Lydia Netzer - Shine Shine Shine

“Stan,” said Sunny, grabbing him by the arm and stopping dead. “It is good news, right?”

“Sunny, now I don’t want to get you upset. But you should know the truth.”

“What’s the truth?” Sunny asked.

“The truth is they might still not make it back,” said Stan. Then he coughed, put his hand on his face, and smoothed his mustache. Sunny found herself crazily trying to decode this gesture, like maybe Maxon would have done. Was he shielding the pregnant lady? Overstating the danger? Itchy?

“What?” Sunny breathed.

“The meteor did more damage than we thought, honey. Once we established the link, Houston ran some diagnostics with them, and it’s not good. I can’t see how we down here can help them up there without the navigational stuff that they need to fix their orbit, to get to the surface, to fire the rockets … it’s just too much.”

Stan sounded like he was going to cry. “Maxon did a good thing fixing the comms. That was a really great thing. But, this might be the last you get to talk to him, honey. That’s why we called you here in the middle of the night. Do you understand?”

“Did they dock with the robots? Did they get that far?”

“Yes,” said Stan. “They have now docked with the robots. I don’t know how, because they shouldn’t have been able to, but somehow they did. Unfortunately, I think that’s as far as it’s going to go.”

“No,” said Sunny. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he would go up there and get himself killed.”

Stan put his hand on a doorknob. Inside, through a pane of reinforced glass, Sunny could see people, hear voices.

“The meteor was something that no one could account for,” said Stan. “You can’t blame him. There was nothing he could have done.”

“But Maxon accounts for everything,” she said, pushing past him to throw the door open. “I want to talk to him. I want to talk to him right bloody now.”

The room was big, with shaded windows on one wall. There were benches and tables around the room littered with drills, pieces of metal, and mounted laser saws and fabricators. A poster on the wall proclaimed, “This is where we make the magic happen!” Angela Phillips had already arrived and was sitting in front of a big silver flat-screen monitor on a dirty old wooden desk. Of course she’d gotten there first; she lived in Hampton. Like any sensible person whose husband worked at Langley.

Sunny had demanded a Norfolk residence, for the opera house and the art museum. She was on the board of this and the committee of that, using Maxon’s money to buy their way into the social stratosphere of this old town. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She regretted everything. Where would Maxon die, in the cold of space? Would he fall into the moon? Or would he make it halfway home and then run out of air? Would he kill everyone on board? Would he? She saw her husband under layers, under the rocket, under the space suit, under the jumpsuit, down to the core of him, where he was breathing, low and strong, his pulse never rising above fifty. It was crazy. The doctors couldn’t explain it.

There were others in the room. A man she remembered having over to the house for dinner with his dowdy wife approached her. He was clearly not distracted enough to not notice the bald head.

“Sunny,” he said. “Are you all right? Are you … cancer?”

He trailed off, but Sunny firmly shook his hand and winked.

“Hey, Jim, you guys called me so early, I didn’t have time to brush my hair, so I just decided not to wear it, right?”

He didn’t laugh, but then, neither did she. When Angela saw her, she motioned for her to come over. Bubber was playing with graduated metal cones on the floor, and was rocking. On the monitor, Sunny saw Fred Phillips, his face filling the whole screen. Angela put out her hand and grabbed Sunny’s hand. She was a genuine blonde, with tiny shoulders and a soft baby voice.

The voice of Fred, slightly buzzing through the speakers, said, “Sweetie, tell me something. Tell me anything.”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Angela. “Everything will be all right. You’ll be home before you know it.”

“Actually it’s not,” said Fred, rolling a wild eye. “Actually that’s not true. So tell me something else, anything else. Tell me what the kids had for breakfast today.”

“The kids are asleep, Fred,” said Angela. “I left them at my mother’s.”

“I want to see my kids,” Fred said, and his voice choked. They saw him, on the monitor, grab at his mouth, and shake his head. “What the hell, Angie,” he sobbed.

There was a delay in transmission, so it was hard for them to communicate. They would talk over each other, and then wait too long, and then someone would start talking, then the other would wait. Is this what it’s like to have a spouse who talks all the time? thought Sunny. All this stopping and starting. Sunny heard a voice in the background that was not Maxon say, “Pull yourself together, Phillips.”

“Fred, Sunny’s here,” said Stanovich, leaning over Angela’s shoulder. “Wanna get Dr. Mann on the feed there? Thanks.”

“Sure thing, Stan,” said Fred. “Here you go, Genius, time to cry and die.”

Angela stood and let Sunny sit down in the chair in front of the wooden desk while Fred seemed to levitate out of the seat he was in, and Maxon seemed to levitate in. Sunny sat perfectly still as she saw his head come into focus. He made sure he was sitting in exactly the right spot, and then he looked at her. She stared back at him, at the wide, bold lines of his face, his precious mouth, his ears, his curls. She wasn’t sure what kind of picture she was seeing, but she saw him very clearly, and it made her want to cry. He smiled his standard, formal smile, and then he leaned closer, peering into his screen. Sunny saw his face change from formal and public, to hungry, the way he looked when he really needed to eat something immediately. He had seen her bald head.

“Hey, baby,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“Well, I’m probably going to have to eat Phillips first,” Maxon said.

“Oh yeah?” she said.

“Yeah, Gompers is such a nice guy, and Tom Conrad is made out of silicon, so…”

“Rethink, Maxon, rethink.”

She reached her hand out and touched the line of his nose, the curve of his cheekbone, the angle of his jaw on the monitor. He was quiet. She wanted to force him to see her, confirm that he knew. She wanted to tell him what to say, write it down for him, hand him a piece of paper with letters on it that he could truly understand. He was quiet. Was she telling him? Was the message getting through? Was she sending him all he needed, to survive? She wanted to say, Maxon, I love you, I’m sorry I’ve been a shit, I am straight now, I’m ready to be nice to you again and give you what you need. Please don’t die. He said nothing.

She picked up a piece of paper from the desk and folded it, and a Sharpie that was sitting there, and she wrote on the paper in very thick letters: I AM SORRY. Then she held it up in front of her head, so that her face was covered. When she took it down and looked at him, she was certain he understood.

“Sunny, do you want me to come home?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said clearly. “I want you to come home.”

“Great, okay,” he said. “Put Bubber on.”

Sunny retrieved Bubber from the floor and put him on her lap, a smooth metal cone clutched in each fist. He was making noises, like sound effects, and rocking. She knew he was far away in his mind.

“Hey, buddy,” said Maxon. Bubber did not look up. “Whatcha got there?”

“Can you show Daddy your cones?” Sunny prompted. “Tell Dad what you have there.”