Lydia Netzer - Shine Shine Shine

Bubber lifted the cones in the air but did not look at the monitor. He continued to beep and shriek quietly, little sci-fi noises.

“Bubber, look right here where Mommy is pointing,” said Sunny, but Bubber wouldn’t look up.

“Sorry,” said Sunny. She saw Maxon lean down and get something. He was clutching something in his lap, his eyebrows up and his head shaking back and forth.

“It’s okay. He looks great,” said Maxon.

“He knows you’re there,” said Sunny. “It’s just that—”

Now Maxon was holding up a sign, too. On a clean page in his notebook he had written I LOVE YOU. He had gone over the letters several times so that they could really see it. He held it up to his chest, over his heart.

“Bubber,” said Sunny, pressing her lips into his ear, “I really need you to look where Mommy is pointing right now. Just look where Mommy’s finger is pointing.”

Bubber looked, just one glance; then he turned back to lean on Sunny and click the cones together. Sunny smiled at Maxon and said, “He saw.”

But Maxon kept on holding up the sign. And she knew it was for her, too. She tried to memorize the sight, so she could hold on to it forever, him there framed in the screen, wearing his white turtleneck, holding that sign over his heart.

“I gotta go, Sunny,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. But I’m going to go ahead and land this thing.”

“Maxon,” Stanovich broke in, “it’s too dangerous. Not without the starboard boosters.”

“Yeah, I gotta switch this thing off, Stan. See ya.”

And then the monitor went black. Immediately, from inside Bubber a wail went up. It came from the back of his throat but it sounded like it came from his toes. She knew from experience that this was the beginning of a meltdown, possibly an epic one, definitely not for public consumption. She wanted to get him out of the room, let him scream and rail and arch and foam and smack at her in the hallway, but first she had to get those cones out of his hand.

“No, honey,” she said. “No, no. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She began to pry his fingers from around the cone.

“We have to go,” she said urgently. “Come on, Bubber, put down the cone.”

But that was the wrong thing to do. The screaming peaked. Red-faced and spurting tears, Bubber fell to the floor, clutching the cones to his body. He rolled along the floor, kicking anything in his way, until he was wedged under a desk, where he stuck. Sunny went stumping after him, so wide and awkward. It would be very hard to deal with Bubber in this way. She couldn’t even pick him up, if he was trying to get away. She wasn’t strong and balanced enough. She started to get down on her knees, to try and talk him out, but Stan put a hand on her arm.

“It’s okay,” he said to her. “Let him keep the cones. In fact, you all can stay here if you want to, for a while.”

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “This is…”

“Sunny, it’s fine,” he said. “I have a boy with Asperger’s myself. And Rogers over there too. I mean, he is autistic, not his kid.”

“Really?” she said.

“Really,” said Stan. “You might say it kind of runs in the family. The NASA family.”

Sunny and Bubber stayed in Stanovich’s office at Langley for the rest of the night. In fact, when Sunny took a blanket and pillow into the lounge to get some sleep, Bubber stayed in the office with the other men. He was perfectly happy to play with the robot parts, finger the machines, and say absolutely nothing to anyone.

Up in the rocket, Maxon had laid out his plans for landing the rocket and the robots on the moon. Gompers hesitated.

“I don’t know, Mann,” he said. “We’re going to do it, but only because there’s nothing else to do.”

Phillips said, “Hey, Genius, who told you it was okay for you to do my job?”

“Shut up, Phillips,” said Gompers. “Unless you have another plan.”

“Phillips,” said Maxon kindly, “of course I can do your job. If I couldn’t do your job and everyone else’s job up here, I wouldn’t have come.”

Phillips stared.

“No disrespect, sir,” said Maxon to Gompers.

“None taken, son,” said Gompers. “Now let’s hope you’re right.”

WHAT THEY HAD DONE to conceive the second baby had taken only a few minutes. It had happened under the wig, under the sheets. It was on Maxon’s timetable, but this time there was no resistance from Sunny. “You’re right,” she said to him. “It’s time to have another baby.” They did it on purpose, all the while knowing that something was wrong with Bubber, that something was wrong with Maxon, that something was wrong with Sunny, that something was wrong with her mother, that something was wrong with everyone else. They did it knowing that a flawed thing would be the result of this effort, and that they would be expected to love it anyway, in spite of, because of. She had containers in the cedar closet labeled “maternity.” It would all be managed handily by the girl who had become a blonde. They would replace themselves, Sunny and Maxon, in the world. They would do what was required of them by evolutionary law.

But the pregnancy of the girl who had become a blonde had changed into the pregnancy of the girl who had always been bald. And the certainty disappeared. The laws were unwritten, the map faded. It was Maxon’s baby, and Sunny’s, and anything could happen. There were no expectations that could be logically brought to bear. The baby could be born a miracle.

In the morning, Sunny received a phone call from the hospital. Her mother had died in the night.

There is a real elevation of the conversation, when death and birth come into it. Nothing is unspoken. Everything underneath comes out, and the darkness spills up into the everyday language. You talk about dark things because you have decisions that need to be made. There is no subtlety when you have to decide between cremation and burial, or tell someone whether or not you want to be sedated through it all.

There was a moment, when Sunny was sitting at a small, cheap desk at the hospital, on a rolling office chair, when she forgot her mother’s maiden name. Then she knew she was coming unhinged. But she kept signing paperwork anyway, kept the pen going across the paper. In the normal course of your life, do you have any dealings with the coroner? No. Do you have any reason to say the word “autopsy”? Never.

As an orphan, you are alone. There is no one on the Earth watching, when you say, “Look at me!” There is no one standing in the gap between you and oblivion, putting up her hands, and saying “Stop.” You have come this far surrounded, and now you must continue without defense. As a pregnant person, Sunny had to hide herself from this exposure. She had to protect the baby from this distress. So as her mother’s ship disappeared, sinking below the horizon, and her own ship sailed up into the wind, she had to let it go without fireworks, without searchlights, without a trumpet blast. Almost without remark.

Sunny decided against a funeral. She decided that her mother would be cremated. These things were going to be handled by the guy at the mortuary, and she signed the release form that authorized him to take possession of the body. This transfer would take place somewhere in the bowels of the hospital. Her mother would exit out the back of the building. Sunny did not know what her mother would look like, at that point. It could be really terrible.

There could have been a funeral in Yates County, where all of Emma’s friends could attend. There could have been a funeral in Virginia. But Sunny could not arrange a funeral now. She knew her mother would say, “Whatever makes it easier for you, dearest. Do whatever you need to do. I don’t care.” So her mother would be cremated. It all seemed so impossible that she wanted to tell the mortician to check carefully and be sure her mother was dead. She wanted to install a brightly colored button on the inside of the kiln: “If you are alive and being wrongfully cremated, PRESS HERE.” It had been so slow, this dying. Maybe it was not completely done, in spite of what the doctors said. Maybe there were still some synapses firing, some spirit to be resurrected and intone the words “Good job, Sunny. You are great. You are handling this really well.”