Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

“And Colin’s two!” Two little fingers.

It would be okay. Ryan, Connie, Jason, Elizabeth—they all met her, smiling, on the porch of the little house. This was just a normal family gathering, and everything would be okay.

Within the hour, none of it was okay.

Colin, the birthday boy, cried constantly, a high thin wail. Marianne walked him; Connie fed him; Jason brought him toys. Only food quieted him, and then only briefly. He looked underweight. Elizabeth, who did not like children, asked Jason to show her his sandbox, just to get out of the house. Ryan, looking strained, dressed Jason in his jacket and sent him outside with his aunt.

“She shouldn’t have come,” Ryan said to Marianne as they stood in the hall. In the living room, Colin cried. “Already Elizabeth’s started that old drumbeat about law and order. Connie isn’t up to this.”

Marianne said carefully, “Connie looks really tired.” The hallway rug was stained, the walls bore crayon marks, a houseplant looked dusty and parched. Connie had always been a meticulous housekeeper.

“Of course she looks tired,” Ryan said. “She doesn’t ever get uninterrupted sleep. Colin just cries and cries. Jason wasn’t like this.”

“Every child is different,” Marianne said, and immediately regretted the fatuous truth. It was no help.

“Did any of us cry like this?”

“No. I guess I was lucky. Ryan, Connie looks like she’s lost a lot of weight. Has she seen a doctor?”

“She has an appointment next week. Colin, too, although the doctor appointments never seem to help.” He ran his hand though his hair, already going thin on top.

“If you need money for a night nurse or other household help….”

“No. We don’t. And I know you don’t have any to spare. But thanks, Mom.”

He had always been like that, reluctant to accept help. “Me do it,” he’d said as a little child, never belligerently but as a statement of fact. Self-contained, self-reliant. And always, always secretive.

Ryan, did you do it?

Did you aid the organization that tried to blow up the Embassy ? She could never ask him. If he had done it, he wouldn’t tell her. If he hadn’t done it and she accused him, the fraying tie between them might snap for good. Instead she said, “Jason is so excited about Colin’s birthday.”

He smiled faintly. “Well, three—an excitable age.”

“He seems to love being a big brother.”

“Yes. We haven’t seen any sibling rivalry at all. Jason constantly tries to console Colin.”

Something small to be grateful for. Sibling rivalry with Elizabeth and Ryan had made Noah feel he could never measure up, had set him adrift. Maybe Ryan and Connie were better parents than she and Kyle had been. Well—not a very high bar.

Everyone kept conversation focused on the children. Jason ate cake and helped Colin to open his presents. Colin cried. During one of his rare exhausted periods, Marianne held him on her lap. Tears stained his tired little face. She played a game of snapping her fingers to the right, to the left, above his head. Colin tried to grab them, until he again began to cry. Whatever his upset was, the baby didn’t have hearing problems.

During dinner, Colin blessedly slept. The adults, plus Jason in his booster seat, sat around the table, eating too fast, trying to get through the meal before Colin woke up. Tim had spent much of the afternoon prowling around the outside of the house, in the woods, and below the windows. Ryan and Connie were polite to him but basically uninterested. Elizabeth, however, kept glancing from Tim to Marianne. Marianne had made a big point of saying that Tim was her administrative assistant’s boyfriend. It did not stop Elizabeth’s glances. Conversation did not flow well.

Into a lull, Tim said, “I saw a wolf in your woods. Do you have a pack?”

“Yes,” Ryan said, “down from Canada. Just this winter.”

Connie said, “I worry about Jason every minute he’s outside.”

Jason, his mouth rosy with beets, mumbled, “Don’t worry, Mama.”

Tim smiled. “If there’s an adult with Jason, ma’am, then wolves won’t attack.”

Elizabeth said, “Are you a woodsman, then?”

“Was.”

“And you’re licensed to carry all three weapons you have with you.”

Tim’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, ma’am. But I’m curious how you know there’s three.”

Marianne hastened to blur the battle lines before they could harden. “Elizabeth’s with Border Patrol in Texas. And Tim’s ex–Special Forces.”

Elizabeth and Tim regarded each other even more closely, but with grudging respect. Ryan, however, frowned. Connie was still fixated on the wolves.

“Are you sure a wolf wouldn’t attack an adult? I saw ours, just last week, and it looked skinny and hungry enough to eat anything .”

Ryan said, “That’s because there are no mice for them to eat. In fact, I’m surprised wolves have survived at all.”

Tim said, “Wolves are survivors. They can make it no matter what happens.”

“Well, no,” Ryan said. “They almost didn’t survive humans. By 1940 there were only a handful of wolves left in the entire United States.”

“Don’t matter,” Tim said. “Like you said, they just retreated to Canada, ready to invade whenever the time was right. Biding their time. I hear other species do that, too. Can’t stamp ’em out, so you got to live with ’em.”

Ryan put down his fork and said evenly, “You’re talking about purple loosestrife.”

Tim said, “About what?”

Elizabeth said, “No, he’s not, Ryan—not every conversation is about purple loosestrife. He’s talking about Mom’s aliens.”

Tim said, “What’s purple loosestrife?”

Marianne said, “They’re not my aliens.”

“Sure they are,” Elizabeth said. “You helped make them welcome and now you want the ship built to go visiting.”

Ryan, for once his sister’s ally, said quietly, “She’s right, Mom. The Denebs were an invasive species, and now we’re reaping the consequences of having them here. You know that as well as anyone.”

Jason looked from his father to his grandmother. Marianne pressed her lips together and said nothing. Let the discussion die here. Connie, uncomfortable with friction of any kind, said brightly, “Who’d like more cake?”

But Tim said to Ryan, “Your mom’s right, you know. We should go to the stars. I mean—wow!”

Elizabeth said tightly, “No matter what the cost.”

“We already paid the cost,” Tim said. “So why not at least get what we paid for?”

“A great philosophy,” Elizabeth said. “The Children’s Crusade is already slaughtered, so why not have tea with the Saracens.”

“Who?” Tim said.

Ryan said, calmly but with a little too much emphasis, “An invasive species always disrupts an ecology. In this case, the ecology is the entire globe. It may end life as we know it. What, in your opinion, Tim, is worth that?”

Tim’s blue eyes glittered. “I didn’t say it was worth it. I said it was done. Take an even strain, man.”

Ryan said, “I’d rather you didn’t tell me how to behave in my own house.”

“Or more coffee!” Connie said desperately.

Elizabeth said, “The Deneb visit was a disaster. The follow-up is a disaster. Any return contact will be a disaster. That’s just the fucking truth, and you, Mom, won’t face it.”

Jason said, “Aunt Lizzie said a bad word!”

“Yes, darling, she did,” Connie said. “Elizabeth—”

“All right! I apologize for the word but not for the sentiments! Tim, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Come down to Texas and see what the Denebs’ ecological interference has done there. If you were anything but an urban New Yorker, you’d realize the full devastation.”