Meg Howrey - The Wanderers

Mireille earned her award because she put together a personal aromatherapy kit for an ultra-VIP client, and the ultra VIP wrote a letter to the manager of the hotel to rave about Mireille’s skills and thoughtfulness, and said the oils had not only changed her life, they’d also cured her chronically ill wheaten terrier.

Mireille is made to stand against a cream wall and hold up her employee of the month certificate. She smiles, and says her name, and her department, and why she loves working at the hotel, and what she did to get her award. She does not say, “I accidentally cured a wheaten terrier’s pancreatitis with essential oil,” because you can’t make sarcastic jokes with people who tape up posters that read Let’s Put a Spring in Our Step! and she is not going to misjudge her audience twice in one day.

Once clear of Human Resources, Mireille folds her certificate up into a tiny square and takes the employee elevator up to the spa.

Mireille hasn’t told anyone about her mother’s news. It’s preposterous, pretty much. Her mother had done the thing where she explained using her special-formula kind voice, and then asked for Mireille to share her thoughts and reactions, and Mireille had said, “I think if it’s important to you, then you should do it.”

It is only coming to her now that what her mother was talking about was going to Mars. Mireille wonders what she could have possibly been telling herself for the past month that wasn’t “My mom is going to Mars.”

She also can’t remember what was so funny about blaming Anne Frank.

“It’s training,” her mother had said. “Just like before, let’s focus on the training, not the going.” Except she always did go. Going was always the point.

If her mother goes to Mars, then that will be the only story of Mireille’s life. It will wipe out everything. Mireille wants to stay with that thought a little, but promises herself she will return to it later, when she has more time to savor how awful it is. Mireille has to touch people now, and there is a chance that people might feel the awful things through her hands. So instead, she will do the thing where she spins it the other way, like her mother is always suggesting.

She will start working seriously as an actress in really good things before her mother goes to Mars, and then, when her mother does go, people will be incredibly interested in Mireille’s point of view on the whole deal. Mireille sees herself and her mother on talk shows, being interviewed together, posing for photographs. She sees herself becoming gracious and generous and funny and tender toward her mom and she is attracted to this version of herself and this self snaps open and catches the wind, just like it’s supposed to, just like the parachute that brought her mother’s Soyuz capsule safely to Earth when Mireille was six.

Mireille kneads and exfoliates and makes sympathetic noises and tells people to breathe and is genuinely nonjudgmental about back hair and psoriasis. She keeps spinning. She has become great, she is big, she is important. And she is carrying her mother, close, close to her. This is the story of a daughter who was inspired by the accomplishments of her mother, who was empowered by them enough to choose her own path, which shoots just as high and as far, as daringly, as riskily, as nobly in its own way. This is the story of the daughter, and not the mother. Not the mother shooting into the sky, then higher than sky, bungling her daughter’s name and neither blowing up nor ever—really—coming home.

“A mie pose is used to demonstrate a powerful emotion.”

The voice is female, synthesized through computer concatenation, stripped of opinion, not unattractive. On the wooden stage, a kabuki actroid swivels to demonstrate a mie pose: right hand held perpendicular to the floor, left arm bent at the elbow, jabbing upward. The actroid stamps his left foot, crosses his eyes, and freezes. Sergei guesses that this character is expressing impatience, arrogance. The actroid looks like an asshole.

“The actor’s makeup, or kumadori , is also used to indicate the character of the role,” the voice continues. “Red lines symbolize good traits like heroism and righteousness. Blue or black lines might be used for a villain or a jealous lover.”

Sergei looks at the red colors on the stamping actroid. He was wrong. This was the good guy of the pair.

The second kabuki actroid looks too small for his giant kimono. Maybe he is a replacement. He lunges forward and slashes the air with his sword, nostrils flared, black painted eyebrows winged from nose to temple in two steep slashes.

“These robots,” says Sergei, “are not pleasant.” He imagines his own face painted red and black in equal measure, a heroic villain, the colors running together. It is warm and he has overdressed, he is sweating. He needs to speak to his crewmates today and is having trouble finding the right opening, the correct tone, something between tragedy and comedy.

Right now, the three astronauts—Sergei Kuznetsov, Yoshihiro Tanaka, and Helen Kane—are standing in a replica of the Kureha-za Theater, originally built in Osaka toward the end of the nineteenth century. Like the other sixty-four buildings spread out across the architectural theme park Yoshi has brought them to, the theater is an example of Meiji-period architecture. The astronauts have already inspected the revolving stage, hand-operated in its day by a crew secreted below.

“I’ve only seen one full kabuki performance live,” says Helen. “It was amazing.”

“Then you have an open mind,” Yoshi says. “Kabuki is difficult even for some Japanese; many find it dull, or unfathomable.”

They troop upstairs to inspect the drummer’s balcony. Two Western tourists, student age, are talking loudly in Japanese. They nod at Yoshi, and ignore Helen and Sergei. Young people do not enjoy being foreigners: these two are clearly wanting very much to be Japanese. Sergei thinks of his sons, who are in America right now. They have said they are excited about this. His younger son, Ilya, is truly so, but Ilya is his own country, a principality of Ilya; he will be happy anywhere as long as he gets what he wants. Dmitri is different. Dmitri doesn’t know what he wants and maybe doesn’t have the power to endure a little suffering for greater good. Sergei hopes that his example is enough of a lesson, but it is hard to be an example at a distance.

“When I came here as a young person,” Yoshihiro says, gesturing to the figures on the stage below, “the representations were simple cardboard cutouts of kabuki actors. I’m not sure when they installed these robots. Not quite appropriate to the museum, and I agree with you, Sergei, not very wonderful.”

A Japanese family approaches the stage. The children wave at the actroids, and laugh when they move.

“Ah, they’re not afraid,” Yoshi notes. “They think they are clowns.”

“I remember a friend telling me,” says Helen, “that it’s a controversial thing in psychiatric circles—whether fear of clowns is a real phobia, like claustrophobia or agoraphobia, or a notion people pick up from movies or images in the media.”

“Well. Clowns are much scarier than robots. Clowns. Yeeaachh.” Sergei performs an exaggerated shudder and Helen and Yoshi laugh. It is good to introduce an informal tone to their conversation now, and also demonstrate that he is in a good mood.

They continue speaking in English as they exit the building. English is the vehicular language of Prime Space, though the astronauts all speak each other’s native tongues. Sergei’s Japanese is fluent and his accent is superior to Helen’s (there is a sound in Japanese—a kind of rolling l / r / u combination that Helen admits to being unable to correctly produce). Sergei’s English comprehension is near perfect, though his grammar has occasional but unimportant gaps. Yoshi’s English has a British inflection; in Russian his tone is more expressive.