Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

Keith paused before answering. “He was at the coffeeshop up the street. His car is still there.”

“You are his friend?” she said.

“Neighbor,” he said. “I live right over there.” He gestured over his shoulder in the general direction of the cul-de-sac.

“Oh!” Her hand went to her mouth. “You are astronaut.”

Keith smiled uneasily and waited for her to continue and when she did not he said, simply: “Yes.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Then she said, “Thank you both from bringing him home.”

“For, you mean,” Campbell said. “ For bringing him home.”

“Yes, for bringing him home. Thank you,” she said. “My English is not so good as Peter’s.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“You are good friend to him,” she said.

Keith did not say anything in response to this, instead looking up at Campbell and nodding. The two of them turned toward the door in unison. On the stairs, the children peered at them as they passed, their eyes wide and emotionless. When he and Campbell reached the door, Keith could hear them scurry into the living room, their mother’s voice attempting to quiet their questions in hushed syllables. Then the door closed.

Audrey confirmed what they already knew: that Peter’s car was the filthy sedan parked at a diagonal in front of Starbucks. They found the keys in the ignition and took a second trip to the house, an activity that was at the behest of Campbell, who considered the job incomplete without the delivery of the car. Keith was not opposed to the “mission,” as Campbell had deemed it, but he wondered how far they would go to help this man that Keith knew only in passing and Campbell knew not at all. Still, it appeared that neither he nor the old man had any other more pressing plans and the task gave them both a sense of purpose and accomplishment. The world had been askew and so they had endeavored to set it aright once more.

Keith drove Peter’s car, a vehicle incongruously clean and tidy in its interior and which knocked and banged when the engine was running and emitted clouds of black smoke whenever he pressed the gas pedal. Peter’s telescope was on the floor of the passenger side, leaning up against the edge of the seat pad and extending almost to the backrest. He had only seen it slung over Peter’s shoulder in the darkness but now he saw that it was a scuffed and dented white tube with silver duct tape wrapped around its midsection as if it had split open at some point and no better solution could be found for its repair.

Campbell drove him back to the coffeeshop in the blue pickup truck and talked incessantly about his time in the U.S. Navy, a topic that Campbell seemed to feel was something they shared even though Keith’s time in the service was forgettable. It had been a stepping-stone to NASA and he had spent his time there in an engineering office working on projects involving weapons systems and power usage and he could think of no way to make this a topic of conversation Campbell would understand or be interested in and so he said nothing. His daughter had been a beautiful little girl there. Once they had gone for ice cream together. Her tiny hand enveloped in his own. That was what Ohio was for him now.

When they reached the Starbucks parking lot again he thanked the old man, half expecting him to salute in response, and then entered and asked Audrey for a cup of water and a coffee. He drank the water greedily. The activity of returning Peter to his home had dissipated much of his nausea and indeed his head had begun to feel clear and awake again, although he was incredibly thirsty. Audrey asked him various questions about their delivery of Peter and he answered them but there was not much to say. Yes, he had gotten home safely. Yes, all would be well again. The excitement was over.

He thought about driving home but then wondered what he would do in that empty shell and so he drove across the parking lot to the first of many megastores and there selected a small dining room table that came in a cardboard box, and a chair, similarly in pieces, managing to fit both boxes in the trunk. When he arrived home he brought them into the silent, plastic-wrapped kitchen and sat on the floor and assembled the parts with the disposable tools that came packaged within. It was likely that his own tools were outside in the garage but he still had not crossed into that space. Maybe he would sell the house without ever having opened that door. A collection of screws and bolts on the kitchen floor, the shapes vicious and curved like miniature weapons.

He managed to complete the table and the chair and sat looking at this makeshift furniture. Then he kicked the detritus of cardboard sheets and nuggets of broken Styrofoam out of the way and poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat at the table to eat it, the bowl resting on its laminated wood surface. When he had finished he set his spoon in the bowl and sat back in the chair and surveyed his work: a particle-board table and chair amidst the dusty plastic wrap and blue masking tape of the kitchen. He had begun painting nearly two weeks ago. At what point would he actually admit that he would never paint the second coat or complete any of the upstairs?

It took two armloads to get all of the cardboard packaging to the garbage can outside and it was during the second armload that he saw Peter’s wife on the sidewalk, her two children clutching her legs.

“Hello,” he said, his surprise evident in his voice. He dumped the cardboard scraps into the plastic bin and then rearranged them in an attempt to close the lid.

“Luda,” she said. “My name. Luda Kovalenko.” She was carrying something in front of her, a glass dish like a casserole.

“Luna?”

“Luda,” she said again. “Short for Ludmila.”

“Luda.”

“Yes.”

Nothing for a moment. Then: “Keith Corcoran.”

“Yes, Astronaut Keith Corcoran.”

He gave up on the rearranging and tipped the garbage can lid so that it rested on the protruding bits of cardboard and Styrofoam and brushed his hands on his pants and walked down to the edge of the sidewalk, glancing up at Jennifer’s house as he did so. All the blinds were closed.

“I wanted to thank you,” Luda said. “So I made you this for dinner. For you.” She held the dish out toward him and he took it.

“Oh,” he said. “Really?” It was covered in foil and he could feel the warmth of the oven still radiating from it.

“I hope you like.” She had a few sheets of paper that had been tucked under her arm as she walked and now she transferred them to her hand and smoothed them.

“Uh … I …,” he began, then stopped, then said, “Thank you.” The gesture was unexpected and he actually found himself emotional, standing before this woman and holding a casserole dish of food she had cooked with her own hands while her two children swarmed around her legs and her husband slept off a bender on the sofa.

“Peter. He is not like this,” she said.

“No?”

“Not ever. Not like this. It is hard for him here.” She paused a moment, looked away from him. Then she said, “He was assistant to scientists in Ukraine. Here he works for Target. It is …” She paused for a long moment and then said, “humiliating.”

Keith did not know if the pause was because she could not find the word or because she did not know if she should say it. But there it was. Humiliating, indeed. He said nothing, continuing to look at her, her eyes casting up and down the cul-de-sac as if avoiding his gaze and his silence, the children still clutching at her legs. Embarrassed perhaps. It was later in the day now and the sun was beginning to creep toward the roofs of the houses, toward the distant trees on the opposite side of the field where Peter sometimes sought the darkness with his battered telescope.