New horizons, p.43
New Horizons, page 43
‘He had a stroke.’ Her aunt’s eyes scan the screen.
‘How bad?’
‘They don’t know yet. Elise says they want him under observation for at least a week, maybe two. You should go and see him, Ayla. It’s been a long time and – given where you’re going, that you might not come back – this could be your last chance.’
‘It’s been five years since he moved in with Elise.’ Ayla shakes her head. ‘She won’t let me near him.’
‘Do you want me to ask her? Maybe if you tell her your news –’
‘No,’ Ayla says sharply. ‘My sister hasn’t spoken to me in twenty years. She doesn’t deserve to know anything about my life.’
The dispirited expression on her aunt’s face makes her relent.
‘I’ll call the hospital, see if I can talk to him by phone. Okay? Let’s finish the rest of our dinner in peace. Please?’
Samsara nods, and they move on to other subjects, but the meal’s pleasure is tainted.
Ayla spends the rest of the weekend running her favourite mountain trails and wondering how to break the news to Jeff. He comes over for dinner on Monday night, bearing a bag full of Chinese takeout and a boisterous demeanour. Jeff tells her about his latest challenging client, but Ayla remains silent, full of restless thoughts. She crunches on egg noodles and orange-glazed chicken and wonders if she can bring dried red chillies to the colony. The pioneers of old relied on spices and spiced food for long journeys. Should Mars be any different?
She looks up from her meal when Jeff stops talking. All lightness is gone from his expression.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you have something to tell me?’ he says.
She feels sucker punched. ‘How did you find out? Brian?’
‘Yes.’
‘That asshole!’
Jeff flings his hands outward in frustration, spattering sauce from his chopsticks across the table. ‘Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how lousy I felt hearing the news from him? Mars! You’re going to Mars! How could you not tell me about this?’
‘We’ve only been dating for a couple months.’ She hates the defensiveness in her tone. ‘I didn’t want to risk losing you if they didn’t pick me.’ Besides, you’ll find someone better, she almost says out loud.
She gets up to escape the hurt in his eyes and scrapes the rest of her food into the trash can. Her watch beeps. It’s a reminder to call the hospital, one that she set herself so she’d stop avoiding it. But the timing is terrible. Her plate clatters into the sink as she tries to steady her shaking hands.
‘I’m sorry. I know I should’ve told you sooner, but it’s over anyway,’ she says, still facing the sink. ‘I’m leaving next Saturday for training.’
‘It’s over all right, but it didn’t have to be like this. You think you’re unlovable because your face makes you ugly and that’s why no one asks you out. You’re wrong. It’s not the scars that repel people, not the ones on the outside anyway. I would’ve been happy to watch you soar into the future, but I can take a hint. I hope you find what you’re looking for out there.’
His chair scrapes over the tile floor. She succeeds in holding back her sobs until the front door slams shut. It’s for the best, she tells herself. There’s no good way to break up. They hadn’t even come to the point of saying ‘I love you’ to each other.
Later, as she brushes her teeth, she stares at the curtain covering the bathroom mirror and wonders if Jeff was right. She holds the cloth aside and forces herself to look at her reflection. One half of her face is ordinary, a blend of boring brown tones. The other is a warped landscape, stretched taut in some areas, puckering like an angry pink mountain range in others. She lets the curtain fall. Mars won’t have any mirrors to hide from.
Elise got the good looks in the family: hair the colour of rosewood, eyes like a summer sky, sweetly bowed lips. How does her sister looks now, after twenty years and two kids? Thinking of her reminds Ayla of her dad, and she imagines him lying in a hospital bed, wondering if his other child cares about him any more.
She grabs her tab as she walks into the bedroom and calls up flights to Los Angeles. There’s an evening option for the following Friday, her last day of work. She books it and changes her Corpus Christi flight to Sunday, from Los Angeles. One day with her immediate family – more than enough – then off to mission training.
Her sleep that night is restless. She dreams of spice barrels coming loose and floating like bloated, drunken bears through the Mayflower’s cargo hold.
Ten days later, Ayla steps out of the air-conditioned terminal into the warm Los Angeles night. Exhaust fumes mix with the scent of sea salt and evoke memories of driving along the coast in her mother’s old convertible. She wonders for the hundredth time since boarding the airplane if she should have come.
She merges on to the freeway and is instantly snarled in seven lanes of traffic. She switches the car to auto-follow. It creeps along and passes a fly-by-night costume store. Her stomach clenches as she remembers the date. Tomorrow is Halloween. Lost in all of the Mars preparations, she has, for the first time in her life, overlooked the holiday.
‘Damn,’ she whispers to the dashboard.
Ayla resumes control of the car and pulls off the freeway, driving through a posh stretch of Santa Monica before heading north along the coast. Here and there, clusters of costumed teenagers are out partying early. She opens the windows and lets in the ocean breeze, fresh and moist. Her curls break loose, flying across her face, but she doesn’t care as she loses herself in the buried, painful memories that she’s been keeping away.
Ayla, age six, wanted desperately to be a robot, as did her best friends, Emma and Shaden. The three of them decided to coordinate, cobbling together their costumes from cardboard, dryer vents, and liberal amounts of duct tape. They were a hit at every house, wandering the hilly streets of their suburban Calabasas neighbourhood and collecting more than their fair share of candy.
Emma’s Dad and Ayla’s Mom were their chaperones for the night, happily taking their pictures in front of the more elaborately decorated homes. The street lights glowed yellow-orange, and Shaden pretended they were on Mars, that his LED ring light was a laser.
The sidewalks were crowded, though, and they couldn’t easily run in their bulky costumes. Still, Ayla wanted to play, so she tore off a sparkly sticker and wrapped it around the tip of her index finger.
‘Pew! Pew!’ she shouted, waving her finger at Shaden and then at her mom who laughed and nudged Emma’s dad.
Ayla stumbled over something. She looked down and saw a silver-handled toy gun.
‘Watch out! I have a laser gun,’ she yelled, grabbing it and pointing it at her mom. ‘Pew!’
She pulled the trigger.
It’s the sounds and the smells that Ayla can’t forget: the horrible popping noise over the din of the crowds; the screams, some of which were her own; the smoke that stung her nostrils before they filled with blood.
West Hills is a different hospital than it was twenty years ago, but Ayla shuts down the part of her brain that wants to compare the ICU ward then versus now.
‘I’m here to see Carlos Butler,’ she says to the receptionist.
‘Your name?’
‘Ayla Narayan-Butler.’
The receptionist frowns at her display. ‘I don’t see it on the list. We only have another five minutes before visiting hours end. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come back tomorrow.’
Ayla represses a sigh. ‘What time?’
‘Nine o’clock.’
Ayla wanders back to the parking lot and slides her claim key into the valet machine. As she waits for the car, she considers sending Elise a message, but she’s saved by the car’s arrival. The empty vehicle pulls to a stop at the curb, and Ayla slides into the driver’s seat. She drives without thinking too much about where she’s going, feeling her way through streets that are vaguely familiar like scenes from a faded filmstrip.
The first few months after the shooting, Ayla was in and out of the hospital for reconstructive surgery so often that she was barely conscious. They told her later that the slide on the semi-automatic had blown backward, shearing off half her face in the process, but she was numbed by an influx of medication. She lost her memories of that time in the haze of opiates. When she was in her right mind, she felt Elise’s fury in a thousand tiny ways – excluding her from games, cutting off bits of her stuffed animals, knocking over her now clumsy body ‘by accident’.
Dad was submerged in his own grief most of the time, but whenever he did look at Ayla, at her mangled face and absent foot, she could feel his revulsion. Only her aunt was sharp enough to realize what was happening. After a year and a half of pleading, Samsara convinced Dad to let her go to Denver. He visited once a year until he could no longer travel, but he always came on his own, without Elise.
Ayla pushes the past behind as the shape of the neighbourhood becomes excruciatingly familiar. There – that’s the street where it happened, and that’s her own street. She turns the car and slowly rolls by her former home. A light is on upstairs, but she can’t see anyone. A silver minivan is parked in the driveway, and the lawn is conspicuously absent of Halloween decorations.
She stops the car in the cul-de-sac and sits, shaking from head to feet. She feels a pang for Elise’s children, deprived of both a grandmother and the pleasure of Halloween, and it was all her fault.
As grief and guilt threaten to drown her, she breathes deeply and imagines herself taking the memories and locking them away in a large, heavy, metal box. The trembling and the emotions gradually subside. She closes her eyes and buries the metal box deep under the earth, to be left behind forever. This house isn’t her home, nor is this planet. When a semblance of peace returns, she searches the car’s navigation system and spends the night at the first hotel on the list.
Halloween morning dawns. The sky is fittingly gray and laden with clouds. Ayla stands in the hospital lobby and stares at her watch, paralysed with indecision. She glances up at the sound of a woman’s voice and sees the back of a brunette head at the reception desk. Before she can decide whether she wants to be noticed or not, Elise turns and sees her. For a moment, Elise doesn’t seem to recognize her, but then realization dawns.
Elise strides over. ‘You! You unbelievable little – What are you doing here? Do you realize what day it is?’
A flush creeps up Ayla’s cheeks, and she hunches as she nods. She focuses on the patterns of the industrial carpet beneath their feet.
‘I came to see Dad.’ Her muscles tense with the urge to run out of the hospital and never come back.
‘And you chose today, of all days, to visit him. You are such a selfish, self-absorbed –’ Elise stops and draws a deep breath, then lets it out audibly. ‘You’ll never change, will you?’ She taps her foot. ‘I suppose you have a right to see him. I’ll take you in, but I’m not putting you on the visitor’s list.’
Bands of pressure tighten around Ayla’s chest. She focuses on her breath as she follows Elise through the security doors and into the ward. She’ll say her farewell to Dad, and once she’s on Mars none of this will matter. She can put it behind her forever.
Elise opens the door and leans against the wall outside, arms crossed.
‘You have fifteen minutes. Hospital rules. Don’t upset him!’
The door shuts behind Ayla. Her dad is hooked up to a bevy of monitors that are mercifully silent, but their coloured lines wriggle eloquently across the screens. The room is a plush single, furnished with dark wooden cabinets, an armchair, and an attached bathroom, though, judging by all the tubes running in and out of her father’s body, he won’t need the facilities anytime soon.
She sits by the bed on a wheeled stool.
‘Hi, Dad.’
Her father’s head lolls toward her, but his eyes are glazed and unfocused.
‘Felicia. You’re here,’ he rasps.
The good side of her face resembles her mother’s. She turns so he can see all of her.
‘No, Dad, it’s me, Ayla. I came to see you… to see how you’re doing… and to tell you something.’
Her father’s trembling hand gropes around on the bed until it finds hers. He curls his fingers lightly, and his eyelids droop.
‘I’ve missed you so much, Fel. Why didn’t … when …’
The rest of his words are too soft to hear. Ayla leans close until his papery lips brush her ear and his stubbled chin scratches her cheek.
‘Forgive me, Fel… terrible thing… little Ayla. I let Samsara take her… was a mistake. Stupid… lost. You left me alone… Ah, I’ve missed you.’
Ayla has been waiting her entire life to hear these words, but not like this, not like she’s eavesdropping on her mother’s ghost. She pulls back. Her father’s eyes are closed, and his whispery voice trails off into silence. She wants to tell him that she forgives him, that she loves him and understands, but it’s not her blessing that he wants.
‘Dad, I have some news,’ Ayla says, swallowing against tears. ‘I’m going to Mars. I’ll be on a ship called the Mayflower, and it leaves in a couple of months. I probably won’t be back, not ever. I’m…’ she stops. The words stick in her throat, and she forces them out. ‘I’m here to say goodbye.’
She can’t tell if any of her words register, but she hopes that some part of him will remember them when he wakes up. She takes a deep, shaky breath and lightly kisses his cheek. His face is peaceful, but it hits her that he looks old – old and fragile like she’s never seen him before.
‘You’re going to be fine,’ she says, wishing it to be true. ‘I’ll send you a postcard from Mars.’
She walks out of the room and finds Elise gone. Her shoulders tense as she strides away, waiting for her sister to chase her. But no one comes, and then she’s outside and away.
Ayla spends the rest of the day at Zuma Beach watching the surf crash. Gulls squawk, and the sand is littered with prone bodies worshipping the sun, but there is not a single reminder that it’s Halloween Day. The sight of the ocean makes an indelible memory: the vastness of it, the colours from turquoise to silver and sapphire; the way the foam traces chaotic patterns before vanishing underground. These are the colours of the earth. Her future is one of brown and red, the colours of her heart.
She holds on to those images in the following weeks at Corpus Christi, returning to them when she needs to escape the presence of her crewmates – her lifemates. Some of them are already forming romantic attachments, but she holds herself apart. It’s not hard. Men have always found it difficult to look past her deformities, and she doesn’t mind now. She belongs to Mars.
Ayla spends her three days of leave in Denver with Aunt Sam. They ring in the New Year together, toasting with champagne and caviar. Samsara even drags Ayla to a party with some of her graduate students to show off her celebrity niece. They both avoid any mention of the past until it’s time to say goodbye.
‘I wish you could’ve had one last day with your dad,’ Aunt Sam says as they stand next to the taxi. Her breath fogs in the sharp morning air.
‘I can text him from the Mayflower and occasionally after we get the colony set up. It won’t be much different from what we’ve done here.’
Samsara looks at her strangely.
‘What?’
‘How… You can’t…’
The taxi chimes to remind Ayla to get in, but Ayla stays still, watching her aunt’s face and feeling confused.
‘Nobody mentioned you at the funeral,’ Samsara says. Her voice is heavy with anger and regret. ‘I assumed you couldn’t come because you were at training. What a stupid person I’ve been! It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t tell you.’
‘Funeral? You mean – Dad’s dead?’
‘I’m so sorry, love. I thought you knew.’
‘Not your fault,’ Ayla says reflexively.
The taxi chimes again, and they give each other a long, tight hug before Ayla gets in. Her cheeks are wet from her aunt’s tears, but she’s numb inside, reeling from the news. Anger builds inside her on the drive to the airport. If she owed Elise nothing, then perhaps the same was true in return, but not when it came to Dad. His life belonged to both of them.
She finds herself at the check-in counter saying, ‘I’d like to change my ticket. I need a flight to LAX, and I need to be in Corpus Christi tonight.’
‘Let me see,’ the agent says. ‘We can get you on a noon flight to LAX, but you’ll have to move fast. It arrives at 1.30, and there’s a 5.30 p.m. flight out to Houston that gets you in at 10.30 p.m. That’s the best I can do.’
Ayla checks the map on her tab. She can drive from Houston to the Mayflower base in four hours. It would mean arriving in the middle of the night, but she wouldn’t miss the final morning briefing.
‘I’ll take it. Both flights.’
Ayla’s stomach clenches with hope and fear all the way through the snarl of Los Angeles weekend traffic, right up to their – Elise’s – house. She knocks on the navy blue door. When it opens, Ayla looks up from the cheery ‘WELCOME’ mat, but not very far. A tiny person with curly brown hair, rather like her own, peers at her.
‘Uh – is your Mom home?’
‘Mom!’ bellows the child, running off and leaving the door ajar.
Elise stops halfway down the stairs when she sees Ayla at the door. Ayla feels herself trembling and rushes the words out before she loses her nerve.
‘How could you? How could you let me miss Dad’s funeral, too?’
Elise storms down, out, and closes the door behind her, forcing Ayla to back up a few steps. Now that she’s closer, Ayla sees the lines and shadows on her sister’s face, which is also pinched with fury.
‘It’s not my fault you’re running off to Mars, like you ran off to Denver. That’s all you know how to do, right? Run away! What do you care if Dad’s dead or alive? You weren’t here. You weren’t the one looking after him.’
‘You didn’t let me help!’
‘Because I knew you wouldn’t. Do you have any idea how much it hurt us when you left with Aunt Sam? You killed Mom, and then you abandoned me and Dad.’
