Ronnie
Thursday, six in the evening, and I've been combed. That's what Tess says, with a wet wipe in her fist and a face of great concentration, "You've been combed, chat, and it's what Mack would have wanted." Combed, wiped, straightened, collar pulled flat. And on the commander's screen in front of me, a kitchen.
The Tolliver kitchen. Everybody in America knows it, from the magazine profile, the one with the iced tea in jam jars. Cream cupboards. A calendar from a tyre company. A wall of framed photographs so thick the wall's got a pattern, and in front of them a woman in a cardigan, sitting very straight with a jam jar in both hands, looking at a camera she doesn't trust.
Bette Tolliver. The widow. Three million people are watching her wait for her husband.
"Okay chat," says Tess, from over Boyd's shoulder, in a whisper. "So this is going to be the most emotional moment of the flight, and I'm not going to say anything, I'm going to be a professional."
"Twelve minutes each, Constance," says Sully, on the loop, in both ears. "Mrs Tolliver, you've got the first slot."
Della told me how it works this afternoon, in two sentences, like she was licking an envelope. The family calls come in over the big antenna, through Royce's media people, who put them on the stream. Flight keeps the clock. That's all Flight does. Nobody on the loop can say a word to Bette, and Bette's not allowed to say a word to anybody but me.
"Hello, Tolliver," says Bette.
She says it flat. The Navy's in it, a nurse's voice, the one for families in the corridor, and under that something I can't place. She's doing a voice. I just can't hear for what.
"Bet," I say.
I say it like the voicemails. One syllable. No grin. I let it go quick and tired, like a man who's said his wife's name nineteen thousand times.
She looks at me. For one second she's not looking at a camera.
"They're calling it the most beautiful marriage in America," she says. "I told them it's the only one where he was always away." The comments scroll past in the corner of my screen, hearts, a lot of hearts, and somebody typing marriage goals, over and over. "How's the food?"
"It's terrible, Bet. I had a burrito. It tried to leave."
"The dog's eaten your dinner. I've stopped stopping her."
"Leave her. She's earned it."
That's straight out of the voicemail. I didn't plan it. It slides out of me with the cadence on. And Bette's mouth does something at the corner that she didn't tell it to.
"Tolliver," she says. And then, in a voice a half-step lower than the rest, still looking at me, not at the lens: "You forgot to take the bins out. You always forget the bins."
Nobody says anything. The comments stop for a second, which they never do. Tess goes still, two seats along. I can hear the pump behind the panel.
I know what this is. It's the test. It's the Hazel thing, the peas thing. It's a line that isn't in any voicemail, a line from forty years of Tuesday nights, and all I've got is a cadence and a guess.
"Bet," I say, and I let the bit before it go, the grin, all of it, "leave 'em. I'll get 'em when I'm home."
Her thumb moves on the jam jar.
"You will," says Bette.
"I will."
"You'd better."
And I'll tell you something. I can't tell who's talking. Not her. Not me. For about three seconds, in a kitchen in Cocoa Beach and a spaceship the size of two minivans, a woman and a man are saying a thing about bins, and I swear to God neither of us is doing a voice. There's water on my face. I'm not going to wipe it. Three million people, and I'm not going to wipe it.
Then she puts the jar down. She sniffs. "That's twelve minutes," says Bette, who has never once looked at a clock. "I'll let you go."
"Bet."
"Stay out of the sun," she says, in the nurse's voice, and the screen goes to a photograph of a kitchen.
Tess lets out a breath so long she has to take another one. "Chat," she says, thickly, "I'm not going to say a single word." And then, because she's Tess: "Chat says goals. Chat says sooo many goals."
I don't say anything. I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. I look down at the watch on my left wrist, and for once it isn't part of the costume.
Boyd's up next, and he takes his call to his lawyers.
I don't know why I'm surprised. He floats to the middle of the cabin, foot hooked under my seat. On the screen, a glass table in a conference room in Houston, two men in blue suits leaning toward the camera like it's a fire.
"Gentlemen," says Boyd, in Texas, huge, drawl wide open, "I believe we discussed a number, and I believe that number had a four at the front. I've been up here two days. I've seen a few things. I'd like a number with a three."
"Mr Castellane," says the lawyer on the left, "the purchase price is agreed."
"It was agreed before the ship made a left turn."
Behind his shoulder, in the camera, I wave. I do the wave. Then I do the other thing with my hand, an auctioneer's gavel, slow, and I mouth, going once. Going twice.
The lawyer on the right stares past Boyd's ear. "Is that the commander?"
"That's just his way," says Boyd, without turning round. "He's resting."
I mouth, Sold. Whole face. Great big. Eyebrows. The lawyer on the left takes off his glasses and puts them on again, and Boyd's drawl, which has been getting thicker all through the call, like gravy, goes right up to the ceiling.
"Y'all talk to Ailsa," says Boyd. "She'll tell you what a price looks like. I want it in writing by the Moon."
The screen goes blank. He turns to me with his big silver head and says, kindly, "Commander, are you doing something with your face?"
"Hay fever, Boyd."
"In space."
"It's a whole thing."
Otis takes his call at the back with his face to the hatch, and nobody listens. Kindest thing the cabin does all week. I hear a few words, low, a voice with a lot of air in it. Baby. Yes. I know. Hazel waves hers off. "I have no one who requires to be waved at," she says, "and I should prefer to look out of the window," and goes back to the porthole.
Tess takes hers last, camera pointed at the wall. She says one word, "Mom," and the rest I can't make out. Knees drawn up, tablet against them, in the corner, for exactly twelve minutes, until Sully, on the loop, says time. She comes back to the middle of the cabin with her eyes very bright and sets the camera arm swinging.
"Okay chat," she says. "We're back."
At half past seven, Tess says, "Chat has asked for something."
She's looking at me, lens too close, like a spoon held up to someone who's refusing it. The red light's on. Boyd's strapped in. Otis is picking at a thread on his cuff. Hazel has her pencil out.
"Chat's asked the commander to tell the Recovery story. It's been sixteen years, chat says. A lot of people only know the headline." Her eyes don't move. "Commander. Would you?"
I know the Recovery story. I've told it at the Rotary. I've told it in a Kiwanis hall in Palm Bay with a man eating a chop, and he didn't look up once, not even at the good part, and I have never forgiven the chop.
I tell it Sully's way.
I don't tell it mine. I put my voice where Sully's was. I stop two beats after Rafe. I give the valve its small laugh like a cough. Ninety seconds, I flew the ship, I've been bringing her home every day since, all of it in nobody's voice but his, flat, like a road. And when I get to the end there's nothing in the cabin but the fans.
It's perfect. It's got no me in it at all.
The comments don't say anything for a moment. Then they say a lot of things. Tess, behind the lens, doesn't blink. Then she reaches up, not to the camera but to her right wrist, and the little red light on the arm goes out.
"Chat's gone to dinner," she says, to nobody, in a voice I don't know. "Everybody's gone quiet."
I wait. She's put her hand back on the arm. She isn't looking at the lens now. She's looking at me.
"That's not what you told my mom," says Tess.
Quietest I've ever heard her. No chat. No laugh. A girl of twenty-six, on a ship with nobody listening but the orange box behind Otis's head.
"Tess," I say.
"Forget it." Her eyes go to my left wrist, the old steel watch with the soft strap. They stay a second. They come back to my face. "Forget it. It's not a thing." She says, to the wall, "Okay chat, we're back," and the red light goes on.
Friday, three in the morning, hour sixty-one, and I can't sleep, and neither, it turns out, can she.
"You there?"
"I'm here." Della, with her hand over her eyes, by the sound of it. "Why are you awake?"
"The bins."
She doesn't say anything. I tell her what Bette said, the whole line, and my line, the leave 'em. What I don't tell her is that I think I said something true and I'm not sure whose it was. I say, "How do I get my voices out of my head? I do forty a day and I've never felt it until now."
"You don't. You hear them. That's what you've got."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's said all week."
"It wasn't meant nicely."
"I'll take it nicely." I look at the dark, at the big window, at a small hard blue coin with a smear of white on it. "Can I tell you something about birthday parties?"
"No."
"Everybody thinks the Mack's the job. It's not. The job's a room. I've got three voices on top of Mack. If a parent's hovering, I go full Captain Barnacle. Full pirate, the whole thing, arr, the parrot. The kids get the joke and the grown-ups get nothing. They look at the pirate and they relax, because a pirate's not a person they have to meet."
"Okay."
"If the prize is behind a different door, I do Johnny Jackpot. Game show. He tells you it's coming. That's all he's for. He's hope."
I'm talking too quickly. I know I'm talking too quickly. In my ear I can hear her not stopping me, which is her saying go on.
"And if I've got numbers, I do Stormy Norm. Weatherman. How long till the cake, how many candles. You read it like the forecast, and you say every number twice, once as the temperature and once as the wind, because a kid never hears it the first time. Nobody's born with a number."
"Seventy-four," says Della, very quietly. "Seventy-four."
She doesn't say anything else. For a long minute, I listen to her breathe.
"What's she like?" I say. "Bette. When she's not on the screen."
I don't know why I ask it. It comes out like the yes. And her voice comes down. Right off the shelf. Lower than I've heard it all week, Atlanta through and through, nothing on top.
"She hasn't played them," says Della. "The voicemails. The bread, the dog, the whole lot. Thirty-one messages and she's never going to play them. She's going to sit in that kitchen with a jar of tea and she's never going to hear him say good bread."
"Della."
"What?"
"That's the one," I say. "That's the one I like."
Nothing for a long time. I think the line's dropped. Then, in the same voice, not putting anything on it: "Go to sleep, Ronnie."
"Okay."
"Go to sleep."
I do. Well. I shut my eyes. I lie there with the pump ticking and the left ear warm, and she doesn't sign off. She doesn't say goodnight. She doesn't click out. All night, at the very edge of hearing, I can feel the channel open, and a woman in a car in Titusville not hanging up.