“Everything’s changing so quickly now. We used to fight the SRA; now we’re designing weapons with them. And the military is letting in way more people than they did before. When you two joined, it was much more selective. That’s part of the reason you don’t get fresh fruit anymore. Same budget, just more mouths to feed.”
“I’m okay with eating soy if it means we get more bodies into uniform,” I say. “Against the Lankies, we need everyone willing and able to hold a rifle.” I can’t help but give Ken a pointed glance, who looks fit and healthy sitting next to Halley.
“It’s not for everyone,” Ken replies. “I mean, I have the utmost respect for what you do up there, but it’s not something I’m cut out for. I’m better with the theory than with the practice.”
“You’re better with the talk than with the action,” Halley says matter-of-factly, and I can see her mother flinching a little.
Ken smiles at her and shrugs. “Look, there’s a need for both. Thinkers and doers. Don’t think less of those of us who choose computers and blueprints over attack ships and rifles.”
“A lot of people don’t get that choice,” she replies. “Be glad that you don’t have to risk battle for a shot at some fresh honeydew melon.” She pushes the dessert plate away from her and gets up.
“Excuse me for a bit. I think I need some fresh air. It’s getting a bit stuffy in here.”
My wife stays gone for the rest of the dinner, leaving me to pick up the conversational slack for her. Halley’s mom looks visibly steamed over her daughter’s absence. Her dad just looks a little sheepish and embarrassed, and I know this isn’t the first time he’s had to be a spectator when Halley and her mother lock horns over something. There’s a good reason we don’t go down to San Antonio more often, and why I dread it when we do.
Halley’s parents see their guests out an hour after the meal, when feet start shuffling under the table with boredom and we run out of polite conversation subjects. Ken, Halley’s old school friend, gives me a firm good-bye handshake as we exchange the usual courtesy phrases, but it seems that his interest in the whole evening went out the front door with Halley when she left. As soon as she sees the guests out of the driveway, Halley’s mother disappears upstairs, and I am left to make strained and awkward conversation in the living room with her dad, who wants to pretend that nothing’s wrong with the evening at all.
Halley returns half an hour later. Her father answers the doorbell, and she strides right past him and into the living room. Then she puts a hand on my shoulder and kisses me on the cheek.
“Sorry about that,” she says. “I shouldn’t have left you with that pack of morons.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
“I needed to walk off some anger.”
“Did it work?”
“Not completely,” she replies.
Behind Halley, her mother walks into the living room, with a facial expression as if she had just bitten into a freshly cut lime.
“Diana,” she says. “That was very much the height of rudeness.”
“I concur,” Halley says, her voice dropping to the same temperature as the refrigerated air coming from the AC vents on the walls. “You are absolutely the rudest bitch I’ve ever known.”
“Honey,” her father says in an imploring tone. Halley holds up a finger to interrupt him, her eyes never leaving the face of her mother, who looks like she’s just been doused with cold water.
“How dare y—” she begins, and Halley cuts her off harshly.
“How dare you,” she says. “How fucking dare you indeed. We come home to see you two because we are about to ship out to Mars, and you throw a goddamn social event without telling us.” She looks at me and then back at her mother, barely suppressed fury in her eyes. “You invite the guy I dated in college, seat him right next to me, and then bitch passive-aggressively for two solid hours about how much you think our jobs suck, and how uncouth all this soldiering business is. You disrespect my husband and his background while he’s sitting right in front of you, trying to play nice for your idiot friends.”
Her mother looks like she wants to say something but can’t think of anything cutting enough to use for a retort. Maybe she’s intimidated by Halley, who projects an air of contained fury and danger without moving from her spot. Instead, she just glares at Halley, but I notice the little sidelong glances she’s giving me and her husband, as if she’s hoping one of us will rein Halley in.
“We are in the corps,” Halley continues. “That’s what we have chosen to do. You think that’s not a respectable career choice. You’re having your goddamn dinner parties and your social-status bullshit games while poor kids from the PRCs are dying by the fucking thousands to keep your ass safe from the Lankies, and you think they’re vulgar trash. I’ve seen plenty of those kids die for you. And any one of them is worth twenty of you.”
Halley’s mom makes a strangled sort of noise in her throat, and her cheeks flush with anger. Her father takes two steps toward Halley, hands outstretched, and Halley glares at him. Her dad stops in his tracks.
“Don’t touch me without permission.”
“Honey,” he says. “I was just going to—”
“I know,” she says. “But I don’t want you to. You’ve been cleaning up the fallout from her shitty games for too long. I’m not going to let you get her out of this one.”
“This is my house,” her mom says slowly, enunciating every word very clearly. “How dare you talk to us both that way.”
“Oh, I dare,” Halley says. “I should have dared years ago.” She glances at her father again. “But I didn’t want to break Dad’s heart. You don’t have one to break.” Then she looks at me. “Would you mind getting our stuff, Andrew? I think it’s best if we leave now.”
“You don’t have to leave,” her father says. “Please.”
“I think that’s a grand idea,” Halley’s mother says. “Now that you’ve told us what you really think of us. Your parents. The people who raised you. Gave you all these opportunities.”
“And that burns you, doesn’t it? That I took all those opportunities and turned them into a uniform? That I’m not married to Kenneth and working a nice nine-to-five somewhere nearby so you can keep meddling with our lives? That I married someone from the PRCs instead?”
Halley looks back at me again, and her expression softens. Her dad is standing off to the side, looking from her to his wife and giving me the impression that he’d love for the ground to open up and swallow him right about now. I’ve never seen another person look so awkwardly uncomfortable and helpless.
“We’re going to leave now,” she says to her mother. “You’ll never have to put up with me again. We’re probably going to die on Mars in a few weeks. But even if we don’t, I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Halley smiles back at me, a sad but affectionate little smile, and I return it almost reflexively.
“If we come back, I want to start a family with Andrew. I know I said I’ll never want kids, but I think I’ve changed my mind. If we make it back from Mars, I think I want to work on that with him. I want to make sure I have a piece of him to continue on, because I hate the thought of him being gone from the world for good.”