She should not have had two glasses of wine along with the Klonopin. She is having trouble keeping her face organized.
Mireille had made a little joke last night at the prequarantine family dinner about her mom being “Aspy,” and everyone at the table had reacted like she had said something that would completely hurt her mother’s feelings and she had said, “Don’t everybody act like I just hurt Mom’s feelings or she’ll pick up on those visual cues and decide that the appropriate thing for her to do is pretend like her feelings are hurt!” Which could have been funny, but Mireille knew right away that it wasn’t going to be funny. It was going to be one those things that take a while before you stop feeling sick about them, and will never go away, but wash up continually in memory form to embarrass you in the middle of something completely unrelated.
Aunt Hillary had taken Mireille by the elbow after dinner, and said, “Aspy is hate language and just because your mother doesn’t show her emotions doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them. And right now she needs to know that we love and support her.”
There was nothing like fame for family members to decide that they were, after all, incredibly close to the famous person and necessary to the famous person’s health and happiness. Aunt Hillary. Fucking hell.
Mireille’s father had been the only person she could say anything to without worrying about being treated as some kind of emotion-demanding monster. Her father had always encouraged her to express herself, to yell if she felt like yelling, to cry. God. God. Mireille could really hurl some lasagna right now.
But what a great daughter she had been here at Prime Space. She cannot blow all of the good credit she has accrued. Mireille assures herself that it had just been family at dinner; none of the Prime people had heard her say the thing about Asperger’s. The Prime people adored her. She was the star family member.
Mireille looks around the room and catches the eye of Yoshihiro’s wife. This has happened a couple of times during the past ten days, over conference tables and group exercises, but it hadn’t led to any intimacy. Mireille finds Madoka harder to place than typical Judys—Mireille’s name for the wives of American astronauts. Of those, some were Super Judys who managed four fabulous kids perfectly and were super trim and raced boats, and some were the kind with the slightly aggrieved quasi-efficiency of overweight blonds who did real estate part-time, but both kinds made you never want to be a wife. They kind of made you not want to be a woman. Madoka wasn’t like them, but she was Japanese and you never knew with Japanese. Madoka was a roboticist or something impressive.
The Russian astronaut’s ex-wife had more of a Super Judy feel, though her capability was of a much sexier variety. Mireille had a sense that Sergei’s older kid, Dmitri, was kind of fucked up. The younger one, Ilya, didn’t give a shit. You could tell that kid was going to be a star by the way he didn’t give a shit.
Was that what was holding her back? Yes. Yes. She cared too much.
The Prime people at the table next to hers are telling engineer jokes.
The graduate with a science degree asks, “Why does it work?” The graduate with an engineering degree asks, “How does it work?” The graduate with an arts degree asks, “Do you want fries with that?”
Of course. Fuck space people.
Acting isn’t about ego, it’s about taking a fall in public for the Fall of Man. It was easy to make fun of actors, but it wasn’t easy to be them.
Only you did end up feeling a little useless when you were around people like this. You couldn’t help it. It was hard to remember who you were.
Mireille thinks about who she is, and despairs.
But didn’t Prime keep saying they needed people just like Mireille, who was so good at conveying Prime’s message? Mireille had killed it at the fake press conference that afternoon.
“Mireille, can you describe some of the emotions you are experiencing right now?”
“I am just so proud of my mother. All my life she has been an amazing role model and a great mom, and supported me in my dreams, and given me so much inspiration. It’s been so special to hear from so many people all over the world that she’s also inspired them. Really, I just feel tremendous pride.”
“Can you tell us what you and your mother talked about during your last conversation before the mission?”
“Well, of course we will be communicating throughout her mission, although not in real time, so mainly we were just joking around. You know, she’s been to space before, so we have a couple of silly rituals. When I was little I used to worry that she wouldn’t have snack time in space, so I always tell her to make sure to have snack time, and she always tells me to keep an eye on the planet while she’s away and remember to water the plants.”
“This mission has unprecedented risks. So along with tremendous pride, you must be feeling a lot of fear and anxiety. Tell us how you manage that.”
“We have such good support here at Prime Space. And I want to thank everyone out there for the thoughts and good wishes and shows of support. There is so much conflict and unhappiness in the world, so much strife and terror. This is an opportunity to reflect on what the best of us is capable of, what we can accomplish when we put everything aside and come together for a common goal. My mom has always talked about how you can’t see borders from space . . .”
? ? ?
BOONE CROSS is entering the room now. Everyone goes silent, as they do around the Great Man. It would be something, to command that kind of power.
The Great Man is not a terribly great public speaker, but everyone treats his slightest remark as either mind-blowingly profound or super hilarious.