Ava

Ava waits for her cue in the NASA building hallway that doubles as a makeshift dressing room. She mentally summarizes her life down to a news bite, like she figures the anchorwoman will. Here we have Ava Lowish, a schoolteacher originally from a small town in Massachusetts. Ava is living a life she never could have imagined. Ten months ago, her husband, West embarked on a three-year voyage. West is serving not only his country—but also his planet—on the world’s first voyage to Mars.

The production assistant hovers, huffing, in front of Ava. The microphone won’t stay attached to her blouse. Must be her fault. She wants to swat him away. She chose the blouse that morning because the collar dipped away from her neck and made her feel like she was blossoming from a flower.

A NASA public relations guy with an unnaturally smooth forehead glides to Ava’s side. His name is Warren. She can never remember his last name. West and the other astronauts are supposed to land in just days. Supposed to. You’d think after traveling over thirty million miles, the hard part would be over. Wrong. Landing is worse. Dangerous. Only officials and the spouses know that NASA has had almost no contact with the shuttle in six weeks. Someone must’ve tipped off the press. Enter Ava and the other two American spouses, stage right. A sleight of hand to divert media attention on the astronauts’ smiling families instead of the loud mission silence.

Today, the interview. Then, tomorrow they’ll make the rounds at a NASA cocktail bash, celebrating the Odyssey’s landing. Ava’s never been suspicious person, but celebrating a landing that hasn’t happened seems like bad taste. She’s already tortured herself with every possible disaster scenario. Life-support failure. The ship’s hull punctured by a stray bit of rock. She’s imprisoned by her own thoughts.

She cornered Warren in his office, last week. How are they going to land if we can’t even talk to them? Warren kept calm. We have a lock on them. Just problems with their outgoing communications. No big deal. Right. He’s a mouthpiece. Of course everything he says will be rehearsed, offering no comfort.

Ava’s make-up is done. The production assistant pins the microphone to her collar—finally, he huffs. The swarm around her clears.

In the mirror propped up against a wall, Ava doesn’t look so much like herself. She’s too dressed up, in a gold blouse and gray skirt. She never gets a chance to wear nice things. Her students are always tugging on her clothes for attention, their hands caked with glue or dirt. Her blonde hair is pulled back. Her flower petal collar has a faint sheen and reflects more light onto her face, smooth except for the line in her forehead that they covered with make-up. That morning, she stood in her bedroom, glistening from the shower. She spread her clothes out onto the bed. Asking herself, if I wear this, what does it say? Weepy Wife? Brave Wife? Optimistic Wife with a Sense of Humor?

Ava wipes her slick palms on her skirt, reaches for the doorknob, and steps into the interview room.

The first thing she sees is Lesley, smiling. Ava tries to ignore the three huge cameras aimed at the seating area and the boom mic that dangles from the ceiling. The anchorwoman sits, pert and ready. Pretty and brunette. She flips through index cards. Ava and her friends have been reduced to bullet points.

Seeing Lesley unravels something tight in Ava. She lets her hand drop from the doorknob. Lesley is so patient. She always calls Ava honey, even though Lesley is just three years older. Lesley cooks extra food and brings containers-full to Ava, at least twice a week. Love is a Tupperware container of lasagna from a friend who suspects you’re not eating dinner. Lesley wears a pastel skirt suit. On the couch next to her is Marcus, in a tie and yellow shirt that makes his skin look like polished bronze. Marcus lights up. He flashes Ava two thumbs up. You ready? A squat, glass-topped table holds three framed headshots of the American astronauts: James, Veronica, and West. The cushion behind West’s photo is empty.

They’re the Wives Club, helping each other fill the quiet that their astronauts left behind. They have movie dates. Comedies—usually. Ava plans the occasional weekend trip. Lesley keeps them fed and happy. Marcus wrangles them to bars, where Ava feels old and out of place. He jokes that he’s on the hunt for a fling. It doesn’t count as cheating if your wife left earth.

Ava sits. Even though they’re not filming, the cameras feel alive. Three cameras for multi-angle close-ups of every quivering lip and teary eye. This is a mistake. Ava feels like the cameras will x-ray her skin, and will show her muscles, her veins, her guts.

Marcus pats a warm hand on her knee. She gives his hand a squeeze. Ten months since she felt hands on her body. The touch refuels her for just an instant.

West and the others always looked so natural in all their interviews. Not that he became an astronaut for the fame, for the newspaper headlines that read Earth prepares to send eight to Mars—three Americans aboard. Press was a part of the job, he said. He handled prying questions with the same patience of when he taught her to drive a stick shift. His voice was gentle, unfazed, as the car bucked. Then, his gentle touch, guiding her hand.

Three months before the Odyssey launched, she sat on their bed and watched him get ready for an interview.

“Look at you preening for these vultures,” Ava teased and crossed the room. She folded her hand into a bird beak and poked at his chest like she was nipping at flesh.

“Ava,” West said. Scolded, almost. She couldn’t blame him. She was like one of her kids acting obnoxious to get a reaction. “They’re not vultures. This is a ten-minute full piece on the morning news.”

She sighed. West lifted his hand and cupped Ava’s face. Then, he pulled her in close. He stood a whole head taller than her. He rested his chin on the crown of her head. Ava dipped her arms into his suit jacket and wrapped them around his body. She felt safe and loved. Wasn’t that all she could ask for?

She reached for the tie that hung loose around his neck. He didn’t stop her even though her knots always came out lopsided. She worked the slick fabric with her fingers. It felt a little like she was tying a noose. Later, when she watched West’s interview, his knot was straight and centered. Retied.

The couch cushion is stiff under Ava. Lesley can tell she’s nervous. Lesley leans over and echoes the words of one of NASA’s public relations drones, except she sounds sincere. “Just be honest and be yourself!”

Right. That’s the worst advice for Ava. Your husband’s absence must be so hard for you, the anchorwoman will say, with gross, fake empathy. If Ava is honest, she’d fire back with things she’s kept even from Lesley and Marcus. I used to wake up and feel lost. Now I’m so used to him not being here. I don’t know which feeling is worse.

The microphone battery pack digs into Ava’s side, beneath her blouse. The mic on her collar will pick up her every breath, every fumble, for the whole world to hear. Jesus—what if she breaks down? Every choked sob will be amplified in surround sound. The cameras will zoom in for high-def close-ups of tears rolling down her sweaty cheeks. No—she can’t.

Ava yanks off the microphone and tosses it on the glass table. Marcus and Lesley turn to her, confused. The anchorwoman looks up from her cards, brows knit.

“Sorry,” Ava says, “I—can’t.”

She’s out of the room, quick but strong. Through the doors. Into the hallway. She doesn’t look back. She brushes past Warren without a second thought. He calls her name, but she moves faster, the clacking of her heels bouncing off the glossy walls.

“Don’t you want to be supportive, like everyone else?” he yells.

Ava spins, steps back once to steady herself, then levels a finger at Warren. Bastard. This is his fault. What was he thinking, telling her nothing about the shuttle’s silence, and then trotting her out to talk about how great it is to be the astronaut’s wife?

“I’ll be supportive at home.” She hates the way her voice sounds in the hallway, too shrill. She flinches when it reaches her ear. “I just can’t let the mission take over my life. I can’t let this own me.”

She’s following Warren’s advice, she decides. Being honest.

The morning sunlight hurts her eyes. She doesn’t feel safe until she is in her car, driving home. Not home home. Florida still feels like a temporary home, even though they’ve lived there for six years. She grew up in the backwoods of Massachusetts where she climbed trees and swam in a lake by her house. The Florida landscape that she drives through now seems sanitized. NASA and the International Space Federation bought plots of land a quick drive from the bases. They hacked down the wilderness and carved out a sitcom neighborhood. Every house has a front garden and neat lawn. Morning glories bloom from window boxes and old-fashioned lampposts line the street. NASA takes care of everything. When the dishwasher breaks she calls a phone number and a nice man comes and fixes it for her. NASA gives her everything she could want, except her husband back.

In her kitchen, Ava flicks on the TV. She catches the last few seconds of Lesley and Marcus’s interview. They look so comfortable and likeable. She could’ve stayed and had her face broadcast into the homes of college friends and old high school teachers. A jury of old friends and strangers. Ava’s favorite questions are when interviewers want to hear a story. Tell us the story of how West told you he wanted to join the Mars program. Four years ago, when West was already an engineer at NASA, they were in their backyard. West pointed a telescope at the moon. He wanted to be part of something larger than himself. That pissed her off. Something larger than yourself? She flicked her hand between them, like she strummed a tight silver cord connecting them by the chest. Then what is this? Nothing?

“The story is that I miss him as much as I resent him,” Ava could’ve have said to the anchorwoman. No confessional today. She’s better off keeping this inside. Both for herself, and for West. She kicks off her shoes. The kitchen tiles are cold against her bare feet.

She should check if she’s heard anything from West. It’s been, what, three hours since she last checked? A computer sits in the spare bedroom. Letters and occasional videos from the astronauts arrive in password-protected inboxes. Emails and birthday messages wait in the shuttle’s databanks to be sent off with fuel level measurements and oxygen readings. Words and numbers twining together and then entering space, bouncing off solar winds, reaching satellites, and beaming to Earth. Her inbox is empty. No new love letters from space.

A bird cuts across the window. She reads his last letter again. Maybe she can feel some warmth.

Ava,

We had a poker game going here, the other night. We may be distilling vodka aboard this tin can. We’re calling it “space hooch.” Tell doc and I’ll deny everything. We got to talking about pickup lines. I forget how. Something about using the astronaut line to try to get ass. I fessed up. I told the others how I came up to you at that party (I can’t even remember whose dorm it was in) and pulled the whole, “Didn’t that chem test suck? I’m only taking the class because I’m gonna be an astronaut” line. I really was a cocky bastard then. Sorry. I’d like to blame the jungle juice. They can’t believe the line worked. I may have left out the part where you laughed at me and said, “What, you think you’re a superhero?” Thanks for knocking me down a couple of pegs. But, it looks like my line worked in the end.

They programmed the lights in our quarters to try to mimic the days and nights on Earth. That little bit of familiarity is nice. I can’t wait to land. I want to step onto Mars and grab a fistful of dirt and see things no one else ever has. Maybe I can build us a little house there in the shade of Olympus Mons and we can retire there thirty years from now. What do you think?

Anyway. Mostly what I think about when I wake up in the morning in my simulated sunlight is seeing you again

I love you.

Ava feels closer to West when she reads his letters. He’s a ghost leaning over her shoulder. She writes mental letters throughout her days. The nicer letters she will actually sit down and write. I hear space is boring this time of the year. Others, she keeps to herself. It’s been six weeks and three days since I have heard from you. How I have come to a place in my life where I don’t know what I feel from moment to moment?

She has too much time. It’s barely past nine in the morning. During the school year, she paints jungle scene murals in her classroom and plans craft activities. Since the school year ended and springtime rolled into a humid and oppressive June, Ava turned her body into a project. Endless miles on the treadmill. She holds yoga poses until her muscles scream. She wasn’t out of shape before West left, but soft and fleshy in spots. Now, small muscles frame her midsection. Running will eat up some time. She pounds her feet on the treadmill until her legs ache. She stands under the cool spray of water in the shower for what feels like hours. At least she can control and shape herself.

Later, the phone rings. Every phone call, every voicemail puts Ava on edge. Is NASA calling to say the shuttle exploded? How long she can wait before answering becomes a game. She’s purgatorying. This might be the last moment where, as far as she knows, West is still alive. What’s worse: tragedy or uncertainty? Ava runs to the phone. A quick glance at the caller ID shows that it’s Lesley.

“Honey,” Lesley says. “I can’t really talk now.” In the background one of Lesley’s kids cries, Mommy, I’m thirsty! “I just wanted to check if we’re still on for tonight.”

Ava forgot. They’re supposed to have dinner and talk about tomorrow’s cocktail party. Running away from another NASA event doesn’t exactly thrill her. “I don’t know, Les,” Ava says. “Something came up.”

“Oh, come on,” Lesley says. “I’m not like that skinny bitch—ignore what Mommy just said, baby!—from this morning. No bailing. I’ll chase you down.”

Ava tosses her head back and laughs. Lesley is right. Ava is too much in her own head. She needs to relax.

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll meet you later.”

“I’ll have a bottle of wine waiting,” Lesley says. “The nerds are paying.”

*

Ava finds Lesley waiting at the restaurant, sitting outside, sipping iced tea. No bottle of wine, yet. Lesley pecks Ava on the cheek. Lesley is thirty-five. She has two children and a soft, pink face. She speaks of her husband, James, so easily. Like he’s on a business trip to New York and just hasn’t had time to call.

“I’ve been worried about you today,” Lesley says. She stirs, ice tinkling in her glass. “How’re you holding up?”

“I just couldn’t sit and smile at the interview like nothing’s wrong,” Ava says. She feels drained. She plays with the pepper shaker, like she’s fascinated by its contents.

Lesley is always strong. Ava calls her in the middle of the night, sometimes. Maybe more than she should. Sometimes Ava didn’t even speak. Just the lifeline of Lesley’s measured breathing over the phone helped Ava feel better. Lesley coos rational thoughts that Ava’s mind could never find on its own. They’re so busy, honey. They’re doing such important work. I’m sure we’ll hear from them any day now.

“And you?” Ava asks.

Lesley shrugs. “You know.” She smiles a little and then reaches for another packet of sugar. “Same old. The kids keep me busy.” Her eyes brighten. “Oh, let me tell you. A woman came up to me this afternoon in the supermarket. I was looking at pasta sauces, and she grabbed my arm. She said, ‘you’re so brave.’ Turns out, she watched the interview this morning.” Lesley stops and laughs. “So I told her, ‘What? I’m just trying to live my life.’” Lesley looks back up at Ava, a small smile on her face.

I’m brave? Oh, thank God, Ava would’ve said, relieved. Like the stranger gave her permission for her feelings. No. Lesley is the good wife. She can’t have the odd feelings that Ava has, screwed up tight inside of her. Feelings toward her husband that sometimes warp into anger when she’s alone at night. Is Ava allowed to feel angry? The laminated menu reflects a rectangle of sunlight across Lesley’s cheek.

“But enough about me,” Lesley says. “Still want to carpool tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I won’t go.”

“We’ll have fun!” Lesley chirps. “I have a sitter for the kids. It’s an excuse to put on a nice dress and get a little drunk.”

“Leaving the house might be nice,” Ava admits. She sees relief spreading across Lesley’s face. Lesley squints, not against the sun, as she looks at Ava.

“Good,” Lesley says. She brings the iced tea to her mouth again, and a heavy droplet of condensation falls to the table. “I was afraid you were getting too closed off.”

Ava knows she means well, but the way Lesley looks at her—with some mixture of pity and pride—breaks her heart.

*

The next day there’s still no word from West. In the kitchen, her answering machine blinks. The pulsing red light sends a spike across her ribs. A sprinkler in the neighbor’s yard kicks to life. She hits play. An unfamiliar, gravelly voice spills from the phone. He introduces himself as Carl Muller from TIME. Something about wanting to offer a dignified portrait of the astronauts to America. Her fingers hover over the delete button, but then she pauses.

“Look, I know you left the interview yesterday,” he says, his voice slowing. “Isn’t there anything you’d like to say? Your side of things? This could be good for you.”

Ava presses herself into the kitchen counter. The drawer handles dig into the small of her back. She wants to call and tell him, you know what’s good for me? Just who the hell do you think you are, asshole?

But she stops. Yesterday, she booked it out of the TV interview. Maybe in an article, filtered through the lens of some reporter, she’d be better. He might be able to explain her own feelings better than she could. She pours herself coffee and pictures the movement printed in neat type in a magazine. Ava pours herself coffee in the morning and wonders how she can carry on when the love of her life is millions of miles away, and might never return. She could photocopy the article and hand it out to friends and family. Shove it in front of people on the street and watch them read. Then ask, am I doing it right?

NASA’s cocktail party is tonight. The invitation said to wear red, in celebration of the red planet. Ava stares into her closet. Her dresses are shapeless things. Mostly black. Funeral chic. She’ll borrow something from Lesley, so at least she’ll look the part of the happy wife. She doesn’t have a good track record with these occasions.

Three and a half years ago, she went to a cocktail party at one of West’s coworker’s house. This was after he joined the space program, but before the lineup of astronauts was announced. Ava stood in the kitchen with three adoring wives in pearls and Jackie O. dresses. They’re saving the world, one wife said. Yes, and learning about the secrets of the universe, another agreed. They regurgitated blurbs from NASA about how humanity’s future depended on journeying beyond Earth. Ava caught the gleams in their eyes. The hostess held her wine glass close to her lips and said, “I feel like my husband will make history.”

Ava couldn’t help herself. She was too blunt when she drank. “Sweetheart,” she began, through the pleasant haze of three martinis. “There’s a hundred-to-one chance your husband—or any of our guys—are going anywhere beyond flight simulators.” She gestured to the crowded living room and a trickle of martini spilled onto her hand. The liquid smelled like engine fuel. The hostess looked ruffled. Ava wasn’t trying to be a bitch. Did they really want to be left behind?

The joke was on her, though. Of all the wives in that room, Ava’s was the only husband in space.

*

That evening, Ava picks up Lesley and they drive to the reception at a nearby hotel. Ava wants to talk with Lesley, again, about the mission’s radio silence. She wants to unload her doubts and fears. Not that anything has changed. But Lesley looks too excited. She got her hair done. She escaped her kids. Ava can’t drag her down. She hides in conversations she’d have with someone in line at the pharmacy. Nice weather tonight, right? Not too hot. She imagines the article page again. Ava’s conversations hide a deep well of sadness.

She and Lesley meet Marcus in the parking lot. He looks handsome in a charcoal suit and red tie. Marcus pulls Ava into a tight hug. They walk inside, arm-in-arm. Ava pulls strength from their warmth.

Inside the hotel, Ava sees red everywhere. Red dresses and red ties. Shimmering, red fabric on tables laden with finger food. A sign propped up on a small easel reads, “NASA Families: Welcome to Mars!” Apparently, Mars is a hotel reception room decked out to look like a high-class bordello. Someone should’ve told the astronauts and saved them the trip.

Ava recognizes most of the faces. People stand around a few scattered tables. Waiters whisk by with platters of hors d’oeuvres. A string quartet plays “Fly Me to the Moon” in the corner. In the center of the room is an ice sculpture. A little man in a toga stands on a scrolled column. He reaches towards a star, suspended by the thinnest tendril of ice, that’s just beyond his reach. Her husband’s ambitions reduced to an ice sculpture that melts under a spotlight.

“I’ll go save us some seats,” Lesley says.

“Drinks?” Marcus asks. He mimes tipping an invisible cup to his lips. His wedding ring catches a glint of light.

“Yes,” Ava begs. “Please.”

More people file into the room. Their chatter sounds distant to Ava, like a passing rainstorm. Someone brought their kid. He’s young enough to be one of her students. One day, she made tin foil space helmets with her kids. After fitting a boy with his helmet, she stepped back. He brushed his shaggy hair from his face and then ran around the classroom, making blastoff noises. It could’ve been West as an eight year old that she crowned with a space helmet. She can’t breathe.

Ava Lowish is a woman lost in her own past.

Her feet are rooted to the spot where Lesley and Marcus left her. Already they are off in a small group of people, chatting away. So much for that drink.

The ice sculpture glistens in the spotlight. Then, she hears the tiniest crack. The star snaps away. Toga man reaches for empty space.

She picks up the small chunk of ice. Cold trickles through the creases of her palm.

“Hi, Ava?”

Ava needs air or—something. She settles for a flute of champagne that she snatches from a passing waiter. She turns towards the voice.

“It’s Carl Muller,” he says. The same gravelly voice from the answering machine message. “From TIME. I left you a message this morning.”

“Oh,” Ava says. “You found me.”

Carl laughs, like Ava is busting his balls. “I just wanted to chat.” He wears a navy suit with a red tie and holds a glass of an amber liquid. He plucks a little device, a gray digital voice recorder, out of his breast pocket and holds it up. “Do you mind?”

She could tell Carl everything. She could be the one to have women coming up to her in the supermarket, telling her, you’re so brave!

“That’s fine.” She shrugs.

Carl taps a button and a rich baritone bursts into the air. Marcus. She can only make out three words, “…and then she said,” before Carl looks embarrassed and shuts off the recording. Wait—Marcus spoke to Carl? Why didn’t Marcus mention anything? Well. If Marcus trusts him, so could Ava. Carl presses a few more buttons and then a small red light blinks to life. He’s recording.

Ava coughs slightly, the puff of air recorded for forever.

Carl grins. “What’s the deal with you dodging the press?” He takes a long pull from his drink. “Lesley and Marcus are lonely, too. What makes you so special?”

“Is that really your opening question?” So much for an impartial interview. Ava’s hope deflates. Ava Lowish is frigid in her loneliness.

The other partiers walk by, laughing, with their champagne. Another waiter slinks up to Ava and Carl. He offers a platter of small puff pastries. She refuses, but Carl’s eyes twinkle. Between his drink and the recorder, Carl’s hands are full. He places the recorder on the nearby table. He snatches a pastry. Then, the waiter floats off in a cloud of butter-scented air.

“Really,” Carl presses. “Do you feel like your loneliness is worse than everyone else’s?” The corners of his eyes crinkle. He laughs a little, like he means that his finger-pointing is all in good fun.

Ava seethes under a thin smile. Carl can’t know that she hasn’t heard from West in weeks and weeks. She flicks her bangs out of her face. She takes another sip of champagne and it tastes like battery acid. Everyone has their tragedies, she knows. But the empty space between her ribs feels huge, like no one else could understand. Big enough to swallow the room.

“One time West said, ‘Tell me not to go, and I won’t,’” Ava says. “I thought about it. But I just couldn’t do that to him.” The red light of the recorder blinks. Ava keeps going. “I heard a story from a friend, years ago, when he was in med school. He was working with a dead body. When he looked down, he noticed that the body—that she was wearing a wedding ring.”

Ava’s sadness slows her breathing. Carl tilts his head. He has no idea where she’s going with this, but to her, the tangent makes perfect sense.

“The lady donated her body to science under the agreement that they’d never take off her wedding ring,” Ava continues. “She wanted to wear it forever, even in death. The second I heard that, I was—moved. It was the most beautiful thing I ever heard.”

“So what does that mean?” he asks, unconvinced.

“It means that yes, I do think my loneliness is worse than everyone else’s.” Ava says.

She doesn’t know what kind of reaction she expected from Carl. Maybe some quiet coo of sympathy. Uncle Carl trying to comfort her. Instead, his eyes roll.

“Then how do you live with this burden,” Carl asks. He taunts her with the flat way he shapes burden with his pastry-flaked mouth. “Do you count down the days until he returns? How do you do it?”

Ava leans forward. She can’t keep the anger in. This is what you came for, Ava. Carl flinches, like he expects her fingernails across his face. She tilts her lips to the side of his face so he can hear her better over the chatter of the other guests. This moment is a secret just between the two of them.

“I can do it,” she says, her voice gone soft, “because I live each day like he is already dead.”

Ava pulls away. She can see West’s face fall, like she said these words directly to him. She wants to inhale and pull the words back inside of her. Carl’s eyes are still locked onto hers when she reaches down and grabs the recorder.

The small thing fits so easily in her palm. She expects it to feel heavier. Weighed down with words. The feelings belong to her alone, again.

Ava turns and walks away, feeling like she struggles through water. Seconds later, Carl shouts after her. She doubles her pace through the hotel lobby. Outside, she drops the champagne flute into a planter. Marcus will take Lesley home. Ava needs to get out of there. She runs across the parking lot. Her high heels make her ankles ache. She takes off her shoes in the car.

She pumps the gas pedal with her bare foot. The painted lines of the lanes blur like comet tails.

*

Ava should chuck the recorder. She leaves it on the kitchen counter. Confessing to Carl has drained her, left her cold. She draws a bath. She nods off in the tub and her skin is wrinkled when she wakes.

She feels the recorder’s gaze through the walls in the house. She opens a bottle of wine. Sometime after the bottle is half-empty, she pulls a stool to the kitchen counter. She hesitates, but then reaches for the recorder. Ava’s voice makes her cringe. She skips back until she gets to Marcus’s interview.

His interview is short. Carl asks him about how he feels now that Veronica is gone. Marcus confesses that he feels powerless. But, he doesn’t dwell. He changes the subject, fast. Veronica’s his hero. She’s the little girl from Brooklyn who loved science, and busted her ass to put herself through college. He talks about their wedding day. There’s an interview with Lesley, too, after the one with Marcus. Ava drains the wine bottle.

Lesley cried during her interview. Lesley, who plies Marcus and Ava with sangria, and pushes all of them to go out dancing. He’s living out his dreams, Lesley says. It’s just—hard. I don’t know. All I can do is hope he’s safe. Ava aches. She feels like she’s loved West, for years, despite his passion. Like his need to explore was some fatal flaw.

Ava’s cellphone rings. She ignores it, but checks her messages. A few missed calls from Marcus, probably wondering where Ava ran off to. A single text from Lesley: Nerds heard from the shuttle. Houston, we have no problem.

The words don’t matter much. There will be other silences. Other doubt.

Ava listens to the interviews again. After the second time through Lesley’s interview, she brings the recorder with her to bed. Marcus and Lesley lull her to sleep. …And then she said. …And then she said. …And then she said.

*

In the morning Ava finds one message on the answering machine, and four missed calls. She doesn’t remember hearing the phone ring. She squints. She slept in too late. She blames the wine. Her head feels stuffed with cotton. She hits play.

Ava doesn’t catch his name. Not Warren, but some NASA rep leaving his number.

“Please call.” He hesitates. Ava hears chatter in the background. “You shouldn’t turn on the TV.” The message is from just past six that morning. Hours ago.

The seconds stretch. Ava can’t not know. She can’t talk to anyone else. She flicks on the TV. This is her choice.

The same morning show that she fled two days ago is on. The anchorwoman is speaking, but Ava’s eyes follow a newsfeed along the bottom of the screen. International Space Federation reports cataclysmic mechanical failure onboard the Odyssey, immediately following landing. Official statement to follow.

No more uncertainty. Ava reels and braces herself against the kitchen counter. She clutches her mouth against a bubble of puke, but even her body is beyond her control. She makes it to the bathroom in time to bend over the sink and release a mouthful of bile. Her sick spreads in a thin yellow pool. In the mirror, through the warp of hot tears, she doesn’t recognize her face.

Ava turns towards the bedroom, stops, and heads back to the kitchen to unplug the phone. No more calls. Not for a while. The recorder sits where Ava left it that morning, on the kitchen table. She should toss it down the trash compactor. Let the shriek of grinding plastic drown out the silence. No. She takes the recorder with her on her way back to the bedroom.

If she was a better person, she wouldn’t feel the anger. Or the thin traces of relief that she knows, finally, what West’s fate is. Only the sadness should remain.

Ava huddles with the recorder in the closet. West joked, once, that his room aboard the ship would be no bigger than their closet. She wedges herself inside, between the back wall and a low shelf of his shoes. She closes the door, sealing herself in. Her every breath is a struggle against gravity. The floor beneath her shifts. Tectonic. She pushes the recorder deep into the closet, past her winter clothes and West’s crisp pants.

Ava draws her knees in close and crumbles.

She remembers shielding her eyes against the sun and the flare of shuttle rockets. Ignition. We have lift off. Now, she’s sure. Even then he was already gone.