“You must be hungry,” Mom plants her feet to stop the glider.
“I might die, that’s how hungry I am,” I reply as we get up, returning to the house.
32
HANGING UP our coats, we walk through the living room, the lighted Christmas tree decorated with ornaments collected over the years, a lot of them space themed like Mom’s topiary. Stockings are hung from the fireplace mantel, our names embroidered on them, and soon enough they’ll be filled with thoughtful foods and small gifts.
“What are Dad and Easton watching?” I ask, the noise of gunshots on TV coming from the den. “Or better stated, what’s playing while they’re sleeping on the couch as usual?”
“Gunsmoke,” she says to hoofbeats, horses neighing, rifles cracking as we pass the rustic dish cabinet and table in the dining room.
“I’m just not sure it’s appropriate for a 6-year-old,” and it’s not the first time I’ve said it.
“Goodness. I guess you don’t watch cartoons anymore. Not to mention what’s all over the news,” Mom replies as we walk into the kitchen where I’ve spent so much of my life.
It’s also her office, and her desk to the right of the countertop gives her quite the view out the windows. Whatever Carme and I were up to, Mom was always watching as she cooked our meals and worked on her lesson plans. Back when we were growing up, she had a big computer, now it’s just a laptop connected to an oversize display.
“I guess you heard about what they found in the debris at Wallops,” she says to my surprise as I slide out my usual chair from the butcher block table.
“I’ve not heard or seen any updates,” and I wonder why ART didn’t inform me of whatever it is.
Then I remember he wouldn’t if Mom, Dick or someone in charge doesn’t authorize it.
“The answer is nothing,” Mom says from the stove. “Nothing was in the payload that was unexpected, suggesting that contrary to rumor, there was no spy satellite, no top secret government project that accidentally was destroyed.”
“So, we were putting on the big act of trying to recover something quickly from the blast site,” I reply, remembering the video feed I was watching in my truck after leaving Mission Control. “All of it was for Neva’s benefit, to give her the false impression that something important blew up.”
“Dick will explain,” Mom lifts the lid from the shiny steel stockpot, stirring chili that looks divine.
“I’ve heard nothing from him all day,” I watch her put on an oven mitt, opening the oven door, sliding out sourdough bread she’s been keeping warm.
“He’ll be picking you up in the morning very early, I’m afraid,” ladling chili into a bowl. “Both of you will be dropped off at the hangar . . .”
“Which hangar?” I interrupt in alarm as I feel another unplanned drama coming on.
“Ours,” she means the huge aviation hangar at NASA. “From there you’ll be flying to DC for a briefing, and beyond that I can’t tell you much.”
We’re probably meeting with the Secret Service, I think. Or it could be the CIA.
“Make sure to bring toiletries and other essentials, enough for several days,” Mom adds, sawing off a hunk of bread, generous with the butter.
“What’s wrong with me that I’m hungry all the time? Hungrier than I used to be, and it was bad enough before,” I complain, watching her every move with my food. “You would think that would be better, not worse.”
“Why might it be better?”
“Because I thought the point was to improve functioning. Did you goof up, and my hypothalamus thinks I need rewarding all the time? Or is there something with my pituitary that makes me think I’m pregnant? Because I have real cravings.”
“Your technical assists regulate many things and ultimately will enable you to perform in ways not possible before,” Mom says, and it sounds like ART talking.
She carries over my very late dinner or it could be an early breakfast, and I don’t care about manners. I dip in my spoon, tearing off a piece of hot buttered bread.
“Having a SIN doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with the same temptations and desires, quite the contrary,” Mom finds a glass in the cupboard, opens the freezer for ice cubes. “You wouldn’t want to stop wanting, now would you?”
I don’t admit that I learned to stop wanting a lot of things long ago when I knew I would be disappointed. Most of all, I gave up on thinking I’d get to make the same kinds of choices my sister’s been given. It wasn’t Carme who was expected to quit the military when the going got tough. She’s not who Dick called with bad news about Mom while I was assigned to his Cheyenne Mountain military installation near Colorado Springs.
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he told me. Just one more lie like so many, maybe my entire life is one, and it’s time I know what was really done to beta test Carme’s and my eventual implanted networks. Because now that I’m face to face with Mom, I’m reminded that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for us including taking on the first SIN herself before allowing any version of it to be passed on to her daughters.
“You started wearing contact lenses a few years ago,” I say to her as I finish eating everything in front of me, telling myself no more. “And now Carme and I are wearing them. Only they’re not intended to correct our vision, and maybe yours aren’t either.”
“Would you like something more to eat?” she collects my dishes before I have the chance.
“Yes, but I’m going to say no,” I reply as a phone starts ringing in the direction of the den. “You don’t even wear reading glasses. But you have contacts, and I should have wondered about it before now. Who tried out the SIN prototype, Mom? Because I know what you’re like.”
“I wouldn’t allow anything done to you and Carme that I don’t know about.”
“Is that what made you sick?”
“We learned the hard way that if you don’t coat the devices with proteins from your own body, chances are the implants are going to be rejected,” she loads the dishwasher. “My immune system went on the attack, and removing the SIN had unexpected side effects,” she explains dispassionately as if what she’s depicting is reasonable, and I remember what Dick said about it.