Foster - God is an Astronaut

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Rayhan Sanders, the best agent a writer could have; my thoughtful and sharp-eyed editor, Rachel Mannheimer; Alexandra Pringle; and rest of the fantastic team at Bloomsbury.

Many thanks to the faculty at George Mason University for their support encouragement over the years: Alan Cheuse, Susan Shreve, Stephen Goodwin, and Courtney Brkic. A huge thank you to my fellow writers at Mason, those of you wonderful people who became my friends as well as my readers: Eugenia Tsutsumi, David Conner, David Rider, Rion Scott, Sara Hov, and Ryan Call.

For my writing-group buddies who gave me their excellent feedback and rooted me on while I sweated through the arduous process of finishing this bookElizabeth Moes, Betsy MacBride, Tim Rowe, Collin Grabarek, Priyanka Champaneri, and Steve LoiaconiI cant thank you guys enough.

Thank you to my colleagues at the National Geographic Society Library & Archives who so kindly took an interest in my progress and toasted my successes at several happy hours along the way.

Most importantly, a loving and grateful thank you to my family: my parents, Barbara and Stephen; my sister, Becca; and my husband, Michael. I love you all more than words can say.

A Note on the Author

Alyson Foster was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. She studied creative writing at the University of Michigan and received an M.F.A. from George Mason University, where she was a Completion Fellow. Her short fiction has appeared in publications including Glimmer Train , the Iowa Review , Ascent , and the Kenyon Review . Foster works for the National Geographic Society and lives in the Washington, DC, area with her husband.

Contents

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 8:57 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: Not sure there is one

Arthur,

Discovered your card in my mailbox early this morning. Im guessing it arrived sometime last week, but as you know, I make a habit of checking my box as infrequently as I can get away with it. Earlier this semester the department hired a new admin coordinator. She looks practically pubescent, certainly not old enough to be administrating or coordinating anything. Her name is Mackenzie. She calls my office approximately once a month to leave a snippy message on my voice mail informing me that my box is full and any additional mail received will be disposed of. I couldnt care less if they throw my mail away, but I listen with great admiration to her use of italics. Id like her to teach me to inflect like thatit would probably be quite effective in getting Jack and Corinne to chop-chopbut Im on her shit list. It will never happen.

My first thought was that you had heard what happened. I dont know how quickly news reaches you up in the wilds north of Winnipeg. Depends on how often you decide to emerge from the conifers and go hunt down a signal, I guess. (Here I imagine you licking your finger and putting it up to the wind, listening for an elusive high-decibel hum, a telltale resonance in the pinecones overhead that would tell you where to set up camp with your laptop.) Then I opened up the card, saw the question about the greenhouse, and realized that you couldnt have. You probably still havent heard unless youve somehow seen the Times or the Post, both of which have been running articles about the accident nonstop since it happened four days ago.

We got the call from Arizona on Sunday night. It was Liams friend, his best Spaceco buddy, Tristan. I was down with a case of bronchitis; my voice was an octave low. When I picked up the cell from the nightstand and said Hello into it, I heard Tristan say, Liam, were fucked. Were fucked, Liam, back to back, just like that. I didnt even respond. I just rolled over and handed the phone to Liam. Then I got up, went down the hall to check on Corinne and Jack, and made my way downstairs to put on some tea. Id never felt anything quite like it, that thrumming nerved-up calm. Like having bees in your ears. Do you know the kind I mean? I watched my hands as they wiped down the counters and shook out the tea bags with a brisk efficiency Id never realized they possessed. When that was done, I started on the refrigerator. I opened all the drawers and began, very methodically, purging their contents. All the vegetable artifactsthe frizzled-out leeks, the calcifying carrots, the strawberries encrusted in what looks like barnacles. All the questionable relics tarnishing in glass jars. Action, drastic action, seemed required; nothing was spared. Not until the next morning did I realize that Id thrown away Jacks science fair project. (A potato/Play-Doh hybrid? Should I be concerned that my son seems to lack a basic understanding of the scientific method? Arent his ten-year-old Chinese counterparts already practicing the genetic modification experiments that will help them take over the world and bring us to our knees? When Jack discovered my blunder at breakfast, a scene ensued. Corinne joined in with her own wailing dirge, and nothing, nothing, not my futile trash-picking, not all my ardent repenting, could salvage that catastrophic morning.)

At last I heard Liams footsteps on the stairs, I stepped back and put both hands on the counter behind me. I was literally braceda little coldbesides that, nothing but expectant. I held stiffly onto the granite slab and watched Liam run his hands down his face, one then the other, while he delivered the news.

It was this: that just a half an hour earlier, Spacecos 6:30 p.m. shuttle launch had exploded twelve seconds after liftoff. The two crew members and four passengers inside the Titan had been killed instantly. A piece of debris from the blast, carried unexpectedly far by the high winds that evening, landed within fifty yards of eastbound I-8, and traffic in both directions was shut down for more than four hours.

That. That is what happened.

What happens next is what were still trying to figure out.

More later? I havent decided yet.

Jess

From: Jessica Frobisher

Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2014 10:42 pm

To: Arthur Danielson

Cc:

Bcc:

Subject: The long answer

Arthur,

Hows the greenhouse coming, you asked. After I e-mailed you yesterday, I folded up your card and stuck it in the pocket of my blue jeans, where I carried it around all day. More than once I found myself pulling it out and rereading the single line of your question like a riddle, studying your familiar script, the listing masts on your hs and tsthe tell of a left-hander. Liam is left-handed too. Not by genetic predispositionits an adaptation. The end of his right thumb was blown off in an accident with a bottle rocket when he was eight. I dont know if you noticed when you shook his hand. Most people dont. He is Liam, after all.

Hows the greenhouse coming? After sifting through all the possible implications of this benign (?) query, I settled, true to form, on the most insulting one. Meaning: Have I finally, for once, undertaken what I said I would?

Well, fuck you, I have. I think Ive mentioned the door in the back corner of our housethe one off the dining room where the ground slants down so that it opens out into empty space. All right, not empty space , not the desolate, star-spangled void that entrances Liamits a plot of incorrigible wild grass, our own little brambly wilderness. Though at night, if you steel yourself and push open the door, space is exactly what you think ofthe distant windows of the neighbors trembling through the trees like satellites, the jungle beneath your feet suddenly vanished into the dark. It has an unsettling effect, like if you stepped out, you would simply drift away into the darkness. In the five years weve been living here Ive never seen Liam so much as glance at that door, but Ive caught both Jack and Corinne lurking around it, and after I came downstairs one night and found the two of them perched in the open doorway, their toes lined up along the edge of that six-foot drop-off (I never was able to determine who was daring whom), I drilled two deadbolts into the frame at shoulder height. The previous owners had intended to build an addition, but they were waylaid by financial difficulties, and then some other mysterious tragedy that our realtor staunchly refused to reveal. I dont have the details, she said in a meaningful tone that made us understand that (A) she was lying, and (B) if we knew what was good for us, we wouldnt ask. So we didnt.