I'm Fine, but You Appear to Be Sinking Page 3

  “A launch is truly a thing to be savored and enjoyed,” Annika added.

  But he disagreed. He likes the part immediately after the launch better—the first twenty-four hours up in zero gravity. Because it feels like being on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Obviously, their shuttle, the Krona Ark III, has complex navigation systems, keeping them in constant communication with a team back on Earth who monitor all aspects of their health and travel. But still, the feeling is the same: that, in their isolation, they really are totally adrift. They have to orient themselves to their new surroundings and rely on their wits and on each other to succeed. And there’s something both powerful and humbling in that feeling.

  When he explained this, the Swedes had nodded in a way he hoped meant they thought this sentiment wise. But it also could have meant they were just humoring him. He hasn’t quite figured them out yet. And so, he’s kept a professional distance, both during their time at the base in northern Sweden, and now aboard the shuttle, a full day into their mission. He is pleasant but detached. He doesn’t get too personal.

  But if he were inclined to get personal, there are two things, at the forefront of his mind, he might tell them.

  The first thing is that he’s never actually been to sea.

  Sure, he’s been on boats, but only in Washington’s Puget Sound. So, here he is, a marine biologist by training and a man who frequently compares himself to the oceanic explorers of yore, who has never actually been in the heart of an ocean. It is a source of great shame to him and something he would like to confide in someone about, if only he felt comfortable enough with anyone to confide such a thing to them. He has never met such a person.

  The second thing is his son, who he does not yet know, but who occupies all his thoughts, distracts him from the work he is really here to do.

  His son is the reason he tries now to think of the sea. This is the part of the shuttle mission where he should be feeling most at sea. Really getting into it. Digging the sensation. He does his best to focus on this idea, to coax his excitement back. But no such luck. He floats around the cabin, listless, hoping his fellow astronauts will not notice his malaise.

  When the shuttle mission was initially offered to him, he’d been thrilled, and also flattered. He knows to be a part of the first collaboration between NASA and the budding Swedish space program is an honor. Though NASA has always employed marine biologists, it’s only in the last decade they’ve begun to see the value in sending them into space. He’s one of the first to really make his mark in the field. Still, he was surprised the Swedes had picked him, of all possible American scientists, to join the team on the Krona Ark III and pursue any line of research he wished with the support of the Swedish crew. He has chosen to investigate how the bacteria that live on the flesh of squid react to a zero-gravity environment. He’s selected twelve different species, including his personal favorite, the rare Nordic squid, to be transported in cylindrical tanks of varying size with self-sealing lids. The tanks are here with him now, locked into place on his workstation in the shuttle’s main cabin. The squid appear docile and content.

  If only he could direct his attention to his colleagues aboard the Krona Ark III, or the plethora of creatures he’s brought for study. Instead, his mind and heart are three hundred miles below in a laboratory at the University of Michigan where genetic data from his own blood is replicating itself at a biologically predetermined pace. His son, as both he and the UM doctors refer to the project. But really, so much more than a son. So much closer. Although the boy, along with his peers, will live and go to school at the lab, the program director has assured him that donor parents such as himself—all scientists, artists, thinkers of note—will be allowed to visit whenever they want. Of course, right now, the child is nothing but a fetus floating in a transparent vat of gelatinous material designed to simulate the experience of a real human womb. He has been to visit numerous times and has trouble seeing a resemblance between himself and the particular fetus they say is his. Still, he imagines reading to the boy from picture books, teaching him to play catch, taking him on visits to the aquarium. Maybe, someday, they could even learn to sail together. Get out into the real ocean together.

  He imagines the day, slated for six weeks from now, when the lab director will pull the baby from its womb vat, wrap it in a blue blanket, and hand it to him. He imagines holding the baby to his chest, feeling his warm little body against him. He wants that day to be today. At the very least, he would like to be back in the lab in the company of the fetus in the vat. He does not like being apart from him in this way—literally the farthest he could possibly be. Fatherly protectiveness, he thinks.

  He knows he should focus on the task at hand. There will be plenty of time to think about the boy later, once he’s back on terra firma. Now though, he has much to learn from his squid. He convinces himself it is time to stop all this sad floating around and get to work. He straps himself into the chair at his workstation and is about to pick one of the squid from his collection for analysis when Annika and Edvard enter the main cabin, looking grim.

  “We think there is a small problem,” Annika says.

  Then the lights go out, the command console goes blank, and the hum of the shuttle’s life support system ceases. The endless foreign chatter from Visdel is silenced. Everything is very quiet.

  Now it really is like we’re at sea, he thinks. They are cut adrift. They will have to rely on their wits. They will have to navigate by the stars. And when they return home, it will be with tales of great heroism to tell their loved ones—like cresting a rogue wave, or vanquishing a giant serpent. It will make a good story for the boy, when he’s old enough to hear it.

  He doesn’t say this to his crewmates, of course. But it’s a thought he takes pleasure in, and he squirrels it away for later. Something to come back to again once true fear takes hold.

  Tiger,

  Tiger

  Something is amiss at the Rolson Meth Lab.

  Though, to be fair, something is always amiss over there. That’s why we call it the Meth Lab, as opposed to the Rolson estate or the Rolson’s place or the That Lovely Home Where the Delightful Mr. Rolson Lives.

  My wife and I can’t agree on what’s making the sound, or even what type of sound it is. I say it’s mechanical—the cold rumble of an ancient tractor engine starting then dying, starting then dying, over and over. This would make sense. Chet Rolson, the Meth Lab’s proprietor, is a collector of well-used farm equipment. Ditto for junked cars. I see him tinkering with them in his front yard from time to time.

  But Jenny insists the sound is the cry of something living. It’s a distressed mammal. It’s hungry. It’s angry. She holds to this belief and the sounds have become very upsetting to her.

  “They’re torturing that poor thing,” she says.

  “What poor thing?”

  “That poor thing. Whatever it is, they’re torturing it.”

  “Maybe that’s the sound it’s supposed to make. Maybe it’s a perfectly healthy and happy thing. Whatever it is,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Nothing that makes a sound like that could be happy. Just listen to it. I’m an animal. You’re an animal. Animals know when other animals are in trouble. It’s instinct.”

  “But it’s not an animal,” I tell her. “It’s a threshing machine. Granted, they may very well be torturing that threshing machine.”

  Jenny does not appreciate my attempt at levity.

  “I’m not kidding, Mark,” she says. Her facial expression confirms this.

  Jenny is one of those women whose sympathy for living things is unconditional. Any time a dog or cat is discovered lost in the neighborhood, she champions the effort for its safe return, printing fliers and insisting we house it until the owners can be contacted. We’ve acquired two cats this way, Boomer and Travis. Once, Jenny found an injured fox pup in the front yard. She built it a nest in a cardboard box and nursed it back to health.

  “You’re suc
h a caring soul,” I tell her.

  “It’s my maternal instinct,” she says, looking everywhere except at me.

  “Would you like me to go over to Rolson’s and ask what’s going on? Because I will, if it will make you feel better,” I tell her.

  She says no, and I am relieved.

  The Rolson Meth Lab is a dilapidated white farmhouse. The paint is peeling and the front porch is bowed. It is, even for a passerby, a place of unsettling noises and smells, some human, some not. Chet Rolson is the only full-time resident. Sometimes there’s a woman around: Chet’s girlfriend. Shortly after we moved in, the couple had a series of loud and upsetting fights that once ended with police intervention, but no charges pressed. Things have been quiet between them lately though. There’s a pair of shifty looking dudes who hang around on the front steps most days, others who come and go, and, from time to time, a middle school-aged boy with a BMX bike. We believe this is Chet’s son. That Chet Rolson could have partial custody of a kid is horrifying to me. Doubly so to Jenny, who has suggested we call Child Protective Services, but worries we won’t be able to provide sufficiently damning evidence to warrant investigation. All we have is speculation and conjecture. What actually goes on at Chet Rolson’s house is a mystery to us.

  Needless to say, we’re pretty sure he’s making meth in there.

  I don’t want to give the impression we live in a dodgy part of town. I’ve been in Indiana for seven years and it seems to me our rural suburb is pretty much the same as every other suburb in this predominantly rural state. I imagine an aerial view must look like someone puked up Monopoly pieces in a field. There’s no real sense of planning or consistency. Clapboard houses sit at varying distances from Derring Street, our main thoroughfare. Behind the homes on our side of the street runs a sprawling corporate soybean farm. Our immediate neighbors to the right, the Wengers, keep chickens. In our own backyard, Jenny has cultivated a truly excellent garden. Jenny and I moved here from Bloomington shortly after we got married. We bought the biggest house we could afford with the intention of “growing into it.” Three years later, it’s still just the two of us, plus the cats.

  The Rolson Meth Lab aside, our neighbors are a quiet and drama-free crowd. They’re almost all large families, with the exception of the Wengers who are, like Jenny and me, a childless couple. But being well into their sixties, people have probably stopped asking them all the fucking time when they plan to reproduce.

  Tom and Darcy Wenger invite Jenny and me over for Sunday lunch every week after church even though we don’t go to church. “Come by after church and we’ll put together a little spread,” Darcy says each Sunday morning, appearing on our porch, presumably on her way to the local house of the Lord. “Okay,” we say, “will do.” Lunch is always lovely and our absence at church is never discussed. It has recently occurred to me that maybe the Wengers don’t go either.

  The Rolson Meth Lab is a hot topic with the Wengers. Chet Rolson’s property borders theirs on the other side and they are privy to all sorts of oddity that stays under the radar for the rest of Derring Street.

  “I’m sure you’ve been hearing all that howling going on,” Darcy says almost as soon as we sit down to eat. “It must be keeping the whole block up half the night.”

  Her use of the word “howling” signals to me that she, too, has pegged the sound as animal. This conversation will follow Jenny and me home, I’m certain. I want to change the subject, but I know it won’t do any good. Darcy always finds a path back to talking about whatever she wants to talk about.

  “That man, I swear, it’s always something,” Darcy says.

  Jenny stops eating her egg salad sandwich and leans forward. “Do you know what it is? What’s making the sound?” she asks.

  “No,” says Darcy, “but there’s a cage.”

  Jenny puts her hand to her mouth.

  “I’m positive he’s got a creature locked up back there,” Darcy continues, though I wish she wouldn’t. “Me personally, I think it sounds like a lion.”

  “It’s not a lion,” Tom says.

  “Tom’s been on safari and he says that’s not what a lion sounds like,” Darcy says, “but I got a glimpse of it over the fence the other day. I think a lion probably has different cries in captivity than it does out in the wild. Don’t you think, Tom?”

  “It’s not a lion,” Tom replies with his usual curtness. The man is the picture-perfect Middle American husband. Hard working, silent, long-faced, he may well have been the model for “American Gothic,” if the picture featured a curly-haired gossip for the farmer’s bride.

  “Can we have a look at the cage?” Jenny asks.

  “Of course, hon,” Darcy says, as sweet as if Jenny had just requested seconds on pie.

  Single-file, the four of us walk out the Wengers’ back door to the tall picket fence that divides the two properties. We line up, faces pressed to the fence’s slats. I imagine Darcy doing this every afternoon, making tsking sounds and taking mental notes on the Rolson crew’s comings and goings to share with the rest of the neighborhood.

  There’s a shed and some patchy grass dotted with a few pieces of rusted farming tools.

  “Look, Jenny,” I say. “I think that thing on the far left is a threshing machine.”

  She hisses at me to be quiet even though there’s no one around except the Wengers to hear me.

  “See back by the trees?” Darcy says. “That’s where the cage is.”

  Sure enough, tucked between a cluster of maple trees and half covered with a blue tarp is a big damn cage, all metal with wrist-thick bars. It looks like the kind circus animals get carted around in, like the cartoons on Animal Crackers boxes. From our vantage point at the fence, the interior of the cage is dark and still. It could hold a large, violent, angry animal. It also could be empty.

  “How long has the cage been there?” I ask. “Has it maybe just always been there?”

  “Oh Lord, I have absolutely no idea,” Darcy admits.

  At home, Jenny is distressed.

  “What if it escapes?” she wants to know.

  “What if what escapes from where?”

  “Mark, we’re not playing this game anymore,” she says.

  I remind her we don’t know for certain that there’s anything in the cage.

  “Who keeps a cage without an animal inside?”

  “Who keeps cars without wheels and tractors that don’t run? Same guy.”

  “It’s not safe,” she says. “It’s not safe and it’s not humane and it’s not right.”

  I have no answer to this.

  “We should call animal control,” she says.

  “And tell them what? The weirdo down the road has a circus cage in his yard and something that may or may not be inside the cage is making strange sounds? We don’t call CPS about the boy, but we’re going to call Animal Control about an unidentified noise?”

  “You don’t have to get snippy,” Jenny says.

  “I’m not getting snippy,” I say, fully aware of how snippy this sounds. “I’m just trying to make a point.”

  “And what point is that? Doing nothing is better than something?”

  “In some cases, yeah,” I say. “Sometimes it’s safer just to wait and see.”

  “I’m not entirely sure what we’re waiting for,” she says. But she doesn’t move to get the phone or look up a number. So, conversation over.

  On Monday, Jenny leaves for work at seven in the morning, like always. I sleep another four hours before I get up to start my own “work.” I use the term loosely here. In our home office, I am supposedly occupied with finishing my book. I quit my job as the assistant editor of our local weekly newspaper six months ago, with Jenny’s blessing, expressly for this purpose. We have a little savings and Jenny’s salary is enough to support us for now. The time off and the completion of a long project would do me good, Jenny insisted. Initially, I agreed. Mostly though, I spend my days drinking coffee, petting the cats, reading the New York
Times online, and watching YouTube videos. There’s a lot of guilt. I’m not sure what good this is doing anyone.

  I’m playing Get-the-String with Boomer and Travis when the doorbell rings Friday afternoon. It’s Tom Wenger. I open the door, smiling my most neighborly smile, expecting him to say the wife sent him over to see if we’d like some lemon cake as she’d made too much. Or something of that nature.

  “It’s a tiger,” Tom says.

  I want to be surprised by this announcement. I want to act like I don’t know what he means, appearing on my doorstep and talking about tigers here in the middle of Indiana on such a lovely spring day.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go have a look.”

  In the Wengers’ yard, Tom and I join Darcy at the fence and peer into Rolson’s property.

  “Do you see it?” Darcy asks, her voice wobbly with excitement.

  “No,” I say. The cage is dim and still, just as it was at Sunday lunch.

  “Come stand where I am,” Darcy says.

  We switch places, but I can’t see any further into the enclosure. I’m about to call both Wengers out as agitators and liars when I catch a glimpse of something in the murky darkness. I can’t see all of it at once, just a wisp of orange-brown fur, maybe an eye, maybe a paw. Maybe a jagged black stripe. Then it’s gone, back into the recesses of its horrible home.

  “Holy fucking fuck,” I say.

  I ask the Wengers what they plan to do, what action will be taken. Neither moves their face from the fence to answer.

  Back at the house, I am restless. Writing is out of the question. I feed the cats, water the plants, and take out the trash. I watch the clock and think about what it will be like when Jenny comes home and I have to tell her what I saw. Contrary to my wishes, this thing isn’t going away. It’s only getting larger, taking shape—a tiger shape. It occurs to me that a different sort of man might simply keep this new information to himself and spare his sensitive wife the agony of knowing exactly what it is that haunts her. Unfortunately, I am not that man. Jenny and I tell each other almost everything.