Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space Read online

  “And you better get a handle on that little monster,” Brad added, picking up his snuffling child and heading for the campsite, where they proceeded to break camp in a silent huff and leave within half an hour of the accident.

  After the others were gone, Gena, Alex and Andy sat down and had a good talk.

  “You are not going to spank a three-year-old boy for mimicking his father. It’s your fault you weren’t watching him more carefully,” is what Gena said for openers.

  “Yeah? Well, why the hell did you tell that hysterical, shakey-handed bitch to help hold the hook? She might have put the kid’s eye out,” Alex countered, sidestepping neatly.

  “Exactly…and then she couldn’t have placed all the blame on the two of us, could she?”

  “Fwee,” Andy chimed in, holding up two fingers.

  He looked back and forth at the two of them, as they burst into laughter, and then he knew it was okay again and laughed too.

  There were other good father-son times too. Like the time Andy had just turned four, when his dad took the training wheels off his bicycle and encouraged him ride on his own— cheering him on right over a curb and into a parked car, requiring five stitches to sew up his chin.

  And then, when he was not quite five, his dad signed up to be an assistant coach for his T-ball team, primarily so Andy could be allowed into the league a few weeks earlier than the age criteria set for everyone else. Turns out there was a good reason for age criteria, called physical development and coordination.

  Actually, Andy was kind of relieved when his dad quit coaching the team two months later so that when he missed the ball three times swinging, he didn’t have to hear his dad say, “It was right there, son; sittin’ on the damn T!”

  And when he ducked instead of catching the occasional fly balls that aimed to conk him on the head in far right field; he didn’t have to see the look of disappointment and embarrassment in his dads eyes, even though he was trying his best. About the time Andy was actually old enough to play, Alex found he suddenly had a lot of work to do and had to stop helping the team, Andy and Coach Rooney were not that disappointed to see him go, especially when Gena volunteered to take his place. They didn’t win many games that season, but somehow it was a lot more fun.

  The next year they’d moved to Edwards, and Alex was so busy flying jets he only came to a few of the T-ball games there. But every time he did, Andy got real nervous and struck out or made other dumb plays, so his dad never really got to see how much better he was getting. The next year he entered the Little League Minors, and once his dad had stopped coming altogether, he continued to improve.

  His Minor League coach had tried him in a lot of different positions: first base, second, shortstop, catcher. Some he did better than others, but by the time he was ten they’d discovered that Andy’s real talent was pitching, a talent so strong it more than made up for any other inherent weaknesses. Yet when Andy ran home excitedly to tell his dad he’d been allowed to play in the Little League Majors and had been made the alternate pitcher for his team, his dad hadn’t seemed that into it, like maybe he didn’t really believe him. Maybe he even secretly thought “alternate” was just a way to keep Andy from screwing up too badly everywhere else, like some sort of glorified bench warmer. In any case, he never came to a single one of the games to find out.

  Andy looked for him every time he got on the mound, looked for him at the end of every game he saved. But Alex was never there, so he never talked to his dad about the game again. And his dad never asked.

  * * *

  20. Defending His Life?

  “I TRIED to be a good dad, I really did.”

  “Of course, of course you did, Alex,” Uriel agreed. “You went camping once, fishing, I believe. You even taught him baseball and how to ride a two-wheeler at a remarkably early age.”

  “Okay, maybe some of those turned out badly, but we did try for quality time…”

  “And when he got a little older, out of that cute age? You spend any quality time shooting hoops, shooting the breeze…watching him play Little League?”

  “I tried, but I had a really busy schedule.”

  Uriel raised a heavy black brow.

  “Okay, maybe I could have done a little more,” Alex admitted.

  “You want to see where?” Uriel asked him.

  “Where what?”

  “Where you made bad choices in your life; your missteps?”

  “Why?” Alex asked petulantly. “To torture me?”

  “Don’t you want to know which were the pivotal choices, those which—if done differently—might have led to entirely different outcomes, a different life path, even?” Uriel prodded gently.

  “What’s the point? It’s too late; I’m already dead,” Alex snapped, “or so you say.”

  “What if you had it to do over?”

  Alex looked at him a long thoughtful moment before responding, “I don’t know…do I?”

  “Shall we take a look at your life?”

  “You’re not Albert Brooks, are you?”

  Uriel gave him a mildly exasperated look.

  “Just kidding. Got any popcorn?”

  “Popcorn?”

  “This is liable to be longer than Gone With The Wind. I get hungry during long movies.”

  Uriel pushed a button on his control panel, whispered something into a little microphone, then turned to Alex.

  “Buttered or plain?”

  “Buttered…and can I have a large Dr. Pepper with that?”

  Uriel nodded, whispered the order into his microphone, and almost instantly a white-robed aide appeared carrying a large cardboard bucket of fragrant buttered popcorn, and soda in a paper cup. Alex stared up at the aide’s face a moment, trying to place him, the pale blue eyes; but before he was able the man left, and the memory of his face faded almost instantly. Alex shrugged and took a handful of the popcorn, then another, suddenly famished.

  Between hungry mouthfuls washed down with gulps of the soda he looked over at Uriel.

  “Not bad, tastes like the real thing—only then it would be Coke. Bye the way, if I’m so dead, how can I eat food?”

  “Virtual food,” Uriel replied, then turned down the lights in the auditorium, as simultaneously the lights on the stage below brightened.

  * * *

  The stage was no longer Mission Control, but instead the large well-manicured backyard of an upper middle-class home. The brick patio around a large free-form swimming pool was set up with a catered bar, and tables laden with trays of hors d’oeuvres as well as more substantial food: cold cuts, various cheeses, breads and homemade salads. The center table held a five tiered wedding cake and iced pails of champagne chilling for the celebration. On the outer perimeter of the pool, and on down into the yard a number of white patio tables and chairs were set up for the reception. Further down, guests filled the six rows of folding white wooden chairs that had been set up on the plush green lawn. The rows—and guests—were separated into two groups by a wide center aisle. At the front of the aisle, farthest from the home, a white wooden arch interwoven with flowers had been erected; in front this symbolic gateway waited a very young, very nervous Alex in an Air Force dress uniform.

  Behind the arch stood a frocked minister, beaming and checking his watch; while to Alex’s left stood three bridesmaids, looking over the crowd hungrily for prospects. His older cousin Sam stood at his right elbow, looking bemused as only a twenty-two-year-old college senior can when he feels a younger relative is making the mistake of his life, and is anticipating the years ahead he’ll have to rag him about it.

  Music began from a stereo system set up around the pool area, and Gena entered from the left: her bridal dressing room the pool house. Alex, watching from the seats in the auditorium, swallowed hard. So did the younger Alex under the wedding arch. She looked so very young he never remembered her being that young—and so elegant, so beautiful in her simple white silk wedding gown. She was escorted by her father, a
small but ferocious looking man who even now was unable to erase the perpetual scowl from his face.

  Alex turned to whisper to Uriel, “It’s my wedding day! Why are you showing me this? Are you saying my marriage to Gena was a mistake?!”

  “Not necessarily,” Uriel replied, “but it was a pivotal choice, life directing, don’t you agree? And so early—notice your eyes.”

  Alex leaned forward, looking hard; then he got up from his seat to go down to the stage itself, wanting to study the virtual image of his younger self and the other players from this scene of his past from a closer vantage point.

  As young Alex watched his approaching bride, his fixed smile twitching imperceptibly at the corners, older Alex could see the fear in his eyes, the uncertainty. He shot a quick glance toward the array of smilingly tearful bridesmaids, whose eyes were all focused lovingly on the approaching bride, their sister or girlfriend…nothing much there. He then let his eyes wander back across the people seated in the first row of chairs on the left, the bride’s family. They all were looking back anxiously at Gena. He approached them for a closer view. The bride’s mother looked at once hopeful, and fearful, perhaps remembering her own wedding day….

  Gena had told him a little about her mother, and mostly in disparaging terms; the way she allowed her husband and sons to boss her about, ever submissive, ever dutiful.

  “She’s very smart, my mother,” Gena had insisted; “but you’ll almost never see it. She never lets it show at all in front of my father, and only to us kids when he’s not around: To be smarter than your husband is considered disrespect. Even my brothers would never listen to her any more after a certain age. So rude, I wanted to slap them, I wanted her to slap them. But she just took it. I would never be like that!”

  Alex had read the statement rightly as a warning, and nodded his full agreement, squeezing her hand.

  Now the older Alex read that worry clearly in the older woman’s eyes. Don’t be like me, they cried out to the approaching bride; be strong… Oh, I hope this is not a mistake, she’s so young, too young to truly know herself yet.

  And then the woman looked over at the teenaged groom with an expression that was pure malice, and the older Alex shuddered.

  He shifted his study to the ancient grandmother, her wobbly head bobbing on the slender stalk of neck, her expression benign, loving, a little puzzled. The aunt, the bride’s sister, looked more serious than happy about the match, almost as wary as the mother, but without the history. Aunt Jen—a lawyer—had never married. Next to her sat two very serious looking older brothers, Takeo and Johnny. The older of these turned back toward the front and caught young Alex’s eye, raising a mildly threatening brow. The groom nervously widened his smile, gave the hostile brother a little nod of recognition, and turned his attention back to his bride, who was just now being delivered the final few steps to the arch by her truculent father.

  The weathered little Asian looked directly at Alex for just a second. Treat her right, he nodded; but don’t take any shit. He then took the empty seat next to the bride’s mother in the front row.

  The young Alex turned to face Gena as she joined him under the flower bedecked wedding arch . For just a second their eyes met, and Gena appeared to see something in his that made her own smile fade into a questioning expression. Alex—both of them—loved her for that, and it showed in the warmth that immediately flooded the groom’s eyes, replacing the nervousness and doubt. He gave her a wink, she smiled back, and they turned to face the minister.

  Alex turned to Uriel, as behind him the lights on the stage dimmed, then went totally dark.

  “Everybody seemed so sure it wouldn’t work. I mean, I was only nineteen, sure, but I was going away to the Air Force Academy for four years…” he explained.

  “And her older brothers convinced you that married men got more perks in the military?”

  “Off base housing, family allowance, more credits at the PX,” Alex nodded. “Besides, we loved each other, we were going to get married someday anyway…”

  “You were horny as hell,” Uriel interrupted, “and she was old fashioned, plus she had a couple of older brothers none too fond of you in the first place.”

  “That too,” Alex admitted a little sheepishly. “But we were already engaged anyway…”

  “And since that hadn’t done the trick…”

  “Come on, it wasn’t for that. I loved her, she loved me. So we figured…”

  “Why not now?” Uriel finished. “She figured, actually…and you went along for the ride. Even at the wedding ceremony, you still didn’t listen to that little voice.”

  “How could I?” Alex argued. “Not then, not there. It was too late. I could never hurt or embarrass her or her family that way.”

  “Oh, I fully agree, you couldn’t. Not then, not there. And up to that moment, maybe it just hadn’t seemed that real to you, what you were about to commit to. So you did what you felt to be ‘the right thing,’ and your life changed forever. Especially when you consider how it led almost immediately to your next major misstep. Look.”

  The lights came up on the stage again, and Alex turned to find it was no longer the setting of his wedding, but the hotel honeymoon suite in Laughlin a few hours later. Young Alex was still in his Air Force dress uniform, though the jacket was gone, slung over a nearby chair. He held Gena in his arms, clumsily disrobing her as he kissed her lips, her face and throat. He folded her down onto the bed as passion increased, and she only fell the last foot or so.

  In the background, feeling a bit like a voyeur, older Alex giggled at the klutz he once was.

  Now, still kissing Gena passionately, young Alex began to tug at his own pants, struggling to get them past his enormous erection. Gena pulled her lips away from his for just a moment to whisper breathlessly.

  “Do you have…you know?”

  “What?” he groaned between kisses and debriefing.

  “Protection?”

  “Shit,” he stopped for a moment to look at her, “I didn’t think…you’re not on the pill?”

  “Of course not silly…I…” He had begun to stroke between her legs, distracting her, “mmmm… oh jeez…I’ve never…you know… Oh, Alex…so why would I need to?”

  “Oh…yeah, huh?”

  He was too inflamed to stop now, burying his face in her neck, fumbling open her brassiere and kissing her breasts.

  “But we’re married now,” he mumbled against the sweetness of her flesh, “so it’s okay, right?”

  “I don’t want to get pregnant, Alex…not just yet,” Gena protested feebly, just as his mouth found hers again.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her between kisses, “you won’t, I promise.”

  “I’ve got to finish college, get my degree,” she moaned as he found her wet spot.

  “I’ll buy some tomorrow, I promise, but…”

  Gena pushed him back, giving it one last try. “But Alex…”

  Alex raised up on his elbows, giving her his best puppy dog eyes. “Honey, please. It’s three a.m., the drug store’s closed… Anyway, no one gets pregnant the first time.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well…”

  Alex had gone back to kissing her, touching and stroking. Passion overcame reason.

  “…OK, then.”

  “Bad call, don’t you see,” Uriel called down to the older Alex from the auditorium seats.

  Alex looked up at him, shrugged ruefully. “All right, all right, I admit it. I screwed up.”

  “Literally. And nine months later…” He nodded toward the stage, and Alex turned around to see the scene had once again changed.

  It was now the maternity ward of the base hospital, the delivery room to be exact, and Gena was in the final stages of labor. Alex stood next to her, ineptly trying to coach and comfort, and looking very young and sheepish as—between pants and pains—Gena found the energy somehow to curse him vehemently.

  �
�Damn you, Alex McCormick, you and your stupid p-p-penis!” she cried. “No one ever gets pregnant the first time! You asshole!”

  The obstetrician glanced up from his view between Gena’s legs to give Alex a wry grin, before ducking back to the business that was occurring between the surgical drapes. The delivery room nurse gave Alex a comforting pat on the shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, sugar,” the woman told him. “They all say things like that, ’specially the first time. She’ll get over it soon as the baby’s out.”

  “But even though she may have stopped cursing you,” Uriel explained from off stage, “she never did get over it, did she? A baby’s not something you get over, like the flu. And your life direction changed inexorably.”

  Alex turned and walked up a few steps back toward Uriel.

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t want to not have Andy either—he’s a great kid.”

  As Alex turned to Uriel in the seating area, down on the stage below the delivery proceeded, finalized by the sound of an infant crying lustily. Alex turned to see his son, his face as alight with hope and joy as it had been at the actual moment, fifteen years earlier. But behind him the stage had dimmed once again, now dark and barren as the irretrievable past. He turned toward Uriel, stricken.