Читать книгу Neon Green - Margaret Wappler - Страница 11

4

The spaceship descends toward the home of the nuclear family, living in one of the psychic detritus clusters of the universe, otherwise known as the suburb. The utopian landscape is precise and ordered, a video-game grid of

school, park, church, houses;

school, park, church, houses;

school, park, church, houses . . .

. . .that gets more focused as the spaceship gets closer. The flying object cuts through layers of atmosphere, as delicate as filigree, made up of natural molecular ephemera and seminoxious particles of clingy waste: the hairspray and the weed killer and the evaporated windshield wash and the fumes from a polyurethane glue used for a children’s toy that is not recommended for below age eight.

The top layers of the atmosphere—the mesosphere, the thermosphere, the exosphere—is made up of garbage and noise, signals from appliances cross-hatching into a graphic density, slivers of metal from aircraft flying on the slipstream, burning lava rock and auroras that vibrate and hum. Closer to Earth, the troposphere is ransacked and violated by the phenomenon known as weather—clouds fattening with water that condenses, bursts, and clatters down to the ground. The spaceship lowers through it all, leaving behind the moon—a pink scrape in the sky—to settle in the backyard of the Allen family.

When the spaceship landed in the backyard at exactly 8:57 P.M. on August 18, seven days after the first day of school, Cynthia was the first of the family to see it through the kitchen’s picture window. A flying saucer made of silver sheets of bolted metal hovered over the trimmed grass emitting a low humming noise that pained her teeth, like pressing sugar into a cheap metal filling. At just about twenty-five feet across, the spaceship fit snugly between the house and the weeping willow tree in the backyard. Five delicate tentacles shot out of the belly of the spacecraft and pierced the ground, one of them cleaving through the fruit of Ernest’s heirloom tomato plant.

“What?” she shrieked, somewhere between delight, disbelief, and dread.

The saucer rooted further into the grass, vrooming its engine. Above the metal portion of the spaceship, separated by a band of lights, a dark glass top. Twirling lights hysterically crawled around the yard, hot white lights that could shrink pupils into black dots.

Cynthia’s hands dripped with the hot, soapy dishwater she’d abandoned to come to the window. “Ernest? Come here!” she screamed, planted to her spot. “Ernest, where are you?” The water, now cool, ran down to her elbows as she plugged her ears. The humming reached a semi-excruciating pitch, vibrating her sternum and surging up through her feet. “Oh my god, oh my god,” she moaned, but she could hear only the sound of her voice muffled inside of her head.

She remembered then that Ernest was at an Earth Day meeting and wouldn’t be home until late. Her relief that he’d snagged a job he enjoyed—finally!—outweighed her admittedly unreasonable irritation that she’d have to parent this disaster alone. What if they were scared? Wasn’t she scared? Was that why her muscles twitched, as if she were about to leap into a dark shaft? Unable to stop watching, she waited for the kids to come down. Some strange knowledge swept in, tidal and moonlit: the spaceship, she thought, was meant to be here, but she couldn’t tell if it was bringing release or terror.

Upstairs, Gabe played his sister an album that’d been forced upon him by a senior with a Mohawk that sagged from liberty spikes to wisps by three P.M. On school nights, between seven and eleven, Gabe and Alison’s world shrank to the confines of their home, and the options for amusement dwindled as well: watch TV, listen to music, play video games, talk to their parents, talk on the phone. At some point, Alison would usually draw for a while in her room. Sometimes, Gabe would read, lately about the Vietnam War. He was glad he wasn’t eighteen in 1968 but oddly jealous too. Everything seemed so meaningful back then.

“If I don’t like this band,” Gabe said, “Todd said that it means I don’t like punk, which means I’m basically a stupid, worthless fag who will end up married to that half-retarded girl Tracy who works at TCBY.”

“Harsh verdict,” Alison said as she painted her thumbnail with a black Sharpie. “Do you even like that guy Todd?”

“No,” Gabe said, “but still.”

The music sounded sawed-off and gritty. Gabe wasn’t so sure he liked it exactly, but it intrigued him, like looking at pictures of Istanbul or Anchorage.

Alison sat listening for several moments and squinting around the room before she finally said, “Who’s this again?”

“Fugazi,” he answered.

Alison scrunched up her face. “Fooo-gah-zee. Always the ugly names with these punk bands,” Alison mocked in a prim voice. “Is it satanic, or just trash?”

Gabe turned it up as a dare. Alison raised him and flicked up the volume knob even more, inspired as the music redrew all the room’s features, rendering it debauched and arrogant, but also carefree.

In her baggy jeans and too-big striped sweater, Alison popped up on the bed but then didn’t know what to do. After a moment, she jumped around in place, her hands a little off to the side like she might be carrying a guitar or maybe it was just a household saw. Then she flipped her brown hair around in a fit of head-banging, imitating the long-coated metal guys on MTV. For extra snazz, she threw in a plié from her long-abandoned ballet training. Gabe rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure Fugazi weren’t headbangers.

The song ended and another crashed into being. Dizzy from the thrashing, Alison collapsed onto Gabe’s bed in giggles. She pressed her face into the mattress. The flannel bedspread hadn’t been washed in maybe a month or so, and Alison smelled her brother on it—vaguely minty from shaving cream and toothpaste, plus the lavender dandruff shampoo that Cynthia bought him from Karen’s that she always handed to him in a covert paper sack, as if it didn’t end up in the same shower caddy as everyone else’s stuff.

Above Gabe’s bed, a pinned poster of the rock star Ziggy Stardust, with his rooster pouf of pink-red hair, posing in darkness onstage. Alison stood on Gabe’s bed in her socks so that her face almost touched Ziggy’s face, a space of breath between them. As she stared into one of his eyes, a sliver of iris barely perceptible around the dilated pupil, she entertained a thought about her life: that everything she was experiencing—herself, her family, her suburb—could all be happening within Ziggy’s eye, all controlled and ultimately created by him. Why not him? Wasn’t he as good as any other god? But what if it all got wiped out the second Ziggy’s heavily shadowed lid closed over that blue eye?

She routinely had these kinds of thoughts but hoarded them, little secrets never to be shared with her brother. She lay back down on the bed, content with imagining a deity actually from her era, who’d been to the dentist or eaten a burrito. Lit by Gabe’s desk lamp, the ceiling appeared warm and splotchy, an ocean of shadowy and then brighter yellows. Gabe sat cross-legged on the carpet flipping through the CD booklet with photos of the band wearing leather jackets and no shirts, finding them gross and compelling at the same time. Then he cocked his head. A loudness, distinct from the music and morphing from lawn mower to helicopter to something with magnitude, overtook the music, and when the song ended and the speakers were silent, the loudness remained—a mighty roar from the outside.

Alison started to say something as a NyQuil hue poured in from the window. One saturated shaft lit up the bed, her arms and shoulders. The two kids ran to the window. “Oh man,” Gabe said, laughing. “I—shit.”

A flying saucer, dead center in their backyard, lowered into the space, the walls of the house shuddering. The pure green of the lights, switching to white and then back again, overwhelmed their eyes. A number of small birds scattered out of the weeping willow, which now appeared dwarfed by its new neighbor. Somewhere in Alison’s amazement, in the awe that ricocheted and collected strength, she registered the look of ecstasy and fear on her brother’s face, fighting for dominance. They quickly cut out of the room and banged down the stairs.

In the kitchen, where the view of their new visitor was the best, Cynthia wiped her soapy hands on a dish towel, a frantic look in her eye.

“I didn’t know this was coming,” she said, shouting to project over the motorized roar of the spaceship. They all stood at the picture window. Something like an airplane takeoff, the spaceship’s noise was occasionally punctuated by a musical exclamation point appropriate to 1950s cocktail records with boomerang shapes on the cover. Every three minutes or so, it climaxed with a saccharine pop—effervescent and thunderous—that made the spacecraft vibrate. The hysterical searchlights roiled in the silvery skull of the ship’s top. They beamed in through the window every few seconds, lighting up Cynthia and then plunging her figure into darkness again.

“This is amazing,” Gabe shouted.

“Can we go outside and see this thing?” Alison asked.

“Let’s wait a little bit until it calms down.” Cynthia stared out through the glass where she usually watched cardinals hopping from branch to branch, their little speck brains chittering instinctive code. On one occasion, she spotted a lone deer that had wandered far off course standing in the light cast from an outdoor bulb. When they looked at each other—the deer’s eyes were soft and beyond fright, almost paralyzed—something passed between them, the mutual acknowledgment of imminent death. It ran out of the yard and then stood gawkily in the center of their suburban street, seemingly confused about which way to go. It was a long journey back to the woods.

Several minutes passed and the spaceship showed no signs of retiring for the night. But it was firmly planted now.

“OK, let’s go out there, but I want you kids to hold my hand,” Cynthia said. Both kids began to complain. “Hold my hand!”

Gabe and Alison each grabbed a palm. Together they climbed down the back porch steps. They stepped carefully around the machine: Cynthia’s loafers, Alison’s Mary Janes, Gabe’s sneakers. Up close, the sound of the ship was deafening—whirring, vrooming, pop!—so they cupped their hands over their ears. There was so much to look at: the swooping saucer shape, the dark glass windows they couldn’t see through, the magnesium noxiousness of the lights. Where it wasn’t obscured by the spaceship, the grass appeared phosphorescent and nearly liquid in the light.

The aircraft seemed more familiar than not. In some ways, it appeared to be little more than old airplane parts repurposed into a saucer, the same sharkskin metal bolted together. The material was sturdy and impenetrable but also weathered. In some places, the surface buckled a bit or was scratched. The legs (each one was two tentacles bound together and then jointed in a few places for flexibility) looked like standard tubing from a hardware store, though with a silkier sheen.

On all sides of the Allen house, neighbors appeared at their windows or in their backyards. Mrs. Chang, a quiet widow next door, surveyed the spaceship from her rarely used guest bedroom. Olivia and Tom, good friends who lived on the other side next door, weren’t home tonight or surely they’d be coming over right now, knocking at their door for the inside scoop, Tom toting his video recorder. Instead, Ernest walked into the backyard and joined his family. With deep annoyance etched on his face, he craned his head back to take in the whole sight. What was the threshold figure again for hearing loss? Something above 2,000 hertz?

Ten minutes before he entered the backyard, he’d been watching the spaceship from the Aurora Park lawn with the rest of the Earth Day committee. They’d broken from their meeting when one of them noticed the spaceship flying overhead. As it raced across the sky, throwing beams of light, Ernest had a foreboding sense that the flying saucer was headed for his house. Confirming his suspicions, the spaceship first paused behind the dark thumb of his chimney and the slanted roof he’d recently patched, and then lowered itself down.

Ernest wanted to hit the reset button on reality. “Maybe it just looked like it landed in my backyard.”

The excitement of his peers told him otherwise. After a moment of stunned silence, Jean said: “My god, did you, of all people, just have a spaceship land at your house? You’ve gotta go, Ernest.”

Ernest took off, running in the moonlight until he turned down his driveway. He had to slow down now so that he wouldn’t trip on the oak tree roots that were rupturing the concrete slabs. The disk was confounding, impressive, and dinged up all at once. He met Cynthia’s eye and said breathlessly: “Told you the things were overrated.” For a moment, they both laughed hysterically from shared nerves and shared thoughts: What was this thing doing here? What the hell set of mistakes had conspired to drop this B-movie contraption onto their private property? Ernest fought off the urge to hustle the family inside so they could figure this all out, but of course he understood. Who could tear themselves away from this hypnotizing spectacle?

He left them to walk around. From every angle, he inspected the spaceship until it became like some Picasso contraption, a cubist repeat and not-repeat of the same curves and slopes. No matter where he stood, he could never take in the whole circumference—always a part of it unavailable to the eye. The unknowable magnitude made him uneasy. He knocked on its legs a few times, but the underside was too high to reach without a ladder. Then he noticed Cynthia, who’d snuck back inside, waving him in from the kitchen window.

The kids sat around the table, Gabe almost squirming from elation, Alison still watching the ship with obsessed focus. Cynthia leaned her hip against the counter. Her arms were locked across her chest, her face a rictus of tension. For now, the funny moment had passed and stress had set in. Ernest forged ahead in the only manner that made sense to him: they would talk logistics.

“Do we know how long this is supposed to stay?”

“Approximately nine months,” Cynthia said. “Kind of like a really weird pregnancy.”

“Nine months?! How do you know that?”

Cynthia handed him a pamphlet. “I just opened it a few minutes ago,” she said. “Guess who it was addressed to?”

Too engrossed to answer, Ernest read aloud the print across the front page: “Congratulations, your friends from Jupiter have arrived!” The printing quality was fairly good; the paper stock was glossy and thick, but it still looked tacky. The illustration on the cover bugged him. It was of a much mightier alien ship than the one currently camped in their backyard. A family stood proudly in a line next to it. They represented a crude replica of the AlLens: a blond wife in a conservative denim skirt, a husband with spectacles and a V-neck sweater, and two teenage kids. The boy was holding a soccer ball, and the girl smiled with exaggerated dimples. A scruffy brown dog sat at her feet, its pink tongue lolling out. The ship’s band of lights reflected on their faces, glowing and warm. They were so happpppppy about their friends from Jupiter!

On the back of the pamphlet was the return address:

New World Enterprises

F

41000 Lexus Lane

Wilmington, Delaware 19880

“Of course it’s Delaware-based,” Cynthia noted. “Even flying saucers want a good tax deal.”

There was also an 800 number—that was a relief. He’d give it a call first thing tomorrow. Also on the back: the fine print of the sweepstakes rules. Ernest scanned them, but his eyes kept coming back to one of the lines in bold: “Any member of the household, age 16 or older, can register to win.”

“Here’s my big question: How did this thing get here?” Ernest watched Gabe stare down at the table, barely suppressing a smile. “Hmm,” Ernest pondered. “There are four members of this family, but only three meet the requirements for enrolling in this sweepstakes. Let’s go ahead and go around the room. Cynthia, did you enter a contest to have an alien spaceship land in our backyard?”

“No, I didn’t. Let me ask you, Ernest: Did you enter a contest to win a visit from aliens?”

“I’m glad you asked, but no, I didn’t either. Well, well, who does that leave?”

They waited for Gabe to say something while Alison enjoyed the show. Finally Ernest couldn’t wait anymore, staring at the name of his son, Gabriel Allen, printed on the envelope.

He exploded: “What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Gabe said, his face pitching between thrill and feigned guilt. “Nothing ever happens around here!”

“Something’s happening now,” Ernest said. “We’re really angry with you, that’s what’s happening.”

“Sorry, but”—and here’s where Gabe gave up on pretending he felt bad—“I hope it stays forever.”

“No, Gabe,” Ernest said. “You do not wish that. Wish that it leaves early and peacefully instead.”

“What do you think it’s going to do, start a war? How can you guys not see how amazing this is? There’s a friggin’ spaceship back there—from Jupiter!”

“We should go back out there,” Alison said, “instead of talking about it all night in the kitchen.”

Ernest ignored her. “We’re environmentalists, Gabe. This thing isn’t right. We have no idea what kind of footprint it’s leaving behind, not to mention what it’s going to do to us.”

“This is part of the environment too. It’s from our galaxy!”

“Part of our environment like polluted rivers and landfills?

“These are neighbors from our solar system,” Gabe said, “not piles of trash!”

“For starters, it’s probably going to kill the lawn.”

“The grass? Is that your big worry? The grass dies every winter.”

Ernest was pacing now. “What if it does something worse? What if it’s toxic?”

“Why would they be allowed here if they were toxic, Dad?”

“You think this country tells us everything? You don’t think mistakes are made in the name of progress? There’s toxic shit all over the place!”

“All right, everybody.” Cynthia held up her hands. “Why don’t we all sit down at the table and read the pamphlet together?”

Once they were all seated, the green lights from the spaceship flared up and bathed them in a sickening glow.

“Jesus, is this going to happen every time we sit here now?” Ernest asked.

“Does that mean they’re looking at us?” Alison asked. “I am so creeped out right now.”

Cynthia yanked down the shade that was rarely used. She started to read aloud: “In 1969, NASA made an advance previously imagined only in science fiction. It discovered another life-form on planet Jupiter and, through extensive development and research, made contact. Carefully, and in cooperation with the United Nations, NASA led a top secret communications effort to foster a healthy relationship with the residents of the fifth planet from the sun.”

Cynthia continued reading, despite the distracting green light soaking in through the shade: “The unique relationship between Earth and Jupiter is built on close communication. After the discovery was made public to the citizens of Earth, the U.S. government established a visiting program in 1984 in which the inhabitants of Jupiter landed at the homes of select Americans. New World Enterprises took over the program in 1986, expanding visitation opportunities for ordinary Americans. In exchange for observing your way of life from a pleasant but close vantage point, you will have the amazing opportunity to host another life-form.”

“They always have to make it sound so creepy. ‘Host another life-form’?” Alison wrapped her arms around herself. “That sounds like a horror movie.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic.” Cynthia flipped ahead, searching for information about the saucer they hadn’t already heard a hundred times before. “Hold on, this part is in bold: ‘Do not try to force or lure them out. Do not damage their home, tamper with any equipment, or, in any way, create a hostile environment. Any damage to the spaceship could put the occupants in danger, and possibly the host family. It’s also imperative that if the aliens do come out—and this particular event cannot be guaranteed—that you keep a respectful distance. Do not attempt to agitate the aliens. For entertainment purposes only’” Cynthia snorted.

Ernest shook his head ruefully. “You know, thinking of this from their position, I don’t see how they could possibly trust ordinary Americans not to do something stupid to the spaceships. I know everyone’s used to them by now, but how can they be so sure no one will attack them? Everyone just accepts aliens from outer space with open arms?”

“Maybe something really bad happens if you attack the spaceships,” Alison said. “I wouldn’t want to mess with them.”

Cynthia steered the conversation back. “Besides what this pamphlet says, what else do we know about spaceships?”

“I remember reading an article where they come out,” Gabe said.

Cynthia and Ernest exchanged an exasperated but pitying look.

“For the last time, they don’t do that, Gabe,” Ernest said. “No one’s ever seen them.”

“No, they did! It was some rich family in New York who paid for them to land, but they couldn’t get pictures or videos because the aliens hate that.”

“You read that in one of those trashy tabloids,” Cynthia said. “There’s never been a credible report of the aliens coming out, and there’ve been thousands of visits now.”

“That’s what’s so suspicious about these things,” Ernest said. “I haven’t read a serious news story about them in a while, not since the first couple of years when the visits were new. You two don’t realize this, but there was real pandemonium at first. I have to admit that Reagan did a pretty good job handling that one.”

During that momentous press conference announcing the existence of alien life—one which Ernest and Cynthia watched anxiously, convinced it was the dreaded beginning of nuclear conflict with the USSR—the Skipper spread his lips into that famous cowboy smile of his and said, “I give you my solemn oath, we share values with these beings—the values of liberty, prosperity, and peace.”

During the first months, when spaceships were sighted only rarely as they skimmed the air on official ambassadorial missions, the general public screamed, prayed, and quite frequently shot at the saucers; police and fire stations were overwhelmed with calls to respond. Certain lower-level politicians, left out of the security briefings, demanded immediate accountability. The solution was Reagan’s apparently. Share the wealth. Let everybody in on it. And the spaceship visitor program was expanded and outsourced. New World Enterprises and a few other companies were formed by giant conglomerate parent entities that could afford the high cost of communicating effectively with Jupiter. Soon they were sending the spaceships to weddings, bar mitzvahs, museum openings—as long as the clients could afford the exorbitant hosting fees. For the rest, a quasi-lottery system existed, a sweepstakes for the regular guy, though it seemed like the lottery system favored residents who lived in safe upper-middle-class neighborhoods with good schools and minimal graffiti problems. Still, people worried. People complained. There were lobbying groups in Washington dedicated to getting rid of them, severing ties. And there were outlier groups who refused to believe, who suspected that like the moonwalk, it was all fake; these ships had never been to space, and were in fact of human manufacture.

“I’m worried they’ll do things to us,” Alison said. “What if they can read our thoughts? What if they kidnap one of us?”

“Nothing like that is going to happen,” Gabe said. “Why can’t everyone see that it’s going to be an amazing experience?” He turned toward Alison. “So you don’t like the spaceship either?”

She weighed her words. “No, I like it. But it’s a little sketchy.”

“Why?” Gabe asked.

“Well, for one thing, I think I can see someone in there.”

“Really?” Ernest said. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“I’ll show you,” and with that they bounded down the back steps.

“If you stand right here at this certain angle.” Alison picked out a spot on the grass and pointed at the wraparound band of glass. “Right here, you can see just a shadow of something.”

Ernest went over and stood behind her, following her finger. He saw what she saw—the faintest traces of an interior hub with a lever and some sort of figure with a bulbous head sitting close to the glass, but it wasn’t moving. Maybe it was an alien, maybe not. It could be a dummy, even a decoy, or a shadow. What was it? They’d been watching it for a moment now, all of them crowded near one another, holding their breath, but it hadn’t moved one bit.

“I don’t know what’s real and what’s not in there,” Cynthia said at last.

“Maybe none of it is real,” Gabe said, and immediately felt silly. He didn’t know what he meant.