The Floating Cradle

Fifteen

We divide into two parties, one tending to the cooking and the other to the cows. By the time we have the barn closed up for the night, the savory smell of roasted turkey is wafting out the kitchen window, promise beckoning habit, and we converge upon the house like pliant cattle at day's end.

Inside, Mama says grace. I look up and down the table and it's like being in a hallucination, logic threatening to implode if I press it too hard. How many times have I imagined Allie sitting to Mama's left, passing Gil the crescents, yammering on about ribosomes or God knows what? I had assumed, I think, that time would give this to me eventually. Still I can't accept, on some level, that the fabric into which this moment has been inexorably stitched also features a tantum as my brother-in-law, Felicity and Lyle's impending divorce, the pills burning a hole in my desk drawer one floor above us, and those diamond studs piercing Allie's ears like inverted black holes. That the vastness of all space and time has failed to alchemize my simplest of expectations without impurities blinds me with rage, and I feel a depth of loss more excruciating than even that which I felt seven years ago, because what I have lost now is the future, the promise of my unreality coming true.

When you reach a conclusion like that, there's little else to do but shovel mashed potatoes in your trap and sing Christmas carols off key till your mama threatens to box your ears.

The remainder of the evening is languid. Mama and Felicity give up on cleaning the kitchen to join the rest of us sprawled in a stupor across the living room furniture (everyone but Dan, that is, who's done us a favor and dragged his feverish ass back to bed). I listen to Taylor Swift—her old stuff, don't judge me—on my new headphones, pretending not to notice Pete sketching me with the markers Allie gave him, and eavesdrop on the free-floating conversation.

"Will you two move back to Cognata?" Felicity is asking Allie and the tantum.

"I grew up in Manhattan," Jack replies with a condescending little laugh.

"Oh," Felicity says. "But isn't Cognata your birthplace? Don't you have people there?"

"Well, yes," the tantum concedes. "I was born there. But I have no memory of it. I was only two when I left."

"Jack made the passage on the Cradle," Allie explains, and the room's attention shifts.

"I'll be damned," Blake says. Gilberto whistles out his teeth.

"That explains why you talk so good," Lyle says. "And you don't move funny like most of 'em. Almost like a person."

"Your English is very, very good," Felicity agrees kindly.

Allie's thumb brushes back and forth over the tantum's hand. Back and forth like a pendulum.

"Can't imagine what mother would shoot her baby into space," Mama grumbles, shaking her head. "I remember watchin' it on the TV, that welcomin' to-do in Switzerland. Couldn't believe my eyes—the adults is one thing, but sure 'nuff there was that handful of children, so far from home. Ain't right."

I see Allie's jaw clench. Her thumb stops.

"Yeah, it's pretty crazy," she flares. "Makin' a new life. Puttin' it on a rock full of strangers in the middle of space, with all these rules it doesn't know and a language it's gotta learn from scratch. Decidin' things for it that can alter the course of its entire existence. Ignorin' what it wants when you think you know better. And they let any idiot do it! Downright irresponsible."

"Easy now," Daddy says as Mama slams her mug on the coffee table, decaf slopping over the sides; Pete seizes his sketchbook just before it is doused. "It's Christmas."

"There ain't a soul in this house that ain't eaten the food off my table," Mama growls. "This ain't no buffet and I ain't taking no orders neither. If you can't stomach my opinions, then you're free to leave."

"I did," Allie spits.

All the air goes out of the room; I brace myself for the explosion. The tantum's watch lets out a jaunty string of beeps.

"Oh," he says, relieved. "It's—I've got to do my compression. Right, well, goodnight everyone. Love?"

He offers a hand—an exit—to Allie, but she doesn't take it.

"I'll catch up."

He escapes up the stairs, leaving Allie and Mama in a vacuum of enmity. Mama looks fit to be tied, lips thin as paper; she's winding up her tongue when something crashes on the second floor, shaking the walls.

"What the fuck is this?" the tantum shouts.

"Wait, it ain't what it looks—"

"Get out!"

We stare slack-jawed as Dan comes skidding down the stairs, the tantum a few steps behind, his scales on end like hot daggers.

"What's goin'—"

"He was in our room!" Jack splutters, apoplectic. "Digging through our stuff! Looks like a wild animal tore it apart!"

Dan is a twitching mess, his clothes blotchy with sweat, his eyes red and bugging out of their sockets. He reminds me of a mug shot they printed in the local papers a few years back, warning farmers to check their barns for an escaped convict once the temperature dropped. My eye travels down to the knotted sock clenched in his fist.

"Dan," I say, fighting to stay calm. "Just gimme the pills. It'll be okay."

"You dirty thief," he rasps.

Confusion and anxiety multiply. Allie is yelling at Dan to explain himself. Lyle grips me by the arm, but I can make nothing of the words coming out of his mouth. Blake moves to seize the sock from Dan's hand, and the latter lashes out, striking him across the ear.

The room fills with a cacophony of strident, electronic bleating.

At first I think it's the tantum's watch again, but it's too loud, too urgent. My phone is vibrating against my thigh; I take it from my pocket as the rest of the family follows suit. For a second we are all still, held fast by the white-blue tractor beams of our phone screens. One by one we look up.

"Emergency Alert: Multiple Missile Threats Inbound To Continent. Seek Immediate Shelter. This Is Not A Drill."

Midnight.