Vessel

11

THE LIGHT THAT filtered into the bedroom told Catherine it was midmorning, possibly later. Catherine winced after opening her eyes, grimacing at a sudden spike of pain between her eyes. Hungover? No. She wasn’t sick to her stomach, and besides, she hadn’t had that much to drink last night. She glanced over at the clock on the night table. Nearly eleven. When was the last time she’d slept so late? She sat up and stretched, wincing again. Everything ached, as though she were about to get the flu. The ache in her muscles was deep, and her back muscles were twinging, just on the edge of a spasm.

The other side of the bed was empty—not a surprise. Catherine swung her feet onto the floor and stared. What the hell? She’d taken a shower before bed last night, but now her feet were nearly black with dirt, grime beneath her nails and between her toes. She went cold as she studied her feet.

What did I do?

Nothing. It had to be nothing. Sleepwalking, maybe. Yesterday had been stressful. Maybe she had had one too many glasses of wine. That’s all it was. Or sleepwalking.

You don’t really believe that. She wanted to. God, how she wanted to.

Catherine went to the bathroom and got in the shower again, washing off her feet. The dirt rinsed away and vanished down the drain, disappearing forever. If only her fears would disappear so easily.

David wasn’t home, but Aimee was in the backyard, sprawled in the sun reading a book.

“I hope you’re wearing sunscreen,” Catherine said, stepping onto the patio and closing the door behind her. She sounded so normal. Okay, she could do this.

“Yes, Mother. I’m wearing so much I bet the sun isn’t even touching my skin.” Aimee looked up with a grin and put down her book. “I was wondering if you were ever going to get up. Go get changed; we have plans this afternoon.”

Catherine raised her eyebrows. “We have plans? What plans?”

“Well, someone has been working her ass off to give someone else an amazing graduation party, so someone deserves to get spoiled for an afternoon.” Aimee pushed herself up from her blanket and picked it and the book up.

“You don’t have to do anything for me,” Catherine protested.

Aimee laughed and walked up onto the patio, taking her mother by the arm. “I told you. Made plans to spoil you. Come on. I worked it out with Dad and everything. We’re going to lunch, then to the spa for a few hours, and then we’re meeting Dad for dinner at Tony’s.”

“Oh Aims, no. I’m not a spa kind of person…”

“Yes you are. Today, anyway. Come on, I’m not taking no for an answer.” Aimee pulled her into the house. “Go on, go change!” She put her hands on her hips and watched until Catherine smiled and went upstairs to obey.

The thought of keeping her normal face on all day made her insides twist. But how could she say no to spending time with her daughter? She changed into a sundress that wasn’t too outdated and put on a little bit of makeup before going back downstairs.

“Okay, let’s go!”

It was still a novelty to see Aimee driving, but Catherine agreed to let her, settling into the passenger seat. They wound up at a trendy vegetarian café for lunch that had an entire wall lined with succulents. They looked like a normal mother-daughter pair, ready to spend a Sunday together.

The food was delicious, and Catherine tried to focus on it rather than on the unending echo in the back of her head, asking what she’d done last night.

“Thank you for this,” Catherine said, trying to match the picture of normalcy.

“Oh, this is nothing,” Aimee said, grinning. “Wait until you see what’s next!”

Aimee wasn’t kidding, either. There was a type of Texas womanhood that Catherine could never manage to emulate, the Junior League types, with their impeccable grooming and tasteful clothes… and now she was surrounded by them. The spa itself was a feminine wonderland: white and neutral tones everywhere, billowing filmy fabrics, and quiet, elegant women in pale-gray coats leading women in robes around. A small dark-haired woman greeted them, and Catherine felt enormous and gawky, towering over her.

“It is you!” the woman said. “I knew it! I tried to tell the other girls that it really was the Catherine Wells that had an appointment booked. We’re so proud to have you here!”

Catherine fought the urge to wince and deny everything. She glanced over at Aimee, and to her surprise, Aimee was beaming with pride.

“That’s her. That’s my mom,” Aimee said.

“I… well, yes, that’s me.” Catherine smiled uncertainly. “My daughter, Aimee, and I are here together.”

“Of course, I can see the resemblance. I’m Teena. We’ve got y’all lined up for our Teaser package, so if you ladies will come this way, we’ll get started!”

Thankfully, it seemed that most of their time would be spent in a quiet room. In spite of the questions that plagued her, the masseuse managed to hammer away some of the physical tension in Catherine’s body, making it easier to keep smiling.

As their hostess led them to the next room, Catherine said, “I haven’t had a facial in years.” She laughed self-consciously. “I guess that goes without saying, huh?”

She and Aimee settled into side-by-side chairs and were given strict orders to close their eyes and keep them closed, before they were each given eye masks. Aimee chatted idly with their aesthetician while Catherine fought to keep from gripping the arms of the chair as the aesthetician spread some sort of cool gel on her face before putting the mask in place.

Relax. Just relax. She couldn’t. She kept thinking about her dirt-caked feet. Her aching muscles. How much time had she lost? What had she done?

The eye mask made everything worse, the darkness overwhelming. It made everything feel unreal. Like she was back on Sagittarius, drifting slowly home, talking to Aimee to keep herself alive.

You are on Earth. Aimee is right here and seventeen now. You are in a spa, Catherine kept telling herself over and over.

“I’ll be right back,” the aesthetician murmured and slipped out of the room.

“Mom? You okay? You went quiet.”

Catherine peeled up one corner of the mask and looked over. Behind Aimee’s mask Catherine could see her brow furrowed with concern.

“Yeah. I think I might have dozed off.” She lay back down and put the mask back in place, breathing easier.

“That’s a good sign, right?”

“It must be.”

She had to let it go. She promised herself she’d let go of the past and be more present. No matter what happened, Dr. Darzi would tell her it was normal, and maybe it was. Who the hell knew what “normal” was in a situation like this, anyway?

“Sorry, Aims,” Catherine said. “I’m not doing a very good job with the whole mother-daughter-time thing.”

“Hey, the idea was for you to relax. Napping counts.”

“I know, but…”

Aimee’s self-conscious laugh was an echo of Catherine’s, and Catherine couldn’t help but smile. “At least you’re here. When you first came home, I don’t know, I was afraid something else would take you away from me. Or that you’d vanish. Or that you would have changed so much that you wouldn’t be… you anymore.”

Am I still me? Really me? All the time? “I kept worrying I would vanish, too.” Catherine tried to laugh it off as a joke then winced at the drying gel pulling at her skin.

“Mom? What made you decide to do it? To be an astronaut? And go away for so long at a time?”

It was a fair question, and Catherine owed her a true answer. “When I was younger, before you were born, I wanted to see the stars more than anything. I wanted to be out there among them. After you were born I still wanted to see the stars, just not more than anything. Remember that, Aims: you don’t stop wanting things just because you have a baby; you just try to get better at making compromises.”

“And your compromise was to… leave?” Aimee’s voice was careful, as if she recognized that Catherine was working through her thoughts, too, that both of them were trying to find their footing.

“I know that sounds terrible.” Catherine still remembered the tension between her and David, but every time she asked, every time she tried to talk about it, he insisted it was fine and that she should go. “The Sagittarius missions are so important, Aimee. Now that we can reach planets outside our solar system, there’s a better and better chance we can find a planet like Earth. The Earth may be fine during my lifetime and yours, but… it might not. I told myself,” here Catherine’s voice started to thicken, remembering how difficult the conclusion had been, “that I might be away from you for six years, but I was part of making sure you would always have somewhere safe to live.” Remembered sadness faded into wry humor. “Oh, the irony; my biggest adventure yet, and I don’t remember a damn thing about the actual destination.”

“I’m sorry. That has to suck.”

All the lost time, during and after the trip, all the worry, losing nearly a decade of her life, and Aimee had managed to distill it down to four words. “Yeah.” Catherine allowed a laugh—because it was either laugh or cry—and said, “It definitely sucks.”

The aesthetician returned, much calmer than when she’d left. “Ladies, I apologize for taking so long.”

“Oh, we’re not in any hurry,” Catherine said, managing a smile that felt real behind the mask. The question still lingered in her mind. Had she made the right decision? Hindsight made it easy to second-guess herself. Would she still be asking herself this if the mission had been a success? It was an unanswerable question, as unknowable as her missing memories.

“Tony’s for all three of us?” Catherine kissed David’s cheek before he held out chairs for both her and Aimee. “Are you spending my hazard pay?” she teased. She’d been able to shake off her melancholy thanks to Aimee’s obvious enjoyment of their outing and brute determination on her part not to spoil it.

“No, Aimee’s college fund. She made out so well at her graduation party, I figure we can get away with it.”

“Hey!” Aimee protested good-naturedly. “I worked hard for that graduation money!”

David picked up his menu, but then let his eyes linger on Catherine. “You look radiant, both of you.”

Catherine and Aimee had finished the afternoon by getting their hair, makeup, and nails done. Catherine had to admit, it was the most glamorous she’d felt in a long while. “Your daughter is clearly better at being a girly-girl than her mother ever was.”

“Director Lindholm was telling me at the party that he wants you to start doing TV interviews. You should see if someone there can do your makeup if you do,” Aimee suggested.

Catherine groaned. “Is he still pushing that idea? Every time I think I’ve gotten him to give up, Paul tries a new angle to get me to agree.”

“The man is a bulldog. He doesn’t give up on anything,” David said.

The waiter arrived and they gave him their orders, then talk turned to Aimee’s plans for her dorm room. Even facing the fact that her daughter was going to go thousands of miles away in a few months was more appealing than thinking about Lindholm and his hunger for media coverage. More important, it felt normal.

“You should see the rooms, Mom. They’re so tiny! I don’t know how they expect future engineers to live together in such a small space. There’s hardly any work space at all…”

“We’ll get it figured out,” Catherine said.

After she and Aimee decided what dessert they wanted to split, Catherine realized something else had been weighing on her since yesterday. “Julie mentioned something at the party yesterday…” She toyed with the napkin in front of her. “The doctors have decided it’s all right to tell Mom about me coming back. Julie wants us to come to Chicago to see her this summer. ‘Sooner rather than later,’ she said.”

“Cath, that’s fantastic.”

“It is and it isn’t.” God, Catherine hated to bring this up here. “It… might not be much longer now. We might be going to, well,… say good-bye.”

Aimee took her hand. “Mom, we’ve known that for a long time now. It’s just new to you.” Aimee, as always, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

Goddamn it, she wasn’t going to sit here and cry in the middle of a restaurant. Catherine held her eyes open to keep the tears from spilling out, holding on to her husband and daughter. “Yeah, I guess it is. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s fine,” David said. “We’ll figure out the next weekend you can get away, okay? Talk to Aaron Llewellyn; he’ll find you some time.”

With the launch of Sagittarius II just weeks away, that was going to be hard. It might have to wait until after the launch, but now that Catherine knew she could go, she wanted to desperately. She missed Nora so badly, and couldn’t help feeling that seeing someone else who knew her, someone who knew her deep down in her bones, would help her shake this feeling of unreality and disconnection.

“Yeah, okay. Thank you.” Catherine was able to swallow the lump in her throat and smile at both of them. “I’m so lucky to have you both.” The idea of visiting Nora hung before her like a glimmer of hope, and she was going to reach for it with both hands.