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For the next day and a half, despite Lydia's complaints, Nath refused to change the channel and not allow her to watch reruns of "I Love Lucy" or "Daddy Knows Best." He began calling the astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan by their first names, treating them as long-time friends. After the astronaut's first call to Earth was started, Lydia felt that all she heard was a bunch of chaotic, hoarse gibberish, and the astronaut's voice was as unpleasant as if it had been crushed in a grinder. But Nath understood it effortlessly. Gene whispered excitedly, "Man, it's beautiful out there." NASA didn't send back a TV signal from the people in orbit, so the station broadcast a simulation of a space capsule: an actor hanging on a wire in Missouri. Performances are performed in the studio with professional equipment. When the guy in the spacesuit stepped out of the cabin, floating gracefully, rising effortlessly - feet up, no trace of the wires attached to him - Nath forgot that this wasn't real. . He forgot everything, even breathing.
For lunch, they had peanut butter sandwiches. Ness said at the dinner table: "The astronauts ate shrimp clams and beef stew, and pineapple cake." At dinner, he said: "Gene is the youngest astronaut ever to enter space. They are going to complete it." The longest spacewalk ever." The next morning, as his father made cereal, Ness was too excited to eat. "The astronauts wore tin pants to protect their legs from the boosters," he said.
James should love astronauts—because, apart from the astronauts who are pioneering the new territory of space, who else is worthy of the title of "modern cowboy"? —but knows nothing about aerospace knowledge. He was entangled in chaotic thoughts, and the fragments of Marilyn's note were in his heart. He seemed to be holding a telescope and watching his son's obsession with cold eyes. He thought that the astronauts deep in the sky were just specks of dust, two little people squeezed into a space the size of a sardine can, tinkering with various nuts and bolts. No human beings on earth can be seen there, and those struggling souls are no different from the dead to them. These astronauts were worthless and ridiculous, costumed actors hanging from wires, pretending to be brave, dancing with their feet in the air. And Nass was hypnotized by them. He stared at the screen all day long, with a peaceful and peaceful smile on his lips. Seeing this scene, James felt a violent fire of disgust surge in his chest.
On Sunday morning, Ness said, "Dad, do you believe that humans can land on the moon and back?" James slapped his son so hard that his teeth chattered. "No nonsense." He said, "How can you think about these things at this time..."
He had never hit Ness before and never would again. But something about the bond between them had broken. Nath held his cheek and rushed out of the room like an arrow, followed closely by Lydia. James was left alone in the living room, with his son's eyes red with shock and anger imprinted in his mind. He kicked the TV to the ground, causing broken glass and sparks to fly. Although he took the children to Decker's Department Store on Monday to buy a new TV, James never thought about astronauts and space again. Those sharp glass particles seemed to blind him forever.
Nath picked up the Encyclopedia Britannica and started reading: Gravity, Rockets, Propulsion. He studied various newspaper articles about astronauts and space missions, secretly cut them out and hid them in folders. After waking up at night because of his dream about his mother, he took out the newspaper clippings in the folder, covered himself with a blanket, took out the flashlight from under the pillow, and reread the articles in order, memorizing every detail. He knew the code names of each launch mission: Freedom, Aurora, and Sigma. He recited each astronaut's name: Carpenter, Cooper, Grissom, Glenn. After reading the last article, he regained the ability to fall asleep.
Lydia didn't have any distractions to help her ignore the "mother"-shaped black hole in her world. When Nath kept company with terms like "docking adapter", "splashdown", "apogee" and so on, she noticed something. This one didn't. My mother's home smelled strange. Once you realize this, you can no longer ignore it. Lydia begins to have nightmares in which she crawls with spiders, she is tied to a snake, and she drowns in a teacup. Sometimes, when she woke in the dark, she could hear the couch creaking downstairs—her father tossing and turning. On nights like these, she could never fall asleep again, and the days became thick and dull, like molasses.
There was only one thing in the house that reminded Lydia of her mother: the big cookbook with a red cover. Her father locked himself in the study, and while Nath was immersed in the encyclopedia, she went into the kitchen and took the book off the counter. Even though she was only five, she already knew some words—not as fluently as Nass, of course—and rattled off the names of foods: chocolate joy cake, olive bread, onion cheese soup. Every time I open this cookbook, the woman on the title page looks a little more like her mother—the smile, the collar turned back, the way her eyes look behind you instead of looking directly at you. Her mother had read this book every day since her return from Virginia, in the afternoons when Lydia came home from school, and in the evenings before Lydia went to bed. Sometimes the book would still be on the table in the morning, as if her mother had been reading it all night. The cookbook, Lydia knew, was her mother's favorite read, and she would thumb through it like a believer touching a Bible.
It was the third day of July, and her mother had been missing for two months. Lydia nestled in her favorite corner under the dining room table, holding up the cookbook again. That morning, she and Nath asked their father to buy hot dogs and Fourth of July fireworks. James only said: "Let's talk again." They knew that this meant "no". Without their mother, there will be no more barbecue and lemonade this Fourth of July, and they won't be going to the lake to watch the fireworks. Just peanut butter and jelly, and the curtains at home remain closed. She turned the pages, looking at the pictures of cream pie, gingerbread house, and steak dinner, and noticed a line drawn on the side of one of the pages. She read out the underlined words:
What kind of mother doesn’t enjoy cooking with her daughter
The following sentence is:
What kind of daughter wouldn't want to learn to cook with her mother
The entire page was pockmarked, as if it had been wet by rain. Lydia ran her fingertips over the ridges on the paper as if reading Braille. At first, she didn't understand why this page turned out like this, until a tear splashed on the paper, and she wiped it with her hand, leaving a raised spot on the page.
Such traces abound, and her mother must have cried while reading this page.
It's not your fault, her father had said, yet Lydia knew it was their fault. They did something wrong, she and Nath. Somehow they made her angry. They didn't meet her expectations.
If her mother could come home and let her finish her milk—Lydia thought, the pages blurring—she would. She brushes her teeth consciously and does not cry when the doctor gives her injections. As soon as her mother turns off the light, she goes to sleep. She will never get sick again. She does whatever her mother says. She wants to fulfill her mother's every wish.
Marilyn, who was far away in Toledo, did not hear her young daughter's silent promise. On the third day of July, while Lydia huddled under the dining room table, Marilyn was slumped over a new book, Advanced Organic Chemistry. The midterm exam was just two days away and she had already been studying all morning. Marilyn held the notebook and felt that she had returned to her undergraduate days. Even her signature had returned to the softness and roundness it had before her marriage. After her marriage, her handwriting became hard and tight. Her classmates are all college students. Some study hard and hope to get the top spot, while others struggle to survive and pass the exam as their highest goal. To her surprise, they did not treat her as an alien, but behaved like others, quietly, politely, and attentively. In the cool lecture hall, they observed the molecular structure together and labeled it as "ethyl, methyl, propyl, butyl"; at the end of the course, they discussed notes and exchanged their thoughts. She was still able to draw as gracefully as before Simple molecular chain. This, she told herself, proved that I was as smart as everyone else. I belong here.
However, when Marilyn opened the book, she often felt dizzy. Various reactions jumped up and down, and the dullest words made her think: sodium hydroxide (NaOH) became Nath, reminding her of his small face, wide eyes and sad expression. One morning, while looking up the periodic table, she mistook "helium" for "he," and James' face immediately appeared before her eyes. Sometimes, she would also capture more sensitive information. For example, seeing this typographical error in the textbook - "Common acids, eggs, nitric acid, acetic acid..." can make her burst into tears and think of boiled eggs. , sunny-side up poached eggs and scrambled eggs. At these times, Marilyn would reach into her pockets and touch the keepsakes inside—hairpins, marbles, and buttons—turning them over and over again until her mind calmed down.
Sometimes, however, even these amulets lose their magic power. Two weeks after leaving home, she woke up in the double room she rented and felt a sharp pain in her body. She suddenly felt that she had made a huge mistake and should not have come here far away from her family. Finally, wrapped in a blanket, she moved to the phone in the kitchen. It was 6:41 in the morning, but the phone only rang twice. "Hello?" James said. There was a long moment of silence. "Hello?" She didn't say anything. She didn't dare to say anything and could only let the voice drown in her heart. His voice seemed hoarse—perhaps interference from the phone line, she told herself, but didn't really believe it. Finally, she stretched out a finger and pressed the hook, held it there, and after a long moment put the receiver back in place. James' husky voice echoed in her head all day, like a familiar and lovely lullaby.
From then on, she would call every few days when she felt homesick. No matter what time it was, James would answer the phone promptly, so she thought he might be sleeping on the kitchen table or spending the night next to the extension in the study. However, one time, the call did not get through - James and the children had gone out to buy food. If they did not go to the grocery store, there was a risk of running out of food - she panicked, worried that the house was on fire, or there was an earthquake, or even a meteorite attack. So she dialed the phone countless times, first every five minutes, then every two minutes, until James's voice finally came through the receiver. Another time, she called early in the morning. James, exhausted, fell asleep at his desk. Nath answered the phone. "This is Li's home." He said seriously, exactly as she taught her. Marilyn wanted to say "Are you okay? Are you listening?" but found that she was so excited that she couldn't make a sound at all. To her surprise, Nath didn't hang up the phone because of her silence. He was kneeling on a kitchen chair listening to the phone - having climbed up to reach it. After a while, Lydia walked in gently from the aisle and lay down next to Nath. They held the receiver between their ears. Two minutes passed, three minutes, four minutes. Through the low hiss on the line, they seemed to hear what their mother was thinking. In the end, the two children were the first to hang up the phone. Marilyn was stunned for a long time holding the phone, her hands shaking all the time.
Nath and Lydia never mentioned this to their father, and James never reported the strange calls to the police. He had begun to suspect that the police were not enthusiastic about helping him, and, deep down in his heart, he still harbored old fears. He thought he understood the police's logic. It was only a matter of time before a wife like Marilyn abandoned a husband like him. thing. Officer Fisk's attitude had always been gentle and polite, but this annoyed James even more, and the politeness made it even more difficult to bear. As for Marilyn, every time she put down the phone, she would say to herself that this was the last time and she would never call home again. The phone call just now proved that her family was doing well and she had started a new life. She told herself firmly—she believed it so firmly that her confidence began to waver the next time she involuntarily picked up the phone.
She told herself that in her new life, anything was possible. Now she feeds herself mainly on cereal, sandwiches and pasta from the pizza restaurant down the street; she had no idea it was possible to live without cooking utensils. She calculated that she still had eight credits left to complete her degree. She wanted to forget everything that had nothing to do with it. She studied medical school exam questions while spinning Nath's marbles. She pulled Lydia's hairpin with one hand - opening, closing, opening, closing - and with the other hand she wrote dense notes in the margins of the textbook. She concentrated so hard that her head hurt.
On the third day of July, Marilyn opened her textbook, but her eyes were obscured by a layer of black clouds. She felt light-headed, her legs were weak, and her body tended to collapse to the floor. However, in an instant, her vision returned to clarity and her consciousness became clear. She found a glass of water poured out on the table, several notebooks scattered on the floor, and her shirt was damp. She stared at the handwriting on the note and stood up slowly.
She had never fainted before, not even close to fainting, and she had never suffered from heatstroke, even on the hottest days of summer. Now she was tired, almost too tired to stand. Lying on the sofa cushions, Marilyn thought, maybe I am sick, maybe someone else has infected me. Then another thought came to her that sent chills all over her body—she was pregnant with her third child. Of this she was certain; she had been counting down the days to this exam. She clapped her fingers and was stunned, as if she had been doused with ice water: This meant that her menstrual period was delayed by three weeks. No. It had been nearly nine weeks since she left home, she thought. She didn't realize so much time had passed.
She dried her hands on her jeans and tried to stay calm. After all, her menstrual period had been delayed before, especially when she was stressed or sick. Her body seemed unable to keep all its functions functioning normally. And with how hard she was working now, her body might not be able to keep up again. on an intense pace. "You're just hungry," Marilyn told herself. She hadn't eaten all day and it was almost two o'clock now and there was nothing in the cupboard, but she could go to the store and buy some food and eat it, which would make her feel better and then she could get back to her studies.
But in the end, she still didn't take the exam. She selected cheese, salami, mustard, and soda in her shopping cart, and picked up bread from the shelf. "It's okay," she told herself again, "you're fine." With the grocery store bag under her arm and six bottles of soda in her hand, she walked towards her car when she suddenly felt like the world was spinning, her knees and then her elbows. It hit the asphalt, the paper bag rolled out, and the soda bottle hit the pavement in a hissing puddle of liquid and broken glass.
Marilyn sat up slowly, surrounded by a circle of food, the bread was soaked in a puddle, and the mustard bottle was slowly rolling towards a green Volkswagen van not far away. Coke was running down her calves. She raised one hand and looked at it. Under the light, the layers of her skin were like sandstone, showing a dark pink color like watermelon. A bright red liquid was gurgling from the bottom of her palm.