Solar Wind

The day Ana went to space, you watched the rocket take off on an oversaturated television screen, the blues of the sky heavy and inky, and you thought about the time the two of you had seen the aurora borealis.

Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction

It was decades ago, early August, less than two months since you had arrived in Brooklyn. You both got in the beat up peeling green Fiat you had just purchased, signing your name on a crisp check that crackled under your fingers. Ana was wearing a sweatshirt that said “New York Rules”. You remembered that because in Poland Julie always bought the clothes and it was the first piece of clothing you had gotten for Ana. A year later you would feel a pang in your chest when you saw it in the Big Brother giveaway bags. Seeing the sweatshirt would remind you of those first couple months, before Julie made it over, a time that was stressful yet simple. You and Ana against the world.

You drove north, stopping just shy of the Catskills but far enough from New York City pollution that stars could blink down sleepily. Ana sang ABBA songs in the car. You tried to join but didn’t know all the words. She spotted it first – she stopped singing to gasp, pointing out the windshield. You pulled the Fiat over into gravel.

The two of you got out. You put Ana on your shoulders, breathing in the smell of pine needles. You stood on the side of the road silhouetted by a vast weaving of light before you: greens and reds so vivid you could touch them, blues more saturated than a TV screen. Ana asked where the lights came from.

Solar wind, you told her. Charged particles from the Sun travelled across space to collide with our atmosphere. The collision let off bright bursts. There had been an article about it in the paper.

The Sun is really far, though, Ana said.

The winds travelled really far, you said.

Just like us, Ana said.

Just like us.

Thinking on the memory, you wondered why those moments of natural phenomena stood out so clearly while other memories faded. Perhaps the awe of the aurora hovering above you forced you into the present. You couldn’t worry about rent or when Julie would make it to the States or if Ana’s school was good enough when you were staring at the shifting mural of the sky, the eye of the universe. You couldn’t get stuck on how you waited twelve hours at the JFK airport for an immigration officer that never showed, how Ana held your hand and insisted she wasn’t hungry even though you knew she was. She fell asleep leaning against you and you contemplated how much easier it was to stay strong for someone else, when they were relying on you. When you were finally assigned a new immigration officer you said something of the sort. It’s for her. I’m doing it for her.

Those first couple months you worked weekends but when you got off you and Ana would go across the street to the sweet shop. You played word games together in a composition notebook, things like ghost and hangman. Occasionally a crossword. Ana usually won, not because you were going easy but because her written English had already surpassed yours. You didn’t mind. Every word she explained made you feel a little warm bubble inside, like a smile trying to escape. You loved the look of excitement on her face when she found a tough word. Then she’d get too tired and she’d hang on your back as you walked back home.

When the aurora began to waver and disperse, you and Ana got back in the car. You packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and you passed her one.

I miss Mom, Ana said as she took her sandwich.

Me too, you said. Ana reached out to hold the back of your hand. She had a serious look on her face.

It’ll be okay. We’ll be here when she gets here, she said. You thought about how that was your line, but then you decided it didn’t matter which of you said it. You both already knew the words and thoughts you shared. Like a collaborative memory pool. Like a word puzzle being solved together.

We should come back here, Ana said as you started to roll the car in reverse. Let’s come back, you agreed, and the two of you were caught in that wonderful feeling of looking ahead rather than behind, of marveling at all the things you’d do together that you hadn’t even conceptualized yet. It felt vast and expectant, like watching solar light cascade across the sky.

You remembered a similar feeling years later. When Ana got into law school a searing pride bloomed through your chest, a warmth so intense it threatened to burn. The days seemed brighter as you walked up and down the blocks. You’re smiling a lot, Julie told you on the street and you said, I am, and kissed her right there in public. You organized a celebratory dinner – Ana’s friends from school came, the group of moms Julie still met up with every Sunday came, your friends and coworkers from the property firm came. By then you were a partner making good money, but that was nothing, nothing. Your little girl got into Oxford. That was the thing, that was the dream. How many times had you heard it said that education was what separated the masses from the elites? She had broken through. Ana was the success story. You said as much in your speech, the soft music of the restaurant behind you, a wine glass sparkling in your hand.

Everyone toasted. Ana laughed and shook her head. She said, I did nothing, I was a kid in the right place at the right time. I owe it all to my mama i tata. You watched her easy grace, the way the others deferred to her. You did everything, you said.

After the dinner people were milling about when Ana came up to you and wrapped her arms around your torso.

Thank you, Dad. For everything, she said. You wrapped an arm around her and rested your chin on her head. You smelled her shampoo, still the same one Julie used at home. You remembered the weight of her as a young girl leaning against you at the airport as you waited for immigrations. She had grown so quickly.

We did it together, Ana, you said. It was us every step of the way.

She held you tighter. You breathed in, feeling that burning in your chest. Why couldn’t that moment last forever?

You thought of that hug years later when things were bad.

You remember waking up early one morning from a call. Mom, Dad, she said, I’m dropping out of school. I’m going to be an astronaut. You thought it was a joke. On the phone you asked if something happened at Oxford, if it was too hard. She said no, and repeated that she wanted to be an astronaut, as if she was talking to a small child. You didn’t understand. Ana came to live at home again. There was a shift between you – of course there was. Before, you and Ana had always had the same approach to life. You worked hard, you knew your goal. You didn’t drop it on a whim. She had the same face, that same high eyebrows and small nose she shared with her mother, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that a stranger was living in your house. You stopped speaking to her. What could you say? In the silence between the clattering of the dinner table you thought about her acceptance celebration and wondered what had happened to her since then.

In the room upstairs, Julie pleaded with you to speak with Ana. She needs you right now, Julie said. But you couldn’t. You couldn’t understand what happened, why Ana had tossed everything away. What happened to the pragmatic little girl who always understood why you needed to work long hours? Who told you she wasn’t hungry as you waited twelve hours for an immigration officer? What happened to the woman that hugged you in the restaurant, optimism coursing through the two of you like a current? The Ana you knew had worked too hard to throw it all away, especially for something so ridiculous. She knew what was at stake.

Talk to her, Julie pleaded. But instead the clink of utensils rang in the dining room, filling up the void between your seat and hers. Sometimes you looked at her and saw her clenched jaw, the familiar fierceness in her eyes, and it hurt so much you had to look away.

The day she left for New Zealand, Ana found you working on the car in the garage. The rusty green Fiat was long gone – this was a sleek Burton you bought after going to the international motor show.

Dad, I’m all packed. I’m leaving as soon as the car gets here, she said. A friend was driving her to the airport. Julie asked you to and you said no.

When you didn’t respond, Ana added, thanks for letting me stay here. I wish you would say goodbye to me, Dad. I’m going to miss you.

She was going to a school in New Zealand, but not as a student. She was an assistant to some professor. She would never get a higher degree. For some reason, she couldn’t admit she had made a mistake when she left Oxford, she kept pretending she wasn’t sliding further and further away from the track she had been on, the life she had built so fastidiously in the first two decades of her life. The dream you had achieved together faded so fast.

Well, you thought as you took the air pressure pump off the wall, if she was going to pretend, you could play that game too.

Ana said, I had to try, Dad. I know it doesn’t make sense to you but I had to try. You did the same thing, you know, coming to America.

It wasn’t the same thing, you thought. Space was a fairy tale. She was an adult chasing a fabrication.

Please say something, Dad. Please talk to me. I miss you. Mom says you still care, that you’re still rooting for me, but it’s hard to feel that sometimes. I’m so used to having you in my court it’s like… that’s the hardest part of it. You know. Not the applications, or all the doubt. It’s not my career at all. I feel like I’m doing life alone now. And that’s not your fault or anything. I just miss being able to come to you. I miss talking. I miss playing hangman. Remember that? At the sweet shop? I miss that. I’ve been doing the crosswords in the paper, I don’t know if you’ve seen that. My Dutch has gotten pretty bad, though. I thought maybe… well. I don’t know.

I’m leaving, you know. You won’t have to talk to me for months. Just say goodbye. Please. Please, Dad. Dad.

Ana left and the void across the kitchen table spread to encompass the jet trail of a plane circumnavigating the globe.

The day Ana went to space you watched the rocket take off on an oversaturated television screen. You recalled how after that trip to see the aurora, the two of you had never gone back to the Catskills. Not once. Why, you wondered, almost desperately. You had so much time together. You and her had so much time but somehow it had all dried up and turned to ash in the rocket trail that traced your TV screen. You curled your fingernails into your palm, feeling their sharp imprint. Why did you never go back?

You went up to the room where she had stayed when she had lived with you. The bed was made, some of her books still stacked on the desk. A thin layer of dust coated the covers. A handbag sat under the chair and there was a poster of an astrological chart on the wall. You sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it. The planets were stacked above each other, a crease crinkling down the middle of them. Jupiter stared out at you, a large orange eyeball.

In the next several years, everything reminded you of her. Space was all over the papers: “Man’s expansion to the stars” read one title, “International Space Commission planning another colony” said another. There were colonies on the Moon, on Mars, on every planet. And every time a news anchor mentioned an asteroid colony you would look up, drawn to the screen, wondering if it was Ana’s rock they were talking about.

You moved back to Brooklyn. Julie missed seeing Broadway shows and anyways you needed a smaller place. There was too much space in your life.

You retired, and the firm threw you a party. You joined a golfing club and every time you hit the ball you watched its trajectory through the air, arcing its way above the green like an orbit. You and Julie celebrated your fiftieth anniversary. That’s a long time, she said, smiling and holding your hand. You were at the corner booth of a small restaurant with calm lighting and quiet jazz music. It reminded you of the celebration for Oxford. This one was much smaller – just the two of you out to dinner. Since Julie’s brother had passed you had no family in the States. You remembered growing up in Poland in a peeling yellow house crowded with cousins. When did families get so small?

In the park you watched as multigenerational families wandered around feeding ducks. An old lady rolling a stroller, a man and a woman hand in hand. They had a bag of feed tucked into the back of the stroller and tossed handfuls of it into the green water where ducks would scurry after it, leaving expanding ripples in their wakes. You saw the way the woman rested her hand on the older lady’s shoulder then laughed and kissed her on the cheek. You turned away.

You and Julie got an orange tabby cat. She had always wanted a pet. The cat scratched, leaving red marks down your arm. The cat got sick that winter and you dumped a tremendous amount of money into veterinary trips, a facility that both smelled of disinfectant and wet fur. The cat died anyway. You thought about how you read in the paper that on colonies when animals or even people died their bodies would be added to compost vats to return their nutrients to the precious soil. The article had mentioned members of the Catholic Church were protesting this practice.

After Julie went to bed you would watch old TV runs of science channels talking about space travel. When you closed your eyes you saw the imprint of rockets crawling across the inside of your eyelids. You discussed the show with your barber, who was studying, trying to get into a space program. He glanced at you in the mirror, his fingers busy measuring the length of your hair. Everyone was trying to get into a colony mission, he told you, STEM fields had never been so overloaded. My daughter’s on a colony, you told him. He was impressed. You thought about how proud you were the night she got into law school and how different the world felt between then and now.

One day you got home from golfing to find Julie sorting through mail, sitting stock-still at the table. She looked up at you and you saw she had been crying.

It’s from Ana, she said. She handed you the letter. But at first you couldn’t read a thing, your vision blurred. Instead your eyes focused on the picture at the bottom – there Ana stood, your Ana, beautiful, a soft smile on her lips. Beside her a handsome Asian man wrapped an arm around her, smiling too. In her arms was a wrapped bundle.

It took you a moment to realize she was holding a baby.

You sat down. Your eyes were blurring with moisture and when you breathed you heard the raspy, heavy sound as if it were very far away.

She says she misses us. Do you want me to read it to you? Julie asked. You shook your head and reached out to take the paper again. Your hand was shaking. One part of the letter was labelled “Mama” and one part was labelled “Tata”. Your eyes fell down the page.

Hey Dad, Ana wrote, Merry Christmas. At least it’s Christmas here, but it could take up to a year for this letter to reach you so maybe it’s Christmas there too. Jasper cooked a cricket bisque to celebrate. The insect tanks are doing well and so are we. I’m sure you read Mom’s section of the letter and already heard all about the baby so I’ll avoid making this section all about him, too.

When we first moved out here it reminded me so much of moving to Brooklyn with you. Remember those little pancake things you’d bring me home from work? And I was so scared the first day of school when I had to figure out how to get there on my own. But I didn’t want you to know because I knew how much you were doing. We’re trying to survive out here too, just like then. Only now the challenges are a little bigger, and we’re all pitching in to run the compound and keep us all alive. It’s overwhelming some days. We lost an entire beetle tank last month which set us back into rationing. But despite everything, I have confidence, a certainty that I’ll make it through alright. You taught me that, she wrote.

As you got farther down the page it got harder to read as your vision blurred. You missed entire lines. As you got near the bottom of the letter the last few lines jumped out at you.

I miss you often, Ana wrote. I miss feeling like we shared one mind, one purpose. I’m sorry we didn’t get to have more adventures together. If you ever get tired of conquering Earth, there will always be a place for you here. Your confederate and abbetor, your stalwart, your daughter, Ana.

Below the words sat the picture of Ana. You tried to determine if she looked older, if the years on the colony had warped her. Looking at the picture, you felt like you could fold right into it, fold into the world where Ana lived, where she had gone and left you behind all those years ago. Even before she had left the planet.

No, you corrected yourself, she didn’t leave you. That invisible gel between you and her had grown for years and you let it grow and grow until it filled up every space in the streets and in your house, until it filled the creases of your phone case and the inside rim of your glasses. You looked up at the ceiling and pictured the sky above your house, then the atmosphere beyond that and the vast emptiness further still. You gasped as you tried to hold your composure, thinking about that vast impenetrable distance that separated you from your little girl. You felt the keen absence of her weight against your side, that feeling of her falling asleep against your body as you waited for the immigration officer that would never come.

Let him never come, you thought. Let me sit with my girl forever.

Julie reached out to you. You looked up and saw that there were tears streaming down her cheeks. You took her hand.

I miss her so much, Julie said. You felt a choking feeling in your throat as you nodded.

You said, What if we go to space?

The picture of Ana lay on the table and you wondered whose words those were, if they were yours or hers. Or maybe they came from the collaborative pool, the shared thoughts that you had nearly forgotten were there. Julie didn’t say anything, but she clenched your hand tighter. Her eyes were saying yes and you wondered if Julie had been waiting for you to suggest this, had been waiting for years to follow her daughter into the stars just as she had followed her across the ocean.

You were hit with the marvellous feeling of looking ahead rather than behind, of the future opening up into something you couldn’t even conceive of yet. You and Julie held hands and cried and you thought about the distance the solar winds had travelled to form the dazzling lights of the aurora borealis.

Quinn Theobald is a writer and software developer who writes short stories about emotional discoveries spurred by the fantastic. Their self-published coming-of-age novella The Hotel Montclair is available on Amazon and a production of their screenplay Becca Comes to Visit screened at Lady Filmmakers and Soho International Film Festival. In between pursuing writing and performative art, they find time to dance West Coast Swing and run DnD games.