She nods, saying, “Yes.”
“You knew them? The parents?”
“Yes. They were good friends.”
“But?” I ask.
Sharon sniffs, wiping tears from her eyes.
“I brought you here because you need to understand.”
“Understand what?” I ask.
“We can’t.” Her voice breaks. She continues, sobbing softly as she says, “We can’t intervene. Even if we know precisely what’s happening and how to fix it, we can’t violate your autonomy. You have to do this for yourselves.”
I put my arm around her, comforting her. Sharon’s grief is raw. It is as though the grave is freshly dug. I hold her tight, but I don’t understand. I don’t know what to say in response. My head is spinning.
“It’s beautiful, you know,” she says, fighting back the tears. “That you remember the dead like this. Not everyone does. It’s one of the things that makes your species special.”
She turns toward me, resting her hand on my chest as she says, “Don’t forget. Those you love. Those you lost. Never forget them.”
Now she’s got me crying. A tear runs down my cheek, leaving a cold track on my exposed skin.
“It’s tough, you know,” she says, sniffing. “You have to go on. You have to keep living. But never forget. Memories are important.”
“They are,” I say, hugging her.
A knot sticks in my throat.
Crazy. We’ve spent hundreds of millions, I don’t know, probably billions, if not trillions of dollars looking up at the stars over the decades, looking for life on other planets. We wonder what First Contact will be like. Hollywood imagines spaceships with laser beams blowing up buildings, or UFOs hovering over the White House, but I don’t think we’ve ever stopped to realize what First Contact actually means. My take might be overly simplistic, but Life from over there reaches out to Life over here. That’s it. Life understands that Life is important. And here I am, standing in a place of death, humbled by a life form from beyond the furtherest reaches of the solar system. I’ve always thought of cemeteries as creepy—places to be avoided—but Sharon’s right. They’re a memorial to life. These aging marble headstones and cold concrete slabs show we care. We should never stop caring.
I wonder what the guys at SETI would think if they could see me standing here in the snow in the middle of a cemetery, comforting an extraterrestrial going through grief over the loss of a human child who died well over a hundred and fifty years ago. I’m pretty sure this isn’t what they imagine when they think about aliens landing on Earth.
“Bye, Sharon,” she says, kissing her fingers and then touching the cold stone with fondness.
I’m stunned.
Mentally, I’m reeling on so many levels.
Less than an hour ago, I watched this woman undress, being held spellbound, captivated by her feminine beauty, and now here I am standing before the grave of a child, realizing they’re one and the same. I guess that’s the thing about porn. No one ever stops to think, “That’s someone’s daughter.” No one recognizes that the sensuous naked woman folding out of the center of a sleazy magazine once grew up as a cute little girl, playing with other kids on the swings and tumbling down a slippery slide. That buxom beauty went to high school math classes and school proms like everyone else. Nah, when it comes to porn, women are objects, living statues paraded before us for our gratification. Porn is fantasy divorced from any connection with reality. This, though, the cold, the snow, the ice, the marble monuments and weathered headstones, this is real.
We turn and walk away.
I’ve had a glimpse into the inner working of an alien mind. Sharon, my Sharon, was so heartbroken by the loss of this child to some hideous disease we’ve long since banished to the history books, that she cloned her body and lived the life the real Sharon never experienced. My Sharon has mentioned the alien policy of detached encouragement. They can guide. They can’t push. But I feel pretty damn sure my Sharon targeted this particular disease, pushing for it to be eradicated as soon as possible, to the benefit of millions of other children around the world, including me. Sobering thought. I guess we never really know the debt we have to past generations.
“We want to see you emerge,” she says. “We want to see you gain mastery of your world and banish heartaches like this.”
Her voice is as gentle as the snowflakes falling in a light flurry around us.
“Do you want to sit and talk?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say, realizing the moment is cathartic for her.
It’s cold, insanely cold. We’re wearing jackets, but not gloves or hats, and yet I have to sit and listen to her. I must. I’m privileged beyond compare, privy to alien thoughts on my home world. And I wonder what Sharon has seen. I wonder about the worlds she’s visited, but for now, it’s this world she wants to talk about, so I’ll listen.
The entrance to the cemetery is through a narrow alley. Retracing our steps, we sit on a bench seat beside the wrought iron gates in the alley. The archway spanning the entrance has sheltered the seat from snow and ice, but the cold still comes through from the frozen wooden slats.
“You’re peculiar,” she says.
“I’m peculiar?” I say, laughing as Sharon slips her hands up and under my jacket to keep them warm. “You’re cold,” I say at the touch of her fingers. I can’t help but pull away slightly even thought I don’t want to.
“You’re weird,” she replies.
I laugh.
“No, I mean, you humans, in general.”
“Oh, well, so long as you’re insulting the entire human race and not just me, that’s fine.”
She snuggles a little closer and I feel myself falling in love. Not like. Not lust. Genuine, I’d-give-my-very-life-for-you love.
“So many contradictions,” she says.
“Like peanut butter and jelly,” I say.
“Just like peanut butter and jelly,” she says, looking at me with puppy dog eyes. “You don’t think it’s going to work—”
“But it does,” I say, completing her sentence.
“Yep.”
I could freeze to death on this park bench and I’d die a happy man. I tuck my hands in my pockets, clenching my fists and trying to warm my fingers.
“So what have you done while you’ve been here on Earth?” I ask, as she slips both hands into my left jacket pocket, gently rubbing my hand for warmth. “What have you changed?”
“Nothing, really,” she replies. A soft mist forms with each breath we take. “You’ve done all the hard work. All we’ve done is point a few things out.”
She pauses for a moment before asking, “Do you know Charles Darwin?”
“Not personally,” I say, and Sharon tickles me. Her efforts are largely ineffective given my thick jacket, but I play along, squirming slightly.
“You know what I mean,” she says.
I nod, mesmerized not by her beauty, but by her intelligence.
“Darwin sailed to the Galapagos and caught finches, dozens of them from different islands. He stuffed them to preserve them for the voyage home, but he forgot to label where the birds came from. He missed the opportunity to categorize them properly.
“We heard about him from a mutual friend back in England—Charles Lyell.
“Lyell couldn’t stop talking about Darwin’s industrious mind and his adventures on the HMS Beagle.
“Mark and I stopped by one summer day a couple of years later and asked Charles about his collection of finches. Isn’t that strange, I said to Charles. They’re all quite different. Some have thin, narrow beaks. Others, broad thick beaks. Rather peculiar, don’t you think? Where did you find them?”
“Peculiar?” I say, listening to her put on a posh British accent and chuckling at her recollection of meeting Charles Darwin in person before his rise to fame. She seems to like the word peculiar, which is peculiar in itself as peculiar isn’t a word used much these days. Peculiar is one of those subtle hallmarks that betrays her true age.