That night he stood and looked out the upstairs window at the bight of dark concrete that was the cul-de-sac. At one point a figure passed the house, some nightwalker, its shadow cast out behind like an arrow pointing ever away. Keith watched the figure’s slow progress as it bisected that circular space, passing under the streetlights until the line it made with its motion disappeared beyond the angle of his view through the window. The street so still that it seemed a photograph or a museum diorama. He waited there at the window, watching in the encompassing silence, but the figure, whoever it might have been, did not return to his view. He might have been disappointed but if so he did not acknowledge it. Instead, he recognized only self-reliance, a position and idea he had always held, even as he turned away from the window and stared down at the faint speckles of eggshell that flecked over his hands.
“Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you.”
“Oh, I can see you.”
“I can see you too.” A pause. Then: “How … how are you?”
“I’m OK,” she said. Tears were already streaming down her face.
He stared at her. The compartment was so quiet. So terribly quiet. “It’ll be OK, Barb. We’ll be OK.”
And then the phone was ringing and he burst out spastically, still half asleep, and answered it without even really understanding what he was doing, the laptop glowing in his mind, his body falling back into gravity all at once as he sputtered into the receiver: “Wh-what? Hello?”
“Keith, it’s Dr. Hoffmann.”
“Oh,” he said. “Dr. Hoffmann.” He was half sitting, the blankets and sheets splayed around him.
“Everything OK?” Hoffmann said. “You don’t sound well. Did I wake you?”
“No, no. I’m … I’m OK. I was … I was asleep.” He lay back down, slowly, carefully.
“You want me to call back?”
“No, no, I’m fine. I’m awake.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m awake. It’s fine.” The clock on the floor by the bed glowed faintly in the morning light: 8:17.
“OK, then.” A pause. “Well, I’m calling because you missed your appointment.”
He tilted his head back to the pillow and closed his eyes. The image of Barb’s face remained: a blurred shape on a laptop screen. The gauze of his memory. A haze of ghosts. Even you, Keith Corcoran. Even you. “I have to apologize for that, I guess,” he said at last. “I’m not at JSC right now.”
“Well, I know that but I had to make a couple of calls to find out. It would have been nice to get a call from you about this.”
“It was kind of sudden,” he said, his eyes opening slowly to the flat white emptiness of the room.
“You know, when people miss appointments often there’s an underlying reason.”
Keith paused before answering. “Yeah, that might be but this time I just forgot,” he said. “I’m taking a vacation.”
“Where to?”
“Well, right now I’m home.”
“Oh. How long have you been there?”
“Two days. I’ve been painting.”
“Painting?”
“The place needs a paint job.”
“You’ve got work to do.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t mean the painting. I’m sure it’s hard being there.”
“Oh, I guess so,” Keith said.
“You want to talk some? I could do a phone appointment tomorrow.”
The ceiling was a blank white void above him. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe give me a few more days to settle in here.”
“We’ve made some good progress over the last few weeks. I’d like to keep that momentum going.”
“I would too. I’m busy here with the painting, though. And I’m really doing OK.”
Hoffman was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I’d like you to think about why you forgot to tell me you were leaving JSC. We can focus on that for our next appointment, but give it some thought in the meantime. Think of it as your homework assignment.”
“All right,” Keith said, without conviction.
“Call me in a week and let me know how it’s going and we’ll set an appointment then,” Hoffmann said.
“That sounds good.”
“Everything OK with the prescriptions?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“Let me know if you need anything adjusted.”
“I’ll do that,” Keith said.
Even after he ended the call, the memory that roiled out of the half sleep in which he had been drifting remained with him as a kind of aftereffect, as if a flashbulb had burst and the shape of its burning still lingered against the black emptiness of his cornea. At least missing the appointment with Dr. Hoffmann meant that he would not have to discuss such topics today, a fact that offered some sense of relief, although in truth he had done little actual talking during the dozen or so meetings they had had in Houston upon his return from the mission. Do you feel sad? Yes. What do you want to do about that? I can think of no way to answer that. Do you think the migraines are related to how you feel? I don’t know. Did you want to talk about anything else? Not really. Are we done? He could not imagine the purpose of this line of questioning and so could not imagine any words that could provide an answer. The most fundamental information had been lost: trajectory, velocity, acceleration, indeed the pull of gravity itself. All he knew now was that he was unaware where such variables could be located and so he could find no possible solution, not to any of it. But he did not think this answer was what Dr. Hoffmann was looking for.
By midafternoon he had completed the first coat of paint on the largest wall in the kitchen and had begun carefully cutting under the cabinets with a brush. When the doorbell rang his immediate thought was that he would open the door to find a delivery person with the files he had asked Jim Mullins to send from his office at JSC and with this thought in mind he jogged to the entryway, the paintbrush in his hand, and pulled open the door.
The woman who stood there did not appear to be delivering anything. “Hello, Mr. Corcoran,” she said. “I’m Sally Erler.”
“OK,” he said, blinking in the bright sunlight of the open doorway. He glanced around quickly for the box but there was nothing near the doorway and the only item she was carrying was a briefcase.
“I’m your realtor,” she said.
“What?”
She wore a navy blue suit and smiled, extending her hand, which he took as reflex. “Your wife called me and said you’d be home,” she said. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d just drop by. Is that all right? You look busy.”
“Busy?” he said.
“Painting?”
“Oh.” He looked at the brush in his hand. “Yes, I’m painting. The kitchen.”
“Is this not a good time?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“If this is a bad time we can make an appointment,” she said. The smile remained on her face like a permanent mask.
“No, it’s fine,” he said once more. He stood there in the doorway, looking at her.
“Would you mind if I came in?”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” He stepped back and waved her in and when she entered he closed the door behind her.
“Nice, nice home,” she said.