And then a surprise. She asked, “Would anyone like to ask me any questions?”
Immediately, there was a dozen questions or comments called out to her in just as many languages. It was a hot mess of noise. Not surprisingly, Erika heard each one and answered the questions asked. I won’t list everything she said here. The speech is easy to find on YouTube. Her initial talk was what should have changed everyone who listened.
Of course, things are never that easy.
Chapter 30
Another week passed, and I began to realize how much I missed the moon. Crazy, right? But it’s been in the sky my whole life, and as a science photographer, I’d aimed my camera at the moon hundreds of times, sometimes for practice, sometimes to wonder at how big and orange it looked when it was near the horizon, sometimes to focus in on one of the craters or the seas visible from Earth.
I’d had a framed print of the Sea of Tranquility hanging on my bedroom wall when I was a teenager. I stared at that photo for what seemed like hours, imagining Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walking around there, a quarter of a million miles above my head.
So, the moon and I, we had a strong relationship, and, yes, I missed it.
I also have deliberately avoided one other aspect of the disappearance: the loss of Karen Anderson. She deserved me to talk about that in a more direct fashion.
Here it is.
I’ll admit she wasn’t the first thing on my mind when the moon disappeared in front of my eyes, but it wasn’t that much later, when I read the article on CNN stating the Golden Luna had vanished along with the moon.
At that precise moment, I think my heart broke.
I hadn’t spoken to Karen since she moved to Houston for her training at NASA. I don’t miss the irony that we parted after that big fight we had when I couldn’t accept her religious views, particularly that God existed.
The same instant that proved she was right was the instant she was taken away from me much more permanently, or at least it seemed like that at the time.
I didn’t want to admit how sorry I was that I had let her go without apologizing to her. Even if Erika hadn’t come along, I should have tried to accept her strong religious feelings. Why was it so important to me that she drop it?
I don’t have a good answer for that. Stubbornness? Arrogance?
In the weeks since she vanished and I was convinced she was dead, I never asked Erika about her. I couldn’t stand to hear her possible answer that the Luna was gone forever. If I didn’t ask her, there was a chance Karen might someday return.
If that day happened, I promised God I would be a more understanding boyfriend for her. That was an easy promise to make.
Each night, as I crawled into my cot and tried to sleep, visions of Karen came to me. I welcomed them at the same time I felt haunted. Closed eyes allowed Karen to visit me, misty memories of our times together bringing joy and sadness at the same time.
I loved her, and I wanted her back with me.
Then came the afternoon Erika was a guest on a podcast organized by the National Academy of Science.
I won’t list all the items they discussed on that podcast, because they’re mostly scientific, and to be honest I doubt many are interested. Anyone can check Erika’s site in the podcast section, and find it easily enough.
I’ve been avoiding a topic because it’s not something I’m proud of. In fact, I find it shameful. I didn’t want to cloud views of events so far in this book, but there’s another aspect of this story.
Beating Jesus Christ to death as a teenager was a bloody mess, horrific to have done, but I had to describe it as it happened. That, too, is part of Erika’s story, and it deserved to be told.
I imagine many thinking, “How could you have possibly been so cruel? It’s horrible, and most people couldn’t have gone through with it.”
I agree.
How was I able to do that? To get there, I need to backtrack to my childhood.
Ariela encouraged my playing sports. It was a way she felt I could fit in with the other kids in the neighborhood, which was sometimes difficult because I was a bit of an oddball. I loved science and wasn’t one of the “cool kids.” I was scrawny and short, and my geek-spirit tended to make me the brunt of cruel jokes that kids play on each other.
Sports would help that, so my grandmother thought. Growing up in Minnesota, the winters were bitterly cold, and the neighborhood kids played a lot of hockey. In the summer, it was mostly baseball with a bit of football later in the summer.
When I turned twelve years old, Ariela decided it was time. So, that summer I played pickup baseball. I played third base for reasons long since forgotten.
Every game, I ended up in a fist fight.
Maybe it was the stress or the competitiveness, or maybe the adrenaline rush that comes with playing sports, but every game, I’d end up losing my temper and starting a fight.
I always lost, and that summer I wore home many black eyes and a few loose teeth. After all, I was twenty pounds lighter and six inches shorter than some of the kids I attacked.
In winter it was even worse because hockey players carry wooden sticks, so we were always armed. Losing my temper was even easier in hockey because of accidental (or sometimes not) body checks or other physical events that triggered me to lose my temper. Again, the fights left their toll, and I soon lost the privilege of playing hockey altogether.
Probably a good thing.
My point is, I had a horrible temper, and when I lost it, I was an awful kid. I didn’t care about consequences, didn’t care how much I hurt another person, didn’t care about the damage to my own body.
Dropping sports meant fewer opportunities to lose my temper, but sometimes I’d get some kind of adrenaline rush from another source, whether it was based on watching a scary movie or worried about Grandma being late home one day. There were those occasional excuses when I’d act out, breaking things or otherwise hurting those I cared about.
By the time I was in my late teens, I was able to control my emotions more, and the outbursts of violence turned more and more rare.
Then they stopped.
Believe me when I say I don’t miss those days. I felt more in control and fitting more into mainstream society.
There were two times, though, when I lost control.
The second time was when I was bashing in Jesus’s head. It was the first fight I’d had since those long-ago days when hockey took control from me. I found myself hitting Jesus harder and harder and wanting nothing more than to keep on shattering his skull and pulping his brain. I had lost control and didn’t stop until his head was a pulpy mess.
It was hard to look at Erika Sabo sometimes, knowing she was the one I had murdered so brutally.
The first time I lost my temper recently, though, is the part of my story of which I’m most ashamed. Regardless of the other things I’ve done and may be judged for, this is (in my mind) the worst thing I’ve ever done.
Karen Anderson was going to leave for Houston to join the training camp for her lunar journey.
This was the highlight of her career, and she was overwhelmed by the thought of going to the moon to greet the aliens.
She wanted me to pray for her. That’s when we got into that big fight because I thought religion was nonsense, and I didn’t care that religion was the backbone of her whole life.
We argued and… well, I lost my temper. I lost control and found myself grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. Hard. She bounced around in my arms like a ragdoll and cried out, begging me to stop.