The Bouvier Girls
Lisa
Simpson’s little hand blotted out three-thirds of the alpha centauri as she leaned over her desk in the
galley. “There,” she pointed out the
course they’d selected. “A-L-P-H-A C-E-N-T-A-U-R-I.”
“Thank
you, Miss Simpson. Now the cocktail
napkins at our landing party will be perfectly correct!”
“Yes,
but in more exciting news if we keep going east we’ll get to Mars.” She sipped her half-full glass of lemonade.
“Thank
you, little lady. It’s been a fine voyage with you aboard.”
Captain Nielson, her chief in command for the past two weeks, smiled blandly
without looking up from his own control panel.
“May I
go sit with my mother for the landing?”
“Yes, it
might distract her from trying to break into the kitchen and bake the crew
cookies.”
Lisa
laughed nervously. “It’s
how she deals with stress. Flour’s her
mood stabilizer.”
“Miss
Simpson, please be quiet. The men are
piloting the spacecraft now.”
Lisa
glowered at the captain’s back, stomping out of the room and back into the passenger’s
section. She tried to be grateful for
her position as proofreader, which had saved most of her family from certain
doom. She tried not to think of who she’d lost – that page had been turned. The
depressing work, long hours and the inevitability of facing her mother after
the horrible decision she’d made made her lower her
eyes as she came upon her sleeping mother and rattle-fascinated sister. She sat down and, for a long moment didn’t
even dare to look up from her lap, until she felt a gentle tug upon her
necklace.
She
glanced nervously at her now-sleeping mother and met Maggie’s guile-free
expression. “Oh, Mags,”
Lisa murmured softly, plucking her sister from her mother’s lap and wrapping
her short arms around Maggie’s sweetly-scented body. Maggie burbled softly and rested her head
against Lisa’s shoulder – it occurred to her sister that she might be hungry,
and for a moment Lisa was bereft of a course of action. Exhaustion had made hunger a distant
possibility, nothing more.
A tiny
part of Lisa felt her sister was enviably lucky – thanks to her youth, this
entire day seemed like a grand adventure to little Maggie. Lisa knew it was anything but, and felt the
weight of the insidious decision she’d made a few hours ago pressing down on
her shoulders again.
“Lisa? Is that you?”
She
glanced over her shoulder and felt another tiny thrill – it was Alison Taylor, in
the aisle behind her. Alison perched herself upon the armrest of Lisa’s
chair with her usual natural grace. A weak
smile played across Lisa’s face.
“My
father told me two other kids from school were on the list, I guessed right
away that one of them was you.”
Lisa
basked, momentarily, in the praise of her friend. “How did you get on the list?”
“I’m
not. Dad’s going to teach at the first
Martian school.”
“So your
mom is…”
To Lisa’s
horror, Alison began to cry. She stiffly
shouldered Alison’s lowered head, unsure of herself, the words of comfort stuck
in her throat.
“Alison,”
her father’s plumy voice called, “we’re about to land. I’m sure your friend doesn’t want to be
bothered with our problems.”
Alison
stirred, wiping her eyes on her sleeves.
“Thanks, Lisa.”
“You’re welcome,“ Lisa said automatically, knowing she’d done absolutely nothing. Maggie began to fuss in her arms and she
finally reached over and gingerly tugged at her mother’s hand.
“Homey?”
Marge mumbled as she awakened. Lisa felt
her stomach sink violently toward her ankles, and at
the sadness in her mother’s expression as she got back her bearings. “Thank you for watching Maggie, honey,” she
said, taking the baby back into her arms.
“The seatbelt sign is on. Buckle
up.”
The
false cheeriness in her mother’s tone caused Lisa’s skin to crawl, but she followed
Marge’s instructions. Their pilot’s
static tone brought no real comfort as the shuttle began to descend toward the
red planet.
Her eyes
went wide in amazement as she saw the huge sphere looming larger and larger the
closer they got to it. Several thousand
feet above the surface Lisa was able to make out a large, grey dome, abrupting the surface of Mars like an unanticipated pimple on
a homecoming queen. The shuttle lowered
toward it as it opened slowly, powering through the planet’s atmosphere and
into the structure below. They settled
heavily into a docking system below.
“Please
remain seated while the cabin depressurizes,” they were instructed.
The
shuttle had been locked onto a pulley system and was being tugged along like a toy
train on a rope. It reminded Lisa of the
subway she’d ridden in New York – flashes of light penetrated the gloom,
showing brick walls and white tile ceilings.
When the shuttle emerged, it came to rest in a brightly-lit lobby lined
with floors and ceilings of grey marble.
Light brown wooden benches tastefully accompanied restaurants and gift
shops, abutted potted palm plants. “You are now free to disembark. Please gather at your appointed orientation post.”
Marge
jumped to her feet, taking Lisa’s hand. “Come
on, Sweetie, let’s go…”
Her
mother had jumped into their adventure with such sudden enthusiasm that Lisa
recoiled slightly from her open hand. “Mom,
I don’t even know where we’re going.”
She found herself being pulled from her seat and down the aisle, then they waited their brief turn for a ride on the elevator
down to the gantry. They were out the door and into the spacious
air of the station in a moment, greeted by an atmosphere that was rather
similar to the one Lisa remembered from Grand Central Station. Citizens milled around, buying food and
household goods; halved families stopped to contemplate their fate beside the
outrageously pink hibiscus plants. Lisa
glared at them all with jaundiced eyes. The
world just ended, and commerce still hasn’t died, she
thought to herself. Then she noticed a cluster of people had
gathered around one figure at the center of the floor. Marge pulled her eagerly toward them, so abruptly
that Lisa fell on her rear end.
“Excuse
me!” a voice came from the center of the crowd, which parted to reveal a woman
with long red hair, a bullhorn and a blue shirt with an iron-on logo reading “Mars
orientation supervisor – a unit”. “Last names, please.”
Lisa
noticed her mother’s posture stiffening, as if she “Simpson,” Marge said, her
tone clipped. “Lisa,
Marjorie and Margaret.”
The
woman flipped through the pages on her clip board. “I have A through L’s. You want that group over there,” she pointed
toward a cluster thirty paces to their right.
“Hmm,” Marge
murmured, taking Lisa by the hand and resuming her pace. “I guess their manners aren’t Y2K compliant.”
Lisa’s
jaw dropped at her mother’s joke. They
were suddenly a part of the new group, this one led by a bland-looking
dark-haired man with a thick mustache.
“Last
name?”
“Simpson.”
“Marjorie,
Lisa, and Margaret.”
“That’s
right.”
The
guide nodded his head, checked off their names, and checked his watch. His sentence gave Lisa proof that he had done
this so many times that the words had lost their meaning for him. “Welcome to Mars,” he said, in the same sort
of tone one would use to say ‘the bathroom’s on the left.’
He
seemed to be satisfied, finally, that the full audience was here. “All right,” he announced, “I’ll make this as
quick and painless as possible. We’re
going to get on a tram that’s going to take us into town. You’ll be dropped off at your assigned house –
yes, you will be able to move later, once the financial infrastructure has been
secured. You will be provided with clothing,
food, water, entertainment suited to your fancy, and cars. You’ve already been assigned duties specified
to your talents. Those adults who are
here on the virtue of their children’s talents will be placed to the best of
their abilities.”
What
would that mean? Hours slaving to keep
the planet’s new eco structure together?
Her mother had been a housewife for ten years now – she had other
talents, artistic ones, domestic ones.
She pictured her mother slaving over a hot oven and felt another wave of
hot guilt creep over her.
“The
children will be required to attend school five days a week. If their duties were specific to the voyage,
their services will no longer be needed.
Do we have any questions?”
A
thousand rioted in Lisa’s mind, but her mouth sealed itself. They were herded into a line, where Marge received
a key and deed to her new house, then buckled into their airplane-style
seats. Lisa stared out the window at the
strange pink night sky. How long had the
government been planning this new ‘utopia’ They must
have been counting on universal stupidity, Lisa reasoned. As the tram pulled out into the Martian
colony, she ignored her qualms.
Their
new world was an elaborate one, constructed to resemble the average city block
as closely as possible. Those who had
been city dwellers on Earth would now occupy brick apartment buildings in the
center of town or concrete penthouses; restaurants, stores and theatres sat,
darkened but ready for use in the dusky gloom, lit up by halogen
streetlamps. The tram stopped intermittently, letting out
parcels of citizens at their new addresses.
Further
out were suburban areas, with houses and yards surrounded by parcels of
farmland and acres of green grass. At
this final stop, Lisa, Maggie and Marge were dropped at the curb with two other
families.
Marge
tried to introduce herself. “My name is
Marge Sim…” but they had retreated to their new
houses, leaving Lisa and her sister and mother to explore the house alone.
Marge
carried her daughters up the daisy-lined walkway and slipped the key into its
lock. What met their eyes was a beautifully-appointed
home done in the old English style, with a roaring fireplace, and a vegan dinner
steaming on the table. It was the
perfect home.
Too
perfect.
Lisa
found herself picking over her dinner.
After a half-hour of silence, she finally asked her mother to excuse
her.
“Sweetie,”
Marge tried softly, “you have to eat.”
“I’m not
hungry.”
“You
haven’t had anything solid in two days.
I know you’re taking everything hard…do you want to talk about it?”
“I want
to be excused,” said Lisa. “Please, just let me go, mom.”
She
could see the tension in her mother’s shoulder’s as she rushed upstairs, to
what would be her bedroom from now one.
Only it
wasn’t her bedroom. It had the books she
loved, clothing that fit her, and a saxophone – a tenor
saxophone. Holding it enforced
everything she’d lost in the past three weeks, and everything she’d never have
again. Tears would have been a relief,
but instead numbness engulfed everything around her. She bathed, brushed her teeth, and curled up
in bed to stare at the mercilessly ticking clock.
In the
middle of the night she woke to the sound of someone gasping, softly. Drawn by elemental dread, Lisa crept out of
bed and two doors down, to her mother’s room.
Peeking through the cracked door, she saw what she always suspected she
would see; her mother on her bed, fully dressed, sobbing “Homey, Homey, my Barty, my special little guy,” softly into her pillow.
Knowing
it was her fault – knowing that any decision she could have made would have
brought suffering – Lisa crawled back to her room. Shuddering violently, she watched the sun
rise alone.