I of course recognize that my father never visited Mars, was not an astronaut, a pilot, a great explorer. No man or woman has ever attempted to visit, land on, or walk the surface of Mars, and despite the optimistic predictions of those who dream of colonizing the red planet, there is little chance that such an ambitious expedition will ever be undertaken, and if it is, it will certainly not be in our lifetimes. Yet in one of my earliest childhood memories I see my father wearing a silver flight suit. Behind the glass faceplate of a gleaming helmet his eyes dart keenly among the gauges of the cockpit as he guides his sleek white spacecraft, its roaring engines flaring brilliantly. He bravely leaves the safety of Earth orbit, traverses vast distances through space and touches down on Mars. There, despite the challenges he faces as an interplanetary explorer, he builds the first human outpost. Some time later he meets the local people and eventually marries a Martian woman. These memories are as real to me as any other from my childhood. The images are gauzy, the colors are muted, the sounds are muffled. If I try to recreate words as they were actually spoken I realize they are in fact indistinct, incomprehensible, as though at the time my young mind had not yet developed enough to accurately record what it was hearing. And yet when I revisit these memories, everything I see and hear is as real as real can be.
* * *
The offices of the firm I work for are downtown, housed on two floors of a stout former warehouse. It’s functional. It’s one of the few in the area not converted to class A office space or completely replaced by a shimmering glass tower. On an unremarkable Monday Tara stopped at my cubicle and wished me good morning. I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I know you’re swamped,” she said, holding out a manilla case folder. “Court date coming up, we need to prioritize this one.” I said nothing, gave her a stony look over my reading glasses. My way of telling her I was too busy. She half smiled and cocked her head. “Right,” I said, taking the folder and adding it to the pile. “Thank you,” she said, and went on her way. A few hours later she returned. “You want to grab lunch with us?” I again looked at her over my reading glasses, picked up the folder she had given me earlier and began to pull off the rubber bands that held it closed. “I’ll bring something back for you.” I opened the folder and scanned the pages. Not a complicated case. Sordid, perhaps, to the uninitiated, but only moderately so by the standards of what came through our office. Twelve-year-old girl. The mom was suing for divorce. The father had been out of the picture for a while but for the last year he had managed to get his hands on the girl’s $125-a-month Social Security check that she was supposed to receive based on the mom’s history of substance abuse. The mom was trying to straighten out her life, trying to get full custody of the girl, but in the great state of New York simply robbing his kid wasn’t going to cost the dad his parental rights. Tara returned, handed me a tuna wrap. “It’s too bad,” I said, without looking up, “that we don’t get to choose our parents.”
* * *
In my earliest memory of my own father, I’m playing with toy trucks on the carpeted floor of our living room. It’s evening, my mother is nearby on the couch, knitting. I am content, the house is peaceful, the only noise is the deep murmur of my father speaking on the phone in the next room, a soothing sound. A moment later he excitedly enters, exclaiming some good news. My mother stands, he grasps her by the waist and tenderly kisses her, but her face is blank and she is not sharing in whatever has made him happy. The conversation went something like this, I imagine. “So, you got it,” she says. “That’s wonderful,” she says haltingly, forcing a faint smile. My father, sensing her trepidation, pauses his celebration for a moment. “Laura, babe, don’t worry. I’ll be gone for a few months. But then I’ll be back.” He picks up the phone and starts to dial. “And you can come see me once I’m set up there.” She looks at him, smiles resignedly, “OK. Well, I guess you’re going to Mars.” He takes the phone away from his ear, holds it against his chest, looks at her. “Yes, I sure am.”
I learned early to keep secret the story of my father’s adventures. In kindergarten I told a classmate about my father’s exploits. I was not being boastful. I innocently explained that he had visited Mars but I was nonetheless pegged as one of those kids who, for whatever reason, tells lies about their life, and I was teased by the other children. The teacher, though she intervened to protect me from the taunts, suggested that I not make things up in order to impress the other children. Make things up? I was simply telling them about my father, at least in the way that I understood him. After that humiliation I was able to salvage my young reputation by determining to never make the mistake of talking about my father again.
I recall an evening, weeks, or perhaps months after my father left for Mars. I am having a bath, my mother is sitting on the closed toilet seat, a magazine in one hand, a cigarette in the other. I have been playing with toy boats in the soapy water but am no longer interested and the water is getting cold. “Momma,” I say. “I want to get out.” She drops the magazine. “I’m sorry honey, I got distracted.” She takes a final drag on her cigarette, lifts the toilet seat and disposes of what remains of the butt. “Flush it, Momma,” I say. It chills me to lift the toilet seat and find floating one of my mother’s discarded cigarettes. “You can’t get out yet, honey, I have to wash your hair.”
As she is helping me to towel off she says, “So, honey, I have some news for you. We’re going to see your father.” She lights another cigarette, inhales deeply. “Are you happy to hear that?”
I have been sad and confused during my father’s absence. “Yes, momma. Now I am happy,” I say, and I hug her. “Ok, OK,” she says. “Time for bed.” She lifts the toilet seat and tosses the cigarette. “Flush it, momma,” I remind her.
I am lying in bed. My mother is about to turn off the light. “Momma,” I ask her, “how will we get there? To see daddy?” She says, “On a plane. We’ll fly on a plane.” From my bed, through the window I see faint stars beginning to shine in the darkening night. Though she never explicitly said that we would be visiting my father on Mars, to my young mind it was the only thing that made sense. My father was on Mars. If we were going to visit him, then our plane must somehow be going to Mars.
The next thing I recall is my mother driving us through scrubby, sun-beaten country. The windows are down, the air is hot and dry, she is holding a lit cigarette out the driver’s window. I don’t have any memory of the flight at all, but somehow we have gotten here. We pull up to what I take to be my father’s settlement, and when I see my father I run to him. He picks me up with both hands, holds me high, spins me around and around, saying, “welcome to Mars, my boy.” I find that he is not alone, there are dozens of people here on Mars with him, and everyone seems very busy.
Something distracted him and his eyes moved away from me and my mother and all that was going on around the settlement. I followed the direction of his gaze and fixed my own eyes on a rocky rise in the near distance. A rugged path followed a steadily steepening hill and at its peak stood what I at first took to be a strange figure dramatically chiseled from the red Martian rock. It was tall and slender–its arms and legs longer than what would seem natural–yet strong, and the light and shadow of its sculpted muscles contrasted each other sharply in the alien sunlight. Its head was covered in short, wildly twisting hair, and the eyebrows, cheeks, chin and lips were all acutely defined. I stared curiously at this strange image for a brief moment but was jolted when its eyes blinked and its head turned so that its gaze met mine. At that instant I realized it was no statue at all, but a living person, a woman. The only woman ever in my young life had been my mother. I had never really recognized the existence of any woman but her and I sensed some significance to this strange individual standing on the rocks. From her face I could read no emotion, could tell neither good nor bad intention, yet I was filled with fear by her unusual aspect. Sensing this, perhaps, my father said gently, “you can wave to her. She can’t come down here right now, but you can say hello by waving to her.” I go to my mother, reach for her hand, but her arms are crossed, so instead I grasp her leg and hold tight to her. She lights a cigarette, places a hand on my head, takes a long drag, looks at my father. She releases a cloud of smoke that hangs suspended in the hot air, eyes him for a silent moment and says, “So, Evan. That must be your Martian?”
* * *
Minors involved in our justice system are required to have attorneys. The kids I work with can’t afford representation. I would be a rich man if there was any money to be made doing this work. There is a never ending supply of new clients.
Tara set up an online meeting for me and the social worker to have an initial conference with the girl whose mother was trying to get custody. Their faces were crowded into the shaky video frame. “Maybe you can set the phone down somewhere, rather than hold it,” I suggested. The girl was a nice kid. Smart and self possessed. She seemed to have it together. The kids always seem to have it more together than their parents, no matter what the parents do to turn the kids’ world upside down.
* * *
After he left her, my mother was not keen on talking about my father. By the time I was ten, I learned to avoid mentioning him if I could. After he returned from Mars, I would spend summers and school holidays with him. He was married to Angelena, the enigmatic woman I had seen on Mars. They lived outside Los Angeles. I was shuttled between the east and west coasts and the arrangements were made with the least possible conversation between my mother and father. My stepmother was kind, but in some way unreachable. I think all she ever wanted was for me to accept her. To this end she did her best to be as unobtrusive as possible, but I interpreted that as her being distant and uncaring, so for years we never really connected. Also, as far as I understood it, she was a Martian, so I had to be careful around her.
* * *
A week or two after the initial meeting, the girl and her mother came to our office for an interview. The mom looked tired and pallid. She was probably nervous, afraid to say something wrong. She had a lot at stake, but my job was to simply understand what the kid wanted in terms of custody and communicate it to the judge. The girl sat opposite us, straight, her hands folded. She smiled easily. Never fidgeted. We talked for a half hour, then she asked if she could speak with the two of us alone, without her mother. This wasn’t uncommon. “I feel like my mom wants my dad to just disappear. I know he’s not perfect.” She looked up at a water stain on one of the drop ceiling tiles. “I don’t want to lose him forever.” At the end of the meeting, when the mom was back in the room, the social worker said, “You have a wonderful daughter.” The mom said solemnly, “She’s my guiding light,” then smiled. “She made sure we got here on time.”
* * *
I grew up as a typical child of divorce. I experienced nothing more or less dramatic than countless kids like me. I went to college, made a career. Years went by, my parents got older and then one day they were actually old.
These days my mother lives in a small suburban apartment. I often find her working on an acrylic painting when I visit. The last time I saw her my father had been dead for nearly three months, but she didn’t even mention it. Even after all these years she is angry with him. Still, because she is secure in her feeling that she did nothing wrong, she is not unwilling to talk about things, and we have, but within her parameters.
“You know, mom, I’ve come to realize the whole ‘dad on Mars thing’ was a really bad way to deal with what was going on back then.”
“I never knew that was a thing for you. I’m sorry if it confused you. I was so young. I didn’t know how to deal with your father leaving. I didn’t even tell my own parents about any of the problems with your father until he had been gone for a while.”
“I bet you didn’t tell your parents that dad had gone to Mars.”
“What are you talking about? Of course I didn’t tell them that.”
“Because that would be ridiculous, right?
She glared at me, then smiled tenderly, perhaps trying to dissipate the tension.
“Why are you picking this fight with me?”
“I love you, mom, I don’t want to fight with you. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of something.”
“Honey, no one ever told you that your father went to Mars. It’s not like I kept some lie alive for years. It sounds like you did that on your own.”
“I didn’t actively do anything. The mind does things on its own. You left an information vacuum. The blanks got filled in.”
“Honey, I did the best that I could. It was your father who disappeared, you know. He was the one who abandoned his family.”
I try to visit Angelena when I can find the time to make the trip. I have no hard feelings toward her. She has treated me well all these years and she was loyal to my father. The two of them had a comfortable retirement but she seems to struggle now that he is gone. She had just received a grocery delivery and after I helped her put away the heavy items I said to her, “Did you know that for years I thought you were a Martian? Even as a teenager, as an adult, when I should have known better, in my memory from that time, you were a real Martian. It’s like the memories of me as a little kid somehow got tangled up with my present consciousness, so even though I knew you couldn’t be a Martian, somehow it felt like you had really been one.”
At first she didn’t say anything.
“For years I think I found comfort in it. Believing in Mars.” I said. “But the absurdity of it all was becoming more and more clear. In the last few years it started to make me feel a bit crazy.”
She sat down at the table, invited me to join her and served us instant coffee in turquoise Fiestaware mugs.
“You know what? I did feel like an alien. I never felt like I fit in. I was new to America when I met your father. My English was terrible. It was hard to understand what people were saying, almost impossible to understand and react properly to all the visual and emotional cues that are easy for someone born here, but impossible for a foreigner.”
“That must have been difficult.”
She said, “at least I had your father.” She slowly moved to the darkness of the living room, where the curtains were drawn. She sat on the couch. “Thank you for visiting me.”
* * *
I saw the girl’s father for the first time at the custody hearing. The judge granted partial custody based on my recommendation. The father still had to deal with the Social Security fraud, but he had not lost his daughter. Still, he sat there with his hands in his pockets, staring at the floor, like he was receiving a five year sentence. The mother looked unhappy. The girl was pleased with the outcome and didn’t try to hide it. Before leaving, she smiled and hugged the social worker. She shook my hand and thanked me. The mom passively followed the girl out of the courtroom. The girl had not won the parent lottery, but, I thought, she is going to be OK.
* * *
The last time I saw him, my father spoke to me from the couch in his living room. “I remember the time you visited the set of Life on Mars. You were so excited, you ran right up to me and threw yourself into my arms. You were such a good child.”
He stood stiffly, as if to go somewhere, paused, then sat again. He said, “I guess it wasn’t a very good show, but I really liked working on it.” After a pause, he asked me, “Did you ever watch it?”
“Only the first few episodes. But I think that was it. My mother never put it on after you were gone.”
“I know your mother is still angry at me.”
“I don’t think she’s angry anymore,” I lied. “Everything that happened was so long ago.”
“Well, if she is, it’s on her. She has to let things go. She acts like she’s angry.”
I wonder why I am telling my father that my mother isn’t angry at him anymore. Who am I trying to protect?
“You never see each other anymore,” I say. “How would you know if she is still angry?”
“The woman hasn’t spoken a civil word to me in decades. It does seem obvious.”
He is silent for a moment, then continues. “Well, I will say this. Maybe, if she is still angry, maybe she has a right to be. I’m not going to say marrying Angelena was a mistake. I’m very happy with my life with her, I have no regrets. But you could argue I left your mother inelegantly. I was a young hot shot. I thought I was, anyway. I thought I could do whatever I wanted. I thought I had to do whatever I wanted. In order to be a real man.” He stands at the window and looks out at the bright day. “It wasn’t right for me to leave your mother, but Angelena–my goodness, she was so beautiful. You remember her when she was young–you even saw her on the set, but I guess you were too young to understand anything.” He sits back down. “I guess I got carried away.”
He looks at me. “I am so glad you never got into the entertainment business. It’s brutal once you get old. How is work going these days?”
“I have a big case load. But they’re mostly the same. You know, trying to get help for kids who need it the most.”
“It’s important work, my boy. I’m proud of you.”
That was our last conversation.
* * *
The girl’s case had worked out OK but there are a lot of cases that don’t have happy endings. It wasn’t yet Friday but already it had been a long week. Tara, myself and a few coworkers crouched over drinks in the dusky light of the corner local. During a lull in the conversation someone flicking her phone said with feigned grief, “Oh no, Evan Grainger died.”
Another voice, mostly uninterested, “Who the hell is Evan Grainger?”
“You know, that 90s actor.”
I felt like I was back in kindergarten, not wanting to talk about him, but I said, “Yeah, I know.” I thought maybe no one would hear me over the barroom noise. “Believe it or not, he was my dad.”
But they heard me, and the group looked at me, silent, until someone said, “Your dad was Even Grainger?”
“Yeah.”
Someone put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry you lost your father,” someone said.
* * *
A day or two later I arrived at my cubicle and found an envelope on my computer keyboard. There was no address, no stamp, just my name printed in what I recognized as Tara’s handwriting. Unsealing it, I found a greeting card. The front panel was decorated with pastel flowers. The message read “With Deepest Sympathy.” Inside were dozens of signatures and short messages from the office. I held the card for a few moments, reading each inscription. I placed the card down. I stared into the blank gray of my computer monitor. I thought about my father and about Mars. I stood the card on a corner of my desk, then I picked up a manilla folder from the pile of cases and started on the next one.