Reuben's Choice: A Translocator Story

“Ma, I told you, I don’t want any gefilte fish. Why do you even buy this crap?”

Reuben pushed the Tupperware containing the leftover fish loaf as far across the yellowing kitchen table as it would go without falling off.

“They had it on sale,” she explained.

“That’s ‘cause no one likes it. Passover is done for and they’re trying to offload their extra stock.”

“I like it,” she insisted.

Reuben grunted and sipped his coffee—black with two sugars. Adding the sugar was a habit he’d gotten into from drinking the bitter, earthy brew they served at the home where Charlie lived now. Other than the coffee, the place was nice. Lush garden, mahogany furniture, plenty of space. And they let Reuben visit as much as he wanted.

His aging mother frowned and turned back to the cabinets. “We’ve got bagels and lox, some raisin bread, and leftover pizza from the other night when I went out with my friend Shirley, you remember Shirley?”

“I’m not hungry, Ma.”

“Reuben, you gotta eat.”

“I eat plenty, believe me.” Reuben said, slapping his rotund belly. His gut pressed up against the inside of the button-up shirt more than was comfortable, more than he’d like to admit. These days, not even being on his feet twelve hours at a stretch overseeing shipments to the lunar base was enough to outwork his mouth.

“Shirley told me that when her husband went into the nursing home, she also put on a few extra pounds. It’s the stress, you understand. Last year, she went on that Weight Watchers diet. Have you heard of it? I could never do that. Counting calories, me? Baloney. Too much work. But she looks ten years younger. Why, I bet—”

“Ma, please. Give me a break. Shirley on Weight Watchers is the last damn thing I need to hear about right now.”

His mother frowned, put the Tupperware of gefilte fish back into the fridge, and sat down across from her middle-aged son. She smoothed the apron down over her lap with two hands.

Reuben avoided eye contact and took another sip from the porcelain mug, scalding his tongue. Irrationally, he felt momentarily pleased with himself that he didn’t react to the pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t want his mother to see how he felt. After more than fifty years, she could read his emotions like an open book. It was his sense of everything else relative to the pain that pleased him. What was a little burn on the roof of your mouth when your whole life had been turned upside down? When nothing made sense? When your lifelong partner in this, the only life you would ever have, didn’t even recognize you?

“How’s Charlie?” his mother finally asked.

“He’s fine. He likes it there because the nurses laugh at all of his bad jokes.”

“That’s good.”

Reuben grimaced.

“Is there something else?”

“You know how it is.”

“Did he say that thing about the President again?”

“No, God, not that. Just the usual. The confusion doesn’t help and he was always stubborn. He doesn’t seem unhappy, exactly, but I can tell. I never thought…”

Reuben’s voice trailed off as he recalled what the nurses had told him that morning. How Charlie was becoming more forgetful and less cooperative. How he had started getting up in the middle of the night and singing at the top of his lungs, causing all sorts of panic among the other residents. How they were trying to figure out whether he was starting to have trouble controlling his bowels, forgotten the purpose of toilets, or some combination of the two.

Being able to afford to put Charlie in a nice place with around-the-clock care was a blessing. Reuben couldn’t possibly work twelve-hour shifts in the Translocator lab and care for Charlie at the same time, and he wouldn’t dare burden his mother with a responsibility that was his alone. Yet, knowing he couldn’t be there for Charlie all the time was also a curse. Guilt bore a hole in his heart, and though he shoveled all sorts of food into his body—except gefilte fish, he couldn’t stand the shit—nothing could fill it.

Nothing except Charlie. His heart ached from missing him, and he’d just seen him that morning.

Reuben dimly remembered a time when Charlie used to laugh with his whole body—mouth open, head thrown back. That’s how Reuben liked to picture him. As the man who taught him how to live life to its fullest. Hard working, hard drinking, hard smoking—that was Charlie, and no wonder his body was deteriorating. In the thirty lucid years they spent together, Reuben wagered that half of it had been spent in restaurants and at parties and on the road. They traveled to New Orleans every year, spending a lavish amount of money on Bourbon Street hotels and Mardi Gras celebrations. They went to Europe and the Caribbean together, to Nice and Sydney and Tokyo.

Went, spent, traveled…past tense. All past tense. And now, in the rare moments when his clarity returned, moments that Reuben usually missed, Charlie would look around and find himself alone in that godforsaken nursing home where no one laughed and they served terrible coffee and there was not a jazz band or bead necklace in sight.

“Honey,” his mother said, reaching across the table and placing her hand on top of Reuben’s, “you’re doing your best. And what happened to him is not your fault.”

“I know,” Reuben said. Of course he knew that. He didn’t give Charlie early-onset Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t his choice.

But recognizing that did nothing to fill the hole.

“I gotta get to work,” Reuben said.

“Reuben,” she said.

He swiped a raisin bagel off the counter on his way out the door.

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TRANSLOCATOR TRILOGY
1. The Auriga Project
2. The Alien Element
3. The Ares Initiative

SHORT STORIES
• Panic at the Tomb
• Reuben's Choice