“I’m never going to take it off,” she said, her voice sleepy and low, “not now. Not ever.”
***
That year the third of November fell on a Sunday and so my parents held a birthday lunch for Laika. To our joint dismay, Aunt Deedee and her husband had also been invited. Even worse, Cousin Freddie was back from his uni for the weekend, so they brought him along too.
The party began in the lounge, where a huge fire roared in the grate and the Sunday papers were arranged in a neat pile on a low table. The adults sank deep into the sofas, gripping their pre-lunch drinks, Campari for Deedee, gin for my mother, single malt whiskey for the men. Laika and I stood with our backs to the fire, warming our rear ends, beneath an oversized studio photograph of the four of us, in which my mother and I were smiling and my father and Laika were not. Freddie stood with us, his thick-lidded eyes fixed on the far wall, beer glass in hand. I knew the rules, so did Laika: one of us had to start a conversation. I made a sidelong glance at Lai. She made a face.
“Freddie,” I said, “have you seen any good films lately?”
His eyes moved to mine. “Last night I watched a documentary about wolves.”
“Really?” I said. “Gosh, how very interesting. What did you learn?”
He turned his face back to the wall. “Things I didn’t know about wolves.”
We stood in silence. I glared at Laika. Her turn to have a go. He was only here because it was her flipping birthday.
“Freddie,” she said, “what are you studying?”
“Consumer behavior.”
“Consumer behavior?” Laika paused. “Are you kidding me? You mean shopping?” I threw her a look, and she returned to her talking-to-unwanted-guests voice, saccharine-sweet, “So how’s it going? Any good?”
“S’alright.”
Silence again. Jesus, I thought, this is hard.
“I see you’re in the papers again Laika,” Freddie said, “space dog.”
“That’s not funny,” Laika said.
“Not everyone gets named after a dog.”
“Too much gas and air for you, Bianka,” Deedee said, joining in from the sofa, “that was the problem. Naming a child after a dog. Honestly.”
“I think it’s a very pretty name,” my mother said, her voice bright, “and, as you all know, November the third happens to be the very day the dear little thing shot up into space, on her very first mission.”
“And her last,” Laika said.
“I thought we were calling you Leica,” my father said, “as in a very nice camera.” The adults indulged him with a short peal of laughter. It was a well-practiced line; one they’d all heard before.
“Laika was a real little hero,” my mother said, “an absolute trailblazer.”
I could feel my sister stiffening beside me. I sent her a look. Don’t, I thought, just don’t. Let it go.
“She wasn’t a hero,” Laika said. “She was sent on a suicide mission. She was never coming back.”
“Now then, darling,” my mother said, “that’s not really the part of the story you should be thinking about.”
“That is the story,” Laika said. “The entire story. The only story. No wait, actually, you are right, there is more.”
I screwed my fingernails into the flesh of my palms.
“First, they went out to look for a little stray dog, and they caught a really sweet one. It turned out Laika loved people. She’d do anything, anything for them. All she wanted were little scraps of love and kindness. And is that what she got? No. What they did to her was obscene. They shoved her into tinier and tinier capsules for weeks on end. She couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t even turn around. She must have hurt so much, trapped like that, unable to move, but even then she came out with her tail wagging. And then they shaved her, opened her up and shoved a whole bunch of electrodes into her heart.”
“We all like dogs,” Aunt Deedee said.
“Yeah, right,” Laika said. “I remember. Some people like them more than kids.”
“Don’t be rude,” my father said. His voice carried a warning we both understood.
Laika took a step forward. I stayed where I was. “And then they fixed her inside some tinny rocket and wired her up and shot her into space and you know what? She was terrified. Her heartbeat rocketed. And you know why? Because it was like a furnace inside that rocket. Laika was literally being boiled to death.”
“That’s enough,” my father said.
Laika, stop, I thought. “And you call that a hero? A hero makes an active choice. A person chooses to be heroic. And they can choose not to. Laika didn’t have a choice. She didn’t have a choice about anything.” Laika’s voice buckled, tears fell from her eyes. “She was just a little dog. She trusted people. And they fucking killed her.”
“Go to your room,” my father said. “I will not have that language in my house.”
“For a fucking science experiment.”
My father jumped to his feet, instantly followed by my mother. She snatched his sleeve.
“Bryce,” she said, “it’s her birthday.”
My father looked at my mother’s hand, then into her eyes. They held each other’s gaze. His eyes traveled momentarily toward Deedee, then moved back to my mother. He tugged his jacket out of her grip. He looked again at my sister.
“I said go to your room.”
