Marnie isn’t the daughter I would have chosen. She’s okay with Tom; I chose Tom to be my husband because he’s tougher than me. I knew enough at twenty-three to realize that I wouldn’t last without someone like Tom, someone with his feet on the ground, someone so grounded that he didn’t like airplanes. Tom can handle Marnie. I can’t. I would have been better off with a sweet slip of a thing, lacking confidence and talent. I can picture what it would be like if someone else’s daughter was my own. We would stay up late watching bad television and feeding each other’s insecurities and forging a bond. But Marnie likes to go to bed early; I am a night owl. We are aliens to one another and that’s that. Marnie is broad with thick eyebrows and a deep voice and a boyfriend I wouldn’t kiss if you paid me. She is never late. She does her homework. She doesn’t care that she is broad. If I were broad I would dream of someone coming along in the middle of the night and cutting me open and taking my ribs and burying them in the backyard. She doesn’t mind that she is taking up more space than a girl should. She is my daughter because I am sitting here on the sidelines and watching her play tennis. She isn’t my daughter because when I sit here it is all I can do to stop myself from doing what I want to do, which is getting up, walking to my car and driving away, my narrow rib cage hunched over, forgiving myself because nobody gets to choose who they love and who they don’t love.

I don’t sit alone at these tennis matches. Miles Cady sits with me, a short taut man with grey hair and greyer eyes. He can’t speak without sighing, can’t speak without looking away and looking around as if he is lost, always lost, as if he wakes up every day thinking, Earth, is this you? His every sentence is a dare. He is nervous doing standard social things, offering a bottle of water, remarking on the heat, praising Marnie’s backhand. Then, when he’s done talking, only when the words are out, he looks at you, as if he is fourteen and he has just asked you to step onto the dance floor with him for the first time. Miles Cady and I sit together and watch Marnie play tennis and Marnie never thanks us for caring. She only asks me if I saw that shot she made. It’s always the case that I didn’t see the shot. Here I sit, day after day, hour after hour, watching her play. But it’s only when I look away and check my watch or reach for a water or check my phone that she makes a good shot. It isn’t because she’s self-conscious and it isn’t a coincidence. There is a sea of nothing between my daughter and me. She could never make a good shot while I was watching. I could never be watching at the right moment. It isn’t anyone’s fault. Some mothers and daughters just can’t be friends.

“Do you want a water?” Miles picks at his fingernails. Then he looks at me.

“Why not!” I say, trying to be a cheery sports mother, sitting up straight and smiling like a crackhead who has just seen himself on a security screen in a convenience store.

Miles reaches into the cooler and takes a water out. I don’t want a water. I hate water. I prefer soda. It’s only here at these games that I drink water, as an attempt to seem like a good mom, a smart person, a functioning human who knows that we are water and that’s why we drink it. “Thanks, Miles.”

I don’t open the water. A few people clap. I look up. Marnie looks at me. She’s too far away to find my eyes. It’s obvious that she just made a shot. And I can’t help it but I sting every time she makes a shot. Marnie is too big. She should eat less. I am personally offended when her mild obesity doesn’t stop her from being good at her game. I cry out, “Go Marnie!” She smiles as she looks away. She isn’t unlike Miles.

“It’s pretty here,” I say.

“You should see it at night.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely at night.”

“It’s very quiet. You almost can’t even hear them coming.”

“Hear who coming?”

Miles looks at me. I look at him. We are looking at each other. “The aliens,” he says. “They come on Monday nights and take me for a ride.”

“They do?”

He nods. He doesn’t look away. He holds my eyes. “You could come with us if you want. I think they would like you.”

“Aliens?”

He nods. He is still looking at me. The beads of water are slipping onto my hands and making their way down my arms like the fingers of a lover. I swallow. He smiles. “They don’t like most people. They could tell I’m a good person. They would see that you are too.”

“Oh,” I say. Again, people are clapping. Marnie is shaking hands with her opponent. Marnie won, again.

In the car, this human that came out of my uterus is sweaty and all I can think about is how she is slowly destroying my car with her sweat. She is talking about her game and eating a granola bar. Bits of granola are flying around, out the window, onto her fat thighs. “And then she tried to get me with a drop shot and I was like no fucking way, you know?”

“Mmmm.” All I can think about is the aliens. It’s all I can do to not drive off the road.

“And then I get her with a drop shot. My drop shot is really getting better. It’s like I can do it whenever I want and it used to be I could only do it on defense. Now it’s a part of my offense game. I figured out what to do with my wrist. Now it’s like it’s my drop shot and none of these cunts know what to do.”

“That’s great, Marnie.” I don’t know why her filthy mouth doesn’t bother me. I used to do that thing where you make your kid give you a dollar every time she swears. But then I felt cruel. Little fat Marnie, this is a girl who was born to swear. She’s crass with thick skin and thicker thighs and a fast mind. What can you do?

“I think I’m gonna go to state. I’m not gonna not go. I mean, my drop shot changes everything.”

“We should celebrate.” See, I do try.

“Mom, it’s not like that.”

“Celebrate your drop shot.”

“No, we celebrate after I win. You don’t get it.”

“I just meant that I’m happy for you. Miles was really happy for you too.”

“Miles is a fucking dipshit.”

“Hey now.”

“They’re finally firing him, you know. Fucking retard will be outta here soon so we can have a real coach. This woman. She’s amazing, Mom. She’s, like, she was on the tour, the pro tour.”

I picture some grotesque hardened woman thing with leather legs and short hair and an expensive coffee maker. My daughter will worship this callous beast. I picture Miles, coming anyway to watch every game and support Marnie, because that’s what he would do, poor soul.

“You don’t even say anything.”

“They’re gonna fire Miles. I think that’s sad.”

“Sad? He’s a fucking retard, Mom. He should be fired.”

“I think he’s nice. So he’s a little strange. But he’s not a mean person.”

“He’s a retard.”

“He’s nice.”

“Nice doesn’t win you the fucking prize. Did you remember to get me a new calculator?”

We pull into the driveway of our home. That boyfriend of hers is sitting on the front porch. She opens the door before the car has stopped. She always does that. I used to grab her arm and try to stop her. But she’s covered in sweat and I forgot to get the calculator. She runs to the boyfriend. He hugs her. He weighs less than her. I wonder if they have sex. I get the chills. I wonder what the aliens are like. I turn off the car. I can’t speak. I just wonder what the aliens look like. I believe in the aliens. I believe Miles. The world just moved a little bit. I’m going to meet aliens. Aliens exist. Miles knows them. Miles is a nice man. My daughter is a cunt.

“Hey Mrs. B, what’s up?”

“Hi, Jason.”

Jason the boyfriend is a squirrel of a boy, with perverse eyes that undress you in a medicinal and calculating way. His Adam’s apple is bigger than his mouth and his lips are always wet and he looks too close at everyone and he believes in himself too much. It isn’t right for a fifteen-year-old boy to be so sure of himself. When they first got together, he came to a tennis match.

“So, do you play, Mrs. B?”

I hated him right away. Mrs. B? I am not Mrs. B. I never told him to call me that. Bauer isn’t a big word. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to say Mrs. Bauer. Who told this little shit to call me Mrs. B?

“No, Jason. Mr. Bauer taught Marnie to play.”

“You don’t play at all?”

“I don’t really like it.” Fuck you, you little condescending prick. Do you play, Jason?

“So you’re just a fan. That’s cool.” And he looked away and I said I forgot that I had an appointment and I left and I hoped that he would break her heart and disappear. He didn’t, of course. Which is why he’s a plague, sitting here at our dinner table, infuriatingly unaware that my husband and I hate his guts.

“Isn’t it awesome that Miles is finally getting fired?”

“Yeah,” I say. The lights dim suddenly. Tom comes out of the kitchen with a cake and he starts in with Happy Birthday. Marnie squeezes Jason’s hand and they share a look. Oh shit, she forgot. She forgot my birthday. I blow out the candles and we all clap and eat cake and talk about how fucking great it is that Miles Cady is finally getting fired because he’s a bad coach and a weirdo. It is the worst 37th birthday party than anyone ever had and it’s mine.

“So, where do they take you?”

Miles and I are sitting in our same spot and Marnie is losing her match so I’m in a good mood and she’s in a bad mood and that is the way it works. I can’t help but be happy when she’s miserable and she can’t help but be happy when I’m miserable. It was like that from the first second she was born. I smile; she starts to cry. I cry; she starts to smile.

“We just cruise around.”

“You cruise around.”

“You can’t tell anyone, you know. Most people wouldn’t understand.”

“Of course, Miles.”

“Marnie wouldn’t understand.”

“Believe me, I know.”

He starts to tell me about the ship, how it looks like something out of Star Trek and how their eyes are big like you would picture. They communicate with touch.

“It’s something,” he says. “We all think smart is being good with words and reading a lot of books. But the higher beings, they look down on words. Who needs ‘em?”

“Wow.”

He goes on and his lead-in to every description is Isn’t it funny… Isn’t it funny that it turns out that aliens look just like we imagined them? Yes, Miles, it is funny. Isn’t it funny that you morph to them, that when you’re with them you don’t need words either? Yes, it’s funny, Miles. And isn’t it funny that nobody can see the ship when you’re in it and you fly low, just barely avoiding the houses, and when you look in on people and they don’t know you’re looking they all look very nice and sweet? Oh Miles, it is funny. And isn’t it funny that the only thing he can compare it to is being in a hot air balloon even though he’s never been in a hot air balloon? Yes, Miles. It is funny.

I remember when Marnie started playing and I went to the first game. And I tried to be friendly to Miles and most of the mothers sat by their cars and avoided him. I asked him about his family. “They’re great,” he said. “My wife Sheila is lovely and I have three sons. But a few moths ago she said she needed a change so they all took off for a while. Isn’t it funny that a while turned out to be forever?” I remember the way he laughed. It wasn’t defensive, it wasn’t that kind of laughter that masks sadness. It was as if he really found it funny that his wife left him and took the kids.

“What time should I come?”

He looks at me. Marnie shrieks, “Fucking mother fucker!” She has missed a shot. She throws her racket. I missed her missing the shot. I grin. I cover my mouth.

“Eight p.m. sharp,” he says. “We’ll meet here on this bench. They like to land on the court. It’s big enough for the ship and it’s out of the way. They can’t really land anywhere else around here. Too crowded.”

“That makes sense,” I say. “Eight o’clock it is.”

In the car, Marnie is howling. “I fucking hate him, Mom. I go out there and I’m losing and he doesn’t even fucking do anything. Did you see the other girl’s coach? The other girl’s coach was right there helping her get her head together and putting his hands on her shoulders and helping her and who’s there helping me?”

My heart is skipping along and this is our comfort zone. I keep reaching over and stroking her arm and I am an evil woman who is high on her pain and happy that she’s sad today, that she’s not gloating in that way that makes me want to smack her. We are at a red light.

“Marnie, honey. It’s okay.”

“And you know they can’t fucking fire him cuz of some tenure bullshit.”

“Oh?”

“He’s gonna ruin my life. I hate my life. Fuck it all.”

“Hey now. Don’t you talk that way about my daughter.”

“What the fuck do you know about it? You don’t play tennis. You don’t compete. You don’t do anything but sit there. You don’t know the first thing about what it takes to make it.”

Marnie looks out the window. She isn’t even kind of listening to me. I have to cart her around from tennis court to tennis court and mall to mall and place to place and keep her in my thoughts and she doesn’t even listen to me, she doesn’t even give me the courtesy of pretending to listen to me. She doesn’t value me. She doesn’t think I know anything. She doesn’t respect me. I turn red. The light turns green. She groans. “Are you blind?”

I pull off and we are sad now together. We are only ever in the same sad boat for a few seconds. I don’t know if she leaves or if I leave. I just know that when we’re both happy or sad the feeling starts to shrink and can only hold one of us at a time. This time she is the one that brightens. She turns happy. She is adjusting, she is sitting Indian style, her sun is rising and her eyes are clearing up and my clouds are thickening and my belly is protruding and my foot is slipping off the gas and I can’t even drive when she’s like this, happy. I can’t even drive.

“Well, I do know some things, you know.”

She huffs. She never even pretends to respect me and I’m her fucking mother. The car keeps lurching and it’s my fault and she groans and grabs her seatbelt as if to say You retard, Mom, you can’t even drive. I need her to be a different person. “Well I’ll tell you. He’s crazy, Marnie. Miles is crazy. You know what he did? He invited me to go up in an alien ship with him.”

“What?” She looks at me, wide eyes, big need, I’m her mom and I know more.

“Now, you can’t tell anyone. He only told me and he told me in confidence.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Marnie, you can’t tell anyone. I’m just telling you so that you know that one of these days he will slip and tell someone else and clearly he’s got problems because he’s telling me that once a week he rides around with aliens in an alien ship. And the fact that he believes this means that he is certainly off and he won’t last forever.”

Marnie is clapping and squealing and it’s all Omigod how did you fucking get him to say that? and Omigod how do you even sit there with him? and Omigod it’s fucking unreal that he would invite you on a mother fucking ship I fucking love it! You are amazing! He doesn’t say shit to anyone ever! He doesn’t even know anyone’s fucking name on the team or anything and he’s fucking telling you about his secret life with aliens?

And every remark makes me feel a little meaner. But Marnie can be funny. When you’re on her team you feel like you’re on the right team. And we’re driving home and we’re a mother and a daughter and she’s marveling at me, at the way I can get people to open up and suddenly I have a purpose and I have what she needs and she knows it and over dinner she’s going to ask me questions and make eye contact and I’m going to tell her she played great today in spite of the loss and we’re going to have one of our good moments together and my husband is going to be happy and we’re going to have nice sex and Miles won’t be outside of our window overhearing. He won’t know that I betrayed him.

“You won’t tell anyone, Marnie.”

“Of course not.”

“No, I mean you can’t tell anyone.”

“Mom, I would never.”

At eight the area where the courts are, back in the woods, is closed to people. So I have to get out of the car and unhitch the gate and then get back into my car and drive on the dirt into the lot and it’s like a horror movie and maybe Miles is going to kill me.

“Hiya,” he says. He has a flashlight. He wears a Members Only jacket and tan pants. So this is alien attire. “You brought snacks.”

“I figured we might get hungry.”

He laughs. We sit on the bench together. We wait. The aliens don’t come. We eat the chips. I ask about his sons. He tells me about them like they are characters on a TV show we both watch. I nod. I ask how he handles the loneliness. He says he likes to be alone. The aliens don’t come. He asks about Marnie, is she a nice girl? I say she is. She is a strong young woman. Quite a mouth on her, he says. Quite a mind, I say. The aliens don’t come. I look at my watch. He looks at me.

“So, I guess I should have figured.”

“What?” I say. The wind comes on. I cross my arms. Is this how I die? Am I raped and murdered by a delusional high school girls tennis coach on a Monday night? Do I die here, when my husband and daughter think I am at the mall? Do I die at the hand of a man who looked me in the eye and all but told me he was crazy? Am I someone who drove to her death sentence? Who, in fact, sentenced herself to death?

“I should have figured you told someone.”

“Miles, no. I didn’t tell anyone.”

He smiles, crazy eyes, grey and far away. “Oh, you did. They told me you did. They said that’s why they’re not coming.”

“Miles, no.” I die here. He’ll come at me fast and get my throat and then he’ll cut me up with knives and put pieces of me into that machine that makes tennis balls pop out across the court. That could probably slice a person up, right?

“It’s okay. They said eventually I would tell someone and that the odds of that person being a true person weren’t very good. But they said everyone has to tell someone to make it real.”

“Miles, I didn’t tell anyone. I swear to God I didn’t tell anyone.” I will be one of those missing people because Miles is a careful man, a tender man. His car is very clean. He doesn’t have friends. Nobody knows I came here to meet him. We’ve never even talked on the phone. There isn’t a paper trail.

“I told them you were a true person. They said I would have to find out for myself. I guess they were right.” He is laughing now and starting to stand up. I stand up too. He extends a hand. “It isn’t your fault.”

I shake his hand. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

He laughs and he looks like he’s going to cry and as he walks away he zips up his jacket and puts his hands in his pockets and opens his car door and he reverses without looking back to check if there are any trees in his way and I know it the way you know that your daughter is unkind. I know that there are aliens. I know there is more.

The new woman tennis coach doesn’t offer me water or make small talk. I am a fly and she can never seem to swat me at the right moment. Marnie’s game is better all the time. Marnie told a girl on the team who told her mother who told the school principal who told Miles to kindly pack his things and go. Nobody knows where he went. They say that he moved somewhere. They say his ex-wife is remarried. They say his sons are young, too young to miss him. They say he’s fine, coaching at a club in another town. But I’d like to think that the aliens found a way to land in his back yard. I know that there isn’t enough room in his back yard or in any backyard and I know that when the ships land they’re vulnerable to human eyes. But I’d like to think that he went with the aliens and that they forgave him for making a mistake and believing in a person like me and that one of these days, when I least expect it, I might be surprised at the tennis court, where I go every Monday, eight p.m. sharp and sit and eat potato chips, waiting for another chance.