This World We Live In

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

  It annoyed me that Alex thought my only accomplishment in life was in the war against ash. "I take pride in lots of things," I said. "Like how my family has come together. How we've fought to keep alive. To keep our hopes alive. I take a lot of pride in that. Do you think that's a sin?"

  "No, of course not," Alex said. "But that's not the kind of pride I'm talking about."

  "Oh," I said. "You mean like vanity. Being proud because you're good-looking or rich."

  "That's not it exactly, either," Alex said.

  "Then what is it?" I asked.

  He gazed out my window, at the perpetually gray landscape. "All right," he said. "Maybe you'll understand better if I tell you about the coin jar. We had to pay for our school uniforms, so my mother kept a coin jar. Every day we emptied our pockets and whatever change we had went into the jar. One day she caught my father taking out a handful of quarters. He was short on beer money. She went crazy. It was the worst fight I ever saw them have. My mother had ambitions for us. Every penny we saved was important to her." He paused for a moment. "My father picked up the coin jar and threw it across the room. The coins flew all over. My mother got down on her hands and knees to pick

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  up the change, but my brother, Carlos, shoved me onto the floor. It was my fault, he said. I was the one they were fighting over.""That must have been awful," I said. Mom and Dad at their worst always let us know we weren't to blame for their problems.

  "I vowed I would never feel shame again," Alex said. "But the shame wasn't because my parents fought over me. It was the shame of crawling on the floor, sweeping pennies and nickels into a pile to pay for clothes other kids took for granted. The next day I got a job, started working wherever I could, finally got regular work at a pizza parlor. I paid for my own uniforms after that and my books, too. No more coin jar. My mother found some other way to pay for my sister's uniforms. And I felt proud. Proud I was smart. Proud that people noticed me, respected me. Proud that I was ambitious. Proud that I was too good to end up like my parents. And now I beg for clean clothes for my sister. I beg for every bite of food we eat."

  "You don't have to beg here," I said. "We're happy to share."

  "No one is happy to share," he said.

  Alex looked down then or I looked up. I don't know how it happened, but we made eye contact, and for a moment I was drawn into his soul. I could see everything, the depth of his sorrow, his anger, his despair.

  I feel sorrow and anger and despair. I don't think there's a person alive who doesn't. I sometimes feel like my sorrow and anger and despair burn inside me the way the sun used to burn on a hot July day.

  But that was nothing compared to what I sensed in Alex. His sorrow, his anger, his despair was like a thousand

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  suns, like a galaxy of suns. It physically hurt me to look into his eyes, but I couldn't break away. He turned his head first, and then he apologized, or maybe he thanked me. For Alex I think they're the same thing.He bolted out of the room, leaving me to stare at my bookcase and think about the sin of pride and the sin of prejudice and all the other sins I'd left behind.

  June 5

  Dad and I biked into town today to talk to Mr. Danworth. I don't think I've ever seen Dad on a bike before, although I remember showing off to him when I rode a two-wheeler for the first time.I'd thought it would be great having some time alone with Dad. We haven't had any since he got back, and there was so much I wanted to tell him and so much I wanted him to tell me. But the weather was awful. Not raining, but cold with a harsh wind blowing in our faces. March weather in June.

  Maybe it was better we couldn't have a father/daughter talk, because by the time we got to City Hall to pick up our food and talk to Mr. Danworth, Dad was in full Bob Nesbitt mode.

  "My wife and I didn't know what to expect," Dad said after he introduced himself. "Of course we hadn't heard from Mom, but you can't give up hope. And it is a miracle of sorts we're alive. Our home in San Diego is gone, but we were visiting Sally's brother, Charlie, when it all happened. There we were in Susanville. We would have stayed there, except for Mom. I was worried about her living on her own, with only Laura Evans and her kids looking in on her. So I convinced my wife and Charlie we needed to make our way

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  east, and that turned out to be a miracle, too, since we were out of range of the volcanoes once they started erupting. Then on Christmas Day we had our third miracle when our baby, Gabriel, was born.""How many in your family, did you say?" Mr. Danworth asked, which I figured was a good sign.

  "Five, not including Gabriel," Dad said. "Although Sally needs extra food because she's nursing. There's Sally and me and our two older ones, Alex and Julie, and Sally's brother, Charlie. Alex and Julie are amazing kids, the best a father could dream of. Alex is so bright. Well, when all this is over with, I know he'll go on to college. And Julie's been a second mother to the baby. Every day I look at them and I thank God for all my blessings."

  I felt really strange hearing Dad say all that. No, that's a lie. I didn't feel strange. I felt sick to my stomach. Not because I had to stand there and nod like it was all true, but because in a funny way it is all true. Dad may have only known Alex and Julie for a couple of months, but there's a connectedness he doesn't have with us anymore. You can see it in the way he looks at them, the way he seems to absorb everything Alex says or the way he smiles at Julie. He's that way with Charlie, too. It's like they're all members of the same secret society, which no one else can join.

  So when Mr. Danworth asked me if what Dad said was true and I said yes, it wasn't as much of a lie as it might have been. Not that I could ever explain that to Mom, or to anyone else. Jon wouldn't understand anyway, and Matt would understand a little too well.

  "I suppose you folks are entitled to food," Mr. Danworth said. "Of course we can't give you any until next

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  Monday, so you're on your own till then. And I can't guarantee any for your brother-in-law or extra for your wife. What we give you comes out of everybody else's. It's not like we call the government and say there are five more people in town so send us accordingly.""Anything you can do," Dad said. "We'd be very grateful."

  "Share and share alike," Mr. Danworth said, a cliché that would have fit right in the other night. "Will you folks be able to manage for another week?"

  "We'll have to," Dad said. "You know how it is. We're used to being hungry. As long as my wife has enough, we can get by."

  "A baby," Mr. Danworth said. "That truly is a miracle."

  Dad grinned. "I wish I had pictures," he said. "Miranda, isn't Gabriel the most beautiful baby you've ever seen?"

  I started to say, "Yes, Dad," but I caught myself in time and said, "Yes, definitely," instead. I know Dad caught it, but Mr. Danworth didn't seem to notice.

  "You know something?" Mr. Danworth said. "My wife and I, well, we have a bit saved up. I'm going to give you my bag, so your wife will have some for this week. A baby. That's worth going hungry for."

  "Thank you," Dad said. "You can't know what this means to us."

  "Maybe I'll come over one day and pay little Gabriel a call," Mr. Danworth said.

  "Any time," Dad said. "We'd be honored."

  Dad and I talked a little bit on the ride home, since the wind was to our backs. Not that I was in much of a mood-- although I was relieved about the extra food for Lisa. If nothing else, it means the rest of us won't have to give up so much of ours.

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  "When Lisa had the baby at the evac camp, people did that," Dad told me. "Not just Charlie. Lots of people. We had so little food, but people brought theirs for Lisa. Strangers who heard about the baby. It was so important to them that Lisa and Gabriel make it.""If Gabriel had been a girl, what would you have named her?" I asked.

  "Abigail," Dad said. "Abigail Hope Evans."

  There went the last of my Baby Rachel fantasies.

  "Someday you'll have children," Dad said. "You and Julie and Syl. God willing,
I'll live to see that day."

  "Maybe someday," I said. But the truth of the matter is when you spend your time thinking about your next meal and wanting your father to love you as much as he loves two strangers and trying to love your baby brother in spite of the fact that all he ever does is scream, it's hard to wish for a baby of your own.

  Maybe someday.

  Maybe not.

  June 6

  For the second time in a week the doorbell rang.Everything was different this time. Matt, Dad, Alex, and Charlie were outside chopping trees. Jon and Julie were in the back of the sunroom. Julie's tutoring Jon in Spanish, which he's developed a mad desire to learn in the past couple of days. Syl was upstairs while Mom and Lisa were sitting cross-legged on the mattress, talking about what supplies Dad and Lisa could take to Mrs. Nesbitt's house. Gabriel was lying in his crib, taking it all in. And I was giving the kitchen a thorough cleaning, which is a lot easier with running water,

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  even if the water is gray.I looked out the kitchen window and saw Mr. Danworth standing at the back door. I was the farthest one away but the only one standing, so I walked over and let him in.

  "I thought I'd pay a call on the baby," he said, which I knew meant "I thought I'd come over and make sure there really is a baby that I gave up a week of my food for."

  "There he is," I said, pointing to the crib that used to be Mom's sweater drawer. "Gabriel, I'd like you to meet Mr. Danworth. He's in charge of feeding your mommy."

  "Wow," Mr. Danworth said, bending for inspection. "What a big boy you are. He's quite the bruiser, isn't he." He turned around and saw Lisa. "You must be Sally Nesbitt," he said.

  Lisa smiled. "Isn't he beautiful?" she said. "My Christmas miracle."

  "Your husband mentioned he was born on Christmas," Mr. Danworth said. "Your family must have gone through a lot since then."

  "Everyone has," Lisa said. "And we have Gabriel."

  "He'll be crawling soon," Mr. Danworth said. "Getting ready to explore the world."

  Lisa nodded. "He's going to make the world a better place," she said. "Not just for me, for all of us. He was born for a reason, I'm sure of it."

  "That wouldn't surprise me one bit," Mr. Danworth said. He looked over our little domestic scene. "Hello, Laura," he said to Mom. "And Jon. Good to see you. Who's your friend, Jon?"

  "I'm Julie," she told him. She hesitated so slightly I

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  may have been the only one to notice. "Dad and Alex and Uncle Charlie are outside," she said. "With Matt. If you want to talk with them.""I'll give them a quick hello on my way out," Mr. Danworth said. "I can't get over this baby. Bob and Miranda told me all about him, but before I saw him with my own eyes, well, frankly I couldn't believe it. A baby here in Howell. It gives you faith."

  "Would you like to hold him?" Lisa asked. "Gabriel's used to strangers. He won't mind."

  "Can I?" Mr. Danworth asked. He bent down and picked Gabriel up. Gabriel, who still screeches at the sight of me, smiled at Mr. Danworth and tried to take his glasses off to play with.

  Mom and Lisa and Julie were all beaming like Gabriel had pushed the moon back into place. Even Jon was grinning.

  "You're quite the fella, aren't you," Mr. Danworth said. "You know, I could be holding the president of the United States in my arms right now. It wouldn't surprise me one bit."

  Gabriel made some kind of gurgling noise in agreement, and everyone laughed. Well, everyone except me.

  Because for the first time I really thought about Gabriel's future. If he exists, other babies must also. But how many of them will survive the next year, the next decade? I've had sixteen good years and one horrible one, but for Gabriel, for all the Gabriels, their whole lives will be like my one horrible year. Only I had the good years to see me through. What will they have?

  And I finally figured out why Mom is willing to give up so much for her ex-husband's baby. Gabriel isn't just Dad's

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  baby. He's Dad's future, Lisa's future. He's all our futures, even Mr. Danworth's. Every day Gabriel lives and grows a little bigger, a little stronger, is a miracle.I stood there, and it's the stupidest thing, but tears started streaming down my face. It was Julie who walked over and gave me a hug.

  "It's all right," she said. "You can love him, too."

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  ***

  Chapter 10 June 8

  Mom is madly happy that Jon is interested in schoolwork, so she's taken over teaching him and Julie. Alex seems pleased that Julie's getting any kind of instruction, and with Dad and Charlie around, Jon isn't needed for the firewood anymore.Mom asked both Syl and me if we wanted to join them, but neither one of us is interested in algebra. Lisa and Syl are doing Bible study, and in the evenings Dad and Charlie join them.

  So I volunteered to get started on cleaning Mrs. Nesbitt's house. All that domesticity was getting on my nerves.

  Cleaning Mrs. Nesbitt's is a big job, and tomorrow I'll ask for volunteers. But for one day I figured being alone would be nice. The plan is for Dad, Lisa, and Gabriel to sleep in the kitchen, since that's where the woodstove is, and Alex and Charlie will sleep in the parlor and Julie in the dining room. Then, when Alex and Julie leave, Charlie will move into the dining room, since that's warmer.

  But now even Mom doesn't want Alex and Julie to go. She knows once they do, it'll be back to chopping wood for Jon, and she'll never be able to get him interested in schoolwork

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  again. And I think she's hoping Alex's may-Is and thank-yous will rub off on me.I don't know how I feel about them staying. It still hurts me to look at Dad looking at them, seeing the pride and love in his eyes. It's not like he looks at Matt or Jon or me any differently. Even Syl gets that same look. He loves all of us.

  But he should love us more. He just should. We're his children, not Alex and Julie.

  But then I see Alex and Julie together, talking quietly, playing chess, and I know that if people had seen Matt with Jon or me, pre-Syl Matt, that is, they would have fallen in love with us the way Dad has with Alex and Julie. If it had been Matt and Jon and me and we didn't have any parents, any family except each other, and people had reached out, included us in their families, it would have meant everything to us. It would have meant survival.

  If I had to guess, I'd say Alex is going to move on, but he'll let Julie stay with Dad and Lisa. Lisa's counting on it, and now with Mom on her side I think the pressure will be too great for Alex. Especially with food coming in.

  It wouldn't be too bad if Julie stayed. She wouldn't exactly be Baby Rachel, but I've adjusted to Syl, more or less. I could adjust to Julie.

  Anyway, that's what I told myself as I cleaned Mrs. Nesbitt's kitchen and thought about how much my life has changed in just a single week.

  June 9

  I started out alone at Mrs. Nesbitt's, which I liked, since it gave me more of a chance to feel sorry for myself. Just call me Cinderella Evans.

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  But then the wicked stepsisters (Syl and Julie) came over to help clean, which I don't remember happening in Cinderella. What made it even worse is they're both dynamos. When you're alone in a freezing cold house, mopping and moping, you can take your time. But when there are two other people and they're actually working, you have to pick up your pace and accomplish something.So I was relieved when Alex showed up about an hour later. "I thought I'd go scavenge houses," he said. "Miranda, would you mind coming along? You know the area and I don't."

  Mind? Breaking into houses with the last living boy in America I'm not related to versus scrubbing every inch of a kitchen floor?

  "No, that's okay. I'll go," I said.

  "Good," Alex said. "Thank you."

  When other people say things like that, simple things-like "good" and "thank you," they smile. Alex didn't smile. Alex never smiles. He says "please" and "thank you" and "may I," but he never smiles.

  I wonder if he used to before.

  We went back to the house, told Mom
where we were going, got bags and bikes, and rode off, leaving Syl and Julie to clean and polish. Alex may not have smiled, but I sure did.

  "I've been going to houses closer to town," I told him as we began. "More suburby places, lots of houses near each other. I've been doing pretty well there."

  "Let's try more isolated," Alex said. "Farmhouses. Cabins in the woods."

  That annoyed me. He asked me along since I know the area. Then he rejected my suggestion about where to look.

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  I have a big brother, thank you. I don't need the last living boy in America to treat me like a dumb kid sister."We'll do better in the suburbs," I said.

  "How do you know?" he asked. "If you haven't tried the country?"

  For a moment I considered turning around and going back to Mrs. Nesbitt's. Let Alex get lost on his own, since he was so determined to bike vast distances for no good reason whatsoever.

  But it's the middle of June, the temperature had to be close to sixty, and if you really concentrated, you could kind of make out the sun. And even if Alex was the most annoying, last living boy in America, he still was the last living boy in America. (I should come up with initials for that: LLBA or something.)

  "All right," I said. "You want country, we'll try country." I began biking a little faster than him, taking the lead. We rode along at a steady pace while I tried to decide how far we should go to satisfy him.

  I'd like to say I didn't know where we were going, but that wouldn't be true. I had a flash of "I'll show him" when I turned onto Hadder's Road, and then made the left onto Murray, the back road to the high school.

  We were there in fifteen minutes. The mound of bodies. Only in the month since I'd been there, the temperature's gone above freezing, the snow has melted, and the bodies have started to decompose.

  It was awful. The stench was unbearable, even outdoors. The bodies were bloated, the faces unrecognizable. As bad as my nightmares have been, the reality is far worse. And it had been my choice to go there, to punish Alex for going against my advice.