We’re almost up the hill now. Ben shows no signs of slowing. If there was ever a dotted yellow line, it’s long run out. I think of repeating his name, but then the crest of the hill is there, and I’m squeezing my eyes closed. My breath, in, then out, takes far longer than most.
There is no crash. There is no car coming toward us over the crest of the hill, nor up from the dip below us. But there’s another hill ahead, and a car is coming down that, in our lane. Well, it’s their lane.
“Slow down.”
“Used to be people drove with sense. Now they all come in for the summer. They get wasted. Kill whatever’s in their path.” I haven’t looked at the teenagers in a while, but their energy is frenzied. By now, the car coming toward us, blue, small, has started honking. But there’s nowhere for it to go, except into the bushes, and anyway, this is its path, not ours.
“You’ve got your business advertised on this van,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady as we near our deaths. “Think of your reputation.”
If anything, that only makes him go faster. In five seconds, we’ll be dead.
“Think of Jenny.” What I mean: think of that sweet little thing having to collect your body.
He lets up on the accelerator. We’re going downhill and the force of momentum carries us anyway, but then he’s pumping the brake, and the sedan peels off ahead, and Ben swerves back into line behind it, and the oncoming car speeds past us with the angry blare of its horn. The sedan sails off over the next hill.
Ben brakes. He pulls us off the road. The car shimmies in the sand, then finally stops. We sit there. He keeps his hands on the wheel. He breathes heavily. I think of getting out, but I’d drop straight to the ground and nothing would get me back on my feet. Another car roars by. The people inside it don’t know a thing.
100
After Jim:
Cornelia braided my hair.
Issy let me unwrap the deck of cards we’d bought in New York.
Xavier brought me a loaf of Sarah’s bread.
The woods ricocheted with the far-off sound of gunshots; hunting season in the Thinged World. Afternoons went dark. Wind careened. We stuffed the walls with rolled-up newsprint. We played Spit before the gasping fire. Mice scuttled with their families along the floorboards. The hatchet stayed under my pillow.
Ben sat on the floor beside me while I slept.
101
By the time Ben pulls into the driveway, we’ve shared twenty minutes of silence. He lets his van idle beside the SUV. “I didn’t do that,” he says, after a minute.
This makes me laugh.
“Chopping off Ma’s hair. Teresa did it.” He lets me see his fear.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay.” The others are watching us from inside the house. The dogs yip at the recognition of his motor. “Have dinner with us tonight.” And then: “Bring Jenny.”
He takes a deep breath.
“It wouldn’t be so bad to be together.” He startles. I clarify. “All of us. One last time. Then we’re out of your hair.”
His eyes pass over the windows, as if it’s not his home. “Seven o’clock?”
“Cornelia’s going to piss her pants, cooking for you lovebirds.”
He slaps the wheel again, to say, all right, get on out of here. So we agree, without agreeing, that I will keep the morning’s events a secret, and, in exchange, he will allow Jenny, the girl who saved our lives, to spend more than a minute in my company. It’s not lost on me that her name was the Hail Mary that saved him from crashing us into oblivion. I tell myself that all that matters is being one step closer to you.
102
On Christmas morning, Dog nosed me awake. It was snowy and quiet and the light was thin, and all I wanted was the warmth of bed, but he’d heard someone coming down the path. He licked my face, then whined at the door. Xavier grumbled on the top bunk. I brought Dog out into the front room and poked at the reluctant fire, and peeked out the window.
“Mama, no.” Tomas, down at the edge of the water, howling into the tundra of the frozen lake, as Teresa held him by one arm. She leaned to his ear to try to soothe him, but he writhed in her grip. He was nimble. He broke free.
“Tomas!” The ice didn’t crack under his small feet. She sank onto a log. She dropped her head into her hands.
Out of the woods came Marta. She moved like a shadow across the snow, until she was beside Teresa. She laid her hand on Teresa’s shoulder. The other woman startled at the touch, but Marta didn’t speak. She simply stood beside Teresa, and watched the boy run.
Was Marta really dying? At our meager Christmas feast, our heads bowed over curried lentils, the aluminum pot sending up a cruciferous steam, I thought the door might tussle open in a swirl of snow and air, and Marta would be standing there, stalwart as ever, bearing popcorn for us all. Instead, we shivered over our bowls as Abraham read aloud from a manifesto he was drafting. Then we sang “Greensleeves,” and “O Tannenbaum,” and Butterfly performed a solstice dance at the edges of the firelight.
In my frigid bed, in the drowsy moments before full sleep, Marta’s small body rushed into my mind, walking ahead of me on the path; the only sound, our steps. I missed her with a skin-thick longing, missed the blueberries—Vaccinium myrtilloides—spilling off an alpine meadow, and thickets of Asparagus officinalis. Her small, rough hands turned our bounty over in the sunlight. Did that happen every time, or was it only once?
103
Jenny steps inside with a platter of deviled eggs, Ben behind her, as though this isn’t his home. She must have an apartment somewhere, or a house, but I don’t let myself think of it, not even when his hand spreads across her lower back. We pull ourselves into formation. Cornelia’s suitcase is packed for an early morning flight. I can tell, in her careful basting of the roast, that she believes her dinner will make everything good forever. She beams across the kitchen—at Jenny, folding the cloth napkins, at Sekou, lining up his little guys across the floor, at Xavier and Ben and Issy, drinking Allagash White at the kitchen table. She beams at Ben’s dogs when they lope across the kitchen, panting, after a day in the sun.
Then we’re in the dining room, and yes, all right, the roast is delicious. The flesh hits my stomach and does not alarm me. Everyone is talking, and Jenny’s guttural laugh hints at surprising depths, and Sekou loves the meat so much that Issy has to tell him not to put more than one piece into his mouth at once, and Ben catches my eye and then makes a point of putting his arm around his girlfriend.
“And what about you?” Jenny says to Xavier, slopping mashed potatoes onto her plate. “What do you do?”
“I run an art gallery,” he says. “In New York.”
“A very successful art gallery,” Cornelia interrupts. She’s had some wine.
“Thank you,” Xavier says. “I suppose we could say it’s successful.”
“There’s family money.” That’s Issy. “I just mean, let’s be plain. I’m sure your gallery is doing great, but the real source of your wealth is your mother. Not to mention that your father is one of the most well-known painters of his generation. Complicated relationships, sure, but money begets money. Privilege begets—”
“Privilege.” Xavier smiles thinly. “You’re absolutely right.” But smuggled in there is irritation, discomfort, embarrassment.
Cornelia puts down her fork. “Issy, you shouldn’t have to be the one to point that out.”
“No shit. But no one else was saying it.”
Cornelia looks stricken. “Gosh, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Oh please, wipe that white feminist pout right off your face. Just notice next time.”
“I’ll notice, too,” says Jenny. “I’ve done a lot of reading and—”
“I like to read.” Sekou is down off his chair, standing right beside Jenny.
“Do you?” She puts her hand on his shoulder, and adopts his solemn stance.
“I tell the stories in my head.”
“That’s the first step.”
“Come finish your green beans,” Issy says. The boy clambers back into her lap and takes a bite and smiles at Jenny because she’s the prettiest girl in the room.
Ben runs his hand over Jenny’s hair.
“And do you have a family?” Jenny asks Xavier, moving the conversation along.
“My husband’s name is Billy.” Xavier draws his phone out of his pocket, and finds a cute picture: the two of them in Mets caps, overlooking Citi Field.
“Handsome,” croons Jenny.
“We’re, uh, we’re in the process of adopting.”
I play at surprise. He was scared to tell me, but only when he looks at me do I know this. “There’ve been some bumps along the way, but we’re hopeful.” Ben and Jenny offer their murmured congratulations—him, with practiced reserve; her, with a gooey sigh that doesn’t hide how badly she wants to reproduce.
Sekou has somehow managed to pass out. His hand, still holding a green bean, curls between his chin and his mother’s shoulder. Issy says, “I’m happy for you, kid.”
“I’m scared as hell.” Xavier’s eyes are wet. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Nothing is wrong with you,” Cornelia mutters.
“There’s something wrong with each of us,” Issy says. “Think of the people who raised us. Or didn’t raise us, as the case may be. No wonder we did what we did. Abraham understood how alone we were. He used it as a weapon against us. He used it to make us into weapons.”
Ben shifts in his seat, clears his throat.
“But Abraham was right about a lot,” Cornelia counters. “Unthinging is the only way we have a remote chance of slowing climate change—if it’s even possible anymore. You still follow his best teachings, Issy. You’re Unthinged, and I admire that—I really do.”
Issy rolls her eyes.
“Why don’t you believe me?”
“Because if you admired me so much, you’d be Unthinged yourself, instead of living in a three thousand square foot new build in a fancy suburb filled with white people.”
Cornelia looks down at her hands. “I’m a hypocrite.”
“Don’t call yourself a hypocrite. Do something. You all have to start doing something. It’s not good enough to sit around and say how much you want to change when you don’t actually make a change.”
Xavier is nodding, tears streaming down his face.
“Why the fuck are you crying?” Issy says.
“Because what the fuck are we going to do? We are so fucked. If they find out what we did, we are all so fucked.” He starts to sob.
A freeze has descended over the room, Cornelia, Issy, Ben, and me looking everywhere but Jenny. Surely it has occurred to her by now that there’s a pressing reason we’ve come, beyond a casual visit to rural Maine.
I admire her for saying, “If you don’t mind my asking, what did you do?”
Ben clears his throat. Issy stands with Sekou, as if she can protect him from her past actions. Cornelia’s face is ashen. Xavier’s hand is at his mouth.
“Oh,” Jenny says, as she looks at Ben. “It’s probably better not to tell me, actually. If you did something illegal. Then I can’t testify against you, right? Does it have something to do with that cult you were all a part of?” Ben looks like she just told him his hair is on fire. “I didn’t mean to ruin the dinner,” she says. “I just believe it’s better to get things out in the open.”
“I thought you didn’t know about Home,” Cornelia says.
“Well, he”—she thumbs Ben—“does not have a great poker face. And I ran into his ex at the grocery store a few months back and she said good luck with getting him over what happened up there”—Ben is turning redder as she talks, but here she stops, and leans against him, like a friendly cat, and says—“and then you all show up with your meaningful looks. So I called my mom’s best friend yesterday. She lived in town back then, and told me there was all sorts of wacky stuff happening back then up out on Bushrow Road! Some kind of cult, really Ben, you should have told me! My man’s got a wild past!”
She’s so bright-eyed that it takes my breath away. And despite the truth she’s just torn open, Ben intertwines his fingers with hers. So, then, she is the key.
104
My stiff fingers curved around the handle of the hatchet, ready to sail it into the air for another round of target practice. Far out, at the middle of the solid lake, the scattering of ice huts trailed smoke into the sky. My breath roiled into a fog. Then I heard it. A snarl. A bark. A knot of rage in the throat of an animal, then a yelp, and the scream of a child in terrible pain.
I ran through the white-draped forest toward the horrifying call. The men, too, sprinted toward the sound, snow crystals catching rainbows in the air as they ran. There was a tussle of limbs beside the frozen lake. From their center came a throaty growl, operatic in scale, rageful, unbound. The child’s cry crested as they shouted: “Get it off of him!” Someone came running with the pitchfork. “Kick it!”
A mess, impossible to make sense of through the bodies and the sounds, the arms reaching in, the frantic jabs. I wanted to see and I wanted not to see. I wanted to stand back but my body led me forward.
Marta appeared. I stood there, dumb. She took the hatchet from my hand.
105
“I’m going up to Home,” I say, when the cherry pie and ice cream are memories across our plates. “Tonight.” I look Ben in his worried eyes. “Do you remember what your mom said about her father? About looking in the window? I’m going to go look in the windows.”
They try to talk me out of it. It’s too dark out (that’s the point). I don’t have a car and Xavier won’t be driving me (I’ll walk). There’s a man with a gun up there (I know). If I go alone, he’ll shoot me on sight (perhaps). I tell them how to keep the Mother fed. Then they know I’m serious.
I rise from the table. I get all the way outside. Framed by the window, Jenny leans toward Ben, with a look that says help her, and I know that I’ve got him.
106
Marta went into the fray. The knot of bodies swallowed her. Then there was a different sound: the squelch of a melon breaking. The screaming kept on, but it was joined with other screaming, shouts and cries as we gathered ever closer just as the worst of it had ended.
I was upon them as Amos picked up the limp, small body from the ground. I couldn’t understand why Tomas didn’t have a face anymore. Where his filthy cheeks had once been there was now a sea of red. His arm dangled in an unnatural way. Amos ran up the land. He shouted, “Get the keys,” and those who had not been nearby looked up as he passed, until they realized something terrible had occurred and scrambled up the hill behind him, screaming toward the kitchen for Teresa. Behind them trailed Nora, eyes frozen wide.
On the ground lay what was left of Dog, the hatchet buried in his skull. Marta was beside him, in the scarlet snow, stroking his blood-soaked pelt, her arms covered in such a gush of red, that I thought for certain he had gotten her, too.
107
Ben cuts the lights and engine half a mile out on Bushrow Road. There’s hardly a moon, which will be to our advantage. We sit in the darkness to let our eyes adjust. The night seems quiet through the muffled windows, but when we’re out there it’ll be anything but, thanks to Pseudacris crucifer, the tiny chorus frogs. Perhaps he is thinking of Jenny. Perhaps he is thinking of the others, who stayed behind.
“Surprised you got back in a car with me behind the wheel.” His cocky tone doesn’t fool either of us. I know what it is for him to come back here.
“Your mom’s sketches are beautiful.” Did Ben frame them? Or Shelley-Ann? Those faces I once knew, lined up. All these years, I’ve only held them in my mind.
“She wanted to go to art school.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“My father said she wasn’t strong enough to be an artist. So I said, ‘Ma, screw him and go to art school now.’ And she said that the part of her that knew how to make art went away when Home fell ap
art. Made me so mad.”
“I think I know what she meant.”
He’s quiet.
“What she said about us—no, let me say this, please, Ben. That night we had together—”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not sorry. I’ve never regretted it. It was … it meant a lot to me. You don’t have to say anything. I just need you to know that I … that it wasn’t something I forgot. I know it’s foolish to have thought you’d leave your wife, especially with another baby on the way. I guess I was…” I decide to be brave. “I guess your mom was right. I guess I loved you and that made me want you even though…”
Ben nods in the darkness. I can just barely make it out, but I feel it, the vehemence of it rocking the car.
“Why…” Be brave. “Why did you drive all the way to New York to be with me, if you were just going to leave?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Just tell me.”
“I didn’t know I was going to leave.”
“So what made you decide to come, on that day, of all days, when any hope of us getting together was long gone? I mean, you’d been with Shelley-Ann for years by then.” I swallow. “What made you want to touch me? On that day, after years of never touching me?”
He blows air through his lips. “I never told you, but. The day before. That was the day Nora had her first suicide attempt. I know it’s selfish. I just … I needed…”
I shouldn’t have asked.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“Saskia—”
“Don’t pity me.”
He stills himself. We sit in that vast darkness.
Then he says, “Sometimes I think about it like we were infected. Like Home infected us with a virus that meant we couldn’t live like normal people. Can’t. I think we might have had a chance of recovering if we hadn’t killed her. But once we killed her, there was no getting free.”
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