by Anselmo, Ray
“Will it ever end?” she wondered afterward. She could go the rest of her life without finding a corpse and be just fine with it. But this was the state of the world right now. It was either live with it or not live at all, and she’d made her decision on that.
She spent most of the day driving slowly around Tamalpais Valley and Almonte and Sycamore Park and Mill Valley and Alto and Strawberry and the other residential areas that clustered near the bay, between San Rafael to the north and Sausalito to the south. She could see the areas starting to look rundown – lawns unmowed, trash uncollected, animals walking more boldly in the streets and yards. Nature reclaiming what it had lost to civilization.
She didn’t see any sign of continued human activity, didn’t hear or smell any either. Marin County wasn’t exactly crowded, not by California standards – it’d had about a quarter of a million people, over a third of which were in San Rafael and its nearest suburbs. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that someone besides her would’ve beaten the plague, survived and done something with their environs like she had.
But if someone had, she thought as she parked the truck and got out to stretch, there was nothing to indicate it, not where she’d been so far. If there was someone, anyone left besides her, where were –
A loud report echoed down the deserted street. Before she could think, she’d turned toward it and pulled the Colt from behind her, flipped the safety off and was pointing it toward where she thought the sound had come from, left hand on right wrist, left foot half a pace forward, ready to fire on …
BAM!
… the screen door of a single-family house in Harbor Point, unlatched and swinging in the breeze.
Her shoulders slumped as her arms fell. She felt stupider than she had in a long time. “A screen door. A flipping screen door.” She kept grumbling that to herself as she secured the gun and put it back. If the Colt caused her to be more paranoid, she might be better off without it. But maybe it wasn’t the pistol. Maybe three weeks of being the only living person in the world, or at least in her world, was messing with her mind. Really, it would mess with anyone’s, wouldn’t it? Hers just happened to be more susceptible.
She looked up and saw the sun was getting low in the west. “Yeah, maybe I should head home.” It wasn’t like she was looking for anything specific besides signs of life. Maybe next week she’d drive up to San Rafael and Greenbrae, or south to Waldo and Sausalito. You never knew where somebody might be hiding out, perhaps as unnerved as she was, worried they might be the last person on Earth.
Kelly forced a smile as she drove out of Harbor Point toward Strawberry Manor, figuring she could take 101 to the Shoreline Highway and be home in less than a half-hour. She sure hoped there was someone out there. If there wasn’t, all the meds in the world might not keep her from going bananas.
18
ENNUI
On Sunday, day 28, Kelly rested. She didn’t really feel like she needed to, but she worried if she didn’t she’d regret it. So no house searching, no gas swiping, no cooking. She snacked, she read, she napped. She put on her bathing suit, an unadorned navy blue one-piece, and played in the ocean for a while. She brought home an abalone shell she found. She took her capsule and went to sleep.
On Monday, she woke up feeling like cold death on burnt toast. Oh, no – had she contracted the plague again and this time it was going to finish the job? But an hour after she got up she felt fine. Breakfast, journal, over to the beach parking lot to decant the next vehicle – it turned out to be the next two, since the first, a Beetle, only had two gallons left. The gleanings went right into the Ram. Then on to the next house on Commodore. She finished the street that day and moved on to Captain Street.
Tuesday, she was slow getting out of bed again, worrying if she was ill again, fine after breakfast again. She took a lamotrigine too, to be on the safe side. Journal, drain another car (that can went into storage), back to Captain Street. Lunch and eight (!) houses later, she had dinner, took the dirty dishes to the ocean, washed them, washed herself, brought them home, lithium, pajamas, nighty-night.
Wednesday afternoon, as she finished 201 Captain Street and was about to turn onto Admiral Drive, it finally hit her. She wasn’t ill, and she clearly wasn’t tired. She was bored!
Which made a load of sense. Day 31, now comfortably into September, and she’d been doing the same things for most of the last several days. She’d had no interactions with other people – obviously. She’d been eating from roughly the same limited menu. Before, she’d felt a little lost without a schedule. But now she’d slid to the opposite extreme, and the schedule was everything. Balance. She needed to balance it.
And underneath that was another, more sinister issue: was it worth doing any of this at all? What was the point if she was the only person left? Who was she preserving and documenting and sorting all this for?
She knew she was on shaky ground thinking about that – that kind of process had led to suicidal ideations in the past. Granted, she’d never gone so far as to attempt suicide, not even in her lowest days in high school when she had no meds to fall back on and Mom was nattering at her up one wall, across the ceiling and down the other about why couldn’t she be normal. She’d always worried that if she attempted it, she might succeed. She didn’t want to die – she just wanted the stress to stop.
And why did she never hear the word “ideation” except in connection to suicide? It was like “ensuing” – the only things that ever ensued were chaos, hilarity and kickoffs. Why didn’t anyone ever have hopeful ideations or constructive ideations?
Okay, she’d veered off-topic. Back to the boredom, the ennui. That was another word you could have fun with, ennui, because everything sounded better if you said it in French. Awn-wheeee. It felt kind of fun, like something you’d yell while riding a roller coaster. So much nicer than “bored out of my freaking skull.” But it was still the same feeling. And she needed to do something about it, to get out of the rut before she discovered she couldn’t.
But what?
She pondered that as she resumed going house-to-house up Admiral Drive. And the distraction was helpful, since the third house, 34 Admiral, was the party of five’s. She’d been dreading this, going through her friends’ belongings as if they were strangers. She’d especially been wary of going into Vivi Fifi’s room, where Vivi took her life.
Kelly hadn’t known Vivi suffered from depression – heck, she didn’t know if Vivi had suffered from depression. Maybe she’d just been overwhelmed by the sudden sweeping blow of her friends dying around her. Either way, she might’ve survived if she hadn’t taken those pills. They could’ve met up that first Monday, commiserated, cried on each other’s shoulders, teamed up to tackle creating a life out of this mess. They would’ve had each other to talk to, to bounce ideas off of, to help …
Kelly realized she was pounding her fist on the door jamb of number 34, angry beyond reason. “Blast it, Vivi, why didn’t you just tough it out? I would’ve been here for you! I …” I would’ve had someone besides myself. That was what really ground her gears – okay, maybe Vivi had already contracted it and would’ve croaked a day or two later. But LaSheba’s journal said she was still up and around, not showing any symptoms.
Vivian Pfeifer might still be around today if she hadn’t gobbled fifty-some Vicodin in her despair, or her grief. Which meant Kelly wouldn’t be alone now. Maybe that was selfish. Yeah, it was selfish. But would anyone, even God, blame her for that. “It is not good for man to be alone” – she knew that wasn’t just about Adam and Eve, or marriage. Everybody needed somebody, even bipolar loners like her.
“No use wishing for a different past,” she grumbled. That was one of the first things she’d learned in therapy – you couldn’t change what had happened, or fix it, only learn and grow from it or leave it behind. She had to leave Vivi Fifi and her fateful decision behind too. Even as she was going through the girl’s house.
There was a lot to document at 34 Ad
miral, what with five adult women living there. Clothes in four different sizes – Sarah and Michanne were the same size, and often swapped outfits. A lot of knickknacks. Not too much crud in the fridge, and most of it in plastic or foil, as they all just cooked for themselves unless Leslie was on one of her periodic baking jags. The sink was half full of dirty dishes, which meant someone had missed their turn with the chores. Probably because they’d fallen ill.
This was depressing, and not just because she’d known the people who lived here. She’d worked with three of them, supervised them, watched them grow as young women, mentally prepared for the days they’d get a job elsewhere or get married. She could see twenty years later getting Christmas cards from them or seeing posts on Facebook of them with their kids or on vacations or …
They were young women, happy and vibrant, with their whole lives ahead of them, a contrast to Sayler Beach’s main population of retirees and aging hippies. And now those lives had been snuffed out like a quintet of candles. One week here, the next week gone.
Of course she shed some tears. It was only natural.
She picked up a framed picture from a shelf by the TV. It was of the five of them, their arms around each other’s shoulders, dressed up and ready to head to a party in San Rafael or a night on the town in San Francisco. Sarah ducking and smiling shyly, like she was being dragooned into it – though Kelly knew she was quietly the biggest instigator of the bunch. Michanne with her perfect coffee-and-cream skin and hourglass figure, for which the others often called her “Beyonce.” Leslie, stocky and butch-looking but the most boy-crazy of the lot. The Queen LaSheba, the acknowledged leader, dark and buxom with her natural bursting out like spring around her head.
And on the far left, grinning like the Cheshire cat, Vivi. Her pale skin, sharp-featured face and curly red hair made her look like a Gaelic Michelle Wolf. She would be laughing the loudest wherever they went, probably drinking the most too, and would be awake long after the others (even Sarah or Michanne, who alternated as the designated driver) had conked out. The life of the party.
Kelly sighed, her shoulders slumping, and took the picture with her when she left. Something to remember them by, even if remembering did bring her low.
She kept going, stopping for lunch and another lamotrigine before she got even lower. But keeping busy, as usual, helped bolster her spirits. One house, then another. Write down the basics, clean out the garbage, pack up the salvageable food, check to see if there was anything she wanted to take with her for her own use (there usually wasn’t). Haul the trash and food to the store and put them in their appropriate spots.
An inconvenience – after today’s collection, she was out of room in the Bog of Eternal Stench. She’d need to let it compact some and find a new dumping ground. Thankfully, she knew the Spinnaker Inn had its own, smaller dumpster. And she’d snapped up one other thing from the party of five’s house: Sarah’s bolt cutters, which she’d used for a couple of more invasive protests. The next time she had to get rid of refuse, it would be the easiest thing to snap the lock on the enclosure and use their receptacle.
But as she went home for dinner, she hadn’t made any headway on the boredom issue. Thirty-one days now since she’d gotten sick. Twenty-four since she recovered. She’d taken days off, yes, but except for the two trips east she hadn’t really gotten out of town. She needed to … to what? To break out of the trance? To get away from it all? To …
She mulled that over as she made noodles, with Alfredo sauce from a jar and shrimp and spinach from cans. There had to be some way, if only for a day, to mix it up a little, to have responsibility-free, consequence-free fun, to forget for a while her self-imposed responsibilities as lone caretaker of the planet (or at least of this corner of it). But nothing was coming readily to mind.
As she ate, she took out the picture of the party of five. What would they do? Well, they would go party. That hadn’t been a great attraction for her even before – she was never the social butterfly even during manic episodes. And now, where could she go to party, and who could she party with? Nowhere and nobody, it seemed. So that wasn’t an option.
She kept chewing on it as she took the laundry to the ocean and scrubbed it and herself. As she worked on the last pillowcase, her clothes drying on the rock, she looked out at the water, stretching to the horizon. Once you went past the little peninsula where the Nature Conservancy building was, there was nothing due west but seawater until you hit Japan six thousand miles away. She could swim out there until her arms and legs tired, and then …
“Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, STOP IT!” she told herself. She didn’t want to die, she wanted to live. She just didn’t like being alone and stuck. She needed to fix her life, not end it.
That brought her back to how. Fun. When was the last time she’d really, really enjoyed something besides a meal? Leave aside the head rushes of challenging wild or semi-wild animals – those weren’t fun so much as exciting in an oh-God-I-might-die-or-lose-a-limb way. Likewise the feelings of accomplishment at jobs well done – that was normal working and living. She was aiming for joy here.
That’s when she remembered the deer. Just standing there by the highway, minding their own business, as peaceful and pastoral a scene as she’d ever experienced. It did her heart good just to think about it now. Was there any way to get a whole day of that?
The answer was obvious: of course there was. Just go out into the wilderness, keep quiet and watch. And Sayler Beach was surrounded by miles of wilderness on all sides. Like houses and canned food, she had more untouched land than she knew what to do with.
That night, after hanging up the laundry to dry, she made plans. The next morning, after breakfast, journaling and siphoning, she packed a backpack with food, drink and Toni Matchick’s binoculars, hopped in the Hyundai and headed for the hills. Specifically, north on the Shoreline Highway until she got to the hairpin where it went sideways searching for a way to ford Lone Tree Creek. Where it finally did, she parked and began hiking north, following the creek upstream.
No houses out there to search – no man-made structures at all, just the natural beauty of Mount Tamalpais State Park. Trees and flowers and brush. She listened to the birdsong, the breezes through the branches, the crunch and shift of leaf litter under her hiking boots. She felt the ferns brushing against her canvas pants (she’d stepped in poison ivy once – never again) and the occasional bit of leaf or bark dropping on her hat. She smelled the fertile scents of growth, decay and more growth.
Finally she found a climbable tree near a small pond, went up about ten feet, settled into a comfortable position on a large branch against the trunk and broke out the binoculars. Time to enjoy nature in earnest.
She saw deer walking by, browsing and drinking before moving on. She saw raccoons and gray foxes toddling along the ground, seeking smaller prey. Squirrels jumped and scurried through the overgrowth and along tree branches. One even came within two feet of her and she froze, not wanting to scare it off. It hung around for a few minutes, twitching hyperactively and looking every which way, until it scampered off to points unknown.
A sleepy-looking mountain lion wandered by at one point, and she squinted at it, trying to determine if it was the same one she’d yelled at last week. But she had no way of telling – it wasn’t like she’d tagged it or anything. A family of coyotes – two adults, three smaller, passed too, acting nervous – maybe they smelled her up in the tree and were worried she’d attack. Later she heard a squeal from somewhere downstream and figured they’d caught dinner.
She even saw a bear at a great distance, bashing through the foliage like a bull in a photosynthesizing china shop. She’d been told that all the bears had left the park (or been hunted out of it) before it was founded almost a hundred years ago. It looked like one was venturing back now. Nature reclaiming its own, once again. Good for her.
When she noticed the sun going down, Kelly climbed out of the tree and headed back, feeling lighter of he
art and sharper of brain. Yep, that was just the thing. She’d have to remember that whenever she felt she was being ground down by her life or what passed for it. She could get away from it all in pretty much every direction expect toward the ocean – it would be a waste to not take advantage.
Dinner tasted better when she got back, and her bath was more refreshing – not to mention soothing, since she’d forgotten insect repellent and her hands and neck were festooned with bug bites. Next time, she’d slather some on. Because there would absolutely be a next time, when she needed it. Humanity save for her might be toast, but the rest of the world was ticking along, and watching it do so made her feel better. Life, uh, finds a way, as Jeff Goldblum put it. She was alive; she’d find a way too.
19
POINT
The day off in the great outdoors worked – Kelly woke up Friday ready to give the world a smile and a hearty “heigh-ho.” In fact, she felt silly enough that she actually did – she walked to her front door, opened it, smiled and waved and yelled, “HEIGH-HO!”