“Wait, let me get you some water.” I walked back to the kitchen and returned with a glass. “Would you like to sit up?”
She shook her head. She leaned to the side and managed to drink some water like a bird, tipping her head back. “I don’t remember much. I remember the path going up and up and up. I remember hiding. I don’t know how I did it.” Her eyes went momentarily wild.
“I wish we knew more about it,” I said, more to myself than to her. “I wish I could remember something.”
She coughed again. “When I left your brother, he was at the very bottom. The very bottom.” The darkness in her eyes shifted to sadness, the way a sunny day can suddenly dim.
I leaned toward her. Again I was taken by her beauty, her vulnerability.
“I wanted to bring him with me,” she said. She licked her lips, and they, too, were soft, healing. Tears formed in her eyes. I leaned closer. “But he wouldn’t come. He was too afraid.”
Something about her courage latched on and stirred up a longing in me. I moved to kiss her cheek at the same moment she turned to look up at me, and our mouths came together. She was warm, and she kissed me back. I felt a rush of confusion and the soft delight of intimacy.
I see him kneeling on a mound of rock, and he looks like he’s been there for a hundred years. His clothes are tattered, and when he looks up, his eyes are wild. I wonder if he’s sane anymore—there’s something about him that looks missing, vacant. I want to walk toward him, but something is between us, something is keeping us apart.
This vision was quick, like a stabbing pain. I leaned back in my chair, shocked, existing on some other plane.
“You should go get him,” she whispered. “You could convince him to follow you out.”
“I can’t go down there on my own,” I murmured, trying to catch my breath. My heart was pounding. I wanted to kiss her again but knew I shouldn’t. I thought of Miho. What was I doing?
“You wouldn’t have to go alone,” she said, and her voice was relaxing, mesmerizing, convincing. “You have friends here who would go with you if you asked them. If you all went together, you would be safe.”
“I couldn’t do that,” I said, but I didn’t sound convincing, not even to myself. Would they do that? Would they come with me? Maybe the horrible ones waiting on the other side wouldn’t expect us. Maybe we could sneak in unobserved and bring back Adam. Safely. All of us together.
My voice emerged empty, distracted. “If you want to get cleaned up, there’s a bath in there.” I pointed mechanically toward the bathroom no bigger than a closet.
I stood up. I had to get out, take a walk, clear my head. I moved to the door, but when I got there I stopped and turned. “You never told me your name.”
But she was already asleep.
“You never told me your name,” I said again, this time in a whisper. I stared at her placid face, my hand on the doorknob. I wanted to stay, but I left.
IN THE MIDDLE of that dark night, Miho’s house became the new center of our small universe. Misha and Circe sat in the soft grass outside her front door, talking earnestly, quietly. Miss B walked in circles around the stone patio not far away, every so often looking down toward the house. As I walked up, John and Po passed by.
“Where are you guys going?” I asked, worried for a moment that they were leaving too.
“We’re going for wood,” John said.
“You’ll have to go a long way,” I warned them. “I was at the second tree and there wasn’t much left.”
“We’ll check it out,” Po said dismissively. There was an edge to his voice that seemed unwarranted.
“Everything okay?” I asked their backs as they walked away, but they didn’t reply.
“Should they be going out there right now, in the dark?” I asked Misha as she came up beside me. “I can’t even see the first tree.”
She shrugged. “What can we do?” Her voice was so slight that her words melted away.
I sighed. “Anything new in there?”
“The girl woke up a bit ago,” Circe said. She clenched her jaw. “I’ve been hounding Abe for an update. I’d love to know what they’re talking about.”
Misha nodded in agreement.
“Why would someone come from the east?” I asked. “After all this time, after all of these people leaving, why come back?”
Could it be there wasn’t anything on the other side of the plains? What if the promised haven didn’t even exist?
But if there wasn’t anything over there, why didn’t more people come back, and sooner? Were the people over there sending for help?
Miho’s face appeared at the door. “There you are,” she said to me in a calm, kind voice. “Thanks for the book. It’s helping her relax.”
“Is she okay?” Misha asked.
Miho nodded. “She’s sleeping now.”
Abe came out, walking past Miho. “Why don’t you all get some sleep,” he suggested. “There’s not much else going on here right now. Let’s meet at the patio in the morning. We’ll give you an update.”
“Sleep? Abe . . .” Circe replied, clearly ready to interrogate him about the woman, but he interrupted her with a tired voice.
“Circe, please. We’re all tired. Let’s talk in the morning.”
“Do we have that long?” she asked.
He stared at her for a moment. “In the morning, Circe.”
“The guys went out for wood,” I told him. “I think they’ll have to go out to the third or fourth tree.”
“I wish they hadn’t done that. Listen, let’s all stick together until tomorrow, okay? Stay in the village. Stay together. I’ll keep the fire going to make sure John and Po can find their way back.”
The women glanced at each other nervously.
“Can I stay with you?” Misha asked Circe.
Circe nodded as Miss B came over.
“Miss B, we’re having a slumber party,” Misha said, smiling, trying to lighten the mood. “You want to stay with me at Circe’s tonight?”
“And sleep on that godforsaken sofa of hers? No thank you, ma’am. I will enjoy my own bed quite well, thank you.”
Everyone laughed, and for a moment the air felt more breathable.
“Well,” Misha said, “can we at least walk you home?”
“Of course.”
The three women walked up the lonely greenway into the darkness. They walked slowly, accommodating Miss B’s easy pace. I made a mental list of where everyone was: Miss B at her own house; Misha and Circe at Circe’s house; John and Po on an unadvised wood run; Abe and Miho in the house with the girl. Who was I missing? I was convinced I was missing someone.
Oh, of course. Mary. But she was gone, walking east, somewhere in the dark, maybe at the fourth or fifth tree by now if she had walked straight, if she had found her way.
I turned to walk home, wondering if the woman in my house had fallen asleep for the night, but Abe called my name.
I turned around. He motioned for me to come back to Miho’s door. “You need to come in. We have to talk.”
THREE LAMPS LIT the inside of Miho’s house, and their softness caused a seed of homesickness to rise again. I loved our town, and I was heartbroken at how empty it had become. There were times we had picnicked out by the first tree, well over a hundred of us. Maybe even two hundred at one point. People had shared houses in those days. The greenway had always been full of people—barely green, in fact, usually trampled to dust by all of the coming and going, the visiting. There had been the constant sound of laughter and even, sometimes late at night, singing.
I could barely see the girl lying on the small couch against the wall, resting in the shadows. I took a step toward her, but Abe held out his arm like a small barrier. I stopped.
“Wait,” he said, motioning toward the table where Miho sat, her face in her hands. She looked up at us, her eyes tired, more tired than I’d ever seen them, and she gave me a sad, uncertain smile. She reached out her hand to me, and I crosse
d the space and took it with a pang of guilt, remembering how I had kissed the woman in my house. The woman without a name.
Abe pulled out a chair for me and I sat in it. I glanced around the table, but the sketch was gone, as was the note with the question about my brother. How could Miho possibly know what my brother looked like? Why was she waiting for him?
The three of us sat still for a few moments, saying nothing.
Abe broke the silence. “She can’t speak,” he said quietly, and I could tell he was trying to keep our words from reaching the girl.
“What?” I asked.
“Or won’t,” he clarified. “Can’t or won’t.”
“This isn’t good,” Miho whispered to herself, as if it was the only thing she had been saying since the girl arrived. “This isn’t good.”
Abe seemed to consider disagreeing, then thought better of it. “We don’t know what it means,” he said to me.
“But everyone’s already freaking out,” Miho said. “What will they do when they find out she can’t talk? What if she can’t talk because of something that happened to her on the other side of the plains?”
I knew immediately what she was implying—that the other mountain, the faraway respite we had heard so much about, might simply be a mirror image of the one we had escaped from. Another place of torment. If that was true, we were trapped in between them, mountains to the east, mountains to the west. Where could we go?
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Abe said firmly.
“But that’s the whole point,” I said, anger or cynicism or despair rising in my voice. Or all three. “We don’t know anything. She’s here, and we still don’t know anything. What could be more discouraging than that?”
We sat in the quiet. The lamp in the kitchen burned down too low and winked out, and the shadows that formed in its wake felt like living things drawing closer, predators closing in.
I felt the key in my pocket. I gathered myself. It was time to tell Abe and Miho the truth.
But then I heard a sound from the sofa. The girl was sitting up, staring at me with eyes wide open. She was either terrified of me or surprised to see me, and neither response made any sense.
“Hi,” I said to her, glancing nervously over at Abe. He nodded at me, encouraging me to keep going. I realized he was hoping we might get her to say something, to explain why she had come back.
She didn’t reply, so I tried something else. “Are you okay? Would you like something to eat?”
She stood up and limped toward me.
Again I thought of how far she must have come, the toll the journey must have taken on her small body. She moved more fully into the light, and when I saw her face, I felt the tug of familiarity, but it was a flash, here and gone. There were tears in her eyes as she raised her hand to touch my face, but just like that, the light went out of her eyes. Her hand fell back to her side, her mouth closed into a straight line, and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She turned and went back to the sofa, curling up under the blanket with her narrow back facing us.
I looked over at Abe and Miho. We stared at each other. No one knew what to say.
What I didn’t say was that I had experienced this before. I knew that old familiar feeling of someone looking at me, thinking they recognized me, only to apologize and walk away.
It happens often when you’re a twin.
So, she knew my brother. I considered telling Abe and Miho this revelation, but it became another nameless thing.
“Tomorrow morning,” Abe said, weariness in his voice, “let’s meet up at the patio. We’ll tell the others everything we know.”
“We don’t know anything,” Miho replied, but it wasn’t a protest of any kind, simply a statement of fact.
“And that’s what we’ll tell them.”
MY HOUSE WAS dark and quiet, and there was an undercurrent of something I couldn’t identify, like a high-pitched sound I heard for an instant and then lost track of. I assumed the woman was still sleeping in my bed, and I felt guilty because of my recent treasons, so I didn’t even go back into the room. I didn’t trust myself. Why should I? No one should trust me. Not anymore.
I pulled the armchair over to the back doors and opened them, sat in the chair, and stared out over the plains. Since it was night I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear the wind moving madly through the grass. It whipped in the door and stirred the air in the house, so I got up, found a blanket, and sat back down.
I fell asleep, drifting into a shallow snooze. I tossed and turned all night. I even watched the sky brighten in fits and starts as I slept and woke up, slept and woke up. Finally, as light took over the morning, I found a place of deep sleep.
When I woke up, I had it. Another memory. One that filled me with dread and a deep, deep sadness.
11 A Real Shame
I SAW THE sunlight glaring off the windshield and felt the warm summer air gusting through my passenger-side window. My arm rested on the window ledge and my chin was propped on my forearm. I stared out at the passing fields and it gave me an empty feeling. The wind blew my hair around as we drove through a cloud of dust, the specks rising up and stinging my face and eyes.
I could feel the resentment of my father, who was boiling in the driver’s seat of the car. I was old enough to drive, but if he was in the car, he was driving. On that particular trip, he was a tornado of pent-up energy, twitching and biting his fingernails and muttering the beginnings of sentences that never came to fruition. I was sixteen, and he was afraid I was about to let him down.
Finally, he managed to actually say something, real words, and he had to shout to be heard above the wind rushing through the open windows. “I don’t care what happened. He’s your brother.” His words simmered there in the air, spitting hot, before being swept out of the car. We left them behind, or at least I wanted to leave them behind. But words have a way of keeping up.
The car carried us around bends and over bridges, and for a moment I was a child again and pretended we were launching into space. I closed my eyes and felt the darkness around me, the earth moving away faster and faster, the encroaching stillness of space and the pinpricks of stars all around. I felt like I was floating, and I had to catch my breath when I looked down and saw nothingness for all eternity. The earth became a tiny blue dot, remote, and I felt a great sense of freedom.
But my imagination could only take me a certain distance from reality, and when the car stopped abruptly and my father shut it off, I had to open my eyes. We were at my high school. He pulled violently on the parking brake, even though the car had come to rest on flat ground. I wondered if you could break the parking brake by pulling on it too hard. He might pull the handle right out of the car and carry it with him into the principal’s office.
“C’mon,” he growled.
As we crawled from the car, I knew a couple of things.
I knew my father believed you should never rat out your brother—never, never, not for any reason.
I knew we were going inside so I could tell a lie.
We crossed the baking pavement. My father treated the handle of the front door much the same as he had treated the parking brake. We entered the air-conditioned lobby, and the cold air clung to the sweat on my forehead, under my arms, on the small of my back. I followed my father as he plunged through door after door, never knocking, never waiting.
Then, the door to Principal Stevens’s office.
“How can I—” his assistant began, but my father ignored her and pushed through the door.
I followed, my shoulders hunched over apologetically. I stared at the floor tiles.
“Gentlemen,” Principal Stevens said, unfazed by my father’s entrance. “Have a seat.”
My father paused, as if he was considering the most brazen way to reject any seat ever offered to him by this no-good principal, but he scowled and sat. I sat beside him. In the remaining seat sat a police officer.
Principal Stevens looked across the desk at
us. “As you know, Jo Sayers has accused your son of . . .” He hesitated, weighing his words. “Of violating her at a party three months ago.”
“Why’d she wait so long?” my father hissed.
“I’m sure we can sort all this out,” Principal Stevens said, somehow managing to remain completely removed from my father’s spite.
My dad glared over at the officer. “What’s he doing here?”
“He’s here to collect your son’s statement and make sure there are no . . . inconsistencies.”
We lived in a small town, one that didn’t give too much standing to things like Miranda rights or the right to have an attorney present.
“Boy?” the police officer said, staring at me.
“I was with my brother all night,” I said quietly.
“Which night?” the officer asked.
“The night Jo claims he . . . was with her.”
“That’s right,” my father muttered. It was the closest thing to encouraging me that I had ever heard slip from his mouth.
“A few kids say they saw him at the party,” the officer said. His voice was neither skeptical nor believing.
I glanced at the principal. I had the sense that this was a performance they had all created, and all I had to do was play my part.
“I heard there was a lot of alcohol there.” I shrugged, staring back at the floor. “Easy mistake to make.”
“This isn’t just any violation,” the officer said, a sternness entering his voice. “This is rape, boy.”
I didn’t reply.
“Where were you boys, if not at the party?” Principal Stevens asked in a completely unconcerned voice, but he did lean over his desk toward me.
“Camping. Sir. Up at the state park. We left right after school and didn’t come back for two nights. I was with him the whole time.”
“You sure?” the police officer asked.
I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
The principal leaned back, and it was clear he was immensely relieved. “We don’t need a good boy to be kept from graduating, not over something like this,” he said. “Thank you, Dan. Officer?”
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