I smile and step toward the door. He blocks me. His body seems to cast a shadow on the entire room. We stand there in silence. I tap my foot. If there were no ARNS would we be kissing right now?
If there were no ARNS we wouldn’t be standing here at all.
“We should go eat,” I say.
“Yeah. We should.”
Neither of us moves.
“Guys! Dinner!” Phoebe’s voice from the hall. It’s like a pinprick on the face of a balloon. We turn and go.
We sit down around G’s oval-shaped table. A massive tray of bubbling-hot lasagna rests in the center. My mouth actually waters.
G pours herself a glass of wine and offers the bottle around the table. “I know you’re all underage, but I won’t tell if you don’t.” She winks at me.
“This looks amazing,” Ben marvels.
“I was lucky to have gotten groceries before everyone started to hoard food. I’m trying to make it last, but this is a special occasion.” G looks at Phoebe, whose eyes are trying to disappear into her plate.
Kamal pauses, holding a spatula. “I hate to ask this, but is it safe to eat?”
“Well, it’s been cooking in a four-hundred-degree oven for over an hour, so I would think so. And I don’t believe I’m sick.”
“Good enough.” We lift our masks and dig in. It’s a relief to see everyone’s faces.
“This is absolutely delicious. Cheers.” Kamal raises his glass. “To G.” We all join him in the toast. The wine in my throat feels rough and comforting, like an old wool sweater. I sneak another look at my watch, still hoping for something from Nam.
“Have you seen any violence around here?” Ben asks.
“Not really, not yet. The town has been extremely sane. It’s a college town, you know, so people are rational, liberal. A lot of Christians here. Real Christians, social justice, take-care-of-your-neighbor kind of Christians. There’s a sense of community.” G sips her wine. “But elsewhere … my neighbor’s son has apparently joined one of those militias they’re talking about on the news. It’s terrifying. They’re armed and they’re scared. Doesn’t get more dangerous than that.”
“Yeah, we met a few of those folks on the way here,” Ben mutters.
G glances at Phoebe, who’s slowly chewing her food, eyes down. “I’ve got an electric fence around my property from when Kelly and Barb were pups. We raised show dogs back then. So as long as the electricity holds, I should be fine.”
“You and?” I ask.
G smiles and her whole face lights up. “Me and Donald, my husband.” Ben, Kamal, and I wait for her to say more. “Didn’t Phoebe tell you about Donald?” We look at each other, shaking our heads.
“Oh.” She takes a breath. “Donald died in Blackout. Along with his brother and his brother’s wife. Phoebe’s parents.” I hear this like the dull thud of a pile driver. A brown filter spreads over everything.
“Excuse me.” Phoebe stands and leaves the table.
“Phoebe—” G calls after her.
“I’m fine,” she snaps and disappears into the hall.
G twists the stem of her wineglass between her fingers. “She was seventeen and wanted to finish high school in Boston, go to Harvard. So she stayed there, lived with a friend’s family. Her sister, Juliette, came here to live with me.” She stops and looks out the window at the moon rising over the tree line. “Until today, I hadn’t seen her in five years. I never had children of my own.”
“Where is Juliette?” I ask, half-afraid to hear the answer.
G turns to me. “She woke up in the night with a fever. And a cough, they said. Just finished freshman year at OSU and was supposed to come home for the summer. The school sent her to the hospital, but their quarantine was full—” She breaks off. She takes a long sip of her wine. I taste the sweetness of honey on my tongue. “Once they saw she was sick, they wouldn’t let me bring her home. They said she had to go there.”
I grip the edge of the table. “Where?” I need to know. It’s like the details of Juliette’s story will tell me something about my dad.
“There’s an empty Walmart outside Columbus. They’ve turned it into a hospital, if you can call it that. I don’t know what to call it. It’s … I begged them to let me take her home, but they threatened to have me arrested. She was taken up there this morning. And now I’m waiting for news.” She tries to sound upbeat as she catches a tear with her napkin.
I want to tell her that I know how she feels, that my dad is in one of those places, that I’m scared to death. But I won’t get the words out without crumbling. And I can’t crumble. Instead, I polish off my glass of wine and pour another.
“You know, Donald was a man of faith. He never feared death,” she continues. “I like to think that’s why he was the one who died. He was ready on some level. I wasn’t. I’m not.”
“How long were you married?” asks Kamal. I look at him. What does he think about death, or marriage?
“Thirty years,” she says. “Nearly. Would’ve been thirty years that June. I was able to fulfill my wedding vows—until death, we did not part. I’m very glad about that.”
“You sound so strong,” I blurt out.
“I’ve had time. There’s a pain that never leaves. But there are other things, good things. I wouldn’t have had these years with Juliette. The chance to feel like a mother for a while. That’s been a gift.”
I picture my own mother’s face, her dark eyes and serious brow. Then, like the glow of a firefly, the image disappears. I stand up. I grab my plate and stop. “Should we each clear our own?” I ask.
“Might as well,” G replies. “But just leave everything in the sink. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
“I cannot allow you to wash dishes after making that fantastic meal,” Kamal says. He puts his mask back on.
“Please,” she says. “I need something to do to fill my time. Otherwise I’ll just sit around and worry.”
We pile the dishes in the sink and go into the living room. We get comfortable on the mismatched couches and chairs. The dogs settle at G’s feet. They look alert. I feel safer with them there.
“Do you think Phoebe’s all right?” Ben asks as G turns on the news.
“This is all a lot for her.” G glances down the hall. “She cut us off completely when her parents died. I think it was easier for her to pretend we had all died. When I told her about Juliette, I really wasn’t sure she’d come.”
“I’ll check on her,” I say. I get up and head down the hall.
“Second door on the left,” G calls.
I arrive at the basement door and open it slowly.
“Phoebe?” I call down.
“Yeah?” Her voice sounds distant. I go down and find her lying on a cot, looking at her tablet.
“Hey,” I say. I try to sound unimposing.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“We finished dinner.”
“Great.” Her eyes remain buried in her screen.
“It was good to eat food.” I shift from one foot to the other.
Finally she sits up and looks at me. “So she told you the whole story, I guess?”
“I don’t know if it’s the whole story. She told us about your parents. And your sister. I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t kill them.” She shoots me a cold look, daring me to stay. I don’t move. “Regrets are like, I don’t know, they’re like roaches,” she says. “Even if you crush them under your foot, you can’t be sure there aren’t a million more behind the walls, you know? It makes it hard to sleep at night.”
I flash again to my father’s hand on the hospital door, to the time when I was five and told him I loved my mother more than I loved him, to when I never said anything about his letter of amends. I hear a clicking sound. I lean against the banister.
“I’m new to regret,” I offer. “Or, I’m new to confronting the things I regret. I never thought I regretted anything until this. I guess I always assumed there would be time to
fix things or change them. But death makes going back impossible.”
“Yup,” she says. “Did Nam respond?”
“Not yet.”
“He will.” She returns her gaze to her tablet and I awkwardly turn to leave. “Thomas Bell just released a video,” she says. “You’re up for his Fellowship, right?”
“Yeah.” I turn back.
“What did you think? When you met him?”
“I thought he hated me,” I reply.
“I didn’t ask what he thought of you. I asked what you thought of him.”
I smile. “I don’t think I’ve actually asked myself that.”
“Well, you should,” she says.
“I thought he was a disconnected, arrogant weirdo,” I say after a moment.
Phoebe laughs. “There you go.”
“But I couldn’t help liking him.”
“Yeah. People seem to like him. Or hate him.” She turns the tablet and I kneel down next to her.
“Not too close,” she warns. I scoot back. She taps Play and an image of Bell fills the screen. He’s in blue, like always, lit up against the night sky behind him. City lights twinkle in the distance. The picture is swaying slightly.
“Greetings from the Pacific Ocean,” he begins. “I find it useful to step off steady ground regularly. To experience my foundation rocking underneath me. I do this to remind myself that in order to enjoy stability, I must create it. I must employ the thing we as humans are unique to possess—my rational mind. Without that, I am adrift.”
I look over at Phoebe. Was she always so cool, so tough? Or did she become that way because her parents died?
“Without seeming too mysterious,” Bell continues, “I say this because it speaks to the bigger problem we are facing. We feel out of control and we want stability to return. Our foundation is rocking and our government is not bringing us to safety. But I am one step closer to putting a stop to this disease.”
“Shit,” I whisper as hope rises in my chest and the smell of roses fills my head.
“I’m here to announce that the Avarshina Lab has identified the infectious agent at the root of ARNS. It is a type of previously unseen enterovirus, similar to polio, perhaps a derivative. We hope to know more soon. Until then, I ask you to find your own steady ground. Stay safe. Stay strong. Stay hopeful and know that I am doing all I can.” And he’s gone.
My heart is pounding. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“I think so,” Phoebe replies. “Can’t stop it if they don’t know what it is.” She clicks the tablet off. “His voice is so weird, though. He sounds like a mouse.”
I laugh. “Oh my God, yes!”
“Is that how he sounds in person?” she asks.
“Totally. And so quiet. Like, you can barely hear him.”
“Well, at least he’s brilliant,” she says. “I watch him and I think, he’s going to stop all this. He’s actually going to do it.”
I study her face for a moment. “Hey, can I tell you something?” I ask. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“Of course.”
“They offered it to me. The Fellowship.”
“No shit! That’s amazing.”
“It is, right?” I let myself feel that joy for a second. An orange glow. “I haven’t really gotten to think about it. My best friend got sick right after I found out, then my dad. And my mom doesn’t want me to go, so.”
“You have to go.”
“I know.”
“You have to.” The look in her eyes is like antigravity. It makes me feel like I could do anything, like I could levitate.
“Do you want to come back upstairs and hang out?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Okay. See you in the morning, then.”
“Yeah,” she says. I turn to go. “Hey, Lu?”
“Yeah?”
“You saved my life today. Twice. Thank you.”
Another wave of orange. I smile. “Goodnight.”
I come back up. The others are glued to FLN. “Bell’s ID’ed the virus,” Ben says.
“Yeah, I just saw it too.” I sit down. The death toll is up to a quarter million and there’s no sign of it slowing down.
“But this is not good,” Kamal mutters.
“How’s Phoebe?” G whispers to me.
“She’s all right. Going to sleep, I think.” I stand back up. “And so am I, actually.”
“Sleep well, sweetheart,” G says.
I stop by a wall of G’s family photographs on the way back to my room. Time and space captured in a constellation of frames—one woman’s personal universe.
There’s one of G and a man. It must be Donald. They’re standing at dusk, in that particular blue light the setting sun leaves behind. They’re high on a cliff. Ocean waves rip a jagged curve along the shore beneath.
Their young faces look straight at the camera. They are real and ghostlike both, evaporating with the slow decay of the photograph itself. They are vulnerable—not afraid to show their feelings—that word transporting me back to the planetarium and my mother’s secret lover.
I close my eyes and picture my mother’s face that day as she introduced us to Dan. Her expression was hopeful and open. Her skin seemed to glow. I see her there, not as my mother but as a woman with her own unmet desires. I miss her, the old her.
“I love that one,” G says, appearing next to me. “We spent the summers on Cape Cod when Donald was teaching in Boston. We had a little cottage on a cliff. Phoebe and Juliette and their parents would visit. Those days were among the happiest of my life.” She stares at the picture.
“I’m sorry about Donald, and about Juliette,” I say. “And I hate just saying ‘I’m sorry’ to everyone because it doesn’t capture at all what I mean, which is that it’s awful beyond words and I wish you’d never had to go through any of it.”
“Thank you. I sense you know what it’s like.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. I relax into her for just a second. My mouth fills with that sweet honey taste. I tap my foot and swallow. “Nothing prepares you for life except living,” she says.
I nod. “Goodnight,” I reply. “And thank you. For everything.” I walk swiftly back to the bedroom, to the cool, hidden safety of the darkness.
CHAPTER 10
I wake to my phone vibrating on the bedside table. It’s early, still dark. It takes me a second to recall where I am and why. I’ve got a new message from Nam. A rush of heat at the sight of his name.
Tell me, it says. Who am I? I don’t have an answer. I hear Phoebe’s words: “Don’t be so literal.” I move to the open window and breathe in the inky sky and sprawling green grass. I scan the edges of the yard. I catch a glimpse of G’s electric fence.
You’re me, I write.
Meaning? he replies.
First tell me something. Tell me about the video.
I made the video, he says.
Why? I ask.
To help.
Is it real?
Define real?
I smile. Good question. Why are you hiding who you are?
Your turn, he writes. Explain what you meant by “I am you.”
I look back at the fence. It’s like the gas mask—an instrument of safety that makes me feel less safe.
I meant that we seem to think alike. I like puzzles too. There’s a long pause. I wish Phoebe were here.
Yes, he writes.
I take one last shot. Why me?
Because I gather you are interested in the way reality is constructed.
Constructed?
Yes.
My fingers hover over my screen. The brightening sky seems to be blotting out whatever ability I have to be clever. A hiss seeps in through the window. I don’t know what else to say.
The chat dissolves. Fuck.
I sit in the stillness. I hone in on the birds outside until they drown out the imagined sound of failure. I Google Evans B. again. There’s that photo of her on the conference website. I stare at it for a long t
ime.
I wake up to the sun pouring in. My phone is still in my hand and Phoebe is sitting on the opposite bed, fully dressed.
“We have to go to Columbus,” she announces.
“Okay,” I mumble, immediately distracted by a text from my mother begging me to call. Nothing more from Nam.
“I want to see the camp, see what’s really going on, get some images and video we can post.” She looks out at the lawn. “And I need to see my sister.” This is the last thing I want to do. I think back to the hospital in Brooklyn and the woman covered in blood, to Janine, to my dad. Yellow waves as my palms begin to sweat.
I sit up and plant my feet on the floor. “It’s controlled by the military. They’ll never let us in.”
“I’ll figure out a way.”
I want to argue with her, but the look in her eyes tells me I will lose.
I turn to my phone. I scroll back through Nam’s messages. Maybe in the daylight I’ll see something I didn’t in the dark.
“You get something from Nam?” Phoebe asks.
I look back at her. As I open my mouth to answer, a blue pulse and the feeling of an invisible rope around my neck. All that comes out is a cough.
“You all right?” she asks.
I swallow. “Yeah. Sorry. What did you say?”
“I was asking about Nam.”
“Oh. Yeah, nothing,” I lie. I’m not sure why.
We meet Kamal and Ben in the kitchen. The heavenly smell of toasting bread and coffee almost makes everything seem normal. Ben’s wearing his Brooklyn Nets jersey. It makes me think of home and I decide to finally text my mom: We’re safe. That’s all I can manage.
G approaches Phoebe gently. “How are you doing, my sweet girl?”
“I’m okay,” she replies. “I’m sorry about last night. I guess I underestimated how it would feel to see you.”
“I’m just so glad you’re here,” G says.
“I’ve decided I need to see Juliette.”
G bristles. “Darling. Of course you want that. But it’s not a good idea. And they won’t let you see her.” G’s voice trembles. “It’s a quarantine. It’s all soldiers and guns. They don’t want anyone seeing what’s really going on.”
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