Circling her bony spine and spreading out to her shoulder blades in an expression of emerging joy are dozens of small black birds in flight.
They’re beautiful, beyond beautiful; they’re poignant in a way I haven’t recognized many times in my life. Like a whisper of truth, of freedom and memory. All I want is to touch them. Because I realize now as I look at these birds that Josi has grown so much since those years she and I spent together. There’s something sad in the shift and tilt of her bones, but there’s also something far more aware of the beauty in the world.
I wish she wouldn’t swallow that awareness away so much, living instead in the misery and pain of existence.
“When did you get them done?” I ask her softly.
She looks over her shoulder at me. Seeing her like that is almost painful in its loveliness. “Couple of months ago. For Anthony.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They’re sad.”
I nod, moving closer in the dim rosy light from the bedside lamp. The space between us feels full of memories and longings.
“Your parents are wonderful,” Josi says, and I can hear in her voice a need for family, a simple appreciation of love.
“They’re so lost.”
She’s holding her arms in front of her breasts; I get her an old singlet out of my drawer. She has trouble putting it on with her broken wrist, so I take it and slide it over her head and shoulders, threading through her arms and pulling it down over her tummy. My fingers skim her warm, smooth skin and I feel delirious with the luxury of touching her. I pass her some shorts too.
“Do you have any pictures of Dave?”
I nod, going to my old dresser and feeling a pang to simply be here in the place I grew up. Here are all my old things, my stupid knick-knacks kept by my parents for so many years. My awards and trophies, my old books and toys and teddies and clothes. It’s weird, actually, like stepping back in time to a very confronting period of my life that always seemed to be about finding a space for myself between poverty and skill, family and work. I don’t have any real connection to these things, but the fact that Mom and Dad have kept them makes me feel more nostalgic than the items themselves.
I get an old photo album out of a drawer, and as I pass it to Josi and watch her flick through the pictures I feel a desperate ache for the fragile thing we once shared. In fact, everything I once enjoyed or experienced now seems fragile to me. “I look at all of this,” I tell her softly, the truth spilling out unbidden, “and it’s torturous to me that I threw it away so carelessly, when it was so painfully precious.”
Josephine looks up from the photos and meets my eyes. The singlet and shorts she wears, once mine as a boy, show off her long, bony limbs, the limbs that are filling out more with each day. It is such a relief to me to see her gaining weight, to see her becoming a person again.
Her brown and blue eyes watch me and I feel so helpless, so vulnerable, standing here like the biggest idiot in the world. But it’s in these moments, I think, when you have to be bravest of all.
So I say, “But you, my darling, were the most precious thing of all, the love between us the most fragile. I tried to cherish it, but I was clumsy. And for that I’ll be sorry until the day I die.”
Her eyelids fall shut, and I see tears slip beneath her lashes.
A soft, tender moment lies between us; my eyes follow the lines of her face as though trying to memorize them.
“I want to ask my first question,” she tells me quietly. “You promised to answer me with complete honesty, no matter what.”
“I did.”
Josi opens her eyes. “If I ask you to hold me for tonight, will you be able to let me go in the morning?”
I feel a swelling inside my heart. “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “But I can try.”
She swallows. “Try, then.”
I cross to her and lift the singlet back over her head. We move to the bed and lie down, and then I duck my head to kiss the birds, smoothing my hands and my lips over each one of them. I am as careful as I would be if the creatures were alive or could shatter with one touch.
When I have kissed them all, every one of her ravens, I hold her against me and look into her face. Our legs entwine, hands clasp, gazes lock.
“I love you,” I tell her.
She shakes her head a little. “Just for tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only person on this planet who can destroy me.”
“I would never.”
“You already did.”
My forehead rests against hers. “I didn’t. You’re stronger than you ever were. You just can’t see it yet.”
Josi smiles a little, moving her lips to the crook of my neck. With my free hand I stroke her dark hair.
“The lovely thing between us is gone now,” she says quietly, breaking my heart, “but I’ll miss it every day of my life.”
*
February 9th, 2066
Josephine
Pace wakes me some time in the night and it’s a measure of how tired Luke is that he doesn’t stir even when I disentangle my limbs from his and get up to take Shadow-watch.
She walks with me to the kitchen, where I check the windows for any signs of police or Blood patrols and then sit beside the table. “Get some sleep,” I tell her.
She nods, but doesn’t go anywhere. “I didn’t mean that stuff I said to you,” she says suddenly. “I was just giving you a hard time because when you get pissy you get strong.”
“I know.”
“You’re not helpless and you’re not a freak.”
“Are you in love with me or something?”
She snorts. “Shut up.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my real name.”
Pace shrugs. “We all get to start over at The Inferno.”
She heads into the living room and I sit with Shadow, reaching for his hand, which feels cool to the touch. The night is abruptly too quiet and too still. His unconscious breathing is too soft for me to hear and it makes me uncomfortable.
“You’re not allowed to die,” I say. “You’re not meant to be killable.” I lean my head on the table and press my cheek to his palm. “Not by a stupid drone cop with a stray bullet.”
I can’t help thinking of Luke in his bed, and me in his bed with him. I’ve always been so sure of how people should behave when betrayed or lied to or cheated on. I had this standard … I pitied women who forgave their lovers and fell back in love with them. In my head I urged them to be stronger, to respect themselves more. Lying, to my mind, was selfish and it was cruel.
But I hadn’t yet understood the power of the thing that overtakes you when you fall in love, and what I feel in Luke’s touch is not selfish or cruel. What I feel when he looks at me is neither. It is generous and kind, it’s pleading and sorry and protective. I don’t know how to marry those things that I feel with what I know to be true, which is the simple fact that liars lie and will keep lying.
I’ve no reason to believe anything good about people. They hurt each other, and that’s fact. Love seems to invite betrayal. It implies heartbreak.
Even with everything he’s done, with the impending pain he’s sure to bring me were I to forgive him, it’s the shame, I think, that feels worst of all. The shame of forgiveness. Of valuing myself so little as to yearn for the cruel love of someone who made a fool of me. I do yearn for it, of course I do. But I can’t let myself give in to it.
“Are you a praying kind of person?” a voice asks and I see Luke’s father emerge from the hallway.
“No,” I murmur. “Are you?”
He shuffles in and pulls up a chair to sit beside me. He is a tall man, someone who obviously shared Luke’s stature but now seems hunched and smaller than he once was.
“I used to know the answer to that adamantly,” he says. “I was sure that anyone who put faith or belief in something that couldn’t help or be proved was foolish.”
�
��I don’t see what the point is,” I agree.
“Nor do I. I suppose I’ve simply come to question things a little more than I used to.”
“And does it help you to wonder if there’s a god?”
“No.” He smiles.
“I don’t wonder,” I admit. “If there is, then he’s a cruel God to make us endure a world like this.”
Mr Townsend rises to pour us both a glass of whisky. I watch him, watch his hands shake almost to the point where he can’t pour the drink. I don’t offer to help – I think that would offend him, somehow.
When he hands it to me I look up into his aging face. He is a handsome man, the lines around his eyes and mouth making him no less attractive. He looks like Luke, a little. “Parkinson’s,” he explains with a sad smile.
I sip the whisky, feeling the burn of it go down my throat.
“I don’t know your name,” I say abruptly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Tobias. And you’re Josephine.”
“You taught Luke to box,” I murmur.
“If I hadn’t, someone else would have,” he replies. “He was so restless. Heartbreaking for a parent to watch.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever know. I’m not sure he does.”
“But you loved him anyhow.” It is a question, not framed as one.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, and what it really means is of course.
I swallow. “And Dave?”
Tobias stops a while, swirling his whisky. Eventually he says, like the weariest of all sighs, “My Dave. He was sweet and funny. He was the best of us all.”
And I start to cry because it’s too sad, and I am grieving, suddenly, for this invisible man I never knew, because I love more than anything the man who loved him more than anything.
Tobias takes my hand and gently sort of tugs me so that I’m resting my head on his knees, and he strokes my hair while I cry.
*
The sun is rising as we pack the van. We’d prefer to be taking a different car, but Claire and Tobias’ vehicle is too small to fit all of us, and we don’t want to split up.
Ben and Meredith are still unconscious, but Shadow has woken and according to Claire he hasn’t yet got an infection, which is a great sign.
I feel bone-weary. Nothing actually happened between Luke and I, but even just lying in his arms sent my mind spinning so badly I was hardly able to sleep at all. My wrist aches, but what I haven’t told anyone is that I think it’s already healing itself. It itches in this maddening way and no longer feels as though the bone is snapped. Which for some reason embarrasses me.
“Must have just been sprained,” Luke comments when he redoes my bandage. We are sitting in the kitchen while the three musketeers make sure everything is ready for the trip to the subway. Tobias has organized food and water for us, and Claire’s set us up with a whole lot of painkillers and instructions for Shadow.
“How are your ribs?”
“Sugar, if you think a few broken ribs are enough to bother me, you don’t know Luke Townsend.”
“And if Luke Townsend keeps referring to himself in the third person I might feel inclined to break a few more of his ribs.”
He smiles as he pins the end of my bandage. “Done.”
I use the hand to shake his. It’s a very weird thing to do and I can only blame it on nerves. “Friends?” I ask.
He looks down at our handshake and then up at me. His eyebrows arch as if to point out how idiotic I am. “Sure. Friends. Are we also business partners?”
I wrench my hand from his and blush pink. “Let’s go already.”
I hear him laugh under his breath.
“Get a move on!” Pace shouts from the garage.
Claire and Tobias are waiting by the door for us. I hug them both quickly, wanting to give Luke a moment alone with them.
“Thank you so much,” I say to Claire.
“It’s my job, sweetheart. Well, actually it’s not at all. It’s illegal. But, you know, all in good fun.”
I grin. To Tobias I murmur, “I think you’re right to question. Don’t stop.”
“Only if you’ll do the same,” he smiles, kissing me on the cheek.
“Deal.”
I climb into the back of the van with Will and Shadow, crammed in beside the sleeping Ben and Dr Shaw.
“What are we doing with this woman?” Hal asks from the passenger seat.
“Taking her with us,” I shrug.
“So we’re kidnapping people now?”
“Why not?”
Luke joins us and it takes me one glance to know he feels like absolute crap. There’s a heaviness to his shoulders and mouth I’ve not seen in a long while. He rests his head against the side of the van and orders Pace to drive. She starts the van and begins reversing.
“Stop!” I shout suddenly. The van jerks to a halt halfway out of the garage.
“We have to go or we’re not gonna make the train,” Hal warns.
I open the back door and jump out. “Josi?” Luke calls but I run inside.
Claire and Tobias are hugging in the middle of the living room, but turn to me in surprise. “Did you – ”
“Get in the van,” I tell them. They stare at me blankly. “We’re not leaving you behind,” I say clearly. “It’s ludicrous. Come to the west and be with your son.”
They look at each other, then back at me.
I spread my hands. “What have you got to stay for?”
“We’re cured,” Claire states. “They won’t take us!”
“Trust me. Parents of the second coming will be treated like bloody deities in that place.”
“Can I bring a few things?”
“Yes,” I laugh. “Just hurry up. Go go go!”
When we finally return to the van, I explain, “New recruits.”
“If it’s okay with you,” Tobias hedges.
Luke stares at his parents, then at me, and finally he smiles the best smile I’ve seen him give in years.
Chapter 12
February 9th, 2066
Luke
It is selfish and stupid to take them with us. The west is dangerous, not to mention we could be caught by Bloods at any point on the way. I vowed never to bring them into the storm of my life, and here I am, sucking them right into the heart of it. I know this. But for the first time in years I feel like I can breathe. With the simple act of inviting them along, Josi has basically countered the secret fear I harbored that my parents were gone forever. To me, cured meant dead, essentially. Stripped of a soul, a personality, any kind of truth. Now I’m not sure what it means, but Josi is demanding that we at least explore the idea of life after the cure. With one simple act she has refused to believe that drones aren’t real people, aren’t worth loving or protecting.
She hated them once. As I have always done. Not because it’s their fault. But because they are a product of our ruined world: the proof of humanity’s worst traits. But it was spending a year with a cured psychiatrist that made Josephine understand the complexity of our remaining population.
Which all means, in essence, that I might have a family again.
*
We are stopped at a checkpoint. I refrain from pointing out how idiotic it is that Pace has just driven straight up to it.
“How was I supposed to know it was here?” she hisses.
“Calm down,” I order crisply. “Mom, get in the driver’s seat.”
“What?”
“You’re a nurse. You’re taking supplies to the hospital. They’ll want to check you’re cured.”
There are about a dozen cars in line before us, so Mom climbs into the front seat once Pace and Hal have joined us in the back.
“I don’t even know how to drive this thing,” she points out.
Dad takes that moment to start ripping through the sheet covering Meredith and Ben.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond, and when I catch
sight of his face I know his brain’s completely short-circuited. He tears violently through the sheet, his eyes vacant.
“Hold onto him,” I snap at Hal. “Don’t let him make any noise.”
While Hal grabs hold of my dad’s shaking hands I scramble to the front of the van and perch myself behind Mom, gun pointed out her window. There aren’t any windows in the back so the cops won’t spot me unless they open the doors, and if they do that the game is up anyway and I’ll have to shoot them.
Mom starts giggling hysterically and it makes me feel queasy. I reach through the grill and squeeze her hand tightly. “Listen to my voice,” I tell her. “Take a deep breath and think about rain falling on a tin roof.”
It was always her favorite sound. When I was a kid she told me that it calmed her so deeply she felt like she could dissolve into a puddle on the floor.
Mom’s laughter slowly peters out and soon she is breathing steadily.
“Drive us forward a little,” I tell her gently. “But keep thinking about rain.”
She revs too much and the car lurches into a bunny-hop. We can’t turn the auto-drive on because it responds only to prints and is connected to the network, which means the Bloods would instantly be able to track the stolen car and Mom’s presence in it.
“Easy,” I soothe her. “You’re doing great.”
A glance behind tells me that Dad is wantonly trying to destroy anything he can get his hands on, giving small whimpers of grief. Hal has wrapped his arms around Dad’s middle to limit his movement, and Josi is pinching his fingers. It’s clever, because the physical pain will hopefully ground him in his body and stop his confused emotional centers from firing incorrect responses to stress.
We approach the blockade, only one car remaining in front of us.
Mom jolts the car forward and winds down her window.
“Print please, ma’am,” the police officer says in a bored tone.
Mom lends him her hand so he can take her print, then a prick of her blood. When his tester blinks green he drawls, “Very good. What’s in the van?”
Melancholy: Book Two of The Cure (Omnibus Edition) Page 18