by Julia Fierro
Predictably, Nicole warned them about ticks. Leigh imagined fat, bloodsucking ticks clinging to every leaf, waiting to drop on the children, embed in their soft skin and infect them with Lyme’s Disease.
They filed back into the house and up the narrow stairs, stopping in each cramped room of the shabby beach house, which, Nicole informed with an eye roll and a disgusted chuckle, her parents had named Eden. Leigh assumed Nicole’s parents had believed that by decorating their home with eastern Long Island’s famous lighthouses (in the form of wallpaper, soap dispenser, lamps, and even salt and pepper shakers), they’d imbue it with the elegance and status of the Hamptons. She could only hope that Nicole’s parents would remain blissfully ignorant of their lack of taste. Although, with a daughter like Nicole, sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, Leigh was sure their precious lighthouses had been critiqued often. Even then, Nicole served a healthy dose of condemnation.
“And this,” Nicole was saying, “is my parents’ library. The finest collection of Danielle Steel you’ll ever see!”
Leigh knew it must have taken courage for Nicole to invite them here. Nicole, the published novelist. Nicole, with her sophisticated academic friends. Leigh could barely follow some of their pompous Facebook conversations. Nicole, who was elitist about her claim that she was nonelitist. So why had Nicole invited them? It was the equivalent of (Leigh thought with a shudder) stripping naked, revealing every varicose vein and pucker of cellulite. For heaven’s sake, the bathroom reeked of old people’s urine, and the shower curtain was streaked with mold. If this had been her childhood home, her parents, Leigh would have kept her friends far far away.
taking stock
Nicole
Nicole hovered over her laptop in the dim garage that smelled of fertilizer and gasoline. Sweat dripped from her chin onto the keyboard as she searched for a wireless signal, the splinters on her father’s nail-scarred workbench digging into her fleshy forearms. She felt that pulsing restlessness unique to plugged-in life. Those rare occasions you were cut off. Denied access. What if something did happen? Something the TV stations wouldn’t pick up until it was too late. Everyone knew Twitter was the most reliable source these days.
Finally, the five bars in the corner of her laptop screen glowed. She went straight to www.urbanmama.com and posted:
Any updates with this end-of-the-world Web bot thing?
posted 3:37pm
Nicole refreshed the site, her index finger tap-tap-tapping, looking up at the house only when she heard a dull thud or the muted squeal of a child.
Finally, a reply:
—what the hell are you talking about? 3:40pm
A moment of relief. It’s nothing, Nicole thought and even allowed a slow exhale.
But she refreshed the site. Just to be sure.
If only she had left it alone, closed her laptop, put it out of reach, and gone on with the weekend. Because there were more responses. Some anxious, Oh god, I can’t handle anything else. I was at the towers on 9/11 and I saw someone in another post say they were leaving the city, which brought forth multiple posts of what?! and wtf!
Of course, there were the naysayers, the responders who, in their breezy “whatever” tones, dismissed the slightest hint of hysteria.
Okay, conspiracy mom, relax and I bet you were stockpiling water and duct tape during Y2K.
And these rational voices calmed Nicole for a moment, enough that she could post once more. She had to. She had stockpiled supplies for Y2K. She still did. And look at what her single post had created. She owed it to these women to follow through.
Is something terrible going to happen tomorrow? Are these “Web bot” rumors true?
posted 3:48pm
(5 replies)
* * *
—no. relax. 3:50pm
—OMG. No. You’re FINE. 3:51pm
—yes. search Webbot 3:54pm
—can you really be this stupid? 3:56pm
—pay no attention to the fearmongers, sweetie. 3:57pm
Nicole stood in the driveway and searched the windows of the house before popping the trunk of the car.
There they were. The product of months of saving, researching, and purchasing, then organizing and reorganizing, until she was certain she had the best Go Bags in the tristate area, even more thorough than the official OEM (Office of Emergency Management) Ready New York! Go Bag.
She began her inventory, checking the items against the NYC.gov Disaster & Preparation Checklist. The iodine tablets, the “Space Emergency Blankets” and first-aid kit, the whistles and toilet paper and plastic plates and utensils, the camping stove and bottles of water and nonperishable food, including twelve cans of gluten-free organic Alphabet O’s from Trader Joe’s, Wyatt’s favorite. She had packed changes of clothes for all three of them and a few toy cars for Wyatt, as well as his lovey, a cuddle-worn blanket named Blue, which he’d given up a few weeks ago after several sleepless nights. There were matches and flashlights and packs of batteries, and an envelope with five hundred dollars cash. A to-go package of tampons. A thick paperback, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The print was so small, she had added a magnifying glass. Not her ideal reading material, but more bang for the buck space-wise.
Nicole’s fingers dragged over each object as if, by touch alone, they imbued her with a kind of protection. A force field, Wyatt might say. Her sweet boy needed to organize the world into two ranks. He was always asking her if so-and-so (the gruff UPS guy, the angry taxi driver) was a good guy or a bad guy.
Entwined with this feeling of safety was self-loathing. How could an intelligent person buy all this crap? Yes, she was neurotic, she thought, as most creatives were, but she was a high-functioning member of society. She paid her bills on time, she made sure her child had all he needed to thrive, she taught at a well-regarded city college where her classes were among the students’ favorites. She was a professor, damnit. The trunk of this car belonged to a militia member of a paranoid fringe cult, not a liberal, educated upper-middle-class mother.
The checklist lay on top of the bags. She’d recently had the single page laminated at a drugstore, but she could see the creases where she had folded it time and time again. In the last few months, it had been massacred by check marks and scribbled notes.
She felt love for this list, which had, in many anxiety-flushed moments, comforted her. Now, in her parents’ driveway, she pressed it to her face and breathed deeply. The plastic was cool against her sunburned cheeks.
The Go Bags had taken her months to complete. First, she had saved the money, then she had spent it, using a PayPal account she had opened in her mother’s name, arranging for the items to be shipped to her parents’ house—$50 for an economy bottle of Cipro antibiotic, $250 worth of gas masks (+ extra charge for child-sized), $100 of Mylar blankets, $185 for the walkie-talkies.
She had scoured the Web each night after Josh and Wyatt had fallen asleep. Her insomnia had worsened in the winter, after the ice and salt had deepened the pothole in front of their building. In the early mornings, when Nicole finally made it to bed—the list of still-needed supplies running like ticker tape through her dream state—every garbage truck rumbling down Union Street felt like a test by a cruel god. Each time a truck hit the pothole, the echo of the metallic shudder flung her into consciousness, into a nightmarish light, the bed trembling under her. It took her a few seconds to realize it was the mellow light of dawn, not the blinding white of a nuclear blast.
She gave the same kind of meticulous attention she had once given to writing her graduate dissertation to her Go Bags. To the precious goods she prayed would help them prevail, not perish, when and if it happened.
She was about to zip the bags when she heard the grinding brakes of an ancient car. An orange-and-white taxi pulled into the sea-pebbled drive, its bumper as rusted as the hinges on the beach house’s shutters.
The taxi door opened, and a red-faced Josh stepped out.
“Honey, you’re here,” Nicole calle
d. She slammed the trunk closed.
Josh walked toward her in an exhausted half limp, his overfull messenger bag—briefcase of the creative world—bouncing against his thigh.
“I’m sorry. I’m late,” he said, breathless. “The train. I had to walk from downtown.”
He doubled over with his hands on his knees, and Nicole wondered if it was an exaggeration, an attempt to guilt her.
Josh took a slow breath, blew it out Lamaze-style, and said, “I was scared you’d be mad if I was late.”
She tried to squash the reflex but couldn’t stop herself. “You know I H-A-T-E it when you say you’re scared of me.”
She smiled. She knew the air must remain conflict-free if Josh was going to tolerate their weekend guests.
“I’ve been calling you for hours,” Josh said. “What’s wrong with the phone?”
“Oh, sorry. One of the kids must have been playing with it.”
He looked at the house, startled, as if seeing the line of cars crowding the driveway for the first time.
“Jesus, I forgot. The playgroup.”
“You said it was okay,” Nicole said, knowing he was just pretending to have forgotten about that weekend. She’d been reminding him for weeks.
“I’m just so exhausted. It would’ve been nice if it were just us.”
There was bloodshot exhaustion in his eyes. He did, she thought, work so hard for them. And she knew he was correct the many times, midargument, he had called her a leech. She also knew that wanting to be selfless, wanting to be a good wife, wasn’t the same as actually being one.
“Did the whole group come?” He looked up at the house and winced.
She guided him up the driveway, pulling away when her hand touched the sweat-soaked dress shirt clinging to his back. She knew that once they were inside, in front of an audience, his protests would subside.
“You can’t invite one and not the others, honey.”
“You said,” he spoke slowly, like a storm gathering, “we needed more family time.”
“It is family time,” she said, hoping the shrug of her shoulders served as an apology. “It’s just that, we’re sharing the time with other families.” She paused, “With the h1n1 stuff and all, I thought it would be good for us—all of us—to get a break from the city.”
This wasn’t necessarily a lie, she thought. At the start of the summer, when the flu numbers had spiked, she had begged Josh to commute to work from Long Island each day, where she and Wyatt, alone and essentially quarantined, would be safe from the flu. Like the Tudors, she remembered thinking, who had fled London for their country mansions every summer to avoid the sweating sickness. Now Nicole was embarrassed by the comparison. Josh had refused, claiming he would barely see Wyatt, he wouldn’t be able to tuck him in at night, and Nicole knew she’d be crazy and cruel to deny her son the hour of sweet prebedtime book reading and lullaby singing with his father, whom Wyatt called his best buddy.
Josh stared at the back door, beyond which rumbled the screeching, chattering, and banging of the children. His brows lifted in what, for a moment, looked to Nicole like fear, sending an arrow of panic through her chest. Josh was her rock, her given in the formula of her life. He’d been there those last ten years to tell her no, nothing bad is happening and yes, everything is okay. If he was worried, she was ten times as worried. Before she could ask him if he was okay, if everything was okay, he opened the door.
As they walked inside, the clamor of family time washed over them. The noise had reached predinner-bullhorn pitch.
Josh’s face shifted into a smile as Wyatt appeared from within the band of boys and galloped to him, yelling, “Daddy! My daddy is here!” He tackled Josh’s knees.
Nicole registered the adoring smiles on the other parents’ faces, and she was able to recognize that this was a happy moment, and she wanted to stop herself from yanking Wyatt away from his father. Truly, she did. She even thought about walking out of the room, running upstairs, locking herself in the bathroom, and lighting up.
But she had to protect Wyatt. Think of the masses of people whom Josh had shared, first, the subway with and, second, the commuter train out to Long Island. Surely, she thought, the number of people increased the odds that at least one of them had the h1n1 virus, and before she knew it, she was gripping Wyatt’s shoulders and lifting him out of Josh’s arms.
“Wyatt, go wash your hands, please,” she said. “Right now.”
When Wyatt rolled his head in protest, she bent over, and whispered, “You don’t want to get sick, do you? You touched Daddy before he changed out of his yucky germy city clothes.”
Wyatt looked down at his hands.
“Daddy?” Wyatt looked to Josh. “But”—he paused before gathering his breath to cry—“I don’t want to wash my hands!”
Nicole could feel the mommies moving away from the three of them, toward the dining table. All except for Tiffany, who plopped onto the sofa. Nicole knew Tiffany would find her later, to ask if Nicole wanted to talk about what happened earlier.
“Relax, Nic,” Josh said with a laugh that was clearly for the benefit of their guests.
Nicole pointed to his messenger bag sitting in the middle of her mother’s heirloom afghan.
“Was that on the floor of the train car?”
The voice she heard belonged to a caricature of herself, like a character in a sitcom with a laugh track. But this was important. To think of the filth! Of man, beast and/or machine; the dog shit, hocked-up spit and garbage juice that thrived in the grooved floor of the subway car.
Josh moved his bag to the floor.
Harper stepped forward, her fists on her hips.
“Take turns, guys,” Harper said, and shook a finger at Nicole. “Be nice.”
An intervention Nicole was both annoyed by (that bossy little…) and grateful for, especially when the room broke into laughter, nodding heads, and smiles that said well how about that!
“You little peacemaker,” Tiffany sang as she ushered the little girl away.
Tenzin intoned from the corner where she was building a castle made of blocks with the twins. “As the great Dalai Lama himself says,” she began, and Nicole almost whirled around to tell Tenzin not to hurl another Dalai Lama quote her way, but Leigh saved her by calling, “Tenzin, can you please take Charlotte for a sec?”
The roomful of parents seemed to sigh in unison. Their obvious collective relief made Nicole feel like more of a fool. One who had to be rescued by a three-year-old and an infant.
“Daddy?” Wyatt said, then paused, thinking, his lash-fringed eyes looking upward. “You said, Daddy, we could go to the carousel this weekend.”
“I did,” Josh said, smoothing Wyatt’s hair. “Mommy wanted to come to the beach instead.”
The sting of the passive-aggressive dig made Nicole worry—not for the first time—about how Wyatt would soon be old enough to see how his mommy and daddy used him as a weapon in the tiny battles they waged against each other.
She interrupted with a cheery exclamation, “And here you are, Wyatt. With all your best buddies!”
“Daddy’s my best buddy,” Wyatt said, pouting. “Now is the carousel weekend.”
“The carousel will be there when we get back, Wy,” Josh said. “It’ll be there all fall. And we’ll go for the whole day. And ride it twenty times. Okay?”
Nicole imagined the carousel in all its renovated glory, the wooden horses with their flowing manes and muscled bodies, and behind it, lower Manhattan in apocalyptic smolder.
She waited until Josh was busy brushing his cheek against the cheeks of each of the mommies in pretend kisses, then she went into the kitchen, and dug the sliver of Xanax from her pocket. It was only a half of a pill, she told herself. She downed it with a swig of flat root beer, the crumbling pill bitter on her tongue.
She snapped the rubber band on her wrist five times. The quick bite of the rubber catching her arm hairs refocused her.
Then she washed her hands.
Nicole had read and reread the CDC’s guidelines on how to wash to avoid disease. Hot water. As hot as she could stand. Wash top and bottom, between fingers, under nails, and up your wrists. Due to the overuse of sanitizers, the site had informed, the Supergerms’ favorite hiding place is the wrists. Finally, you wiped your hands with a towel, and then—this was the tricky part—used the towel to turn off the faucet.
Josh walked into the kitchen and stopped in front of her, his hands on his hips in a stance she had always disliked because it felt effeminate, and she wanted him to be manly. Rocklike. Unbreakable. She also expected him to banish her daily worries with maternal-style tenderness—a hypocrisy he had pointed out in their couples’ therapy. Since they’d met at college, so many years ago, Josh had been the first and only person who could put Nicole almost at ease, who made her feel almost safe, and despite his gentle voice that was just a note too high, he’d always had muscular forearms, with thick cords of vein that wriggled under his skin and indicated pumping blood and strength.
“Nic,” Josh said, his voice nearly a whisper. His chin was tucked to his chest, and his large brown eyes (Wyatt’s eyes, she thought) looked up at her—one part concern, one part inspection.
He stepped closer and took her in his arms and into the warmth of his body. Its solidity was a sudden comfort. His smell, which had always reminded her of cinnamon, made her feel as if she was home, made her realize how exhausted she was and how badly she wanted him to lift her, like a sleeping child, and carry her upstairs to the bedroom, where she would lie next to him, sleep comalike all night and through the next day. Dead to the mommies and daddies waiting below. Dead to the relentless forward momentum of the world. Oh, how she wished she could die and come back to life after the doomsday warning had expired. Because it wasn’t the end she feared, so much as the waiting for it not to happen.