by Andrew Roe
Two elderly women exit the house. The crowd instinctively quiets. A wave of questions ensues. Are the women transformed? Did they get what they’d hoped for? Which one is in need of help—the taller one or the shorter one with the stern brow and glittering earrings, or both? Or are they here for someone else, a grandson with leukemia, a childhood friend almost completely blind, in the final stages of macular degeneration? What was the girl like? Could you tell just by looking at her? But these two ladies, dressed similarly, in stretch slacks and floral print blouses, are not saying: they stare at the ground before them as they solemnly make their way past the hushed onlookers, arm in arm, European style, each doing her best to ease the burden of the other. There is, however, this: they look like something has transpired, spent and worn out, like a great deal of energy has been exerted since they entered the house. Or was it just the heat, the long drive from Fresno or Bakersfield or wherever? Who could say really? No one asks them anything, though. The reverence lasts a while, longer than seems necessary. The crowd soaks up every last drop, it is their primary sustenance at this point, the day lurching onward, and the conversations do not fully resume until the women are far down the sidewalk, trying to remember where they’d parked their car. The line moves forward. A little. A young woman in a wheelchair is next. They have to lift her out of the chair to get her through the front door.
Why didn’t he bring a hat? He wipes his forehead with his sleeve and gazes up at the sun, the sky: clogged with eyesore haze, congested with apocalyptic gunk. That’s what you get inland. No saving ocean breezes here. Mountains veiled behind, vague shapes that have been there for millions of years. They’ve been saying L.A. is no longer the worst, that Houston is the worst, and that the air quality has been improving. That is until this past summer, when there was a triumphant return of the smog. Only they don’t call it smog anymore, because they’re not sure if it’s technically smog or something else. So they’re calling it Abnormal Atmospheric Disruption, or AAD. Might be related to global warming, might be related to El Niño or La Niña, might be an entirely new pattern. They just don’t know. But ever since the summer and well into the fall and now the approaching winter (if you believed there were seasons in L.A.), there have been more frequent reports of people having trouble breathing, passing out on the sidewalk, claiming disorientation and delirium. Donald reminds himself not to inhale too deeply. Take it slow. Who knows what’s out there.
Past midday now, the thick of it, and it’s certifiably sweltering. It’s going to take much longer than he thought. His son and daughter-in-law, currently staying with Patricia, will be wondering where he is. Cassie Solinski is off on another tangent—unprovoked, of course. Vaginal polyps, radiation, date rape drugs. So much that’s wrong with the world, how truly fragile everything is if you only take the time to fully realize. Closing his eyes helps: her voice seems farther away, like a distant radio. After all, he can’t save Cassie, he can’t save her kids or any other hapless participant in her messy life. Heck, he can’t even save his Patricia. He can’t save anyone. Which—and finally he’s getting back to this—is why he’s here. And he’s come this far. It’s about time to take the leap. He can’t leave and turn back now.
Then up at the front of the line, there—someone collapses. Standing, then down in a broken heap. Everyone sees but it takes a while for the sight to register; there’s a delayed reaction, a spell of time when those waiting in line mentally check off the possibilities (the heat? the smog? the girl? millennium madness?), before a woman snaps them out of their collective trance and yells, “Call 9-1-1. Somebody. Call 9-1-1. We got ourselves a situation here.”
15
| Karen |
THEY BRING THE woman inside, put her on the couch in the living room, where her recently arrived across-the-street neighbors (their first names already having slipped her mind) have been sitting, waiting their turn. The woman is unconscious, strands of damp, dark hair pasted to her face, her body limp and uncooperative, carried by a younger man and an older man.
“What happened?” Karen asks.
“We don’t know,” the younger man answers. “She was standing in line, like the rest of us, just standing there, and then all of the sudden she collapsed, she’s on the ground, down for the count. Me and—”
“Donald,” exhales the older man, almost out of breath.
“Me and Donald helped pick her up and brought her in. Figured it would be a good idea to get out of the sun. Ambulance is on its way.”
Karen rushes to the bathroom and wets a towel, places it on the woman’s forehead, which is beaded with trails of perspiration. The woman doesn’t move. She is ghost-white pale. You can see her bra straps. Her shirt untucked and askew, revealing a series of startling stomach folds. Her bra is beige. Karen wants to pull down the woman’s shirt for her, cover her up, something, with all these people looking, but she refrains.
“Probably the heat,” says the older man, Donald, his face and bald head patched with red and sweat. “It’s brutal out there.”
The woman’s mouth remains open. Karen isn’t sure if she’s breathing or not. There’s nothing they can do now except wait for the ambulance. She stares at all the people in her house.
What’s next? Karen wonders. What could possibly happen next?
THAT MORNING, NOT long after getting off the phone with her mother (she’d been calling more frequently, asking about all the media coverage and hinting at the possibility of a visit), Bryce had tried to kiss her. It was an awkward grope of the mouth that drew part cheek, part lip, part nose—and she’d turned away just as she saw it coming, a belated reaction, Bryce’s face hovering close and smelling of aftershave and guy, but it was too late, it was happening, a two-second incident that no doubt would change everything between them. They’d been sitting on the backyard porch, which overlooked a large patch of dirt that was supposed to be a lawn—and that, for the most part, was the extent of the backyard. She was wearing shorts and flip-flops, the cool, early morning air like a balm on her toes, a welcome respite from the heat that would soon dominate the day. Her legs almost touching Bryce’s legs (the porch was narrow, not much of a porch really). He’d been growing his hair out and not shaving regularly. From there in the backyard, the San Gabriels loomed in the distance. You could also see other yards, other houses leading toward the mountains. The patio concrete had tiny tributaries of cracks all over, a lousy job done long before they’d moved in, which they’d never fixed. She’d been staring at the cracks and thinking about John, wondering how often he thought about her, if he was awake yet, wherever he was. And then Bryce leaned in.
“Oh god. I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry.”
Why, she thought later, after breakfast, and after a BBC reporter interviewed her and also informed her that some of the neighbors were considering legal action because of all the disruption her daughter was causing—why did the kiss initially take her by surprise? It shouldn’t have. The constant helping, the taking care of things, the scheduling, the organizing; the shoulder massages. How could she not notice? But really, Bryce could have walked into her bedroom naked and she’d probably say, “Hey Bryce. What time is that guy from the Chicago Sun-Times coming tomorrow?” She felt so removed from her body that such possibilities didn’t even enter her head. Or heart. Or tingly lady parts. Another place, another time: would she have said yes? Would she have turned to him instead of away?
“It’s OK,” she said.
“That was dumb. Man. That was messed up. What was I thinking? I’m so sorry.”
“Really, Bryce. It’s OK.”
“Do you want me to leave? Do you want me out?”
Bryce’s neediness: she was not used to seeing this in a man. Sometimes it was endearing, sometimes she wanted to tell him to buck up, to act like, well, a man. And plus he was so big, so burly, yet so reserved and breakable, which makes it all the more odd to her. John had longer hair, John didn’t shave regularly.
“No I d
on’t want you out. Of course I don’t want you out. And it’s not like if things were different or . . . But my life right now is so . . . You of all people know that . . . there’s just no place even if I wanted, even if I had the, you know, energy. Which I don’t, I so don’t . . . and, I’m married . . . Bryce, I’m sorry, too. But I can’t. I just can’t.”
Bryce started moving toward her, then stopped himself.
“I understand,” he said. “I completely understand. It’s just that I get caught up sometimes. I start thinking things in my head, start convincing myself that things are one way when they’re actually another way. I convince myself. I’m sorry.”
“Please stop saying you’re sorry.”
“OK. I do that, I know. Apologize too much.”
Sounds of the couple next door fighting, something about coupons having expired. The sky above was lightening, turning bluish-gray, the clouds looking flawlessly white and sculpted. The other day someone said an angel had appeared in the cloud formations above the house. That night Bryce had showed her an article about it on the Internet. People believed and believed. It wasn’t going to stop.
“Let’s go back inside,” Karen said.
“I fucked up, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t fuck up.”
AND THIS, TOO: Yesterday they arrested someone in Port Angeles, Washington, trying to cross the border from Canada. Customs officials found explosives and timing devices in his car. Said it all could have caused an explosion forty times greater than your average car bomb. The guy’s plan—a guy from Algeria—was to detonate everything at LAX on New Year’s Eve. And there was, of course, the weather, the earthquakes, the computers that would self-destruct. Every day another story, more evidence of some kind of reckoning ahead. Things were happening, it seemed, an intricate converging had been set in motion, and Karen was having a hard time telling if Anabelle was part of that or outside of it all. Or maybe both.
THE PARAMEDIC’S CONCLUSION: heat exhaustion. Just as they all suspected. The smelling salts do the trick and the woman snaps awake and sits up on the couch. She immediately wants to know if they would save her place in line. She’ll be back as soon as possible. This was no big deal. It wouldn’t take long. She didn’t even have health insurance. She’d be in and out in no time. I need to see the girl. Please. It’s about my son. He has this condition. This thing the doctors can’t figure out. They’ve seen specialist after specialist and the bills have been staggering. He’s always tired, distracted. He has no energy. So would you mind terribly while I’m gone to just hold my . . .
“Relax, ma’am,” the paramedic instructs. “We need to get you hydrated. I’m going to start this IV and you’ll feel much better. It’s best if you don’t talk.”
Another paramedic, whom Karen recognizes from the earthquake visit, helps lift the woman into the gurney, and they roughly wheel her outside. Karen follows them out the front door and then watches them push her down the driveway and deposit her in the double-parked ambulance, the now-silent crowd outside watching, too, some doing that sign of the cross thing. There must be forty, fifty people out there, waiting still. With foldable beach chairs. Umbrellas. Blankets. Coolers. In it for the long haul. But Karen decides they need to leave. Now.
“Everyone,” she begins. “Everyone, hello. Can I please have your attention please?”
Heads turn. The crowd collectively surges toward her, gathering around her in a haphazard semicircle, causing Karen to take a step back. She tells herself to speak up. She’s never given a speech before, nothing like this. She doesn’t like crowds or speeches or having to deny people what they want.
“I think that’s going to be it for today. There’s been a lot of excitement and Anabelle needs her rest. I know you’ve been waiting and some of you have come a long way, and I’m sorry about that, but we need some—I think we need a little break here. These past few months have been amazing but it’s been exhausting. Our lives are so different now. Everything is so different now. I’m very sorry. I hope you understand. You can come back tomorrow, if you’d like. Tomorrow is fine. But today we need some rest. Thank you.”
Back inside the house, her neighbor from across the street (Mavis, she now remembers) extends an arm and walks her over to the same couch where the heat-exhausted woman had been. “Sit, dear,” Mavis says. “You look like you’re about ready to collapse yourself. You look like you could use a cookie.”
Someone else brings her water. She drinks. She eats the cookie. Chocolate chip. Fresh. Delicious.
“Thank you,” says Karen.
“Do you want us to go, too?” the older man, Donald, asks.
“No. Please don’t. Why don’t you each have a visit with Anabelle. You’ve all been waiting and so helpful and you’re here. So that’s fine. I hated to do that, to tell everyone to go. But I had to.”
Mavis nods, and she and her husband go first, Karen insisting on showing them to the room, and when she comes back, the other visitors—the older man, the younger man, and a woman with a ponytail and hippieish tie-dye dress—are sitting and eating cookies. Karen apologizes for the state of the house, tells them she wishes she had more food to offer them. They shush her, say don’t even think about it considering all that you do, who has the time when there is . . . And here they gesture with hands, with tilts of the head, in the direction of Anabelle’s room.
The younger man—Ted from Tacoma, wearing a button with Anabelle’s picture on it—explains that he’s on vacation with his family and when he heard about Anabelle before their trip he told his wife that they’d be in Southern California anyway and he would have to come, to see for himself, he had to, it was one of those things you just knew deep in your bones, and his wife and kids went to Disneyland and here he is and sure there was a little familial tension but looking back now he wouldn’t have it any other way. Today has been the most amazing experience, he’s met the most amazing people and heard the most amazing stories. This is the other Magic Kingdom, he concludes.
The older man, who’s quieter than the rest and more formally attired, nervously avoiding eye contact, not as excited, presses the sunburn on his arm, it goes from red to white and back to red again, repeating this several times, and it’s as if he’s enamored by this simple transformation of the human body: red-white-red. The hippie ponytail woman comments on how someone could have used a little sunblock today. And he, the older man, looks caught, his face shading even redder, says yes, he wishes he’d had the wherewithal (a direct quote: “wherewithal”) to remember a hat. He burns easily. Always has. Like his mother and brothers, a hereditary vulnerability; they’d all be lobsters in the summers. This was Pasadena, growing up, before it was developed like today and you could see Mount Wilson all the time and there was one postman for the entire town and believe it or not Pasadena used to be a place where people moved because of the clean air. His skin would burn then peel then burn again. He had to be careful. His wife is always telling him—and then he pauses, and it’s hard to tell if he’s pausing because he realizes he’s kind of rambling and folks are beginning to wonder where this is going, or if—but no, he continues, corrects himself, switches to the past tense, was. His wife was always telling him. So: that was the reason for stopping. Then he stops completely. Sucking breaths. Saying the words is too much. You can tell that this is a man who does not cry often, if ever, let alone in front of people he doesn’t know, and who still adheres to the tears-equal-weakness philosophy, and who quickly wipes them away before they have a chance to trail down his proud, bank-president cheeks. Ted from Tacoma places a priestly hand on the man’s shoulder, keeps it there. I’m all right, Donald assures. I just need a second here, sorry.
The living room is quiet, acknowledging the moment. Karen has witnessed so many similar moments: of people, complete strangers, sharing their grief, their hope. The tray of cookies gets passed around again.
The hippie ponytail woman asks if it’s true that sometimes you can feel an immedia
te jolt when you touch her, the energy and power is that strong.
LATER THAT EVENING, after she has sponge-bathed and prepped Anabelle for the night ahead, Karen calls Bryce.
“Again, Karen, I’m really really sorry about today.”
“It’s OK, Bryce. And I’m not even calling about that. You said you knew someone who worked at the high school who might be able to help us get permission to use the football stadium. For the thing we were talking about, the event.”
“I have a friend who’s a teacher there and also an assistant coach on the football team. He could maybe help.”
“Let’s do it. I want to do it. December 30. It happens to be the one-year anniversary of the accident. We’ll have a big gathering and people can come and make their prayers and do what they need to do and that will be it.”
“What do you mean, that will be it?”
“It will be a big send-off. After that, I’m done. We’re done. Anabelle and I are done.”
“Done?”
“We’re going back to being a mother and daughter again, a family. We’re done.”
NEXT SHE TURNS her attention to the six diehards in the front yard, former strangers who are now chatting away like old college roommates who haven’t seen each other in years, who have either ignored her earlier request that everyone leave or they showed up after the incident. They pass around photos from their wallets and purses, explain genealogies and the diseases afflicting their loved ones. (The overnighters will come later, around midnight, carrying sleeping bags and Igloos and radios, establishing their space and trading stories of their respective journeys here, from near or far.) Then she does what she’s taken to doing lately: inviting the last few visitors in for snacks and drinks. Surprised, delighted, they follow her into the holy house where it all began, past the daily overflow of flowers and balloons and stuffed animals (monkeys, Anabelle’s well-publicized favorite, heavily represented), and past the gauntlet of hallway photographs (and are they wondering about the man with the mustache, is that perhaps the mysterious father we never hear anything about?), and into the kitchen. Tonight there’s not much to choose from, only some Cool Ranch Doritos and the last remnants of a Whitman’s Sampler. But the people are grateful. They feel blessed, she can tell, being shown such generosity in an age of ignoring. And then they turn, with rapt faces, in the direction of Anabelle’s room.