the apocalypses
apocalypse #1
Now Tor has stormed out to go chop wood. We’re fighting. An asteroid the size of seven houses is headed toward Earth. I discovered this yesterday, as did he. We are astronomers. We live at the top of a mountain in an undisclosed location. We have our telescopes, and our makeshift observatory. We enjoy the thinness of the air and the absolute quality of the silence.
When the asteroid arrives, the air surrounding it will become ten times hotter than the surface of the Sun. Wherever it hits, all life in a 150-mile radius will be obliterated. Light brighter than any light. Darkness moving thousands of miles per hour. Fires. Volcanoes. Tsunamis. A billion and a half people killed the first day. For many years, no sunlight will reach the surface of the earth.
I want to march down the mountain—when was the last time I descended? Five years ago? Twelve? Thirty?—and tell them. I’ll tell their newspapers and magazines, their TVs and Internet. They ought to know they have nine days left. I like to think of them dancing in the streets, drinking $500 bottles of wine, making love, breaking the windows of stores, eating mangoes and caviar, staying up all night in the amusement parks, tossing rose petals down from roller coasters.
Tor prefers to imagine them going about their lovely mundane little lives, getting upset about foolish things and getting happy about even more foolish things. He thinks we ought to let them do whatever it is they do, fight and cry and fuck and be poor and be rich and irk out their nine final days until, much to their surprise, they die. Meanwhile, up here on the mountain, we will have slow sex late in the afternoon, and will feast on our store of dried chokecherries, and on the ninth day will lie out in the glen, waiting.
I cannot tell which of us is kinder. But here I am, filling the flask with water, tying the sheepskin around me, lacing up my boots.
apocalypse #2
All their lives they’ve heard the song: She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes. Sometimes it sounds boisterous, sometimes mournful. Anyhow, they settle at the foot of the mountain to wait for her. They bring their chickens, their children, their rose-seeds. They wait a long time. The chickens are slaughtered, and the chickens’ great-great-great-grandchickens. The roses climb up and over fences. In the restaurant, the man at table 14 sings She’ll be comin’ round the mountain . He has blessed many people by buying them beer. Who is she? they ask him. He shuffles off to the bathroom, his response lost beneath the music of his urination. Things start to change—blue-breasted robins appear, people mistake fallen gloves for dead rats, trails of sugar lead red ants into the courthouse—and it seems that she’ll be coming soon. Everyone goes out to the meadow. They shade their eyes, look up at the mountain. Entrepreneurs sell hotdogs, balloons, sarsaparilla. Speculations fly left and right.
It’ll be the Queen, holding the first potato from the New World in a lace handkerchief, one crisp bite taken, arrived here to begin a Potato Empire! It’ll be a unicorn accompanied by six wild white horses, the unicorn saber-toothed and violent yet obedient to any command given by any child under the age of five! It’ll be an invisible bride wearing a thirty-foot veil; when the young ladies reach for the fascinating fabric, they’ll be transformed into a thirty-foot-long white dragon! It’ll be someone named Mary! Anne! Helen! It’ll be a humanoid seven feet tall, her body glowing like gold! It’ll be a naked woman holding a gleaming apple! It’ll be a girl as mild as spring but for the smell of scotch on her breath! It’ll be an old woman in an enormous white hat! It’ll be a fire, a blizzard, a tornado, a bomb!
The children get heatstroke. The roses get dusty. The Ferris wheel gets stuck. The man at table 14 leaves table 14. Weary, we sit down on the trampled field to wait.
apocalypse #3
When the subway fire begins, we keep our cool, as we’ve been trained. We don’t remove our sunglasses. We don’t take deep breaths in an attempt to figure out the source of the smoke. We stand on the subway platform, breathing shallowly, pretending we’re merely smelling urine and old gum, chatting among ourselves, avoiding the topic of the fire that’s raging somewhere nearby. We don’t think about how many stairs stand between us and the outside. We don’t entertain the possibility of claustrophobia. If there were a problem, the firemen would be here. If there were a problem, announcements would blare over the loudspeakers. There are no firemen and no announcements: ergo, we keep our cool. This is the logic in which the city has trained us. Disregard the smoke stinging your eyes, disregard the flicker of orange down the tunnel, disregard your claustrophobic heart. Don’t sweat on your lovely fabrics.
But. What if one cannot control oneself? One rushes up the first flight of stairs, screaming, embarrassing oneself a thousand times over yet screaming, shrieking, and others join, following behind, letting their beautiful sandals fall off their feet, tearing their delicate garments, clawing at one another, up the second flight, the third, thousands moving upward, stampeding, sunglasses clattering to cement, up and up, arriving wild-eyed and sweaty on the street, panting in the glorious heat of the earth, trees, breeze, ice-cream truck—and then, shamefully, returning to the subway station, back into the intestines of the city, where the trains are running normally and no firemen have appeared, where the smell of smoke has dissipated and no flames can be seen.
Anticipating this trajectory, we stay right where we are, cool as cucumbers on the subway platform, weteyed and trembling behind our indifferent sunglasses, feeling a small sense of utter failure, not unlike the sense of failure felt upon using the air-conditioner for the first time each season, or upon seeing four turtles lining a concrete log in the city park, joyously stretching their silly chins up to the sun.
apocalypse #4
It’s a terrible idea, yet we go ahead with it. We’ve seen disturbing signs: two chairs perched precariously on the edge of a city rooftop, as though someone is trying hard to recreate a home in a time when the idea of home is threatened. It seems that many catastrophic things are on the verge of happening. We’re poor and have nothing, yet the possibility of the world falling apart disturbs us nearly as much as it disturbs the rich. Unlike them, we don’t own a vehicle that could be used as a getaway car when chaos comes—but also unlike them, we’re footloose, ferocious, ready to leave immediately, not moored anywhere by anything, not worried about precious objects of silver and whalebone. We buy $15.00 wigs and drugstore sunglasses. We vaguely recall distant relatives who live in other, greener places. They dress countrified and are extremely generous. We met them once at someone’s wedding; they were wearing corduroy! We pitied and admired their authenticity. Now we envision ourselves driving down the road to their farm. They’re on the porch with lemonade. The bedroom they give us has a rag rug, a foggy mirror, a daisy. We milk cows.
Having served on grand juries, we know just how violent our city can be. We have fewer qualms than we used to about one brief crime, a few seconds of snarling aggression. Here, women get robbed on their doorsteps. Boys hide under beds in which their mothers are raped, in bedrooms from which their mother’s jewels are stolen. People use bottles as weapons, and teeth. They fail to say “Excuse me.” Truly it is time to leave. Our wigs sit lopsided on our heads. Our hands are bronze with blood. The discarded knife slices the oily river. Our hearts are resilient. They rise up with the twinkling birds of morning that dart over the highway. These birds seem to think they’re already in the countryside.
The countryside—the countryside—the countryside consists of a concrete barn, a tiny trailer, a field filled with shit.
apocalypse #5
This is what happened: Your mother was sitting on the porch. It was August. The night of light. Everyone hung candles in silk globes on the gingerbread roofs of their cottages. Small kids ran around burning themselves with sparklers. Big kids shared one cigarette, an orange pinprick beyond the pond.
The cottages blazed from the inside too, lamps in living rooms illuminating gingersnaps glistening with sugar. Great-great-grandmothers’ crystal bo
wls hosted radiant gumdrops. The punch glowed with its own pink light. A group of gay boys wandered among the cottages, singing sunny songs from a lighter era.
The oldest man in the world had been honored that night. They let him light the first candle, and then let him sit in the rocking chair where he sat for ten hours every day. He had things to tell people, yes he did, yessir, but the light had stolen his voice.
My darling, you who were not there, it wasn’t difficult to be happy then. So much less difficult than usual. I found the darkest place, right beside the lilac bush, and lingered there to catch the last of the light before it got swallowed up by the thick fragrant black of the woods.
Your mother sat on the porch with two other old women. They all had red skin and flowerdy dresses. They looked as though they could answer any question in the world. I could think of a hundred I wanted to ask. But then the gay boys came by. More punch had to be made, and the seventh batch of gingersnaps pulled from the oven.
It was just then—as your mother held up the bowl of gumdrops for the gay boys, as the littlest kid discovered my hiding spot, as the older kids returned chewing gum—that lightning struck. Drawn by the many sources of light illuminating the cottages that night, it came down, trying to match our brightness with its brightness, it struck the roof of your mother’s cottage, my darling, and everything everything everything began to burn.
apocalypse #6
Now that everything’s on fire and there’s no water anywhere, the violinist is the firemen’s only hope. As he plays, his violin produces water. Using the smallest screws, they attach their hose to his instrument. Radiant orange flames stretch up fifteen feet, twenty. Tchaikovsky. Water starts to emerge from the hose. A drip. Then a stream, a torrent. The firemen attack the fire.
It’s unclear to everyone whether the violinist is a guest or a prisoner. He’s permitted to sleep four hours each night, in a protective concrete tomb in the graveyard. He’s gotta sleep, the firemen agree. While he sleeps the fire gains ground. The firemen begin to feel hopeless. They wake him and give him a PowerBar—such a precious resource now, but remember how they used to inhale them during high-school football season? But hell. Who wants to remember. The smell of tackles ripping up a damp field. Grass and fog. Their sons will never know. There are no autumn football fields (woodsmoke, apples) in the skyscrapers to which families have retreated, claustrophobic but alive. Safe. The firemen get angry, thinking these thoughts, and perhaps are somewhat rough leading the violinist back toward the fire. The fire is red and yellow and green and orange and blue and purple and white. Like bonfires in the woods after the games. Their future wives clinging to them. Look at those colors! the girls whispered, their skin hot and coppery.
The violinist has also been remembering. His parents, his friends, etc., the memories anyone would have. Nobody notices the slight slowing of his miraculous fingers. Violin lessons in a room that smelled of mothballs and raisins. Then, eventually, her. Hands hovering above piano keys. How dear she was. Sometimes crying for no reason. Sometimes flinging herself into his arms. Rolling dough into perfect spheres to make gingersnaps. Mournfully rubbing her uterus. Standing in the yard with a teacup as the fire approached. That’s all.
The violinist drops his violin and walks away. Hey! the firemen shout. Come back! Stop! Hey! You!
apocalypse #7
The first sign of the impending apocalypse is that people start smoking cigarettes in the subway. Before, cops with gleaming badges would have materialized. But now? Everyone smokes, for we know our lives will be short no matter what. Subway cars fill with the delicate fog of cigarette smoke. It swirls overhead, makes us lightheaded, reminds us of those faraway days when cigarettes were legal in bars and smoke was a magic substance through which you could view dark, fascinating scenes—a woman leaning against a wall, drinking a golden liquid.
When the heart of the apocalypse beats right above us, we grab cartons of cigarettes and carry them underground. The subway is the final stronghold in the shattering city. We bring tuxedos and party dresses and booze and crystal and heirloom jewelry. When we get hungry, we eat things out of cans, but we don’t get hungry much. We get drunk. We get smoky. There are, of course, moments of repulsion—issues concerning, for instance, the disposal of human waste.
But moreover: knowing we shall die, we’re desperate for joy. We measure time by the number of dresses the women go through. “I’ve been partying for seven dresses,” they report. We’ll run out of cigarettes someday, yes, and booze, and even dresses, but our amassed resources are quite astonishing. The unreliable subway lights force us to rely on candles—how romantic we all look in the tremulous flame—but then sometimes the electricity flashes on, and we all cheer, drink deeply, throw glasses on the floor, divine tinkle of shattering crystal. Somebody turns up the battery-powered music and we’re the best people in the world, carefree, mystically enshrouded in cigarette smoke, our voices rich as money. It’s dark down here, and warm, like the nightclubs we always dreamed of.
When we emerge, old, pale, sick, the world is all tar and steam. We scream promises to the mustard sky: if we find one single blade of grass, we will redeem ourselves, we will change our life, we will change our life.
apocalypse #8
An extremely normal man walks past a park bench, a stoplight, a pigeon, a dog, etc. So certain is he of these objects that he can think about other things as he walks, which is why he fails to notice when the world becomes paper; he’s agonizing about something in his briefcase.
Only as the snowflakes fall more thickly does he realize they’re not snowflakes at all but rather scraps of paper. He looks up to locate the delinquents responsible for this prank . . . and finds that the trees are flat, two-dimensional, made of brown paper. The sky beyond has no depth. He sits on the park bench to relieve his trembling legs; it crumples beneath him, throwing him onto the stiff, papery grass. The pigeon takes flight, flapping its impossible paper wings. The stoplight changes: a circle of red paper miraculously replaced by a circle of green, as though large, powerful fingers switched them while he blinked. The dog is now a paper dog. As it runs toward him through the falling snow, its fur sounds like the pages of a book being flipped. This begs the question—and he looks down at his hands. They are indeed made of paper, carefully—even tenderly—cut into the proper shape. The dog sniffles kindly at his paper shoes.
The wind strengthens. It sucks up the grass. Piece by piece, it yanks the dog’s paper fur off its body. Soon the dog is just half an ear, two legs, and a tail taped to a stick. The trees blow away. A panel of the sky blows away, leaving a rectangular gap beyond which emptiness can be seen. The man holds tight to himself. Another panel of the sky vanishes, revealing more emptiness. Coming apart at the, he thinks, but never completes the thought, for his arms are pulled off, his head, his—and soon all that remains of the entire world is a few pieces of wood, awkwardly nailed together to resemble the shape of the human body, floating in the universe.
the helens
helen #1
A young woman sits in a room, thinking of all the women named Helen Phillips who have ever existed. Many, many, many of them are dead. She would like to line them all up in a row. The young woman in the room is named Helen Phillips.
Someone once said to her: You ought to write more about people who are middle-aged, and also people who are old.
She recently discovered that the saddest obituaries are the obituaries of old women who lived long, happy, satisfying lives and are mourned by husbands, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. These are the obituaries that bring tears to the eyes of young wives. It does not make sense that these are the saddest obituaries; and yet.
The young woman leaves the room and walks out into a meadow of brilliantly green grass. Footpaths wind through this meadow, and in the middle of the meadow there is a white pavilion, and in the middle of this white pavilion there is a fountain, and this fountain makes the loveliest, quietest sound. There are many, many, ma
ny women walking around the meadow. All of these women wear large and fabulous hats in different shades of white. As Helen Phillips walks among the women, they slowly turn to her, and their faces are bright beneath their beautiful white hats, and their eyes aren’t bloodshot. “I am Helen Phillips,” each woman says before turning away again, and then adds, “I am 87” or “64” or “93” or “72” or “101,” yet they all look as though they are twenty-five. Suddenly, Helen Phillips notices that she has a large and wonderful hat on her head; but she is not yet ready for such a hat.
And Yet They Were Happy Page 13