‘I’ll sit too,’ Eve says helpfully, and does.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rosaline says, and hates herself for apologizing where she shouldn’t.
‘You’re tired.’
‘It’s tiring,’ Rosaline admits. Then, because she’s too tired to skirt around the issue, ‘It’s not right. He isn’t right. Hasn’t been in a long time, Eve.’
Except for a blink, in profile, Eve doesn’t react.
‘Please,’ Rosaline insists. ‘You can help him.’
Eve looks at Rosaline impassively. ‘Really, Rose, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You shouldn’t get so worked up. It’s not healthy.’
‘He isn’t healthy!’ Rosaline fires back. ‘He’s …’ Unable to find the words, she sighs. ‘Soul, he deserves to live a long and happy life, dontcha think?’
‘Of course he does,’ Eve responds coolly. ‘Are you suggesting Soul isn’t a happy boy?’
‘You know that isn’t what I mean.’ Rosaline dashes a blood-hot tear. ‘Jim, I mean. He’s not in a position … so many lives in his hands …’
Eve gets up abruptly. Walks to the blackboard and surveys it with crossed arms.
‘I meant what I said onstage,’ Rosaline tells the dark knot of hair, the sharp shoulders. ‘If there’s somewhere Jim could go for a little whiles and get better, or, well, live out the rest of his days in peace … we could keep things going, I think.’
‘We? ’ Eve says with a pitiless jerk of her eyebrow, which brings Rosaline back to her own pain-wracked body.
‘Well, a committee of us,’ Rosaline downplays. ‘You. Phil, of course …’
Eve turns her back again. ‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘That’s not an option.’
‘Eve, please—’
Over her shoulder, Eve flashes a look of undiluted contempt. Resumes cleaning.
Not crying seems like such an impossible ambition, Rosaline concentrates on crying silently. And, aside from a few sniffles, she succeeds. Once she’s done with the blackboard, Eve puts away her spray-bottle and looks at Rosaline patiently. ‘You’re tired,’ she repeats.
‘Aren’t you?’
Eve bats her eyes and fetches some tissues. ‘No, not really.’ She looks away as Rosaline blows her nose. ‘I guess I’ll rest when my time comes.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like that. You’re young, still. You could have a whole ’nother life without—’
‘I really think you should stop talking now.’
Eve’s eyes, though shinily alert, have a shuttered look. That earlier rosiness is gone, cheeks as pale as a corpse’s. ‘Your poor parents,’ Rosaline says, out of nowhere.
‘I’m sorry.’ Eve looks down. ‘But that’s just the way it is.’
Rosaline shudders, hiccups. In a fury of self-righteousness, she raises herself, attempts a couple of angry steps, but the pain is too much; her body wasn’t built for all-nighters.
‘Rose. You’re struggling,’ Eve says soothingly. ‘Let me—’
‘No,’ Rosaline says firmly. ‘Thank you.’
‘Rose.’ Eve comes to her side. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
Years ago, there’d been a day when Eve had caught her struggling with some boxes in the Temple parking lot. The failure of Rosaline’s body — it’s always the elephant in the room with Eve. It strikes her that she doesn’t like or understand Eve any better than she did that day.
‘The least you can do. Maybe …’ Rosaline sighs, looking at the pale hand hovering before her. ‘… But don’t you want to do more?’
6.
If it weren’t for them being such good, intelligent people, Evelyn would probably smirk at the ironies her parents keep spouting. Like her mother, yawning indulgently over a late breakfast of rice, sweet potato, and pineapple, their final morning in Jonestown. ‘Really, I think we’re going to have to invest in one of those “rainforest relaxation” tapes! I never sleep so well in Berkeley.’
‘You could try unhooking the phone,’ Evelyn suggests; her mother’s attachment to the phone is legendary, the one thing — other than Evelyn — that she has in common with Jim.
‘Those relaxation tapes are cool,’ Sally-Ann enthuses, spearing a hunk of pineapple. ‘But I bet we could make one ourselves. It’d be way more authentic.’
‘I’m sure it will be “authentic”, if you girls are making it,’ their father says. ‘But “relaxing” … I have my doubts.’
‘Ee-ee,’ Sally-Ann chirps. ‘Brep-brep! Krahk-krahk! Bzzz … CAW! ’
They laugh. Soul, who’s been placidly following one of the dogs around, trying to touch the tip of its tail without disturbing it, beams at the commotion and, after considering for a moment, toddles over. ‘Silly Auntie,’ he chastises Sally-Ann.
‘Geez, kid, when did you get so condescending?’ Sally-Ann laughs and pinches Soul’s pudgy brown arm. Soul is an undeniably white child, but he tans easily, like Jim. ‘C’mere, I need to tell you something.’ She lifts one of his hat flaps. ‘Ca … CAW! ’
Soul giggles. Then, at the top of his tiny lungs, shrieks, ‘Ca-CAW! ’
‘Whoa-oh.’ Phil approaches with a nervous look. ‘What have I walked into?’
‘“Rainforest Relaxation”,’ their father answers calmly. ‘A Burne family original.’
‘… Right.’ Phil looks from Evelyn to her mother and Sally-Ann, who are cawing at each other as Soul rushes around the table, flapping like a bird.
‘You’ve known us an entire five days now, Phil,’ Evelyn’s mother pipes up. ‘It’s time you stopped looking so surprised to see us acting like a bunch of crazy coconuts.’
‘I guess Evelyn didn’t prepare me.’ Phil smiles in her general direction, without meeting her eye. Evelyn, not Evie. He clearly hasn’t forgiven her for turning Yolanda over to Jim.
‘Oh, Evie may look perfectly sweet and sane,’ her mother says. ‘But she’s one of us.’
‘One of us, one of us! ’ Sally-Ann chants.
Evelyn feels herself blush. She avoids looking at Phil, but makes room for him at the table. He stays where he is. ‘How’re you liking that pineapple, Tom?’ he asks her father.
‘He loves it,’ her mother responds. ‘Tom’s got the palate of a hummingbird.’
‘Best I ever tasted,’ her father confirms.
‘We’d give you some to smuggle home, but I’m afraid we can’t afford to piss off Customs,’ Phil says good-naturedly. ‘If you want more, though; more of anything—’
‘Mr. Sorensen! I refuse to let you make a glutton of my husband,’ her mother cries in mock-outrage. ‘No. We can’t spend all morning stuffing our faces. It’s our last chance to be obnoxious American tourists, after all.’
Phil laughs. ‘Got any film left?’
‘I’ve got precisely half a roll, and I’m determined to get a clear shot of Antonio.’
Antonio is the resident anteater, a surprisingly evasive fellow. Phil laughs again, and Evelyn can’t help comparing the easy warmth of it with Jim’s high-pitched cackle.
Evelyn is disappointed when Phil doesn’t accompany them on their last walk around the settlement; even more disappointed by her disappointment; even more disappointed, still, when Jim appears and makes a great show of greeting every person they meet, bombarding her father with agricultural projections, taking Soul to the playground and cavorting with exaggerated hoots, claps, and cackles. At midday, they return to the pavilion to wait for their ride to the airstrip, and Phil is there with a packed bag, but so, too, is Mona, who will travel on to Panama to move around some of their finances, and so, too, is Rosaline, whose face is a silent reproach, and Martin Luther and Jimmy Jr. with her parents’ luggage. Conversation doesn’t flow so much as crackle; sentences like radio noise. ‘… I hope you’ll tell the world about us,’ she hears Jim tell her father, faux-humble, but not the actual farewells they exchange before
Jim retreats. ‘Oh, you haven’t seen the last of us!’ she hears her mother cry, flinging her arms around Rosaline, though she wasn’t even aware they were friends. Her father presses her hand and says, ‘No reason we can’t make this trip an annual thing,’ and Sally-Ann loudly interjects, ‘Vicky and Richard the Second, too! If she’s not too much of a New Yawka for us guys …’ (Vicky is on her second marriage, to a second Richard, and working at a publishing house in Manhattan.) At the same time, Soul is demanding attention with the insistence of a fire alarm, Phil-Mom, Phil-Mom, until Evelyn picks him up and asks, ‘What, Solomon Tom?’
Soul points to the red flatbed truck driving up. ‘I spy.’
Rosaline makes herself scarce. Martin Luther and Jimmy Jr. race each other to the truck and throw in the luggage, give Mona a leg-up. Phil tells her parents, ‘Here’s our limo.’
Hugs are exchanged. Soul’s face is plastered with kisses, his pug nose pinched. ‘Don’t grow up too fast, Soul-baby,’ Evelyn’s mother sighs, and Evelyn finds herself wishing for the same: no growth, no passing time, just the world exactly as it is now, down to the blades of grass beneath her feet.
Phil, on the outskirts, seems unsure how to proceed, until Sally-Ann grins and loops her lanky arms around him. ‘Hey, Phil. Don’t let these geezers get lost in Georgetown, okay?’
‘I’ll look after them like they’re my own,’ Phil replies gallantly and turns to Soul. ‘Little King Solomon. Will you be good to all the doggies while I’m gone?’
‘… Yeah.’ Soul hides his face in Evelyn’s neck in a sudden daze of shyness.
‘Good man. That’s my little Man of Peace. Shalom, Sunny.’ Phil peaces Soul, then pulls the brim of his hat low over his face like a beak, kisses the top of it. In the same sweep of movement, almost incidental, he curves an arm around Evelyn’s back, grazes her cheek.
‘Bye, Evelyn.’
Soul giggles. Evelyn’s insides writhe, a sweet nest of vipers.
She watches Phil jump onto the truck — broad shoulders, tapered waist, perfect ass — and instantly start up a conversation with Mona. Her parents turn to her with broken smiles, and there are more hugs, jokes from Sally-Ann, which she doesn’t hear but knows to laugh at. I will never see my parents again, she thinks, and accepts the thought, as she accepts that she will die someday, probably soon. They board, and she gives Soul to Sally-Ann, who has more energy to run alongside the truck, to shout and wave, to pretend the parting isn’t what it is.
As soon as the truck is out of sight, Soul throws a tantrum.
‘I’ll take him to the nursery,’ Sally-Ann says.
‘I’ll take him,’ Evelyn snaps. ‘Go to work.’
Sally-Ann looks startled, but does as she’s told; saddles Evelyn with the red-faced, recalcitrant tangle of limbs that is her child, her child by Jim.
Though the nursery is closer, and Soul is heavy, Evelyn chooses to take him back to the cabin instead. The cabin is empty, thank God. ‘That’s enough, Solomon Tom,’ she scolds him, setting his thrashing little body on the lower bunk, plonking down beside him. She feels an unexpected tranquility, as if nothing in the world could possibly harm her, ever. Then, like a disemboweling, the feelings come tumbling out — raw, loud, ugly.
Soul stops crying; looks at her in awe. ‘… Little Mother?’
She is bitchy that day. Not just in a routine, getting-things-done way, but in a way that makes her ashamed. Provoking Polly, her pretty young teaching assistant, to tears for doing a poor job with the worksheets. Taking Meyer to task for the slow progress of his Russian classes, until his glasses are foggy, his bald head bowed in defeat. In the haze of late afternoon, catching sight of Lenny Lynden among the newest boatload of people clumped outside the Supply Tent, she makes no effort to wipe the ugh! from her face.
That evening, she and Frida dine alone with Jim in the cabin, spend slow hours going over the new radio codes, before giving him the day’s infraction report, to be referenced during that night’s confrontation. The report is unusually long. Jim is amused by this.
Jim is amused, too, when, seeing Frida touching her pimply jaw, Evelyn remarks snidely, ‘The pigs may not be breeding, but the pustules are.’
But soon after, Jim dismisses Frida with an indulgent smirk, a poorly concealed nod in Evelyn’s direction. ‘Honey, go check in on the Clearing Committee, will you? I’ve got things to discuss with Evelyn.’
Evelyn starts clearing the coffee cups. Obediently, Frida rises from her rattan stool.
‘Alright, Father. See you tonight.’
Evelyn keeps tidying, even after Frida leaves. There are always things to be tidied, living with a man, a toddler, and three women in their twenties. She takes up the vase of withered orchids from Jim’s nightstand. ‘I like those,’ Jim protests, shaking some pills from a bottle on his bookshelf with a sound like one of Soul’s silly rattling toys. Evelyn dumps them in the trash, water and all.
‘You’re not being objective,’ Jim gripes. ‘Do I need to get you to write yourself up?’
‘If you think it’s necessary.’ Evelyn plonks the empty vase on the nightstand.
‘That ain’t what I asked.’ He slouches over to the mirror, puckers his lips and squares his jaw. ‘I don’t need it. I can read your thoughts without seeing ’em on paper.’
‘Well, then, if you ask me, it sounds like a waste of time and resources. We go through enough paper as it is.’ She plucks a sock from the floor, makes for the doorway.
‘Bitch. Look at me when I’m talking.’
Evelyn stops. Leans against the wall with folded arms. Jim keeps peering at his reflection. ‘What do you think? Time for another haircut?’
‘Hardly.’
‘I want to try another rotation with our PR team,’ he changes subject. ‘Two weeks here, two there. People stay too long, they get soft. That’s where we failed with Scarlett.’
It’s easier for him to speak about Terra when he uses her alias.
‘I agree. We need more structure.’
‘Write me up a proposed schedule for the next two months, and don’t waste no paper doing it.’ Jim roams over to the bed, sits, bounces. Stretches out. His bare feet fidget. ‘And I want you over there later this week. Soon as Mona gets back here with Roger.’
‘Fine.’
‘You can work with Phil.’ He rolls onto his side. ‘Fuck him, too, if you want.’
Evelyn doesn’t flinch. Jim continues pragmatically: ‘Phil’s a good socialist. And he’s got a pretty big dick. Not as big as mine, mind, but sizeable.’
‘Phil is a mannequin,’ Evelyn rejoins. ‘Looking into his eyes is like looking at glass.’
‘If you say so, honey … Do what you want. I know you can’t live without me.’
‘I don’t mind dying.’
‘You bitch.’ He laughs. ‘C’mere then and let me blow your brains out.’
Evelyn doesn’t particularly feel like playing games with Jim, but when she sees him fumbling in his nightstand for his .38, she comes to roost on the edge of the bed. He waves the pistol at her. She looks skeptical.
‘Take it,’ he says.
‘I have my own. Thank you.’
‘Take it,’ he repeats. ‘Show me what you can do with it.’
She takes it. Feels the weight of it. Checks that it’s loaded, then points it at her temple.
‘Close your eyes,’ he says. She does, and there’s nothing but a whisper of calm; the disorder of her life, reduced to a single, fulfillable order. After a while, Jim says, ‘Open up.’
She opens her eyes. Sees his pinprick pupils needling her through his dark glasses, and the old questions stir: do you love me? Have I given your life meaning? Would you die for me?
‘Good.’ Jim nods. ‘Other way, now.’
She knows what he means. Scooting closer, she leans across his lap and presses the muzzle to his own dark
temple. He closes his eyes.
Rosaline would want her to the pull the trigger. Rosaline wouldn’t have the courage to pull the trigger herself. Evelyn is not Rosaline. Open your eyes, she thinks, and he does.
‘Good.’ He smiles. ‘Good soldier.’
She hands him the pistol. He returns it to the nightstand, pats her bony hip. She rises. Swinging his legs off the bed, Jim pulls her back to him by the belt of her rather ugly drawstring trousers. ‘That’s how I want it, when my time comes,’ he murmurs. ‘My right hand.’
Evelyn watches him pick up her hand.
‘When they come for me. Cause they’re comin’ …’ His black head tilts from side to side, as if listening for hooves, trumpets. ‘I die with a bang. There’ll be nothin’ left for you to live for. Promise me.’
Whichever way she winds her mind, it is destined to come full circle, to snag on the same small comforts. The dog-whistle of nothingness. The shelf of household poisons. The ghost of herself, reflected in his gaze. There is only one answer, and she knows it.
‘I promise.’
Eve of Destruction
1.
There are mornings, lying in bed in his parents’ mansion in the Berkeley Hills, when Lenny Lynden dreams Jim Jones’s voice in his ear, Jim Jones’s hand reaching under the covers and taking out his cock. Jim tugging at him good-naturedly, talking all the while, until he wakes with damp sheets and a stickiness in his shorts. So ashamed he could die, or maybe kill.
These are the mornings Lenny swims to forget. In the kidney-shaped pool, back and forth, holding his breath, skimming the floor. Swims until the stickiness dissolves and there’s nothing but stinging blue, a nullifying coldness. A woman’s drowned voice, calling his name.
‘Mister Lenny! ’
Lenny doesn’t respond to the woman right away. The older Lenny gets, the slower he is to respond to voices, partly because he has more trouble telling the real ones from the imaginary ones. He stays underwater until his lungs start to burn.
‘Mister Lenny! ’
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