Apocalypse- Year Zero

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  “Just say it. Be honest. You wanted me to be important, so I’d reflect well on you, and now you don’t love me anymore.”

  “Stop it.” The room was dark, but we could hear the shouts of the kid who’d fallen off her Hot Wheels. A scraped knee, it looked like, though I wished it was worse. I wish she’d skinned her whole body, and died. I wished I could wear that skin, and run away, and become someone new. In my mind I saw four riders, all pale except for the blood.

  “I’m a burden to you,” I said. “I ought to just die.”

  My dad’s face got red. The room was so hot now that he was sweating. Not me, though. I’d gotten used to heat. “You’re right, Brigid. You do disappoint me,” he said. “All that bullshit high society. You know what I do for a living. I defend sick people from their landlords. You mother keeps the books for the Special Olympics. We spoiled you like we got spoiled, so that you never had to make decisions based on money. So you’d be free to choose your own lives. But we still set an example, and I always figured you’d come around. You’d get tested by fire, and you’d come through better on the other side, and you’d learn some compassion. You’d learn that not everybody’s as lucky as you. Look at your sister Carolyn - she’s got shit for brains, but she’s a better person than you. Look at Jimmy - he’s so shy he can’t talk on the phone and he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t live the rest of his life alone. Not everybody’s got your gifts. They’re not born smart and privileged and good-looking. I’d have expected you to learn that from all that’s happened. You’re the only person who survived. I’d expect you to have the brains to be happy about that. So yeah, you disappoint me, because you’re taking it lying down. You’re a coward.”

  He pulled the doorknob. The golf clubs rattled against it, and he kicked them out of the way, then stomped out.

  That night, I heard him cough in the bedroom he shared with my mother down the hall. The sound was wracking, painful, and for a moment, I mistook it for weeping. In my shame, my room got so hot that the paper bags holding my Oxycontin smoldered.

  Chapter 13

  Fall Returns

  September 11, 2002. My father knocked on my door. “Happy birthday. We baked you a cake, but you have to come downstairs to eat it.”

  This sounded suspiciously like tough love. I squinted behind my bandages. My physical therapist, with whom I refused to meet, had recently informed he and my mother that if they kept waiting on me, my muscles would atrophy, and I’d become a permanent cripple. By now, the doctors all agreed that I should have been walking. The pain had remitted, too, though my Oxycontin prescription had not. The only thing that prevented me from a normal life, other than my appearance and drug addiction, was my lack of sweat glands, which made my core temperature rise during excess exertion, and could potentially cause brain damage and death. Yes, if not for these few minor impediments, and the infants and parents alike who would probably scream at the sight of my face without bandages, I could be a television weather girl.

  “Get up,” my mother said. She stood behind my father, a compactly built tank of a woman who would eat steak every night, if not for her husband’s cholesterol problem. My father was right: over the last year, her ash blonde hair had gone utterly white.

  “Leave me alone,” I said.

  My dad cleared his throat. His stitch was gone, and I noticed for the first time that the cut on his face had healed into a mound of scar tissue about a centimeter in diameter. My mother shook her head in disappointment. The heat of my room had them both panting. For as long as I’d known them, they’d avoided confrontations. Instead, they’d overlooked or pursed their lips. Most people would call them suckers.

  That time the house burned down was the last and probably only occasion they’d punished me. I’d been seven years old. Like a bully, I’d pushed a little boy off a swing at the local park, then stolen it from him while he’d cried. The kid had been bleeding, his front teeth knocked clean out from the fall. As I’d swung, watching him cry, I’d been terrified, wishing I could take it all back, hoping that by ignoring him, he’d disappear, and no one would notice this terrible thing I’d done.

  The rest of the parents at the park were scandalized. My mother dragged me home by the wrist, block after shameful block, then shoved me into my room and locked the door. The fire started there as I’d lay in my bed. The clothing in my hamper smoldered. I remembering thinking it was because I was so angry - I’d set it with my mind. Then came the flames. I’d wanted to burn the whole house down, not so much for revenge, but to erase what I’d done, and wipe the slate clean.

  My mother was at the hospital, making sure the boy I’d hurt was not seriously injured. My siblings were on play dates. As I sat on my bed, the flames devoured the waxy, yellow child’s-size chair, the Barbie dream house, the walls, and the wood beams holding the house together, until finally, the door I was locked inside cracked open.

  I remember coughing from the smoke. I walked through red flames and half-broken steps, out of the house, where I met the fire fighters, and then my mother, who’d stopped her still-running Camry in the middle of the street.

  “What did you do?” she’d cried.

  I was lucky. The few injuries I got that day, even the third degree burns on the soles of my feet, healed within twenty-four hours. The insurance found no cause, and in the end, blamed faulty wiring.

  We lived with my grandparents in Old Westbury for about a year after that, and that year was a bad one for our family. “Promise me,” my mother said the day we moved back to the small new house on the old lot, a split-level ranch. “Never again.”

  I’d nodded, though neither of us had ever admitted to knowing what we were talking about.

  Funny, I’d forgotten all that. Now though, as they leaned in my steaming doorway, I remembered. Maybe we all did, because they seemed frightened. Like my father said, I’d been born with a lot of gifts, but I always used them wrong.

  “For your birthday, we’re not waiting on you anymore. You have to come to the table and eat with us from now on,” she said.

  I gritted my teeth in a way that reminded me, for the first time in a long while, of Cole. “I hate you,” I said, hating myself as I said it.

  They hovered for a little, the last of an American breed: the happily married Silent Generation more committed to their families than their egos. I fell short of them in every way, and I wondered, as they looked upon me, whether they knew that.

  Eventually, they left. I heard their feet pitter-patter down the stairs, and then the sound of cutlery on cheap Filene’s Basement plates decorated with drawings of ferns.

  I thought of Cole and the perfect life we would have had. My pretty face, which I hadn’t known to be satisfied with. My good life, which I should have cherished. If he saw me here, without skin, would he still love me?

  The silverware kept chattering down the stairs. I don’t know what prompted me. Maybe because I had so few choices left to make, this one, finally framed, became easier.

  I reached for my crutches. On wobbling legs and atrophied muscles, I doubled-caned my way out the door. But my bed-bound days had enervated my muscles. My legs were doughy, and my arms too frail. By the time I got to the stairs, I abandoned my canes and crawled.

  By the time I got to the dining room, I was dragging myself by my arms. Crying, too. Furious that they wouldn’t help me; I wanted my drugs. Furious because I knew myself too well to imagine that I could rise above this.

  Hand-over-hand. Panting. Hot, but without sweat, the fire inside me raged. And underneath all that, it felt good, finally, to be doing something.

  My mother’s gray eyes were wide. My father stopped, then continued chewing his steak, as if I was not there. A place was set for me at the head of the table, the birthday seat, where cream of spinach, baked potatoes, and steak had been served, still steaming.

  I pulled the legs of the chair to hoist myself up, and it fell over. I landed with a thud on my back and rolled. It didn’t hurt as badly as I’
d expected, and my skin didn’t tear.

  My mother jumped up and rush at me.

  “Stop it!” my father called with the voice of misery, like he’d already been defeated, and watching this travesty did not hearten him, but instead proved what a wreck I had become.

  My mother returned to her seat.

  I began to cry on the floor, rolled in a ball. In the background, serendipity: WFUV played Loudon Wainwright’s mockery “Four is the Magic Number.”

  The room was hot, or maybe it was only me. In places, my skin had begun to sweat again. Under my arms; along my hairline. Surprisingly, I could feel the wet beneath my bandages. Drops fell as I righted the chair and hoisted myself up. This time I used the edge of the table and leaned on my legs for leverage. The trick worked. I sat, finally, and looked across at them, left to right, furious enough to smash the plates, claw the food with my hands, shit on the seat through my yellow night gown, and let them clean it. Fuck ‘em and their premature aging and lost Golden Years. I was the one with the problems.

  My father’s eyes watered. My mother clapped happily. “Wonderful!” she said.

  The looks on their faces were wounding. They bored inside me, and the thing I’d kept in a tiny cage, hoping it would die, began to fly. Though I did not allow myself to smile, for the first time in a long time, I was happy. My mother broke into a laugh, relieved and hysterical. “I knew,” she said. “Well, I hoped. I prayed.”

  My father grinned. He covered his eyes for a moment, so I didn’t see the tears. Then he passed me the bread.

  I lifted my knife and fork, but my bandaged fingers could not manipulate them. It occurred to me for the first time that I’d been eating my food with my hands for the last year, like a savage. So I unrolled the gauze on the left hand, very slowly, and then the right.

  “Leaping Jesus,” my mother gasped.

  At first I didn’t understand. But then I realized. My skin was smooth and soft. No scar tissue left. My hands were healed. I waved them in front of my eyes, stunned. On my fourth left finger, my skin bulged where it had grown over the ring.

  My mother came to my side. I nodded as she began to unwind. In my peripheral vision, my father covered his mouth in shock. The feeling was vertigo, everything spinning. I hoped, and prayed, and swore promises to God and the devil alike.

  The air felt good on my skin. Free. “Ooohhh, oooohhh,” my mother moaned, and I was sure the news was bad until I looked. My arms were healed, too.

  I couldn’t stop looking, afraid that if I turned away I’d be disfigured again. “A robe?” my mother asked.

  My father bounded for the stairs as my mother pulled away my nightgown and unwound the rest. Pale and beige skin like leopard spots formed circular patterns all over my body, but the scarring was gone. Naked as a newborn, my skin now had sparse, infinitesimal pores through which tiny blonde hairs sprouted.

  My father draped the robe to cover my modesty. There were no words for this, and so we spoke none. My mother reached for the last bandages over my face, and I shook my head. “No. I’m afraid.”

  I pulled the robe tighter.

  “It’s… It’s a miracle?” my mother asked me, and from her face, she seemed to think I might know.

  I shrugged, and tried to speak, but could not.

  And then we were hugging.

  “Jesus Christ,” my father said.

  Now we were all crying. Happy tears. Sad tears. Every kind of tear. I could feel their good will inside me, fixing all the broken parts. Maybe it was they, who had made me whole again.

  I lifted my fork, and for the first time in a year, sliced into a steak. The best cut of meat I’d ever tasted. “Oh, you’re kidding,” I laughed when my mother brought out the Fudgie The Whale ice cream cake with extra chocolate crunchies. They dimmed the lights and sang.

  “Happy Birthday to you…”

  They went into three stanzas, and as they sang, I remembered the view from the top of the world, firefly lights, and the life I could have lived, juxtaposed against the burning candles marking my twenty-sixth year. For the first time, I remembered how unhappy I’d been. Maybe this new life was a second chance.

  I opened my presents. A pretty silk scarf. Red and long. “I thought,” my father looked down. “For your face. It must get hot. The scarf instead of the bandages.”

  From my mother, blank canvases and a set of oil paints.

  I spent the evening downstairs with them. We watched “Now Voyager,” on Channel 13. Betty Davis cowed in her small bedroom, hiding cigarettes inside tissue paper, and then vamped, reborn with Paul Henried. When I got tired, I walked, and then crawled to bed, and it felt better than flying. Better, in fact, than I could remember ever having felt, even with Cole.

  Chapter 14

  Even Stasis Must Support Itself

  Things changed after that. I started painting again, and signed up for finance classes at Hofstra University, where I’d begin working toward my Master’s Degree the following spring. My older brother came home from Seattle for the month of October, and my little sister drove in from Amityville. As a family, we went to Shea Stadium and saw the Mets play the Blue Jays. Buffeted between so many of them, I didn’t worry that people were looking at the woman with the bandaged face.

  The cold weather came, and the first rule of my new routine was showering each morning, and wearing clothing instead of pajamas. I’d throw down a drop cloth in the den and paint using the Eastern light until noon, then break for lunch and read the paper, or pull a deep hat over my head and go for a walk. After dinner I’d read, all the while plotting the things I would do, when I was ready.

  It took a few weeks before I recognized my most recent painting. Dutch Tudor, cross-gambled roof, dark blue shutters and lush lawn. The old family house, before I burned it down. I wanted to give it to my parents, I’m not sure why. Maybe as a kind of apology, but the picture turned against my will, and became ominous. Reds and blacks crept across the white porch, and the building appeared unkiltered, as if it might topple its viewer. In the corner, where a sun might appear, was a mouth without lips. It did not pass my attention that I was representing myself: I hadn’t taken my bandages off in weeks, and the specks of blood now formed the outline of thin lips along the outside of my gauze, like a phantom’s grin.

  * * *

  Everything changed again on a sunny morning in November. My hands and wrists were wet with cadmium red, because I liked to mix the paint with my fingers. My parents were both at work. I heard the backdoor creak open, and at first assumed that one of them had stopped back, because they’re forgotten something.

  But the footsteps were heavier and more cautious, like someone who does not know the lay of a place.

  “Mom?” I called.

  A balding man in a tan suit and loose tie appeared in the doorway. I jumped back on weak knees. My paintbrush dribbled red.

  “Hiya,” he said, cocking his head to get a good look at me. His voice was high-pitched, and too young for his lined face. “Took a long time to find you. We had to go through a lot of people.”

  Before I had the chance to figure out whether to scream, run, or suggest he check his prescription, he tossed a white-edged Polaroid at me. The thing was thick, and flew like a Frisbee straight into my chest, where I gracelessly caught it, then wondered, Polaroids? People still have these cameras?

  The picture showed Natalie, in her blue velour pantsuit. Her gut stuck out from between the elasticized waist, a roll of undignified flab. Her severed head was neatly stacked on top of her chest. I wondered what they’d done with all the blood.

  “Uhhh,” I said to this grinning used car salesman - Natalie’s shyster lawyer, and suddenly, it all made sense. This nut had found Cole’s mother and lied to her about her son. Then killed her and come looking for me. He wasn’t an arms dealer. He was a psychopath living in his mom’s basement, wearing his dead dad’s polyester suit and carrying a garage-sale camera. He’d probably read about the way I’d carried Cole with me out o
f the tower, and like a lot of the sad sacks who wrote letters during the weeks after the collapse, been inspired. Crazies flip over tragic love stories, because the happy ones imply commitment and the possibility of sex. Yeah, it all made sense. The nut was dressed like he thought he was in a bad Birnbaum movie, chasing disaster widows. Next was a tsunami in Thailand, or a hurricane in New Orleans, or an earthquake in LA, or a bomb in the Hoover Dam.

  I dropped the glossy paper and bolted for the door. Tan suit caught me by the elbow. “Where’s the money?” he asked.

  I shook my head, fast, panting now, realizing that despite all the walks, I was out of shape. No way I’d outrun him. So instead I faced him, and tried to smile. Red lip shapes through white bandages. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Corrine Johnson visited you at the hospital for…” he looked at his watch, “thirty four minutes. First time you met her, right? You must have talked about something.”

  He produced a utility knife from his pocket and pressed it against my neck. The blade was dull. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it was all he’d been able to find in his mom’s kitchen cabinet, given they don’t sell semi-automatics to psychopaths.

  “Hey,” I said “I’ll help you; I just don’t know anything.” My teeth were chattering, and my whole body shook just slightly, like low voltage electricity ran through it.

  He smiled. “Good. Because you play along, maybe you’ll live. There’s a safety deposit box. You’ve got the key. So why don’t you cripple your sad little way over to the bank and get it, and I’ll be seeing you again. Soon.”

  A terrifying thought suddenly occurred to me: he might not be crazy. “I don’t—“

  “You Wall Street sluts and your grinding teeth... Nice painting. Looks like a Francis Bacon,” he said, then the back door slammed, and he was gone.