As she walked, she heard each person’s voice, each person’s story. She heard Danny Willow trying to comfort his wife. She heard Steve McCormack take a last, gasping breath before the river carried him away. She felt Elizabeth Marley looking into the eyes of her long-dead father. She heard Kevin Brutton, who tonight had told his wife Allie that he loved her for the first time in their twenty-three-year marriage. She saw inside them all.
She didn’t know why she was hearing all of this. She didn’t care. She only knew she had to get to the mill.
As she neared Main Street, Matthew’s coughing tapered off. His face was red, as if from choking, and she saw that he was too weak to cough. She picked him up and carried him.
At Main Street they met with the families from Iroquois Hill: the Realmutos, the Fullbrights (who had broken from their reverie, pulled away the bookcase barricading their front door, and finally fled once the smoke filled their house), the Gonyas, the Murtaghs. Five blocks farther east, they reached the mill. She could not see it; she could only hear it. Pumping. Churning. Throbbing. Like a volcano, black smoke spouted from its pipe. It mixed with the rain and stung her tongue. It hovered in the atmosphere, so dense she could hardly see her feet on the ground.
The voices were loudest here. I can’t breathe, one said. Where are your children? You should have eaten them long ago. This is what it feels like, when you steal from yourself. There are pretty things, too, I wish I could remember them right now. The voices became a thumping, a throbbing. They were one voice though they said different things. All one voice.
She looked behind her, and saw a crowd of frightened faces. All of Bedford. And then their eyes changed, and became the color blue. And then they were not people for one terrifying moment. They were Susan Marley.
She arrived at the mill’s open door. “There’s an emergency generator,” Ed shouted over the rain. “It looks like a fuse box along the wall facing the offices. I’ll go in.” But his breathing was labored. His hand was clenched over his left side, and she knew that his heart was bothering him.
“No, I’ll go,” she said.
He started to object, but then nodded instead. She passed Matthew into his arms, took a deep breath, and ran inside.
The place was cold. So cold that it reminded her of the way her house had felt on the morning of her mother’s death. Spiteful, and without hope. She wanted to cry, though doing so would have made her lose her breath. Grinding machines rumbled in her ears; steel and water and fire. She passed the rubber conveyor belt that wound through the old building. There were still bits of woodchips in its mouth. She passed the lamps that dried the pulp, and the office where her father had spent so much of his life. Though she did not breathe, she could feel black air burning the pink parts of her skin: her nose, her ears, her eyes, the soft parts of her hands and cheeks, and a fresh cut on her thigh from the corner of a steel shredder she’d bumped into.
On the far wall she found something that looked like a large fuse box, and hoped it was connected to the generator. One of its wooden stop handles was broken. She tried to pull it down anyway, but it would not be budged. She gave up, and started searching for an emergency stop button on the side of the vat that would stop the sulfur from cooking, but could not find one. The voices droned, so loud. So full of nothing. They droned, and she started to forget where she stood. She started to forget that her eyes burned, that everything burned. She tripped over something soft but substantial, and fell on top of it. The sound it made when she landed was a wet slap. It only took her a fraction of a second to recognize Paul’s black hair, but it seemed like much longer. Then she was back on her feet, crying but trying not to cry. Trying to hold her breath even while the smog filled her lungs, and she wondered not at all idly whether he had been her last chance at happiness, and they’d both somehow managed to screw it up.
Shit comes from shit, Georgia Ellen O’Brian. You know he’ll never amount to anything. You know you never wanted him, a voice that sounded just like Georgia’s whispered in her ear. Why don’t you stop pretending you’re someone you’re not? Why don’t you give up, the way you know you want to? Take a deep breath, Georgia. Take a very deep breath.
Georgia slammed her fists against metal. She kicked the vat in slippered feet, breaking three toes so that they dangled awkwardly. “Stop!” she shouted, “Stop it. Stop!”
The mill filled with ghosts. People born two hundred years ago, people who’d died five minutes ago. They lined the walls. They watched with mad blue eyes. They worked the line, filling the vat, cooking the wood. And down below, the people who’d been buried in this place began to moan.
At first, Georgia couldn’t distinguish them from the living. They all looked the same. But then she saw that some people had followed her inside. Danny Willow shot his pistol at the vat’s engine and hot steam gushed out, burning his face while he screamed. Kevin Brutton wandered in circles like a wind-up doll. Amity Jorgenson sat down in the water and cried. April Willow ran laps around the room, searching underneath tables and inside lockers. (For what? Oh, right, the thing she lost.)
Georgia rushed outside and took a deep, wet breath. Matthew had fainted in her father’s arms. Behind her, she heard another round of pistol fire, and knew without having to look that April Willow had grabbed her husband’s gun and put it to her head.
For the first time in her memory, Georgia screamed.
FORTY-FIVE
Father
Though the power was out, she could still see the way the water moved in ripples, just like that time long ago. She could see the bookcase in the corner, half built, that had been chopped into splinters years before. There it was. The smell of fresh sawdust. She touched it and she could feel the smoothness of pine, freshly sanded. There it was. And loneliness. She could feel it.
Was this really her father, or a monster of Susan’s creation? She looked across the basement floor, and knew that it was both things; a man and the shadow he had cast.
He stood in the darkness. A small man. She knew now that he was not an appealing man. Ugly little man. She outweighed him by ten pounds. His face was dark, his eyes drawn haggard. He held something in his hand. Picked at it with his fingers. It must be something awful. Something terrible, she knew. A knife. Something to kill her with. Or worse. A heart. His own rotten heart, picking at it, trying to make it whole. He stayed in the shadows and she knew he saw her. She knew he was watching her, picking at his heart. A scabby thing.
He started toward her. A little move, an inch or so. He picked at the thing in his hand. Yes, it must be his rotten heart. His sick and rotten heart. He placed it in the water where it bobbed up and down. She could not stop herself. She picked it up. Not his heart at all. A white rose. She held it in her hand. A gift for his girl.
He came at her and she knew what would happen. What always should have happened. Because he did not love her. That was the fairy tale. That was the joke. Oh yes, she knew what he would do. The thing she had escaped, not because he cared for her, but by luck. Dumb luck.
He extended his hand but did not touch her. He waited, and she hitched her breath. It came to her that this was supposed to be her decision. Her choice.
Tears filled her eyes, and she became present again. The different parts of her smashed together, the parts that wanted to die and the parts that wanted to live. They came together, the parts that remembered and the parts that forgot. The parts that loved and the parts that hated. All these things that could not be reconciled came together. They became one thing.
She let out what she thought would be a giggle. Laughter. So funny, eating a cake that beats like a heart. So funny, my father’s a rapist who hated himself so much he willed his heart to stop beating. So funny, he came back to life, not to tell me the secret of existence, not to bother with something petty like telling me why, but to give me a flower. So funny, that big sisters, fathers, boyfriends who only pretend to love you, even strangers on the street carry these things inside them. So funny, that every
one of them, deep down, is a monster. They’re all so fuckin’ funny I could laugh forever. This is the place I come from. This is ground zero. This is the reference point for every decision I have ever made, everything I will ever be. Oh, the joke’s on me. Because I’m the only one who isn’t in on it.
She did not giggle. She let out a sob.
He held out his hand. Her choice. What choice? She looked at him. She didn’t want to know. She had to know. She had to know. She had to know.
She took his hand. He pulled her in. Put his mouth over her hair and kissed her. She closed her eyes. He squeezed her tight. He held her, and she remembered the other things she’d chosen to forget. She remembered her mother, who had once possessed a gentle beauty, and the safety she had felt at night, when she and Susan had shared a room. She remembered snow days, and the smell of warm Pop-Tarts at the breakfast table. She remembered that there were good things, too. She remembered that even when the worst happened, there was always hope.
“It’s up to you, what you carry,” he whispered as he let her go, and she began to sob.
Her father slowly left her, then. He became a shadow that faded into darkness that faded into nothing. All that was left was the smell of sawdust, and the old bookcase, and the churning water, and the inexplicably beautiful flower in the palm of her hand.
FORTY-SIX
Excitable Boy
Bobby Fullbright didn’t reach the Marley house until almost five A.M. He stood before the threshold, and he could sense the house watching him. A pain radiated from his throat to his chest to his groin. His testicles retracted deep inside his pelvis, and he wondered briefly if they’d ever come back. But he had to find her. He had to tell her what he’d only realized for certain tonight. It wasn’t convenience. It wasn’t circumstance. He really loved her. He took a deep breath, and entered the house.
As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he stumbled down the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom. “Liz?” he called. “Liz!” he shouted. His voice reverberated through the house. It echoed. The first time it sounded like him. The second time it was deeper. The last time it whined her name. “Liz!” it jeered at him.
The smoke thickened with each passing second, and his mind moved slowly. Everything was dark. He started coughing and couldn’t stop. His skin throbbed like he’d been standing too long near a hot fire. It came to him suddenly, as he dry-heaved on the green carpet that looked gray through the smoke. He could feel her right then. His thoughts descended down the stairs, into the basement, into the black hole. Into Susan. She was down, there, in the basement. Liz was down there, too. He could see her in his mind.
He got on his hands and knees like they’d told him to do in health class. Around him, he noticed how the walls breathed and the boiler beat. Alive, he thought. This whole town was alive. But pretty soon he didn’t think about any of that, not even Liz. He just kept crawling for the sake of crawling, for the sake of instinct, for the sake of survival, until finally, he collapsed on the floor, right in front of the open basement door.
FORTY-SEVEN
Heart of Darkness
Like a polite guest, the smoke entered the Marley house through the front door first. It wiped its feet on the welcome mat and sneaked through the hallway. It coiled its black fingers around the kitchen table. It climbed the stairs and floated above the beds. It donned the cotton T-shirts and wool sweaters that its occupants had left on hangers, and smoldered them to rags. Finally, it married the rain that fell, and trickled through the basement windows just as Ted Marley gave his daughter a rose, Bobby Fullbright walked through the front door, and Mary got up from the kitchen table.
“Elizabeth Rebecca?” Mary shouted as she raced down the stairs. She reached out with blind hands. At first she only swiped at air, and she began to panic. But she grazed Liz’s sweatshirt with her fingertips. Before she had the chance to pull her close, Liz rushed at her. She pressed her face into the crook of Mary’s neck and began to cry in wracking sobs.
Mary did not try to stop her. She did not stiffen. She held her daughter. Liz cried harder, and for once Mary did not let go. She held Liz more tightly, and Liz let herself be held. She let herself forget, and remember, and love, and hate, and trust, because even on this night, the worst had not happened. Her father had not hurt her, and her mother had come to find her.
Mary took a breath and through the smoke was able to smell the scent of Irish Spring on her daughter’s skin. She stiffened. “Where is he?” she asked in a flat, low voice that meant harm.
“Gone,” Liz said.
She lifted Liz’s chin, and through the smoke Liz could see the shine of her eyes. “What did he do to you?”
“He gave me a flower,” Liz said.
Mary let out a sob of relief. Despite the heavy smoke in the air, Liz felt as if she had set down a great weight she did not know she’d been carrying. For the first time in a long time, the house was without secrets.
The smoke thickened, and both Mary and Liz started coughing. Together they headed out, but just then, someone came clopping down the steps. They stopped short, and Susan appeared before them.
Despite the darkness, Liz could see the way Susan’s broken neck lolled this way and that. An inhuman thing. A human thing.
Susan grinned, and inside her blue eyes Liz thought she could see all of Bedford. Every gurgle of the river. Every deer in the woods. Every particle of smoke. Every melancholy winter night. There was no hope in there. No joy. No trust. No love. And yet, somewhere inside this thing, Liz could also see her sister. Susan Marley. A pretty girl. A smart girl. A girl who used to laugh.
Susan advanced, and Mary tried to stand between them, but Liz would not be budged. She thought she knew the way to end this. A little girl racing down a hill. A stain of blood in the snow. A sensitive girl, who felt what other people could not. “Where are you, Susan?” Liz coughed out.
Susan smiled. “Everywhere.” Her voice sounded like Ted Marley. Like Liz. Like Mary. Like Susan. Like Paul Martin. Like Bobby Fullbright. Like Georgia O’Brian. Like Danny and April Willow. Like Andrea Jorgenson. Like Montie Henrich. Like Thomas Schultz. Like Louise Andrias. Like every person in this town.
Liz shook her head. “No. I can hear you someplace,” she said, and then she stopped to cough while Mary held her by her shoulders to keep her from falling. “I can hear who you used to be.”
Susan’s smile became less certain. “That’s why you came back here, isn’t it? You could have waited in your apartment. You could have let the house get us, or the smoke, or these things you brought, but you wanted to see us. You just had to see us. What do you want, Susan?”
Susan’s eyes flickered and her smile became a scowl. “Nothing,” Susan said. “It’s all nothing.”
“He didn’t hurt me, even though you thought he would,” Liz continued.
Susan frowned, and Liz knew that Susan was surprised. She’d been unable to know or guess this. Unable to conceive of it.
Liz pressed forward. “Nothing is all bad.” She looked around the smoke-filled room, where the boiler kicked and the walls breathed and the smoke had burned red welts into her pale skin. “Even in the worst places, nothing is all bad. You know that, or you used to know it. Even in this house, you had yourself. You had me.”
She was coughing again, only this time, when she gasped for air, she found none. Her coughs became choking sounds, and then finally, she stopped coughing. Without her noticing, somehow she and Mary were now down on their knees in the cold water.
Sparks flitted across Liz’s field of vision, and her throat burned as if someone was strangling her. “What do you want?” Too weak to speak, Liz whispered this with her mind. “Tell me what you want.”
Susan reached out her bony hand to Liz. “No,” Mary said, but Liz did not hear. She did not hesitate. She took it. They were sisters, after all. Always, in the end, it came down to this.
When they touched, Liz felt a shock of electricity. Felt soft fingers prod her skin, inside her skin
. Felt them ask permission, felt herself say yes. They opened her up, piece by piece. Through her skin, her blood, her bones. She remembered sleeping in bed next to her big sister, who had smelled like tea rose perfume. Sitting on her father’s lap. Curling up under a blanket with her mother. Trying, and failing, to hock a loogie of phlegm through her fingers at the Nudd Street bus stop. Climbing trees. Playing quicksand with her big sister. A first kiss. A taunting for snarly hair and big hips. A family road trip that took ten extra hours because Dad couldn’t read maps. Believing in everything, even when the evidence told her to doubt. Believing in nothing, because she dared not hope. A sister lost. A father’s death. A mother drifting away. A first love. Living in this town, where all things bright began to look gray, and bad thoughts found a home inside Susan Marley.
As Liz remembered these things, Susan remembered them, too. She lived them. She became the younger sister, the woman on the other side of the fence. She saw a man in a basement who for once did the right thing. She saw a woman in a kitchen devour her own regret with one simple act. She saw all these things, and she envied them, and she wished that they belonged to her, and wondered why they did not, and at last made her peace with them, that the girl they belonged to shared her blood. The girl they belonged to loved her, and perhaps that was good enough.
Susan let go of Liz. Her blue eyes became still. She remembered the girl she had been long ago and the woman she had become. She saw the flower that Liz had dropped to the floor and wondered if it had been meant, not as a gift for Liz, but as an offering from a fallen man to his fallen daughter. She picked it up and tucked it inside the hole in her chest where her heart had once beat. Nourished somehow by what lay inside, its petals turned red and opened into full bloom.
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