by Anna Woltz
She looks at us expectantly. She’s the toughest little girl I know and she can handle a hurricane, but still she’s only eleven. I look at her little face and her shining eyes and I want to adopt her. I want to make sure she never sees any porn by accident and never has to read about icky erections in dumb magazines for girls and that no one ever tells her about girls who get undressed in front of webcams to show their boyfriends how much they love them.
I take three big swigs of wine, one after the other, and feel the warmth tingling inside.
“I have no idea,” I say. “But maybe Jim or your brother could throw some light on the subject from their monkey cage … ”
“Sorry,” says Seth. “As Jim already pointed out, I know nothing about it.”
We all look at Jim now.
“Well?” asks Abby. “How does it work? If you say ‘fuck’ all the time, you must know all about how to do it.”
He looks down at the floor. I can see that he’s finally realized what eleven years old actually means.
He sighs and shakes his head. “It’s a great mystery to us all.”
We made another pan of mulled wine and now we’re playing crazy eights with Seth’s old deck of cards. We keep inventing new rules and shouting louder and louder. Normally, I don’t like playing cards, but in the dark, with cold pancakes and mulled wine, it’s great.
In the middle of a game, as we’re bent double with laughter, Abby suddenly looks at Seth.
“Now I remember! We always used to play this with Dad. I was really too young. But because I didn’t understand the rules, you guys could let me win.”
“Yeah. Mom didn’t think that was good for you,” says Seth. “She thought you needed to learn to cope with losing.”
Abby nods. “And then Dad let me win again anyway.”
“He said losing could always come later. When you were older.”
The laughter dies away. The wine’s now whirling through my veins. I’ve never felt like this before. Like fifteen years old really is a great age to be. Like everything’s possible and it’s only just beginning. And, suddenly, I feel brave enough to ask the question.
“So how did he actually die?”
Maybe they don’t want to tell me. But I think not asking is worse.
“Car accident.” Seth doesn’t look at me. “His car went into the water and he couldn’t get out in time.”
It’s very quiet. And then I feel Abby moving beside me.
“We don’t know that for sure.”
In the candlelight, Seth’s face looks like a mask. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says quietly.
“I do so.” Abby puts her chin in the air. “No one knows if it was an accident. And that includes you.”
It takes Seth three steps to reach the couch. “If Mom ever hears you … ” He’s about to grab ahold of her, but I put my arm around her.
“This doesn’t concern you!” he shouts at me. “She’s my sister, not yours.”
I hold on to her and Seth clenches his jaw. In the half-dark room he looks like a zombie that’s been under the ground for two years and has just escaped.
“She’s lying,” he says. “Just as long as you guys remember that. Abby’s a liar.”
He turns on his heel and strides off. I hear his bedroom door slam. And then it’s quiet.
• • •
Abby doesn’t cry like a little girl. Her face barely changes, but tears are rolling down her cheeks. She stares at the tea lights in the window. I give her a tissue, but she doesn’t notice. I dig my nails into the palms of my hands and wait.
“Was it suicide?” Jim asks.
I feel a shock go through my body. I wish he’d kept his mouth shut, but at the same time I hope Abby will answer.
She swallows, then wipes her cheeks and shrugs.
“We don’t know. We really don’t.”
The crackle of a radio comes from Seth’s room. That makes me even madder at him. He’s not allowed to listen to the radio all on his own—and at full volume too. The batteries will run out way too quickly.
“I was nine,” says Abby. “No one told me anything. Just that he wasn’t there anymore. And that his car ended up in the water in the middle of the night. An accident, they said.”
“Well, that’s possible, isn’t it?” I ask quietly.
She nods. “Yes, it’s possible. But there are some strange things about it.”
“What kind of things?” asks Jim.
“Dad was still wearing his seat belt. If your car goes into the water, you try to get out of it, don’t you? You at least undo your seat belt.”
“Maybe he was unconscious,” I say. “From the impact of the car hitting the water.”
She stands up and studies me from a distance.
“You’re just like Mom and Seth.” She wipes her top lip. “Now I’m not even allowed to mention it. But those first few months, whenever I asked about it, the answer was always: It was an accident. We have no idea how he went from driving along a perfectly quiet road to ending up in the water, but of course he didn’t do it on purpose. We don’t know why he was in that part of town either, or why he’d left his cell phone at home, but it was an accident. An accident. An accident.”
She looks worn-out.
“But then isn’t it better … ” I pause. “I mean, wouldn’t you rather it was an accident?”
“Duh,” she cries, “of course! But that’s not something you can choose. I want to know what really happened. Because there was something going on with Dad. Something wrong. Even before that, I mean. He never wanted to join in with stuff anymore. But yeah, Mom doesn’t want to talk about that either.” She’s crying again. “I just want to be able to mention it. Without them getting mad … ”
I stand up and put my arms around her. “I understand,” I whisper. “I understand.”
• • •
When Abby falls asleep, Jim and I carry her to the big bed. We stroke her cheek and then tiptoe out of the room. Jim ladles the last of the mulled wine into our mugs.
“Maybe next time you should let it boil for longer,” I whisper.
“Good idea.” He drops down onto the couch. “Fuck! Oh no, I wasn’t going to use that word anymore.” He sighs. “You know, I thought my family was messed up. But this … ”
I empty my mug in one gulp. I leave the fruit at the bottom. “I have to go talk to Seth.”
Jim looks at me by the light of the last candles. “Want me to come with you?”
I shake my head.
“Okay, then I’m gonna crash. Can you throw me that blanket?” I open the box of rubber gloves, put some on, and hand him the dusty old blanket.
“Freak,” he says quietly.
“Sleep tight,” I reply, just as quietly.
He closes his eyes and I stay there for a moment. The candles flicker and I realize that something’s changed. Of course I can still see how good-looking he is. But it doesn’t feel as if I’m looking at a billboard anymore. Now I can see him. Jim. A boy that I know.
When I go into Seth’s room, I don’t know if he’s still awake. The crackling voices from the radio fill the pitch-dark box.
“Seth?” I say. “Wait, I’ll get my cell phone … ”
“No!” His voice sounds choked. “Leave me alone.”
“Well, at least turn off the radio! The battery’s going to die and then we’ll be completely alone.”
I wait in the doorway. And then the sound stops.
“What … ” I begin, but I don’t know how to continue. I take off the gloves and put them in my pocket. “Did you speak to your aunt?”
He sighs. “My uncle. They’re alive but half the house is underwater and the car’s drowned. My uncle got a ride to JFK in a pickup with a load of other people. There was a signal at the airport, so they all got to make just a couple of phone calls, and then the pickup turned around so that other people could go to the airport.”
“Wow,” I say quietly. “And to think
that this is New York. Not Somalia or Honduras or India, but America.”
Normally, as your eyes start to get used to the dark, you can make out a few things. But with no moon, no streetlights in the distance, and no devices on standby, you really can’t see anything at all. No matter how long you stand there in the dark, you stay blind.
“So where are you exactly?”
“Sitting on my bed.”
As I feel my way toward him, I think about his Picasso poster, which I can’t see now. The woman with two faces.
“Whoa!” Seth suddenly exclaims. “Another step and you’ll be sitting on my lap.”
I giggle in spite of myself. “What about here? Can I sit here?”
Silence.
Then Seth says, “I nodded.”
“Okay.” I sit down with my back against the cold wall and suddenly, I feel calm. “Now I want to hear about it. Open up the door of your capsule.”
“Seriously? Did Abby tell you about that?”
“That you and your mom are stuck inside a time capsule? Yes. And you know something? She’s right. I can see you through the porthole. It’s kind of like a submarine, but without the water. We—the rest of the world—are flying farther and farther away from you. And you’re still stuck there. Inside your capsule.”
“I work with computers, Emilia. With ones and zeros. I don’t know anything about submarines flying around without water.”
“Okay, then.” I clench my fists. Not behind my back, but just on my lap. It’s dark, after all. “Then tell me. One or zero? Accident or suicide?”
The mattress moves violently. I hear a siren in the distance and a thump on the wall close beside me.
“What do you want?” he growls. “I already told you it was an accident. I don’t keep bothering you about your dad, do I? You told me your story. And I believe you.”
I lean back, with my head against the wall. I breathe in the darkness, and his breath, and what must be years’ worth of dust. How long ago did he build that model of the dinosaur? When did he get the Picasso poster?
“Christ,” he yells, “you just don’t get it! With computers it’s always ones and zeros. But it doesn’t work like that in real life. Sometimes you don’t know if something is a one or a zero. And sometimes it’s somewhere in between … ”
I keep quiet, because I’d be sure to say the wrong thing. The wine is still whirling through my body. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe I’m sitting with Seth inside his capsule and we’re floating through time. So we could easily zip back to a year ago, before my dad sent any of those text messages. Or back to two years ago, when Seth’s dad was still alive …
“Okay,” he says, “listen.” It sounds like he’s made up his mind. “We don’t know if it was an accident. We just don’t know. For months I hoped we’d find out. It was all I could think about. Every day I waited for the mail because I hoped my dad had sent a good-bye letter. A letter that had gotten lost, but would eventually be delivered. And at the same time I hoped someone would say: I saw what happened that night, he swerved to avoid a dog and the car went into the water.”
It’s a while before he continues.
“But there was nothing. No letter, no witness. No secret diary, no reason for him to be out driving there that night. And that’s it. We’ll never find out. We just don’t know.”
“But what about Abby?” My hands are trembling. I let them shake in the darkness. “Why isn’t she allowed to talk about it?”
“We never said that. But her questions were driving us crazy. And if you can choose what it was … then you’re going to say it was an accident, right? That’s what Mom told everyone. And that’s what everyone thinks at school.”
My eyes are still open. I don’t know why, because the room’s pitch-black. But I keep them open anyway. I keep looking. I try to see.
“If you can choose,” I say, “you’re going to choose an accident. I get that. But what do you think? What do you think really happened?”
It takes eons before he answers. His words have to come from the other side of the universe.
“I think,” he says quietly, “that it may have been something in between. Between a one and a zero. I can’t believe he was really planning to leave us. Then at least he would have written a letter. Then he would have said good-bye. But I could imagine … ” He clears his throat. “That it was a sudden impulse. He just did it. Turned the steering wheel. Left his seat belt on. And by the time he realized he was actually drowning, and he thought about never seeing us again—then it was too late.”
On Wednesday morning I have tortilla chips for breakfast. Wearing rubber gloves, I take the chips out of the bag and Abby giggles as she copies me. I have a headache and I wonder out loud if this is my first-ever hangover.
“Yep,” says Seth grimly. He looks gray and he doesn’t want to eat anything.
“You have to tell Abby!” I whisper as soon as we’re alone for a moment. “What you said to me yesterday—about the ones and the zeros. She’ll want to hear it.”
“That our dad may have committed suicide?” he asks. “You think my eleven-year-old sister wants to hear that?”
I nod. “She already knows. She just wants to hear from you that she’s not crazy.”
And then Abby comes back out of the bathroom.
“It’s Halloween, so we have to wear costumes!” Her eyes are red, with big bags under them, but she smiles at us as if there’s nothing she’d rather do than go out and party.
“I don’t have any scary clothes,” I say.
“But we have a dress-up box!”
An hour later we set off with two backpacks full of costumes. We’ve decided that we’re going uptown to shower at Bridget’s and then we’ll change our clothes. So at least we’ll be clean zombies.
We begin our journey north in silence. We know what to expect now. The sky is still gray and our part of the city is dead silent. The stoplights aren’t working, the stores are closed, everyone is gloomy. We trudge onward until our phones start beeping.
And then I have the shock of my life.
My dad has texted to say he got a flight and that he’s landing in America tonight. The text message is too short for all the details, so I don’t know exactly where he’s flying to, or how long he’ll have to be in a taxi, or how much it’s all going to cost. But one thing is clear: He’s not coming alone.
My mom is coming with him to New York.
She hasn’t flown for twenty years, because she’s convinced that airplanes are unnatural and lethal. No matter what fantastic offers she receives from museums in Asia and America and Australia, my mom always says no. And now, two days after Sandy, while the city’s still a disaster area, she’s getting on a plane to New York. The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim couldn’t persuade her. But I could.
I tilt back my head and start laughing.
“Bridget’s not home.” I hear Abby’s worried voice. “She just texted that she won’t be home from work until really late … ”
My laughter dries up.
“Right.” Seth shrugs. “So we can’t shower at her place. Then we’ll just go to a diner and change our clothes in the bathroom.”
“But I need to shower first!” cries Abby.
I look at her in surprise.
Her fingers twitch anxiously. “There’s no way I’m putting on a costume until I’m clean. Do you know how many bacteria you have living on your skin?” I bite my lip and say nothing.
“There are one hundred and fifty different kinds of bacteria on your hands,” Abby squeaks. “Emilia knows all about it. That’s why you should always wear gloves to eat! If I can’t shower now, I’ll get sick.” She looks at me. Her bottom lip is trembling. “Emilia, tell them how dirty I am!”
It’s like hearing nails scratching a blackboard.
Every cell in my body has goose bumps. I can see the boys looking at me.
Seth puts his arm around Abby’s shoulders. “I think you … ”
&n
bsp; “Don’t do that,” she snaps. “You’re dirty too!”
The nails go on scratching and I know I need to do something. This has to stop.
“Abby, listen.” I’m a bit out of breath. “Everything I told you about bacteria … It’s all true. But … it doesn’t matter.” I try to remember all the stuff that dumb psychologist told me last year. “People can deal with bacteria, no problem. You won’t get sick from not showering for a couple of days. You might get a bit stinky, but that’s not so bad—especially not now, after Sandy.”
“That makes no sense,” she says angrily. “So why do you keep washing your hands? Why wasn’t my bunny rabbit allowed in your bag?”
I know Seth and Jim are looking at me. I can feel their eyes, but I have to forget about them. This is about Abby.
“Some people,” I say, “are scared of mice. Some are frightened of heights. Others are scared of the dark. Well, it just so happens that I have a thing about bacteria. But if one of your friends tells you she’s too scared to go up the Empire State Building, does that mean you’ll never go up there again?”
Abby shakes her head. “I love tall buildings!”
“Exactly. Which means you’re perfectly capable of turning into a zombie without taking a shower first.”
“Really?”
I nod.
“What about you?” she asks. “Are you going to put on your costume without showering first too?”
Nails scratching open my belly from the inside. Slicing through my flesh, sharp as knives. Slowly ripping …
“Of course I am,” I say cheerfully. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Today uptown is gleaming like the hurricane never happened. For ten minutes we’re happy that all the stores are open again, but the happiness soon fades. Because we really do feel like People of Darkness now. We eat chips for breakfast and have to drink wine to stay warm. We roam around, hunting for power sockets and Wi-Fi, and the rest of the world doesn’t understand us.
“Dumb tourists,” I snap. “All they ever do is eat and take photos and buy souvenirs. Don’t they know people have died?”