The Wall (The Woodlands)

by Taylor, Lauren Nicolle

  Maybe that’s why it never ends.

  Matthew had been silent for about five minutes, which was about all I could stand.

  “What is it?” I asked, watching his hands that were gently clasped to start with, wringing each other out like he was trying to dislocate his fingers.

  “I am so sorry, Rosa. This is all my fault.” He looked up at me and the agony on his face showed that he truly believed it. I didn’t.

  “How can it possibly be your fault? Unless you forced him to do it, it can’t be.” Matthew was a good man. He couldn’t have done this.

  “I didn’t but I may as well have.”

  “What?” I didn’t understand, and looking around the room, the rest of them were as clueless as I was.

  Matthew looked at the ground and stared at his canvas shoes, lifting his toes up in them, rocking his feet back and forth. “Have you ever noticed that Gus and Cal look very similar?”

  I didn’t see what this had to do with anything. “Yes, Cal is Gus’s son; they’re bound to look similar.” Picturing Cal, his features, the ears poking out, the hard, sticky glare, made me cold. Remembering the way his eyes razed the room and darkened the air stunned my body and I twitched, my shoulders shaking violently.

  “No,” Matthew said, shaking his head. “Cal is Gus.”

  I searched people’s eyes. They looked surprised but less so than myself. Having the science background helped them come to the answer a lot quicker than me. I went through ridiculous possibilities like Gus dressed as Cal, or Cal with a fake beard masquerading as Gus. But I had seen them together. Was there two of them, twins? How was that possible when one was much older than the other? Cal called Gus Dad. I already had a headache but this made it so much worse. I had double vision and was picturing two Cal’s coming at me, laughing hysterically and calling me darling.

  Matthew explained it as simply as he could: The Survivor’s had come at their infertility problem from a different angle than the Woodlands. During one of their scavenging hunts, they found a clinic in one of the main cities in China. It was a research lab, filled with partial notes and equipment. It seemed like they were attempting something—some sort of mass-produced army. Matthew thought their work was complete. It was a stupid assumption. Really, they had no idea where in the cloning process they were before the bombing, or how safe it was. But the Survivors decided to risk it. Take the technology and try to make some babies. Ten families volunteered. They made a clone of the mother and the father.

  “If that’s true, where are all these kids? There should be twenty young people here—why is there only Cal?” It didn’t make any sense and the words were starting to swish around in my brain like old dishwater. My hands searched out for something that wasn’t there and then grasped a knot of sheet and squeezed it tight in my splintered fingers. Where was Joseph? I needed him here with me.

  Matthew’s face was pained. Deshi put a hand on his shoulder. “Let him finish, Rosa.”

  Matthew continued talking, “Everything went well, in the beginning…” he said in that hopeless kind of voice, the one where you wish things were different. “But there were holes in the instructions, in their research.” It switched to pleading. “I thought I could do it, come up with the necessary growth hormones on my own, but I was arrogant. Truth is, I was stupid and desperate. I wanted a child of my own and I let that desire lead me.” Now, justification… and this is where he lost me for a while. The scientific terms were whacking me on the head like the lashes I used to receive at school.

  “The children grew normally at first and we thought it had been a success,” Matthew continued, his voice high. Everyone was looking at their feet. “I was thrilled… the parents were happy. There were children in the community for the first time in years.”

  “I’m guessing it didn’t last,” I said darkly.

  “Rosa!” Deshi snapped.

  “No, no she’s right. Those hormones, what I created, caused the growth of other things. Tumors.” His hands were so tightly clasped, they were white. “I tried to fight the cancers but they were aggressive. They all died,” Matthew said, his voice cracking at the end. “Cal was my one success. I don’t know what happened. He was tumor free at his last check six months ago.”

  I cut him off, “So Cal’s sick. I don’t see what that has to do with my attack. Are you trying to make me feel sorry for him?” The whole story was wearing me down.

  “Cal has a tumor in his brain, in his frontal lobe. The frontal lobes have been found to play a part in impulse control, judgment, sexual behavior, socialization, and spontaneity,” Matthew said, like he was quoting a textbook. A disconnect he needed.

  “What are you saying?” I asked. “Are you saying he couldn’t help it, that it wasn’t his fault?”

  “No, not exactly, but even though he knew what he was doing was wrong, he couldn’t stop himself. He feels terrible, Rosa, just terrible.” I didn’t want to hear that he felt bad. My head felt like it was going to explode.

  “Oh my God, stop talking, just stop. I don’t want to know anymore.” I put my hands to my ears. “Please, get out.” I felt like I was slamming my head against a wall, over and over. Someone listen to me. Look at me. Stop lying to me. Please.

  Matthew slumped out of his chair and turned to walk away, his face so downcast he was nearly doubled over. “Wait,” I said.

  “Yes,” he barely whispered. There was no hope in his voice at all.

  That thought, it wouldn’t let me go. “I want to go back and get my mother.”

  Every time I said it, my resolve grew stronger. The words were a march I was already part of. I would never let it go.

  Matthew nodded and walked away as Joseph passed him without acknowledging his presence. His fierce green eyes were on me.

  When Matthew was out of sight, I turned my attention to Addy. “Did you know about this?” I asked accusingly. The others stared around the room, trying not to get caught in the searing waves of heat that were coming from my eyes. I didn’t care if she was old.

  She nodded.

  I glared at her, hoping her loose face would join her body and melt into a puddle.

  She reacted immediately, not shying away from my glare—she met it. “It is not your right to know anything and everything about everyone. You are new here so I’ll cut you some slack.” She stared me down, daring me to respond. I found I couldn’t. “This was not my pain to share. These were families that lost children.” She huffed and her face softened. “We are on your side. But we all have our own tragedies to deal with. You need to try and understand that.”

  I blinked slowly, unused to being talked to like that. I wasn’t sure if she was right but I felt bad for upsetting her so I left it alone. I was suddenly so weary. The tumult of information had run right over me like an avalanche and now I lay bruised and battered under meters of snow. But I was still doggedly and exhaustedly trying to tunnel my way out to make some sense of what just happened.

  I put my hands to my hair and moaned. My head felt like it was splitting open.

  Apella stood protectively between Addy and me and told everyone to leave in a sliced-back tone I didn’t recognize. I needed to rest. The last thing I saw was a needle being pushed into my IV and Joseph’s sad, sad face sliding together with my son’s smiling one.

  I sat in the hospital bed for three days, going crazy. People were around me all the time and I hated it. I hated the look in their eyes, the way they recoiled when they saw my bruises, the way they rushed to my side every time I swayed. I hated it. But more than anything else, I hated what it had done to Joseph. He just didn’t know what to do with himself. He would reach out to touch me, and then his hands would wither away before they got to me like a leaf under a blowtorch. He blamed himself. He wanted to fix it but he couldn’t. You couldn’t fix something like this.

  Careen was the only one who didn’t treat me like I was made of glass. She told me plainly that my face looked horrible, that my hair would grow back, and that i
f I wanted, she would step on my attacker’s neck and crush his windpipe. But I wouldn’t tell her who did it. We kept it quiet. The revelations that Cal was dying complicated our feelings and no one felt the need for outright retribution.

  And all the while, that thought never went away. I want to go back and get my mother.

  I said it so many times, I think they thought it’s all I could say. But no one listened. No one took me seriously. They thought I’d let it go.

  “Can this come out now?” I asked, holding up my hand, which was still punctured with an IV needle connected to a bag. I wriggled it and pulled at the bag, knowing full well I wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t a very good patient.

  Joseph nodded and stood to leave. “I’ll go get the nurse.”

  “No, you do it,” I said, holding it under his nose, feeling like I wanted to jam it in his face just to force him to touch me. His behavior had been frustrating and confusing. It seemed like he was always arguing with himself about what he should do and then he sat on his hands and did nothing.

  “Um, I don’t know, Rosa,” he said reluctantly.

  “Joseph, will you look at me?” I tried to catch his eyes. He looked up and it knocked me down. So sad, so loving, so much.

  “I’m fine,” I said finitely. “I’m the same person and you need to get that in your head.”

  “But, but he could have… I should have been there.” He sighed deeply. How could I make him understand?

  I held his gaze, feeling the warm blush only he could create. “I have changed.” He eyes were full of sorrow. “Becoming a mother changed me. Fall… falling in love changed me. But this? This will not change me. Ok?”

  His shoulders relaxed a little but I knew he only half-believed me. “Ok.”

  I smiled. “I’m serious! Stop treating me like I’m going to dissolve into tears and screaming. I need you to believe it.”

  My wrist was shaking from holding it up for so long and he clasped it between his palms. I exhaled, letting out days of pain and fear. This is where I was supposed to be. “Please. Kiss me?” I whispered, not meaning to plead.

  He raised an eyebrow and let out a small chuckle. Leaning in, he moved so damn slow I nearly collided with his face in my own haste. Our lips touched and everything did melt away. If there were people in the room, they were flung from the floor and out the window. They were shadows cast from golden light. Everything stretched and bent around us. This was home. Wherever we were, we could take this with us.

  Again, like some aggravated prisoner in a cage, my brain rattled inside my head. I put my hand to my forehead. “Ah.”

  “Are you ok?” Joseph asked before the sigh had left my lips.

  “I’m fine. It’s just…”

  “I know, I know. You want to go back and get your mother, right?”

  “How did you know I was going to say that?” I asked, irritated by his assumption… even if it was right. My head pulsed and throbbed, nodding vigorously inside and out of time with the rest of me.

  His eyes crinkled and he rubbed his forehead. “You even say it in your sleep. You scrunch up your face like that and you say it, over and over. Rosa, you can’t, you know? You’re not well enough and it’s too dangerous.”

  I started to argue but bit down on my lip before I said something stupid. Besides, I knew I was talking to the wrong person. It wasn’t up to Joseph. I knew whom I needed to talk to.

  I frowned and wiggled my languid, skinny arm in front of him, “Just take this out, please.”

  Silently, he unwrapped the plastic bandages from my wrist and pulled the needle out slowly. It was like removing a splinter. The achy, itchy pain disappeared immediately once the foreign object was removed.

  “Thank you. Now, can you get Matthew?”

  Joseph looked at me like he was going to ask, ‘Are you sure you want to talk to that guy?’ But he left it. He smoothed my hair down and skimmed the shaved part gently.

  “You look like one of the dolls in Orry’s toy box,” he laughed.

  Orry had collected some nightmarish plastic dolls, all smooth breasts, tiny waists, and half-shaved heads. I really should have thrown them out but I was unsure of whether this was the normal thing for children to be playing with in the world of the Survivors.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, secretly reveling in the return to our normal way of interacting.

  No, this would not change me.

  “I’ll be back soon. I have something to show you,” he said, grinning. He leaned down to kiss me again, still reluctant. He was too gentle, hovering over my face like he thought it would shatter. I resisted the urge to grab him by the collar and shake him.

  I sighed. It would take time. I hoped not too long. I didn’t feel like coaxing him out of this state. I had other things to worry about.

  Matthew walked towards me like he was scared I would erupt. And in a way, he was right to be nervous. If I could, I would have scalded him with burning lava. But not for the reason he thought. I wasn’t angry about the cloning thing, the eagerness that had led to him rushing the process. I was simply angry that he didn’t tell us. People think they can hide these things. But it always comes out, usually at the worst and wrong time.

  I wasn’t proud of what I was going to do next but I had to use his guilt to my advantage if I was going to get what I wanted.

  I tried to keep a delicate balance of looking hurt but not incapacitated, which gave me the awkward appearance of wincing with my face but sitting up stiffly like I had a plank glued to my back.

  “You wanted to see me?” he said, his eyes searching for something else to look at other than my determined face. He settled on the horrid, clashing colors of the rug at my feet.

  “Yes. I was wondering if you would set up a visit with Gus for me?” I said evenly, even though my insides were shuddering and pulling away from me at the thought of it.

  He looked so surprised he had to sit down. He smoothed down his crinkled, check shirt that he hadn’t changed in days. “What? Why?”

  I stared at him, rolling over the right words in my head. “You do have some responsibility in this but so does he. I figure you both owe me a favor.”

  Recognition sparked in his eyes, “If this is about your mother, I can’t see how…”

  I cut him off, “Just set it up. Let me worry about the rest.”

  “All right, Rosa,” he said, resigned. I was fast becoming used to him saying my name like a sigh.

  As he walked away, I shouted after him. “And go home and have a shower… you look awful.”

  He didn’t turn around but I thought I saw the corner of his face lift a little. But then I added more quietly but so he could definitely hear me, “And don’t tell Joseph about any of this,” and it fell just as quickly.

  I stared down at The Line. Simple white chalk scratched into the pavement. And I watched myself willingly, and almost eagerly, step right on over it.

  I dozed off after Matthew left, the mix of painkillers and my terrible headache pulling me under. I awoke to the sound of clanking saucepans and men laughing. And for a moment, I had the wonderful feeling that I was outside. That I was walking through the forest, my hands grazing the low branches of the juvenile pines, my fingers sticky with sap.

  As the noise got closer, I remembered where I was and I reluctantly opened my eyes to face the cold, white walls and shiny, metal bedframes. The hospital was empty save a few nurses and one coughing old man they had bedded in the far corner.

  Deshi was striding in with Orry in his arms, the child’s wide eyes drawn to the light that bounced off shiny surfaces. Joseph was loping towards me with a pack slung over his shoulder, a big grin plastered on his face.

  “Surprise,” Joseph exclaimed, flipping his foot out and looking like the cowboy on the can of corn from so long ago.

  I rolled my eyes. What now?

  Deshi stepped back and ran his eyes over my whole body, rolling back on his heels. “Well, you look a little better.” He smiled darkly. His
eyebrows rising at my sorry state.

  “I’ve been beat up—what’s your excuse?” I said, instantly wanting to pull the comment back into my mouth. Deshi reacted ever so subtly, giving me a short, disapproving glance before turning his attention to Orry, holding him up under his arms and swinging him over to me. I held out my hands eagerly and grabbed my son with greedy fingers.

  I kissed Orry’s forehead and sat him up in the crook of my arm. He felt so warm, so secure in my arms. I shook my head a little, regretting what I was planning to do. Regretting it but not changing my mind.

  “What’s going on?” I asked suspiciously to the two beaming boys.

  Joseph’s demeanor was so different to that of before but then Deshi had that effect on him. “We’re going to have our date.” A nurse walked past, her eyes on him swinging that pack around. He was whirling around, pots and pan clanging against each other. I looked up at him and smiled, a rare, all-my-teeth kind of smile. He stepped back and collided with a trolley full of medical supplies. “Whoops, sorry,” he muttered sheepishly to the nurse, who clucked her tongue as she knelt down to help him clean up the mess.

  I stood up and tried to smooth down my hair, reminded of my lovely bald patch. “Did you get me a hat?” I asked, keeping my hand over the prickly, shaved part.

  Deshi tossed me a knitted, wool cap, which I pulled down over my head as quickly as I could.

  “Why don’t you guys go? I’ll take care of this,” Deshi said. I watched him move elegantly around the mess, unlike Joseph, whose big body sometimes moved out of sync with the rest of him. He knelt down and started sweeping cotton buds into his palm.

  He was such a good friend, to both of us. I wondered if his heart was healing. Since my attack, his attitude towards me had shifted. His voice no longer had that bitter edge to it. He seemed at peace with how things had turned out. I hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking.

  “Umm, just a minute. I need to speak to Matthew to make sure he’s ok with me leaving.” They both looked at me like I’d gone crazy.