The florescent lights and the rough, colorless carpet bring her back to the hospital waiting room. It’s the night nurse speaking. She’s sitting in the opposite row of chairs, beside Therese, waiting for Zac’s sister to slog her way awake.
“I—Yes. Oh—yes, I’m sorry.”
Therese’s makeup is smudged, her eyes unfocused. Nora is still surprised to find Zac’s sister so amply fleshed, so dramatically opposite from his beanpole skinniness.
Allison had been with Nora at the hospital when Therese arrived. The three of them parked Therese’s red suitcase in a corner and began to poke at the strangeness of Zac’s present meeting Zac’s past. Therese quickly showed her warm heart, as open and empathic as her brother. She was ashamed that no one else from Topeka would acknowledge him. That had been awkward. They told her how kind Zac was to everyone he met, but omitted the yoga, and the Buddhist theology, and the nights danced away in bars along Polk Street. Therese hadn’t asked about politics, not even about the protest on the bridge, and neither Nora nor Allison pressed. Now, watching her stir, Nora recognizes family resemblance in a blank uncertainty Zac shows when he wakes.
“Mrs. Tanner, I’m sorry to have to disturb you.”
Nora stands, and takes a step toward the other two.
“What is it?” she asks. The night nurse meets her eyes.
“It’s … it’s fine,” Therese is saying, still fighting her way into the present. The clock on the wall reads a quarter past two. A quarter past four in Topeka.
“I’m afraid I have unwelcome news,” the nurse tells Therese, placing a hand on the other woman’s arm.
“Oh, God—”
“I’m so sorry.”
“How did—when?”
“Your brother suffered a severe seizure about twenty minutes ago. The doctor was by his side immediately, but … he didn’t linger. We did everything we could to bring him back. I am so very sorry for your loss.”
Nora feels herself sinking into a blackness at the edges of everything. Not just what she can see, but around the words she’s hearing too, and the sense of her feet on the ground. She feels wobbly, as if she might fall away into deep, irrevocably deep sleep. She steps back, uncertain of her bearings.
“My colleagues are preparing him now. Please take whatever time you need.”
Nora sits, a barely controlled fall into her chair.
Is it time to weep?
Her eyes are dry and her ears are buzzing. She has no idea what to feel, how to feel, whether she can feel anything at all.
THIRTY-SEVEN
It isn’t as though Zac used to make a particular racket meditating in his room, or cooking to the rhythm of Vedic chants, or shepherding Jonah toward his homework. But the teakettle’s lonely churn in the Triangle’s quiet marks his absence nonetheless, reminds each and all of them that he won’t step into the kitchen for a cup of chai, not ever again. No one has had the heart to enter Zac’s bedroom since his sister left town with a plastic urn of ashes packed inside her suitcase. Brendan’s insomnia, his late night orbits to the back porch, the brokenness his old friends wanted, somehow, to fix: all that is gone too.
In Christopher’s imagination, the ticking clock marks increments of distance Brendan is putting between himself and the collective. The Kawasaki’s whine, receding. Brendan no longer haunts the front room, and now it is he, Christopher, who seeks solace in poetry: John Milton, late into the empty nights. The blind bard is stern, certain, lending a longed-for solidity to Christopher’s circumscribed pool of lamplight. Nora says she hears a ghost of Zac’s boyish laugh behind every shut door.
The kettle warbles softly, threatening an all-out wail. Nora cuts the gas and the steam settles. Christopher idly riffles the pages of Paradise Lost. They’re talking about Buzz.
“Rules and conditions would alienate him,” she’s saying. “He would never trust us. All we’d offer better than juvie is decent food and physical safety.”
“Neither one trivial.”
“No. Neither one.” Nora drops a tea bag in her mug and pours water over it. A tart, floral fragrance fills the kitchen. “But it wouldn’t be parenting, and we’d be naïve not to weigh the risk.”
“Of?”
“Of exposing Jonah to … who knows what.”
He sees that she is right, but can’t find what to say. Even the smell of hibiscus tea is too much. If he stood, Christopher thinks, he’d probably puke.
“So do we become the bad cops? Put him through Narconon and pee tests and cell-phone roll calls? Or do we risk him dragging Jonah into the muck?”
“No happy choices.” To his own ear Christopher sounds like the village idiot. All he can muster are platitudes.
“Meantime we wait for seriously bad cops to show.” She sits opposite Christopher. “I’ve been thinking … it’s like a race.”
“What is?”
“Nebraska. Us. It’s a race to see if they catch these truck bombers before we get served with a warrant. A bust is the only thing that’ll keep the Feds off our backs.”
Fear presses the air from his lungs.
If they find Chagall, he’ll be next. Chagall knows who he is. If the police don’t take down an actual culprit, he’s in the line of fire on the manifesto front. If the government makes no headway at all they’ll raid the Triangle because they have to do something.
No matter which way the wave breaks, Christopher can feel he’s going under. He woke that morning certain the only option he has is to walk into the local FBI office. Plead ignorance and beg for mercy. Now he isn’t so eager. Is it rational uncertainty that holds him back? Or is he just scared?
He can’t fathom the distance between a month before and now. Christopher called Suvali exactly once since everything happened. From a pay phone. She didn’t pick up, so he left an elliptical message. What can you say in thirty seconds about the bottom falling out of your life? She hasn’t phoned back, which he takes to mean that thirty seconds was long enough. She gets that she’s better off avoiding him. It’s probably what she wanted anyway.
Christopher can’t explain any of this to Nora.
“Back to Buzz,” he says, sublimating mightily. “He’s not going home to Cheryl and Vince.”
“Goddamn right he’s not. Standards of proof be damned, Chris, there’s no mystery about those two. Vince beats him, maybe worse, and Cheryl lets it happen.” Nora looks up at the clock over the stove. “Allison’s about to come on.”
Christopher reaches for the radio. At that moment the front gate crashes shut. He freezes, then recognizes Marty’s familiar pounding up the steps. Christopher presses the power switch. Second Look’s program signature swells out of the boom box speakers, then fades into Hannah Freedman’s opening patter. Nora shakes her head wearily as Marty’s messenger bag slides down the hallway and ricochets off a wall.
HANNAH: Last week April turned March on its head, going out like a whole pride of lions with nary a lamb in sight—
“Hey,” Marty says breathlessly, stepping into the kitchen. He bends to kiss the top of Nora’s head. “Did I miss much?”
“Nick of time.” She turns up the volume.
Marty scoops a pair of beers out of the fridge and offers them to the others.
“Not me,” Christopher says. Nora points to her steaming tea.
HANNAH: —protesters shut down the San Francisco Bay Bridge, hanging a gruesome and now iconic banner from its westernmost tower. A scuffle with one of thousands of drivers trapped behind their blockade resulted in an activist’s fatal injury. The next morning, a truck bomb destroyed a genomics research center outside Lincoln, Nebraska. The bombers hacked and spammed their manifesto across the internet, calling for an end to the politics of destruction. Finally, on Wednesday night, CBS News broadcast photographs depicting United States military personnel committing acts of torture and sexual humiliation against detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This is Hannah Freedman, welcome to Second Look. Today is Tuesday, May fourth.
&nbs
p; Christopher shakes his head gloomily. “Hell of a lead.”
“Hell of a week,” Nora says. “She’s setting up for compare and contrast.”
“I don’t like her leaving out Zac’s name,” Marty says. “He ain’t just some protester.”
HANNAH: In the studio we have Meg Wyneken and Allison Rayle. Meg heads the US arm of the activist organization Global Justice, and played a key role in protests against scientists and industry representatives attending the seventh annual GeneSynth convention. A mile to the east of Moscone Center, Allison was arrested on the Bay Bridge. As climbers hung their enormous banner, she witnessed longtime friend and fellow activist Zachary Coyle fall victim to a driver’s road rage. Meg, tell us: why genetic engineering, and why now?
MEG: Thanks for inviting me, Hannah, and for posing those key questions …
“First person singular,” Christopher says.
Marty nods. “Maybe it’s the only pronoun she knows.”
MEG: —a situation where scientists see a convergence of mass die-offs, thousands of species each year, and the biosphere being taken over by freak life-forms whose DNA is corrupted and patented by major corporations. Nobody knows what damage these mutants will cause. In Europe, in Japan, in Canada, issues posed by genetic engineering are getting a full public airing. Global Justice insists that Americans have a chance to participate in that dialogue.
HANNAH: Allison Rayle, tell us why your group left the fold to organize a dramatic protest on the Bay Bridge.
ALLISON: Thanks, Hannah. I wouldn’t put it quite that way. Many of the people on the bridge took active roles in the coalition that Meg’s group was part of. We helped to craft and fully supported the coalition’s points of agreement. The drama of a billboard-sized banner hanging off the bridge tower broadcast our common message in a way that mass media couldn’t ignore. The police would have stopped us if they’d known our plans, so we took it off the radar.
“Holding her own against the queen of spin,” Marty says.
“Through round one.” Nora sips from her mug.
MEG: Unfortunately, the risks that Allison’s group guarded against weren’t the ones that sabotaged our protest. Zac was a vibrant and committed activist. I can’t claim Allison’s close friendship, but all of us mourn his tragedy on the Bay Bridge.
HANNAH: Let’s talk about an event that abruptly upstaged West Coast activism against genetic engineering. Allison, where were you when you first learned of the bombing in Nebraska?
“Christ on a cross,” Marty says.
ALLISON: That was not an easy morning, Hannah. Zac was in intensive care after a three-hour surgery, and I’d been released from jail the previous night. So I heard the early news about Nebraska at the hospital. The first thing I thought was how awful it would be if anyone was inside the building. Thankfully, the facility was empty.
HANNAH: What was your political response?
ALLISON: I am unequivocally opposed, and everybody I work with is unequivocally opposed to this type of destructive tactic. No responsible person or group blows up buildings, whether they’re empty or not. What is perplexing here is that the perpetrators issued a statement criticizing destruction as the worst possible way to advance a political agenda. As you put it a few minutes ago, the bombers’ own manifesto called for an end to the politics they practiced.
HANNAH: Meg?
MEG: Terrorism hurts our work terribly, Hannah. Of course I’m as thankful as Allison that no one was killed or injured. But no matter how the bombers tried to color their despicable attack, they have now linked opposition to genetic engineering with reckless terrorism in the public mind. We will be years repairing damage done to a righteous cause.
“Twice,” Christopher says.
“Twice what?”
“Twice she said ‘terrorism’ in twenty seconds.”
HANNAH: —eclipsed by the Nebraska bombers, and a day later the media refocused again, this time on the Abu Ghraib prison. Meg, we all feel moral outrage looking at those photographs. How can opposition to genetic engineering be maintained when we’re confronted with hard evidence that American soldiers are committing acts of brutality in Iraq?
MEG: There is no excuse for the inhumanity those images show, Hannah. But as these atrocities and the policies behind them come to light, we need to remember that never in the history of political activism has there been one single, all-consuming issue. Torture of human beings by American soldiers is inexcusable and it must stop, right now. Environmental rape by corporate-funded genetic engineers? It’s beyond dangerous, and simply not tolerable. Truck bombs as a means of advancing political dialogue? Absolutely never.
HANNAH: Allison?
ALLISON: Meg is on point. I would add that these issues are part of a single fabric. We can only assume that Abu Ghraib happened when rank-and-file soldiers were thrown into chaotic situations, then ordered by ideologues to betray their own humanity. When we find genetically modified corn used illegally to make tortilla chips and soft drinks, that’s the result of workers in our food industries being manipulated by agribusiness giants who aren’t accountable to anyone. These issues share symptoms of an antidemocratic influence in our government. Profit and expedience have replaced morality and stewardship as a basis for deciding policy.
HANNAH: There are a lot of listeners out there who see November’s elections as our opportunity to nip that influence in the bud.
ALLISON: The sooner the better, Hannah, but unfortunately we’re well past the budding stage.
MEG: As an avid listener myself, I see November as a critical opportunity. What’s going to work against us, though, is when terrorism like the bombing in Nebraska is associated with citizens who want to create change through constitutional due process. And with all respect to Allison and to Zachary Coyle’s memory—
“Here goes.”
MEG: —I think we have to acknowledge that dangerous and clandestine urban disruptions are going to hurt our cause as well.
ALLISON: I take exception to characterizing a traffic delay in such frenzied terms, Meg. Where would one draw a line?
MEG: Let me ask you, Allison, how our cause is advanced by overshadowing publicly convened protest with secretly conceived, unaccountable, mortally dangerous disruptions?
ALLISON: Exaggeration doesn’t improve our credibility as a movement, Meg. Diversity of expression and style is our strength. We lack a government’s power, it makes no sense to tie ourselves up in mock-governmental bureaucracies.
MEG: And yet a young activist paid with his life for your group’s recklessness—
—
Christopher switches off the boom box the moment the interview is over, and silence seeps back into the kitchen.
“I dunno.” Nora sounds defeated.
“She gave it a great shot,” Christopher says. “Meg wouldn’t let go.”
Nora carries her empty mug to the sink.
“Did anybody talk to Zac’s sister?” Marty asks.
“This morning,” Nora says. “Nobody’s speaking with her back in Topeka.”
“Jayzus. And nothing yet from Brendan?”
“Not a word.”
“I don’t think he’ll be in touch for a while,” Christopher says. “Not until we see what happens.”
Again, the quiet. A chair scrapes across the floor upstairs.
“Jonah and Buzz?”
“Just Jonah.”
“Hmmm …” Marty turns his empty bottle idly. “I been thinkin’, you know? About Zac’s ashes.”
Nora slumps against the counter. “I feel so weird about that. Ever since Allison said—”
“What?”
“We were talking about Brendan. She said he’s got this idea that only your blood family steps up when things get really bad.”
“Right,” Marty says. “It’s like we all believed that, letting Therese take him back to Kansas. As if Topeka meant anything to him.”
“Well, I don’t know about that last part,” Nora says. “I don�
�t think Zac would have cared one way or the other about the ashes. Body and spirit.” Her lower lip begins to quiver. “But he was our family too. Why didn’t we think about what it meant to us—” Nora can’t hold herself in check. All the words and worries of the past week crumble, like a sand castle giving way to the tide. She collapses in breath-snatching sobs.
Marty steps across the room to hold her close. At his touch, the sluices open wider. Nora tries to speak, but Marty gentles her. “Let it go, girl. Let it go.”
Christopher sits immobile. Lines he read in the dark hours of morning well up in his emptied mind:
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide …
Nora struggles to contain her grief. Marty murmurs consolation.
He sees they both believe the worst is past. They imagine that even if the government were to invade, the Triangle is inoculated against its sting. Christopher bows his head to the tabletop, overwhelmed by the havoc yet to come.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The collective feels preternaturally vacant. It feels that way no matter how many of them—of those who are left—are at home. Allison floats through the Triangle like a widow. Like a widow’s ghost.
The third floor pulses with blurred metallic chaos, music indecipherable to adult ears. She climbs the stairs and approaches the boys’ bedroom. Up close the noise is excruciating. They’re lying on the floor, all bottled up and staring at the ceiling, listening as though the stereo’s distortions were the subtlest string quartet. She knocks sharply on the doorframe. Jonah turns his head.
“The music is too loud!”
“What?”
“Turn the music down, please.”
Buzz looks over. “Bitter Rockets,” he says. She has to read his lips because she can’t hear over the frenetic guitar.
Jonah picks himself up reluctantly and turns the volume a notch counterclockwise.
“More,” Allison says.
He complies, and resumes his prone position. Their sullen vitality doesn’t fill her void.
Consequence Page 27