Life as We Knew It

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

  "I'm afraid not," she said. "But I feel so bad for you. You were finally doing something you enjoyed and now I've screwed things up again."

  I thought she was going to cry, but she didn't.

  I guess none of us is crying anymore.

  October 28

  Peter came by unexpectedly (well, all visits are unexpected these days, so what I mean is he wasn't summoned) and checked out Mom's ankle. He agreed it wasn't broken, but he said this sprain is worse than the last one and Mom needs to stay off her feet for at least two weeks, maybe more.

  He also thought Mom might have broken one of her toes, but he said there's nothing that can be done about it, so why even worry. Which is pretty funny, coming from Peter.

  There doesn't seem much point to sleeping all night, since I have to check the fire regularly, so I'm grabbing naps day and night. I sleep for two to three hours, then wake up and do whatever needs to be done, and then go back to sleep. Actually the smartest time for me to sleep would be in the early evening, when Matt and Jon are home and can tend the fire, but that's the time I most want to be awake. Sometimes I nod off anyway.

  It's driving Mom crazy that she can't do anything, but there's not much any of us can do about that.

  Oh, and I have an exciting new job as well. Mom can't make it to the bathroom and Matt located a bedpan in the attic, and I get to clean it. I keep threatening to put kitty litter in it.

  It's funny. Mom sprained her ankle a few weeks ago, and things were okay. It was a good time. Not that much has changed since then, but it certainly isn't a good time.

  October 29

  I told Mrs. Nesbitt about Peter's visit and what he'd said about Mom. I didn't leave any of it out, including the part where Peter said that even after Mom could walk around the house she wasn't to think about walking outside.

  "I guess you're stuck with me for a while," I said.

  Mrs. Nesbitt surprised me. "Good," she said. "It's better that way."

  I thought it had taken courage to tell Mrs. Nesbitt about Mom's ankle. It took a lot more courage to ask her why it was better that way.

  "I didn't want your mother to find me dead," Mrs. Nesbitt said. "It won't be fun for you, either, but you're younger and I mean less to you."

  "Mrs. Nesbitt!" I said.

  She gave me one of those looks that used to terrify me when I was very little. "This is no time for make-believe," she said. "I could be dead tomorrow. We need to talk honestly. No point beating around the bush."

  "I don't want you to die," I said.

  "I appreciate that," she said. "Now when I do die and you find me, here are the important things. First of all, do whatever you want with my body. Whatever is easiest. Peter dropped by to visit me after he left your house and he told me that a dozen or more people are dying every day around here. I'm no better than any of them, and probably a fair amount worse than some. Peter says the hospital is still taking bodies so if that's what works for you, it'll be fine for me. Never liked the idea of burial anyway, always preferred cremation. My husband's ashes are scattered in the Atlantic somewhere so it's not like our graves would be side by side."

  "All right," I said. "If I find your body, I'll tell Matt and he'll get you to the hospital."

  "Good," she said. "Now after I'm gone, go through the house and take everything you can possibly use. Don't worry about leaving things for my heirs. I haven't heard from my son or his family since May so I have to assume they won't be needing my things. If any of them show up at your doorstep and you still have something of mine, give it to them. But don't worry about it. Go through the whole house, attic to cellar. My car has some gas in it, so you can put all my things in it and drive back to your place. Don't be bashful. I won't be needing anything and the more you have, the better your chances. This is going to be a long and terrible winter and I'd be very angry if I thought you left something behind that could have helped you get through it."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "After I die, wrap me up in a sheet," she said. "Don't waste a blanket on it. And even if someone in my family comes back, I want your mother to have my diamond pendant and you to have my ruby brooch. Those are my gifts for the two of you and don't you forget it. Matt's to have the painting of the sailboats, because he always liked that when he was little, and Jonny should have the landscape in the dining room. I don't know if he likes it or not, but he's entitled to something and that's a good piece. You probably can't use any of my furniture, but you might want to take it for firewood."

  "You have antiques," I said. "We couldn't burn them."

  "Speaking of burning things, I burned all my letters and diaries," she said. "Not that there was a single interesting word in any of them. But I didn't want you to be tempted so they're all gone. I kept the albums, though. Your mother might get a kick going through them, seeing the old pictures of her family. You have all that?"

  I nodded.

  "Good," she said. "Don't tell your mother any of this until after I'm gone. She has enough to worry about. But when I've died, you be sure to tell your mother I loved her like a daughter and all of you like grandchildren. Tell her I'm just as glad she didn't see me at the end and she should never feel guilty that she couldn't come by for one last visit."

  "We love you," I said. "We all love you so much."

  "I should think so," she said. "Now tell me. Have you started your schoolwork yet?"

  Of course I haven't, but I recognized a change of subject and went along with it.

  When I got home I put wood in the stove and curled up for a nap. It was easier sleeping (or pretending to sleep) than trying to make small talk with Mom about Mrs. Nesbitt. I've never really thought about what it would be like to be an old woman. Of course nowadays I'm not sure I'll live long enough to be any kind of a woman.

  But I hope when I get closer to death, however old I might be, that I can face it with courage and good sense the way Mrs. Nesbitt does. I hope that's a lesson I've truly learned.

  November 1

  Matt hovered around the house all morning, which was unusual. He's been even more obsessive about chopping wood ever since Mom moved back into the sunroom. I know it's because we're using up firewood earlier than planned, but it still annoys me just a little. I'd like him to stay indoors occasionally and clean the bedpan.

  Sometime this afternoon I could hear the sound of a car in our driveway. Matt bolted outside and the next thing I knew he, Jon, and a couple of guys I didn't recognize were moving sheets of plywood out of a pickup truck and into the sunroom. Mom watched but she didn't say anything, so I guess she knew about it.

  After the guys left, Matt and Jon spent the rest of the day covering the windows in the sunroom with the plywood. When the house was first built, the sunroom didn't exist—it was just a back porch, and windows in the kitchen and dining room looked out on it. But when the porch was enclosed, the spaces stayed where the kitchen and dining room windows were even though the actual windows were removed. That's where a lot of the light in both rooms comes from, since the sunroom has skylights and three walls of windows (plus the outside door, of course). Matt blocked off the kitchen/sunroom window with the plywood, and put a sheet of plywood in front of the dining room/sunroom window so it can be pushed aside for easier access to the firewood.

  Now the only natural light in the sunroom comes from the skylights. Not that there's been much sunlight lately, but the room is a lot darker.

  Then, just in case I wasn't miserable enough, they blocked off the window over the kitchen sink. So now the only natural light in the kitchen is what comes from the skylights in the sunroom through the kitchen/sunroom door. In other words, just about none.

  "Are you blocking off the living room windows, too?" I asked.

  "No reason to," Matt said. "Once we stop using heat, we'll close off the living room. But we still might use the kitchen."

  I'm so angry I could scream. For starters, I'm sure Matt got the plywood from the gang I saw in town, and I hate that he did
n't tell me he was going to. No discussion. He knew what was best and he just went ahead and did it. (Okay, he talked to Mom about it. But I wasn't consulted.) And he doesn't understand what it's like to be cooped up in this house all day long. The only time I get out is when I visit Mrs. Nesbitt and that's just a short walk there and back.

  I know Matt and Jon have it harder than me. Matt eats so little and he's doing physical work. When he comes in, he's exhausted. The other day he fell asleep during supper.

  But he didn't have to cover the kitchen window. Not yet anyway. He could have waited until we ran out of oil. He didn't care what it would mean to me. He never even asked.

  I'd move into Mrs. Nesbitt's but I can't leave Mom.

  Sometimes I think about how things used to be. I'd never been anyplace, not really. Florida once and Boston and New York City and Washington and Montreal and that was it. I'd dream of Paris, of London, of Tokyo. I wanted to go to South America, to Africa. I always assumed I could someday.

  But my world keeps getting smaller and smaller. No school. No pond. No town. No bedroom. Now I don't even have the view out the windows.

  I feel myself shriveling along with my world, getting smaller and harder. I'm turning into a rock, and in some ways that's good, because rocks last forever.

  But if this is how I'm going to last forever, then I don't want to.

  November 5

  I was in the kitchen washing out Mom's bedpan when the water stopped running.

  I turned on the faucets in the downstairs bathroom and nothing came out. I went upstairs and checked that bathroom. Nothing.

  I waited until Matt came in before telling him. For a moment he got mad at me.

  "You should have told me right away!" he yelled. "If the pipes are frozen I might have been able to do something."

  But I know it's not because the pipes have frozen. It's because the well's run dry. We haven't had any rain since July. No matter how careful we've been with water, it was bound to run out eventually.

  Matt and I walked over to the well to check it out. Of course I was right.

  When we came in, Jon was sitting with Mom in the sun-room, so we joined them. "How long can we survive without water?" he asked.

  "It's not that bad," Matt said. "We still have bottled water and soda to drink. No more laundry, I guess. And Miranda'll just have to share a bedpan with Mom." He grinned like that was some kind of joke.

  "We don't have that much bottled water," Jon said. "What if it never rains again?"

  "We'll get some snow before too long," Matt said. "But in the meantime we can cut some chunks of ice from Miller's Pond. We'll boil it and hope for the best."

  "Isn't there someplace else we could get ice?" I asked. "How about your little friends in the black market?"

  "They're not my little friends and they don't have any water or ice," Matt said. "Or if they do, they're not selling it. If you can think of someplace closer than the pond, great. But that's the best I can come up with."

  I thought about Brandon skating on the pond. I told myself it had never really happened so it didn't matter.

  "Since there's no water left, there's no reason to keep the heat on," Matt continued. "We might as well conserve the oil and move into the sunroom."

  "No!" I shouted. "I won't!"

  "Why not?" Jon asked, and I could tell he was genuinely surprised. "It's warm in here. Even with the furnace on, it's cold in the house. Why not move?"

  "I spend a lot of time in the kitchen," I said. "Not just sleeping. And it's bad enough now. I'll freeze to death if we turn the heat off. Is that what you want? You want me to freeze to death?"

  "You won't be spending any more time in the kitchen," Matt said. "Except to get stuff out of the pantry. We don't cook in there anymore or eat in there and now you won't be doing any washing in there. If something happens to the firewood and we don't have any heating oil left, we'll freeze to death. It's better to keep some in reserve."

  "What difference does it make?" I said. "We're never going to make it through the winter. It's November and already we're out of water and the temperature is below zero and there's no way of getting more food. We're dying in increments, Matt. You know that. We all know that."

  "Maybe we are," Mom said, and I was almost startled to hear her speak. She's been talking a lot less since she hurt her ankle again, and she's really cut down on her rah-rah speeches. "But as long as we don't know what the future is going to bring us, we owe it to ourselves to keep living. Things could get better. Somewhere people are working on solutions to all this. They have to be. It's what people do. And our solution is to stay alive one day at a time. Everyone dies in increments, Miranda. Every day we're one day closer to death. But there's no reason to rush into it. I intend to stay alive as long as I possibly can and I expect the same from you. The only sensible thing to do is for all of us to stay in the sunroom."

  "Not tonight," I said. "Please, not tonight."

  "Tomorrow morning," Mom said. "We'll bring the mattresses in then."

  "It'll be okay," Matt said to me. "In some ways, it'll be better. You won't be the only one responsible for the fire. We can take turns stoking it. You'll sleep better."

  "Yeah," Jon said. "You'll have it easy, Miranda. You won't even have any housework to do."

  So tonight is my last night alone. And my world has gotten even smaller.

  SIXTEEN

  November 7

  Mrs. Nesbitt died.

  I don't know when, but she was in bed and I like to think she died in her sleep. Her eyes were closed and she looked peaceful.

  I kissed her cheek and covered her face with her top sheet. I sat silently by her side for a while, mostly to see if I was going to cry, but I didn't and I knew I couldn't sit there forever, no matter how peaceful it was.

  I knew she wanted us to have everything, but I made a point of taking out her diamond pendant and ruby brooch first. Then I went downstairs and took the two paintings off the wall she wanted Matt and Jonny to have. I piled all the things on the kitchen table and tried to decide what to look at next.

  What I really wanted to do was go through her kitchen cabinets and see what food she had left, but the very thought of it made me excited and that didn't seem like the proper way to feel. It made me feel like a cannibal.

  So I found a flashlight and started with the attic. I didn't know what I was going to find there but Mrs. Nesbitt had told me to go from the attic to the cellar and I had no desire to go to the cellar.

  The attic was filled with boxes and trunks. It was ice cold in there and I knew I didn't have the energy to go through every single one of them. So I hopped from box to box.

  There were lots of old clothes, which I didn't think would be any help to us. There were also boxes of papers, accounts from Mr. Nesbitt's business.

  I opened a box called Bobby's Things and found something great in there. Most of the stuff was from school, papers he'd written and the letters he'd gotten from being on the school basketball team. But toward the bottom I found a shoebox filled with old baseball cards.

  I thought about how Jon hadn't gotten a birthday present and I clutched that shoebox. I'd surprise him with it at Christmas. Or before Christmas if I don't think we'll make it that long.

  I went downstairs then and walked through the bedrooms and looked in the closets. There were clean towels and washcloths that Mrs. Nesbitt must not have used. Clean sheets and blankets and quilts. No matter how warm we might be in the sunroom, extra blankets seemed like a good idea. There were boxes of tissues I knew we could use, and rolls of toilet paper. Aspirin and painkillers. Cold remedies.

  I took a clean pillowcase and started putting stuff in there, starting with the baseball cards. I didn't put any of the blankets in there, but I did throw in some of the towels and washcloths. There really wasn't any logic to what I put in and what I left out. I'd be sending Matt over to fill the car and he could pick up anything I forgot to take.

  Then I allowed myself to go to the ki
tchen. I opened the cabinets and I saw cans of soup and vegetables and tuna and chicken. All the stuff we'd been eating for months now. There wasn't enough for us to eat three meals a day. But every can would keep us alive a little bit longer.

  I knew, without her ever telling me, that Mrs. Nesbitt had been going hungry so we could have the food. I thanked her silently and kept looking.

  In the back of one of the cabinets I found a box of chocolates, unopened, with a Happy Mother's Day card attached. Mrs. Nesbitt never was one for chocolate. You would have thought her son knew that.

  I took the chocolate and put it in the bottom of the pillowcase along with the baseball cards. I couldn't decide whether to give it to Mom at Christmas or on her birthday.

  Then I realized there was a funny noise in back of me. I turned around and saw the kitchen faucet was dripping.

  I grabbed a pot and put it under the faucet and turned it on. Actual water poured out.

  Mrs. Nesbitt's well hadn't run dry. There was only one of her and she hadn't used up all her water. Her insistence on keeping the heat on had prevented the pipes from freezing.

  I grabbed a lot of the cans and an unopened box of raisins and rammed them into the pillowcase. Then I went through the entire house, top to bottom, looking for containers for the water. Everything I found that could possibly hold water, bottles and jugs and canisters and barrels, I dragged into the kitchen. I filled them all just for the joy of hearing running water.

  I was tempted to pour myself a glass of water and drink it, but even though the water was probably clean, I knew it should be boiled first. But then I thought to look in Mrs. Nesbitt's refrigerator. Sure enough, she'd been using it for storage space, and there was an untouched six-pack of bottled water.

  I let myself drink one. It was all I could do to keep from gulping it down in three giant swallows. But I sipped it instead, like a fine wine.