by Rumaan Alam
“Thank you,” Clay said.
Ruth held the boy’s chin, placed the point of the glass tube beneath his tongue. “You do feel warm. But let’s just see how warm.”
“How do you feel now, bud?” Clay relied on these masculine affections when he was most worried. He’d already asked. Archie had already answered. He wanted to put an arm around him, wanted to fold him into his body, but the boy wouldn’t like that because the boy was nearly a man.
“I’m fine.” Archie mumbled through the thermometer, unable to achieve his characteristic adolescent disdain.
Ruth studied the inscrutable instrument. “One hundred and two. Not so bad. Not so good.”
“Drink your water, pal.” Clay pressed the glass into the boy’s hand.
“Take these.” Ruth shook out two Tylenol just as G. H. and Rose were peppering the cake with sugar confetti, a nice little duet.
Archie did as he was bid. He held a sip of the liquid in his mouth, then put the pills into that. He swallowed and tried to tell if his throat was tender. He wanted to watch television, or go back to his house, or lose himself in his phone, but none of these were possible, so he just sat there, saying nothing.
“I’m going to go help Amanda.” Ruth was pleased to have a problem to solve, or a problem that she might solve. “You just rest here.”
Finding the bathtub full of the water that was meant to save their lives, Amanda took the soiled sheets to the master bathroom, rinsed the (mercifully watery) vomit in the tiled shower. She squeezed them as dry as she could, twisting the cotton until she feared it would rend. She was angry, and this was something to do with that feeling. She dried her hands and went into the bedroom. How quickly they spread out: a tangle of dirty underwear, used paper napkin, magazine, glass of water, all these little signs that they existed and endured. Trees marked their lives in rings that can’t be seen; people, in the garbage they left everywhere, a way of insisting on their own importance. Amanda began righting the room.
“Knock knock.” Ruth said it like a character in a television show as she strode down the hall and into the room, laundry basket at her hip. “I don’t mean to interrupt. I thought I might do the wash anyway, though.”
Amanda performed a kind of curtsy for some reason. Well, it was the woman’s room. “I’m sorry. I can do Archie’s sheets.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just throw them in here. He seems fine. A temperature. One hundred and two.”
“One hundred and two?”
“It sounds high, but you know they are high when they’re kids. Those showroom-new immune systems working overtime. I gave him some Tylenol.”
“Thank you.”
“You can put your clothes in too. I just—while the power is still on.”
It was too intimate, but Ruth had foresight. It would save them the trek to the Laundromat when they got home. Amanda did not know that the Laundromat was closed. She did not know that the Chinese man who ran it was inside the elevator that carried passengers between the turnstiles and the platform at the R train station in Brooklyn Heights, and he’d been there for hours, and he’d die there, though that was many hours in the future yet. “That’s smart. Thank you.”
They considered each other like they were meant to duel. Maybe that was inevitable. Ruth pitied the woman. She knew what was required of her, and hated it. She had to pretend her way to being a good person. But what about Maya and the boys? “You know, you could stay. If you wanted.”
The little house as life raft. Ignorance as a kind of knowing. This did not seduce Amanda. An eternity (as though that were granted) with these people. Part of her still wondered whether this wasn’t a con or a delusion. It was torture, a home invasion without rape or guns. Still, this woman was the nearest an ally Amanda had. She shook her head. “Archie needs a doctor.”
“What if we all do? What if it’s inside us? What if something is beginning, or everything is ending?” This subtext was inescapable. People kept calling the Amazon the planet’s lungs. Waist-deep water was lapping against Venetian marble, and tourists were smiling and taking snapshots. It was like some tacit agreement; everyone had ceded to things just falling apart. That it was common knowledge that things were bad surely meant they were actually worse. Ruth wasn’t this kind of person, but she could feel disease blooming inside her body. It was everywhere, inescapable.
“I can’t think about what we don’t know. I need to focus on this. Archie needs a doctor, I’ll take him to a doctor tomorrow morning.”
“But you’re afraid. I’m afraid.”
“That’s not getting us anywhere. I can’t stay here. I can’t hide. I’m his mother. What else can we do?”
Ruth sat on the bed’s edge. She couldn’t go to town or beyond, to Northampton. She wanted to just lie in her bed. “I guess you’re right.”
“Say something to make me feel better.” Amanda was searching for friendship or humanity or reassurance or relief.
Ruth crossed her legs and looked up at her. “I can’t do that. Comforting.”
Amanda was immediately disappointed.
“Maybe I need it. Comforting.” She was eager to wash the clothes. The neutral smell of the soap, the thunder of the water. “So I can’t provide it. But stay. I think you should. I think it makes sense. Even if I can’t make you feel better. I can’t say something wise and churchy for you.”
“I know—I know you can’t.”
“At least you have your children here with you. I don’t know what’s happening to my daughter. I don’t know what’s happening to my grandsons. We don’t know anything about the world. That is what it is.”
Amanda knew this was the way it had always been. She couldn’t help but wish it were otherwise. Her clothes smelled of her son’s vomit, and the air smelled of her daughter’s cake. “Let’s eat something. I’m going to take a shower, and then we should eat something. I think that will help.” No, that wasn’t quite it. “I can’t think of anything else to do.”
28
THERE WAS ALMOST SOMETHING FESTIVE ABOUT IT. A DRINK before the war. Seen one way, it was placid, it was inviting, it was a vacation. Enterprising Ruth had produced a can of chicken soup, which Archie reluctantly spooned. Amanda tucked him into his remade bed. Enterprising Rose remembered: she had downloaded a movie to her mother’s laptop a year earlier. She wasn’t that interested in it, but it was better than nothing. Amanda sent her to bed with a slice of cake and the almost-obsolete computer, and the four adults had an adult evening, or the candor they couldn’t enjoy when little ears were listening. G. H. paged through an old Economist. Ruth filled porcelain bowls with baby carrots and hummus. Amanda nursed a glass of wine. Clay stood at the island, improvising a sausage pasta.
The rain had abated, the deck dry beneath the eaves. But they’d dine inside, not for fear of the mosquitoes in their end-of-season death throes. The woods menaced them. The moon was waxing, pale yellow, proud through the broken clouds. There was no aftershock to the noise, or there was, and it was all in their heads. Maybe what they’d heard was the sky itself cracking, like Henny Penny foretold. It seemed likely as anything. No one knew what was happening to them, and maybe because of that the rite was strangely joyous, or maybe it was collective hysteria, or maybe it was the chardonnay, cold and the color of apple juice.
It felt practiced or familiar as Thanksgiving, the passing of food on plates, the filling of glasses, the chitchat. Did anyone want to hear George’s stories? A client bilked out of a fortune when a Basquiat was revealed a forgery, the man who’d shifted hundreds of thousands of dollars to his seven-month-old to sidestep a prenup, the man who’d lost three million in Macau, the client who needed cash to pay one of the New York Yankees to bless his son’s bar mitzvah. His stories were about money, not men; money awe-inspiring and irrational and almost all-powerful. George thought money could explain what was happening to them, and that time would tell if money would save them from it. If these people did leave the next day, he’d have to remember to gi
ve them a thousand dollars for their trouble. G. H. wasn’t sure if he thought they would leave, though.
Dessert, why not? There was an air of finality, at least for Clay. The now-clean clothes tumbled about in the hot embrace of the four-thousand-dollar dryer. He thought Archie’s fever would break, thought he’d ask G. H. for directions, a pencil sketch, safe deliverance. He thought the morning would come and surprise them with its beauty and they’d drive home.
They sliced Rose’s cake. Ruth put cardboard pints of ice cream onto the table. The well-stocked kitchen had two stainless steel ice cream scoops. There were enough dishes to fill the washer.
Amanda said it: “Well, the electricity is still on.” You stopped noticing a thing like the flow of power, a thing you couldn’t see but derived some comfort from, rather like God. The water was slowly, very slowly, draining from the tub in the children’s bath, but she didn’t know that.
The conversation turned to places they’d traveled. G. H., sardonic, said, “You must have had more enjoyable vacations than this one.”
Amanda thought of those places where nights never grew dark: Helsinki, St. Petersburg, small towns in Alaska built for men paid to do things to the earth. She feared the return of that noise, unfathomable in the dark. They already knew nothing. “Disney?” She laughed. She’d hated it at the time but cherished the memory.
“Archie threw up then too,” Clay said. He wanted to think of it like that—that vacation meant kids naturally capitulated to virus. Archie, always with the throwing up! Archie, cut it out! This was more enjoyable than believing Archie ill.
Ruth talked about Paris. She and Maya had teatime at the George V, tried on shoes at the Galeries Lafayette, rode the carousel in the Tuileries, though at thirteen Maya considered it beneath her. “A city as gorgeous as you’ve always been told it is.”
“We should do that for winter break. Paris is so beautiful you don’t even care if it’s cold.” Clay saw his kids on the deck of the Eiffel Tower, puffs of frosty breath as they surveyed the world at their feet. He remembered footage of Paris flooding—when was that? The Louvre had moved thirty-five thousand works of art so the Seine wouldn’t destroy them. “We’ll see The Lady and the Unicorn.”
“Sounds expensive.” Idle promises scared Amanda. What if it was a war, big enough to ensnare the entire world, and national borders became like castle walls? She didn’t know that it was worse, that war could not describe it. Those planes had been sent from Rome, New York, to meet another, approaching from western Africa. Bad intelligence: they ended up killing four hundred odd souls before they got near enough our borders to have to fill out their immigration paperwork. The pace of things used to be slower. Now a nut didn’t have to shoot an archduke; every day was a jumble of near-simultaneous oddity.
The cardboard cartons emptied. Everyone admired the cake made from a box. Smudges of chocolate hardened on plates. When the true dark set in, the night’s winged creatures would beat softly against the glass, the outside lights would click on, illuminating the boughs overhead. A silence settled, one of those natural intervals sometimes experienced in restaurants or at parties when talk relaxes and the assembled company lean forward, straining as though to hear something barely discernible. There were no eggs left in the refrigerator, but perhaps they could serve cereal for breakfast.
They decided, without discussing, to simply sit and feel satisfied. G. H. fiddled with his glass. Clay twitched with that delirious urge to smoke a cigarette, so powerful it was a little frightening. He had to confront the fact that he was weak. Ruth looked toward the window and saw mostly her own reflection. Amanda retrieved the bottle of vodka she’d bought the day they arrived.
G. H. sliced lemons into rounds, yellow coins, fat with flavor.
When Amanda got to the bottom of the first drink, she dug her fingers through the ice and set the citrus on her tongue like the Catholics did with the body of Christ. Transubstantiated into someone new. She was drunk. The tell was the volume of her voice. “I’ll have another.” This was a command more than a request.
G. H. poured. “My pleasure.”
Clay smelled of the cigarette he’d just returned from enjoying, though enjoyment wasn’t much a part of it. The crickets conspiring. The possibility of something out there. He’d hoped to see headlights, maybe a plane crossing the sky. There were studies about solitary confinement making you mad. He missed the presence of other humans, and he was putting on a brave front because that was his job as a man. “George, will you make us a map? Tomorrow? You’ll show us the way. Clearly I can’t be trusted.”
“I’ll drive into town. You can follow me.”
Ruth did not say anything.
Amanda was afraid of slurring and seeming more drunk than she knew she was. She was a woman in control of things. “Are you going to come back . . . here?”
“Yes, we are.” Ruth would go with him. She wouldn’t stay there alone. She wanted them to leave and to stay. She could not be indifferent, even though she wanted to be. She did not want to feel guilt.
“I wish I knew the roads to Northampton.” G. H. was reserved. “It’s far. We’ll just hope that the phones . . .” He didn’t bother concluding.
“We need to take care of Archie—” Amanda’s falter said what needed to be said. The boy was sick. It didn’t matter what caused it, only what they did about it. All those years fretting about the expensive epinephrine autoinjector, at the boy’s side like the president and the nuclear codes, and Archie was undone by a noise. Parenthood was never knowing what was going to hurt your kids, but knowing only that something, inevitably, would.
“Before you go, I’ll give you your cash back.” G. H. was fair, or a deal was a deal. He was drinking the vodka too. The four of them were united in their search for the temporary peace of oblivion. It almost worked; he almost forgot why they were together in the first place.
“I’m not going to forget that, I can assure you.” Clay tried to make a joke of it. Maybe they needed that money to pay the medical bills. Maybe they needed that money to replace a refrigerator full of rotting food. Maybe his editor at the New York Times Book Review would so love his essay she’d offer him a contract. Anything, anything, was possible. He put a hand on his wife’s to tell her that he thought they were making the right choice.
“We’re all going to be fine.” Amanda was not addressing him alone, drunk enough not to care that these people were involved. They were family now, or something.
“If it’s your last night of vacation, you should enjoy it.” Ruth stacked soiled plates one atop the other, leaving aside the fact that she enjoyed restoring order. These people had become their friends, their guests, and Ruth the host, and she just needed to clear the table.
“To enjoyment. To the enjoyment of vacations. To the enjoyment of any moment in life, I guess. Enjoying a moment is a victory. I think we need to hold on to those.” G. H. raised his glass. The gesture was sincere.
“I’ll enjoy, I’ll enjoy.” Amanda felt defensive. Like saying: I am having a good time, I am a good time. Optimists believed they could change the world. They thought if you looked on the bright side, the less bright side would no longer exist.
“It’s not an order, it’s an invitation.” G. H. felt at ease. He couldn’t wait to see the markets. He couldn’t wait to figure out who had got rich, because in such moments, someone brave or just lucky always did. He hoped the night would grow cold. He wanted to stand outside and shiver, then sink into the hot tub and look at the black limbs of the trees.
Amanda refilled her drink. She wanted more ice cream, the lavish sweetness in her mouth. There was no more, but there were doughnuts, there was a package of cookies, she had options. She knew before they went to bed that night she’d steal into the kitchen, tear through whatever she found, palms full of salty Goldfish crackers, limp American cheese, a finger in the hummus. As she stood, the room moved, a little. The table under her fingertips steadied her.
“I think I’ll have an
other.” Ruth closed the dishwasher door, satisfied.
“I should fold the laundry. Maybe pack us up.” Amanda stood.
“I can help you. Fold. We can fold. Pack—let’s go one step at a time.”
“I think we should be prepared,” Amanda said.
“Perhaps we’ll have a nightcap later?” Clay felt it was good manners. Maybe this was their last night together. It seemed they’d been together for weeks. It had been one day.
In the bedroom, they worked in silence. The clothes, still warm, were sorted into tidy piles, dropped to the bottom of the rolling duffel. “I have to remember to go outside and get everyone’s flip-flops.”
“Let’s just be cautious.”
“I’m packing. We’re not coming back here. We’re going home.”
Clay understood her insistence. If they thought it, it would be so. He took clean underpants from the chest of drawers and placed them atop the bed. “It’s been a strange day. I need reality.”
Amanda sat on the bed. “A day that felt like a week.”
“Could it be that we’re addicted to our phones? Like an actual addiction? Because I feel unwell.” Clay was charging his, wanted to be sure it was ready when the network came back online.
Amanda fretted. “What if that noise made us sick?”
“It might be possible.” What if the hair fell from his head, as it did for chemotherapy patients on television shows, what if his rubbery fingernails peeled back to reveal the softest part of the body, what if his bones hollowed and weakened, what if his blood ran with poison, what if tumors lurked in the space behind his eyeballs, grew slowly as Amanda’s lungs had filled that inflatable pool toy, one breath, then the next, until the thing was a softball pressing into his eye socket?
“And those people.” She whispered this. She was betraying them. She hated George Washington (what sort of name was that?) and she hated Ruth and she blamed them for bringing the world into this house. Amanda wanted to be safely buckled into the front seat, her left hand straying unconsciously to squeeze Clay’s right arm, recumbent atop the gearshift. She wanted to drive away from this place and these people.