by Stephen Cox
Molly said the right things, hung up the phone and wiped away tears.
Later, she stood in the flower shop, trying to decide. Janice liked her flowers loud and colourful. She raised an explosive bunch of red and orange blooms to her nose, but they smelled of nothing. What had she expected?
She parked in the hospital lot, determined to be on time. Janice would be glad of a visit, because hospitals reeked of boredom as much as disinfectant. She was so pleased for her friend, but just looking at the building brought everything back. The cold north wind blew straight into Molly’s heart. She sat in the car and just breathed, in and out, in and out, for twenty minutes, until the chill air got too much to bear.
Janice had argued herself a corner bed with a little more privacy than the rest. She looked exhausted, but she and the girls were fine. Above her head hung a vast picture, a loving scrawl which showed Chuck had already been in to see his new sisters.
‘I love these flowers!’ Janice said, then, ‘It’s such nonsense to keep the babies and mothers apart.’ They had read books together that wanted women back in charge of birth. ‘They could stick them in a little crib right here. Male doctors have turned pregnancy and having babies into an illness . . .’
Molly felt a prickle of tears come, how stupid.
Janice’s face turned to one of horror. ‘Molly, I’m sorry . . .’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, biting the inside of her cheek, just a little, enough to help her keep it together. ‘I agree, it’s ridiculous.’
Janice used her mix of force and sweetness to get the nurse to bring her the twins, Alice and Tammy. They slept on as Molly cuddled one, wrapped in white, and stared at that unmade look of a brand-new baby: the little pouty mouth, eyes shut like kittens. Both were perfect pink, with tiny tufts of their father’s copper hair. She found more bright things to say, more obvious questions, while she ached inside. She understood, deep in her guts, how that crazy lady had walked into the hospital three years back and tried to steal a baby.
Janice looked at her. ‘How’ve you been?’ Janice’s friends didn’t keep their secrets long.
‘Well, no one’s burned down my house. I think Gene’s finding it tough. Roy should take him out for a beer.’ Recently the thought would not go away, that Gene would be happier married to someone else.
‘He did, last week. Gene’s worried sick about you. About the drinking. He said you’ve said some crazy things.’
‘Gene worries too much.’ She should be angry with Gene, telling tales outside the marriage, but she felt nothing, just more tears threatening. She fought to keep them in, determined not to spoil the moment or wake the babies. Janice looked tired and Molly didn’t want to burden her. ‘This isn’t your problem,’ she added. ‘Roy and Chuck and these great girls, that’s enough to deal with. We’ll survive, Gene and I.’
Janice’s eyes were moist too as Molly stroked one little Henderson forehead with a finger.
Molly added, ‘I’ll bounce back, you’ll see. Gene and I will fight through.’ And as she said, ‘We’re pretty tough, you know!’ the thought swam up, as it had too many times: Why fight? Why not just let the darkness rise and take her away?
‘Let me show you what I found for them – here, can you hold both girls at once? I wouldn’t want to drop one.’ She’d bought toys and clothes from the department store in Bradleyburg, not the stuff she’d so carefully collected for her own child. She’d never give that away.
When visiting hours were over, Molly drove back the long way through cold fields, remembering that perfect velvet evening when she and Gene decided to buy the house, that shooting star and the naïve wish she’d made. That Molly felt like a different person, the Molly who thought life was just beginning: so young, such a fool to hope.
Those thoughts came. Take the hose-pipe from out back and run the exhaust into the car, in a sealed space like a garage. It would be like going to sleep. Or she could go back to work and steal drugs. She hated incompetence; there’d be no half measures if she decided to end it.
*
Bleak months passed before Molly told Gene about those dangerous thoughts. Holding him, she knew she needed to find purpose, to turn herself outwards. Bit by bit, this came.
Now she longed for her work, her passion, and she fought to persuade them she was well. She put on the starched white dress and stiff white hat and returned to the wards. There was comfort in efficiency and routine, and in the certainty of a job well done. It wasn’t easy, and there were days when even looking at the hospital entrance still brought a savage catch to her throat, but she took strength and pride in what she did. She couldn’t fix the world, but she could help those people in front of her. When things went badly, when medicine could do no more, at least she could wait with the families in the dark. Her church-going days were long past but she thought sometimes of those grieving women waiting at the foot of the cross.
She planted an ornamental cherry tree in her garden, cossetting it with straw against the worst winter could do. It flowered each spring, pink for a girl, and its survival gave her hope.
Seasons came and went and came again. Across the country strange winds blew, whipping away old certainties and blowing in peacock clothes and rainbow words. People spoke up who’d long been silenced, although some were answered with billy-clubs and teargas. Dr Martin Luther King, Molly’s great prophet of peace and hope and justice, was gunned down, then someone shot Bobby Kennedy, the younger brother, who had turned against the war. In tears, she watched the cities burn in retribution and heard the new voices that said change must come in fire and blood. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times and no one knew where the country was headed.
She watched Gene grow colder, until the evening a bitter wind stripped the last leaves from the trees, he came to her and confessed about that woman: what he had done, and almost done. Molly screamed and slapped him and raged at him until even she was frightened to be so out of control. He took the punishment, not trying to defend himself, until she ordered him from the house.
Gene told her he had changed his mind at the motel room door. She always knew when he was lying and even in her fury, she believed him. He had betrayed her, but only in heart and soul and not in body.
It was a fragile straw, but she clung to it. Gene had confessed and made no excuses. He swore he wanted to save their marriage – he had not actually screwed that scheming woman. Nine days later, still barely able to speak, Molly let Gene return, but to the spare bedroom. It was a month before she would let him touch her.
In January, a new President took the oath: a grey man who’d come back from the political dead. That jowly politician gave his dishonest smile and claimed he had a special plan to end the war – yet still the young men were sent out to drop fire on villages and to kill and to die in the mud.
The world was full of news, the year they said America would put men on the Moon.
*
That morning, a cold Tuesday in April, she finished her long, tiring shift on the hospital’s fifth floor. The work drained her, but it was still a good shift, of sorts.
She walked across Founders Green to the red-brick diner. Francine’s smelled of coffee and bacon and toast. It was the unofficial centre of the town; more business was done there than anywhere in City Hall. Francine herself grew greyer and wider each year, although she was never seen to eat. On the wall hung the black-framed picture of her only son, in uniform, with his Purple Heart. They had brought him back from Korea in a box.
She was looking forward to seeing Gene. This meal would be his breakfast and her supper. Gene needed his sleep – she’d never met a man so desperate for eight uninterrupted hours – but here he was, rising from behind their usual table.
Gene kissed her on the cheek. Together, they sat and he put an awkward hand on hers. Just months ago, she’d have found some excuse to brush him off.
He m
ade his old joke about her nurse’s hat, then, hopeful, said, ‘It’s been like a shipwreck. I don’t believe how tough it’s been. But since New Year, I feel we’ve reached some kind of land. Don’t you?’
She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I think so.’ Life would never be great again, so why should she expect to feel as she did before? But this was okay. All you could do was take it a day at a time.
‘Sixty-four days sober,’ she said, to encourage him. She was twenty pounds heavier than on her wedding day, but nothing comes free. Stay sober, stay working, stay married.
‘That’s great,’ he said, smiling just a little bit more. ‘Do the meetings still help?’
Molly shrugged. Perhaps those AA meetings in the damp church hall made a difference, although she struggled with the piety she didn’t feel around a Higher Power she didn’t believe in. She thought what helped was just the people: they had a raw human need, they stared into the abyss together and somehow, they helped each other, one day at a time. Molly’s sponsor was a strange woman, but she had written a beautiful, impossible letter. ‘You can’t help stop war in the world unless you end the war inside yourself.’
After Gene’s betrayal, she’d moved to night shifts, to punish him and to banish him from her bed. It was time to make it right.
‘Working nights is too hard on both of us. I’ll talk to Sister tomorrow, although it might take a while to move back to a day shift.’
‘Great.’ He grinned, as he used to do. ‘Maybe “Better Times” after all.’
He had written that song at New Year, how he still wanted her, how sorry he was and how he still had hope for the future. He had played on his guitar, all thumbs from nerves, and it had made her cry. Taking him back had been the right thing.
‘Baby steps, Gene. Don’t let’s pretend it will all be the same.’
‘Things will be better,’ he said. ‘I know they will.’
‘Everyday People’ played on the radio.
CHAPTER 4
Meteor Day
No one in Amber County would ever forget that cold spring day, clear, but with cloud due from the north. Everyone had their Meteor Day story, but Molly believed hers was the strangest of all.
She ate an afternoon breakfast in the kitchen. When Gene left that morning, without waking her, he’d left a children’s book on the kitchen table, about a talking walrus. He’d added a note with a badly drawn lady walrus that had made her laugh.
She smiled at the memory of how they’d made love on Sunday, gentle forgiveness. Then she went outside to fix the porch light. She’d been asking Gene to do it for weeks. Now she wanted it done.
It was a day, an hour, a minute like any other. Then, in a heartbeat, the light changed behind her. Molly glanced up and saw the Meteor rip open the sky like a flaming sword. Of course she had no idea what it was: this strange blazing moon falling to the north, trailing fire and smoke and smaller fragments across the blue . . .
I’m going to die. Her heart went wild and the light bulb dropped from her fingers to shatter on the porch. It’s the end of the world. They’ve gone crazy and launched the Bomb. It’s the end – the end for everyone.
A few moments later noise slammed into her and the sky became thunder. She fell to her knees.
Then came the impact and the world shook like a bucking horse. Molly grabbed the porch pillar and held on.
A second roar – a second gale. She should’ve taken cover, stupid not to; she should’ve covered her face so as not to be blinded, but the sheer impossibility of whatever it was had stopped her thinking. Her head ringing from the noise, she tasted blood.
A giant tree of black smoke rose in the north.
Whatever it was must have missed the town, but she had to check. She ran up the road, past those few houses before the road dipped down and she could look out at a picture-postcard view of Amber Grove. Yes, the big strike was north, but smaller things, like half a dozen comets, had struck right in the guts of the town and now plumes of smoke were rising from somewhere on the Green, near Gene’s library. Her skin crawled.
A siren wailed.
Molly ran back inside, dialled the library and hung onto the phone. It rang and rang, for ten minutes or more, but she didn’t give up, even as she wondered if she should drive in to look for Gene or report to the hospital. There’d been the chaos of the derailment when she was in high school . . . She had been a volunteer in the hospital, a candy-striper; the memory told her the hospital would need everyone they could get – but first aid would be needed in the middle of town too.
If that was the Bomb, fallout was coming. Man’s towering achievement was invisible poison in the air to destroy children yet unborn. Perhaps she should hide away.
At last, a young woman’s voice buzzed down the telephone line. ‘L-library . . .’
It was the new assistant. Evie? Emmie? ‘It’s Molly Myers – where’s Gene? Is he hurt—’
‘He went out to help,’ the girl gabbled. ‘There’s a big fire on Main Street – I can see it – and more, there’re fires all over town . . . There’s only me here—’
‘Listen, I need you to get him a message, okay? Tell him not to be stupid. Let the damn place burn down.’
‘But people are hurt,’ the girl said, suddenly showing a hint of backbone, ‘and they need to stop the fires spreading.’
Molly breathed. Of course Gene wouldn’t stop, not if someone was in danger. And anyway, how could she argue with him third-hand?
‘Tell him I’m going to the hospital – tell him I love him, will you? And don’t take any risks.’
‘I’m scared,’ the woman said. Evelyn.
‘Here’s the secret.’ Molly tried to keep her voice calm. ‘We’re all scared. Breathe, take one step at a time. You’re doing a good job.’
She felt good, saying that. Almost as soon as she hung up, the phone rang.
‘Nurse Myers, are you coming in?’
‘On my way.’
She grabbed her first-aid kit and a clean uniform; it always reassured patients, knowing who was who. She slammed the car door, gunned the engine and took the back roads, skirting the town. To the north that vast threatening column of smoke hung like their own volcano, or a spreading black funeral tree. The impact site must be in the woods where Gene took her walking, near Two Mile Lake.
Horns honked and sirens wailed, an angry chorus of metal voices. Gene will be all right, she told herself. Gene won’t take any risks.
This was going to be worse than the derailment ten years back, when the train had hit a car, some three miles from town. All those fires and rocks falling from the sky – how could the firefighters battle on so many fronts at once?
She still remembered the man who’d lost a leg, bleeding out five feet from her while the professionals sought to save him. Although she’d been frightened and sick to her stomach, she had truly understood her calling. In that moment, the younger Molly had stepped forward, pretending a calm she did not feel, to act.
She almost missed the old man standing shaking by the roadside, his toothless mouth gaping, his bleeding hands held out in entreaty. He was just standing there barefoot in a dressing gown. She couldn’t see any house, but he must’ve come from somewhere. She braked, and her work began.
Out of the car, the wind brought the stench of smoke: the end of the world stank of petrol and burning tyres, like a hundred junkyards in flames. And still the great tower of darkness grew where the blazing thing had fallen. Her mother always said the world would end with a falling star.
*
Meteor Day slipped into endless night. Cold rain streaked every hospital window black with ash. Molly worked alongside many others, setting up a casualty station in the hospital coffee shop; there were cheery plastic daisies everywhere, but it was the smells of smoke and disinfectant that fought for dominance. Every chair was taken; there was nowhere els
e to put people who’d crashed their cars or who’d been hit by debris and who weren’t going to get worse for a while. Outside she could see yet another damn fool sheep wandering loose. A farmer had brought in an injured neighbour on their truck – but who’d been stupid enough to let his livestock out?
As her grandma had always said, It’s only help if it’s helpful. Molly’s team was a long-retired doctor, half blind but still reassuring; some Girl Scout den mother, half an adequate first-aider as long as Molly checked her work, and a peroxide teenage candy-striper straight off a bubble-gum poster. The girl wiped her eyes and set her little girl’s chin. ‘Just tell me what to do, Mrs Myers.’ They looked at each other and the girl grew four years and a couple of inches in that moment. God bless the women who have it, thought Molly, for they’ll save the world.
Burst eardrums, cuts and burns, broken bones . . . the County Treasurer, bleeding from the mouth, went into cardiac failure. Molly gave him CPR and brought him back.
She washed her hands, readying herself for the next round. And Gene walked in, ragged and dirty and smiling. The trousers of his best work suit were torn beyond repair and his hands were bandaged, not very well. Her heart gave a little leap, like old times.
‘You’re busy, Molly-moo,’ he said.
She wiped a smudge of soot from below his hairline. ‘Not too busy to see you.’ It wasn’t private, but they found a corner where they hugged, reassuring each other without words. Their bodies had long memories and forgave more easily.
‘You idiot. You should’ve stayed out of it.’
Gene frowned. ‘It’s madness out there. They think it was a massive meteor, not a Russian attack. Empire State Gas went up in flames, there was a tanker . . . Molly, there are fires everywhere . . . and this giant rock ploughed up the Green.’ He paused for a moment, then dropped his voice. ‘Sol Rosenthal died, getting some kid out of a burning car. What a guy.’