by Stephen Cox
Fear turned her stomach. The last thing she needed was Gene poking the overwhelmed hospital administration into paying attention, asking questions.
He took her hand. ‘Molly, you need to look after yourself.’
Her face grew warm with rising anger. ‘Other people need me too, Gene. I’m sorry I can’t be there for you all the time.’
But something more was coming, she could feel it. ‘Molly, I spoke to one of your colleagues yesterday – she came into the library. Betty says you’re not even on the ward.’
She had a moment of sheer panic then, like the times she had promised and then he had still found the bottles. For a moment she had no idea what to say.
‘Jeez, Molly. I’m worried, don’t you get it? I know there’s something you’re not telling me.’ He was trying to look her in her eyes. ‘Are you ill, or drinking again?’
‘No!’ She sounded as indignant as she felt. ‘You know I can’t discuss the work I’m doing – I’ve told you that.’
But he wouldn’t let it go. ‘You can’t be working for the army – you wouldn’t. And nor would Jarman.’
If in doubt, attack. ‘You’re spoiling my day off, the time off you wanted me to have. You’re being unreasonable and selfish . . . Books don’t die if you leave them. My work is my business.’
He snapped, ‘I don’t believe there is a patient. I’m fed up with being sold a line. Don’t dump your garbage on me.’
That phrase goaded her, it always did, and he knew it. She exploded. ‘It’s work that keeps me alive – you’ve never understood that. There’ve been times when it was the only thing keeping me going.’ As she threw some of the old arguments at him, a tiny, calm voice inside her was horrified.
Gene was shaking his head. ‘I notice you haven’t denied lying. How long must we pretend this is okay, Molly?’
People were watching. This was no place to have this discussion, but Gene would not be stopped. ‘You’re hiding something – I won’t be lied to, Molly. We can’t do that anymore.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ she said, and all the while a part of her screamed, No, no, no! but her rage carried her on. ‘I didn’t have to take you back. You knew I was sick and you still screwed around.’
His face burned. A woman walking her dog stopped. ‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘When that woman threw herself at you, you could have said no.’
‘I did say no,’ Gene said. ‘I’ve said it a hundred thousand times: I was stupid – I risked our marriage and I had no excuse. I nearly lost you, Molly, but I stopped at the edge, and I came back. You gave me another chance. And now you’re lying to me.’
‘How dare you!’ Through her rage and shame, she thought, Take it back, take it back, now. In the dark years, Gene had learned to fight back.
‘I know you’re hiding something.’
‘So go find some stupid housewife who doesn’t want to work,’ she said.
‘You said you’d try, Molly. You said you’d make space for us. You said it would be different now—’
‘—and then real life happened. Live with it.’
At that, Gene got up from the bench and strode off. Molly didn’t follow. He’d walk for an hour, calm down and come back. She sat there and cried and wished she had a better grip on her temper, and when she’d stopped, she dried her eyes and composed an apology. For bringing up that scheming woman, anyway. You’re right. That’s the past. She would make firm commitments, somehow: a day, even a weekend off. But the conspirators were too few.
Gene just needed to be patient . . . But he’d ask, for how long, and what could she say? What if Cory never left isolation? How could she abandon him . . . even for Gene?
I want a Scotch, the little voice said. Scotch makes this go away.
Schoolchildren came and went, high-school students threw a football, a young man read a book, oblivious to the pretty girls passing by. Molly watched and waited, but two hours later, Gene still wasn’t back.
And again, she thought: I want a Scotch.
How Cory would love to run and smell the Earth flowers . . . Maybe the pollen would kill him, or the bugs on the grass. Their latest fear was that he might be allergic to everything. Jarman was doing what experiments he could.
Yesterday she’d cried in the storeroom and snapped at the colleague who found her there. All children in danger brought up the nameless child she’d lost, who’d never had a chance. Well, crazy or not, Cory still stood a chance.
She sat on the bench as the sun sank, re-running the argument in her head. He was right. Before their child had died, there had been no secrets between her and Gene.
Darkness came, a dark night with no Moon, and at last, she drove back to Crooked Street. The lights in the house were off, just the porch light left on so she could see to slip in the key. Her stomach tensed. If Gene were awake, she might not have the courage to face him.
On the side, he’d left the little copper saucepan full of casserole. She lit the blue flame under it and made toast. She still had a bottle of Scotch hidden in the one place he’d never found. Just one drink, just one, her body cried.
Cory didn’t need a drunk. He needed a mother. He found the toothbrush astonishing, but he quite liked the taste of baby toothpaste. He’d try to sneak a lick at the tube when he thought Molly wasn’t looking. She had to hope it wasn’t bad for him.
She ate the casserole half warm. Not every husband would have done that, she thought, even though she could tell Diane had made it. And she looked at the reproachful note in his cramped writing, not daring to open it, but knowing she’d need to.
Molly,
I thought we agreed, no secrets. When I screwed up, I told you. I don’t know what the deal is, but it’s eating you up. You’ve got to decide, because I can’t live with someone who doesn’t trust me.
That hieroglyph meant, Love you, Gene.
She lay in her cold single bed. On the other side of the wall, Gene snored in the double. Doubtless he’d spent hours wondering what’d gone wrong.
She’d keep this strange little boy alive, but it was driving her and Gene further apart. He knew she was lying – he knew she was not on the ward. He would expose her, even unintentionally, and Cory would be taken from her.
And yet, somehow, Molly’s fear faded. She had decided Gene was the one; she had taken him back and the two of them had sworn to each other that there would be no lies.
Gene deserved to know. Gene needed to know.
Her oath as a professional was a wall, but brick by brick, it was crumbling.
She slipped out of the spare room and back into the double bed, under the warm quilt. Gene still slept neatly on the far side, his body always leaving the old space for her.
‘Gene, are you awake? I’ve something important to tell you.’
He didn’t stir, so she just held him close.
CHAPTER 8
The day she told him
Gene came into the kitchen in the grey light of dawn, vaguely conscious that Molly had been in his bed and was now gone. Molly was crying over pancake mix and a hot griddle. Without words, he took her in his arms. Sometimes tears were her fullest apology. He guessed that there had been a child and it had died. Any death was a tragedy, but maybe it would make their life simpler.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, wiping her eyes with a hand. She sounded brisk and determined, like the old Molly he used to know. ‘I just needed a clear-out. I’ve decided to tell you the story. You were right, I’ve hidden stuff, and I had a good reason, but it was still wrong, even though it wasn’t my decision.’
They sat and he listened while she told him the story, rich in detail. She held his hands and he listened, unbelieving, but seeing the life in her face. How the tone of her words jarred with the shadows under her eyes . . .
When she had finished, she looked at him for a response, but his min
d was whirling.
He repeated the story back, without comment. ‘Sheriff Olsen and Dr Jarman found aliens on Meteor Day. Aliens from space. The mother died, but the boy survived.’
‘Jarman told Olsen he died,’ she said. ‘Keep the thug out of it.’
Gene felt mocked – or maybe it was far worse; maybe she really was ill. Maybe she’d lost the ability to tell the real from the imagined . . .
‘Cory’s so sweet and smart and brave. You’ll love him,’ she said, sweeping back a stray lock of hair.
‘You need to prove this,’ Gene said.
‘Of course. I’ll tell the others I’ve told you, then you need to see him.’
Struggling to understand, Gene’s voice was quiet as a breath. ‘You don’t even know if you can take him outside isolation. And you want to hide him from the government?’
‘We must hide him, don’t you see? If they find out, he’ll disappear into some lab, for ever. He needs real parents, Gene, like us. Think about it: that monster Pfeiffer and that butcher in the White House?’
She looked like that time on borrowed bicycles, out by the lake, when he’d handed her the necklace, still unsure, and she’d loved it. The rain had caught them and even Molly thought being soaked and cold was a joke then. Her eyes were shining and he’d wanted to be in that moment for ever.
Now, here in their kitchen, his heart skipped a beat: she could still look like that. But for what?
She’s so stubborn, she’d drag a mountain behind her if she needed to, he thought. Of all the Moon-touched nonsense . . . He realised he wasn’t ready, not for Molly to be ill again. Not for aliens to be real, here, today.
He was angry, he guessed, but more frightened that she was ill. ‘This has to be true, Molly. I can’t take another lie. I can’t do it. It will bust our marriage apart if this isn’t true.’
‘You don’t believe me. So come and see him.’
He’d nearly lost her into unimaginable darkness, so maybe her mind had gone. And if by some chance it was true, what a risk! What kind of people could take it on?
There must be more; she was nervous.
‘Now, he looks a little unusual, but I bet we look really weird to him.’
‘What do you mean, unusual?’
She ducked and weaved and in the end, she tried to draw this Cory with coloured crayons. Her attempts confused him more than explained anything; it looked like a creature from a nightmare.
‘I just can’t get it right.’ She flicked the page. ‘Oh, those things are just like fingers and tongues – honestly, you barely notice after a while. But they help you understand how he’s feeling, his ears too: ears up means cheerful. He’s very affectionate – and he’s musical, he likes me singing. Bring the guitar, he’ll love that. And Gene, he’s so smart. Yesterday we ran through the words he’s learned . . . eighty of them already!’ She opened her eyes wide, pointed here and there and said ‘What-called? What-called?’ in a high, strange voice.
Words failed him. He couldn’t think what to say.
‘His language is unbelievable, it’s all burbling and hoots and whistles,’ she went on. ‘None of us can manage his real name.’ Please, her eyes were saying, please.
Every time Gene looked up at the stars, he knew there were wonders there. Since he was a kid, he’d known the future would bring a flood of great things, as certainly as he knew a thrown ball must fall. Some would be bright and some terrible; some would be both. But Gene knew he was no one special. He’d hoped to meet the right person and have kids and maybe do some good in a small way. But this? This was too big for him.
‘What does he say . . . about where he came from?’ he asked at last. ‘About what happened?’
Her eyes saddened. ‘Not much. It’s painful, he gets so distressed. We all figure he’ll talk when he’s ready.’
Perhaps someone had slipped her LSD? Once, she’d been as Puritan about the new drugs as he was, but that . . . that creature certainly looked like a hallucination.
But if the kid was real, what if he couldn’t love it, with its bizarre face? It was just like Molly to bet the farm on this one, this strangest of all the sick children. If it died or didn’t work out, could they soak up another death?
He asked the next question as tenderly as he could. ‘Suppose the kid doesn’t like me?’
‘He’s such a little bundle of love, he will,’ Molly said, but she looked away.
Gene wasn’t ready to be a father. He wasn’t sure he would ever be ready. But how could he say that?
*
Gene watched Molly dress in her white uniform. Four months without smoking and as he watched her go, suddenly Gene hungered for a cigarette. Nerves like mice scampered in his gut. He’d agreed that at seven that evening he’d come to a side entrance of the hospital, one no patients ever used, and then he’d know the truth. But now he had to work.
The radio sang of the Age of Aquarius. He loved the idealism of the times but he loathed the mumbo-jumbo the New Age had brought with it.
Locking the front door, he saw Roy Henderson waiting in his truck.
‘Want a ride?’ Roy said. Gene preferred to walk, but he nodded; he liked Roy. He might be square and unimaginative as a brick outhouse, but he was a decent guy to have a beer with, as long as you stayed off politics. Roy never ran late by chance; if he’d parked outside, he had something to say.
In the truck, there was a solid, friendly silence. Two military trucks sat on the road, but that was nothing unusual nowadays. In the past few weeks, the traffic had changed in Amber Grove. A big Volkswagen camper, yellow with pink and blue flowers, made a clumsy turn; Roy braked and frowned.
‘Jokers.’ Then, he said, ‘Diane was over last night. Janice and Diane, you know how those two talk.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Gene said.
‘Yak about anything.’
‘I guess.’ Many times, Roy would drop over to take Gene out for a beer while Molly, Janice and Diane were putting the world to rights. It would be a long conversation, and men would be largely to blame.
‘You and Molly should come over,’ Roy said, glancing from Gene to the road, to the mirror, then Gene again. ‘We owe you supper, I’m sure.’
‘She’s working crazy hours,’ Gene said. ‘The Meteor shot everything to hell.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it!’ Life was now reckoned in two eras: Before the Meteor and After.
‘When things quieten down,’ Gene said. Did he believe Molly or not? If he did, the Myers wouldn’t be chatting to anyone about the boy. Janice and Diane were like the FBI when it came to questions. Then you’d have to trust them not to tell their children, their relatives, their co-workers . . . Raising a kid completely on your own? But he’d have to tell his own parents at some point.
‘How’s business?’
‘Nose above water,’ said Roy, parking adeptly in sight of the library. ‘Drop you here?’
Gene liked that men didn’t need to spell things out. But he’d an odd question he needed to ask. He remembered all those bright afternoons playing ball with Roy and Chuck out on the meadow. The two red-heads, one big, one small, with the same smile and the same frown and, after a few days’ sun, the same freckles. Chuck the Scout, the Little League slugger, the patient guardian of his little sisters. Any father would be proud of Chuck. ‘Kind of a strange question . . . Molly wanted to know. When they hand you your kid in the hospital . . . for the first time . . . what’s it like?’
Does a father’s love switch on like a light bulb, or is it like learning a musical instrument, all work and false starts and practice? Do you know when it works? Do you know when you’re ready?
The truck engine purred for almost a minute while Roy looked at him as if he had fallen from space. Then he sighed. ‘It takes ages. You just stand there. Chuck looked at me with big eyes like, This wasn’t my idea. Your move, big guy. But I
guessed I was the father and I had to get on with it. I figured sometime, something would happen inside, and it did. Longest seven minutes of my life.’
Roy laughed, and Gene laughed too and got out of the truck.
*
That strangely endless day, Gene walked around his beloved library thinking, If this is true, this is the biggest story in the world.
Nowadays visitors streamed into the library to ask the same questions, over and over. Was it true the army built a fence in the woods? They’d heard someone found shards of strange metal and the government paid a bounty, no questions asked. Was that true? Intense men brandishing maps with red trajectories drawn on them explained their theories about why the Meteor should’ve fallen much faster from space. Ghouls wanted to see the damage. No one knew who first coined the phrase ‘the Meteornauts’, but it stuck.
Gene stayed polite, of course; he was a public servant – but people died on Meteor Day and seven people were still missing, one a fourteen-year-old girl. This wasn’t some Disneyland spectacle to be gloated over. People here were tough, but sometimes he knew they were holding back tears. Amber Grove had scars, visible and invisible; it was far worse than the derailment, which still haunted the town all these years later.
He picked out some picture books and tucked them in his attaché case. He had asked what the kid was interested in, and Molly had smiled widely and said, ‘Everything!’
The library was there for everyone, respectable or not. They’d always had the odd hobo, pretending to read the newspapers to keep out of the cold, but now Amber Grove had all sorts. Some, with their shaggy hair and bright-coloured, stale-smelling clothes smelling of pot, clearly marched to a different drum. Sometimes they brought a child or two and Gene gladly steered them to the kids’ library at the back, his particular pride and joy.
Sheriff Olsen would come like a wolf, looking for drugs or any other excuse to harass them. Amber Grove had its own long-hairs, but by and large they went to school or had jobs and parents who voted, so he sneered, but did no more. Outsiders who fell into his hands didn’t get off so lightly. The Sheriff kept electric clippers at the station specially.