The doorbell rang.
Mom and I sat there, frozen by the sound. Syl was upstairs napping. Matt and Jon were chopping firewood.
The doorbell rang again.
Mom gestured for me to stay absolutely still.
“Laura? Laura? Are you in there? It’s me, Lisa!”
“Oh my God,” Mom said. “Lisa?” She raced to the back door and opened it. “Lisa? Is that really you?”
Lisa was crying. “Please,” she said. “Please let me in.”
“Of course,” Mom said, and gathered Dad’s wife in her arms. “Oh, Lisa. I’m sorry. I’m in a state of shock.”
“Where’s Dad?” I asked. “Is he here? Is he all right?”
“Yes, yes, he’s out front with the baby,” Lisa said. “Everyone’s outside. Hal thought it would be safer if I came first, that it wouldn’t frighten you as much if you heard a woman’s voice.”
At least I think that’s what she said, because before she was halfway through, I had run through the house, passing Syl on the stairway, and flung the front door open. There he was: my father, still alive, home where I could hold him and never let him go.
“Miranda, Miranda,” he said. “I knew this day would come. I never lost hope.”
“Oh, Daddy,” I said, and the tears streaming down my face were tears of joy for a change. “I don’t believe it. I can’t. It’s too good to be true.”
Dad laughed. “It’s true all right,” he said. He turned to one of the other people he was with, a girl, I noticed, and took a baby from her arms. “Meet Gabriel,” he said, handing the baby to me.
I was so stunned the baby’s name wasn’t Rachel, I almost didn’t reach out. Gabrielle’s a pretty name, I told myself. It was my fantasy she’d be named Rachel, no one else’s.
Dad was beaming. “This is Miranda, your sister and your godmother,” he said to the baby. “Miranda, this is your baby brother Gabriel.”
I looked down at the baby I was cradling. “It’s a boy?” I said.
“He was born right after midnight on Christmas Day,” Dad said.
For months now I’ve dreamed of my little sister, Baby Rachel. A few days ago I was in such despair, I’d hoped she’d never been born. And now I was holding that very baby, only it was a boy and it was screaming.
“He cries a lot,” the girl said. “You get used to it.”
Lisa and Mom had come to the front door. “Come in, everyone,” Mom said. “Syl’s gone to get the boys. Please, come in. You can warm up in the sunroom while I make a pot of tea.”
Lisa took the baby, Gabriel, from my arms, and for the first time I really looked at the people Dad was with. They were unloading their backpacks and taking their coats off, so they didn’t seem to notice that I was staring at them.
There were five altogether, if you count Dad and Lisa. Six if you include the baby. Besides Dad, there were two guys: one maybe in his thirties, the other one more my age or Matt’s. The girl who’d been holding the baby looked young, close to Jon’s age. Everyone’s so thin nowadays, and gray and sad, you can’t really tell ages anymore. Except the older guy wasn’t thin. He wasn’t exactly robust, but he certainly wasn’t thin.
We followed Mom into the sunroom. “It’s so warm in here,” the younger guy said.
We had the woodstove going, of course, and one of the electric heaters was on. Mom has it in her head we’ll use less firewood that way.
“Please,” Mom said. “Make yourselves comfortable. Lisa, is there anything I can do for the baby?”
“He’s hungry,” she said, and she began to nurse him. The other people—their band, I guessed—acted like this was the most normal thing in the world.
I didn’t have to figure out where to look, since Syl, Matt, and Jon burst in. Jon held on to Dad even longer than I had, and then Matt got his turn to hug Dad.
“This is Syl,” Matt told them. “My wife.”
“Your wife?” Dad said, giving Matt an extra congratulatory hug. “When did that happen?”
“Three weeks ago,” Matt said.
“May I kiss the bride?” Dad asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he gave Syl a hug, which she resisted for a second, but then responded to with a hug and a peck on Dad’s cheek.
“Can you believe it?” Dad asked. “My son got married.”
“Congratulations,” the older of the two men said, and gave Matt his hand to shake. “That’s wonderful news. Hal talks so much about you, but he never once guessed he had a daughter-in-law.”
“Are you from around here, Syl?” Dad asked. “Did Matt go to school with you?”
“No,” Syl said. “We met nearby.”
“That’s great,” Dad said. “Lisa, darling, can you believe it? Matt’s married.”
“And you had your baby,” Matt said.
“A boy,” I said. “Gabriel.”
“I have a baby brother?” Jon said. “Wow.”
Dad laughed. “It’s all wow,” he said. “Oh, I’m sorry. There are introductions to make. It’s just—well, I know you understand. Laura, everyone, this is Charlie Rutherford, and Alex and Julie Morales. And in case you haven’t figured it out, this is Laura, the mother of my beautiful children Matt, Miranda, and Jon. And now Syl, my unexpected daughter-in-law.”
There we were, eleven of us, crowded into the sunroom. If Alex Morales had thought it was warm before, our body heat and the lingering smell of fish now made it almost unbearable.
“It takes a while for the kettle to boil,” Mom said. “Please, everybody, sit down. Miranda, get the mugs, and the tea bags.”
I went into the kitchen. The girl, Julie, followed me. “Let me help,” she said. I gave her a couple of mugs to carry in.
Mom’s been using her tea bags over and over again, but she’s down to her last half dozen. Now five of them would be used.
Did Dad expect us to feed all these people? Sure, he and Lisa were entitled to whatever we could give them, but the others were strangers to us. And on a Thursday. If we fed them the way we usually ate, we’d be out of food by Saturday.
I thought I saw Alex give a quick look at Julie. “Just hot water for Julie and me, please,” he said, handing one of the mugs to Dad.
“It’s just boiled rainwater,” Mom said.
“But it’s in a cup,” Julie said. “And in a warm room.”
Charlie laughed. He had a big man’s laugh, and it changed the atmosphere immediately. “See how little it takes to make us happy?” he said. “This is very kind of you, Mrs. Evans.”
“Laura, please,” Mom said. “I only wish I could offer you more. Miranda, get the bottle of lemon extract. That will give the water a bit of flavor.”
I ran back into the kitchen, found the extract, and returned it to the sunroom. I bumped into Alex as I did, and I blushed while I apologized.
“My fault,” he said. “I was in your way.”
I glanced at him, trying to act like I wasn’t looking. He reminded me a little of Syl, like he’d always been thin, like his body was used to it. His eyes were a very dark brown. I used to like more athletic boys, but I could see that he’d be good-looking under ordinary circumstances.
But these aren’t ordinary circumstances, and even though I couldn’t get over the idea that a guy had fallen into my sunroom, I was a lot more excited about Dad coming home.
“How’s Grandma?” I asked. “Did you get to her?”
“And what about your parents, Lisa?” Mom asked. “Are they all right?”
Lisa had finished feeding the baby and was patting him gently.
“Let me,” Charlie said, and Lisa gave Gabriel to him.
“We never got out west,” Dad said. “We don’t know.”
“It was horrible,” Lisa said. “We went from one evac camp to another, for as long as I could manage. Then the flu hit. By the time they lifted the quarantine, I was too far along to travel.”
“Everyone tried,” Dad said. “Lisa got extra food because she was pregnant. There were some great people: doctors, nurses, sacrificing their lives to help others. But by the time Gabriel was born, we’d been told not to try to go farther west. They said there was no point: Colorado, Nevada, were devastated. What survivors there were had been moved east or south.”
“We thought about you all the time,” I said. “Hoping and worrying.”
“You were never out of our thoughts,” Dad said. “Our thoughts and our prayers.”
“Was Gabriel really born on Christmas?” I asked.
“He sure was,” Charlie said. “I was there.” Gabriel was holding on to his ring finger with a possessive grip.
“Are you a doctor?” Matt asked.
Charlie laughed again. “Not hardly,” he said. “I was a telemarketer back in the day.”
We all laughed at the very thought of telemarketers.
“We met at the evac camp,” Dad said. “Charlie was great, helping everybody, boosting morale.”
“You make it sound like a prison camp,” Matt said. He was clutching Syl’s hand. I wonder what she’s told him about her time on the road.
“In some ways it was like a prison camp,” Dad said. “Especially during the quarantine. There was never enough food, or blankets, or medicine. But we held on, and Lisa had the baby, and thank God, they both came through.”
“Did you all meet there?” Jon asked. “I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten your names.”
“Alex and Julie Morales,” Alex said. “No. We met later, maybe two months ago? Time loses a lot of its meaning.”
“Lisa and I had decided to come back,” Dad said. “She knew how important it was for me to be with my children, all my children. Charlie came along because by then we couldn’t imagine life without him. He’s the best friend we’ve ever had. We ran into Alex and Julie, who were making their way back east, also.”
“You’ve stuck together all this time?” Syl asked.
“I know,” Dad said. “It’s unusual. In some ways we’ve become a family. Other people came and went, but the five of us held on.”
“Hal and Lisa have been kind to us,” Alex said. “Very protective of Julie.”
“She’s worth protecting,” Charlie said. “You both are.”
“I know it’s an imposition, Laura,” Dad said. “Us barging in on you like this. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t thought what our next step should be.”
“Julie and I won’t be staying,” Alex said. “We have other plans.”
Dad held his hand up to stop him. “Julie’s exhausted,” he said. “Look at her. She’s already fallen asleep. You need time to recover before you move on.”
I held my breath, waiting for Mom’s response to all this. It was one thing for me to be thrilled that Dad was back. It was another for her to welcome her ex-husband, his wife and baby, and three strangers.
“You caught us at a good time,” Mom said. “Matt and Jon have spent the past few weeks fishing in the Delaware.”
“No kidding,” Dad said. “The shad were running?”
“We got our share,” Matt said.
“Enough for all of us, at least for a few days,” Mom said. “We have some cans of food, too. There’ve been government handouts. We get food on Monday.”
“Maybe they’ll let Dad have some,” Jon said. “Like they gave some to Syl.”
“Well, we won’t know that until Monday,” Mom said. “But if you don’t mind eating fish for the next few days, I don’t see why you can’t stay here.”
“Oh, Laura,” Dad said.
“You and Lisa and the baby can sleep in the sunroom,” Mom said. “We can’t count on electricity, but the woodstove will keep you warm. That will be best for the baby. Julie can share the kitchen with Miranda and me, and Jon, Alex, and Charlie can sleep in the dining room. Between the mattresses and the sleeping bags and the blankets, we should manage all right.”
“This is very kind of you, Laura,” Charlie said. “And you’ll see. We’re great workers.”
“Good,” Mom said. “That’s settled. Jon, take a plastic bag and go to the garage and bring back some fish. A lot of fish. We’ll have to eat in shifts, I’m afraid, but at least we’ll all have supper.”
“We only eat two meals a day,” Matt said.
“Are you kidding?” Alex said. “Two meals a day? That’s luxury.”
“It is for us, too,” Matt said.
“It’ll be fine,” Mom said. “It’ll work out. We’ll make it work out.”
Last night, I wrote my diary entry in my bedroom closet, the most private place I could think of. Thanks to a couple of the flashlight pens Jon gave me, I had enough light, and although I could hear Matt and Syl murmuring in their room, the only other sound was Gabriel crying.
Gabriel cries a lot.
I hid my diary along with my other diaries, but I got it in my head my hiding place would be too easy to find if anyone really looked. It was hard enough after Matt brought Syl, but Charlie and Alex and Julie are strangers, and who knows what they were like before things happened, or even what they’re like now.
So I was in my closet, searching for a better hiding place, which was why I got to hear Mom and Matt arguing in Matt’s bedroom.
“They can’t stay,” Matt said. “You know that.”
“This is what I know,” Mom said. “I’ve already told Jon this, and I’ll tell Miranda when we have a moment alone. There is only one person in this house who matters and that’s the baby. He can’t survive without his mother, so that makes Lisa the second most important person. All the rest of us, even the girls, can get by if we have to. Syl’s shown me that. But the baby can’t, so we have to see to it that Lisa is taken care of, that she has enough to eat, that the baby is kept warm and dry. If that means all those people move into this house, then so be it. If that means we all eat a little less so Lisa can eat a little more, then so be it. No baby is going to die because I ate a second can of green beans. Do you understand me?”
“I do,” Matt said. “And on the face of it what you’re saying makes sense. But if you’re so concerned about that second can of green beans, how can you justify Dad eating it? Let alone all those other people. Mom, Jon and I worked hard for those fish. It wasn’t fun and games, especially not the second trip. You know as well as I do the food we’re getting from town isn’t enough to sustain us, and it sure isn’t going to last forever. We need to be as strong as possible when we have to leave here. Just having Dad and Lisa and that army they brought with them here cuts down on our chances. What if the rains stop? Will we fight with them for water?”
“I’m not turning them out,” Mom said. “This isn’t a way station for Hal. You’re his children. He has rights.”
“He has no rights!” Matt exploded. “He deserted us twice. He left you years ago—”
“That was a mutual decision,” Mom said.
“He left you,” Matt said. “You would have kept the marriage going if he hadn’t and you know that. And then he and Lisa drop by last summer and go their merry way. We owe them nothing.”
“They brought us food,” Mom said. “Food that kept us alive for weeks, maybe months. Food they could have kept for themselves. And would things have been better if they’d stayed? Lisa hysterical with worry over her parents? Food running out and then the sickness. Maybe she wouldn’t have survived. Maybe the baby would have died. Things could have been so much worse, Matt. I’m not sure they’d have been any better.”
“I don’t know, Mom,” Matt said, and his voice got so much lower I had to strain to hear him. “Maybe you should have let Miranda go with them. That might have been the best thing after all.”
I felt like I’d been punched in my stomach. I had never known Dad wanted me along with him and Lisa when they left here last summer.
“Is that what you wish for her?” Mom asked. “Evac camps? A life like Syl’s?”
“Leave Syl out of this,” Matt said. “She didn’t have parents to look after her. Dad would have protected Miranda. Yeah, it would have been hard, but it’s been hard for her here. And we knew, we all knew, that whatever food we had would last that much longer with one less mouth to feed.”
“I couldn’t let her go,” Mom said. “I couldn’t send Miranda or Jon or you out there knowing I might never see you again. I don’t know how those kids’ parents could have done it, Alex and Julie’s.”
“My guess is they don’t have parents,” Matt said. “Any more than Syl does.”
Mom sighed. “This is a horrible time,” she said. “But we’ve gotten through it together, and that’s how it’s going to be. I’m sure Hal’s already thinking about what to do next. In the meantime we’ll make do. Lisa isn’t going to go hungry while she’s nursing. We can’t let that happen.”
I heard Syl walking up the stairs. “Laura?” she said. “I remembered seeing a flannel sheet in the linen closet. I thought we could cut it up for diapers.”
“Good idea,” Mom said.
“Stay here for a moment,” Matt said. “Mom and I have been talking, and I want you to know what’s going on.”
I used that chance to slip out of my bedroom and make my way downstairs before anyone realized I might have eavesdropped. My timing was perfect, since as I walked past the living room, I heard an argument between Dad and Lisa.
“We can’t let Julie go,” Lisa said. “Who knows where Alex will take her, what will become of her.”
“We know exactly where she’s going,” Dad said. “Alex’s been very clear about their plans.”
“To leave her in an orphanage,” Lisa said. “So he can go off to Ohio.”
“It’s not an orphanage,” Dad said. “It’s a convent, and it took in girls like Julie last summer. It’s not like he’s planning to join the circus. He feels that Julie would be safer at the convent than she is on the road.”
“But she’d be safe with us!” Lisa cried. “Hal, I don’t think I can survive without Julie. She understands what I’ve gone through. No one else does.”
“I do,” Dad said. “I wish you’d believe me, Lisa.”
“You don’t,” Lisa said. “You say you do. You may even believe it, but you don’t. You decided right away that your mother had died. Even when we were trying to make it out west, you never thought you’d see your mother again. But my whole family was out there—my parents, my sisters. I’ll never know if they’re alive or dead. All I have is my faith that God will reunite us. Julie knows how that feels, that need to see your family again, that terror that you never will. She’s the only one I can talk to.”
“You can talk to me,” Dad said. “You are talking to me.”
“It makes no sense for Julie to live with nuns she’s never even met,” Lisa said. “If Alex would let her stay with us, then he could do whatever he wants, and he’d never have to worry about her. Please, Hal. Talk to him again, try to convince him. I’m sure the nuns are wonderful women, devout women, but Julie doesn’t know them. She knows us. I’ve lost so much, Hal. God brought Julie to me, to help me through. He can’t want me to lose her.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?”
I turned around and saw Alex standing there. Who knows how long he’d been watching me.
“I’m not enjoying any of this,” I said to him. “Thank you for asking.”
“Miranda, is that you?” Dad called.
“Yeah, Dad,” I said, sticking my head into the living room, nice and casual. “I was looking for Lisa. I wanted to tell her Syl found a flannel sheet Gabriel can use for diapers. Oh, hi, Lisa. I bet Gabriel will like that, a new set of diapers.”
“I know I will,” Dad said. “We’ve been down to four diapers for weeks now. Every night we wash three and hope they’ll be dry by the morning.”
I imagined quickly what my life would have been like if I’d left with Dad and Lisa back in August. Only I couldn’t imagine. Maybe if I’d gone, Mom, Matt, and Jon would have left before winter got bad. Maybe I never would have seen them again, and I’d be like Lisa, not knowing if my family was still alive, only without her faith. Or maybe I’d have her faith. Lisa hadn’t been particularly religious that I could remember.
“I saw some textbooks, Miranda,” Alex said. “Julie’s in eighth grade. Would it be all right if we used some of your books?”
“They’re ninth grade textbooks,” I said, like that would make a difference. “Sure. Jon’s stopped using them, at least for the summer.”
“We have a Bible,” Lisa said. “Julie can read from that.”
Alex smiled at her. “Yes, she can,” he said. “Julie and I read from our missal. But it would be good for her to review spelling and grammar and math. She was a very good student when she went to Holy Angels.”
I was starting to see what Lisa was up against. Alex reminded me of Matt, only a 100 times more protective. Then again, Alex and Julie didn’t have a mother watching over them.
What were their lives like? How could they endure without parents? How had Syl?
No matter how awful I’d had it, I realized how lucky I was. Even now, back in my freezing cold closet, the only light coming from my two flashlight pens, I do understand that, in spite of everything, I’m one of the lucky ones.
If you’d asked me a week ago what it would take for me to feel better, I would’ve said knowing how Dad and Lisa and the baby were, meeting a boy my own age, and running water.
Now I have all three. I guess I must feel better.
Dad and Matt got the water running again, which, with ten people and a baby in the house, is a really good thing. All that snow and rain have finally paid off, and the sound of the toilets flushing is music to everybody’s ears.
Gabriel isn’t exactly Baby Rachel, but I think he’s screaming a little bit less. Mom says Jon was colicky also, but I don’t remember. Charlie is great with the baby. I think the only times Gabriel isn’t crying is when he’s nursing and when Charlie sings him lullabies.
Alex may not be the teenage boy of my dreams, but he is a teenage boy. He’s eighteen, and if things had stayed normal, he’d be graduating high school this month and preparing to go to Georgetown. Julie told Jon, who told Mom, who told Matt, who told me.
If Alex isn’t the teenage boy of my dreams, Julie seems to be the teenage girl of Jon’s. Or maybe he’s just as desperate for someone his age as I was. He and Julie always seem to be sitting next to each other and talking, even playing chess. I guess Alex approves of Jon and Mom approves of Julie. I know Mom approves of Alex, who stands up every time Mom enters a room and says please and thank you and may I help you. He’s definitely Mom’s dream of a teenage boy.
With all this happiness going on, you’d think I’d be happy, too. Or at least not as obsessed with how long the fish is going to last.
Except we all are. Nobody says so, because that would be rude. But today, instead of fish and a quarter can of vegetables each (except for Lisa, who gets double portions of everything), we had fish and a whiff of vegetables.
It’s amazing. I never used to like red cabbage, but now when I get only a teaspoon of it, it’s all I can think about. How lovely. How tasty. How not fish it is.
Pretty soon the fish is going to be not fish also.
Charlie eats the least of us, and I have to admit I thought he was sneaking into the garage and stealing shad until he told us a bit about himself.
“I used to weigh three hundred and seventy pounds,” he told us over a quarter teaspoon of red cabbage. “I was scheduled for weight loss surgery on May twenty-third. Instead I went on a starvation diet, with lots of walking and biking for exercise.” He laughed. “This is the best shape I’ve ever been in.”
“It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow anybody some good,” Syl said, and we all stared at her.
“My grandmother used to say that,” she said.
That got us laughing, and then we came up with clichés that used to mean something. The early bird catches the worm. Big fish in a small pond.
The best one was half a loaf is better than none at all. I thought we’d never stop laughing after Dad came up with that.
But then Gabriel started yowling, and Lisa nursed him for the 87 th time that day and that quieted all of us.
“I’ve been thinking,” Dad said. “It’s been wonderful staying here, and Laura, you have no idea how grateful we are, but this house was never meant for ten people.”
“I think we all know that,” Mom said.
“Julie and I won’t be staying much longer,” Alex said. “We shouldn’t have stayed as long as we have, but she needed the rest.”
“You did, too,” Julie said. “You’re the one who collapsed last week.”
“Julie,” Alex said.
“We all needed the rest,” Charlie said. “Laura, you—well, all of you have saved our lives.”
“Alex and Julie have places to go to,” Dad said. “But now that I have my children back, including Syl, who I didn’t even know about before, I don’t ever intend to leave you.”
It’s funny how relieved I felt when Dad said that. I’d been trying not to think of his going away again. Even though I’d know he and Lisa and Gabriel were alive, it would still be awful not to have them with me.
“The problem is we can’t be sure you’ll get any food,” Matt said. “It took a fair amount of convincing before they’d give Syl any.”
Dad nodded. “That’s been my concern, too. We can’t keep eating your food, and we can’t be sure they’ll give us some.”
“But you’re our father,” I said. “That should count.”
“Maybe for me,” Dad said. “But there’s Lisa to consider and Charlie, and Alex and Julie for as long as we can get them to stay. I do have an idea, though, that might solve a lot of problems.”
“Go on,” Mom said.
“Mrs. Nesbitt’s house is empty,” Dad said. “But if her son came back, his family should be entitled to food. What was his name again?”
“Bobby,” Mom said. “He lived in San Diego. Mrs. Nesbitt never heard from him…” She didn’t finish the sentence. We never do. Some sentences don’t need to be finished.
“Then no one knows if he’s still alive,” Dad said. “I’ll go into town on Monday and say I’m Bob Nesbitt, that I brought my family back to see how Mom was doing, and we’ll be moving into her house. Which we’ll do anyway, since that way we won’t be underfoot. It’s me and my wife, what was her name?”
“Sally,” Mom said.
“Me and Sally and our two kids, Alex and Julie, and the baby and my brother-in-law, Charlie. Who’s going to know different?”
“Why should they believe you?” Matt asked. “I was there to vouch for Syl.”
“Then I’ll take one of you with me,” Dad said. “Miranda? How would you feel about coming along and swearing I’m Bob Nesbitt?”
“Hal, I didn’t bring up the kids to lie,” Mom said.
“No,” Dad said. “But you didn’t bring them up to starve, either.”
“I don’t mind,” I said, because I hated the thought of Mom and Dad going after each other. “If Syl’s entitled, I don’t see why Dad shouldn’t be. And it would be great having everybody at Mrs. Nesbitt’s.”
“There’s a woodstove in the kitchen,” Matt said. “You’ll need firewood. And some space heaters.”
“We can look for those,” I said. “And toilet paper and everything else they’ll need. Oh, Mom, it’d be so great to have Dad there.”
“Where’s Mrs. Nesbitt’s?” Alex asked, and Julie asked, “Who’s Mrs. Nesbitt?” at the exact same time.
That got us laughing again. “She was our closest neighbor,” Matt said. “Her house is right down the road. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a path through the woods we used to take.”
“Then we’re agreed?” Dad asked, although it wasn’t exactly a question. “Miranda and I will go into town on Monday and see if they’ll give us food. We’ll spend the next few days here, until we can get set up at the Nesbitt house. Maybe if we can get food, we can convince Alex and Julie to stay a little longer.”
“Please, Alex,” Julie said.
“We’ll see,” Alex said.
Julie smiled, and suddenly I understood why Jon likes her so much. Her smile made you forget everything that’s happened in the past year.
“We might as well give it a try,” Mom said. “If Miranda is willing.”
“I am, Mom,” I said. But I don’t think my smile made anyone forget anything.
I was in my bedroom, trying to decide what would be the absolutely safest place to hide my diaries, when I heard a knock on my door and Alex softly saying, “Miranda?”
Even though I hadn’t touched a thing and my diaries were as hidden as they ever are, I instantly decided I needed to find an even better place for them. That was after I finished jumping at the sound of a strange boy’s voice.
“Yeah,” I said, which didn’t come off quite as friendly as it should have. “I mean, hi, Alex. What do you want?”
He stood in the doorway until I gestured for him to come in.
“I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said. “I was wondering if you might have some clothes Julie could borrow. Just for the time we’re here.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Julie’s smaller than I am, but we can work something out.” Syl already has half my wardrobe. Julie could have the other half.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’ll mean a lot to her.”
“Do you want me to ask Matt if you could borrow some of his clothes?” I asked. Why should I be the only naked one in the house?
“That would be great, thank you,” Alex said. “It’s just for a few days, until Julie’s rested up enough.”
“There’s no rush,” I said. “I’ll see what I can find.”
Alex looked around my room. “You have a lot of books,” he said.
“Not that many,” I said. “And I’ve read all of them three times by now.”
“I miss reading,” he said, taking my copy of Pride and Prejudice off the shelf. “I miss learning useless things. Latin. Calculus.”
“I miss friends,” I said. “Friends. Family. Food. The three Fs.” I smiled, but Alex didn’t smile back.
“I miss home,” he said. “And the feeling you got in a library carrel, like nothing in the world mattered except the book you were reading.” He put Pride and Prejudice back on the shelf. “I miss pride. The sin of pride.”
“I don’t think it’s a sin to be proud,” I said, looking at my skating trophies. “Not if you’ve worked to achieve your goal.”
Alex shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s different for you. You work to keep your house clean, and you take pride in how it looks. That’s not what I mean.”
It annoyed me that Alex thought my only accomplishment in life was in the war against ash. “I take pride in lots of things,” I said. “Like how my family has come together. How we’ve fought to keep alive. To keep our hopes alive. I take a lot of pride in that. Do you think that’s a sin?”
“No, of course not,” Alex said. “But that’s not the kind of pride I’m talking about.”
“Oh,” I said. “You mean like vanity. Being proud because you’re good-looking or rich.”
“That’s not it exactly, either,” Alex said.
“Then what is it?” I asked.
He gazed out my window, at the perpetually gray landscape. “All right,” he said. “Maybe you’ll understand better if I tell you about the coin jar. We had to pay for our school uniforms, so my mother kept a coin jar. Every day we emptied our pockets and whatever change we had went into the jar. One day she caught my father taking out a handful of quarters. He was short on beer money. She went crazy. It was the worst fight I ever saw them have. My mother had ambitions for us. Every penny we saved was important to her.” He paused for a moment. “My father picked up the coin jar and threw it across the room. The coins flew all over. My mother got down on her hands and knees to pick up the change, but my brother, Carlos, shoved me onto the floor. It was my fault, he said. I was the one they were fighting over.”
“That must have been awful,” I said. Mom and Dad at their worst always let us know we weren’t to blame for their problems.
“I vowed I would never feel shame again,” Alex said. “But the shame wasn’t because my parents fought over me. It was the shame of crawling on the floor, sweeping pennies and nickels into a pile to pay for clothes other kids took for granted. The next day I got a job, started working wherever I could, finally got regular work at a pizza parlor. I paid for my own uniforms after that and my books, too. No more coin jar. My mother found some other way to pay for my sister’s uniforms. And I felt proud. Proud I was smart. Proud that people noticed me, respected me. Proud that I was ambitious. Proud that I was too good to end up like my parents. And now I beg for clean clothes for my sister. I beg for every bite of food we eat.”
“You don’t have to beg here,” I said. “We’re happy to share.”
“No one is happy to share,” he said.
Alex looked down then or I looked up. I don’t know how it happened, but we made eye contact, and for a moment I was drawn into his soul. I could see everything, the depth of his sorrow, his anger, his despair.
I feel sorrow and anger and despair. I don’t think there’s a person alive who doesn’t. I sometimes feel like my sorrow and anger and despair burn inside me the way the sun used to burn on a hot July day.
But that was nothing compared to what I sensed in Alex. His sorrow, his anger, his despair was like a thousand suns, like a galaxy of suns. It physically hurt me to look into his eyes, but I couldn’t break away. He turned his head first, and then he apologized, or maybe he thanked me. For Alex I think they’re the same thing.
He bolted out of the room, leaving me to stare at my bookcase and think about the sin of pride and the sin of prejudice and all the other sins I’d left behind.
Dad and I biked into town today to talk to Mr. Danworth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dad on a bike before, although I remember showing off to him when I rode a two-wheeler for the first time.
I’d thought it would be great having some time alone with Dad. We haven’t had any since he got back, and there was so much I wanted to tell him and so much I wanted him to tell me. But the weather was awful. Not raining, but cold with a harsh wind blowing in our faces. March weather in June.
Maybe it was better we couldn’t have a father/daughter talk, because by the time we got to City Hall to pick up our food and talk to Mr. Danworth, Dad was in full Bob Nesbitt mode.
“My wife and I didn’t know what to expect,” Dad said after he introduced himself. “Of course we hadn’t heard from Mom, but you can’t give up hope. And it is a miracle of sorts we’re alive. Our home in San Diego is gone, but we were visiting Sally’s brother, Charlie, when it all happened. There we were in Susanville. We would have stayed there, except for Mom. I was worried about her living on her own, with only Laura Evans and her kids looking in on her. So I convinced my wife and Charlie we needed to make our way east, and that turned out to be a miracle, too, since we were out of range of the volcanoes once they started erupting. Then on Christmas Day we had our third miracle when our baby, Gabriel, was born.”
“How many in your family, did you say?” Mr. Danworth asked, which I figured was a good sign.
“Five, not including Gabriel,” Dad said. “Although Sally needs extra food because she’s nursing. There’s Sally and me and our two older ones, Alex and Julie, and Sally’s brother, Charlie. Alex and Julie are amazing kids, the best a father could dream of. Alex is so bright. Well, when all this is over with, I know he’ll go on to college. And Julie’s been a second mother to the baby. Every day I look at them and I thank God for all my blessings.”
I felt really strange hearing Dad say all that. No, that’s a lie. I didn’t feel strange. I felt sick to my stomach. Not because I had to stand there and nod like it was all true, but because in a funny way it is all true. Dad may have only known Alex and Julie for a couple of months, but there’s a connectedness he doesn’t have with us anymore. You can see it in the way he looks at them, the way he seems to absorb everything Alex says or the way he smiles at Julie. He’s that way with Charlie, too. It’s like they’re all members of the same secret society, which no one else can join.
So when Mr. Danworth asked me if what Dad said was true and I said yes, it wasn’t as much of a lie as it might have been. Not that I could ever explain that to Mom, or to anyone else. Jon wouldn’t understand anyway, and Matt would understand a little too well.
“I suppose you folks are entitled to food,” Mr. Danworth said. “Of course we can’t give you any until next Monday, so you’re on your own till then. And I can’t guarantee any for your brother-in-law or extra for your wife. What we give you comes out of everybody else’s. It’s not like we call the government and say there are five more people in town so send us accordingly.”
“Anything you can do,” Dad said. “We’d be very grateful.”
“Share and share alike,” Mr. Danworth said, a cliché that would have fit right in the other night. “Will you folks be able to manage for another week?”
“We’ll have to,” Dad said. “You know how it is. We’re used to being hungry. As long as my wife has enough, we can get by.”
“A baby,” Mr. Danworth said. “That truly is a miracle.”
Dad grinned. “I wish I had pictures,” he said. “Miranda, isn’t Gabriel the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?”
I started to say, “Yes, Dad,” but I caught myself in time and said, “Yes, definitely,” instead. I know Dad caught it, but Mr. Danworth didn’t seem to notice.
“You know something?” Mr. Danworth said. “My wife and I, well, we have a bit saved up. I’m going to give you my bag, so your wife will have some for this week. A baby. That’s worth going hungry for.”
“Thank you,” Dad said. “You can’t know what this means to us.”
“Maybe I’ll come over one day and pay little Gabriel a call,” Mr. Danworth said.
“Any time,” Dad said. “We’d be honored.”
Dad and I talked a little bit on the ride home, since the wind was to our backs. Not that I was in much of a mood—although I was relieved about the extra food for Lisa. If nothing else, it means the rest of us won’t have to give up so much of ours.
“When Lisa had the baby at the evac camp, people did that,” Dad told me. “Not just Charlie. Lots of people. We had so little food, but people brought theirs for Lisa. Strangers who heard about the baby. It was so important to them that Lisa and Gabriel make it.”
“If Gabriel had been a girl, what would you have named her?” I asked.
“Abigail,” Dad said. “Abigail Hope Evans.”
There went the last of my Baby Rachel fantasies.
“Someday you’ll have children,” Dad said. “You and Julie and Syl. God willing, I’ll live to see that day.”
“Maybe someday,” I said. But the truth of the matter is when you spend your time thinking about your next meal and wanting your father to love you as much as he loves two strangers and trying to love your baby brother in spite of the fact that all he ever does is scream, it’s hard to wish for a baby of your own.
Maybe someday.
Maybe not.
For the second time in a week the doorbell rang.
Everything was different this time. Matt, Dad, Alex, and Charlie were outside chopping trees. Jon and Julie were in the back of the sunroom. Julie’s tutoring Jon in Spanish, which he’s developed a mad desire to learn in the past couple of days. Syl was upstairs while Mom and Lisa were sitting cross-legged on the mattress, talking about what supplies Dad and Lisa could take to Mrs. Nesbitt’s house. Gabriel was lying in his crib, taking it all in. And I was giving the kitchen a thorough cleaning, which is a lot easier with running water, even if the water is gray.
I looked out the kitchen window and saw Mr. Danworth standing at the back door. I was the farthest one away but the only one standing, so I walked over and let him in.
“I thought I’d pay a call on the baby,” he said, which I knew meant “I thought I’d come over and make sure there really is a baby that I gave up a week of my food for.”
“There he is,” I said, pointing to the crib that used to be Mom’s sweater drawer. “Gabriel, I’d like you to meet Mr. Danworth. He’s in charge of feeding your mommy.”
“Wow,” Mr. Danworth said, bending for inspection. “What a big boy you are. He’s quite the bruiser, isn’t he.” He turned around and saw Lisa. “You must be Sally Nesbitt,” he said.
Lisa smiled. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she said. “My Christmas miracle.”
“Your husband mentioned he was born on Christmas,” Mr. Danworth said. “Your family must have gone through a lot since then.”
“Everyone has,” Lisa said. “And we have Gabriel.”
“He’ll be crawling soon,” Mr. Danworth said. “Getting ready to explore the world.”
Lisa nodded. “He’s going to make the world a better place,” she said. “Not just for me, for all of us. He was born for a reason, I’m sure of it.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” Mr. Danworth said. He looked over our little domestic scene. “Hello, Laura,” he said to Mom. “And Jon. Good to see you. Who’s your friend, Jon?”
“I’m Julie,” she told him. She hesitated so slightly I may have been the only one to notice. “Dad and Alex and Uncle Charlie are outside,” she said. “With Matt. If you want to talk with them.”
“I’ll give them a quick hello on my way out,” Mr. Danworth said. “I can’t get over this baby. Bob and Miranda told me all about him, but before I saw him with my own eyes, well, frankly I couldn’t believe it. A baby here in Howell. It gives you faith.”
“Would you like to hold him?” Lisa asked. “Gabriel’s used to strangers. He won’t mind.”
“Can I?” Mr. Danworth asked. He bent down and picked Gabriel up. Gabriel, who still screeches at the sight of me, smiled at Mr. Danworth and tried to take his glasses off to play with.
Mom and Lisa and Julie were all beaming like Gabriel had pushed the moon back into place. Even Jon was grinning.
“You’re quite the fella, aren’t you,” Mr. Danworth said. “You know, I could be holding the president of the United States in my arms right now. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”
Gabriel made some kind of gurgling noise in agreement, and everyone laughed. Well, everyone except me.
Because for the first time I really thought about Gabriel’s future. If he exists, other babies must also. But how many of them will survive the next year, the next decade? I’ve had sixteen good years and one horrible one, but for Gabriel, for all the Gabriels, their whole lives will be like my one horrible year. Only I had the good years to see me through. What will they have?
And I finally figured out why Mom is willing to give up so much for her ex-husband’s baby. Gabriel isn’t just Dad’s baby. He’s Dad’s future, Lisa’s future. He’s all our futures, even Mr. Danworth’s. Every day Gabriel lives and grows a little bigger, a little stronger, is a miracle.
I stood there, and it’s the stupidest thing, but tears started streaming down my face. It was Julie who walked over and gave me a hug.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You can love him, too.”
Mom is madly happy that Jon is interested in schoolwork, so she’s taken over teaching him and Julie. Alex seems pleased that Julie’s getting any kind of instruction, and with Dad and Charlie around, Jon isn’t needed for the firewood anymore.
Mom asked both Syl and me if we wanted to join them, but neither one of us is interested in algebra. Lisa and Syl are doing Bible study, and in the evenings Dad and Charlie join them.
So I volunteered to get started on cleaning Mrs. Nesbitt’s house. All that domesticity was getting on my nerves.
Cleaning Mrs. Nesbitt’s is a big job, and tomorrow I’ll ask for volunteers. But for one day I figured being alone would be nice. The plan is for Dad, Lisa, and Gabriel to sleep in the kitchen, since that’s where the woodstove is, and Alex and Charlie will sleep in the parlor and Julie in the dining room. Then, when Alex and Julie leave, Charlie will move into the dining room, since that’s warmer.
But now even Mom doesn’t want Alex and Julie to go. She knows once they do, it’ll be back to chopping wood for Jon, and she’ll never be able to get him interested in schoolwork again. And I think she’s hoping Alex’s may-Is and thank-yous will rub off on me.
I don’t know how I feel about them staying. It still hurts me to look at Dad looking at them, seeing the pride and love in his eyes. It’s not like he looks at Matt or Jon or me any differently. Even Syl gets that same look. He loves all of us.
But he should love us more. He just should. We’re his children, not Alex and Julie.
But then I see Alex and Julie together, talking quietly, playing chess, and I know that if people had seen Matt with Jon or me, pre-Syl Matt, that is, they would have fallen in love with us the way Dad has with Alex and Julie. If it had been Matt and Jon and me and we didn’t have any parents, any family except each other, and people had reached out, included us in their families, it would have meant everything to us. It would have meant survival.
If I had to guess, I’d say Alex is going to move on, but he’ll let Julie stay with Dad and Lisa. Lisa’s counting on it, and now with Mom on her side I think the pressure will be too great for Alex. Especially with food coming in.
It wouldn’t be too bad if Julie stayed. She wouldn’t exactly be Baby Rachel, but I’ve adjusted to Syl, more or less. I could adjust to Julie.
Anyway, that’s what I told myself as I cleaned Mrs. Nesbitt’s kitchen and thought about how much my life has changed in just a single week.
I started out alone at Mrs. Nesbitt’s, which I liked, since it gave me more of a chance to feel sorry for myself. Just call me Cinderella Evans.
But then the wicked stepsisters (Syl and Julie) came over to help clean, which I don’t remember happening in Cinderella. What made it even worse is they’re both dynamos. When you’re alone in a freezing cold house, mopping and moping, you can take your time. But when there are two other people and they’re actually working, you have to pick up your pace and accomplish something.
So I was relieved when Alex showed up about an hour later. “I thought I’d go scavenge houses,” he said. “Miranda, would you mind coming along? You know the area and I don’t.”
Mind? Breaking into houses with the last living boy in America I’m not related to versus scrubbing every inch of a kitchen floor?
“No, that’s okay. I’ll go,” I said.
“Good,” Alex said. “Thank you.”
When other people say things like that, simple things like “good” and “thank you,” they smile. Alex didn’t smile. Alex never smiles. He says “please” and “thank you” and “may I,” but he never smiles.
I wonder if he used to before.
We went back to the house, told Mom where we were going, got bags and bikes, and rode off, leaving Syl and Julie to clean and polish. Alex may not have smiled, but I sure did.
“I’ve been going to houses closer to town,” I told him as we began. “More suburby places, lots of houses near each other. I’ve been doing pretty well there.”
“Let’s try more isolated,” Alex said. “Farmhouses. Cabins in the woods.”
That annoyed me. He asked me along since I know the area. Then he rejected my suggestion about where to look.
I have a big brother, thank you. I don’t need the last living boy in America to treat me like a dumb kid sister.
“We’ll do better in the suburbs,” I said.
“How do you know?” he asked. “If you haven’t tried the country?”
For a moment I considered turning around and going back to Mrs. Nesbitt’s. Let Alex get lost on his own, since he was so determined to bike vast distances for no good reason whatsoever.
But it’s the middle of June, the temperature had to be close to sixty, and if you really concentrated, you could kind of make out the sun. And even if Alex was the most annoying, last living boy in America, he still was the last living boy in America. (I should come up with initials for that: LLBA or something.)
“All right,” I said. “You want country, we’ll try country.” I began biking a little faster than him, taking the lead. We rode along at a steady pace while I tried to decide how far we should go to satisfy him.
I’d like to say I didn’t know where we were going, but that wouldn’t be true. I had a flash of “I’ll show him” when I turned onto Hadder’s Road, and then made the left onto Murray, the back road to the high school.
We were there in fifteen minutes. The mound of bodies. Only in the month since I’d been there, the temperature’s gone above freezing, the snow has melted, and the bodies have started to decompose.
It was awful. The stench was unbearable, even outdoors. The bodies were bloated, the faces unrecognizable. As bad as my nightmares have been, the reality is far worse. And it had been my choice to go there, to punish Alex for going against my advice.
“I wondered where all the bodies were,” he said like he wondered where Mom hid the Christmas presents.
“I know people there,” I said. “Friends of mine are in that pile.”
Alex stopped his bike and bowed his head in prayer, which made me feel even worse. Especially since the sight and the smell sickened me and all I wanted to do was get as far away as possible.
“It’s hard to lose friends,” he said.
I figured that meant we could start biking again. “Have you lost friends, too?” I asked.
“Everyone has,” he said.
I thought that was a pretty lousy answer. He could have consoled me for my losses or he could have told me about his, but to point out the whole world is a rotten stinking mass of death didn’t make me feel any better.
And I resent being told the whole world is a rotten stinking mass of death. Every night Mom turns on the radio and gets stations from Pittsburgh and Nashville and Atlanta, and we get to hear, every single night, about their rotten stinking masses of death.
So I didn’t need Alex to point out that everyone on earth has lost friends.
The one good thing about getting mad was it made me bike even faster. This time, though, I paid attention to where we made our turns and what roads we were on. I had no desire to get lost with this particular LLBA.
One of us would spot a farmhouse, and we’d check it for signs of life—more carefully than I had in the past because it’s warmer and there’s a chance people inside weren’t using their woodstoves. But the first three we went to were empty. The only problem was they were empty inside as well. We took half a bar of soap and a quarter tube of toothpaste and not much more.
I considered resisting saying “I told you so” but gave in to the temptation. “I didn’t think we’d do so well out here,” I said. “People in the country stayed on longer, so they used up all their stuff.”
“You never know,” he said, which I took to mean “Shut up, you stupid girl.”
I wonder what Cinderella would have done with a wicked stepbrother.
We did better with house number four: a summer cabin you couldn’t see from the road. Most likely no one had used it the year before, so whatever was there was two years old. But that doesn’t matter when it comes to soap and paper towels. And because it was a summer house, there was lots of summer house reading. I grabbed a dozen paperback mysteries for Mom and some romances for Lisa and Syl.
“I’m sorry there are no Latin books for you,” I said.
“I’m sorry we can’t eat books,” he said.
If Alex knew how to smile, maybe he would have smiled then, and I would have known it was a joke and smiled back. But he doesn’t and he didn’t and I didn’t.
We kept biking up that road, stopping at a couple more cabins, but mostly finding more of the same. One house, miraculously, had a half box of disposable diapers. Syl and I have been the diaper service since Gabriel’s arrival, and even a dozen disposables looked like treasure.
Our trash bags still looked empty, so we kept on. The houses were getting more isolated, and I was glad to have Alex by my side as we searched.
I can’t say the last house we went to was going to be the last one of the day. Alex hadn’t said we should stop looking, and every half roll of toilet paper will make our lives a little bit better. Maybe we would have kept on for another hour or two.
And neither one of us noticed anything particularly different about the final house we went to. I could tell right away it wasn’t a summer house, but that didn’t mean anything.
We used Alex’s trick of throwing a few pebbles against a door and then running for cover in case anybody started shooting. No one did, so we got closer and looked through the windows for signs of life. When we thought it was safe, we tried the doors, which were locked, and threw a stone through the living room window.
The sound of shattering glass has replaced doorbells in my life.
It was Alex’s turn to stick his hand through the window and unlock it. I love breaking in, but that’s my least favorite part, since there’s a part of me that’s sure whoever owns the house is waiting to chop off my hand. I’ve had lots of nightmares about that.
But no one came at us with an ax, so we climbed in.
We both smelled death right away. It was like the mound of bodies only worse because the house was all closed up and the smell had intensified.
“Please,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Wait outside if you want,” Alex said.
But I knew what I didn’t see would frighten me more than what I did. “I’ll be okay,” I said. I’ve told bigger lies.
Alex took my hand. I could see his was bleeding. “You cut yourself,” I said to hide the fact that I was shaking from fear and excitement at the touch of a boy’s hand.
“Just a scratch,” he said, but he pulled his hand from mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get blood on you.”
I nodded. Alex began walking toward the smell and I followed him.
The body was in the kitchen. Once it had been human, sitting in the chair next to where we found it. Or what remained of it, some torn clothing, a belt, some flesh and muscle, hair, bones, an eyeball. By its side was a shotgun, and lying a few feet away was a dead pit bull.
I screamed.
“Don’t look,” Alex said, but I couldn’t avert my eyes. He walked around the corpse, took a red plaid vinyl tablecloth and flung it on top. Then he held me until I stopped shaking.
“I think we’re in luck,” he said. “The dog died recently, maybe even today. It’s been eating its owner for a while now, but it finally starved to death. There’s probably dog food if we look.”
“I don’t know if Horton will eat dog food,” I said.
“Not for Horton,” Alex said. “For us.” He began searching through the kitchen cabinets. Sure enough, there were a couple of cans. Dinner, I thought, grateful that Alex hadn’t suggested we eat the dog.
“All right?” I asked, my voice sounding squeaky even to me. “Can we go now?”
“There’s more,” Alex said. “Can’t you sense it? He was protecting more than two cans of dog food.”
“But he’s dead,” I said. “Maybe he killed himself when he ran out of food.”
“Maybe,” Alex said. “But we should look around anyway. For toilet paper and diapers.”
We both knew there weren’t going to be any diapers, but I was just as happy to get out of the kitchen. We went through the house thoroughly, taking anything we could use, which wasn’t very much. Alex even went down to the cellar but came back empty-handed.
“I guess your hunch was wrong,” I said.
“I still feel it,” he said. “He would have shot his dog first if he was going to kill himself. He loved that dog.”
I knew Alex was right, because if it came to that for us, we would have killed Horton or at least let him loose. “There’s a garage,” I said. “Maybe there’s something out there.”
“Then he would have been sitting in the garage with his shotgun,” Alex said. “It’s in the house somewhere. We’re overlooking something.”
“It could be money,” I said. “Or jewelry. Things he thought were valuable.”
Alex shook his head. “The dog just died,” he said for the third time, like he was Sherlock Holmes and I was the world’s stupidest Dr. Watson. “He ate off the man for a few days and then went a few days without eating. This guy, whoever he is, died fairly recently. He knew what was valuable.”
“All right,” I said. “Where, then? We’ve looked everywhere.”
“Not in the attic,” Alex said. “Wouldn’t this house have an attic?”
“At least a crawlspace,” I said. “But I didn’t see a staircase. Maybe there’s a trapdoor.”
We went upstairs and looked through three closets before finding the trapdoor to the attic. Alex pulled on the cord, and I climbed the stairs.
There were cartons everywhere. But cartons in an attic mean nothing. Even cartons that had the names of products mean nothing. Even cartons still sealed mean nothing.
Alex followed me up. The roof was so low neither one of us could stand upright. There wasn’t much space to walk anyway, but we could move around well enough for him to pull out a penknife and cut open a Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup carton.
Inside it were twenty-four cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.
“He didn’t starve to death,” I said. “How could he with all this food?”
“He was a miser,” Alex said. “You’d hear about guys like that, but I always thought they were folktales. People who stocked up when it first happened and then were so afraid of not having enough, they stopped eating what they had. You stay here. I’ll be back up in a moment.”
I had no idea why he was leaving but I didn’t care. I looked at box after glorious box. Some of the food, I knew, had gone rotten. But there was still so much. Even with ten of us there was enough food for weeks.
When Alex came back up, he had the man’s shotgun. “Just in case we need it,” he said.
“How can we get all this back home?” I asked, hoping Alex knew how to handle a shotgun. “Maybe we should move here until the food runs out.”
“The house is too small,” Alex said. “Besides, a guy like that had to have some way of getting out. He’ll have a van in the garage, or a pickup, with a little gas in the tank. Enough to get the food back to your house. I bet he has some containers as well. He was prepared. Crazy but prepared.”
“What if the garage is locked?” I asked.
“It probably is,” Alex said. “But there was a key ring on the guy’s belt.”
I remembered what the man looked like and shuddered. Not a cute, little horror movie shiver, either.
“It’s okay,” Alex said. “It’s a lot to take in. I’ll get the key and check out the garage. You stay here. It’ll be all right.” He took the shotgun with him and climbed down the stairs.
I forced myself to read the cartons, to concentrate on the miracle of black beans and beef jerky. The sight of four 20-pound bags of rice thrilled me. But I was never more relieved than when I heard Alex enter the closet.
“It’s a van,” he said. “With a quarter tank of gas. I found a couple cans of gas, too.” He shook his head. “He could have gone anywhere with two cans of gas,” he said. “He and the dog both.”
“Is it stick shift?” I asked. “I don’t know how to drive stick shift.”
“I know how,” Alex said. “You learn things on the road. How to drive. How to hot-wire. How to defend yourself.” He paused for a moment. “You’d be amazed how many cars there are with a little bit of gas left in them. You hot-wire a car and you can go twenty-five miles on fumes.”
“That’s how you got here?” I asked. “Dad and Lisa and Charlie, too? By car?”
“Some,” Alex said. “Some we biked and some we walked. Julie and I got a lift partway to Tulsa in February. That was a big help. Then we left Tulsa to find Carlos in Texas. His Marine regiment is stationed there. By the time we located him, we knew everything we needed to survive.”
I knew I’d ask about Tulsa later, but the important thing was getting all the food back home. “I had an idea,” I said. “See that window? I could toss the cartons to the ground. They’re cans and boxes, so nothing would break.”
“Great idea,” Alex said. “You stay here and do the tossing. I’ll go down, and when you’re through, we’ll load the van.”
At first I resented the idea that I’d do all the heavy lifting, but then I realized Alex would be outside with the shotgun. He and Julie knew how to defend themselves, but no one had bothered to teach me. “Fair enough,” I said.
We shattered open the window, and Alex watched as I threw a box down. “Good work,” he said. He picked up one of the bags of rice and carried it down while I kept tossing the boxes out the window. A couple of them flew open, but mostly they held.
It took a while for me to get them all down, and I was exhausted by the time I’d finished, but the job was only partly done. We still had to get three bags of rice outside, and we couldn’t toss them. Alex came back, and we each took one. I had no idea how heavy twenty pounds could be. Alex handed me the shotgun, then went to the attic and got the final bag.
The van looked really old, and its windows had been whitewashed so you couldn’t see in. But it held everything, except our bikes. Those Alex and I strapped to the top with rope he’d found.
The sound of the engine turning over was just amazing. The sensation of being in a van that actually moved was beyond description.
“Do you know how to get back?” I asked. “Or should I direct?”
“I’ll need your directions,” Alex said. “I try to remember landmarks, but this country all looks the same to me.”
So I told him where to turn. There were no other cars on the road, and no one came out at the sound of ours. I was relieved, since Alex had given me the shotgun and I was terrified I’d be expected to use it.
“Who was in Tulsa?” I asked. “Or did you just pass through there?” It was easier to ask Alex questions with us both facing forward with no danger of eye contact.
“We thought we’d find our aunt and uncle,” Alex said. “They set out for there last June. We spent a few days looking but no luck.”
“It’s hard to picture cities,” I said. “Cities with people.”
“They’re not like before,” Alex said. “There are bodies, mostly skeletons now, piled up. Even the rats have died. And only some buildings have heat, so you share apartments.”
“Are there schools?” I asked, remembering my idea about places for politicians and millionaires to live. “Hospitals? Could you and Julie have stayed there?”
Alex held on to the steering wheel a little tighter. “The plan was for me to leave Julie with our aunt and uncle. I was going to get to Texas, find Carlos, let him know where we were, and then go back and work at the oil fields. But I couldn’t leave Julie alone, so we went to Texas together.”
“But you didn’t stay,” I said. “Couldn’t you have worked in the Texas oil fields instead?”
“I could have,” Alex replied. “But there was no one to look after Julie.”
“Julie’s a good kid,” I said. “She wouldn’t have gotten into trouble.”
“Trouble would have found her,” Alex said. “We couldn’t take that risk.”
I considered asking him about the convent, but I didn’t want to remind Alex that he’d caught me eavesdropping. “Could Dad and Lisa have stayed?” I asked instead. “Not necessarily in Tulsa. But in a city somewhere? Could Dad have gotten work?”
“Maybe,” Alex said. “Maybe not. It’s all physical labor. But the only thing that mattered to him, besides Lisa and the baby, was getting home to you. He talked so much about you, I felt like I knew you before we ever met. You were on your swim team, and before that you used to figure skate, and you played Glinda the Good in your fourth grade play.”
“He told you all that?” I asked.
“And more,” Alex said. “About all of you.”
I thought about Dad, about how I’d even for a moment thought he could love anyone like he loves us, and I felt happy and guilty at the same time. But mostly I felt grateful to Alex, even though there was no way he could know how much his comment meant to me.
“Can I ask you a question now?” he said.
“Absolutely,” I said. LLBA was asking me a question.
“The bruises on your face,” he said. “When we got here a week ago, they were pretty bad. How did you get them?”
It’s nice to know the first thing he’d noticed about me was my ravishing collection of black-and-blue marks. “I took a header off my bike,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Julie and I had a bet going.”
“Who won?” I asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.
“We both lost,” Alex said. “Her money was on you and Syl having a fight. Mine was on Matt slugging you one.”
“Matt’s never hit me,” I said. “We weren’t brought up like that, like animals.”
“Neither were we,” Alex said. “You don’t have to be an animal to hit your sister.”
“Not in my household,” I said, sounding exactly like Mom.
“Fine,” Alex said, sounding exactly like me.
We drove the rest of the way in silence, except for when I told him to make a turn. But it was hard for me to stay sulky when I was so excited about all the food we were bringing back in our very own van with its very own containers of gas.
Mom and Lisa stayed inside, trying to find places for all the cartons, while the rest of us carried in the food. The excitement was contagious. Charlie sang “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” and Julie danced around, and Matt and Syl grabbed each other, and Dad cried with joy.
And I discovered that Alex knows how to smile.
You’d think with a houseful of food for the first time in a year, we’d be eating nonstop. Oh no. Not us.
First off, Matt pointed out that what seems like an enormous amount of food now is going to vanish in the blink of an eye with ten people eating it. Okay, he didn’t say “in the blink of an eye.” He said that if we each ate four ounces of rice a day, we’d finish the four twenty-pound bags in a month.
Four ounces of rice sounds like a lot of rice to me. And there’s all that other food we brought back, plus the food we get each week, plus whatever shad is still in the garage. But Mom agreed with Matt that we’d have to be very careful to stretch out our supplies for a long time.
Then Charlie—Mr. Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’— pointed out that some of the food might have spoiled, and it would be a disaster if we came down with food poisoning at the same time.
He suggested we become food buddies (that was his exact term, “food buddies”), and every morning two of us could take a nibble from one kind of food and two of us from another, etc., and then if we didn’t get sick, we could all eat the food we’d started that morning.
Matt and Syl said they’d be food buddies, and Jon volunteered himself and Julie, which left Alex and me. Dad and Charlie said they’d food-buddy, also, and we agreed Mom and Lisa shouldn’t risk it.
This morning Alex and I each had a bite of canned mushrooms, and Jon and Julie had a bite of beef jerky, and Matt and Syl had a bite of canned carrots, and Dad and Charlie had a sip of vegetable soup.
We’re all still alive.
And none of us have yet eaten our four ounces of rice.
My food buddy and I ate a bite of spinach this morning. I don’t like spinach and I’m not at all sure I like Alex.
It’s Sunday, so after breakfast Alex and Julie went off to the dining room and prayed there while Dad, Lisa, Charlie, Syl, and Matt prayed in the sunroom.
Jon looked conflicted about which group to join but ended up in the dining room with Alex and Julie. I guess he figured since he sleeps in the dining room, it was okay to be there.
I’m not feeling real religious these days and Mom never has, so we chose to organize our fabulous food supply, one cabinet for food that hasn’t killed us and another for food we’re going to try next and another for food we get from town. We also separated all the food with expiration dates from over a year ago. We didn’t throw it out, because who knows how desperate we might get when we run out of rice, but we tucked it away where it wouldn’t tempt us.
All this while Charlie and Lisa and Syl and Dad sang hymns. Matt kind of hummed along.
Eventually Gabriel decided to blow his horn, which broke up the sunroom revival meeting. The dining room Catholics (and potential convert) lasted a little longer.
While Mom and I flattened the cartons, we gave thanks, in our own way, for the merciful bounty that’s come our way.
Jon and Julie biked into town to get our Monday food. Julie offered to drive the van, and Mom nearly had a fit.
When they got back, they were loaded with a dozen bags of food.
“One bag for each of us,” Julie said. “Including Gabriel. And an extra bag for Lisa.”
There was less in each bag than we used to get, but it was still very nice of them to include extra for Lisa and to throw in a bag for Gabriel. With all the food in the house and none of it poisoning us so far, the food from town is pretty much a supplement.
Amazing. Enough food for all of us.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it,” Mom said. “But let’s have a feast tonight.”
“Like a party?” Julie asked.
“Exactly like a party,” Mom said. “Lisa, is it all right with you if we have a party in the sunroom?”
“It’s a wonderful idea,” Lisa said. “Why don’t we move our mattresses into the dining room and spread blankets out, like a picnic.”
“Miranda, go tell the guys they need to come in early tonight,” Mom said. “Alex, too, of course. Julie, you go upstairs and tell Syl.”
“A party,” Dad said when I told him. “Great idea. We have a lot to celebrate. Matt’s marriage, and our homecoming, and the food, and our move to Mrs. Nesbitt’s.”
Matt didn’t look all that excited, and Alex looked uncomfortable, but Dad didn’t notice. Dad always liked parties.
Charlie, Syl, and I lugged Dad and Lisa’s mattresses into the dining room. Lisa took Gabriel into the kitchen with her while I gave the sunroom floor a good mopping. Julie and Charlie went to Mrs. Nesbitt’s to get her silverware and glasses. We’ve been eating in shifts, so we never needed service for ten.
Since we’ve gone three days without food poisoning, we had a lot of opened cans to eat from. Plus rice and shad.
The electricity cooperated by staying on almost all evening, so in addition to cooking on the woodstove, we used the microwave. There was no way we could cook enough for ten people at one time. So first we had a few sips of vegetable soup, and then we shared bites of spinach and mushrooms, and then the main course of rice, shad, and green beans. We each had two dried figs for dessert.
Then the party began. We’re used to spending the evenings together in the sunroom, Bible studies in one corner, chess and card games in another, but the whole idea of a party is to play the same games together. Charlie suggested charades.
“What’s charades?” Julie asked.
I had the feeling Alex didn’t know, either, but to be fair about it, I doubt Jon does and it’s not like I’ve ever played. Charlie explained about acting out names of songs or movies or books, and we divided into boys vs. girls. The boys went into the kitchen to come up with their titles, and we girls stayed in the sunroom to work out ours. Gabriel was an honorary girl. Mom sacrificed a piece of typing paper for us to write our titles on, and Jon donated the use of his Phillies cap for the girls’ slips of paper and his Yankees cap for the boys’. Then Charlie coached all of us on how to divide words into syllables and to cup your ear for “sounds like.”
It turned out to be hard coming up with names of things. You want something that’s perfect to stump the other team, but it’s not like I’ve seen a lot of movies lately or read a lot of books. And all the songs seemed too obvious. But we each came up with two names, put them in the cap, and played.
Alex went first, and he pulled out Mom’s choice of Little Women, which was much too easy. Lisa went next, and she got Matt’s title, Finnegans Wake, which was impossible, even though Mom said she had tried to read it once.
But it didn’t matter, because whether we did well (Dad and Syl were the best at acting things out, and Mom was the best at guessing) or miserably (Jon, with me a close second), it was a lot of fun. It feels like such a long time since I’ve done anything silly. At least intentionally silly.
We played until the electricity went off, but we were still enjoying ourselves, so Syl ran upstairs and got Matt’s old guitar.
“I’ve been teaching myself,” Syl said. “I’m not very good yet.”
She had to be better than Matt, though. He got the guitar for his fourteenth birthday, played it nonstop for three days, and never looked at it again.
Syl strummed chords and Charlie sang, and then we all sang. Julie, it turns out, has a pretty voice, and with candles and the woodstove for light, you could see Alex’s face glowing with pride. Which made me kind of like him again, at least for a minute or two.
After we’d finished massacring every Beatles song we could remember any of the words to, Charlie said to Syl, “I’d like to learn how to play the guitar. My fingers were always too fat before. Would you mind if I learned with you?”
“Not at all,” Syl said. “That would be fun.”
“I’d like to learn, too,” Julie said. “Could we start tomorrow?”
“There’s no point,” Alex said. “We’ll be leaving in a day or two.”
“I don’t want to go,” Julie said. “I want to stay with Hal and Lisa and Gabriel.” She paused for a moment. “And Charlie, too,” she said. “And Jon.”
“We’ve stayed too long as it is,” Alex said. “You know what the plan is, Julie. It’s not open for discussion.”
“It’s not fair!” Julie yelled. “No one asked me what I want to do!”
I’d write what Alex yelled back at her, but he switched to Spanish. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but there was no doubting the tone.
Matt and I have had our fights, but we never sounded that bad. The fights we had were over hogging the computer or getting in each other’s way. He was mean. I was a pest. We had fights like that with Jon, too.
But this, whatever it was they were saying, was much deeper, much angrier. I guess it was the fight brothers and sisters have when they don’t have parents to stop them.
For a moment I was afraid Alex might hit Julie, but that was just in my head, since he didn’t step any closer to her. But he must have said something really bad and Julie must have said something even worse because she ran outside, slamming the door behind her.
“She’ll freeze out there,” Lisa said.
“No,” Alex said. “She’ll be all right. Let her cool off.”
He had to have felt all of us staring at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She doesn’t want to leave. But it’s the right thing.”
“Is it?” Dad asked. “You know how much we love Julie. She’s family. She’ll be safe with us.”
Alex shook his head. “I know you mean that, Hal, and I’m grateful. But there’s food now and it feels safe. Things change too fast.”
“Even if we left, we’d take her with us,” Dad said. “She’ll always have a home with us.”
“If you have a home,” Alex said. “For as long as you have food. No, the decision’s been made, and it’s the right one, even if Julie doesn’t see that. No matter what happens, we trust the church to protect her.”
Which was more than Alex was doing, letting her run outside without a coat. I got up, grabbed one, and carried it outside.
Julie was standing by the garage, close to where I’d been the night Mom kicked me out. Only it was raining that night, so I got to suffer more. I grinned at winning the martyr contest.
“I brought you this,” I said, handing Julie the coat.
“Thank you,” she said, putting it on. “What’s Alex doing? Explaining how wonderful the church is?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “Would you rather stay with us? Even if Alex goes?”
“Yeah,” Julie said. “But he won’t let me. Carlos said I had to go to the convent. We told him about it, and he couldn’t find anyplace else for me to stay, so he said I had to go there. I told him I didn’t want to, but he said I had to anyway. And Alex said Carlos was right.”
“It’s a shame you couldn’t find your aunt and uncle,” I said. “Alex told me about them, how you could have stayed there while he worked in the oil fields.”
“We didn’t want to live in Tulsa,” Julie replied. “I’d have been stuck taking care of my cousins. You think Gabriel cries a lot? He’s nothing compared to them. And Alex’ll be much happier in a monastery than he would be in an oil field.”
“Monastery?” I said. I don’t think I’ve ever said that word before. “Alex wants to enter a monastery?”
“Didn’t he tell you?” Julie asked. “I thought Alex told you everything. I thought maybe he’d like you so much, he’d change his mind.”
I almost burst out laughing. The last living boy in America drops into my bedroom only he wants to be a monk. I think that pretty much sums up my life.
“He doesn’t like me that much,” I said. “And he never told me.”
“It isn’t what he used to want,” Julie said. “Before. He wanted to be president of the United States. And I bet he could have been. He’s so smart and he worked all the time. But after we left Carlos, Alex said he’d take me to the convent and then he’d enter a monastery. There’s a Franciscan one in Ohio that’s still open. I’m never going to be a nun, though. I’ll stay as long as I have to and then I’ll come back here. If you’re gone, I’ll try to find you.”
“We won’t be going anytime soon,” I said. “Mom doesn’t want us to leave, and since Dad and Lisa and the baby can stay at Mrs. Nesbitt’s, there’s no reason for them to go, either.”
“People leave,” Julie said.
I knew she was right, even though I couldn’t picture us leaving anytime soon. “If we do go, we’ll let you know,” I said. “I promise you that.”
“And I promise you, you’re going to freeze without a coat,” Charlie said, approaching us. “It may be the middle of June, but it’s freezing out here.”
“Not freezing,” I said, gratefully taking my coat from him. “It’s definitely above freezing.”
“You’re right,” Charlie said. “It’s got to be at least forty.” He laughed. “I used to hate hot weather,” he said. “Just breathing made me sweat. But now I think about hot summer nights and everything I would give up for one.”
“What?” Julie said. “What would you give up?”
Charlie laughed again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not any of you and I don’t have anything else. I guess I don’t have anything to barter.”
“I used to think there’d still be stars in the sky,” Julie said. “In the country, I mean. We used to spend summers in the country with Fresh Air Fund families, and there were always stars. I had a postcard once of a painting with big crazy-looking stars.”
“Starry Night,” I said. “Vincent van Gogh painted it. I saw it in a museum in New York. You’re from New York, aren’t you, Julie? Did you ever see it?”
“No,” Julie said. “But I’ve been to museums. I went on a school trip to the Natural History Museum once. We looked at the dinosaurs for hours.”
“The dinosaurs are gone,” I said. “Just like the stars.”
“The stars are there,” Charlie said. “Hiding behind the ash clouds, but they’re still there.”
“I don’t believe in anything I can’t see,” I said.
“You don’t have to see God to believe in Him,” Julie said. “You can feel Him and la Santa Madre and the saints. Like you can feel the sun, even though we can’t see it anymore.”
“I can’t see the stars and I certainly can’t feel them, so I’ve given up believing they’re there,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, they no longer exist.”
“Look at it this way,” Charlie said. “Do you think there’s life on other planets?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I hope they’re having a better time of it than we are.”
Charlie laughed. “Okay, then,” he said. “Picture Princess Leia on her planet, or a Klingon, or some eight-eyed thing with four brains. And whatever it is, it’s outside on a hot June night, looking at the ten thousand stars in its sky. Our sun is one of them. It can see our sun better than we can, and it has a name for it, like we have names for the stars. But Princess Leia doesn’t know we’re standing here looking up to where the stars used to be. Does that mean we don’t exist just because she can’t see us?”
I had never thought about that before: all the life on all the other planets throughout the universe as unaware of our lives, our suffering, as we are of theirs.
I wondered how many teenage boys there were out there and how many of them planned on becoming monks, and I laughed.
Charlie laughed with me and Julie did also. We were probably all laughing at different things, but that was okay. We were alive, we were together, and somewhere in the June sky there were stars.
Moving day.
Naturally it poured.
Mom stayed in and watched over Gabriel while the rest of us lugged stuff over to Mrs. Nesbitt’s. Food, blankets, sheets, the clothes we’ve been sharing with everyone else. Lots of books.
I didn’t believe it until Dad came back for Gabriel. But they really are gone. Even if it’s just down the road.
There are only five us now, and it’s so quiet.
Lisa came over this morning, distraught.
“Alex says he’s taking Julie away tomorrow,” she said. “Miranda, you’re the only one he listens to. Please talk to him.”
I don’t know where people have gotten the idea that Alex listens to me. Matt listens to Syl and Jon listens to Julie, but that seems to be where the listening ends.
Still, I told Lisa I’d give it a try.
I walked outside to where the guys were chopping wood. “I was wondering if I could borrow Alex for a few hours,” I said, nice and casually. “I’d like to do some house hunting, and Mom doesn’t like me to go alone.”
“Good idea,” Matt said. “Alex, you don’t mind, do you? You and Miranda had great luck last time.”
“Sure,” Alex said. I get the feeling chopping wood is one thing he isn’t going to miss at the monastery.
We walked back to the houses and got our bikes. It was as warm a day as I could remember, almost muggy, and we biked slowly.
“No country this time,” I said. “Let’s do Fresh Meadows instead.”
“All right,” Alex said.
Well, that was easy. Maybe he was in an agreeable mood. Or maybe he didn’t like looking at half-eaten bodies any more than I did.
When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about living in Fresh Meadows. It’s at the other end of town from us, five or six miles away, and it’s where the doctors and lawyers live. Or lived before everything happened.
“These are nice houses,” Alex said as we climbed our way through an already shattered window. “The rich kids lived here, huh?”
“No one was rich in Howell,” I said. “But the richer kids lived here.”
“I like your house better,” Alex said. “It reminds me of home. All the people stepping over each other. We were pretty crowded.”
I pictured Alex and Julie and Carlos living in a filthy tenement, with everybody yelling in Spanish and hitting each other. “Where was that?” I asked.
“West End Avenue and Eighty-eighth Street,” Alex said.
There went my tenement fantasy. Actually, there went most of my ideas about Alex and Julie and where they came from. It costs a lot more money to live on West End Avenue and Eighty-eighth Street than it does to live in Fresh Meadows.
I guess Alex sensed my surprise. “My father was the super,” he said. “Not much salary, but they let us live in the basement apartment, by the laundry room and the furnace.”
“Oh,” I said. “No wonder our house reminds you of home.”
Alex laughed. “It’s better than I made it sound,” he said. “It was a nice apartment. But crowded and noisy.”
We walked through the house together, taking whatever pickings we could find. I taught Alex the cosmetic bag trick, and he admired the travel-sized shampoos and soaps. We went through three houses that way, all of them previously ransacked, probably more than once. But each had a little something we could use, and we both enjoyed the quiet and the nice furnishings.
“No food today,” I said. “No misers in this neighborhood.”
“No,” Alex said. “The rich don’t starve.”
“Are there special places for rich people, do you think?” I asked. “Did you ever see any?”
“There are safe towns,” Alex said. “But they’re hidden. Even Carlos couldn’t find one.”
Syl had mentioned trucks going to safe towns. Truckers must know where they were located even if the Marines didn’t.
“We’re safe enough where we are,” I said. “We have food and shelter. Julie would be safe, too, if you let her stay with us.”
“No,” Alex said. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“But why?” I cried. “Charlie’s staying. He’s no more a part of the family than you are.”
“Did you hear yourself?” Alex asked. “That’s exactly why Julie has to go. No matter how much you say you love her, she isn’t a part of your family. She’s Carlos’s sister and mine, not yours.”
“Carlos isn’t here,” I said. “We are. You could be, too. You could both stay with us.”
“No,” Alex said. “Carlos told us what we should do, and we’re doing it.”
“You really will make a great monk,” I said. “You have the obedience thing down pat.”
“I have no idea what kind of monk I’ll be,” Alex said. “Or even if the order will take me in.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “You’re dumping Julie with some nuns and then you’re going to Ohio on the off chance you can become a monk? Are you serious?”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you,” Alex said. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “Maybe I don’t understand, but you didn’t know if I would. You may know Latin and calculus and how to hot-wire a car, but you don’t know anything about me. I don’t think you know anything about anybody except yourself.”
Alex looked around at what had once been a very nice living room, now covered with ash and broken glass. “I’ll tell you what I know,” he said. “Everywhere there’s death. You think that pile of bodies was the worst thing I’ve ever seen? Or the corpse with the dog beside it? That was nothing. Every day for a year I’ve seen worse. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why God lets me live when so many people have died horrible, lonely deaths. People better than I’ll ever be. For a long time I thought I was alive to protect Julie, but every plan I’ve made for her failed. Now I’m trusting in Carlos’s decision. And if God shows us mercy and gives Julie the protection I can’t, I’ll go to Ohio and beg the Franciscans to take me in and devote the rest of my life to serving Christ and my church. That’s everything I know, Miranda. Everything.”
He was crying. For days I hadn’t known he could smile, and now I found he could cry.
“Stay until Tuesday,” I said. “Go into town and get the food. Do that for Dad and Lisa, all right?”
He took a deep breath and wiped the tears off his cheeks. “Tuesday,” he said. “What’s today?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, but then I counted back to last Monday. That’s how we tell time: Monday to Monday. “It’s Thursday,” I said. “That’s just a long weekend.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ll leave on Tuesday. No more arguments.”
“None,” I said, but I felt a glimmer of hope.
Maybe Alex really does listen to me.
I opened one of the cans of dog food and put some in Horton’s bowl. When I checked this evening, he hadn’t touched it.
A couple of days ago Jon asked permission to give Horton a little bit of the shad. We have so much food in the house, Mom agreed, but Horton ended up not eating it.
He’s gotten so thin. He seems comfortable, and he can get up and down furniture and laps. Sure, he mostly sleeps, but he always sleeps a lot.
I’d hoped when everybody left, especially Gabriel, Horton would start eating again. I know he was eating a little before they came, because I fed him when Jon was away.
When Julie was in the house, Jon was distracted, and even now he’s spending most of his free time with her, either here or at Mrs. Nesbitt’s. But she’ll be gone in a couple of days, unless Alex changes his mind, and then Jon is going to have to face what’s going on with Horton.
If he can. If any of us can.
Charlie popped in, just like a neighbor might, to invite us over for Sunday prayer service, followed by dinner.
Syl said yes right away and Matt nodded. Jon said he would if he could pray with Alex and Julie, and Charlie said of course, they were hoping Jon would join them.
That left Mom and me. I said yes, more for the dinner than the prayers. Mom thought about it and said she didn’t have that many chances to be alone and whenever one came along, she grabbed it, so she’d stay home.
“You could come just for the dinner,” Charlie said. “It won’t be the same without you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Mom said, which we all knew meant “no, thank you.”
We’re in and out of both houses all day long. Julie comes over every morning for lessons with Jon, and more often than not, Jon eats supper at Dad’s. Syl goes over for Bible study. Mom sends me over with something for them, or Alex comes over with something for us, and Charlie and Mom have formed their own book club. One of them reads a mystery, then gives it to the other, and then they discuss it.
But Charlie always comes over here to see Mom. Mom never goes there. I can’t decide if it’s because she doesn’t want to see Mrs. Nesbitt’s house filled with other people or if it’s Dad and Lisa she’s avoiding. Maybe she thinks they want to avoid her. It can’t be easy for Mom having them so close by, but she might think it’s just as hard for them having her so near.
It’s only been a few days since they moved out. Maybe by next week Mom will start visiting them.
The four of us walked over to Mrs. Nesbitt’s this morning, splitting up once we got there. Jon went to the parlor, where Alex and Julie set up a little chapel, and Matt, Syl, and I stayed in the kitchen with everybody else.
Dad moved Mrs. Nesbitt’s table back into the kitchen, and we sat around it for our prayer service. It made things feel more ordinary, and I was glad for that.
Someone would start a hymn and whoever knew it would join in. I asked for “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” since that was Grandma’s favorite. There were some prayers, and Syl talked about the peace she felt when she accepted Christ as her savior. I guess that happened after the moon goddess Diana proved to be such a dud.
Charlie gave a sermon, if you could call it that. He said he’d been thinking a lot about Noah and his family lately, what it must have been like for them those 40 days and 40 nights. As far as they knew, they were the only people left on Earth. Everybody would be descended from them but only if they survived, and they had to trust in God that they would.
“I bet the rabbits weren’t worried about that,” Charlie said. “They just did what rabbits do. But it’s our curse and our blessing to remember the past and to know there’s a future.”
He reached over, touched Lisa with his right hand and Syl with his left. “Our past is gone,” he said. “But our future is in this house right now. Little Gabriel, sleeping peacefully in his crib. The children Syl will bear. Miranda and Julie, too. Their babies, born and unborn, are God’s gift to the future, just as the ark was.”
Dad squeezed Lisa’s hand. Matt squeezed Syl’s. I felt very much a part of something and very much alone.
Alex, Julie, and Jon came in, and Dad and Lisa served us dinner. It was crowded in the kitchen, and we couldn’t all fit around the table. Dad, Matt, and Alex ate standing by the sink.
We never used to have Sunday dinner. Sunday was for track meets and skating competitions and baseball games. But even with a beef jerky main course, Sunday dinner felt special.
“I should get back to Mom,” I said.
“I’ll walk you home,” Alex said.
It felt funny to be outside without needing a coat. It felt funny to be walking with a boy. It felt funny and awful to think in a couple of days I wouldn’t see him again. He and Julie would be like all the other people who’d been part of my life and then left me.
“Have you changed your mind?” I asked him. “About Julie staying?”
“No,” he said. “Did you think I would?”
I shook my head. “I’m still hoping, though,” I said. “And that you’ll stay, too.”
“We’re leaving on Tuesday,” he said. “It’s better for everybody. There’ll be more food for you.”
“Thank you for being so noble,” I said. “But we’d rather be hungry with you.”
Alex laughed. It surprises me every time he does.
Then he surprised me again. “You would have been my dream girl,” he said. “Before. Beautiful and smart and funny and kind.”
“I don’t have to be,” I said. “A dream, I mean. I’m here. You’re here. Why leave?”
“Because it’s best,” he said. “Maybe not now, this minute, but for the future.”
“You drive me crazy,” I said. “You. Charlie. Everybody. You talk about the future like you’re so sure we’re going to have one.”
“You have to believe in the future,” Alex said. “Otherwise there’s no point being alive.”
“That’s easy for you to say!” I cried. “You have your faith, your church. But I don’t believe like that. Maybe I used to but I don’t anymore.”
I thought Alex would get angry at me then, but he didn’t. “You don’t have to believe in the church,” he said. “Or even in God. Believe that people can change things.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know that anymore.” My mind flashed back to the dead man with his dog lying beside him. “We’re all helpless,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing left to trust in.”
“Trust in tomorrow,” Alex said. “Every day of your life, there’s been a tomorrow. I promise you, there’ll be a tomorrow.”
“Do you trust in tomorrow?” I asked.
“I have to,” he said. “For Julie’s sake.”
“But you don’t trust in us,” I said. “To look after Julie.”
He answered with silence.
“You don’t trust in anything, either,” I said. “Not really. Your God, your church, your tomorrow. You don’t even trust Carlos. You’re just doing what he tells you because it’s easier.”
“That’s not true,” Alex said. “You don’t understand.”
“I do understand,” I said. “But I don’t care. I’m not a dream girl. I’m a real human being with real feelings. How can I trust tomorrow? Tomorrow terrifies me. I wake up every morning scared and I go to bed every night scared, and all those tomorrows I’ve lived through are exactly the same. Hunger and fear and loneliness. Exactly the same as you, as everybody. Only you’re worse, because when we ask you to share our hunger and our fear and our loneliness, you turn your back on us. I may be lonely and scared and hungry, but I haven’t given up on loving people yet. You have. Or maybe you never loved anyone. Maybe all your life was dreams.”
Alex grabbed me. I knew he would. I knew he’d kiss me, and he did, and I kissed back. Only it wasn’t a dream-girl kiss. It wasn’t a kiss of love or even excitement, not the way I’ve been kissed before.
There was so much anger in his kiss. In mine, too. We shared it, the electric volt, and when we broke away from each other, we were both shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.” He gestured wildly, as though he was taking responsibility for the last horrible year of my life.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It was just a dream.”
I walked the rest of the way home alone.
I was nervous someone would suggest that Alex and I go into town to get our food, but Dad and Jon ended up going instead.
Alex and Julie came over this evening to thank us for our hospitality and to say good-bye. Julie looked a wreck and Alex didn’t look much better, and when they left, Jon ran to his room and hasn’t come out since.
I wish Alex would go already. I wish he would never leave.
The first official day of summer.
I checked the thermometer and it was close to 60. But then it started to rain, and it never stopped.
Jon spent the day sulking. I did, too. Matt and Syl spent it in their room, but I doubt they were sulking.
I don’t know if Alex and Julie left. He was so determined, but the weather was awful.
I could have gone to Dad’s to find out, but I didn’t want Alex to know I cared. Assuming he’s still there. Which he probably isn’t, because he’s a total idiot who would take his sister out in a hurricane if his big brother told him to.
The last living boy in America can go to hell for all I care. Except I do care, and he’s probably already there.
It’s still raining.
Charlie dropped over to talk mysteries with Mom. “Alex and Julie haven’t left yet,” he said. “Julie’s developed a bit of a cough. We were wondering if you had any cough medicine around.”
Mom gave Jon what little we have left, and he raced over with it. He didn’t come back until after supper.
The third straight day of rain. Jon says Alex and Julie haven’t left yet.
My guess is rain or snow, they’ll go tomorrow. And I’ll be glad. Not for Jon, who’ll be heartbroken, or for Julie. Not for Alex, either, because I don’t care what he feels.
I’ll be glad for me. Once Alex is gone, I’ll never have to think of him again. I’ll throw him onto the mound of bodies and forget I ever met him.
Why not? He’s already forgotten me.
It stopped raining. The ground is nothing but mud.
“I don’t see how they could possibly go,” Mom said to Matt and Jon and me at our rice and beans breakfast. “The convent is ninety miles from here. That’s a four-day walk.”
“They might be able to pick up bikes on the way,” Matt said.
“They still have to find them,” Mom said. “And who knows where they’ll sleep. They’ve got to wait for things to dry out before they go.”
That was all Jon needed to hear. Off he ran.
“I hope they’re gone,” Matt said. “The longer they stay, the harder it’s going to be on Jon. And I’ll be just as glad never to see Alex again.”
“Why do you say that?” Mom asked.
“He’s a parasite,” Matt said. “He’s a danger chopping wood. I’m always worried he’s going to cut off one of his fingers or one of mine. I don’t think he’s done a day’s worth of physical labor in his life. He sits and he reads and he eats our food. Which we’ll run out of soon enough anyway.”
“It’s thanks to Alex we have food,” I said. “He’s the one who found it and figured out how to get it back here. He was the one who made us search the whole house.” I pictured the half-eaten man and shuddered.
“It’s great you found all that food,” Matt said. “But it isn’t going to happen again. In the meantime Alex eats what little we have. And I don’t like the way he plays up to Dad.”
“He doesn’t play up to Dad,” I said. “Dad loves him. There’s a difference.”
“Why does Dad love him, then?” Matt said. “It’s not because of anything he does.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But Dad loves Syl, too, and she doesn’t do anything, either.”
“Miranda,” Mom said, but it was too late.
“Don’t you ever speak about my wife that way!” Matt shouted. “She’s given up everything to be with me!”
“To get your food, you mean!” I shouted right back. “To have a place to sleep and people who wait on her hand and foot!”
We were sitting on the floor around the woodstove. Matt lunged for me.
“Matt, stop it!” Mom screamed, and I think that startled Matt into stopping. I got up and ran out of the sunroom, down the path to Mrs. Nesbitt’s.
Matt’s my big brother. We used to fight when we were kids. But he always knew when to stop.
This time I don’t think he would have known when.
I found Alex standing outside the house, checking the sky, examining the mud. I ran straight into his arms, and before I could catch my breath, we were kissing. No rage this time. Just hunger and need.
“No,” he said. At least that’s what I think he said. I know I wouldn’t have thought it on my own.
“Stay with us,” I said. “Don’t leave me.”
“I have to,” he said. “Julie can’t stay here. We’ve got to go.”
“But I don’t want you to!” I cried like a five-year-old.
Alex kissed me and I didn’t feel five anymore. I wasn’t a kid having a tantrum because someone took my favorite toy. I was a woman, and this was the man I wanted, and I was losing him.
We held on to each other, not wanting the moment to end, because when it did, our life together would also end. Our kisses grew deeper, our hands explored more, we gave each other all we could in that single passing moment.
Matt’s gone back to chopping wood. He insisted Jon work with him.
Mom and I cleaned the house. Charlie dropped by to invite us over for Sunday prayers and dinner.
“How’s Julie doing?” Mom asked.
“She’s a little better,” Charlie said. “The cough medicine seems to have helped. Hal’s convinced Alex to stay until Tuesday. Let’s hope the weather’s better this week.”
“I think I’ll see how she’s doing,” I said. “Mom, is there anything I can bring?”
“I don’t think so,” Mom said. “I gave them the last of our cough medicine.”
“Well, I’ll check and see, anyway,” I said. I didn’t even sound convincing to myself.
When I got there, Lisa was playing with Gabriel. Of course once he saw me, he began crying.
“He’s allergic to me,” I said, and Lisa laughed.
“He’s ready for his nap,” she said. “Julie’s resting now. Alex is in the parlor, though, if you want to see him.”
“I guess so,” I said, and walked through the house as casually as I could. All I wanted to do was fling myself into his arms. Alex must have felt the same way because he gestured for me to be quiet. We slipped out the front door and ran far from the house.
“This is wrong,” he said as we embraced. “We have to stop.”
“Stopping is wrong,” I said, kissing him to prove my point.
He pulled away. “Miranda, listen to me,” he said. “We can’t do this. I’m leaving in two days. I’ll never see you again. You have to believe that.”
It’s funny. That’s all I’ve heard for weeks now, how Alex and Julie will be leaving. Maybe because they talk and talk and talk about it but never actually go, I’ve stopped believing it.
“What if Julie isn’t ready?” I asked. “What if she’s still sick next week?”
“She can’t be,” Alex said. “I have to get her to the sisters while I can. She has to be with people who’ll protect her.”
“You’ll protect her,” I said. “We’ll protect her. And don’t use Carlos as an excuse anymore. He’s thousands of miles away. You’re here. I’m here. Explain why getting Julie to the convent is more important than you and me. Because I try to understand, Alex. I hear the words, but I don’t get the meaning.”
Alex kissed me, and when he held on to me, I felt how reluctant he was to open up, how scared.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Just tell me.”
He looked straight at me, and once again I could see all the suffering in his eyes. “New York was very bad,” he said. “Every day you’d think, Well this is as bad as it can get, and then it got worse. I saw things, I did things, things I never want you to know.”
“You could tell me anything,” I said, but he interrupted me.
“I love you for thinking that, but you’re wrong,” he said. “You can’t imagine what things were like. Carlos couldn’t understand. He got to Texas in the very beginning, and the Marines have fed him, sheltered him, protected him.”
“Has Julie seen those things?” I asked.
He nodded.
“She survived,” I said. “I could, too. Alex, don’t feel like you have to protect me. That’s not what I want.”
“I can’t protect you,” he said. “I can’t protect anyone. I can’t even do what Carlos tells me and get Julie to the convent. The rain stops me. You stop me.”
I kissed him, hoping the gift of my love could ease his pain. But he broke away.
“I won’t let Julie suffer,” he said. “I tried to tell Carlos but I couldn’t. There is too much past history between us.”
“Julie doesn’t have to suffer,” I said. “Not if she stays with us.”
He shook his head. “You have no control,” he said. “None of us do. Not over what might happen. I have only one way left to protect Julie. Everything else I’ve tried has failed.”
“What?” I asked, figuring he’d say faith or prayers or the church.
Alex took a deep breath. “Pills,” he said. “Sleeping pills. Six of them. I got them in New York. I keep them for her.”
“So she can sleep?” I asked.
“So she won’t ever wake up,” Alex said.
“Six pills wouldn’t be enough,” I said, like if I told him that, he would laugh at how silly he was, and nothing would matter except us.
“Two would be enough,” he said instead. “Enough to make sure she’d sleep through what I’d do.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why would you do something like that?”
“There could come a time when life is worse than death for Julie,” Alex said. “I’ll know it when it does. I pray I’ll know it.”
“But killing’s a crime,” I said.
“Nothing’s a crime anymore,” he said. “There are no cops, no jails. It’s a sin, and I’ll be damned for it. But I’ll deserve damnation. I deserve it now.”
“You don’t,” I said. “You love Julie. You love me. How can you be damned for loving?”
“Love isn’t enough,” he said.
“It has to be,” I said, holding his shaking body in my arms. “Love’s what I believe in, Alex. Love is what protects us.”
Last night I had a dream that the doorbell rang, and when I opened it, there was Alex. It was summer, and he was holding a bouquet of daisies.
“Julie’s a nun,” he said. “So’s Carlos. Marry me, Miranda.”
I’m not going to write what happened next in my dream, in case anyone ever sees this. Let’s just say it was the best dream I ever had.
When I woke up, I thought maybe things could happen that way. Not with Julie and Carlos becoming nuns. But maybe if Alex was sure Julie was safe, he’d come back to me. I know he loves me. That has to count for something.
Alex has convinced me it’s better for Julie to be at the convent. I hate the thought of his having her life in his hands. Not that he’d ever do anything to Julie. But he shouldn’t have to worry about it. He’s taken care of Julie for over a year now. He’d take care of her forever, except Carlos told him not to.
Maybe it’s wrong of me to dream that Alex and I can stay together if Julie’s at the convent. Maybe it’s wrong of me to want that when I know Julie doesn’t want to go.
But Carlos is the one who made the decision, and Carlos is right that Julie should be someplace safe, where he and Alex will always be able to find her. And Julie can take care of herself. She’ll stay at the convent for as long as she has to, and then she’ll do what she wants. Assuming she can. Assuming any of us can.
If he doesn’t have to worry about Julie, I know Alex will stay with me. We can’t be together as long as Julie is here. But when she’s at the convent, Alex will be free to stay with me forever.
I want Alex. I want love. I know that’s what Alex wants also.
Jon and Syl went over to Dad’s this morning. Mom told Jon if it was all right with Alex, he and Julie could make the food run.
I feel strange around Syl since my fight with Matt. I don’t think he told her what I said but I can’t be sure. I was glad when she decided to visit Lisa for Bible study.
I planned on going over to see Alex one last time, but before I could figure out an excuse, Dad, Alex, and Matt showed up. Matt had been chopping wood, so I knew this was important.
For a moment I thought Dad would tell us he’d forbidden Alex to leave, and Alex would come to his senses and agree.
“I wanted to talk with you,” Dad said, meaning Mom and Matt, I guess, but he didn’t tell me to leave, so I didn’t. “Without anyone else around.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Alex said. “Julie’s cough is gone. Thank you for the cough medicine, Mrs. Evans. It made a big difference.”
“I’m glad,” Mom said. “I’m glad Julie’s well again.”
“You know this scheme of Alex’s,” Dad said. “And you know I don’t approve. Lisa’s distraught, and Jon isn’t much better.”
“I know how upset Jon is,” Mom said, “but he’ll get over it in time.”
“He’ll have to,” Alex said. “We’ve waited too long as it is.”
“The convent is ninety miles away,” Dad said.
“We’ve walked farther,” Alex said. “And in worse weather.”
“That may be,” Dad said. “But in this case it isn’t necessary. There’s the van in the garage. With two five-gallon gas cans.”
“Are you crazy?” Matt asked. “We’re supposed to give away the van? That’s our way out of here, Dad. We don’t hand that over to strangers.”
“Alex found the van,” I said. “And the gas.”
“You were with him,” Matt said. “He couldn’t have found them without you. They’re as much ours as his, and our need is greater.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Matt,” Dad said. “Julie’s just a child.”
“So is Jon,” Matt said. “That didn’t stop you from leaving.”
“Stop it,” Mom said. “Both of you. Now.”
Alex has never heard that tone from Mom. It’s probably been years since Dad has.
“Alex, are you absolutely determined that you and Julie are going tomorrow?” Mom asked. “You know how much we’ve come to care about you. In spite of that you’re going?”
“Yes, Mrs. Evans,” Alex said. “First thing tomorrow morning.”
“After Julie is settled in, what will you do?” Mom asked.
“There’s a Franciscan monastery in Ohio,” Alex said, and Matt snickered.
“Matthew, stop that right now,” Mom said.
“Mom,” Matt said. “I’m not a child anymore.”
“Then stop acting like one,” Mom said, turning away from him. “So your plan is to go northeast for ninety miles and then make your way across Pennsylvania to get to Ohio. That’s hundreds of miles.”
“We made it from Texas here,” Alex replied. “I can make it from New York to Ohio.”
“It won’t be the same,” Dad said. “The farther north, the fewer people.”
“It’s summer,” Alex said. “It’s warmer. I’ll do it.”
“Fine,” Mom said. “It’s your choice and we’re not your parents. Julie’s the one I’m concerned about. Why not drive to the convent and return the van on your way to Ohio?”
“What makes you think he’ll bring it back?” Matt said.
“He’ll bring it back,” I cried. “I know he will.”
Everyone stared at me.
“I trust him,” I said, my voice shaking. “We can trust him.”
“Alex, will you give us your solemn word that you’ll bring the van back once you’re certain Julie’s all right?” Mom asked.
“I’m not accepting his solemn word,” Matt said. “It’s not good enough. These are our lives we’re talking about. If Dad won’t look after Miranda and Jon, then I will.”
“I’ll take Alex and Julie,” Dad said. “I’ll drive them to the convent and then Alex and I can drive back.”
“You’ll use up all the gas,” Matt said. “The van’s got to be a gas guzzler.”
“Couldn’t Alex take one of the cars instead?” I asked. “Matt’s or Mrs. Nesbitt’s? They’d get better mileage, and we’d have the van if we need it.”
“That’s a great idea, Miranda,” Dad said. “Five gallons in a car will get us farther than ten gallons in the van. We’ll use one of the containers and leave the other one here for an emergency.”
“That seems fair to me,” I said, glaring at Matt. “Alex can use his half of the gas and we’ll keep my half here.”
“How do we know the cars are still working?” Mom asked.
“You didn’t keep them tuned up?” Dad asked. “All these months and you didn’t run the engines?”
“It was stupid of me,” Mom said. She looked stricken. “Hal, I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”
“I thought I could count on you,” he said to Matt.
“Well, I thought I could count on you,” Matt replied. “I guess we were both wrong.”
I hated this. I hated every moment of it. These are the people I love most in the world and the ones I depend on the most. “Maybe the cars still run,” I said. “We won’t know until we try. And if they don’t, then Alex should take the van. He can have my half of the gas. Maybe Dad’ll find some more gas on the drive back.”
“If the van is all you have, Julie and I can’t take it,” Alex said. “We’ll go by foot. We’ll find bikes along the way, maybe another car. We can manage.”
“No,” Mom said. “The air is awful, and Julie shouldn’t be out in it any longer than necessary. Hal, if you drive Julie and Alex, when do you think you’ll get back? Tomorrow night?”
“Maybe,” Dad said. “Or Wednesday afternoon. That way we could make sure Julie’s settled in. And there’s no way of knowing what the roads are like.”
“Lisa and Gabriel can stay over here,” Mom said. “If they’ll feel more comfortable.”
“No, they’ll be fine,” Dad said. “Charlie will look after them. Maybe Jon could spend the night.”
“Then it’s settled,” Mom said. “And I don’t want to hear another word out of any of you.” She glared equal time at Alex and Matt.
“Miranda, would you like to come along?” Dad asked. “I’d love your company, and I’m sure Alex and Julie would, too.”
“Yes,” I said before anyone had a chance to say no for me.
“Is that a good idea?” Mom asked. “Ninety miles. That seems so far away.”
“Please, Mom,” I said. “I never go anywhere. You let Matt and Jon go all by themselves to the river. I’ll be in the van with Dad.”
Mom hesitated. “Alex, would you mind?” she asked.
“No ma’am,” he said. “I think it would be easier on Julie if Miranda was with us. On Hal, too.”
“He’s right,” Dad said. “It would make losing Julie hurt a little bit less.”
“You’ll be back by Wednesday?” Mom said. “You and Miranda?”
“I don’t see why not,” Dad said. “Maybe even tomorrow night.”
Matt shook his head. “It’s a bad idea,” he said.
“I’m not sure it’s a good one,” Mom said. “But all right. Miranda can go.”
I got up and hugged her and then I hugged Dad. As I broke away from him, my hand touched Alex’s.
Alex and I will be together, I thought. We’ll see that Julie is safe together, and then he’ll know he belongs with me.
When I got to Dad’s this morning, I found Lisa in a state of hysterics.
“How can you take her from me?” she was screaming at Alex. “Hal, don’t let him. I’ll hate you both if you take her away.”
Gabriel, who doesn’t need much excuse to get going, was screaming almost as loudly.
“I don’t want to go,” Julie said. “Alex, don’t make me go.”
Alex yelled something in Spanish at her, which shut her up. Charlie picked up Gabriel and soothed him. Dad held Lisa, stroking her back until she calmed down.
“She’ll only be ninety miles away,” Dad said, which used to mean “We can visit on weekends” but now means “That’s not quite the end of the earth.”
“She’s the only person who understands,” Lisa said. “The rest of you just pretend to. Julie knows what I’ve gone through not knowing what happened to my parents, my sisters.”
“I’m sorry, Lisa,” Alex said. “But I have to take her. Hal, can we go now?”
“We’d better,” Dad said. “Lisa, darling, I’ll be back tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.” He kissed her and Gabriel, hugged Charlie, and half pushed Julie out of the house. Alex did the other half of the pushing.
I thought Julie might cry, but she was silent, the way Alex can be. I had mixed feelings. I knew I’d miss Julie, and I felt bad for Jon and Lisa. But I was excited at the thought of leaving Howell for the first time in over a year. And I was so sure that once Julie was in the convent, Alex would agree to stay with me.
Julie and Alex had returned our clothes to us yesterday and had all their belongings in their backpacks. We threw our sleeping bags into the back of the old van. Mom’s van and Matt’s car and Mrs. Nesbitt’s car hadn’t started when Dad tried them last night, and Matt was so angry at himself that he picked a fight with Syl. They stayed up half the night yelling at each other.
Jon was mad, too. He’d gone over to Dad’s last night to say good-bye, but Mom refused to let him go again this morning. So he was curled up in a corner of the dining room, trying not to cry.
It seemed like an excellent time to get away from home.
Dad did the driving, and I sat next to him. If you didn’t know better, you’d think we were a family, maybe a divorced dad bringing his kids back to their mom after a long weekend. Of course we were a bilingual family, since the only conversation I could hear between Alex and Julie was whispered in Spanish.
Even on the highway Dad stuck to 30 miles an hour. The engine sputtered, and at one point it overheated, and Dad stopped driving until it cooled down. I didn’t mind. Everything was gloomy and gray and there were no signs of life anywhere, but it was still thrilling to be away, and there was no hurry to get back home. Alex and I had all the time in the world to be together.
I realized the second time Dad stopped to let the car cool down that I might never get this far from home again. Mom wasn’t going to leave, with food still coming to us and electricity practically every day and with as much wood as we’d ever need to stay warm. Syl might want to go (that seemed to be one of the things she and Matt fought about last night), but Matt won’t leave Mom or the rest of us behind. I guess if Dad and Lisa leave, Jon might go with them. But why would Lisa go anywhere, when traveling’s dangerous for the baby.
So this trip was it for me, summer camp and college and honeymoon all rolled into one. The fact that it was going to end at a convent didn’t dampen my excitement. It’s not like I’ve ever been to a convent before.
“How do you know about this place?” I asked after I’d gotten sufficiently bored trying to figure out what Alex and Julie were going on about. “From the Fresh Air Fund?”
“No,” Alex said. “Our priest told me about it a year ago. They were taking girls in, but Julie was too young then.”
Julie muttered something in Spanish. Alex muttered back.
“If your priest approved of it, it must be a good place,” Dad said.
“Yes,” Alex said. “That’s why Carlos thought it would be good for Julie.”
“There’ll be girls your age there, Julie,” Dad said. “That will be nice for you, having friends again.”
“Jon was my friend,” Julie said, which set Alex off on a Spanish torrent.
Dad ignored him. “Jon’s going to miss you,” he said. “We all will.”
“It’s for the best,” Alex said. “Julie’s going to a safe place. God will look after her there.”
“That’s a comfort, I’m sure,” Dad said, slamming on the brakes. “We’d better clear those branches off the road,” he said. “I can’t risk driving over them.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. Alex joined me. Dad had done a good job driving over and around potholes, but the roads were in awful condition, littered with branches and other garbage. Mostly it wasn’t a problem, but occasionally we had to stop and clear things out of the way.
“I hadn’t realized you’ve known about the convent that long,” I said. It made me feel better to learn that Julie would have been at the convent for a year if she’d been old enough to go last summer.
“It’s a good place,” he said. “The sisters will look after her. They’ll learn to love her.”
“We have,” I said.
Alex nodded. “You’ve been very good to her,” he said. “Your family’s been very kind to both of us.” He grabbed the biggest branch and dragged it to the side of the road while I carried some smaller ones. I looked through the front window of the van and could see Dad had turned around to talk to Julie.
“Things will be all right,” I said softly. “For Julie. For us.”
“I would love you forever if I could,” he said.
“You can,” I said, wanting desperately to hold him. But all I could do was brush my hand quickly against his. For a second he clutched my hand in his.
We got back in the car, and Dad resumed his slow drive through New York. Alex and Julie had nothing more to say to each other in any language, and Dad gave up trying to make small talk. I could see he was worried about the van, but he didn’t say anything about it.
We made one pit stop, which was pretty literally that. We’d brought some food with us, but we were saving it for supper. Nothing was open, none of the strip malls we passed or the occasional motel or gas station. I thought about how Matt had met Syl at a motel and wondered if any of the ones on the side of the road had people camping out in them, but there were no signs of life.
We drove ninety miles without seeing another car, and the scariest thing was that seemed normal.
“It’s hard to believe there are still people out there,” I said. “Is everyone living in evac centers and cities?”
“It seems that way, doesn’t it,” Dad said. “But there were plenty of people on the road. There were days we didn’t run into anybody else, but for the most part you’d see someone new every day.”
“Syl told me bands of people came together and split apart,” I said. “I guess your band stayed together, all of you and Charlie.”
“Charlie was the glue,” Dad said. “He never let us give up.”
“It’s amazing,” I said. “It really is. You traveled thousands of miles, and Dad, you’re back with us, and now Julie’s going to this convent Alex has known about for a year. It really is amazing.”
“Christ has blessed us,” Alex said.
“Yes, He has,” Dad said.
Well, that was a conversation stopper.
We made two more stops, one to cool down the engine and one to clear off the road, and then we got to the town. Like everything else, it was completely deserted. It had been a charming town once, you could tell. There were antique stores and bakeries with French names and tea shoppes. But now it was a ghost town like Howell, only worse, because I know there are people in Howell.
“The convent is on Whitlock Lane,” Alex said. “Off Albany Post Road.”
“We should be able to find it, then,” Dad said. “Albany Post Road is generally the biggest street in these towns, like Main Street. We’ll see where it takes us.”
It took us through neighborhoods with empty streets. But amazingly, or maybe miraculously, we saw the road sign for Notburga Farms.
“That’s it,” Alex said. “That’s its name.”
Dad made a left, and we drove for a couple of miles on Whitlock Lane. The road was in bad shape, and we had to stop a couple of times to move debris. It was a relief when we saw the Notburga Farms sign.
We looked out at a field. You could imagine how beautiful it must have been a year ago, a large green expanse surrounded by an apple orchard. But now the ground was gray and the trees had only a few sickly leaves.
It could have been anywhere. It could have been Howell.
I got out and opened the gate. Dad followed the driveway to the convent. It was an old farmhouse, with outbuildings, barns, and what looked to be a chapel.
“I don’t think there’s anyone here,” Dad said.
“No,” Alex said. “There must be. I asked about it at the archdiocese in Louisville. It was listed as open.”
“Alex, that was months ago,” Dad said. “Anything could have happened.”
“We’re going in,” Alex said. “I won’t believe the sisters deserted this place until I see it for myself. Come on, Julie.”
We all got out of the van. Alex led the way, knocking boldly on the farmhouse door.
“Who is it?” a querulous voice asked. “Sister Grace, is that you?”
“No,” Alex said. “Please open the door. I’ve brought my sister for you to take care of.”
We could hear footsteps, and then an elderly woman nervously unlocked the door. “Did Sister Grace send you?” she asked.
“No,” Alex said. “Father Franco in New York did. May I speak with you privately, Sister?”
“I’m all alone,” the nun said. “Sister Grace told Sister Anne and Sister Monica to take the girls back to New York City and to stay there. That was October, I think. A few weeks ago Sister Grace said she’d better get help for us so she and Sister Marie left, and then it was only Sister Helen and me. Sister Helen passed away three days ago. Or maybe it was four. It’s so hard to keep track of time. I’m all alone now. Do you know where Sister Grace is?”
“No, Sister,” Alex said. “But we brought food. We can give you our food.”
“That would be very kind of you,” the nun said. “Please come in.”
“We haven’t been introduced,” Dad said. “My name is Hal Evans, and this is my daughter, Miranda, and our friends Alex and Julie Morales.”
“I’m Sister Paulina,” she said. “I was in charge of the dairy, but we slaughtered the cows months ago. There was no feed for them. The meat kept us alive until Easter.”
I couldn’t bear it. “I’ll get the food,” I said, glad for any excuse to get away from her and the house. It reeked of death, and I realized that Sister Helen must still be there, rotting away.
It was awful. I remembered finding Mrs. Nesbitt lying on her bed the morning she died. I left her there, went through her house searching for food, for anything we could use, before going home to tell Matt and Jon and Mom that she had died.
At the time it seemed so right to do that. Now I asked myself what kind of monster was I, that I could carefully examine every inch of a house knowing that a beloved friend was lying dead while I looked.
I took the food from the van and slowly carried it to the farmhouse. The smell must have been too much for everybody, because they were all sitting on the porch, looking out onto the gray deserted field.
“It’s so nice to have company,” Sister Paulina was saying as I approached. “I don’t know when Grace and Marie will be back, though. It’s been so long. You’d think if they’d found help, they would have returned by now.”
“Here,” I said, thrusting the bag of food at her. “It’s all the food we brought with us.”
“This is so kind,” Sister Paulina said. “Sister Helen would have been so glad. She said she wasn’t hungry, but I could see that she was. In her eyes, you know. Even at the end her eyes never lost that look.”
“Maybe you should come with us, Sister Paulina,” Dad said. “Back to our home in Pennsylvania.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” Sister Paulina said. “But Grace left me in charge while she’s gone. I couldn’t possibly leave.”
“Sister Grace might never return,” Dad said.
“Oh, she will,” Sister Paulina said. “It’s only been a few weeks, and nowadays everything takes so long. I worry that Marie has taken sick. There’s been so much illness. We did what we could for the people in town, but so many died. I suppose they’ve all left by now, the ones who survived. It used to be people would bring us food and firewood, but no one’s come for a very long time. We had hoped at Easter we’d be remembered, but it was just the four of us.”
“Please,” Dad said. “You’ll die here if you stay alone.”
“I’ll die anyway,” Sister Paulina said. “I made my peace with that a long time ago.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a crazy-lady smile. It was the smile of someone who wasn’t afraid of death.
“We’ll stay with you,” Alex said. “Julie and I. Until Sister Grace gets back.”
“Alex,” Dad said.
“No, Hal,” Alex said. “It’s the right thing for us to do.”
“It’s sweet of you to offer,” Sister Paulina said. “But Sister Grace didn’t give me permission to open the convent to others, so I’m afraid I’ll have to say no.”
“Is there anything we can do for you while we’re here?” Dad asked.
“Why yes,” Sister Paulina said. “Helen’s been lying in her bed all these days. She looks so peaceful, but I think it would be for the best if she were buried. Don’t you agree? Dust to dust.”
“We can do that,” Dad said. “Tell us where we can find shovels.”
Sister Paulina rose and pointed to one of the outbuildings. “That’s the toolshed,” she said. “Helen was in charge of the vegetable garden. Oh, she had a green thumb. Tomatoes so sweet you could eat them for dessert. Zucchini and carrots and corn. All summer long we’d eat from her garden, and then we’d can what we didn’t eat. It was a wonderful life.” She looked out at the apple trees. “No crop this year,” she said. “If God is merciful, next year the bounty will return.”
“God is merciful,” Dad said. “I believe in His mercy.”
“I used to,” Sister Paulina said. “I suppose I will again someday. After all, you people have brought me food. And you’re going to help with Helen.”
Dad nodded. “It’s going to take a while,” he said. “We’d better get started. Come on, Alex.”
“Could we walk around?” Julie asked. “I’ve heard so much about the farm, I’d like to see it.”
“Certainly, dear,” Sister Paulina said. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t join you? My arthritis is kicking up today. I think it will rain tomorrow.”
“Want to come?” Julie asked me, and I was more than willing. We never walked so far we couldn’t see the farmhouse, but we were too far away to hear any conversation or to be overheard.
“There’s no reason why you and Alex can’t stay with us now,” I said.
Julie shook her head. “Alex’ll find another convent to take me,” she said. “Between here and Ohio. The archdiocese in Pittsburgh will know where there’s one. Then he’ll go to the monastery.”
“He doesn’t have to,” I said. “Carlos won’t know any better.”
“It’s not just Carlos,” Julie said. “Alex wants to go to the monastery.”
What Alex wanted was me. But there was no way Julie could know that, or at least know the depth of his feelings.
“Maybe he’ll change his mind,” I said. “You said he didn’t always want to be a monk.”
“That was before,” Julie said. “Alex explained it to me when we were in Kentucky. He said God had entrusted me to him and that once he knew I was safe, he would dedicate his life to Christ in gratitude.”
“People change their minds,” I said.
“Not Alex,” Julie said. “Even when he’s wrong, he doesn’t change his mind.”
I realized then that I knew Alex better than she did. But Julie would never believe me if I said that, any more than I’d believe Syl if she said it about Matt.
“Alex loves you,” I said. “He wants what’s best for you. So does Carlos. You’re lucky to have them.”
Julie shook her head. “They may love me, but they don’t want me,” she said. “Neither of them wants me. But it doesn’t matter. The Holy Mother will look after me until I can look after myself.”
“We’ll look after you,” I said. “Mom and Dad and Lisa and Charlie. Jon. You’re part of our family now. You and Alex both are.”
“We have no family,” she said. “Not anymore. Come on. We should go back.”
I let her lead me to the farmhouse. When we got there, Sister Paulina, Alex, and Dad were kneeling in prayer. Julie joined them. I felt uncomfortable standing and watching, but I knew I’d feel even more uncomfortable joining them.
Then Alex and Dad went upstairs, and a few minutes later they brought down Sister Helen. They’d wrapped her in a blanket, but it didn’t matter. It was obviously difficult for them to carry her, and Julie, without hesitating, walked over to help. I had no choice but to do the same.
We carried her outside, Sister Paulina by our side. Dad and Alex lowered the body gently into the hole they’d dug. Alex, Julie, and the Sister recited some prayers, and then Dad and Alex filled the hole with dirt.
We didn’t stay much after that. It was still early, but the sky was getting dark. Sister Paulina kissed all of us good-bye and thanked us, and said she’d tell Sister Grace about our visit when she got back. Which we all knew she never would.
We were back on the road for less than two hours when the van stopped. We could feel it die.
Dad got out, lifted the hood, and acted like he knew what the matter was. Alex joined him. They looked manly and stupid and only got back in when rain began to fall.
“We’ll sleep in the van,” Dad said. “We’ll start for home in the morning.”
“How far are we?” Julie asked.
“About forty miles, I’d say,” Dad replied.
“That’s two days walking,” Alex said. “Three if the weather stays bad.”
“We can do it,” Dad said. “We’ll be home by Thursday.”
None of us said anything, but we all knew that’s two days of hard walking on no food. The longer we go without eating, the harder the walking will be.
So that’s where we are. The rain is pelting against the roof of the van. Dad’s sitting behind the wheel, staring out the front window, thinking about Lisa probably, and Mom, and how upset they’re going to be. Alex and Julie are in the back, whispering furiously in Spanish. I’d brought my diary and a flashlight pen on a just-in-case basis, so I’m in the passenger seat, writing all this down. The more I concentrate on what happened, the less I have to worry about what’s going to happen.
We’re camping out in a gas station convenience store. It’s crowded with the four of us, there’s no food (we looked everywhere), the roof leaks, and the windows have all been smashed in. But the toilet works, so I guess we’re in paradise.
We stopped before it got dark because Julie was coughing. I don’t know how much farther I could have gone anyway.
Dad says we made good progress today, and he thinks we’re about twenty miles from home. We should be home by tomorrow night.
“I want to tell you how proud I am of you,” he said. “A year ago I had three children. Now I have seven. The world is a mess, and you have every right to be angry and scared, but things will get better. You’ll make it better.”
“We’ll do our best,” Alex said.
Dad smiled. “Life’s sloppy,” he said. “You think you know how tomorrow is going to be, you’ve made your plans, everything is set in place, and then the unimaginable happens. Life catches you by surprise. It always does. But there’s good mixed in with the bad. It’s there. You just have to recognize it.”
My feet are blistered from all the unaccustomed walking. My body is shaking from cold and hunger and exhaustion. I’m frightened I’ll never see home again and almost more frightened that once I get there, I’ll never leave.
I know Dad’s right that there’s good mixed in with the bad. But I don’t know that I’ll ever have the wisdom to recognize it.
We’re still in New York, but we’re close to the border. We’re spending the night in an empty house. There are beds and pillows and blankets.
Dad and Alex went out looking for bikes or a car with some gas. I fantasized they’d find some food. But when they came back, they had nothing.
It was foggy most of the morning, and with the ash, it was like breathing mud. We had to take break after break because we were coughing too hard to move on.
I had a horrible nightmare last night, and I couldn’t shake it from my mind today.
I dreamed we were in the convenience store, Dad and Julie and me zipped in our sleeping bags. Only Alex was up. First he went to Julie and forced her to swallow two pills. Then he forced Dad to swallow two.
When he got to me, I tried to free my arms from the sleeping bag, but I was trapped. I couldn’t move my body. I felt helpless as Alex knelt beside me. He gently lifted my head, resting it in the crook of his arm. Almost in spite of myself, I felt an overwhelming hunger for him, and when he bent over and kissed me, I welcomed his lips, his mouth, the proof of his love, until I tasted the sleeping pills on his tongue.
I woke up shaking. There was enough light coming through the broken windows that I could see everyone’s faces. Even in sleep Alex looked troubled.
I love Alex. I love loving Alex. I love his touch and I love remembering his touch. For so long I thought I would never have someone to love, and now I do. Every day I’m with him is a day I never believed possible.
Tonight Alex is sleeping in the room next to mine. I want him so much. I want the wall between us to dissolve, for us to be alone, to be together, to be one.
Then my doubts would be gone. My nightmares would be gone.
All there would be is Alex and me.
Two bodies. One heart.
We’re home.
Horton is dead.
I’m crying too hard to write.