Instructions for the End of the World (10 page)

“My dear Wolf! What a treat!” she says, beaming at me as she stands up and rounds the desk to give me a hug.

Helene always smells citrusy. She is a thin but soft-bodied woman, sculpted by a lifetime of yoga postures into her current shape, strong but comfortable to hug. I get the sensation that she is shrinking on me, but it's just that I am getting so much taller than her lately.

“Are you busy?” I ask.

“Of course not. I'm glad you got my note. It's been too long.” She motions for me to sit on the sofa that faces her desk, and she pulls up a cushioned chair so that she's sitting only a few feet away.

“When did you get back from Haiti?”

“My flight home was Sunday,” she says.

Helene spends several months a year volunteering at an orphanage in one of the poorest parts of Haiti, and then she returns to the US and spends the rest of the year convincing rich people to donate money to the orphanage.

“How was the trip?”

“Devastating and beautiful, as always. You should go with me next time.”

“Maybe I will,” I say, then lean back into the couch, allowing the quiet and peace of the room to settle me. “I'm curious about that cryptic note you slipped under my door.”

“I spent the day with Annika yesterday,” she says by way of explanation.

“Right. She's back.”

“And of course I immediately thought of you. How are you doing with it?”

I shrug. What is there to say, really? If anyone knows my complicated feelings about the situation, it's Helene.

“Have you spent much time with her?”

“No,” I say.

“Is that your choice or hers?”

“Mine. She's been trying to reconnect.” A tightness rises up in my throat and I force myself to breathe deeply.

I do not want a feelings-about-Mom therapy session. I glance at the door, wondering how difficult it will be to get away.

“It's part of her recovery process,” Helene says.

“Yeah, making amends. She needs to check me off her list.”

“I don't think she sees it that way.”

I stare out the window beyond her desk, at an Australian fern the size of a tree, swaying in the breeze. It must have been planted before the all-native plant craze hit the village.

“Can I tell you what I think?”

A half smile creeps up on me. “You're going to, whether I want you to or not.”

She laughs. “You know me too well.”

I shrug. “I'm listening.”

“I suspect you won't be able to find any kind of happiness until you make peace with Annika.”

A laugh sort of dies in my mouth. “Make peace?”

She leans back in her chair and gives me a calculating look. “What would that look like for you?”

“I don't know.”

“Think about it.”

“I don't want to think about it.”

“It's not like you to be so resistant,” she says in her best calm-therapist voice.

“I don't want a therapy session.”

“I'm sorry,” Helene says. “I should have asked you.”

“Maybe. But you knew I'd say no if you asked.”

She smiles. “As smart as you are handsome.”

We sit in silence for a few long moments.

“I don't believe her,” I finally say, the words restless to get out of me now.

“About what?”

“About being sober. Staying sober.”

She nods. “She has to earn back your trust.”

I don't think it's possible, is what I want to say, but I don't. Instead, I just look at my dusty brown feet in a pair of old thongs. I have my mother's toes, squared off, each one a little shorter than the one before it. It's one of the few ways we are alike.

I have never drunk more than a beer, never touched a hard drug. I've smoked weed here and there, but never with any enthusiasm, and I stopped completely a few years ago in an effort to not be in any way like my mother.

“I didn't ask you here to put you on the spot, I promise.”

“Then why?”

“I just wanted to talk as a friend.” She leans forward as she says this, reaches out and places a hand on my forearm, grasping me as she gives me her “I'm serious” look.

“Then as a friend you'll understand why I'm not going to join the Annika fan club.”

Her lips purse and she looks like she's going to say something, but then doesn't.

“Don't worry about me,” I say.

“May I offer a bit of advice?”

“Sure.”

“Now that your mother is back, let her succeed or fail without any help from you, okay? Just be open to the possibility of change, but know you don't have to control the outcome.”

She has me there. I look into her faded blue eyes and know she sees my fear—of becoming stuck in my mother's quicksand-pit of a life again. She will suck me in until I drown.

“Okay,” I say, and stand up to leave.

We hug, say our good-byes, and I go back down the hall to the front courtyard, where the afternoon sun is baking everything in sight.

Let her succeed or fail on her own,
I think.

I can do that.

I can resist trying to save her from herself.

At least I hope I can.

*   *   *

This girl who has sprung up in my life like a weed—like a mysterious unknown flower—is a pleasant distraction from my mother. While I don't want any ties to this world, I also can't resist her pull. I have a plan of sorts, which doesn't include a girl named Nicole who hunts forest animals, but she seems to be making herself at home in my psyche nonetheless.

And she makes me wonder about the future. After the completion of the “tree house of Thoreaulike solitude” experience, after high school, then what? Will there be an escape? A plan of some sort? It's only a year away and I can feel the restlessness growing in my limbs, the desire to get lost in the world far from here, to get away from everything that has defined me so far in life—my mother, the village, my father, my friends.

I am sure this earth has a million things to teach me that I can't learn here in the tiny world of the village.

In this way, I differ from my hero Thoreau. But then, his cabin in the woods didn't hover on the edge of a place that had threatened to swallow up his life.

Maybe part of Nicole's appeal for me is her otherworldliness, her stark contrast to everything I've ever known. She is from another planet than mine, and that must be why I come to her house bearing gifts.

Tokens of peace and goodwill, from my planet to hers.

If I don't extend a diplomatic hand, she might destroy me with her strange beauty.

I ride my bike along the gravel path and up the hill to the old farmhouse, and there is no one to be seen outside. The car and truck that arrived on the first day are still not anywhere to be seen, and for a moment I wonder if I should have waited until later in the day to come. But it's not so hot out yet, at nine in the morning. Later in the day would be a miserable trek. So I lean my bike against the side of the barn and walk along the path to the house.

What was once a brick walkway is now a patchwork of weeds and broken red brick. In the not-so-far distance, at the foot of the hill, I see a male turkey followed by three females wander into the clearing and I wonder if any of them will become this family's dinner.

My first instinct is to rush toward them and shoo them away to safety, but then, who am I to judge? A girl hunting her own food is far nobler than going to the store to buy a factory-farmed turkey, I know.

I have to keep reminding myself of this, because I am so disgusted by the sight of a gun.

I take the two muslin bags off the handlebars of my bike—one containing a handful of flowers gathered in the Sadhana garden by me just a little while ago, and one containing a loaf of rosemary bread baked early this morning by Laurel. This lapse of mine into neighborly hospitality is brought on by the sheer strangeness of having a neighbor, I tell myself. But a deeper voice reminds me that the neighbor is pretty—and ever present in my thoughts since her arrival.

Would I be bringing these peace offerings if it were only her dad who'd arrived, and not her?

Not a chance.

 

Eight

NICOLE

About a week has passed since Dad left, and I am already sick of this little survival game. I wonder nearly every hour when he's going to come home. At least Izzy came back home last night, just before eleven, without any explanation of where she'd been or what she'd done.

I'm trying not to care.

I don't have the energy to worry about it, because everything about this house is falling apart.

But the big problem is still water. Or lack of it running through our pipes, as of last night.

We have plenty of drinking water stocked up in the garage, in gallon jugs lining the bottom shelves. I also know I can go down to the stream and get water to boil for use at home. And if all else fails, I have a supply of tablets for purifying water when it can't be boiled.

We aren't going to die or anything.

But after less than a day of no running water in the house, no easy way to water the garden, no easy way to take a bath, or cook, or flush the toilet, or wash my hands, I am starting to see just how spoiled we are in everyday life.

It's become a bizarrely lucky thing that our grandparents never bothered to get rid of the horrid little outhouse that sits in the backyard, because that's what we have to use now, spiders, bugs, awful smells, and all, until I sort out the water situation. Izzy and I got into a screaming argument about it at midnight last night, but once she understood how gross it would quickly become to have an unflushed toilet sitting in the house stewing in the heat, she gave in.

I've camped with Dad before, but I've never camped in my own house, and that's what this is starting to feel like.

I am sitting on the ground next to the well, its cap off, staring down into the darkness of it, when I hear footsteps on the dry grass. I look up, expecting to see Izzy coming toward me with yet another complaint, when I see Wolf instead, and my breath catches in my throat.

His presence is unsettling in ways I don't quite understand.

“Hi,” he says, his eyes crinkling at the corners with a smile that doesn't reach his mouth.

He is carrying a couple of fabric bags, one with a bouquet of flowers poking out. For us? I almost laugh, because it's so far from what I need right now, which is a plumber.

“Hi.”

“I come bearing welcome-to-the-neighborhood gifts,” he says, holding up the bags and then setting them aside on the rear porch steps.

“Wow, thanks.” He's like one of those military wives from the army post who used to show up bearing cookies in a country-style basket to welcome us to our new neighborhood.

“Did you lose something down there?” Kneeling next to me now, he peers into the hole.

“Not exactly. Our water in the house stopped working, and…” I think of the lie I've rehearsed in my head. “My parents went to the Bay Area for a couple of days to pick up some of our stuff we had in storage there.”

“Hmm.”

“Do you know anything about wells?”

“A little,” he says, and my heart skips.

“There's definitely enough water in here,” I say, picking up a flashlight and shining it down inside to show him. “I just don't know how to get to it.”

He frowns like he's pondering the problem. Finally he says, “This house has been sitting vacant for so long, probably your pipes are rusted, and your starting to use them again caused one to burst.”

“So we have to figure out where it broke?”

“You don't have any leaky spots in the house?”

“No.”

“And you've tried all the faucets?”

“None work.”

“Then I would think that might mean your break is between the house and the well, and it looks like it's an underground system. You'll probably need to dig to figure out where it is.”

I look down at the ground below me. I am sitting on the space that needs to be dug out, and it's only a few feet, assuming the pipe goes straight from the closest side of the well to the closest point at the house, which is the kitchen wall where the sink is. This seems probable, and doable. Except the ground is hard as rock after months of no rain.

I sigh, not sure if I should reveal that I'm the one who will have to do the work. In a normal family, a normal situation, the teenage girl would, I guess, call her dad and tell him to come home and solve the problem. And then the dad would do that. Or he would call a plumber.

I don't want Wolf to know exactly how far from normal we are.

But he seems to guess my dilemma. “Want some help digging?”

I bite my lip and look up at him. “Really?”

“Sure, why not. Looks like you're on your own here otherwise. Do you have two shovels?”

“In the garage.”

We stand up and head that way, and I wonder for the first time why Wolf is here. I've been so caught up in the water dilemma, I forgot to ask.

“I hear your little sister went hitchhiking last night,” he says.

“What? How did you know?”

“She got picked up by my friends.”

“Oh god. She's an idiot.”

“She's lucky.”

“Where did they take her?”

“Into town to a burger joint. They all ate together and then they dropped her back off here on their way home.”

“Oh. She didn't mention. She's kind of a brat.”

I open the garage door and blink while my eyes adjust to the change from bright to dark. On the nearest wall Dad has installed a series of hooks on which every shovel and garden implement imaginable hangs. I select a spade-shaped shovel, better for digging into hard earth, and hand it to Wolf. Then I grab a second one for myself.

“I don't know if your sister mentioned it, but we're having a party tonight at our place. You both are welcome to come.”