Pure (37 page)

Partridge sits next to Pressia on the mattress. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s in a frenzy,” Pressia says. “I’d just let him go.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Partridge asks Pressia.

The doll-head fist—she lifts it. The doll’s eyes click open. Even the lids are covered in ash. Its lashes clumped. The small
o
of its mouth is clotted shut. She brushes over its plastic head with her good hand and feels her lost hand within it. This is how her mother seems to her now—a presence, numbed, riding under the surface of things. “As long as I don’t move…” She doesn’t even finish the sentence. She’s angry at Partridge. Why? Is she jealous of him? He has memories of their mother and she doesn’t. He got into the Dome. She didn’t.

“So that’s all it was,” Partridge says, nodding at the chip on the floor. “A lot of trouble for something so small.” He pauses and then says, “I didn’t know,” he whispers. “Not until you did. I’d never hold back something like that.”

She can’t even look at him.

“I just wanted you to know that.”

She nods. It sends a sharp pain up her neck into the back of her head. “How do you feel about her now?” Pressia asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Is she still a saint? She cheated on your father,” Pressia says. “She had a child out of wedlock, a bastard.” She’s never thought of herself as a bastard before. For some reason, she likes it. It has a certain toughness.

“I didn’t come out here expecting simple answers,” Partridge says. “I’m happy you exist.”

“Thanks,” she says, smiling.

“What’s strange is that my father must have known. He’s been watching you all these years so he had to have known. I wonder how he took the news?”

“Not very well, I bet.”

Pressia folds the chip in her one good hand. Her eyes fill with tears. She thinks of the word
mother
—lullabies—and
father
—warm coat. Pressia has been a red dot on a screen, pulsing like a heartbeat. Yes, the Dome has known she exists. They’ve kept tabs on her, perhaps all her life. But maybe her parents have kept tabs on her, too.

Bradwell asks Partridge abruptly, “Did your mother go to church?”

“We got swiped every Sunday like everyone else,” Partridge says.

Pressia remembers the term
card-carrying.
It was something Bradwell had talked about during his mini lesson—the convolution of church and state. Churchgoers had cards. Their attendance was a matter of record.

“Not everyone,” Bradwell says. “Not the ones who refused to go once it was turned over to the state and then were shot to death in their beds.”

“Why did you ask the question?” Pressia asks Bradwell.

Bradwell sits down again. “Because the birthday card had religious wording. How did it go, Partridge?”

“
Always walk in the light. Follow your soul. May it have wings. You are my guiding star, like the one that rose in the east and guided the Wise Men.
”

Pressia recognizes the star in the east and the Wise Men from the Bible. Her grandfather has whole sections of the Bible memorized; they were often recited at funerals.

Bradwell says, “But was this typical of your mom?”

“I don’t know,” Partridge says. “She believed in God, but she said that she rejected government-sanctioned Christianity
because
she was Christian. The government stole her country and God. Once she said to my father, ‘And you. They stole you too.’ ” Partridge sits back as if he’s just remembered this now. “Strange that was in my brain all along. I can almost hear her say it.”

Pressia wishes that she had words from her mother that she could draw up from her memory, a voice. If her mother was the one singing her the lullaby, then she has something—lyrics, someone else’s words.

Bradwell says to Partridge, “So maybe it’s sincere.”

“If it’s sincere?” Partridge asks.

“It’s useless,” Bradwell says.

“If it’s sincere, then it means what it means,” Pressia says. “That’s not useless.”

“For us right now it is,” Bradwell says. “Your mother wanted you to remember certain things. Signs. Coded messages, the necklace. So I was hoping this would lead us to her. But maybe it was her way of saying good-bye, of giving you advice to last a lifetime.”

They’re all quiet a moment. Pressia turns around and leans her back against the cool wall. If this was her mother’s advice, what did it mean?
Follow your soul. May it have wings. Always walk in the light.
She imagines her soul having wings. She imagines following that soul. But where would it lead her here? There is nowhere to go. They’re surrounded by Meltlands and Deadlands. And there is no untarnished light—everything exists beneath a gritty veil of ash. Pressia envisions the wind pushing the veil as if it rests over a woman’s face and her breath billows the veil—her mother’s face, hidden from view. What if her mother truly is alive, somewhere? How would you lead someone, knowing the world was about to be wiped clean of markers?

“
You are my guiding star, like the one that rose in the east and guided the Wise Men
,” Partridge says. “Do you think she wants us to go due east?”

Bradwell pulls a map from the inside pocket of his jacket, the map they’d used to find Lombard. He spreads it out on the floor. The Dome, of course, is north, surrounded by barren terrain that gives way to some burgeoning woods before you hit the city. The Meltlands appear as gated communities in clumps surrounding the city to the east, south, and west. Then beyond that ring is a stretch of Deadlands.

Bradwell says, “Those hills in the east were a national reserve.”

“And in the fairy tale, the swan wife burrows underground. Maybe she is in an underground bunker in those hills,” Pressia says.

“So, tomorrow we head east,” Partridge says.

“But that could be dead wrong,” Pressia says.

“I don’t like the expression
dead
wrong,” Partridge says.

“East is all we’ve got,” Bradwell says.

Pressia looks at Bradwell’s face. She can see the light flecks of gold in his dark brown eyes. She’s never noticed them before. They’re beautiful—like honey. “It’s all
we’ve
got?” Pressia says to Bradwell. “You’ve paid your debt, okay?”

“I’m still in this,” Bradwell says.

“Only if you’re in it for your own sake.”

“Okay then, I’m in it for my own sake. I have selfish reasons. Does that work?”

Pressia shrugs.

Bradwell lifts her hand, opens her palm, his fingers on her fingers, and drops the necklace into her palm. “You should wear it,” he says.

“No,” she says. “It’s not mine.”

“But it is yours now, Pressia,” Partridge says. “She would want you to have it. You’re her daughter.”

Daughter
—the word sounds foreign.

“Do you want it?” Bradwell asks.

“Yes,” she says.

Bradwell unlatches the dainty clasp. She swivels around, lifts her hair, careful of the bandage. He reaches over her head, holding the necklace with each hand. He locks the clasp. Once it catches, he lets go. “It looks nice,” he says.

She reaches up and touches the pendant with one finger. “I’ve never worn a real necklace. Not that I can remember.”

The pendant sits on Pressia’s chest below the leather choker keeping the padding on the back of her neck in place, sitting in the dip between her collarbones. The gem gleams a brilliant blue. This necklace once belonged to her mother. It touched her mother’s skin. What if it was a present from Pressia’s father? Will she ever know anything about her father?

“I can see her in you now,” Partridge says. “It’s the way you tilt your head, the gestures.”

“Really?” The possibility that she might look like her mother makes her happier than she’d have ever expected.

“That,” he says, “right there, in your smile.”

“I wish my grandfather could see it,” she tells them. She remembers how, as he gave her the clogs, he said that he wished it were something more beautiful, that she deserved something beautiful.

Here it is, a small piece of beauty.

PARTRIDGE
IS
THE
FIRST
TO
FALL
ASLEEP
. He’s lying down on his back, his injured hand over his heart. Pressia’s on the other pallet, and Bradwell’s on the floor; he insisted, but now Pressia hears him shifting around, trying to get comfortable.

“Enough. I can’t sleep with your rolling around all night,” she says. “I’ll make room for you.”

“No, thanks. I’m fine.”

“Oh, so you get to do all the favors and get to be a martyr too? Is that how it works?”

“I didn’t come after you just because I owed your grandfather a debt. I tried to tell you earlier, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“All I’m hearing now is that you’re going to sleep on the floor, and I’m supposed to feel guilty about it.”

“Fine,” he says. He gets up off the floor and lies down next to her on the pallet.

She’s lying on her back, but Bradwell can’t—the birds are there, settling to sleep. He curls toward Pressia. For a moment, she can almost imagine that they’re out in a field under stars, a clear night. The room is quiet. She can’t sleep. “Bradwell,” she whispers. “Let’s play I Remember.”

“You know my story. I told it at the meeting.”

“Think of something else. Anything. Talk. I want to hear someone’s voice.” She wants to hear
his
voice, really. As angry as he can make her, his voice now sounds deep and calming. She realizes that she wants him to talk because, whether she agrees or not, he’s always honest and she can trust the things he tells her.

And so it surprises her that the next thing he says is, “Well, I lied to you once.”

“You did?”

“The crypt,” he says. “I found it when I was just a little kid before I came across the butcher shop. I slept there for days while people were dying everywhere. And I prayed to Saint Wi, and I survived. So I kept coming back.”

“You’re one of the people who prays for hope?” Pressia asks.

“I am,” he says.

“That’s not a terrible lie,” she says.

“Nope. Not terrible.”

“Did the prayers work? Do you have hope?”

He rubs his jaw roughly. “Ever since I met you, it seems like I’ve got more to hope for.”

She feels heat rise in her cheeks, but she’s not sure what he means. Is he saying that he hopes for something that has to do with her? Is he confessing he likes her, now that he’s confessed his lie? Or does he mean something else? That she’s made him see things differently?

“But that’s not what you asked for,” he says. “You wanted a memory.”

“That’s okay.”

“Can you go to sleep now?”

“No.”

“Okay, then. A memory. Does it have to be a happy one?”

“No,” she says. “I prefer true over happy now.”

“Okay then.” He thinks for a moment. “When my aunt told me to get out of the garage, I did. I poked the dead cat in the box. And then I heard the motor turn over—and one shout. It was the noise my own father used to make when he’d skin a knuckle or wrench his back. I pretended it was his voice. I closed my eyes and imagined my father coming out from under the car with a heart-engine fused in his chest like a superhero. I imagined him coming back to life.” Pressia can see Bradwell in her mind as a little boy with birds in his back, standing on a charred lawn, the dead cat in a box at his feet. He’s quiet a moment. “I’ve never told anyone that before. It’s stupid.”

Pressia shakes her head. “It’s beautiful. You were trying to imagine something great, something else, some other world. You were just a kid.”

“I guess,” he says. “You tell me something now.”

“Obviously I don’t really remember much from the Before.”

“It doesn’t have to be from the Before.”

“Okay,” she says. “Well, there’s something I’ve never told anyone either. My grandfather knows, but he doesn’t know, not really.”

“What?”

“I tried to cut the doll head off when I was thirteen. Or that’s what I told my grandfather. He stitched me up quickly. But he never asked me why I did it.”

“Is there a scar?”

Pressia shows him the small mark on the inside of her wrist where the doll meets her arm. The skin on her wrist is etched with delicate pale blue veins and has a little rubbery give.

“Were you trying to take it off or…”

“Or,” Pressia says. “Maybe I was tired. I wanted not to be lost. I missed my mother and father and the past, maybe because I didn’t see enough of it in my head to keep me company. I felt alone.”

“But you didn’t do it.”

“I wanted to be alive. That’s what I learned as soon as I saw the blood.”

Bradwell sits up and touches the scar with his fingertip. He looks at her as if his eyes are taking in her entire face, her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. Normally, she’d look away, but she can’t. “The scar is beautiful,” he says.

Her heart skitters. She pulls the doll head to her chest. “Beautiful? It’s a scar.”

“It’s a sign of survival.”

Bradwell’s the only person she knows who would say something like that. She feels slightly breathless. She can only whisper. “Aren’t you ever afraid?” She isn’t talking about all the things she should be afraid of—heading back into the Deadlands tomorrow, the Dusts that rise up from that ground. She’s talking about his fearlessness right now, calling the small scar beautiful. If she weren’t afraid, she’d confess that she’s happy to be alive because she has this moment with him.

“Me?” Bradwell says. “I get so scared that I feel like my uncle under the car, with pistons in my chest. I feel too much. It’s like being drummed to death from within. You know?”

She nods. It’s quiet a moment. They both hear Partridge mumble in his sleep.

“So…,” Pressia says.

“So?”

“Why did you come after me if it wasn’t for my grandfather?”

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t. You tell me.” They’re so close that she feels the heat of his body.

He shakes his head and says, “I have something for you.” He reaches for his jacket. “We looked for you at your place. Your grandfather was gone.”

“I know,” Pressia says. “I know. He’s in the Dome.”