The Things That Keep Us Here (29 page)

FORTY-SEVEN

B
LUE WALLS PRESSED AGAINST HIS HEAD AND SHOULDERS
, then rolled back. Somehow the hallway had become an ocean. Peter could hardly breathe. Coughing seized him and bent him in two. He sat down heavily on the step and grabbed the railing to keep from being swept away by the flood of carpet. His heart pounded a warning. He placed his palm there to calm it and felt the viruses teeming beneath his touch.

Now Ann was there, bending down. “You’d better drink this.”

He blinked and he was alone again. Right. He’d been getting a glass of water. He pushed himself to a standing position. The stairwell shrank to a pinpoint, then expanded. He shuffled across the cold kitchen floor. Grit rolled beneath the soles of his feet.

He reached for the faucet and curled his fingers around the handle. Nothing moved. He wasn’t pushing hard enough. A sudden splash of water into the sink.

He looked down. He’d given Kate her first bath in a steel sink just like this one. She’d blinked up at him with surprise as he ladled warm water across her belly. He’d bent to kiss her forehead and Ann had snapped the picture. She’d framed it and put it on her night-stand for a while.

William’s first few baths had been quiet, the water lapping the sides of the tub, the baby lying there cocooned on his bath sponge, his tiny thumb in his mouth. Peter would work the suds around his little bald head and William’s eyes would drift shut. Peter would lift him up and wrap him in a towel and carry him, sleeping, into the bedroom, where Ann would be combing Kate’s hair. They would look at each other over the heads of their children. They’d had no idea how closely sadness would follow on the heels of such simple happiness.

Peter held his hand beneath the silvery stream of water. It felt as cold as lake water. He thought of Canada geese flapping in perfect V’s across the golden water. A tight synchrony, but every so often a bird would veer away and head off in the wrong direction. The rest of the birds would continue on. Not one would pull out of the V to retrieve the lost comrade.

No geese this season. This year, they’d all pulled out of formation.

He brought his fingers up and patted his forehead and his cheeks, let the water drip down his neck.

Ann had almost drowned on their honeymoon in an ocean as warm as bathwater. She had waded out behind him, pulling up her knees and laughing. Then she was gone, snatched under and rolled away by the riptide. He’d plunged after her, caught her by one elbow, and yanked her free. She’d put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “My hero,” she said, laughing.

He heard drums. He turned his head. The room tilted. He placed a palm on the counter to steady himself. There was muffled barking, too. He didn’t remember a dog at the hotel they’d stayed at. Cats, yes, two of them slinking from room to room. But no dogs.

The walls trembled with each resounding thud. Where were they, these impatient drummers? He moved across the floor, letting the sound draw him through the dining room. His feet caught on the fringe of the rug. He lifted them free. He brushed past chairs, the hard corner of the table.
I’m coming, I’m coming
.

He was getting close. He could feel their presence in his bones. The light was brighter here, too, flooding in through panes of glass, glowing on the floor and shining up to the ceiling. The wall held him up. He saw dark shapes moving behind the glass. People were out there. He put his eye to the glass and peered out. He didn’t know them. They were strangers and they wanted to get in.

He squinted. They moved into the light. He couldn’t believe it.

It was his father standing there. Ann’s sister, too. They’d made the journey together. Pleased, he reached for the doorknob.

FORTY-EIGHT

W
HAT TOOK SO LONG?” KATE DEMANDED AS ANN SLID
open the back door. The baby reached over to bat Kate’s chin, and she grabbed his hand and held it. “Is Maddie okay?”

“I got a shot.” Maddie pushed past Ann and scrambled into the car. She’d torn the mask from her face and gripped it in one hand. “And the doctor pulled up my shirt in front of everybody.” She fumbled for the seatbelt with fat fingers, and Ann reached to help her.

Kate sat back. “So, everything’s okay now?”

“We still don’t know what caused Maddie’s reaction,” Ann said.

“I thought she was just allergic to cats.”

“She must have developed a reaction to something new.” Ann got behind the wheel and slammed the door. She looked in the rearview mirror at Kate. “I need you to help me figure out what it was.”

Kate looked worriedly at Maddie, who was staring out the window. “How do we do that?”

“I don’t know.” Two weeks, the doctor had said. “Tell me what you two were doing when Maddie got sick.”

“Nothing. We were getting Jacob dressed.”

Ann turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb. “You didn’t go outside?”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s dust.” How would she know? She wouldn’t. “When we get home, I’ll wipe everything down. Stay out of your rooms until then. Maddie, you’d better stay downstairs.”

They exited onto the highway. Heat poured in from the vents. They drove past a hardware store, a cellular phone store, and a string of restaurants. All closed. The clock on the dashboard read four-fifteen. They’d been gone an hour. As soon as they got home, she’d go upstairs and check on Peter. With any luck, he’d have been asleep the whole time. They’d gone through the worst, the nurse had said. Tomorrow would be better.

Kate said, “Was that there before?”

A fire engine sat in the middle of a vacant parking lot, parked at an angle as though it had slid to a hasty stop. One door hung ajar. Ann couldn’t recall whether it had been there. She’d been focused on getting to the hospital.

“It’s got something written on it.”

Ann glanced over. Maddie looked, too. A black circle was scrawled across the side of the engine, with a bold line crossed through it.

“I’ve seen that before,” Kate said. “It’s like that thing on Smith and Libby’s door.”

A huge vehicle like that had to have a big gas tank. Ann wondered if anyone else had thought of that.

“Only that one says three.”

A three here, a two on Libby’s door—small numbers that added up to too many.

Ann glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Kate staring out the window. Then a look of horror flashed across her face. She’d figured it out. She clapped a hand to her mouth. Jacob squirmed in her lap. After a moment, Kate allowed him to grab her hand back.

Ann tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She needed to get everyone home before they saw anything else.

Here was the grocery store, the clothing shop, the office supply store. Nothing but a row of blank windows and dark doors.

“Wait,” Maddie said suddenly. “There’s Heyjin.”

“Who?” Kate said.

“A girl in my class from Korea. She’s right there on that bus. I think she sees me.” Maddie waved.

Ann glanced over to the big blue-and-silver bus that was pulling past them. She glimpsed windows filled with children’s faces.

“Where’s she going, Mom?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t see her mom.”

“I don’t see anybody’s mom,” Kate said. “Or dad, either.”

How had the children been rounded up? How long had they gone without anyone taking care of them? This was what Peter was afraid would happen. He’d been right to worry. As soon as they got home, she’d bundle him up and they’d leave. They wouldn’t wait even one more hour. He could sleep just as well in the van as he could in the house, and he was past the contagious point. Better, too, to get Maddie out of the house and whatever it was that had caused her reaction.

Ann turned in to their neighborhood. She felt a heavy curtain drawing around them, close and familiar and suffocating. The road swept along the brick and stucco and columned houses, wound past the blackened husk where the Guarnieris’ house once stood. She’d been to parties in some of these houses. She’d walked the girls past them on their way to the park. Now they all felt like strangers to her, soulless buildings instead of homes. It would be good to break free and head north.

“Barney’s back,” Kate said.

Sure enough, there he was, trotting around the back of the house. These past few days he kept disappearing, raising Ann’s hopes that he’d found another family to take him in, but then he’d reappear, nosing around the patio or scratching at the garage door.

Ann bumped the van into the garage and shut off the engine. “Maddie, go straight into the laundry room. Take everything off and put it into the sink. I’m sorry, honey, but I’ll have to scrub you down and wash your hair.”

“In cold water?”

“I’ll be quick, I promise.” She bent and looked at Kate through the open car door. Whatever it was might be clinging to them, too. “You wait here with Jacob. I’ll bring you something to change into when I’m done with Maddie.”

Kate nodded, looking distracted. “Why is Barney barking like that?”

“I don’t know.” The dog wasn’t a barker. The hollow sounds reverberated around the small cul-de-sac. If Peter hadn’t been awake before, he’d be awake now.

Ann prodded Maddie before her into the house. “Leave everything turned inside out. I’ll go get a towel and clean clothes.”

“Okay.” Maddie went into the laundry room and shut the door.

There was a steady splashing sound. Strange. Ann stepped into the kitchen and saw the faucet was running. She was sure she hadn’t left the water on. She hadn’t been anywhere near the sink. Well, she must have. There was no other explanation. She switched it off. A peculiar silence settled around her. It was nerves, the adrenaline of rushing Maddie to the hospital and being out of the house for the first time in almost two months. No wonder coming home felt strange.

Clothes first, then she’d check on Peter. He needed to drink something, and maybe he could keep down some ibuprofen. His appetite might be returning, too. She should try and get some nourishment in him before they left. Soup, maybe. The hot liquid would soothe his throat.

She couldn’t wait to go check on Peter and see for herself if his fever had finally broken. She went to the stairs and halted, hand on the railing. Something had caught her eye. Something was out of place. She turned her head. Not something but someone lying in the front hall. She glimpsed green pajamas, long, narrow feet. Whoever it was wasn’t moving.

Peter
.

Then she was beside him. She dropped to her knees and grasped his shoulders. She could feel the sinew of his arms through the flannel. He was so thin. “Honey, you shouldn’t have gotten up.”

He sagged against her. “Come on, sweetheart. Let me help you.”

His head lolled to one side. He looked at her through half-open eyes.

She went cold. Something pushed itself into her throat. She laid her hand to his bare cheek. His skin was waxy. It had an unusual yellow color to it. His eyes had gone opaque and sightless.

“Peter?” she whispered, but she knew he wouldn’t respond. Wherever Peter was, he wasn’t here in this body. He was gone.

The world plummeted away from her. She began to shake.

No.

She pressed both hands against his cheeks. “Come back.” His mouth sagged open. “Peter! Don’t you dare leave me! Peter!” She patted his chest, slapped his cheeks, shook him so that his head fell back.

“Peter!”

Sobbing, she wrapped her arms around him and held him as close as she could, willing her heart to beat for both of them. “Please, please.” It had been like this before. It had been too late, then, for William, too.

Outside, Barney let out a howl.

FORTY-NINE

W
HY WAS HE DOWNSTAIRS?” MADDIE STOOD BESIDE

Kate at the top of the stairs. Peter lay at the bottom. This was as close as she’d let them go. Ann had covered him with the blanket she’d pulled from the bed. He’d looked so cold and miserable. So alone. She couldn’t bear it. From the bedroom behind them, Jacob wailed in feeble protest.

“Maybe he was looking for us,” Kate said. “Mom, we left him all by himself.”

“I know.”

He’d been all alone. Had he suffered? Had he been frightened? The girls pressed against her.

At last, she ushered her daughters back from the stairs and into the bedroom. They wouldn’t sleep in the family room anymore. Too many memories crowded that confined space. Jacob had fallen asleep on his makeshift pallet on the floor. Ann checked him, then went to the bed and lifted up the covers. The girls slid in, one on either side of her, and lay close. Maddie was weeping. Ann held their cold hands in hers, their fingertips grazing her palms. Shadows collected along the ceiling.

Kate said, “I’m never going to love anybody ever again.”

“Oh, honey.” Ann rubbed her thumb against her daughter’s palm.

“How could he leave us?”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“How come you didn’t get sick?” Maddie said. “How come we didn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to die?” Maddie’s breath was soft against Ann’s cheek.

“No.” The truth? She already felt dead.

Maddie said in a small voice, “What about us, Mommy? Are we going to die, too?”

“Everyone dies.” Kate tugged her hand free and rolled over onto her side, away from them.

Yes
. Ann looked at the ceiling.
Everyone dies
. She lay there in the dark, listening to her children breathe. She filled her heart with it.

THE MOON RODE LOW AMONG THIN CLOUDS
.

Ann knelt, studied the ground in the gray light, looking for tree roots. Too close to the birch and the sun would be obscured. Too far and the effect of sun through the branches would be lost. She had to frame the sunset just right. She ran a mittened hand across the surface, checking for rocky outcroppings, then stood. Wedging the tip of the blade into the hard earth, she stepped up to balance on its end the way she’d seen Peter do it. She let her body sag and bear down with all its puny weight. The shovel skidded sideways.

She wriggled the blade to get a better purchase on the soil. Still, the shovel tilted as she stepped on it. Peter had made it look so easy, one foot pushing, both hands lifting. She grasped the handle, lifted up the shovel, and drove it down. A ping as the metal struck something. Rock, perhaps. She retrieved the flashlight from where she’d set it on the ground and shone the beam across the dirt. She saw the tiny chip she’d made. It was a start.

She fell into a rhythm. Lift the shovel and let it drop. Scrape away the bits of earth. Lift, drop, scrape. After a while, she’d carved a narrow trough. It didn’t have to be wide, just deep.

Peter, looking at her over the tops of his reading glasses. Reaching over to fill her coffee cup. Sitting down beside her on the couch and stretching his legs out beside hers.

The moon rose as she worked, releasing a feeble wash of light. After a while, she found she no longer needed the help of the flashlight, so she switched it off to save the batteries. Every so often, she stopped and looked around. No one was there. The street was empty, the houses dark.

Those men with the truck would return. They’d been polite the first time, but they wouldn’t be so tolerant the second time. They’d hear the quality of her voice and would know she was lying to them. She couldn’t leave anything for them to find. She drove the shovel down, again and again.

It’s always been like this for us
, she’d said to him on the patio that night. She’d felt so alone, all her mistakes crowded around her. He’d answered,
No, it hasn’t. Don’t you remember?

Yes, she remembered.

Peter, loping behind the girls as they wheeled unsteadily on their bikes. Setting up the sprinkler on the first day of warm weather. Pointing out the flight pattern of a particular bird, parting the grass to reveal a burrow. Sitting between them on the porch and watching thunderclouds roil in the distance. All those lessons couldn’t go unlearned. Somewhere in Kate and Maddie, Peter lived on.

Ann crouched on the hard earth and reached down; the hole went all the way to her elbow. Twelve inches, maybe more. Nowhere near deep enough. She climbed into the hole and went from there.

The shovel rang against something. The handle vibrated, the motion thrumming up the bones of her arms. She knelt and felt around. Through the wool of her mittens, she felt a sharp edge. She dug around with both hands and levered up a heavy chunk of limestone. This old farmland was full of it. She heaved it aside.

The digging became easier, the compacted soil giving way to softer clay. It clung in thick clumps to the shovel blade. She was up to mid-thigh now. Here was another slice of rock. She spaded away a shovelful of dirt and tried to pry the limestone free. The muscles between her shoulder blades and all along her rib cage felt tight and sore. Her fingertips throbbed and blisters were forming all around the web between thumb and forefinger. Was it her imagination or could she see her hands more clearly now?

She looked up. The sun was coming. She had to go faster. She had to be done before the girls got up. She had to erase all activity before the truck showed up. She’d left Peter alone in the end, but she wouldn’t abandon him now.

CROUCHING IN THE FOYER, ANN DREW THE MATERIAL UP AND
over, wrapping Peter and the top sheet together in a cocoon of cotton. Kate’s owl went, too. She brought the corners up and tied them, the material bunching in her grasp. Up and down the length of the sheet, she moved, tying knots until he lay contained in a weave of cloth.

She shook open the comforter and spread it on the floor, lifted his legs, and put them on one end. She put her hands against his shoulders and pushed hard. This was the man she loved. She blinked away hot tears.

His body rocked, then settled. She picked up the corner of the comforter and dragged him across the threshold. Peter’s voice as they tried to maneuver Maddie’s old dresser down the stairs.
Grab it by the end, Ann
. His laughter when he realized she was pinned to the wall.

A rock snagged the fabric. She leaned and pulled, stopped to rest. Her cheeks were wet. She swiped at them with her sleeve. A jangling noise made her whirl around to see Barney slinking toward her in the half-light.

“Go away.”

The dog halted.

“I mean it, damn it! Get out of here!”

Barney whirled and disappeared down the street.

————

BY THAT AFTERNOON, A FRIGID WIND HAD TAKEN OVER
. A cold front was moving in. The three of them stood shivering beneath the empty branches of the birch. It gave no cover. Maddie huddled on one side, Kate on the other, the baby in her arms. The sun sank behind the rooftops. Ann had waited for it and the clouds had obliged, thinning themselves into frothy strands that amplified the red and orange rays of the setting sun.

She opened the Bible and thumbed through the pages, looking for the right passages. There were several options. Everything was clearly marked and italicized, when to stand, what to say. Her eyes burned. The tiny black type swam before her. A hard, painful knot was lodged in her throat. The words refused to crawl past her lips. She shut the Bible and stood there, looking at the mounded yellow earth, feeling utterly helpless to guide her husband and children through this narrow tunnel.

Maddie’s cold hand crept into hers.

Wind buffeted them.

So much lost.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Ann said.

Maddie sniffed, then lifted her voice. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep. May God’s love be with me through the night …”

Kate came in at the last line, her voice tremulous and low. “And wake me with the morning light.”