Todd (9 page)

The boy stopped eating and looked
at him. "What if we never find Mommy and Allie?"

Alan had just taken in a mouthful
of cereal, of course. He held up a finger as he crunched through it. It bought
him a minute to think, but it also exposed him to the dangerous gleam of his
son's eyes. They were earnest. Desperate. Whatever Todd needed, Alan didn't
have it.

"What do you mean?" he
finally said.

"Well... I've been looking
everywhere we go, and they're just
gone
." He furrowed his brow,
concentrating. "It's like their
bodies
are gone. And I think... I
mean, I wonder if..." He chewed his lip. "You can't live without your
body."

"Yeah." It was a heavy
word. "I've been thinking about that, too." Alan's instinct was to
withdraw from the question. It was too big; it would be too easy to screw it
up. But he also wanted to talk about it, to air some of the ideas that had been
running through his head.

You don't owe him anything,
Alan's
dad said, and that's what decided him. He went on. "But what happened was
so weird. Really powerful. Maybe whatever did it, if it was that powerful,
maybe it didn't have to kill them. Maybe it, like... teleported them, or
something."

"Teleported them where?"

To the mother ship,
he
mused,
or to the middle of space.
He thought of the blue star, but
didn't mention it. "I don't know." The boy was already scared; he had
horrible ideas enough without listening to his father's.

"Maybe it teleported them to
a big building somewhere," Todd said, "like a jail, and they're all
there, and we can find them."

"Maybe," Alan said. If that
were true, if there were survivors, they should be looking for them. Right? If
every human being on Earth—

Not the whole Earth, it
couldn't have hit the whole planet

—were holed up in one giant
building somewhere, it had to be possible to find it. Maybe even save them.

But if it weren't true, the search
would be fruitless. Travel was dangerous; they'd seen enough wildfires and
twisted metal to know that. The idea of roaming aimlessly, searching for
something that wasn't even there, left a hollow in his chest.

And even if that is what
happened, and we did find them, then what? We're still talking about a force
stronger than the combined total of every defense the entire human species had.
It would see us and just throw us in with the others.
Again, he couldn't
say it. Why had he started talking about this in the first place?

"But I still don't think
that's it," Todd said.

"Why not?"

"Because if I was a monster,
I wouldn't want to capture all the people. I'd want to get rid of them, so they
couldn't hurt me or fight me."

"You think a monster did
it?"

"Yeah." That musing look
had gone out of his eye; now he looked scared. "I do."

It was the part where Alan was
supposed to reassure him that there were no monsters, that there was a rational
explanation for everything, that he didn't have to worry.

Either way,
he realized,
teleported
or killed, we're still alone.
It slammed into him like a wrecking ball.
Brenda wasn't on a business trip. Allie wasn't at Grandma's. It almost didn't
matter what had happened to them. They were gone, and they weren't coming back.
It was time to face it.

"I miss them," Todd
said. "I don't... I don't think we're gonna find them."

"No." The word was
horrible, malignant. "We're not."

"I wish this never
happened."

"Yeah." He couldn't
protect his son from this. He couldn't bring anyone back. All he had was
himself. He scooted his chair closer, put an awkward arm around his son's
shoulders.

Todd was staring out the window,
at the empty street. "Allie would've really liked Pinky Wing. I know she
would've."

"Is that the pony we got
yesterday?"

He nodded.

"You're right. I think she
would've loved it." He took a deep breath, screwing up his courage for
what he had to say next. "I think maybe we should have a funeral for Mom
and Allie." The words burned on his tongue. They awoke some kind of
violent, thrashing denial deep in his skull.
No!
it screamed, whining
like a tantrum.
No! No! NO!

"What's that?"

Alan blinked. "What's... a
funeral?"

"Yeah. It's like a birthday
party, kind of?"

"No."
Ah, gods.
"No,
it's—"

"I mean not
exactly
a
birthday party."

His son's naiveté wrung him like a
rag. "It's when you bury someone you've lost, and talk about how much you
loved them, and try to..."
Let them go.
He couldn't say it.
"Try to figure out how to deal with it. You celebrate the person, talk
about your favorite things about them. Sometimes people play music or sing
songs." Belatedly, he added, "We can do that if you want."

"But we
can't
bury
them. They're gone."

"That's okay. You can have a
funeral even without the body of the person. People do it all the time. And we
don't have—"
Their bodies.
Again, he couldn't say the words.
"I mean, they disappeared, but we have the clothes they were wearing. We
could bury those." Part of him stood apart, aghast at his words, frozen
with disbelief.
What are you doing?
it wanted to know.
Are you giving
up that easily? Just giving up?

But it had been three days, and
they weren't coming back. No one was.

This was the right thing to do.
Wasn't it?

"Okay," Todd said.

30

The shovel was too big for him,
but Todd was dogged anyway, his face serious and his eyes grim. Alan had never
seen him work so hard at anything. He was proud of him for coming to the
backyard with him, for facing this.

Alan had never felt comfortable at
funerals. He'd never known what to say or how to act, even when he'd been a
believer. After his religion had dropped away, it had gotten even worse. Todd
would be looking to him for answers today, and Alan didn't have them.

The digging gave him something to
focus on: real, hard labor. Each thrust of the shovel was a statement, a
declaration of love for his wife and daughter. He might have been middle-aged
and fat and weak, but he would do this for them.

The end of the world wouldn't
seem so bad if they were here.
It was a dangerous fantasy, the kind of
dream he wouldn't want to wake from, but he indulged it anyway. Yes, if the
whole family had been spared, it still would've been terrible. The stuff of
nightmares. But he would've had Brenda to talk to. They could've decided on a
plan together. Todd would have had Allie.

They had always fought to make
their home a refuge: a place safe from the world's madness, from its bullying
fathers. They would still have had that. So what if the world outside disappeared?
They'd spent half their time trying to ignore it anyway.

What's the difference between
four people and two?
he demanded of whatever blind fate had made the
choice.
You couldn't have just left those two more?

Even in his blackest depressions
he had always been fiercely grateful for his family. Allie had brought joy to
every room she entered; Brenda had been sharp and competent and beautiful.

The thought of Brenda arrested
him. Sure, they'd fought. She'd handled family life with such easy competence that
he'd felt inadequate, even threatened sometimes. But she'd made him aspire.
She'd shown him that he could do better for his kids than his father had done
for him. She'd
believed
in him.

He glanced at Todd and saw tears
streaking the grime on his cheeks. Alan's heart lurched, throbbing with grief
but suddenly burning with gratitude, too.
I still have him. It could be
worse.
That was another old mantra he told himself when fighting to keep
his head up, and even here, even now, things could be worse. He didn't know why
or how, didn't know what cosmic accident had kept them together, but it had.
They'd gotten lucky.

"Okay." He tried to keep
his voice level and blew it. He took a shaky breath and tried again. "I
think that's enough."

Todd nodded and sniffed—not
crying, but not fighting the tears, either. Alan wanted to say something
profound to start their little ceremony, wanted to lift the clothes and perform
some kind of ritual, but he had nothing. This was where religion might have
helped. Death was such an awful emptiness that no words could stand up to it—it
was as sprawling and impossible as the gaps between the stars—but religion at
least provided a way to kill the time. Some traditions to lean on as you
trudged through your grief, even if they were empty.

He picked up the clothes—flaking
apart in the breeze, brittle as dry film—and laid them in the holes.

"We're here to remember Mommy
and Allie," he said, because he had to say something. "I met your mom
at work, when we were both working at Target a long time ago. I thought she was
beautiful and smart, and she thought I was funny."

The words dried up as a memory of
her laugh gripped him. His humor had always been dry and self-deprecating, and
it had clicked with her. There was something divine, something powerful, in
making the woman he loved laugh.

The moment he fell in love with
her, she'd been laughing.

"We spent five of the best
years of our lives together, and then—"

Memories detonated in his head
like landmines: Todd's first cry, Brenda breastfeeding, the weight of the child
in his arms and the answering burden on his heart. Love so strong that he
thought it would break him, and that horrible, automatic disdain that answered
it, a gift from his own dad from which he'd never break free.

Don't coddle him,
Alan's
dad had instructed when he'd seen Todd for the first time.
He'll turn out
like you.
The boy had been two months old.

Alan fought for control of his
voice, wrestled down his emotions so he could keep talking. "And then it
got even better, because we had you."

Confusion and astonishment warred
on Todd's face. Was it really so strange for him to hear that Alan loved him?
Had Alan really fucked it up that badly?

He pulled Todd to him, hugging his
son in defiance of everything he'd learned growing up. Todd hugged him back
awkwardly, his wiry frame hitching with little sobs. "You were everything
we'd hoped for," Alan whispered. "Smart and funny, and... handsome
and... and healthy. Your mom loved you, Todd, gods, she loved you so much."

He wiped his eyes and let his son
go. Hoarsely, he finished: "She was everything to me, I loved her with
everything I had, and I can't imagine life without her. It's like... it's like
getting cut in half. And I know I can never replace her for you. I know she was
better than me. I know you miss her." He started nodding, his chin
agreeing so hard with the words that it began vibrating of its own accord.
"But I'm gonna do my best, okay? I know you're probably scared, because
she kept me straight, but I—I'm gonna do my best."

He looked at the hole with her
clothes in it. "I love you, Brenda. I'm going to miss you really, really
bad." It was completely inadequate; she deserved better. But his eulogy
had left him drained. There was nothing left.

He wiped his eyes and looked at
his son. "Do you want to say something about Mommy?"

Todd stared at the ground, his
hands playing with a clump of dirt. Finally he nodded. His face was all twisted
up, flashing from grimace to grimace. "I love you, Mommy." He looked
at Alan. "Do you think she can hear me?"

No,
Alan thought at once,
but didn't say it. "I don't know, but I figured... you know, I'd talk to
her anyway. Because maybe she can. Maybe she's listening right now,
somehow."

"Okay," Todd said.
"Well..." He stared at the hole, thunderclouds of anguish flickering
behind his eyes. "Goodbye."

It might've been funny in any
other context, but here it just spoke to the simplicity of children: their
uncanny power to cut straight to the heart of anything.

"Do you want to say something
to Allie?"

Todd nodded, shifting so he could
look at the little green dress in the second hole. "You were the best
sister ever," he said. "I'm—well—I'm sorry I didn't let you play
Mario that one time. I should have let you play it. If you were here right now
I would let you play it." He looked at Alan. "I would give up Mario
forever
if she... if it could..."

Alan put a hand on his shoulder.
"Yeah. I know."

Todd looked away, shaking, so Alan
took over.

"Allie, if you can hear me,
Daddy loves you. I will always love you. You were my special light. It was like
nothing—" He choked. Struggled to fight past it.

Allie was always smiling. He used
to think she was just oblivious to the deeper tensions in the house, mostly
caused by Alan himself, but as time went on he'd realized that wasn't it at
all. She'd known. Even at six years old, she'd known—she'd just been unwilling
to accept it. She was always trying to cheer everyone up, even him.

She deserved this.

"It was like nothing could
bring you down," he finished in a hoarse whisper. "You made
everything so wonderful."

It was far less than either of
them deserved, but it was what they had. Alan forced himself to give Todd
another hug. As he did, his eyes strayed into the neighbor's empty backyard,
and across it to the next, and the one beyond.

We are two people,
he
thought,
alone on the planet, talking to ourselves.

Then they started filling the
holes.

31

After other funerals Alan had
attended, there had been food or music. Social interaction. There was no one
left to socialize with, but the gas station had pop and candy bars. It was a
small thing, but they could have it.