White Horse (33 page)

“I have to keep moving,” I tell them. “I have to find Nick if he’s still alive.”

“He lives,” says the rock woman.

“How—”

Irini bows her head. “My sister has the sight. She knows many things. She is the sibyl, the oracle of Delphi where there hasn’t been such a thing for centuries.”

“Hush, Sister. The gods have been cruel enough. Do not give them reason to take more from you.”

“What more can they take?” she asks simply.

“You still live, do you not?”

“This is not a life,” Irini snaps. Immediately she dips her head in contrition. “I’m sorry. I did not think.”

The woman of the rock looks straight at me. “Take her with you. I implore you.”

Irini’s head jerks up. “No.”

“Go with her.”

“I have to stay with you, Sister. Who will feed you, bring you water?”

“My time is short. You will go with the American, deliver the child into this broken world. Maybe some good will come of her birth. Everyone needs a purpose. This is yours.”

The screaming wakes me on
the third morning. Holding my belly, I race up to where Irini is standing, her face melted in horror. My brain processes the scene like an investigator, in explicit, full-color snapshots.
The rock woman’s head dangles at an unnatural angle, her useless limbs hacked off and used to form the letters
I
and
N
in one single word painted on the ground in scarlet letters.

ABOMINATION
.

My mind flips through the searing photographs with gathering speed.

“We have to go. Now.”

Irini doesn’t argue. With methodical detachment, she gathers her things and stacks them neatly in a sleepover bag. It’s high-quality leather, the kind that improves as it is passed down through the generations. Within minutes we’re moving on with Esmeralda in tow.

There’s a hole in my soul and it’s filled with the dead.

“Not a ghost.”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

I know what she wants: some explanation so she can make sense of her sister’s death. But all I have is an improbable story that sounds like a lie. I give her the bones, then the story’s meat. My tongue lifts my mind’s petticoat and skirts and displays my regret: that I didn’t double-, triple-check that the Swiss was dead.

“Why?” she asks.

“Why what?”

“Why you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why chase?”

Why do crazy people do anything? Why did I sprint across the world to find one man?

“I don’t know.”

DATE: THEN

I leave a note in
the box, place it outside the front door. When Morris comes, she reads it moving her lips.

“Crackers and Twinkies?”

“Everything else makes me sick,” I mouth through the glass door.

She shrugs, scratches her nose. “Okay.” She disappears across the street with the box. We’ve been doing this for a week now: I leave the box out front, she returns with supplies within minutes.

Only, this time the minutes drag by slow enough that I have to run to the ground-floor bathroom twice to throw up. She comes back empty-handed.

“Where’s my box?”

“C’mon. Doctor wants to see you.”

“I’m in quarantine.”

“He doesn’t care.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Reluctantly, I open the door, step out onto the sidewalk, maintaining a distance between us. Our boots echo down the hall once we enter the old school. Hers clip along cheerfully while mine drag all my baggage behind them.

Joe is in the infirmary waiting on us, blowing into a latex glove. He holds it to his head and grins. “I’m a rooster. How long has Nick been gone?”

Morris glances at me. “Six weeks.”

“Six weeks, two days, six hours. Give or take.”

She raises an eyebrow, scratches her nose.

He pulls open a drawer, rifles around, tosses a box to me. I stare unblinking at the packaging.

“When was your last period?”

“I don’t remember.”

Morris scoffs. “All this stress, who bleeds anymore?”

“Did you use protection?”

My cheeks flush. “Mostly.”

“Well, then it mostly worked,” Joe says with a brightness that makes my retinas burn.

Although the box is light in my hands, the gravity of the situation elevates it to the weight of a brick. I can’t be pregnant. I wanted children, yes, but not like this. Not now.

Joe ties a knot in the glove. “Go pee on the stick.”

Morris steers me out of the room. Numb, I allow her to propel me to the bathrooms. I pee on the stick while she paces. Two pink lines slowly form in the white window.

“How many lines?” Morris asks.

“Two.”

There’s a hoot of laughter.

“I’m glad one of us finds this funny.”

“‘I don’t know nuthin’ about birthin’ babies,’” she screeches.

Joe grins when we walk in. “Looks like your death sentence has been reduced to life imprisonment.” He throws me a bottle. The irony of the rattling container is not lost on me. “Prenatal vitamins.”

Like all bad ideas, this
one is born in the middle of a sleepless night when my mind has inevitably turned to a channel where I’m a child again. I’ve flipped through the other pages of my life already tonight: the regrets, the embarrassing moments that still manage to color a grown woman’s cheeks; all those choices made and opportunities that languished while I wandered down life’s side streets. Then I’m seven, six, five, four, three years old, dragging Feeney, my toy monkey, along behind me in a cherry-red cart. An invisible finger yanks one of my heartstrings and holds it taut until I’m aching to see the monkey again. The sensation of longing evolves in a painful fantasy where I’m holding Nick’s hand, watching our child toddling ahead of us with Feeney tucked under his or her arm.

When I wake, my pillow is wet.

At breakfast I tell Morris
about Feeney.

“I’m coming with you,” she says.

“Huh?”

“You’re planning on going back to your folks’ place, right?”

She knows me too well. “You got me.”

“Coffee first. Then we’ll rustle up some bicycles.”

An hour later, we’re peddling through the badlands. Out in the burbs, the grasses grow wild, concealing the curbs, defiantly shooting pollens into the crisp air. They seem to know they’ll never see another lawn mower, never have their stems whacked ever again. There are signs everywhere that nature has seized control. Vines race up the brick veneers, competing for the highest gutters. They grab saplings in choke holds and wrestle them for precious sunlight. Our tires roll along parched blacktop that’s become cracked and warped enough for green sprouts to poke their heads through. Nature is having her wild way with the land—a party to end all parties.

My mind plays a cruel game, stripping away these new adornments, giving me furtive glimpses of how it used to be. I used to ride these streets when they were cared for by people who had no idea how soon the end was coming. The lawns were once neatly manicured, the flower beds free of weeds, and the houses didn’t peel. There’s no longer the soft tsk-tsk-tsk of sprinklers accompanying the birds and bugs. Now my old neighborhood is a strange new world where the curtains twitch and things creep. I have my gun. I have bullets. Or rounds. Whatever they call them. I’m not a gun person. All I know—and need to know—is how to load and pull the trigger.

The last time I cruised these streets, I was driving Jenny’s car. That was the last time I saw my parents alive. Maybe they still are. Hope fills me like helium and I pedal faster, hoping to get there before some big prick bursts the bubble.

It’s like old times almost, me coasting to a stop, throwing my bicycle onto the lawn, but this time I don’t run to the front door. Morris stops, butt on the seat, feet on the ground. She lets her bicycle down easy next to mine, draws her weapon.

I came prepared: I have keys.

The smell comes up and backhands me across the face. I stumble backwards into my friend.

“Jesus H. Christ,” she says. “You never get used to that smell. You okay?”

I give her a look.

“Didn’t think so.” Her voice takes on a soft, gentle sheen. “We’ll go slow, okay? Where’s the monkey?”

I’m holding my nose, trying to not to breathe, trying not to think about how this smell is probably what’s left of my parents. Morris pats me on the back.

“I’m okay. He’ll be in the attic. They kept all our toys up there in boxes.”

The air is stale and the silence deafening. Growing up with electricity, I never appreciated how much noise it made. Everything is the same. The den is neat, although the cabbage rose couch is cultivating a layer of dust. The kitchen is clean, the dishes put away, the sink empty. The beds are made and somehow the bathrooms are mildew-free. Mom cleaned before—

“Up there.” I point at the trapdoor in the hall ceiling, its synthetic rope dangling low enough for me to grab. We climb deeper into the gloom. Sun leaks in through the tiny grimy windows. Dust flecks aimlessly ride the beams.

Morris coughs.

My whole childhood is up here, packed in boxes bearing labels in my mother’s tidy hand. One side belongs to Jenny, the other to me. Easier to sort that way, Mom used to say, when we had our own children.

My eyes heat up. Tears make threats. So I fake a cough to chase them away.

“I wish I could take everything,” I say.

Morris gives me a wry smile. “You’d need a moving truck.”

She’s right. These boxes are stacked in minor mountains.

“Maybe someday,” she says.

“Maybe.”

We get to work. I don’t linger over old photos. I barely recognize the happy people depicted in the quilted albums. They belong to a time I’m not entirely convinced ever existed. Maybe the past is all a fairy tale we tell ourselves over and over until we believe it’s true.

I find Feeney crammed into a box with other old toys and claim him for my child.

On the way out, I use the bathroom. Stare at the trapdoor in the floor.

It’s locked.

I wonder which of the neighbors was left standing long enough to slide the bolt home.

Morris sneezes. “Allergies.”

It’s not allergies. Morris knows
it and I know it. But neither of us wants to jump to the right conclusion. We’re walking down the hall at the school when she paints the floor in two of three primary colors.

She pulls out her pistol, shoves the end into her mouth, and
bang!
Just like that. Her skull shatters. Brains splash. The wall is Morris-colored on institutional beige. And that damn jingle keeps dancing around my head: How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Cleanup in aisle five, Dr. Lecter. Don’t forget to bring a nice Chianti and those fava beans. And a spoon. You’re gonna need a spoon because this is one sloppy mess and a fork isn’t going to cut it.

The voices are distant, miles away at the end of a long dark tunnel. But they’re getting nearer. Closer. Closer. Closer. Until they’re right in my face, shouting at me, trying to pull me away from Tara Morris. That’s when I realize I’m kneeling, holding her in my arms, trying to scoop up her brains and shove them back into her head. A rerun of Jenny’s murder.

“Don’t touch me!” I scream, but their hands keep tugging until I’m forced to let her go. A sob blocks my throat, reducing my voice to an animalistic whimper. “No. No.”

Then something inside me snaps into two pieces—maybe my mind compartmentalizing, stowing away the grief and horror in a steel vault until I can gain perspective and cope. Suddenly I’m looking down on the scene, not dispassionately, but through a cool veil. Separate. Other. Not part of this. Not part of this at all.

“Let’s clean her up,” I say.

Detached.

I stride down the hall in the direction of the broom closet. Bucket-and-mop time. Someone has to clean the Morris mess.

It’s me who lights the
match that burns my friend. I try to pretend I can’t smell her body cook. When she’s reduced to the contents of an
ashtray in a dive bar on a Saturday night, I let myself into Nick’s room and pull his letter from my pocket. The envelope’s edges are worn now and the paper brittle from the cold. This room smells like him, like sunshine and citrus still, although there’s nothing of his left in here. Not that any of us brought much. A person doesn’t need a lot of stuff for survival in a temporary home.

That Nick smell intensifies as I lift my feet off the floor and sink into his bed. I close my eyes and rifle through my memories, searching for the perfect image.

I remember him. I remember us. The things we did. The things we talked of doing back when I had no idea how little time was left for us. A mixture of anger and lust builds inside me. How dare he go without giving me a choice? How could he make that decision for me? I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be safe. I can’t exist on some fucking pedestal like some precious
thing
. I picture him standing there, listening, riding out the tempest until I’m empty of rage-coated words.

My hand slides down the flat plane of my stomach, down, down between my legs, and I remember everything good until I’m biting my lip to stop from calling out to him.

Sometime between the storm and the calm that comes afterward, I slide Nick’s letter back into my pocket, unopened still. And I know that I am leaving.

The librarian would understand: I
tell myself that as I tear maps of Europe from her precious atlases. She would understand.

The week whittles away
.

Monday creeps. Tuesday crawls. Wednesday stumbles by like a drunk searching for the perfect gutter to piss in. Christmas never took this long to arrive.

On Thursday I hear a familiar rumble. The bus sounds close, but it’s still blocks away. Nonetheless, I pull on my boots, grab my backpack, and run, leaving my good-byes to float back over my shoulder. The well wishes fly at my back like arrows. They hit true: right at my heart. It’s
all I can do not to turn back and look at what’s become my family. But I have to go. I have to find Nick, if he’s still to be had for the finding.