Thirst (5 page)

“I need to sit down,” she said.

Eddie moved quickly to help her to the grass. She shook her head back and forth.

“I’m a Christian,” she said, pressing her fingers into the corners of her eyes. “I stole all this.”

“The groceries?”

“There was no one there to pay. You have to steal. But that doesn’t make it right.” She looked up at Eddie, and her face seemed to clear. “Go on,” she said. “Take whatever you need. Just look in there and take it.”

“I need to get back to my wife.”

She nodded to him, serenely. “Go to her, then,” she said.

Laura was home—as though the woman saying so had made it true. He wanted to run to her, to throw his arms around her like he used to, to take her to the ground and smother her with his body. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut in such a way that there would be nothing in the world but her chest beneath his own.

When she saw him, her hand went to her mouth but not fast enough to trap a sob. They had barstools at the kitchen counter, and she stepped behind one as if to protect herself from him.

“Eddie,” she said. She took a few breaths to keep her expression from breaking. Her forehead was scraped, but not so badly.

Then she stepped out from the barstool and hung her arms around his neck. Her nose pushed against his throat, and her skin was warm, except for the tip of her nose where it made contact. She was crying. The urge to tell her about the boy in the woods was rising somewhere in his chest. But telling her would do no good. It made no sense to make her worry. He
wasn’t even sure he’d seen the boy. He could no longer describe him to himself.

“How did you get here?” he said, but she didn’t answer. She stayed there, hugging him silently, and now he could breathe her in—the faint chemical lilac trapped inside her clothes. He put his hands on her waist and held her as though he were holding her aloft.

“I should call the police,” he said, pressing away.

“Everyone’s trying,” she said. “Where were you? You look like a ghost.”

Eddie looked down at himself. His clothes and arms were streaked with ash.

“I was looking for you.”

“Oh no,” she said.

“I spent the night outside, but it’s okay. We’re okay now.”

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I heard helicopters, though. We’ll have the power back on soon.”

“Will you clean yourself up, please,” she said. “I can’t look at you like this.”

“How long have you been back?”

“Just now,” she said. “I sat in my car until four in the morning. I left when people started leaving. Everybody was leaving. I left the car, Eddie.”

He squeezed her arm. She was shaking. “I left mine, too,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t. I had to pull a woman off another woman’s child last night. She was hitting him. You know why? She said he stepped on her.”

“You walked the whole way?”

“Everyone was stepping on everybody. We all walked. I was in my flats, thank God.”

“You must have walked right past me.”

“You were on the Beltway?”

“I went back out to look for you. Where’d you leave the car?”

“Just a couple of miles before the exit. There were people walking a lot farther.”

“It’ll be fine. They’ll tow some of the cars, but they can’t tow everyone. When things clear up, I’ll walk back down and get it.”

“I don’t care about the car, I guess.”

“I don’t want you to worry,” he said. “There was nothing else you could do. Did you try the phone?”

“I tried to call my parents, but I can’t get a call to go out. Thank God you’re back, but I’m worried about them.”

Eddie went to the sink and tried the faucet handle again.

“Your parents are nowhere close to this. They’re three counties over. This is just a power thing.”

“How do you know that? There’s no communication.”

“They’re fine. They’re probably worried about
us
, is all.”

“You have no way of knowing that.”

“Do your parents leave the house? No. So they’re sitting at home just like we are.”

“I’m going to cry,” she said, though she’d been crying already. “I’ve been wanting to cry all morning. I couldn’t do it last night, not with all those people. I had to be a good person and be on the lookout for women hitting other people’s children.”

Eddie went to her and held the back of her head so that she could cry into his chest. He felt her cheekbones against his ribs, the hollowness of her eye sockets.

“What’s on you?” she said.

He looked down at the ash on his shirt. It was too much to tell her. He didn’t know what he should say. There was enough to deal with right there in front of them.

“I was in the woods,” he managed, but he said it softly—a mumble—and the words didn’t register.

“Go,” she said. “You need to clean yourself off.”

Eddie went gamely to the bathroom and turned the knob in the tub. He pounded on the opening of the faucet with the heel of his hand and waited. Then he sat on the edge of the tub and allowed his mind to wander.

She liked to bathe in the dark, and he would come in and flip the switch to brush his teeth and see the water flash in oscillating white plates above her body. He would see the tuft of her pubic hair floating like grass beneath the water.

The memory calmed him.

He remembered handing her towels and helping to pat her dry, feeling the warmth of her breasts and shoulders coming through the cloth. Smelling the cleanness of her skin.

He stood to collect himself—that was a different time from this. He peed a yellow stream into the toilet bowl. Without thinking, he flushed, and the water gulped down but didn’t refill. He took the lid from off the tank and the ceramic scrape jarred him to attention like a bell. The tank was empty. His gut clenched. He should have saved the water from this tank, too.

There were wipes beneath the sink that they used on the porcelain, and he wiped his arms and face and the back of his neck. He took off his clothes and put them in a pile and got his chest and most of his back. Then he went into the bedroom and put on a fresh T-shirt and a pair of shorts. In the kitchen, Laura was quiet. She was sitting on a barstool, staring down into the
marble of the counter. There was a bowl of fruit there, and Eddie took an apple and extended it beneath her face.

“Eat,” he said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Just eat it.”

There was a knock on the door, and Eddie put the apple down. Laura looked up at him, and he raised his hand for silence.

The knock came again.

He listened and could hear footsteps around the side of the house. From the kitchen window, he saw the top of someone’s head. It was Bill Peters’s head. He’d forgotten about Bill Peters. He watched the head through the windows. It moved around to the side of the house, and he heard the hollow sound the man’s feet made on the wood of the back porch steps. The screen door groaned on its hinge and slammed as he walked across the boards. He knocked at the back door this time.

“I met him outside,” Eddie said. He went to the door and looked back to Laura before he turned the knob. She lifted her eyebrows in a way that cautioned, but didn’t tell him not to.

Eddie opened up a couple of inches.

“I’m here,” said Bill Peters like a game show host. “Just like you said.”

“Our water’s still off,” Eddie said. He moved his body fully in front of the opening in the door.

Bill Peters stuck the milk jug in the opening. “I’ll take whatever. It doesn’t have to be water. We just need to get something in him.”

Eddie felt anger flood his body. He’d dealt with people like this before, petitioners who wouldn’t take no for an answer,
pressing him for donations until he was too flustered to deny them. “You know there’s a grocery store a mile from here,” he said.

“Have
you
been there? There’s nothing on the shelves. I know they’re human beings, but they’re behaving like animals.”

Eddie squeezed through the door, forcing Bill Peters back out onto the porch. He closed the door behind himself. When he spoke, his voice came out sharply.

“I need you to get away from my house,” he said.

Bill Peters’s face slackened. Then he smiled and shook his head. “I’m not trying to take advantage of you here,” he said. “This is for my son. My son is sick, you understand? Are you a father?”

Eddie stared at him. His clothes were a huckster’s clothes.

“I’ll take you down to see him if you don’t believe me,” he said.

“That’s not necessary.”

He held up the jug. “Whatever you have,” he said.

“Did you try anyone else?”

“No one else told me to come by their house.
You
told me that. I could tell you were a good man right away. You’ve got a good man’s face.”

“That was before I knew the extent of the outage.”

“You have any juice or anything in the fridge? We normally give him apple juice.”

The mention of apple juice pinched at Eddie’s nerve. He felt briefly panicked and shifted in front of the door—as if protecting the apple juice they did, indeed, have in the fridge.

“We’ve got nothing,” he said. “Go to the store and buy some juice. Get him to Holy Cross if you need to. They’ll take care of him there.”

“Fine,” said Bill Peters. He crossed his arms over his chest so that the milk jug protruded from his armpit. “You’re a liar, then.”

“Leave, please.”

“You’re a liar and you feel bad about it, don’t you? I’ve got a sick kid, and you’re a healthy man. You should be ashamed.”

“I’ve been patient with you,” Eddie said. He felt his voice rise and tried to steady it. “We’re all in this together. Just wait until they come.”

“Your wife is in there, isn’t she? Does she know she’s married to a liar?” He came up close and tried to peer around Eddie.

Eddie caught his arm and turned him around. He pushed his hand into the small of Bill Peters’s back. He hardly weighed anything at all. “Come on,” Eddie said between his teeth.

Bill Peters stiffened as Eddie pushed him toward the screen door. At the top of the steps, he lifted at the man’s collar and shoved. Bill Peters tripped and landed in a pile in the driveway.

He didn’t get up, and he didn’t turn his head to look at Eddie. He reached to pick at one of the desiccated day lilies that lined the asphalt and crushed the crisp flower in his fist. “I know where you live now,” he said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Eddie called down to him.

“You know what it means.”

There was a table on the porch where Eddie and Laura sometimes ate dinner in the twilight, and a thin glass vase where he put flowers. The vase was empty, and Eddie grabbed it by the neck. He let it dangle at his side as he stood at the top of the steps. Bill Peters got up. The jug had fallen into an azalea bush,
and he retrieved it and went walking down the block. When he was a few houses away, he raised his middle finger in the air and held it up behind his head.

Eddie put the vase back on the table and went inside.

“You fought with him?” Laura said.

“He threatened us,” Eddie said, immediately regretting it.

“What did he say?”

“He thought I was holding out on him, is all.”

“That’s not what he said.”

“So if you know, why are you asking?”

“You could have filled up his bottle.”

“Listen to me,” he said. He put both hands on her shoulders. “Don’t give away anything we have in the fridge.”

“It’s not like there are people lining up.”

“Just don’t. Promise me. Let’s just save it until we see what happens.” He went to the refrigerator and took out the bottle of juice. A quarter of it was left and he poured it into a glass.

“Here,” he said. “Drink this.”

“I thought we were saving it.”

“Drink it.”

“All the water’s out, right?” she said. “I only tried the kitchen sink.”

“Please.”

He held the glass out to her and she took it and drank down the juice in big, vocal gulps.

“Okay,” she said, finally breathing.

“We’ll be fine until it comes back on.”

“Wait,” she said. She bunched her thumb and fingers and pressed them to her forehead. “The woman down the street.”

“Who?”

She squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate.

“Mrs. Kasolos,” she said.

“I’ll check on her.”

“We’ll go together.”

“Let me. I feel fine. Which one is it?”

“It’s the one right on the corner. On our side of the street.”

“And
how
do you know her?”

“I’ll go if you don’t want to.”

“She knows you?”

“Eddie …”

He went outside and was buoyed by the sunlight. The sidewalk was as bright as a washed plate. There was no sign of anyone up the street.

He walked to the corner and knocked on Mrs. Kasolos’s door.

Mrs. Kasolos called, “Who is it?” from deep inside.

“It’s Ed Gardner,” he said.

“Who?”

“Laura Gardner’s husband. Eddie Gardner from up the street.”

There was a muffled sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. The dead bolt thunked across.

She opened up a crack and stared at him.

“I’m just checking to see how you’re doing,” he said.

“Your wife thinks old people are cute, doesn’t she? Tell her not to worry.”

“You have things to eat?”

“I’ve been feeding myself for years.”

“I mean, with the power out.”

“I have a pork chop from Thursday that’s still good. It takes me a while, but I’ll eat it.”

“How about to drink?”

“Come in here,” she said.

She opened the door up fully, and Eddie stepped inside. There was a long dining room table padded with thick brown squares that lay askew. A bunch of bananas in a bowl sat on the table. A breakfront held a series of presidential plates in wooden stands, the largest of which had G. W. Bush’s face painted on one half, G. H. W.’s face on the other. More plates—a row of them with blue Chinese designs—had been affixed to the wall.

“Look at that,” she said. Her face soured, and she pointed to the other side of the room, as if identifying where it had been vandalized. Her finger shook as she held it up.