Salvation City (9 page)

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Authors: Sigrid Nunez

BOOK: Salvation City
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And it wasn’t that he’d had a bad time. Camp
was
awesome. The counselors were much better than teachers at breaking up cliques and keeping bullies in line, and in two weeks he’d gone from being a spastic swimmer to an almost smooth one.
It wasn’t exactly that he was homesick, either. But never having been away from his parents before, he was unprepared for what it would mean to miss them. Even before the end of the first week, he was spending at least part of each day in agony. He kept it secret, of course; he didn’t want to look like a baby, and homesick kids were often teased or avoided.
It was worse at night, when, lying on his cot in the pitch dark with nothing to distract him, his longing bloomed into a kind of insanity. For the first time in his life he had trouble sleeping. He could not shake the fear that something would stop his parents from coming home. Things happened, didn’t they? Planes got hijacked. Buildings caught fire . . .
He dreamed that they had returned and had brought a strange boy with them. An ordinary-looking innocent-seeming little boy who wanted to be Cole’s friend. But in the dark world of the dream, Cole knew without a doubt that the boy’s appearance spelled his own doom. But you
asked
for a brother, his parents kept saying. Perplexed; annoyed.
And then, at last, their ecstatic reunion, it, too, like something out of a dream—but how could something that makes you so happy also make you feel like you were being beat up?
This was love, but it was also terror, and Cole didn’t know what to make of it.
And now, he did not like to remember that time. Because even though it was about something happy, something good, it had become only painful to remember. And that particular day in school it had been too much to bear. Had it happened in the middle of a lesson, he would have had some major explaining to do. But mindfulness training was known to make some kids emo, and Cole’s excuse, that he absolutely had to get to the bathroom, no time to raise his hand, was accepted without comment.
And it wasn’t the teacher but Cole himself who sternly warned:
Don’t you ever let that happen again.
His mother was right. He was ashamed. He was totally ashamed even to have such feelings, let alone have them found out.
 
 
 
Later, when he was in the hospital, a volunteer grief counselor would come to see him. She took him out to the courtyard, where roses the size of melons were in bloom.
“What I’d like you to do for me,” she said, “is to think back to a time when you and your mom and dad were all very happy, and describe that time for me.” The woman’s name was Eden. She was not a comforting sight. She had hooded eyes and deep dark lines running down her cheeks as if she had wept acid. They sat on a bench near a small fountain whose gurgle sounded like birdsong. There was real birdsong, too, and it almost hurt his ears, it was so shrill and excited. The day was cloudy. He had not been outdoors in weeks and he was sharply aware of the light and the air, almost as if he were experiencing them for the first time. Though he was well covered up, he felt naked. The least breeze made him shiver. The smell of the roses was strong, almost sickening, like the perfume of old ladies.
He didn’t want to talk about the happy time, and so he invented something, some story that he then forgot almost immediately. But he would remember later how he’d gone on and on, dragging the fake story out, and how Eden had listened, watching him curiously, not interrupting until he finally stopped talking. Then she made no comment except to thank him for sharing. He had no idea if she knew that he’d lied. But it seemed to him that as she listened her mouth had tensed and something like dislike had crept into her face.
COUGH, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH.
It followed you everywhere, like footsteps. But then came worse.
It was as if behind the bedroom door Cole’s father had split into several different people who could be heard at different times chattering, arguing, laughing, and once even singing with one another. Cole listened, his blood running cold.
“Get out, get out, you spider cunt! I’ll kill you, Serena!”
Cole nearly collided with his mother as they both ran out into the hall. There was no color in her face. “Dad doesn’t know what he’s saying.” But he kept saying it, over and over.
Once, he found her slumped on the landing with her legs tucked under her and her hands over her ears. Behind the door his father was calling, “Mom! Mom!”
Fever dream, his mother explained. “He’s back in his childhood.”
Yes. But why did he sound so scared?
Middle of the night. Cole woke to hear his parents talking. To his surprise, the noise (why were they being so loud?) came not from their room down the hall but from downstairs.
So his father’s fever must have broken. He was probably in the kitchen, getting something to eat. He’d be starving, of course; he’d eaten hardly anything this past week. Cole wanted to see him! He wanted to go down and join his parents—but not if they were fighting. Wait—how could they already be fighting? And where did his father get the strength to raise his voice? Had his mother picked now of all times to announce that she was leaving? This, Cole could not believe. The only explanation was that Cole was still asleep; he was dreaming . . .
 
 
 
Morning. He found his mother in the kitchen, alone. She was sitting at the table, her laptop open in front of her. Instead of her bathrobe she was wearing her winter coat. His father wasn’t there. He wasn’t upstairs in bed, either. The door to his room had been wide open when Cole passed on his way down.
Before he could form the question, his mother spoke. “I’m sorry,” was all she said.
Cole’s head started jerking helplessly from side to side, as if someone were taking swings at him. The pounding in his ears was so fierce it felt like a sudden loss of hearing.
“But I heard him last night—”
“Don’t shout,” she whispered. She stood up and embraced him. They staggered together, gripping each other for support, a macabre little waltz. She let go of him then and coaxed him down onto a chair, saying, “Sit, sit, sit.” They were both crying.
She went to the fridge and took out a bottle of water. She took a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water and carried it to the table and set it in front of him. Every movement careful and slow, as if even the least gave her pain.
Cole stared at the water as if he had no idea what it was.
She gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “I have to lie down before I pass out.” Her voice was a croak; her eyes looked as if someone had tried to scratch them out. “I’ve been up all night.”
He wanted to help her. He picked up the glass and tried to give it to her but she waved it away.
She didn’t want to climb the stairs. Without taking off her coat she stretched out on the living room couch, resting her heels on one of the arms so that her feet were higher than her head. Cole knelt on the floor beside her. He sucked in his lips to stop them from trembling.
It wasn’t his father he’d heard, she said. His father had been unconscious.
“He needed to get to a hospital, but I knew I’d never get an ambulance to come here.” She had run out into the street and started knocking on doors. Two houses down lived a retired widower—the owner of the chocolate Lab that sometimes roamed the neighborhood—who’d agreed to come back with her.
“I wanted him to help me carry Dad to the car. He tried talking me out of it. He said the hospital wouldn’t be able to do anything. But I wouldn’t listen. I hung on to his arm, I begged him until he gave in.”
“Why didn’t you wake
me
, Mom?”
“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know.” She looked at him imploringly. “I wasn’t sure, I didn’t think it would help if you—yes, maybe I should have woken you. Can you understand why I didn’t think so at the time?”
Cole nodded, but inside he was screaming. He remembered waking up to the noise and how he’d decided against going downstairs. Mistake! Mistake!
The man wouldn’t go with her to the hospital, she said. Suddenly she began to sob. “Why did we come here? We never should have come!” She sat up and gazed around the room with a look of terror. “We never should have come!” She was sobbing so hard Cole could barely make out the words.
He said nothing. He felt utterly helpless, under a spell, without the power even to put his arms around her. How would they live? How would they live without his father?
His mother had let herself fall back. She was still sobbing, but quietly, and Cole let her be. Minutes passed—he had no idea how many—and he saw her fall asleep, or pass out. A river of fear ran through him. He didn’t want to be alone.
“Mom!”
Her eyes flew open. For an instant she looked blind.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t stay awake anymore.”
Cole thought again of that old movie, the one where falling asleep meant worse than death. The one whose hero had the same name as his father.
“Let me sleep just a little,” she slurred, eyes closing again.
He was alone.
He got up and drifted back into the kitchen. He took a sip of water from the glass sitting on the table and poured the rest down the sink. How clean the kitchen was, all neat and shiny. The whole house was like that. It was one of his mother’s ways of dealing with stress. If my hands are busy I’m not wringing them, she said. At other times, the house was a mess.
He sat down at her laptop and tapped the touchpad.
Addy, the worst has happened. Miles had a heart attack and died last night. I’ve been trying to call you but can never get through. I’m writing now mostly just for something to do until Cole wakes up. I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. I swore to him Miles was going to get over the flu, and technically he didn’t die of the flu, though I was told the attack was probably triggered by inflammation caused by the virus. I had to ask a stranger to help me get Miles to the hospital. He kept telling me it wouldn’t do any good and I knew he was right, but if Miles was past saving I was determined at least to get his body out of the house. I didn’t want to be like all those poor people forced to live with their dead or secretly dump them somewhere. What will happen to his body now I don’t know, I suppose it will be burned, or buried in some mass grave. My god, I can’t believe I just wrote that. I feel like a big part of me still hasn’t taken it in.
I’m not sure how much Miles understood what was happening, either. His last lucid moment was around noon two days ago, when for a little while he was able to breathe a bit more freely and he could talk. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, We blew it, baby. I still don’t know what he meant. I thought he might have been talking about us separating, but it’s possible he was talking about the flu and how we’d blown our chance to get away. He may not have realized there was nowhere to go. But these were his last words to me, and I will never get over that. I can’t bear to think of him dying under the weight of such a heavy regret. And it was the first time he called me baby in such a long time.
But I can’t let myself think like this right now or I’ll go mad. I’ve got to think about Cole. And now that I’ve been to the hospital and seen with my own eyes what it’s like, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to do something. I’ve made up my mind to volunteer at the clinic they’ve set up at the college, at least for a few hours a day. It will mean leaving Cole home by himself but I think he’ll understand. Besides, if I’m around him all the time it just gets on his nerves. Poor Cole. When I think of all the trouble we’ve been having with him, how badly he’s doing in school and how cold and sullen he’s gotten with me, and now he’s even smoking on the sly—how small all these problems seem now. Can you imagine losing Mom or Dad when we were that age, and without even being able to say good-bye?

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