Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle (23 page)

I leave before he can change his mind. I make it around the building, through the front door, and halfway up the stairs before I begin to lose my nerve. I hear muffled voices, low and unintelligible and serious. I feel a nauseating plunge in my stomach. What if they're sitting there—Birdie and Kimberly and Colby and Harp—in calm anticipation of our return? What will it be like for them when I enter, gray-faced and alone, blood-soaked, clutching Robbie's rifle?

I open the door and the faces turn. Harp pushes through a crowd of people, bounds forward, her face alight with triumph, but time moves weirdly, like a film slowed down interminably, lingering on each excruciating frame. I see her take in the sight of me. Happiness into horror. People speak not in words but tones: confusion, alarm, panic. All of it slurred, incoherent. Somebody—Colby—pushes past, out the door. Faces in an awful flash: Amanda, Birdie, Frankie, Daisy, Gallifrey. Daisy and Gallifrey? From the New Orphans? I'm dizzy, seeing things. Harp catches my arm. A figure moves through the crowd then—tall and curvy and determined, her black curls twisted on the top of her head in a tight bun, her lips pursed and frowning. She's at once familiar and completely wrong; my brain is broken, overlaying images of the present with what has happened in the past, putting her here in Los Angeles when she ought to be in South Dakota, still tearfully waving us goodbye. Across the figure's chest, wrapped in a soft blue blanket, is—of all things—a sleeping baby. I look up from the baby into the face of Edie Trammell, his mother, in a kind of helpless wonder.

“Oh my goodness, Vivian,” she says in her warm voice, reaching out to help Harp support me. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, my God, Edie?”

Together Harp and Edie usher me to a chair, lowering me carefully into it. My throat is dry and her name comes out raspy. Edie smiles, apologetic and slightly bewildered, like the host of a surprise party gone horribly wrong.

“Is any of this blood yours?” Harp demands, examining my hands, my chest, everywhere Robbie's blood has soaked. I look down at my own body, hardly recognizing it.

“Robbie.”

I don't have to explain further, because Diego walks through the door then, Robbie limp in his arms. He looks particularly small this way. At the sight of him, Kimberly shouts and someone starts crying; I hear Birdie say to herself in a quiet, horrified voice: “No.” It is different from when Suzy and Karen were killed—I don't know why, exactly. Because he was thirteen, and because Suzy and Karen are already gone. Robbie's death is like an awful punctuation mark; it reminds us all that we were already grieving. Diego brings Robbie's body into one of the side bedrooms, while Winnie, who has followed him inside, explains in a hushed voice what happened. I bend forward, put my head between my knees—I can't listen to it.

I feel a hand on the back of my neck. Harp. She keeps it there the whole time, a warm presence on my skin that feels like home.

When I finally pull myself upright, the room is half empty—most of the militia has filtered into the room where Robbie lies. Of those who remain, I pick out faces I recognize from Keystone: Estefan, sharp cheekbones and shaved head, who'd promised Edie he'd help deliver her baby; Daisy, honey-colored hair pulled into a messy ponytail, eyes rimmed pink; Kanye, tall and broad-shouldered, bouncing a restless knee; Eleanor, with her pixie haircut, frowning in a corner. But there are others, too, people I've never seen before—a huddle of men and women by the kitchen window, older than the majority of us, all of them in identical pale gray uniforms. They look twitchy, uncomfortable. Gallifrey stands with them, murmuring things I can't hear.

“Who are they?”

“Well . . .” Harp sounds nervous. “I don't know how to do this now. But we have some good news. Some very good news.” She pauses. “Actually, maybe Edie should tell you. I mean”—she catches herself—“Umaymah. She goes by Umaymah now.”

“Oh, Harpreet!” exclaims the girl formerly known as Edie, beaming. “You remembered! But of course you and Vivian can call me whatever you like! We've known each other so long.”

Harp has that frazzled look I know from our weeks on the road with Edie—our former classmate's open-hearted sincerity completely unnerves her. But I watch as she drags a chair over, and note something strange about her manner—something careful and formal. An awed respect I've never seen Harp extend to anyone. Edie bows to thank her, sinking into the chair with an almost regal grace. The New Orphans crowd around her, clustering by her feet like she's about to tell them a bedtime story. I glance at the strangers in the kitchen—they watch us with the same dazed expression. Edie pauses to gaze at the baby strapped to her chest, smiles sleepily at him, then looks up at me with wide, soft eyes.

“Six weeks old. I named him Naveen. Can you believe it?”

“He's beautiful,” I tell her.

“Thank you. My heart breaks for that boy they brought in here. Robbie, you said? Do you think anyone would mind if I went in and said a prayer for him later on?”

I shake my head. Who is there to object? We're his only family, and as far as I'm concerned, the prayers of Edie Trammell are the only ones to which God, if such a thing exists, ought to listen. Edie turns, and says, “Would someone be so good as to bring up my prayer book?”

Eleanor's the first to her feet, though all the Orphans make an attempt. I glance at Harp, but she stares intently at the group in the kitchen.

“So much has happened these last two months!” Edie exclaims, and the Orphans nod, like this is sage wisdom. “I hardly know where to begin. The last time we saw you, you were driving to Salt Lake City. And, of course, we know what happened next, because we've been reading the blog. We love it, Harp—such an achievement. But you aren't the only busy ones. We've had quite a lot going on ourselves. I'm not sure if you saw, oh, about a month and a half ago now, our official ‘truce' with the Church of America?”

Somewhere in the group of Orphans, there's a hiss, then giggles; Edie gives no sign that she's heard except a slight, indulgent smile—so maternal it gives me chills.

“We were . . . surprised by that. To put it lightly. We understood Goliath had no interest in violence, the way other branches of the Orphans did, but still we assumed he wished to be outside the influence of the Church. When we approached him with our concerns, he was patient at first—but he became snide: ‘Where do you think money comes from? None of you have any idea how to get by in the real world!' And so on. Once we began to understand what he was really about, there seemed to be nothing left to do but . . .” Edie brings her palms together, as if in prayer, then pushes them apart. “Our differences were too fundamental to overcome. Goliath was furious to find we were not the docile followers he'd taken us for. He had no idea we were more than just faithful bodies.”

“He kicked you out of Keystone,” Harp says, disgusted.

But Edie looks surprised. “Kicked
us
out? Oh, no. As a group, we decided Goliath's needs were no longer being served by the New Orphans organization. We invited him to seek residence elsewhere. From what we can tell, he hasn't made it far—he comes to the gates every now and then, extremely addled, begging us to take him back. But actions,” she says sadly, “have consequences. Goliath never understood that.”

“What about the Church?” I ask in the silence that follows. “They didn't mind that you sent their youth leader packing?”

“They have no idea,” Edie says sweetly. “I've been personally answering all Goliath's correspondence, as him, since he left us. I know it's dishonest, but . . . you know I still consider myself a Christian, Vivian? I really, truly do. And I think that's what gives me the energy to work as hard as I have against the Church of America. Because they stand for many things, but the last thing they stand for—the absolute last thing—is Christ.”

Naveen makes a soft, mewling noise, and Edie busies herself rocking him back to sleep. Eleanor bursts through the door, clutching a large scrapbook to her chest like it's a precious relic; she pushes through the Orphans to take the spot directly at Edie's feet. I see Harp's eyebrows rise. Before we left her in South Dakota, I'd taken comfort in Edie's hold over the New Orphans; I knew their respect would keep her safe. Now, watching them huddle closer, I realize I underestimated their affection. I thought they found in her a warm, calming presence; I didn't anticipate they'd tap into some ancient store of strength in her, that she'd find it in herself to lead them.

I catch Gallifrey's eye and he smiles, almost as if he can read my thoughts. “Before Umaymah came to us, we thought we were free. We thought Goliath had given us a home outside the rule of the Church of America. We never realized what we truly lacked: Love. True liberty. Umaymah gives us all these things and more. She's unshackled us.”

“Thank you, Umaymah,” the Orphans exclaim in perfect unison.

“It was these two who brought me to you,” Edie replies. “Without Vivian and Harp, our paths would have never crossed.”

“Thank you, Vivian and Harp!”

In other circumstances, it would maybe be funny—all-knowing Edie, the Orphans clutching the hem of the long skirt she still wears from her Believer days. But I'm tired, and the nightmarish quality of Robbie's death has started to fade. It is starkly real now. Plus I'm still distracted by the strangers in the kitchen, keeping a disoriented distance from us.

“I still don't understand . . . what are you doing
here?
And who are they?” I gesture to the group and they shrink back from my gaze, like I've shone a blinding light upon them.

“Well, that's just it.” Edie beckons brightly to them, and they inch forward slightly. “They're the whole point of everything, aren't they? They're the miracle, Viv. They're the ones who are going to change our world.” She smiles at me encouragingly, like I'm a child on the verge of solving some elaborate math problem.

And then Harp says simply, “They were Raptured, Vivian.”

As the others begin to drift back into the room, stunned and sniffling, Edie tells us a story. In another life, or told by another person, I might refuse to believe it. But Edie's the one telling the story—recent shifts in moral rectitude notwithstanding, she would not lie. She begins with the way they solved it.

Under her leadership and emboldened by Goliath's betrayal, the New Orphans committed themselves to actively undermining the Church of America however possible. They held a virtual conference with Orphans across the country and united each chapter under a common goal: ours. Edie knew from the blog that Harp wanted to find the missing Raptured; she used the money the Church corporation thought they were paying Goliath to send her Orphans to the twelve cities Harp's blog followers had cited. The local chapters assisted in the investigation. They had no idea what they were looking for or where they would find it. They only knew Edie wanted them to look. The New Orphans ingratiated themselves with Believers, listened to rumors, pursued every dead end. Even modest Edie doesn't hesitate to tell us it was hard work. The Believers insisted that the missing had been saved, that they were in heaven now. Non-Believers clung to a wide range of theories, as Harp and I already knew—alien abduction and spontaneous combustion. Loyal readers of Harp's blog were positive the missing three thousand had died like the faithful in Point Reyes, like my dad. Still the Orphans kept searching.

It was Kanye who found the link that brought this group of missing Raptured to us—these twelve men and women, whom Gallifrey dutifully ushers closer at Edie's command, all of them looking frightened and faintly embarrassed. In Santa Fe, Kanye listened sympathetically as a left-behind widow told him of her late husband—a devout Believer, he'd proudly held a job at the Church of America textile factory outside the city, down in the desert. It was a good job that paid well, but right before the Rapture there were massive layoffs. Redundancy, the Church of America said, and the widow admitted they must have been right, because even with the layoffs it seemed like the factory was as effective as ever—they were the number one source of Church of America brand women's clothing, one of the corporation's most profitable ventures. But the whole community was affected. Some were lucky enough to go quickly to their rewards with the Rapture, but others, like this woman's husband, couldn't bear the agony of being abandoned by both his Church and his God. He killed himself.

When Kanye reported back to Edie, Edie had them do a simple Internet search: the Church corporation proudly boasted their twelve flagship manufacturing plants across the nation—based in exactly the twelve cities Harp's blog followers had named. Edie had a feeling. A new mother of only a few weeks, she led the rest of the Orphans to Santa Fe. Through means that Edie is not quite clear on, and about which nobody pushes her to elaborate, the Orphans located the factory and made it past the Peacemakers. They found a large workforce there, but something was wrong. The workers were hungry, confused, dead on their feet. They skittered away in fear when Edie approached them. She tried to convince them to escape, to come with her; she promised she'd protect them, but only a handful—the group gathered with us—consented to go. Edie takes a long breath then and looks at them. As if she's been coached, a young woman steps out of the anonymity of the group and into our line of sight. Edie introduces her as Joanna.

“I don't know how to . . .” Joanna's voice is tentative, but strangely loud, like she's trying to speak over us. But we're silent, shocked, waiting for her to continue. “I'm from Rhode Island, originally. My family is not religious. That was never important to them. They were content not to know the how or the why, and that worked for them, but never for me. The last few years had been hard for me, and then . . . then I found Frick. Everything he said made sense, and I believed. And I pushed the Non-Believers in my life away—my parents, my friends. I thought it didn't matter, because my day was coming; I knew I'd be embraced by God; I knew I'd be saved.