The Age Page 13

  Ian stares into the street. “I’ve been thinking about going to community college.”

  Gerry sniffs at the idea, another flakey scheme he’ll give up on before the week is out. “You didn’t even finish high school.”

  “I finished, I just didn’t graduate. Anyway, I still can, correspondence or whatever.”

  “Community college is for retards.”

  Ian nods. “Got to consider the future, Gerry Mouse.”

  She feels herself sulking but doesn’t know why, something heavy and childish she wishes she could shrug off.

  They sit in silence until Ian nods at the baggie. “If you don’t want that, I’ll take it back.”

  Outside, the night is a galaxy, vast and heavy. The streetlight on the corner douses the sidewalk and grass in metallic light. She stuffs the baggie into her pocket, whispers her thanks, cracks the door open so she can float away.

  Her mom yawns and stretches on the couch. “Out with the boyfriend?”

  Gerry hovers in the archway. On TV, a stone-faced anchor with oil-slick hair reports that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has dialled the Doomsday Clock forward. In the wake of escalating military exercises, the clock now reads 11:57 p.m., the closest to catastrophic destruction since its inception. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Her mom pats the couch. “I’ll bet he’s your boyfriend one day.”

  “Mom.” Gerry draws out the word in protest, flops down to feel her mother envelop her. Warships haul through rough seas, under the domes of cockpits, fighter pilots wait, tubes and masks hanging like tentacled parasites from their faces.

  Her mom’s chin rests a warm pressure against her forehead. “There’s leftovers. Go eat something.” The bossiness smothers and soothes her. She crawls off the couch, drags her socked feet, tries to stop her heart from thumping.

  Randy hunkers at the kitchen table, fork in one hand, a folded newspaper in the other. His clothes, streaked in dried mud, make him look as if parts of him have turned to stone. He stares at the paper. “When your mom asked me to stay for dinner, I assumed we’d be eating together.”

  Gerry opens the fridge, pours a glass of milk. “Yeah, well, she probably ate dinner at dinnertime, like a normal person.”

  He shrugs. “I was busy.” His fork stabs a hopscotch across his plate. He shoves the food into his mouth. The mechanical workings of his jaw remind her of cows chewing grass in a pasture. “Take a look.” The muffled words break from his cheeks.

  She sips her milk as she crosses to the back door.

  Through the glass, a halo of inset lights illuminates the pool liner, a surreal aqua pit, its perimeter braced in jigsawed two-by-fours. The angle gives the illusion of water, and Gerry feels a compulsion to swing open the doors, throw herself in.

  “We pour the concrete tomorrow. Start filling, and that’s it.”

  “It’s dirty.”

  “Filters will get that clean in a few days. It’ll be cold though. I told your mom, solar panels are a pipe-dream in this city.”

  “She’s guessing it’s what my dad has.”

  He scrapes his plate. “Yeah, well.”

  Behind him, her mom leans in the doorway. “I thought you left with the rest of them.” She wraps her cardigan tight.

  Randy stands, carries his plate to the sink, rinses it carefully under the tap, loads it into the dishwasher. Gerry studies them, Randy’s slow measured movements, her mom’s tense eyes, chin tipped away as if she can’t bear to look.

  He straightens, wipes his hand on his jeans, then brushes his palms together. “Maybe you want to watch a movie?”

  Her mom shakes her head. “You’re filthy.

  He flinches, a subtle tic in the muscles of his face. “I brought a change of clothes.”

  Gerry leans on the counter. “I’ll watch a movie.”

  The offer evaporates into dry silence. Randy stares at her mom.

  Flustered, her mom blinks at the floor, shakes her head, kicks her foot at something unseen. “I have to be up early.”

  He raps a knuckle against the counter. “Okay then.” Stalks to the back door, packs up his toolbox, and lets himself out.

  Her mom moves to the dishwasher, opens it, begins rearranging the dishes inside.

  “If you’re going to dump him, just dump him already.” Gerry turns her empty glass, watches the opaque film gather into a drip. “Don’t make him finish the pool.”

  “Geraldine, why do you say such things?” She reaches for Gerry’s glass, then stoops under the sink for a scoop of dishwashing powder, sprinkles the powder carefully inside the washer like she’s decorating a cake. “I’m not going to dump him.”

  “Yes, you are. I can tell by your face. And then what? You’ll be alone.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  “Sure, now. But what about when I’m, you know, gone. Who’s going to take care of you?”

  Her mom chuckles. “Geraldine, I’m your mother. I’ll be, you know, gone long before you.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” But it’s exactly what she means, her fingers feel the air for the weight and shape of Andri’s chocolate box. “I like him. I think he’s nice.”

  Her mom shakes her head as she straightens. “I don’t think that’s true.” The dishwasher burbles. Water sloshes in a lazy rhythm. “But it’s kind of you to say so.” She wipes her hands on a dishtowel, a weary smile on her lips. “I’m going to bed. Come here and give me a kiss before I’m, you know, gone.”

  Gerry lets her mom kiss her, rub her shorn head, squeeze her until her ribs ache.

  The grey light and chilly breeze of predawn flit under Gerry’s bedroom curtains as her mom’s car mutters in the driveway. Gerry falls back into inky, dreamless sleep, a buoyant blackness she clings to, even as a thin, insectlike sound pricks at her. The shudder wakes her, a vibration that rises up through the floor to her mattress, a flicker at the window. Lightning, a spring storm. Beneath the rumble of thunder, a whining electrical note, the neighbour’s power saw, a lazy ambulance winding toward a nuisance emergency. She turns on her side, tries to muffle the noise with her blanket.

  The siren doubles, triples, dips low and reluctant, then spirals up to single sustained note, a fever-pitch of alarm that startles her from sleep, cold with recognition. She throws off the covers and checks her clock radio. A series of faded eights, the power out. She tries the light switch, the stereo.

  Downstairs, she tries the TV. Her thumbs jam the buttons of the remote control, reveal only the reflection of her bare legs in the dark screen. In the kitchen, the emergency radio’s battery case is empty, the cordless phone dead. She sprints upstairs, grabs a pen from her room, prods the lock on the study door until it pings open. Her knees slide on the surface of her father’s desk. As she throws open the window, sirens rush in like water, fill the room with a panicked whir. Up and down the block, neighbours stand in their yards, hands to foreheads, eyes to the sky.

  Beneath the alarm, the unmistakable scrape of speed against atmosphere. She leans out the window. From beyond the fence one neighbour calls to another, “What is that? Is that something?”

  She searches but sees nothing, the sky shielded by a ceiling of muddy cloud.

  The black receiver shakes in her hand. Her fingers fumble with the dial, the translucent plastic wheel dragging out each laboured rotation. No answer at her mom’s lab, Ian and Megan’s phones both busy. Henry’s extension rings back to the station receptionist. Her finger dials zero, pops free to let the tiny window skid its countdown around the face of the phone. “Is something happening?” she asks the operator.

  “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

  “The air raid sirens. Has something happened?” She swipes at her face, swallows to clear her voice.

  “Well, I don’t think so.” The operator’s vowels are deep, cushiony holes. “But I’m in a cubicle, so sometimes it’s snowing outside and I don’t even know.”

  Gerry slams down the phone, holds her knees in her arms. Emergency
broadcast messages, civil evacuation plans, she scolds herself for being gullible enough to believe in warning systems. She tries to remember the articles she’s read, how much time she has, twenty minutes, maybe less.

  Cold air drops around her shoulders. Faraway, thunder buckles. She waits, stares at the sky. Through the dirty overcast, she pictures it again and again, the tip of a warhead breaking through. Her body shakes, a vessel emptying and filling with tears until an arid calm settles over her. She hugs the windowframe.

  The sky darkens to a smoky dusk. Hail, a raucous clatter, pelts the yard and house, comes down on her like icy spittle. Over the roofs across the alley, lightning scores thin white veins. Hail passes to rain. The sirens wind down, a mournful retreat. She sinks back into herself, presses her palms to her eyes, half her T-shirt soaked through, her legs splattered wet.

  The front door opens with a creak and brush. She rushes to the landing and finds herself hovering above a herd of workmen as they stomp their boots. They all notice her at once, crane their necks. Smiles split their faces, except Randy, who frowns. She shivers in her panties and T-shirt, covers her body with her arms.

  “Go on,” Randy says to the men. They shuffle through to the kitchen. Some of them arch back to keep their eyes on her. “You should get dressed,” he says.

  “Did you hear the sirens?” The words stutter out of her.

  “Yeah.” Randy lifts his arm, wipes the rain from his face. “Some big electrical storm moving east. Everything’s haywire.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He squints at her. “About what?”

  “They cut the power.” As if on cue, the house ticks, bristles with static, the fridge and furnace rumble, the foyer lights blink then shine, raucous voices from the TV and radios. The workmen’s applause wafts in from the yard.

  “That’s some party trick,” Randy says.

  She clutches herself to stop shaking, and she’s suddenly aware of her nakedness, his eyes on her, a flush of heat through her stomach.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “All right, then.” He nods and waits, as if giving her the chance to change her mind. When she doesn’t, he reaches for a bundle of tarps tied up with string. “Put some clothes on.”

  As soon as she hears him outside, she rushes to the living room. Remote seized at her chest, she searches for any kind of news. Finds only the plastic buzzer hysteria of game shows, soap opera nurses with powdered cleavage and glossy lips.

  Showered and dressed, she waits for Henry in front of the TV. The noon news covers the storm, offers a tally of lightning strikes and hail dents in cars, no mention of sirens. More worrisome is the international news: an Iraqi Exocet missile has hit a Greek tanker in the Persian Gulf. The flagrant attack by Soviet-backed forces is expected to draw U.S. retaliation. When asked if President Reagan would consider the use of nuclear weapons, a pepper-haired man with a pursed mouth reassures a room full of reporters that the president always considers the use of nuclear weapons. His accent, coarse, wheat-field America soured with a drawl, makes Gerry feel as if she’s choking on dirt.

  When Henry doesn’t arrive by late afternoon, she pulls on her sneakers, rounds the side gate to unlock her bike. The noise from the yard is like rocks being ground through gears. A cement truck idles in the alley. Beside it, a man stands with his shovel near his shoulder, guides sludge as it funnels off. Two men flank a long, cylindrical trough, hold their paddles, urge the sludge along. Randy watches the pour spout, hands on his hips, while beside him, two men bend at the waist like dipping birds, smooth the cement as it drops into the wooden forms. Gerry glances at the sky. A shadow streaks behind the clouds. She follows the shape until it disappears. None of the men look up.

  “What are you doing?” she shouts.

  “What does it look like?” Randy shouts back. “You wanna help?”

  “No.” She stares at the men, disgusted by their greasy ponytails and stoner eyes. The men squint, as if trying to see her from a distance. “Hey!” Gerry waves her arms. “Yeah, you guys. I want to tell you something.”

  “Gerry.” Randy’s voice shimmers under the growl of machinery.

  “They’re starting a war. Do you get what I’m saying? Right now, while you’re doing this, making a stupid hole in the ground that nobody gives a shit about. They’re setting it all up, moving things into place. And maybe you think it’s no big deal, because if it was, someone would tell you, right? But no one’s going to tell you until it’s too fucking late. We’re all going to die. We’re all going to be vaporized. The world is going to shit. So, you don’t need to waste whatever time you have on this.”

  The two men at the trough look at each other. “What’d she say?” one of them yells.

  Gerry clamps her elbows over her ears and screams. The sound plows inside her. When she opens her eyes, the men’s bodies are still, their mindless, automatic hands, continue to work. She waits for the snickers, their jeers, but instead they’re silent, captive. “I already have a swimming pool, did he tell you that?” She points an accusing finger at Randy. “I have a swimming pool at my dad’s.” The word crumbles in her throat.

  She blinks. Through a haze of tears, she sees Randy’s body lumber toward her. She reaches for her bike, pushes off and away.

  The shouting carries out into Megan’s backyard. In the kitchen, Michelle and Andri sit squeezed together at the far side of the table, as if there’s a shortage of space in the empty room. Andri stares at his coffee mug. His parka rides up behind his head. From the bedroom, Megan’s voice is shrill and incoherent, Ian’s tone flat and hard.

  “What’s going on?”

  Andri shrugs. “Lovers’ quarrel.”

  Michelle straightens herself in her seat. “She’s upset about Clem.”

  “Is he okay?” Gerry steps into the hall, leans around the doorframe. Clem watches Gilligan’s Island, hands folded on his lap, feet crossed at the ankles, a smile on his face.

  “He is fine. She.” Andri teeters his palm in the air. “She is thinking maybe Clem will stay here, not go to the home.”

  “Cool.” Gerry sits down across from them.

  “Not cool. Imprudent. The future is too uncertain.”

  “For us and Megan, he means, not for you.” Michelle’s face is uneasy, a soft crush of skin between her eyebrows.

  “Maybe for you too, now.” Andri shrugs. “If Clem is in an institution, someone takes care of him no matter what.”

  She had only heard them call it a home before. The word institution jars her, as if they’re sending Clem back to prison. “Where will Megan go?”

  Michelle smiles. “Clem has a lot of fans. Megan can go underground. They’ll take care of her.”

  “What are you guys gonna do?”

  Andri smiles. “It’s better to know nothing. In case you get arrested. We disappear, poof.“ His hand waves an invisible wand.

  “And Ian?”

  Michelle looks toward the bedroom door, the shouting now a push and pull of high and low murmurs. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll go wherever Megan goes, right?”

  Andri nods.

  Pair by pair, the future forms slowly. Gerry will be left behind like Clem. “Maybe I could go with Megan, or you guys?”

  “Nobody needs a kidnapping charge. We have to leave, you have to stay,” an edge to Andri’s voice, as if he’s scolding her for a mistake she hasn’t yet made. His mistrust annoys her, then makes her feel strangely guilty. Behind her, the bedroom door opens. Ian steps out. Megan sits on Clem’s bed, her face spongy. She snorts loud and wet as she holds her forearm to her nose, glowers at Gerry. “What are you staring at?”

  “I’d visit him all the time.” Gerry offers it as a pledge, a way for Megan to feel better about her decision.

  Megan kicks the door with her bare foot. The slam judders through the house.

  “Cut that out!” Clem shouts from the living room.

  Michelle pushes herself up to standing, shuffles to t
he bedroom, opens the door and slips inside.

  “Well?” Andri says.

  Ian lingers in the unlit hallway. “Get ready for her to call it off.”

  Andri sniffs in disgust.

  “We’ll take Clem on Friday. If she doesn’t want to go through with it, we’ll pick him up again.” Ian glances at Gerry. “I’m gonna need help with him.”

  She shakes her head. “She doesn’t want my help.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Gerry, can you just grow up for five bloody minutes?” His temper catches her off guard.

  “Okay already.”

  “Everything is bad news.” Andri pats his jacket until he finds his cigarettes. “Time for some fresh air.”

  When Ian doesn’t follow but stands rooted, staring at the bedroom door, Gerry scrambles out of her chair to join Andri on the back porch. She reaches into her pocket and slips a menthol from the pack, hopes the gesture looks like a tired habit. She holds the cigarette for Andri to light.

  Andri shakes his head as he flicks a match against his thumbnail, snaps a flame into the air, and brings it to her face. “A child shouldn’t smoke.”

  “Why are you all being so mean to me?”

  “This isn’t mean, this is adult life, adult problems. You’d like to go back to play-school?”

  She grinds her sneaker against a crumbling board, watches debris fall into the well of the basement stairs. She’d expected more from them, at least gratitude. “If you guys don’t want me around, then fine, I’m gone. Kiss your building access goodbye.”

  “You know, ego is a human nuisance.” Andri holds his stubby cigarette in his lips. “You and Megan have that in common.” His hands feel out the wooden porch rail, shake it. The porch shifts under her feet, the stairs rattle. “Do it or don’t do it. No one is going to beg you. No one is going to force you. Something like this, just imagining it brings out weakness.”

  “I’m not weak.”

  “We are all weak.” He squints at the horizon, then points. Far away, an airplane glides a slow, downward trajectory, aims for the airport across the river. “You’ve been watching the news?”