The Age Read online

  Gerry nods, keeps her eye on the plane as it glints low in the sky, drops behind a stand of treetops.

  “Those men are weak too. It’s not enough to build bombs, to collect them, they are desperate to play with them.” His cigarette bounces on the porch. He stamps it with his boot, kicks the butt into the yard. “Anyway, we will be counted before we are blown to dust.” He rests on his elbows. “But maybe you don’t want to be counted?”

  Flinty smoke jabs at the corner of her eye. “I do so.”

  “Then why this childish nonsense?”

  She slumps on the rail, her body tired, her mouth tasting like ashy toothpaste. She rubs the lit end of her cigarette into the peeling paint, leaves a charred smudge. “I just want Megan to like me.”

  Andri rolls his eyes. “Put your head into what we are doing. She will honour Clem and yet she must leave him behind. It’s painful for her.”

  “So, she can stay here with him. We don’t need her at the march.”

  “You think she wants to just sit at home and watch this on TV?” Andri shakes his head. “Show her a little respect.”

  “What about me?”

  “What about you?” He nods at her. “What are you sacrificing?”

  She imagines talking to her father through Plexiglas, his features scratched out and blurred by the battered window, his voice crackling and distorted out as she holds the sticky receiver to her ear. “I might go to jail.”

  Andri smiles, raises his fists in his Rocky pose, dodges back and forth to fake her out. He sends a slow-motion right to her jaw. His knuckles graze her skin. She turns her face to take it.

  “Now, jail,” he says. “Jail would make you my hero.”

  When they get back inside, Michelle is sitting at the kitchen table. “She’s resting,” her voice, the even hush of motherhood. Andri and Ian grab beers from the fridge. Andri points at her. “After the news, we rehearse.”

  Gerry wants to join them in the living room, but Michelle holds her hand. “Keep me company.”

  They sit across the table from each other in silence. Gerry catches herself listening for sounds from Megan’s bedroom, wonders if Michelle is doing the same.

  “You shouldn’t be scared,” Michelle says finally, a smile on her face as she braces the table to stand. “They make it sound worse than it is.”

  “I’m not scared.” From the living room, jet engines whine, a reporter shouts over the noise. Gerry pictures him at an airfield, wind battering the sock of his microphone. The sound shifts to shutter clicks, dog-piled voices, muttered response, a press conference. Gerry smiles at Michelle.

  “You can go watch, you know,” Michelle says.

  She feels bad for Michelle, so easygoing that she hardly seems to matter. “It’s okay.”

  Michelle’s face has become round and babyish, a projection of the life inside her. Her blue-green eyes remind Gerry of ocean water. “Do you want to see the letter?” Michelle lowers herself into the chair beside Gerry, digs in the pocket of her dress for a folded sheet of paper. Gerry opens it carefully. On the page, neat lines of typewritten words:

  THIS DETONATION IS AN ACT OF RADICAL PEACE, AN ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WAR-HUNGRY IN A LANGUAGE THEY UNDERSTAND, AN EFFORT TO ILLUSTRATE, FOR THE COMPLACENT, PRIVILEGED, AND UNCONSCIOUS, WHAT DISTANT ABSTRACTIONS LIKE BOMB, MISSILE, CONFLICT, AND WAR REALLY MEAN. WE REGRET THE NECESSARY DAMAGE TO THE REVENUE BUILDING. THIS DAMAGE IS AN INFINITESIMAL FRACTION OF THE DESTRUCTION CAPABILITY OF EVEN THE SMALLEST NUCLEAR WEAPON. TAX DOLLARS BUILD WEAPONS OF ANNIHILATION. LET THIS BOMBSITE SERVE AS A WARNING TO EVERY CITIZEN NOT ACTIVELY PRESSURING THEIR GOVERNMENT TO DISARM. YOU, THROUGH APATHY AND NON-ACTION, ARE THE WARLORDS.

  The letter is anonymous, no signatures, no group name. “It goes to all the newspapers. Through the mail. Once everything’s, you know, happened. Do you like the writing?”

  Gerry nods, thinks of how the cover story will look to the media, how it transforms her into a delinquent stupid enough to take money from a stranger in exchange for breaking into a building and leaving behind a gift. “No one will know we were together.”

  Michelle smiles. “Cool, right?”

  Andri strides past them to the fridge, bends down into its light, then stands with two beers cradled at his chest. “Stop flashing that thing around.”

  Michelle slips the letter back into her dress.

  “It’s really good writing,” Gerry says in her defence.

  Andri grunts. “Words, words, words. The action says all we need to say.”

  Michelle waits for him to leave, then leans close to Gerry. “He doesn’t believe people will change. They just need a chance. That’s what we’re giving them, a chance to wake up. Everything will change. Decades from now, people will look back on this time and shake their heads. The Dark Ages.” She smooths her hand over her pocket. Her eyes widen and she grabs Gerry’s wrist. “Did you hear the sirens?”

  Gerry’s fingers link into Michelle’s with relief.

  Michelle’s palm squeezes a damp pulse. “I just burst into tears. I didn’t want it to happen before the baby was born, you know? Andri knew it was nothing. He kept telling me to calm down, that I was overreacting.” Michelle rubs at her belly. She blinks and her eyelashes glisten.

  Gerry stares at the dome of Michelle’s stomach. “There was no one home at my house. The power was out. I tried to phone, but no one–” Her mind grapples with the question of where a baby would go if the world ended before it was born, a puzzle that turns her thinking inside out, panics her with a need to touch Michelle, to feel the baby alive.

  Michelle seems to read her mind. “Go ahead.”

  Gerry presses her hand flat against the side of Michelle’s belly. Through her dress, the surface is firm, but pliant, impossibly warm. Gerry’s hand travels, skims patches of tightness and tensing muscle as Michelle shifts in her seat. The nub of her belly button startles Gerry, reminds her she’s touching another woman’s body. She thinks to pull away when something nudges her, a small lump that forces her palm into a cup. From the universe of Michelle’s body, an alien creature pushes out, reaches into their world.

  “It’s a foot.” Michelle’s words whispered like the final flourish of a master magician.

  Gerry giggles with delight.

  WHEN HENRY FAILS TO APPEAR the next morning, Gerry calls the station. The receptionist doesn’t expect him until later in the afternoon. Gerry spends the day in her bedroom, window open to vent the pot smoke, scrapbook splayed on her bed, stereo loud enough to drown out Randy’s crew. At four, she rides to the station, body numb from the waist down. The high glides her bike along cushioned roads, bounces it over inner-tube curbs. Cars and houses soften at their edges like plasticine. The Jell-O glow of traffic lights triggers a rush of saliva, ignites a craving for warm, sugary batter, a tower of pancakes. She stops at the Nuffy’s Donuts, buys a half-dozen honey dip fresh from the fryer, stuffs them into her mouth. Each one disappears to air as she swallows.

  At the station, Gerry locks her bike to the building’s saggy chain-link fence. But before she can make it into the newsroom, the receptionist jabs her pen toward the door, whispers, “Parking lot.”

  In the far corner, Henry’s car idles. Exhaust billows from the tailpipe as he revs the engine. Gerry approaches the car and a security lamp blinks on above her, casts a cone of amber light in the building’s shade.

  Henry sits with his hands on the wheel, face masked in on-air makeup. A ruffle of protective Kleenex over his shirt collar, limp petals, his face a scowling flower. She taps the passenger-side window. The electric lock thumps inside the door. As she opens it, radio woodwinds pipe a depressing tune. She climbs in. “Why are you out here?”

  “A man’s car is his castle.”

  “I think that’s his home.”

  “Premonitory. That’s the word for what you just said. Look it up.”

  “I can guess what it means.” The car’s heat fogs the windshield. Her window glitters with tiny prisms
of condensation. She touches a drop and draws it along, watches the beads of water race one another down the glass. “How did the court thing go?”

  Henry examines his face in the rear-view, turns his chin back and forth. “The female co-anchor starts tonight, we’re leading with a cat story. If that’s not the end of days, I don’t know what is.” He clears his throat, a low, guttural roll. “I have to sell the apartment.”

  “She has the house.”

  “Mortgaged to pay the first Mrs. Cross. Mortgaged again to pay the second Mrs. Cross. The third Mrs. Cross doesn’t like to share.”

  His black mood begins to smother her high. “Remember the alimony.” She says it to cheer herself as much as him.

  Henry winces. “That joke is going to bury me.” He settles his head against the headrest, a corner of tissue stuck to his chin. “She looked so beautiful.” He sighs. “I don’t know how long I’m supposed to keep fighting. Three wives and I’ve got nothing left. How the heck does a man win at this thing?”

  “Maybe you need a better lawyer.”

  “You mean, a lawyer.”

  “Oh.” The security light flickers off and she blinks in shadow. “You should have asked my dad about Larry Walsh.”

  Henry runs a thumb over the lines in his forehead, nods. “Have you ever done something you’re ashamed of?”

  “I don’t think I’ve done anything I am proud of. Does that count?” She wonders if now would be a good time to let the plan slip out, a slow, careless scatter of clues to make him curious, urge him out of his funk. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “You do the right thing for the wrong reasons, the wrong thing for the right reasons, who can make sense of it all.” The thunk-k-thunk of the electric lock vibrates against her arm as Henry plays with the switch. “Which do you think is worse?”

  Gerry shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “I am intimately acquainted with one Larry Walsh, Esquire.” He opens and closes his mouth as he turns his head from side to side, the way a fish might give a slow-motion refusal. “Plugged ears. That ever happen to you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He frowns, chin low. “The esteemed and expensive Mr. Walsh represented my first two wives. I credit him with two-thirds of my misery. A man can’t help but have enemies, and as soon as he does, that’s the end of a good night’s sleep.”

  “Maybe if you ask my dad–”

  He slumps back in his seat and groans as if he’s bored with the conversation. The tissues ripple with his breath. “The problem with enemies is that once you start fighting, you can never stop, even when you can’t remember why you’re fighting. You have to keep going, and never give in, no matter what. It’s exhausting.”

  “What I mean is, maybe my dad knows a different lawyer.”

  “There’s something I have to tell you. It’s not good news. And yes, I should have told you sooner.”

  The change in his voice catches her by surprise. “Okay.”

  He fiddles with the turn signal, wiggles it back and forth, up and down. Headlights spray through the wire fence. “To finish life as a disappointment to oneself, that is a black hole beyond any man’s reckoning. Who said that?”

  “Shakespeare?”

  “I did. Will you remember?”

  The set of his face worries her, a stiffness in his orange cheeks. “I’ll try.”

  His foot taps the gas pedal, shave-and-a-haircut, then stops. He shifts closer to her, leans in over the gearshift, dips his head, so that his face hovers slightly lower than hers. “Give me your hand.”

  She edges back, hopes he doesn’t notice. She can smell his glazed cologne and underneath it, the sour of his skin. Her mind jumbles with plotlines from bad movies of the week, unshaven uncles and handymen who corner teenaged girls, unbuckle their belts as they whisper phony reassurances. “Why?”

  “Just. Come on.” He bobs his head like a horse.

  She offers her hand, then hesitates, thinks to tuck it safely under her leg. Before she can withdraw, he catches her fingers, jams them into his hair. Touching his scalp makes her dizzy, queasiness rising like slippery yolk behind her eyes.

  “Hard now.” His earthy voice alarms her. She pulls away as he clutches her fingers together. A flap of hair comes off in her grip and she screams, flings it away, shakes her hand in disgust.

  He laughs, chin tipped up, scalp shiny, the back and sides of his head rimmed by a thick hedge. The hair huddles on the dashboard, a dormant animal, an unkempt guinea pig. “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s human hair.” He leans back to admire it, fingers laced over his suit jacket. “You can touch it.”

  A fresh wave of repulsion breaks over her. “No, thanks.” She tries not to stare at his head. The baldness makes him look older but somehow stronger. Or maybe cleaner, though she has no idea why that would be. She decides finally that he looks more relaxed.

  “Focus groups, studio execs.” He points at the hair and she’s sure she sees it quiver. “This is what I’ve become. If there’s one thing I can say about Henry Cross without a hint of irony, it’s that the man despises himself.”

  They sit in silence. The throb in Gerry’s ears calms to an even tempo. “You didn’t have to tell me, I mean, I don’t care what you look like.”

  Henry snatches the hairpiece from the dashboard, turns it in his hands, gives it a shake. He nods. His lips pinch and open in a series of false starts. He looks down at the hair, strokes it as if it’s a pet. “I don’t actually know your father. I mean, he’s my son, of course. But I haven’t seen him since he was about your age. For a while, he called me every few years to remind me that I ruined his life, but eventually that stopped. I suppose I could call him, but what for? He hates me. We were having such a good time, you and I. I wanted it to be true.”

  Flutes trill from the radio. She presses her cheek against the window to feel its cool damp. A heady weightlessness overtakes her. In her mind, her father falls away, tumbles out of reach, while her own body rises, shrinks with altitude, until she’s no more than a speck. The air feels thinner, colder. As the high creeps back, her body melts into the seat, a cottony itch around the edges of her face. She searches for the right words, syllables that will float, a sentence like a life preserver. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad I found you.” She says it for him, then clings to it herself.

  He nods. “I’ve never been good at keeping things. Wives, sons, houses. Right now, you’re my only friend, kiddo.”

  She looks at him then. “I’m going to do something that you should know about.”

  He plucks a tissue from his collar, gazes at it as if he has no idea how it arrived there, drops it in his lap. “Before we go on, there’s one more thing. I need to take that bike back. It’s the money. Not right away. The receipt says thirty days, so, enjoy it while you can.” The confession deflates him. He looks shrunken, awash in his suit.

  “It’s okay.”

  He takes a deep breath, blows the air out with puffed cheeks. “Geraldine, in the long midnight of my life, you are the one bright star,” pats his hand over hers. “Now, what’s this thing you’re doing? Let me guess, school play? Class president?”

  His sarcasm makes her feel more sorry for him, like she’s looming over him from a great height. She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She takes the hairpiece from him, expects the hair to be coarse and rough but finds it strangely fine and fragile. She squeezes the hair, crushes it in a fist. “Tell me about the cat story.”

  Henry chuckles. “I have to admit, it’s kind of cute. This cat works at fire station. Even rides the pole. Nestles up against the fireman when he slides down.” Henry demonstrates, holds his arms as if cradling a baby, looks down into the empty space and smiles.

  THE FIRST NIGHT THE BOY SPENDS naked with the girl, she holds his hand over her hulled stomach, casts a spell, makes a wish. From the beginning, the idea sickens him with worry. She corners him in the hut each day to ensure success. He is helpless to resist.

 
The men make jokes about dogs in heat, elbow the boy, pry for details. He smiles and shakes his head.

  By the third month, the thickness in the girl’s belly is noticeable to everyone. Women paw at their own wasted bodies, sneer at the girl, cut in front of her in the food line. Away from their wives, men offer the boy sympathetic words, sheepish faces.

  Dan takes him aside, arm around the boy’s shoulder. It’s not a good thing.

  I know. Even as the boy says it, he lies. He thinks of how changed the girl is. Despite the bad treatment, she smiles, radiates gentleness and calm, a state he can only vaguely remember from his own childhood. Memories have fallen away like the crumbled edge of a cliff, this new, wretched life forming a landscape that day by day stretches further from the eroded past. How can people persevere without a single happiness, a flint of hope? For this reason alone, the pregnancy seems a good thing.

  She’ll see the doctors, Dan says. You should go with her.

  The boy nods.

  The next day, he takes the girl to the clinic house. All three doctors wait, a stern tribunal behind a heavy oak dining table. Pained and feeble, the sounds of the sick carry in from other parts of the house. The doctors, though disparate in appearance are made similar by the tiredness of their faces. They lean: Dr. Woo back in his chair, Dr. Patak forward onto the table, Dr. Joan to the side, as if the mere act of sitting is too much for them.

  When was your last period? Dr. Woo speaks slowly.

  The girl counts out loud, offers an approximation. The doctor nods and writes on a pad of coarse paper, the kind that might have once been used for sketching or painting.

  How are you feeling? Dr. Joan’s voice is warm and motherly. Are you having any morning sickness?

  The girl shakes her head.

  Dr. Joan smiles. Dr. Patak will examine you, she says.

  The young doctor rises and rounds the table. The boy shifts his seat to make room for her. She gestures for the girl to lift her sweater. As she feels the girl’s abdomen, her thin, brown hands look as if they are kneading dough. She finishes and nods, returns to her seat.