Unnatural Disasters, page 24
“One day we saw three men in black with their faces covered coming down the street, banging on doors, trying to find our apartment. Baba grabbed Mina and me and took us to our neighbors, the Bisharas. He kissed us and told us he loved us and that he and Mama would be back soon. But one night passed. And then another. On the third night, Mrs. Bishara came to our room and told us that they’d been taken. It had happened to enough people by then that we knew what it meant. If you were taken, you didn’t come back. The Bisharas made arrangements with a smuggler who said he could get us into Libya and then to a boat that would take us to Italy. We made it all the way to the border before we were stopped. The smuggler tried to pay off the guards, but they wouldn’t take the money. They shot him and Mr. and Mrs. Bishara, who were riding with him in the cab of the truck. Mina and I were hiding in the back under some tarps and managed to slip away.”
Halla turned and pulled her hair aside, exposing a jagged scar that started behind her ear and ran down her neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt.
“We had to duck through coils of razor wire to get across the border. It was pitch-black. Mina almost lost an eye. I got this. We escaped, but ended up alone in the desert with nothing but a little food and water in our bookbags. It was almost a week before we came across another group of refugees.”
Oscar had fallen asleep. Halla stood, retrieved her mug from the windowsill, and held it in her hands.
“I wanted to give up every day,” she said. “All I could do was think about Baba and Mama and our little apartment. My books. The vendors on the street downstairs. The smell of Mama’s molokhia. Mina had some paper and a few colored pencils in her bag. She was always a better artist than me. She drew pictures of silly, made-up animals—cat lizards, lion camels, an elephant with a trunk made out of fire—and put made-up facts about them on the back, like trading cards. ‘The fire-nosed elephant is universally feared for his incredible exploding boogers.’ She said she’d draw me a new one every single day, and that we just had to keep going. So we did. Eventually, we made it here. I would have died if it wasn’t for Mina. I think she probably would’ve died without me, too.”
Halla got up and moved toward the door. It had gotten dark outside, enough that I could see her reflection in the window as she turned back and leaned against the doorway.
“We’re having dinner soon,” she said. “Your dad got ahold of some eggs. After that we’re going to play Monopoly.”
She called to Oscar and the dog got up and trotted out behind her. The stairs creaked. There were hushed voices and then the sound of a log falling on the fire. My face hung in the window, ghostly in the empty room.
* * *
The next morning, I snuck out of the house as the sun was starting to rise. After the war, dawn was a strange thing. There wasn’t a hard line between night and day, no dramatic layers of gold and orange on the horizon, only a gradual brightening.
I buttoned my coat to my neck and hunched my shoulders against a razor sharp wind. It didn’t seem possible, but Bethany was even more quiet than before. It used to be that I’d at least hear birds singing or squirrels chattering up in the trees, but that day there was nothing. It was like being on the surface of the moon. I wondered if everyone who’d remained, every person and every animal, had the same idea as Dad and Halla. Get out while you can. Get out before more snows come.
I cut through abandoned neighborhoods and across roads until I came to a stretch of woods. The ground was covered in piles of fallen leaves and dead branches. I forced my way through, holding on to tree trunks for support. I jumped a narrow stream and then, soon after that, the woods broke. I stepped onto a scrubby hill and looked across the soccer field at Bethany High.
I hadn’t been back since the night of the fire. I’d considered it, but had always turned away at the last minute, afraid of the memories it might dredge up. The place had fared better than I would have thought. The basic structure was still there—the roof and walls were blackened, but mostly intact—except for the north side where the old engineering shop had been. There, the ceiling had collapsed entirely, leaving a messy square of ash and scorched machines. The desk where I’d sat had been burned to cinders.
I descended the hill and crossed the field. The back door was still there, but the collapse near the shop had opened up an entire wall, so I stepped through that and into the school. I figured that the fact that the place was still standing despite the damage probably meant the whole thing wasn’t going to come crashing down on my head. Inside, everything was burned: the walls, the lockers, even the tile floors. Glass from broken windows lay in piles. In classrooms, the plastic tables and chairs had melted into strangely colored, toadstool-shaped lumps. Their metal frameworks remained, like skeletons.
I made my way down the hall toward the lunchroom. The pile of tables and chairs Toby used to start the fire had turned into a twisted, ashy heap. It had burned hot enough to make a hole in the ceiling, so it was only a little bit dimmer inside than outside. I wandered around in the destruction, rubble crunching under my feet, trying to decide where to go next. The library? The science labs? I came around a blackened pillar and found the doors to the auditorium standing open. I passed through them and stood at the back.
The seats had all turned to sludge and the strip of carpet that ran down the aisle had melted, then hardened into a black slick. Walking down it was like trying to balance on asphalt that had been coated in ice. I kept to the edges and took it slow. When I got to the orchestra pit, I peeked down into a jumble of music stands and toppled chairs. A violin case sat near the back wall, untouched. I left the pit and made my way up the steps at the edge of the stage.
The crew had never gotten around to striking the set for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so it had burned along with everything else. A forest fire raging within a school. The trees were gone and so were the painted flats that had shown the sky and the sun. The platforms that had been used to create hillsides were more or less unharmed, but they were bare of the grassy fabric that had covered them. I went to the edge of the stage and knelt by the flower beds. The metal stalks were there, but the flowers had burned, and the resin that had been used to make them sparkle had dripped into hard dollops on the floor. The fairies had disappeared and the elves, too.
The first show Jenna and I ever did together was some silly pageant about environmentalism that Mr. Cronin had put together with Mr. Rickert, the science teacher. I’d been cast in the role of Tree but was incredibly jealous of Jenna because she’d landed Cloud #1, which meant she got to wear a white bodysuit covered in cotton balls and stand at the top of a ladder that had been painted sky blue. The second the show was over, our parents rushed the stage and threw us bouquets of roses wrapped in cellophane, shouting “Bravo! Bravo!” We blushed and curtsied like stars. The next day some kid in our gym class came up to me and said that the show was stupid, so Jenna punched him in the eye.
I laughed at the memory, but the laugh quickly turned into this choking sound and then into tears. They hit the stage and mixed with the ashes. My throat ached. My chest heaved. In my head was everything and everyone that had disappeared. A whole world. Gone. And it wasn’t even over. Every time you think you’re safe, every time you think you have nothing left to lose, you find out you’re wrong. There’s always more.
Finally, the tears subsided. I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve and then I left the stage and walked back up the aisle. On my way out, I closed the door behind me.
Halfway to the engineering shop I stopped at the sound of something moving in the kitchen area behind the lunchroom. Rattling pots and pans. Probably some animals looking for food, I thought, and kept walking. But when I passed the door I saw someone standing on one of the steel food prep tables, reaching into a high cabinet. When he heard me, he stopped what he was doing and turned around.
“Oh,” I said, surprised to see the smallest member of the Hacky Sackers. “Hey, Stank.”
It took a second, but recognition finally dawned on him. “Lucy Weaver. What’s up?”
I leaned against the metal doorframe. “Nothing much. What are you doing?”
He turned back to the cabinet he’d been rooting around in. “Looking for this bag of En Fuego Cheesy Curls that Svetlana said she left here before the fire. We’re heading west with some of her friends tomorrow and I wanted to take it with us.”
“Any luck?”
“Nah. It’s all right. If the universe wants you to have En Fuego Cheesy Curls, it provides En Fuego Cheesy Curls.”
“You have a lot of faith in the universe, Stank.”
He hopped down off the table. “Well, the universe, it’s just . . . it’s everywhere. You know? Anyway. What are you doing here?”
“Looking around, I guess.”
“Communing with the sprits.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”
He pulled a multicolored Hacky Sack out of his pocket and held it up. “Wanna play a round?”
“Thanks, but I better get going.”
Stank and I left the kitchen and started back down the hall. He kicked at some piles of ash, marveling at the destruction.
“Man, someone actually went and burned down the school. I mean, we’ve all thought about it, I know I did, but to actually light the match? Damn! Who do you think would do something like that, Weaver?”
“Toby Wolfowitz.”
“No way. Seriously?”
I nodded. We stepped through the broken wall and onto the grass. I looked out across the soccer field at the hill where I’d left Toby the night of the fire. I wondered what had happened to him. Had he been arrested? Thrown in jail? And if so, what had the jailers done when everything fell apart and they couldn’t care for the prisoners anymore? Set them free? Let them rot? My thoughts drifted from Toby to Mom. What had her jailers done? Where was she?
“Why’d he do it?”
“What?” I said, distracted. “Oh. Well, he said a lot of stuff, but it basically came down to ‘Tibetan Buddhism made me do it.’”
Stank chewed on that for a second, then shook his head. “I don’t know, Weaver. I’m not, like, a scholar of the eastern mysteries or anything, but I think it’s possible that dude’s interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism is wack.”
“Well said, Stank.”
We came to the hill at the edge of the field. The trees were bare enough that I could see a bit of the road heading north. Stank held up the sack again, a crocheted ball of black, yellow, and red.
“You sure you don’t want to partake? The other dudes are all gone and I haven’t played in forever.”
“What about Svetlana?”
Stank laughed. “Aw, man, my lady is a lot of things, but a Hacky Sacker she is not.”
I checked out the road again. It was a straight shot from the school all the way to the next town. About six miles total. Most of it uphill.
“Well . . . how do you do it?”
Stank took my arm and led me onto the field. “It’s easy. All you have to do is keep the sack in the air using anything but your hands. Feet. Legs. Head. Chest. They’re all fair game.”
“How do you win?”
“By creating a shared space of peaceful cooperation and respect for all living things.”
“What if I drop the ball?”
“You pick it up and start again. Here!”
Stank kicked the sack toward me with the side of his foot. Instinct sent me jumping backwards, but somehow I thought to lift my knee at just the right time to send it flying back to him.
“Nice one! Now try this.”
Dead grass crunched under our feet as Stank and I moved across the field, doing everything we could to keep that little ball in the air. We played for an hour or so and then he said he had to get going. Svetlana was waiting. I wished him luck out west. He told me to follow the quiet voice of my heart in all things, and then he headed for the road on the other side of the bus loop, eventually disappearing in the gray distance.
Once he was gone there wasn’t the slightest hint of sound. No wind. No birds in the trees or squirrels rustling through the woods. No planes. Not even the trickle of melting snow. I could stay there for years, I thought, decades maybe, and nothing would change. Maybe the weeds would grow a little bit taller, or the school walls would crumble a bit more, but that was it. Everything that had ever happened in that place, everything that ever would happen, had run its course. It was finished. Complete.
I found a spot at the top of the hill and stared at the ashes.
Twenty-Two
The morning we were going to leave Bethany, Dad got me up early. He moved through the dark house, his breath filling the hallways with clouds of white as he packed small, last-minute things. Extra socks and candles. A pile of family pictures. I sat on my bed in the gloom, staring at the backpack he’d brought down from the attic for me. It was one of Mom’s old ones. I’d tried to fill it a half-dozen times, but always ended up with a messy pile of clothes and an empty pack. When Dad was finished, he offered to make me breakfast, but I told him I wasn’t hungry. When he pushed I said I had to go to Mr. Stahlberg’s to see if he needed any help.
The sun rose as I walked through Bethany. It was a cold, gray morning, just like all the other cold, gray mornings, but the town didn’t have the abandoned feel it usually did. Most of the other families that had stuck it out were getting ready to leave too. Bags were being packed and dragged out onto lawns. I imagined that by the next day, the whole town would feel like that field around Bethany High, empty and still, like the surface of the moon.
I took a left at the end of Water Street. Mr. Stahlberg’s house was a nice old place, two floors with a big porch and a single castle-like turret on one side. The yard was bare in patches, overgrown in others. Some windows were broken and repaired, by me, with cardboard and duct tape. I climbed the porch steps and knocked on the door. No answer. I lifted the welcome mat and took the key he always left for me. The doorknob turned with a squeak. The inside of the house was dim and cold and filled with a faint smell of mildew that I hadn’t noticed the last time I was there. I called for Mr. Stahlberg but got no answer.
The first floor was full of overflowing bookcases and tables packed with framed pictures of him and Amanda. Art crowded the walls. Handmade afghans warmed the backs of couches.
The stairs complained as I went up. The first bedroom I came to was empty and so was the bathroom. Clean towels hung on silver bars. The mirror above the sink gleamed in the light coming in from a small, frosted window. There was one more room at the end of the hall. Mr. Stahlberg’s. The smell of mildew became stronger the closer I got.
“Mr. Stahlberg?”
The door was open a crack. I pushed it and stepped inside. It was a large but spare-looking bedroom, with cream-colored walls and a four-poster bed covered in sheets the color of tangerines. Mr. Stahlberg was lying beneath them, his hair a messy white halo against the deep orange of the pillows.
“. . . Mr. Stahlberg?”
His eyes fluttered open. When he saw it was me, he waved me over.
“Lucy. Come. Sit.”
His voice was frail. There was a wheeze as his chest rose and fell.
“We have to go,” I said. “It’s time.”
He ignored me, patting the bedspread by his hip. I came into the room and sat beside him.
“Have you packed? I can get your things for you if you—”
“Did I ever tell you that I was the one who decorated this house?”
“We should really—”
“Everyone thought it was Amanda, but the truth was, she had awful taste. The worst. If it had been up to her we would have gone to that Swedish place and filled our home with pressboard monstrosities and the kind of art you find in cheap motels.” He chuckled to himself, then coughed into his fist. “I always loved old things. Things that were made with care. Beautiful things.”
He let out a long breath and scanned the pressed-tin ceiling.
“I met Amanda in college, at a frat party of all places. I didn’t want to go. I hated that sort of thing, but my friend was in love with the fraternity’s president and he made me come with him for moral support. The party was in this old mansion way up in the hills. It reeked of pot smoke and old beer. The music was awful. I told my friend I’d stay for twenty minutes, max, and then I went into the kitchen to get a glass of wine, and there she was, wearing a dress the color of daffodils, her hair hanging down over her shoulders. She had a tumbler of whiskey in her hand and was talking to someone about Victor Hugo and laughing. It was spring. The air coming through the open window beside her smelled like lavender. She looked like she’d been carved from a block of sunlight.”
He shut his eyes tight, like he was trying to fix the memory in place, to make sure it never escaped.
“There are days when I remember that she’s gone and there are days that I don’t. The days I don’t are better. On those days, she’s always just about to walk through the front door. She’ll drop her things on the chair in the hall and flop down beside me on the couch with this beautiful sigh, so full of relief. I’ll pour her a glass of wine. We’ll talk and laugh. Amanda told the worst jokes, but she had the most amazing laugh.”
I started to say something, but he laid his hand over mine before I could open my mouth. His eyes were open, bright and clear.
“This is my home, Lucy. I don’t want another one.”
He squeezed my hand and smiled.
“You should go. Amanda will be here soon. I want to be ready for her.”
* * *
By the time I got back, a crowd had gathered on the street outside our house. Some were our neighbors—Mr. Giolotti, the Walkers—and some I didn’t know at all. Everyone was dressed in bulky layers, long coats over multiple shirts and sweaters, like they were wearing every bit of clothing they owned. Everything else was packed into overnight bags, backpacks, and rolling suitcases. A few rusty shopping carts sat by our driveway, filled with bottles of water and extra food. I searched around for Dad and found him standing on the Ivanchuk’s front porch with Copperfield in his arms. Mrs. Ivanchuk and her son had decided to stay behind and had agreed to look after the cat for us.
