“Anyway, Miriam was upset. She asked him where he’d heard about such things, and he said—he said you taught him about… sex.”
I’m past annoyance now, nearing anger. “Yes, I talked to him about sex, and I showed him a physiology text. Jerry, he’s fourteen years old. He asked me about sex, and I answered him. I always answer the children’s questions if I can.”
He sighs. “I think this is one question you shouldn’t answer.”
“Then who will answer it? Don’t make a taboo of sex, Jerry. It’s a vital part of life. Besides, the children are fully aware of all aspects of the reproductive cycle. They see it every day in the animals.”
“But that’s not the same. Anyway, it’s up to a boy’s father to answer questions like that.”
“What makes you more qualified than I to explain human reproduction to Jonathan? At this point he knows more about it than you do.” I pull myself up short. Jerry is insulted and hurt, and that wasn’t my intention. Still, I can’t refrain from inquiring, “Are you going to explain the menarche to Little Mary and Deborah and Rachel when they’re old enough to ask questions about that?”
He says stubbornly, “It’s a mother’s place to tell her daughters about… such things.”
I take time for a deep breath. “Jerry, I just don’t like to have any subject put out of the children’s reach. I don’t care what it is.”
“I know, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not that important. But it is important to Miriam, and she said she’d bring it up in the family meeting next Sunday. It’d mean a lot of argument and bad feeling.”
I don’t believe his professed lack of concern. Besides, it’s the principle here that’s important, not the subject of sex—the principle that children should have their questions answered. But he’s right about one thing: if Miriam brings this up at the weekly family meeting, it will mean argument and bad feelings, and we’re too small a group to tolerate dissension.
“It’s blackmail, Jerry, and that’s a very dangerous game.”
He looks at me blankly. “It’s what?”
He doesn’t know the word blackmail or its implications. “Never mind. All right, I’ll give in on this point, but I do it with misgivings. Just don’t ask me to limit my curriculum, such as it is, further.”
He grins with relief. “Don’t worry, Mary. Thanks. We have to keep peace in the family. You understand that.”
“Yes, I understand, Jerry.” And I understand something that wouldn’t make sense to him if I pointed it out to him: Miriam is testing him, testing her power. Testing me.
And I realize wearily that I’ve lost this skirmish.
But there will be others.
“It’s time for Stephen’s lesson, isn’t it?” Jerry glances at Stephen, who is hurling the ax blade into the trunk of a hemlock. “I’ll send him to the house when he’s finished with that tree.”
Does Jerry think he’s throwing me a bone with that? If he hadn’t brought up Stephen’s lesson, I would have. That’s why I came here in the first place.
No, he just thinks he’s keeping peace in the family.
The rain has resumed. I’m sitting at the table in the living room, a book of the poems of Emily Dickinson open before me as I look out at the gray sky, gray sea, gray silhouettes of trees. The rain collects on the roof and falls in streams like a glass-beaded curtain. I like the gray of this kind of day, this kind of gentle, nurturing rain, but such days make me think of hourglasses and clepsydras, and how we might build them, because our only clock—other than the Seth Thomas, which can’t keep ticking indefinitely—is the sun, and it’s hidden today.
But in fact the family gets along very well without knowing exactly what time it is. We count years, months, weeks, and days. We may talk about hours—and I use that term more than the others do—but it’s a vague designation. Minutes and seconds have no place in our lives. And I remember once reading about a division of time called an attosecond; when it was written out, the decimal point was followed by seventeen zeros, followed by a one.
“Good day, Mary.”
Stephen is standing beside me, his hands freshly scrubbed. I motion to the chair at the end of the table. “Sit down, Stephen. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he replies absently, eyeing the open book. “What’s that you’re reading?”
“Emily Dickinson. We haven’t studied any of her poems in school yet, but we will.” I offer him the book. “Would you like a preview?”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
“Take it, then. Oh—I’ll need it tomorrow. Mary wanted to know about Emily Dickinson. Maybe you could read it with her in the evening. She needs some extra help with her reading.”
He seems pleased at that. “I’ll help her anytime she wants. Why was she interested in this woman?”
“Because of our cat. I hadn’t thought about the names of the animals as teaching aids. Now I’m waiting for someone to ask about Falstaff.” Then I add: “But our Emily isn’t the first of the pets here named after Emily Dickinson. Rachel and I named Shadow’s first pup Emily.”
He leans forward, arms folded on the table, and I am again gratified to see the glint of curiosity in his black eyes. “When did Shadow have her first litter?”
“In November, about two months after the End. She had a litter of five, but only three were bom alive.” The gray of the sky seems to turn melancholy with the memory. “One pup looked perfect, but it was born dead. The other was pitifully malformed—stubs of legs, not even slits over its eyes. I buried them next to Topaz. I took a flashlight and a shovel and went out into a howling night and dug through the snow into the frozen earth. And that wasn’t the last grave I dug for the pups. Even our little Emily died that winter. None of the first litter survived.”
“Oh.” He lets his breath out in a sigh. “Can you… would you mind telling me about the Long Winter?”
The Long Winter. Luke called it that. I don’t think Rachel and I had a name for it, other than nuclear winter. Or simply, with a little emphasis on the article, the winter.
I lean back, look out at the beaded curtains of warm, greening rain. “Yes, I’ll tell you about it, Stephen. It’s part of the Chronicle.” “When are you going to start writing it?”
I touch the small, black portfolio on the table. “I’ve already begun. At night, while you’re sound asleep. Only a few pages so far.” Too few. My time is getting short.
“Can I read it?”
“When I’ve finished, yes. I’m writing it for you, Stephen.” I don’t give him time to question that. “The Long Winter. Well, it was bitterly, miserably cold, a constant twilight in the daytime, starless and moonless black at night, and the air smelled like… rotten smoke. It was…”
He waits for me to go on, then: “What, Mary?”
“Terrible. Terrifying.” I reach for the diary on the table, but keep it closed for now. “We had to live in the basement. I still don’t like to go down there, although Esther and Miriam have made it very pleasant. And we wouldn’t have survived without it or without the extra provisions and supplies we’d bought. Or without scavenging. Looting. We went to the houses near us that hadn’t been burned, and we looted them of food, tools, clothing, medicine—anything that might be useful. Of course, Rachel always took any books she found.”
“That’s not really looting,” Stephen objects. I mean, you weren’t stealing from people.”
“No. There was no one to steal from. Not around here.”