Jack watched as the boy reached into the other bassinet for the second infant, straightened with them both in his arms.
“Is that doctor’s orders?” Jack asked.
“Absolutely.” Emma patted his good arm. “Go try to sleep, Jack. That’s the best thing any of us can do right now. Just try to sleep.”
He stood on the landing, watching as the boy sat with the babies. “Doctor Emma said there’s some formula downstairs,” he called into the room after a while. Trip looked up. His face broke into a smile.
“They’re so tiny,” he said. “But they’re really, really cute.”
Jack smiled back. “Yeah, well, be careful. They’re brand new. Maybe you could figure out how to feed them.”
The boy nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”
Jack turned away. Outside his grandmother’s door he hesitated, then peeked inside. Keeley and Mrs. Iverson lay side by side on the bed, mouths open, snoring loudly. Jack shut the door, and went upstairs to his room.
Somehow he had expected a seismic change, the roof caved in, bedclothes strewn anywhere. But no. Only the window had been opened, and the door leading onto the morning balcony. He closed the window, hesitated, then stepped out onto the balcony.
After the city’s rain of ash, the freezing air felt pure as spring rain: it washed away the stale smell of Leonard’s limo and the sickroom scent of the house beneath him. From downstairs he heard first one of the babies shrieking, and then the other. Then Keeley’s voice crying out for Emma, Emma calling back wearily, and Mrs. Iverson exclaiming, “Poor things!”
Then a deeper tone, Trip’s voice commanding them alclass="underline" “Shhh, hey, everybody be quiet—they’re just hungry. I’ll take care of them.”
The wails grew louder but, miraculously, Emma and Mrs. Iverson and his grandmother were silent. Jack shook his head, imagining the boy pacing around the bedroom, trying fruitlessly to calm the infants. But after a few minutes the babies quieted. Lazyland grew still again.
He stepped to the railing and leaned out. A film of ice covered the rail; as he stood there he could feel it melting beneath his fingertips, giving forth a damp green smell. There was a strange emerald clarity to the air, a brilliance that he thought must be caused by ice crystals, or reflected light, one of those atmospheric things he had never understood. He looked up into the sky, the coiling clouds and haze of smoke above the Hudson. He felt no fear; only a sort of exhausted peace. A sense that he stood upon a battlefield, but at least he was still standing.
“Happy New Year!”
From the riverbank far below a voice echoed. There was a rapid burst of fireworks or gunfire, cheers and what sounded like a trombone blatting.
Jack yawned, rubbed his eyes, and indulged in the absurd wish for more champagne, recalling Larry Muso in his arms.
I should have kissed him, he thought. He remembered Larry’s words—Go back to your house—wait for me there, Jack, I’ll meet you as soon as I can—and Leonard’s—You’ll see me again, we’ll see everybody again, real soon.
He couldn’t remember the last time Leonard had said anything remotely comforting.
He stretched, wincing. His arms hurt, and his wrist, and his chest. His mouth and throat ached from where he’d inhaled burning fumes. He wondered if, by chance, Emma did have anything in that black bag for him. He scarcely felt strong enough to walk back to his bed. He looked out for one last time into the night.
Beneath him the estate’s overgrown lawns sloped into stands of sumac and alder, the ruins of all the other houses that had once stood guard upon the Hudson. Light shone through the tangle of trees and broken buildings—firelight, the flicker of a few moving headlights, myriad bonfires and a confetti of red and green marking the rowdy flotilla massed upon the river. The fires along the upper span of the George Washington Bridge still burned. Its struts glowed dull gold and citron yellow, and cast a spangled reflection in the black water below.
It’s beautiful, Jack thought. It’s really beautiful.
He lifted his head. For some reason—the cold; excessive moisture in the air; maybe just his blurred vision—the glimmering suddenly seemed less pronounced. He frowned, then sucked his breath in.
For one moment—so quick he was not even certain if it was real, or if it was another remnant of the fusarium stirring in his sight—for one moment, something seemed to move in the vault above him. A profound darkness that might have been a cloud, or wings, or a mile-long pennon; the silent flank of a dirigible passing at an unimaginable distance through the heavens or the shadow of something else, spirochete swimming across his eye’s inner orb, the silhouette of a face he loved. Something moved, a vast cyclonic eye that turned slowly in the blazing heavens, as though the sky was ready to burst at last.
But even farther overhead something else glimmered, faint as Jack’s breath in the chill morning air, faint as a heartbeat, faint as dawn.
“I see it!” he cried aloud. “I can see it, it’s there, it’s really there—”
And in that instant, the rush of wind and revelry dying into the sound of the sea and the wails of the infants downstairs: in that instant Jack smiled; and thought he saw the stars.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Hand is the author of Æstival Tide, Winterlong, Waking the Moon, Illyria, Generation Loss, and others. She lives in Lincolnville, Maine.
NOVELS BY ELIZABETH HAND
Available Dark
Radiant Days
Errantry: Strange Stories
Generation Loss
Illyria
Saffron & Brimstone
Mortal Love
Bibliomancy
Black Light
Last Summer at Mars Hill
Waking the Moon
Icarus Descending
Æstival Tide
Winterlong
Copyright
Copyright © 1997, 2012 by Elizabeth Hand
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts “The Wasteland,” in Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt, Brace & Co., copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot.
“A House Is Not a Motel,” by Arthur Lee, published by Grass Roots Music BMI.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission should be emailed to underland@underlandpress.com
UNDERLAND PRESS
Portland, Oregon
eISBN : 978-0-982-66393-6
First Underland Press Edition: June 2012