There was a man at the fence who widened his eyes at me, as if I was too big to see in one look, too complicated.
“Hey Terry, don’t see you here much anymore. How are the kids?”
What did you ever say when people asked you shit like that? You don’t say help me I’m dying. You don’t say hold me because I’m going to fall. You don’t say I cannot really speak to you right now, because if I do the blood will come out and I won’t be able to stop it and then we’ll all be in trouble. I guarantee it. You just don’t do that.
What I did say was that everyone was swell, in their way, and I rolled my eyes, and what a day and wasn’t it beautiful, the snow? The man looked around as I pointed, but you didn’t need to look around. It was on us, covering us up, and if we stood still any longer we’d be buried for good. I said, wasn’t it the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen?
There were cops at my house when I got home. Outside of the old rotted house, looking in the windows. A couple of young men in uniform. What was my protocol here? Keep walking and circle back around? But didn’t that leave my house vulnerable and should I not be protecting the inner contents? Who else would guard the place if not me?
When I walked up, they took off their hats, called me ma’am.
Did I live here, they wanted to know, and what was my name and would I be so kind as to show them some identification?
They came in and we talked and it was not at all unpleasant. This was routine, they said, they were checking in. They were seeing that people were all right. Did I live alone? Was there anyone else in the house?
I offered them tea and apologized. There was just nothing to eat. Nothing nothing nothing, never, no matter how much I shopped. Trucks rolled up and offloaded food, I explained, and the little ones upstairs sucked it down, spitting out not even a bone. There was no way to keep up.
They were okay, they didn’t care, they weren’t hungry. They just had a question for me, if I didn’t mind. Just a question and then they’d be on their way. Was I okay? Did I feel okay? What did I feel?
What did I feel? What a funny thing for a police officer to ask. I half expected a question along the lines of, where were you when, and I was worried a little bit. I thought I might not know. I thought I might not remember. Who doesn’t feel that in some tiny, forgotten part of their day they might have done something truly horrible? And then the cops come, and then, well, you find yourself confessing.
But what did I feel? What I felt was old, and I shared this with the officers. I cried a little bit right in front of them, and I’m not really bragging. I felt dead. I felt tired. I felt unattractive. I felt no longer intelligent. I felt slightly horny, but in such a nonspecific way that it might just be an allergy, an illness, an excitation of the skin. But really, I asked them, why was anyone ever expected to report accurately on their own feelings? Could either of them do it? If I were to pin them down and ask them to report the truth of themselves? Would they be able to perform? They shouldn’t trust me, I said, finally. I was not a reliable source. If they really wanted an answer, they should ask my doctor.
The car that we rode in had a nice comfortable seat in the back. It was more like a bed. We drove through the sweeter part of town and it was almost like we skirted the perimeter of a plunging cliff. You know that feeling—that the car and the road beneath it are themselves just delicately suspended in space, poised to fall? It’s like you understand that the road is holding the car up, and the earth is holding the road up, but it’s not clear what’s holding up the earth itself, and if you pay attention, really really pay attention, you can feel it, the falling. Certain people are terribly attuned to it, and they can’t bear it. They try to escape the world as soon as they can. Scientists try to explain this, but you can see it on their faces, the doubt, the sadness. They are more afraid than we are. I looked out the window and only saw sky, the sort that bends into finer clarity where it meets the horizon. A sharpening of the lens, just where you most need it. Where, if you look carefully, and really study it, you might see something important in the distance, something that has been kept from you your entire life.
I knew where we were going. I’d driven this same route myself, many times. It was my favorite part of town and I’d never get tired of it. I got a little bit emotional, I must admit, when I looked at the long, thin trees in Sawtooth Park. I’d seen these things planted when I was a girl. There had been a fire. Nothing serious, but part of town was blackened. The parks were scorched. It wasn’t a big deal. Anyone with a computer could look up the details. From space, maybe, it looked like nothing. But for those of us down below it was not nothing. And then they chose a species of tree that was controversial, I guess. Because these trees grew taller without getting thicker, and after a little while they curled, maybe like hair would. And so from above this park was supposed to really look like something. People oohed and aahed over it. People said it was indescribable, amazing. But who got to look at the park, or really anything, from above? What population took to the air to see the world? A mistake had been made. Our world had been designed for birds, and the people had been forgotten. What about the people? I always wanted to ask. We will never know how beautiful our own world is if we’re stuck down here.
In the car, I asked if I could go ahead and lie down all the way. I wasn’t tired. It wasn’t that. It was mostly because I did not think I could keep looking out of the window, at the people on the streets, marching off the end of the planet. I couldn’t do that without really starting to have some feelings that I was fairly sure would not soon go away. Permanent feelings? Maybe not. I don’t think there are such a thing. I think that we die, and the feelings go on, they find a new person, and so on, moving from host to host, destroying bodies and soaring away to the next fellow. But probably not forever. That’s too big a claim. I’m not comfortable going out on that sort of limb. We just don’t know enough.
Dr. Nelson had another clinic, I guess. The secrets people kept! They had beds there. It was all super professional, a real building in a real place with people as real as can be scurrying around looking busy. Sometimes Nelson brought his subjects in, during a trial, for closer study. That is what I figured when I saw this place. The experiments needed to be controlled. You couldn’t blame him. You have a subject who’s out at large in the city, and how can you possibly begin to collect any reliable data? If you put them in a bed, in a room, with nurses and the whole shebang, your experiment gets tighter. You narrow down your variables. It’s just good doctoring, is what it is. Dr. Nelson knew how to swim in this world. He wasn’t going to go over the falls. He knew how to keep from disappearing.
They made me comfortable, which I appreciated. It was only late afternoon, but who doesn’t like slipping on some pajamas and getting into bed early now and then? Who would really complain about a luxury like that? Especially when it’s snowing. To get into bed and be cozy while the world is turning to powder outside. I was in good hands.
This was the part of the study where they sent in people who pretended to know me. I had to hold my ground. They found an older couple, gray-haired and shriveled up. They played a certain role. They showed off a certain kindness. You’ve seen it before. Compassion and concern, faces twisted into sympathy. Straight out of central casting. I always loved that expression: central casting. Didn’t that just mean the whole world, every fucking person? Anyway, here came the two, sweet-faced old-timers. The name “Terry” was on their lips. Of course it was. They’d obviously been briefed. I didn’t mind. They approached my bed, smiling, melting with concern, and took my hand. Even fake feelings can feel good when they come down on you—you know there’s very little difference. I’ll take a hug when it comes. I’ll hug right back. I’ll feel the warmth of a body, even the bodies of those two old-timers, who got pretty worked up. I’m really not picky. Does it matter if it’s a stranger? What I would like to know is who isn’t a stranger? Name one person.