Danni told Gina that April had said that all these sightings were, like, mass hysteria, and that the Justice Department was looking into it, because it might be the work of terrorists. You had to be on a twenty-four-hour alert.
And it would have died down, too, Gina thought, if one of the nicest boys in her class, Sam Cole, who was sweet and a good athlete and really good-looking — he wasn’t like most of the other boys, and the boys knew it, and because he was both tough and goodhearted, nobody ever said anything bad about him — hadn’t been riding home from a dentist’s appointment on his bicycle and hadn’t been hit by a newspaper truck backing down a driveway. Because, after that, all the kids in Five Oaks who were even close to Sam’s age knew that Gordy Himmelman had pushed him into the path of that truck. They didn’t exactly tell their parents, but they told each other, and that was how they knew.
This is how it was: there were terrorists for their parents, and there was Gordy Himmelman for them.
Fifteen
The woman in front of Patsy at the VitaDrug prescription counter had been taking antipsychotics for so long that she had apparently lost control of her tongue. Patsy didn’t even pretend to look away. While the woman waited for her credit-card number to go through, her tongue emerged from her mouth like a snake from its nest, angled left and right experimentally as if testing the air for bugs or oxygen density, then retreated back into her mouth before emerging again, this time staying out as it continued its ceaseless explorations. Her purchases were piled on the counter in a haphazard fashion. Along with the drugs nestled in their bar-coded, stapled bags with the “Ask the Pharmacist” cartoon on the front, showing a bald-headed man with a small-town smiley face (none of the pharmacists here looked like that: they were all East Indian), the woman had bought three cylindrical containers of potato chips, four cans of tuna, and two six-packs of diet cola. She made Patsy think of a lizard-lady preparing for a party with the other lizard-ladies, all of them sitting outside on the terrace, passing the tin cans from lap to lap, their tongues wagging, the fat of their ankles spilling out over the tops of their shoes.
All through October, when she was alone, or running errands after work like this, after having picked up Emmy from day care, Patsy somehow found herself at the end of her goodwill. This falling-away from sympathetic feelings for the helpless was new for her. Random compassion without any outlet now struck her as a Saul-like indulgence. Against strangers, she could feel her heart slowly hardening, developing a shellac. Her charity was failing her. If any woman deserved her pity, this woman did. But her pity seemed unavailable to her. Everything she had was directed toward her children these days: this one, and the one to come. And Saul, too, of course.
After picking up her prescription for Dorylaeum, a vitamin supplement and sleep aid for pregnant women whose occasional side effect was that it made time speed up, Patsy wheeled Emmy in her stroller down the aisles past the magazine rack, where two middle school girls were talking quietly to each other as they flipped through the new issue of Gloor. They appeared to be dressed for Halloween, and it was now late October, and their white hair, kohl-darkened eyes, bleached skin, and black raggedy clothes accessorized with pins displaying cryptic symbols gave them the aspect of ghosts. When Patsy passed them, they gazed at her with the fixedness of the dead. They were part of the growing number of middle schoolers and high school kids who were affecting the gothic mortuary look. In the space of several weeks, a small but significant cult of Gordy Himmelman had surfaced, and this style, Patsy had heard, was meant either to ward him off or to evoke him. They called themselves Himmels. All over town, out of the corner of your eye, you could see these neo-goths, these Himmels, with their staring-fish expressions. Saul and Patsy’s paperboy, Darryl Anderson, was now a part-time Himmel. He was a nice kid and hadn’t quite mastered the doom-laden frown yet. Some of the others talked in a kind of code, the way they imagined that the dead might.
The school superintendent, Floyd Vermilya, had sent home a notice to parents encouraging them to celebrate life, not death, at the level of family. He had threatened suspensions. Students who ghouled their way into school with Himmel-haircuts, Himmel-overcoats, or even Himmel-like expressions on their faces could just ghoul their way out again until they were ready to dress and act like normal young people. Unfortunately, the new restrictions were hard to enforce. Himmelism had spread to both of Five Oaks’s high schools — though who would know? So many of those kids acted and dressed like that anyway. An underground goth cell had established itself there some time ago. Besides, adolescents could disguise themselves as ordinary, decent American kids and then, when school was out, turn into Himmels in the privacy of their homes. At that age, they all wore masks anyway. Masking was the pride of adolescence. Himmel-speak, the language of the dead that the Himmels had fabricated, was forbidden in the classroom or the athletic field, though none of the athletes were Himmels anyway. Probably. You could never tell. There was an unsubstantiated rumor of a Himmel sleeper-cell on the football team, the second-stringers and bench-warmers, though it strained credulity: What would a would-be dead football player say? And to whom? Himmel-athletes didn’t bleach their hair, but many of them had the trademark blank look. And their cheers lacked conviction. The school guidance counselor had suggested to parents at the latest PTA meeting that they motivate their kids to participate in more upbeat sports activities. Playing a musical instrument, he said, might also overcome the recent community-wide tendency to morbid display.
Vermilya had told Saul, and Saul had told Patsy, that he feared national attention to this phenomenon. If that happened, if the networks showed up, there’d be no stopping it. He feared Himmel websites, Himmel chat rooms, docudramas on Himmelism. .
Something has gone wrong with our children, he had told Saul. Something is spreading, and I don’t even know what it is.
The door flipped open electronically, and Patsy walked out onto the sidewalk. She crossed the street into Governor John Engler Park, a square city block decorated with a few surviving petunias planted in an uneven row on the south border. To the north was a stage and a band-stand. Skateboarders leapt up and down the benches and roared across the proscenium. The air felt autumnal and cool. In the center of the park stood an eight-foot-high statue of the former governor, holding his hand out in welcome. On his face was a smile contaminated with a dubious affability. This statue was now permanently blocked off from the sun by the WaldChem building, under construction across the street, a bright yellow steel crane perched on the topmost beam, and by the AddiData building to the west, whose windows had the rectangular shape of the holes in IBM punch cards. The WaldChem building would be the highest structure in Five Oaks. Although the Chamber of Commerce had lobbied for its construction with the zoning board, both the mayor and the City Council had complained mildly about the architecture, which was in a downsized Black Rock style. It was considered by many to be dour and not suitable for the Midwest. It did not glorify the heartland.
In the park Patsy took Emmy out of the stroller and bounced her on her lap. She was being fussy today. “Down me,” Emmy said. Patsy let her down. Emmy walked experimentally around the bench, singing her toothpaste song. With a mild shock, Patsy saw Anne McPhee sitting on the park bench opposite her, and Anne’s son, Matt, running back and forth before her, as if he were searching for some interesting trouble to get into but hadn’t yet found it. Anne was visibly pregnant and wore a besieged expression: she was still a beautiful young woman, Patsy thought, with great features that her pregnancy had not diminished, but she seemed distracted and solitary. Her blouse was stained with apple juice. She looked used. She had a rash on her wrist that she scratched absentmindedly. Something about her suggested helplessness and excessive brooding. She waved at Patsy without enthusiasm.