All the familiar landmarks had been hidden from view, and I’d reached the valley floor suddenly, emerging from the corridor of thickening darkness to find that I was about to run the stop sign at the foot of the mountain. I’d slammed on the brakes and found myself staring at a herd of Guernsey cows that had backed up against the barbed wire on the other side of the intersection, their faces turned ominously to the sky, bellowing and stamping. A helicopter had whirred overhead and disappeared, followed by another. I’d driven home, pausing at the railroad crossing to take another look at the mountain in the rearview mirror. It was burning, all right: you could see it. The normal autumn mosaic of green and gold on the north face was overhung with thick patches of gray, billowing slowly and broadly toward the sky.
The next day, I’d driven up to find the forest like lace, untouched pockets of maples and beeches interspersed with ghostly stands of burned trunks, charred javelins surrounded by layers of smoldering ash. I’d parked and walked through the ruined terrain in my boots, the ground crackling and still smoking under my feet. Later that day, I’d heard the park buildings had been spared, but hadn’t found the news as reassuring as expected. I’d thought I’d known what this place was, thought I’d known its every rhythm, but I’d been wrong. It was so much greater, so much more powerful, than I was. And I barely understood it at all.
I strode into Miller’s and glanced around at the shelves. The shop was dark, giving off the smell of newsprint and candy and the metal of the guns they sold in the back. The woman behind the counter looked from the TV to me without changing the angle of her body.
I approached the counter.
“I need a map,” I said.
“Pennsylvania?” the woman asked without interest. “Maryland? Eastern U.S.?”
I thought about it. “Eastern U.S.,” I told her. On the TV, there was a burst of laughter. Two women in an apartment in some city, thin and elegant even in their jeans, with pretty, swingy hair, were having an argument. The camera lingered on their faces as they circled around a coffee table, pointing at one another with manicured fingers.
I put my money on the counter and left.
Back in my grandmother’s kitchen, I dug for the box of tea I knew was lurking there and put the kettle on, watching the flame dance under the metal, losing myself in my thoughts. Then, leaning against the counter, I spread out the map—Florida Keys to New Brunswick, it said on the front—and traced the roads with a finger.
For a long time, I took in the patches of green that were forests, the hard-edged gray blots of cities, the brown dots that were mid-sized towns. Sipping my tea, I traced the roads with a fingertip, thinking without any resolution.
Then I folded the map and carried it up to my room, where I slid it under the mattress.
That night, I made shepherd’s pie for dinner but found I couldn’t eat it, dissecting it with my fork while my grandmother dug in. If nothing else, she had a healthy appetite.
I watched her for a time.
“Grandma,” I said finally.
“What?”
I fiddled with the silverware next to my plate. There was something I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t know how to ask it, or even exactly what it was. It had something to do with a sense that I was being watched, tested, judged for what I did in these hours. To my surprise, it came out as “Do you believe in God?”
She glanced up, a streak of mashed potatoes trailing along one cheek. “Do I believe in God?” Her tone was suspicious, as if she smelled a trick. She was wearing the flowered dress she only wore when I forgot to do the laundry.
I decided to stick with it. “Yeah.”
She considered the question, her mouth opening slightly as she chewed. “No, I don’t think I do. Why?”
“Did you ever?”
She pinched a corner of bread from the slice on her plate, pushing it through the pool of meat juices. “I guess so. At one time.”
“But you changed your mind.”
“Yeah.” She thought about it, the powdery skin of her brow crinkling. “I must’ve.”
“Was there a reason?”
“I don’t know.”
I studied her from across the table. “You still go to mass, though.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged her thin, bird-like shoulders. “Got to go somewhere. Why?”
“I don’t know. Never mind.”
We lapsed into silence. I imagined the stranger sitting on the edge of his cot, tense and worried, afraid to leave the room but just as afraid to stay in it. Standing up, pacing, fixing his gaze on the door, waiting for someone. The police. Someone like Jerry, with his long black gun. Me.
I closed my eyes.
“Your father had a sister,” my grandmother said suddenly.
I looked up at her. “Sure,” I said, wondering what had brought this up. “Aunt Jeanine.”
“No.”
I looked at her. She blinked back at me in her tortoise-like manner.
“Different sister,” she said. “Lulu.”
I eyed her warily. “I don’t have an Aunt Lulu.”
“You did. Before you were born. Long time before that.” A streak of gravy had found its way into her hair, causing one curl to droop. “She had problems.”
“What do you mean?”
“Problems,” she said again vaguely. “She didn’t develop right. She had problems in her brain. Seizures and other things.”
I knitted my fingers together, uncertain of what to say. “I…didn’t know that.”
She shook her head. “They talked me into giving her up. The county. They took her away. She died when she was three.” She looked down, aligning her fork and knife along the edge of her napkin. “Three years and five months. She never said a word. That’s what they told me.” Coughing, she covered her mouth. “That kind of thing used to happen back then. It’s not like now, when they can fix these things. Everything was different.” She coughed again and reached for her glass of milk.
“After they told me she died, I was just so tired. That’s when I stopped thinking about things like God, I guess. I just didn’t have the energy. It takes energy to believe in that kind of thing, that’s what I found out, and I didn’t have it. I was busy taking care of your dad by then. He was almost two.
“The priest told me my faith would come back, but it didn’t. I never told him that, though. I didn’t feel like arguing about it.” She crumbled a piece of bread.
I opened my mouth, but she went on. “I just didn’t see the point of it—living. I did everything I was supposed to do. I did what I thought was best. I thought it would help her when I gave her up and it didn’t. I thought it was the right thing.” Her eyes flicked up, and she peered at me. “You looked a bit like her, when you were little. I always thought so.”
I shifted in my chair. “Do you have a picture of her?”
“No.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No pictures. We didn’t have a camera back then.” She took a long sip of milk. “I’m the only one left who remembers what she looked like.” Then, with a wry look, “Me and God, I guess.”