“You should go to bed, Ell,” said his mother. He was aware of her hand on his arm, tugging him up. Then her arms were on him in an embrace, as his father patted his back. He felt a strange dislocation in time, as though he were a child again. He let her lead him to the bedroom he used to share with his sister, where he collapsed into his bunk.
* * *
—
A baby was crying in his dream, and when he awoke, it was still crying—but quickly shushed. Elliot sat up, disoriented until he remembered his ex-wife and her new wife and child were in the other room. He had an aching bladder and a spinning headache after the whisky and four beers. He had an urge to piss and throw up, and also to speak to Sarah. He needed to tell her about the letters. Using his phone as a flashlight, he tiptoed past his parents, asleep in the main room, to creep outside and take a leak in the bushes. The cool air was refreshing.
Afterwards, Elliot leaned against the front door of the cabin and withdrew the letters from his pocket. Even crumpled, they remained shocking. Then he checked his email. Sarah still hadn’t written. He started typing to her on his phone, snapping photos of the letters and attaching them to the message.
Sarah,
See attached. I commit myself to your infinite wisdom. What do I do?
In this case, cause and effect seem too thin on the ground to be able to make sense of anything. Do you know what I mean? Trying to connect that time in my life to anything as important as forty-six human beings and their families seems impossible. I feel stupid and guilty and cheated. And embarrassed.
Do I register on the website?? Won’t they be disappointed?
I still want to have kids, but I was going to wait until I was a better person.
Elliot
He held his phone up in the air, checking his signal, making sure the message was sent.
He knew what Keisha would tell him to do. He had two unanswered texts from her: Results are in and Aren’t you curious??? He was eager to tell Sarah about his possible immunity, but he didn’t want to alarm her—or inadvertently encourage her or Noah to take even the smallest unnecessary risk.
Thinking now along protective lines, he moved across the clearing to his family’s parked car and reached into the glove compartment to extract his service weapon. He regretted bringing the gun into the philosophical debate that would probably carry on over the next few days. He hadn’t even checked with his parents to see if they knew of anyone else up at the lake. Stalking a wide perimeter around the side of the cabin, he began circling the property. From the lake to the upper slope with the outhouse and back towards the other side. With the gun in his hand, his body was taut and ready and tingling with anticipation in the unknowable dark. When he heard a sudden noise in the underbrush, he stopped and fired into the air. The gunshot reverberated through his body and blared across the lake. He forced himself to exhale, his breath ragged. All was still, the snow undisturbed apart from his own footsteps. Then he stood there, taking in the tranquility of the forest at night. But the darkness turned out to be full of noises: branches snapping, animals rustling, ice creaking and groaning in the lakebed. Night birds called out in counterpoint. And the more he listened, the more he heard. For once, he felt small and untethered. The most faltering and uncertain creature of them all.
When he got back to the cabin, Julia was waiting for him outside with an electric lantern. She had a parka thrown on over her pyjamas.
“What are you doing up?” he asked.
“I heard a gunshot,” she said dryly. “I have a baby in there.”
Elliot could feel himself flushing. “Did I wake anyone else?” He peered in the nearest window, but all was dim and undisturbed. He quickly returned to the car and replaced the weapon, hoping to move past his overwhelming feeling of ridiculousness.
“I’m sorry,” he said, coming back. “I’m still messed up over this whole ‘sudden paternity’ thing.”
Julia gave him a flinty look, her face pale and haloed in faux fur. “Oh well. I’m sure the kids will understand. You were going through something.”
“Yeah.” He was disconcerted by the change in her, the hardness in her voice. When she’d dropped by his apartment, she’d been earnest but ironic, as ready to plead her case as to laugh at herself. “So why didn’t you tell Dory you came to see me? You’ve put me into a bit of an awkward position.”
“She wouldn’t have liked me meddling,” said Julia. “She doesn’t like having to accept help.”
“Don’t I know it.” He almost smiled, but he was annoyed that there was not even the pretext of an apology. “I don’t care for lying, though.”
“What’s a white lie to a white knight?” Julia blew on her hands then shoved them into the pockets of her parka. “I know you have some kind of saviour complex. That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it? You’re always trying so hard to prove you’re one of the good guys. Saving us, trying to save my dad.” Her breath cooled into clouds. “But you haven’t really forgiven anyone.”
“What’s to forgive?” he asked, but his reply was mechanical. “People change. Marriages end.”
“But you still think it’s my fault.” The porch creaked as Julia stepped towards him, glaring at a point somewhere to the left of his forehead. She was all jagged edges, as though battered by the events of the past few months.
Elliot was still drunk and riled up, but he felt an affinity for her, in the transparency of her grief manifesting as misplaced anger. “I don’t,” he said, darting his head to catch her gaze and hold it. Somehow, in saying so, he felt it become true. “It wasn’t your fault. Maybe it was just easier to pretend like it was.”
“That’s nice of you to say.” She pulled her coat down as far as it would go before sitting down on the cold stoop. Up close, she looked worn out, her skin dry and dull. “And what you said before, you were right. Words do matter. But not as much as actions.”
“Right.” Elliot recalled their last conversation and everything he’d said about marriage. “Vows are just words. Dory needed to be with the right person. I can see that now.”
Julia shook her head as though he was missing the point. When she spoke, her voice was fierce and intense. “No, I’m saying I’ll never forget what you did for my father.” Then she tightened her shoulders, folding in on herself. “Sorry.” She rubbed her chin against the collar of her jacket.
Elliot felt ill at ease with her gratitude, since his final hours with Keelan still registered as a failure. “I wish I’d managed to get in touch with you sooner. I don’t know if it helps, but with a one-month-old at home, they wouldn’t have let you in the ward. Or at least strongly counselled against it.”
Julia gave no sign of having heard him. Elliot tried to banish the memory of Keelan lying prone in his lap. Part of him longed to tell her of that terrible day in the hospital, to share and disarm the images so they were no longer his to bear alone.
“Your father was at peace,” Elliot said instead. “He wasn’t in any pain at the end.” There was so little else to offer besides this compassionate omission.
A puff of condensation from her nostrils: a silent snort.
“Your dad loved you so much,” he went on. “And he knew you loved him, too.”
Julia stretched out her legs as she wept silently, her flannel pyjama bottoms sagging onto the steps. “I’m just…tired.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her jacket. “It’s a scary time to have a kid. Even if we survive, it’s hard to see where we go from here. Nothing is going to be the way it was before. Us against them. Neighbour against neighbour. You know what I mean?”
“Every generation thinks the world is going to hell. That’s not new.” Elliot remembered one of his parents saying that even the ancient Romans thought as much.
“Everything is falling away,” Julia continued, flicking a hand around in a jerky, truncated wave. “The insects, the animals,
the forests, the ozone. If it isn’t ARAMIS that ends this freak-show evolutionary lottery, it’ll be something else. We don’t know how to talk to one another, and we can’t listen.” She swallowed. “It’s hard to see the point of doing anything besides what’s right in front of you.”
It was discomfiting to listen to her voice his worst fears with the same hopelessness he had been trying to suppress for weeks. He heard the self-protectiveness in it, the terror of failing, and the overwhelming grief for all of humanity’s missteps. Elliot paced back over to the turning circle and the car. He could see that the keys were inside.
“Hey, what are you doing?” said Julia, as he got into the driver’s seat. When he glanced over at her, she seemed taken aback. “Don’t leave. I was joking. Or at least, I was just…talking.”
“I know,” said Elliot. “But I am leaving. Going back to the city,” he said. The relief was sobering. He could feel his head clearing, the path of duty laid bare and beckoning. He thought, too, of all those children he had helped bring into the world, the dozens of unknown ties he had yet to explore. “Society is still worth protecting, don’t you think? Maybe now more than ever.”
She stood up, looking fretful. “Are you sure? Why not wait until morning? I really hope it’s not because of me.”
“It’s not because of you. Less traffic now.” And less pressure from his parents. “Bye, Julia. Tell them for me?”
She nodded, then hopped off the porch and approached him with quick, hurried steps. He saw the shock of cold on her face as her feet in their flimsy slippers hit the snow. Then her arms were around him in a swift, tight hug. When she pulled back, her smile was small and tired, but real. “Good luck. And stay safe.”
As he slowly negotiated the rutted, icy road, Elliot felt renewed by their conversation. He was starting to believe there were second chances in life to make things right. There were a million chances, really, given how connected everyone was these days. With a million chances, he might finally be able to do the right thing.
December 18, 2020
Dove Suite Snags Song of the Year
“Song for the End of the World” by indie-rock quartet Dove Suite has topped Trillis’s annual “Year in Music Insights” list as the most streamed song in America.
Though only released at the end of November, the single has surpassed even the summer’s biggest hits. “If you’d asked me if it was possible for a single to come out at the end of the year and dominate in this way, I would have said no,” says Gregory Fischer, who helped compile the list for the streaming service. “But this has been an unusual year for music and for Dove Suite in particular. All the drama surrounding the band probably increased public interest.”
Husband-and-wife bandleaders Stuart Jenkins and Emma Aslet both contracted ARAMIS in late October, during the final weeks of Aslet’s pregnancy. Aslet and the child survived, but Jenkins passed away from respiratory failure. The couple also spearheaded the “To America With Love” ARAMIS fundraising concert in Vancouver on September 26, which became notorious for proliferating the virus within Canada as well as for a stampede that claimed the lives of eight concertgoers and injured 58 others.
“Everyone knows that this is someone who has suffered greatly,” says Fischer of Aslet. “We look to art to show us how we can survive the pain of this world. And right now there are a lot of people in pain, a lot of people who have lost loved ones. This song has become a kind of anthem for them.”
The song has also been wildly popular on conventional radio, where it debuted at number one and has been holding steady ever since. Dean Lefferts of Sound City Records predicts it could become the “Hallelujah” of the ARAMIS age. “It has that bittersweet quality.” Though the new Dove Suite offering has not yet spawned as many interpretations as Leonard Cohen’s famous song, a YouTube search for the title reveals more than 150 different cover versions, by well-established and unknown artists alike. Neela Sim, founder of the Dove Suite fansite LightningHearts.com, reported in a recent blog post that “Song for the End of the World” is frequently being performed at memorials and funerals across the country. The post included photos sent in by ARAMIS survivors who were inspired to get tattoos featuring the song’s lyrics.
The band released a statement in response to the Trillis announcement. “Music has always been a way for people to come together, and that has never seemed more important than it does right now. If we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that sometimes a voice in the darkness can reach out and save you from feeling alone.”
The catchy single is also the 18th most streamed track globally.
SARAH AND OWEN
DECEMBER 2020
Sarah popped below to the navigation station to check the charts as they prepared to leave Bimini and cross to the Berry Islands. As she calculated their route to Chub Cay, she listened for Noah, who was still singing to himself in his cabin.
They had set sail out of Cape May, New Jersey, with no fanfare and only Elliot to see them off. Sarah had stowed their three bags—packed and repacked many times over several days—while Noah bounded around the yacht, exultant over his new kingdom. Though she’d put on a brave face, she felt dangerously untethered as they motored away from her brother and everything safe and familiar. Not at all the intrepid joy of her teen sailing days, nor the sure purpose she’d felt when she decided to quit school and move to Bolivia—she could still recall the crescendo of pleasure from her scalp to her fingertips as the plane lifted off. Back then, she had willingly put herself in the hands of fate. If the plane went down, nobody would blame her for all she had failed to do in life: complete her master’s degree, establish a dazzling career in some field or other. Find a boyfriend of any consequence. Guilt had already swept her off course like some inexorable riptide, like the current that had nearly drowned Jericho. Nothing she had undertaken since that terrible night in the river had seemed to matter quite as much, even as each new decision felt fraught with hidden and ever-multiplying consequences. Living Tree had promised forgiveness, community, and freedom from the unknown. For a while, that liberty had made her ecstatic, buoyant. High on life. Though she also remembered the eventual flipside of that unfettered feeling: the loneliness that crept in once her certainty had soured.
“There’s a breeze out of the east.” Owen was peering over her shoulder at the charts. The day-long sail across the Gulf Stream had boosted his confidence, even as the northerly winds and swift, relentless current had tested all of Sarah’s rusty navigation skills. “Shall we try to sail the whole way? Go where the wind takes us?”
She tried to return the smile, but her face felt tight. “We should at least motor out of the anchorage. And we need to leave soon to make it there before low tide.”
“I can take the wheel if you like. I think Noah is awake.”
Sarah nodded. “Sure.” He bounded back up on deck.
The first few days on the boat with Owen had been strange, as their relationship, established mainly over the phone, became embodied. She felt hounded by the mere bulk of him, though he moved around her with such circumspection that she knew he must be going out of his way not to crowd her. And it was no wonder: she could sense the barbed energy she was putting out. She tried to curb her anxiety by plotting and replotting their route, but it spiked no matter which way her thoughts tended—ARAMIS, Noah, Elliot, her latent sailing skills she prayed would return. Not to mention the sheer bodily strain of living in close quarters with a near stranger. But the more their minds were bent towards their journey, the easier they were with each other.
She had steered them 987 nautical miles down the Intracoastal Waterway from Norfolk, Virginia, all the way to the Florida Keys. Mostly they were motoring by day and mooring at night—by far the safest option as they were a stone’s throw from dozens of other boats, all cruising the sheltered route down to Miami. The Ditch, as it was known—a mix of c
anals, rivers, bays, and inlets—was a crash course in navigation. They were protected from ocean swells, but they needed to pay close attention to buoys and the depth sounder. Running aground was the peril of the Ditch, and Buona Fortuna had a full keel and a five-foot draft. Shallow water put Sarah on edge, and she’d longed to be out in the ocean right up until they’d faced the choppy nine-hour passage across the Gulf Stream to Bimini, in the Bahamas. Next, as weather allowed, they would cross to the Berry Islands, then to Nassau, to Rose Island, and finally to the Exumas for the rest of the winter. She wished they were there already.
As she stowed the charts, she remembered a saying about the journey being more important than the destination—a commonplace already too indulgent for the circumstances. She had a child and a man in her charge, and nothing mattered more than getting them all where they needed to go.
* * *
—
Sarah kept an eye out as Owen guided the yacht from the slip and set them on a steady course for the crossing. It was a perfect day, with favourable winds. After breakfast, she sat across from Noah at the table in the salon, watching as he copied a row of Gs, capital and lower case. A little before noon, Owen returned below.
“What shall we have for lunch?” The writer beat out a rhythm on his belly and Noah giggled.
“Hmm.” She pretended to deliberate. “Soup?” Soup was their usual meal, the default.
Owen laughed and Noah joined in as he always did, despite not getting the joke. Owen went to the galley and Sarah stayed at the table, progressing with her son through the alphabet, until she felt fingers lightly brushing her upper arm, a gauzy touch that was almost sensuous. She turned to see Owen bearing a large mug of soup that he put into her open hands.
“Captain,” he said. He reached out and smoothed her son’s blond cap of hair, then ran his fingers through his own silvering locks, a reflexive preening. “All hands on deck when you’re done eating. The water is as clear as a window. I’ve already counted thirty-four starfish as big as dinner plates.”
Songs for the End of the World Page 37
