by Lydia Millet
“Eve!” yelled someone.
My mother.
“Jack having fun?” she asked.
Fun?
Turned out what she really wanted was for me to fill her glass. “Two fingers of the bourbon,” she said. “Orange label. Neat.”
I took the empty glass from her, purely to avoid a discussion, and then set it on the sink counter while I leisurely showered. There was still some warm water—a marvel.
As I was coming out of the bathroom she cornered me in the hallway. On her way to the liquor cabinet, likely.
“Where did you put my drink, Eve?”
“Shouldn’t you be thinking about your nine-year-old son instead of your next cocktail? Honestly.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I know he’s safe with you. Mature beyond your years.”
“Oh please.”
“Even your kindergarten teacher said you were extremely precocious. Mentally and emotionally. They wanted to put you in fourth grade! When you were six years old!”
“You’re flattering me to try to avoid responsibility? That’s low.” I pushed past her.
But at the end of the hall, lurking behind a bust of Susan B. Anthony, was Terry.
He’d witnessed the whole exchange.
EVERYTHING WAS TOO wet for a campfire that night, but Rafe still longed for flames. Wanted to toast the fact that he’d made it to the Final Two.
The game was down to him and Sukey.
So we stood around a grill he’d set up in the greenhouse. Its roof had been falling in even before the storm and now was mostly holes.
He burned something that looked suspiciously like sticks of furniture, and on the two-burner camp stove we boiled water and cooked ramen from packets. We ate it while playing music on David’s puck-shaped speaker.
By the time Val and Burl showed up we were sharing cans of the parents’ beer.
Burl was fully dressed. Val’s clothes, maybe.
“We saw something,” said Burl.
“A vision? I’ve been having those,” said Low.
“We saw a bush,” said Val.
“Whoa,” said Sukey. “Stop the presses.”
“Not sure what species, actually,” reflected Burl. “It had these bright-orange flowers.”
Val echoed. “Orange flowers.”
“We went to survey the trees. See how many had come down. Then we saw the bush. Thing was, there were bugs swarming above it. Huge swarm of mosquitoes. Whining. I’ve never seen mosquitoes swarm like that,” said Burl.
He paused, but it felt like he wanted to say more.
“OK,” said Sukey. “Uh-huh?”
“I think we need to take off. Get out of here.”
“Here where?” asked Terry. “These United States?”
“Maybe he’s got a compound,” said Jen, hopefully.
“Please,” said Dee. “He’s homeless.” She squirted hand sanitizer on her arms.
“Get away from the house,” said Burl. “The standing water. Your parents, too. I heard something about an MDMA episode . . . ? They don’t seem, uh . . . well equipped.”
“Damn, Burl,” said Sukey. “That’s not new information. But thanks for the moral support.”
“Only two of us have driver’s licenses,” said Rafe, almost apologetically. “Two cars can’t carry us all.”
“I can drive,” said Burl.
We looked at each other by the light of the flames.
“If one of us drove the van . . .” said Low.
“Where would we go?” asked Jen. “And what would we do when we got there?”
“Trouble’s coming,” said Burl.
The way he said it, somehow, it sounded real. It sounded like he knew something.
“Trouble’s not already here?” said Sukey.
“Maybe it’s a plague,” said Jack.
“A plague?” asked Dee, and stopped rubbing sanitizer on herself. “Bacterial? Viral? What plague?”
“I say hell yeah,” said Sukey. “Let’s book.”
“Come on,” said Dee. “We’re going to do what some homeless guy says?”
“Not homeless,” said Burl. “Groundskeeper. Live in a shack. Heated.”
“You’re the yardman?” said Sukey.
“The one who drove Alycia to live with the statutory rapist?” asked Jen.
Burl’s jaw dropped. He shook his head. “She said she needed asthma medicine!”
“There are plagues in my book,” said Jack.
“Eve. Tell your baby brother,” said Sukey, and crushed a beer can underfoot. “The only people who take the Bible literally are Alabama inbreds. And wife-beaters in Tennessee.”
“Your family’s not even Christian, Jack,” said Jen. “Eve told me. And your storybook’s not a user’s manual.”
“Ease off my brother,” I said.
“They say God in the book,” said Jack. “But me and Shel figured it out. God’s a code word. We figured it out!”
“Do tell,” said Jen.
“They say God but they mean nature.”
Shel signed.
“And we believe in nature,” Jack interpreted.
“OK,” said Terry. “How about Isaac and Abraham? Was it nature that told a guy he had to knife his son to death?”
Shel signed a bunch more. He stood up, agitated.
“Nature gets misinterpreted,” said Jen. “Shel says.”
“Plus it’s a story,” added Jack. “Things are symbols.”
I was impressed.
“Point is,” Burl interrupted. “Point is, it doesn’t feel right here. I know this place. We need to get away.”
“We could, like . . .” began Dee, then trailed off, hesitant.
“What?” said Sukey. “Spit it out.”
“. . . tell them? Tell the parents?”
Rafe shook his head. Juicy chortled.
“What, tell them a homeless guy said that it’s time to go?” said Low.
“Not homeless,” said Burl, quiet. “Just saying. Not a homeless molester.”
JACK’S WORRY WAS the animals. If they couldn’t come with us, he and Shel couldn’t leave. The animals needed protection.
The little boys were stubborn, and I finally broke down: what if we packed their animals into the van? Rafe and David had full licenses, but Sukey and I could also drive, in a pinch. We had learner’s permits.
Last was the problem of our destination. We had to reveal our home bases, choose the best prospect.
It turned out Juicy’s place took the prize: a mansion in Westchester County. He’d once muttered “north of Harlem”—probably trying to maintain his street cred.
Which was imaginary.
He lived in a ten-bedroom house in Rye.
TERRY WAS THE spokesperson, as usual. We went with him to the great house when we were finished packing up the vehicles. No parents had even noticed.
David’s mother lay on a couch in the library with a cold compress on her forehead. Other mothers and fathers milled around aimlessly, like robots with no programming.
“Excuse me? Attention?” said Terry.
No one listened.
“Use this,” said Sukey.
She handed him a rape whistle. It was the one the parents blew for dinner, but none of us had ever touched it. So when it suddenly shrilled, the parents gathered. Puzzled and annoyed.
The David mother leapt up from the couch.
“Amy? Is it Amy?”
“No,” said David.
She subsided again.
Terry mentioned the fact that the house had two gaping holes in it, including one that had wrecked our sleeping quarters. The yard was a muddy waste surrounded by fallen trees. The basement was two feet deep in toxic floodwater, and there were serious electrical hazards. The tap water might be unsafe to drink. The power was still out. All in all, our vacation paradise had turned into hell. And the bugs were getting bad, he added. They might carry disease.
Could we please leave?
&n
bsp; It sounded reasonable to me.
But the parents shook their heads.
“Even if little Amy wasn’t missing, we need to fix the damage or we won’t get back our deposit,” said a mother.
“If the management company hires their own contractors, the surcharge will be highway robbery,” said a father.
“Then there’s the breach of the lease agreement. What was the penalty, again?”
“Seventy thousand, I believe.”
“At least.”
“Leaving right now is, frankly, unacceptable.”
The yacht parents wouldn’t have given a shit, I thought. For them seventy grand was just a quick, private dinner flight to Paris.
BEFORE WE LEFT we carved our initials into the waterlogged posts of the Ark. I felt melancholy saying goodbye to the house: it was flooded, cold and dark and boarded up, but once it had been the site of splendid parties.
More than a century ago, said Terry, empire builders and criminals, famous artists and actors and ass-kissers had floated in their finery beneath the Roosevelt chandelier.
And in the future, he said, maybe a new generation of partyers would arrive. Much like us, but strangers to us forever, they’d look upon our names and wonder who we’d been.
“Or after us there won’t be anyone,” said Rafe. “Maybe we’re the last.”
“The oceans are rising,” said David.
“The plagues are coming,” piped up Jack.
“This forest, too, will fall,” said Jen.
They didn’t know if they were joking.
BURL VOLUNTEERED TO drive the van, with the little boys and their zoo in the back. I still don’t know how they lured the barn owl in, but when I slid into the front seat I turned around and saw it behind us, perched on a branch stuck between two cages.
Looking out the window as we pulled around the crescent onto the straightaway, I spied some parents running out the front door, waving their arms. Not my parents, of course.
I thought: Enh, they’ll get used to it. Children grow up. Children leave.
They’ll find us, I thought. When we want them to.
There was standing water on the dirt drive that wound through the woods to the edge of the property. Ahead of us a car sank two wheels into the mud. Juicy and Val got out and shoved a branch beneath a tire, but the engine revved and revved. Burl had to jump out to help.
Waiting for him to finish, I saw some parents beginning to gain on us—three. Running, since we’d hidden the keys to the cars we’d left behind. We’d text their location from a safe distance.
It was highly unusual to see a parent run.
Several of us were transfixed by the sight.
But then Burl got in again and we were off, in the lead. Rust-red water surged up around the van, but we had momentum. We didn’t sink beneath the waves.
5
TWENTY MINUTES OUT our progress was halted. Across the road more trees had collapsed—recently, it looked like. They’d taken a power line down with them, and it was popping and sparking across the top of the leafy mass.
Rerouting, I texted to the group, and pulled my finger around on the map app.
But the alternate routes were all in red, with multiple hazard signs on them.
We got out of our cars, except for Jack and Shel who wanted to check on the animals, and clustered on the road fiddling with our map apps.
None of the routes looked promising.
Some of us kicked at tires. We’d be damned if we were going back to the parents. We’d feel like losers, retreating with our tails between our legs.
More importantly, we just didn’t want to.
“I do know one place,” said Burl, after a while.
“A place,” said Val, encouraging.
“A farm,” he said. “Fields. A barn. It’s inland. Safer. Farther from the ocean.”
He said there was plenty of straw we could sleep on in the barn. That sounded uncomfortable. Plus flies, roaches, spiders, and possibly fire ants.
At Juicy’s mansion there were memory-foam mattresses, king-sized. And an infinity pool.
“Are there, like, cows on that farm?” asked Rafe. “They depress me. Doomed. Zero exceptions. It’s either a bolt shot through your head when you’re two or they let you live till you’re five. Make you a breeder and kidnap all your babies. Suck out the milk that was meant for them. And after that you die.”
“I didn’t realize you were vegan,” said Sukey, slightly sneering.
“Whose barn is it?” asked Dee.
“Rich lady’s,” said Burl. “She’s a hobby farmer. I do maintenance for her. Not there now. Lives in TriBeCa.”
The map app gave us a clear path when Burl entered the address—not that the app could be trusted. It also wanted us to levitate across the sparking power line.
“It wouldn’t be for long,” added Sukey. “Someone will clear these trees, won’t they? Then we get out of the barn and head to Juicy’s badass crib. OK?”
Juicy preened.
In the van Burl reversed quickly and accelerated back up the road. He liked to drive boldly.
There was a bad smell.
“The bunny made a mess,” admitted Jack.
“Son, that’s not rabbit turds,” said Burl. He had the air of one who knew.
“So did the possum. And the skunk. They’re scared.”
“The skunk?” said Burl.
“A skunk’s back there?” I echoed.
“She’s a nice skunk,” said Jack.
“So, I’ve been wondering,” I said to him. “To save the animals, wouldn’t you have to get two of each? Isn’t it a problem, down the road, if you only save one?”
Jack looked at me, amazed.
“Evie,” he said, in a reproachful tone. “Are you kidding? We’re not the only ones.”
“The only ones what?”
“Collecting. There are lots of others doing it.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ve got to have faith, Evie.”
Burl and I shared a sidelong look.
“One thing’s for sure. The deaf kid’s amazing,” said Burl to me under his breath. “I never saw a pro trapper as fast as him.”
“You used traps?” I asked Jack.
I’d pictured him and Shel with arms spread wide, animals strolling in. Hadn’t questioned it.
That was how distracted I’d been.
“Havaharts,” he said. “The biggest one fits a raccoon. We got them from the toolshed. Evie! No animal was hurt! The Havaharts work really good.”
“I guess they do,” said Burl. He shook his head. “A skunk, right here. With us. Well, damn.”
He drove less boldly after that.
THE BARN WAS painted red, and next to it was a white cottage with ivy growing up to the roof. There was an old metal grain silo looming. Together they nearly looked picturesque.
Best, no trees were down. That made it feel peaceful. A haven, almost. No sound but a breeze in the woods across the field, and in the distance a siren.
At the edge of the field there were three donkeys grazing. I pointed out some sheep. Six or seven.
“They’re not sheep. They’re goats,” Jack said.
“How do you tell the difference?”
“Goat tails go up, Evie! Sheep tails go down.”
Behind the cottage Burl showed us a generator, which he connected so the refrigerator would get cold. We’d snagged some cartons of milk and sticks of butter. Inside the barn we saw two rows of stalls and a hayloft, some dusty farm machinery. We climbed the ladder to the hayloft and found bales of hay. As promised.
There were a couple of all-terrain vehicles, which Low and Juicy jumped on. Electric, with push-button ignitions. Dee scolded them into wearing helmets she found hanging on pegs, and they went swerving across the pasture.
A few of us hung out in the cottage kitchen, where we could plug in our phones. The signal wasn’t strong enough for voice calls—the parents’ scolding voicemails came
through patchy, which was just fine—but we could browse.
We read how the storm had flooded the subway tunnels in New York, and in Boston the river had overflowed its banks. Downed power lines electrocuted drivers, and cars and garbage cans and pets had been swept away down streets that looked like rushing rivers.
We watched video of collapsing houses.
“Don’t you think they just, like, rerun the same footage from every hurricane before?” asked Sukey.
Usually it was of Florida or Louisiana or other places none of us lived. Now it claimed to be of closer locations. Pine trees whipping around instead of palms.
Riots, they said. Looting. States of emergency. The president had promised some money.
“One day there won’t be any money left,” pronounced Terry.
“Even the apps will stop working,” added Sukey.
We were downcast, there in the cottage. Downcast and uncertain. Relieved to be where we were, for sure.
But out there, beyond our field of view, the options were shrinking. Choices were being removed.
I slumped against the counter with my phone. On Instagram James had posted curated pictures of his ocean misadventure.
“Take a look,” I said.
There he was in a selfie, bare-chested in front of a stormy sky and perfectly filtered. One arm was raised to the heavens, displaying his well-molded pecs. The arm was holding an orange flag with a black square and circle on it.
#SOS, said his comment. He was smiling.
There was Alycia in profile, a white, slit-skirted dress flying out behind her and exposing her slender legs.
#goddess.
There were two faces pressed cheek to cheek and looking at the camera: an overly tanned older man, grimacing and shiny, and the trophy wife. They were holding up champagne flutes in hands loaded down with bling.
#ilovemyshipwreckedparents.
“Hashtag asskiss,” said Rafe.
“Parents? She’s not even his mother!” said Sukey.
“Unless she had him when she was three,” said Jen.
I quit the app.
“Good climbing trees off the east pasture,” said Burl to Val.
“Good climbing trees,” said Val.
I followed the two of them through the door, stood in the cottage garden under an arched wooden trellis with small roses growing over it. Watched them walk past a fenced enclosure where some vegetables were growing—tall rows of corn, dark clumps I’d learn later were kale and chard. Bees circled and grapevines climbed the fences, hanging in sweeps of green.
