“What did I tell you?” I said.
She took a moment to scan the article, then glanced up at me. “It says it was incinerated in the upper atmosphere.”
“‘Most likely,’ it says. And it’s wrong, obviously. You were there. You saw it.” I pointed through the doorway to the living room, where the piece of mesh—stiff, twisted, blackened from the heat of reentry—occupied a place on the bookcase, where formerly a vase had stood, between Salinger and Salter in the American Lit section. “Tell me that’s not real.”
The night before, out in the field, she’d warned me not to touch it—“It’s dirty, it’s nothing, just some piece of junk”—but I knew better. I knew right away. I took it up gingerly between thumb and forefinger, expecting heat, expecting the razor bite of steel on unprotected flesh, and thinking of The War of the Worlds in its most recent cinematic iteration, but after we’d had a moment to examine it under the pale gaze of the cell phone and see how utterly innocuous it was, I handed it to her as reverently as if it were a religious relic. She held it in one hand, running her thumb over the braid of the mesh, then passed it back to me. “It feels warm,” she said. “You don’t really think it came from that meteor or whatever it was?” She turned her face to the sky.
“Satellite,” I told her. “Last I heard they said it was going to come down in Canada someplace.”
“But they were wrong, is that what you’re saying?”
I couldn’t see her features, but I could hear the dismissiveness in her voice. We’d been fighting all day, fighting to the point of exhaustion, and it infuriated me to think she wouldn’t even give me this. “They’ve been wrong before,” I said, and then I cradled the thing under one arm and started back across the field without bothering to see if she was coming or not.
Now she said, “Don’t be crazy. It’s just some piece of a car or a tractor or something—or a lawnmower. It fell off a lawnmower, I’ll bet anything.”
“A lawnmower in the sky? It hit me. Right here, on the shoulder.” I jerked at the neck of my T-shirt and pulled it down over my left shoulder in evidence.
“I don’t see anything.”
“There’s a red mark there, I’m telling you—I saw it in the mirror this morning.”
She just stared at me.
A week slid by. The heat never broke, not even after a series of thunderstorms rumbled in under a sky the color of bruised flesh—all the rain managed to do was drive up the humidity. We were supposed to be enjoying ourselves, we were supposed to be on vacation, but we didn’t do much of anything. We sat around and sweated and tried to avoid contact as much as possible. Dinner was salad or takeout and we ate at the kitchen table, where the fan was, books propped in our hands. It was hard on the dog, what with the complication of his fur, which was made for another climate altogether, and I took him for increasingly longer walks, just to get out of the house. Twice I led him to the park where the satellite had sloughed its skin, and if I combed the grass there looking for evidence—metal, more metal, a screw, a bolt—I never said a word about it to anybody, least of all Mallory. What did I find? A whole world of human refuse—bottle caps, cigarette lighters, a frayed length of shoelace, plastic in its infinite varieties—and the bugs that lived in and amongst it all, oblivious. I came back from the second of these excursions and found Mallory on the couch, where I’d left her, her bare feet and legs shining with sweat, magazine in one hand, Diet Coke in the other. She didn’t even glance up at me, but I could see right away there was something different about her, about the way she was holding herself, as if she knew something I didn’t.
“I took the dog to the park,” I said, looping his leash over the hook in the entryway. “Hotter down there than here, I think.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You want to go down to Gabe’s for a drink? How does a G. & T. sound?”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking up at me for the first time. “I guess so. I don’t care.”
It was then that my gaze happened to fall on the bookcase, on the gap there, where the old paperback of Nine Stories had fallen flat. “Where’s the thing?” I said.
“What thing?”
“The mesh. My mesh.”
She shrugged. “I tossed it.”
“Tossed it? Where? What do you mean?”
In the next moment I was in the kitchen, flipping open the lid of the trashcan, only to find it empty. “You mean outside?” I shouted. “In the dumpster?”
When I came thundering back into the room, she still hadn’t moved. “Jesus, what were you thinking? That was mine. I wanted that. I wanted to keep it.”
Her lips barely moved. “It was dirty.”
I must have spent half an hour out there, poking through the side-by-side dumpsters that served our building and the one across the alley from it. I was embarrassed, I’ll tell you, people strolling by and looking at me like I was one of the homeless, a can man, a bottle redeemer, and I was angry too, and getting angrier. She had no right, that was what I kept telling myself—she’d done it just to spite me, I knew it, and the worst thing, the saddest thing, was that now I’d never know if that piece of mesh was the real deal or not. I could have sent it to NASA, to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to somebody who could say yea or nay. But not now. Not anymore.
When I came back up the stairs, sweating and with the reek of rotting vegetables and gnawed bones and all the rest hanging around me like a miasma, I went right for her. I took hold of her arm, slapped the magazine away, and jerked her to her feet. She looked scared, and that just set me off all the more. I might have pushed her. She might have pushed back. Next thing I was out the door, out on the street, fuming, the sun still glaring overhead, everything before me looking as ordinary as dishwater. There was a bar down the street—air conditioning, music, noise, people, a change of mood that was as easy to achieve as switching channels on the TV—and I was actually on my way there, my shoulders tense as wire, when I stopped myself. I patted down my pockets: wallet, keys, cell phone, a dribble of dimes and quarters. I didn’t have a comb or a toothbrush or a change of underwear, I didn’t have books or my iPod or the dog, but none of that seemed to matter, not anymore. A couple in shorts and running shoes flashed by me, breathing noisily. A motor scooter backfired across the street.
We kept the car in the lot out back of the apartment. I went the long way around the building, keeping close to the wall, in case Mallory was at the front window, looking to see where I’d gone off to. The tank showed less than a quarter full, and my wallet held three fives and three singles—along with the change, that gave me a grand total of nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents. No matter. I’d stop at the ATM on the way out of town, and if things got desperate I did have a credit card, which we reserved for emergencies only, because we really struggled just to make the minimum payment every month. Was this an emergency? Mallory wouldn’t think so. The geniuses from NASA might not think so, either—or the farmer whose sheep bore crusted-over scabs on their legs and throats and sad white faces. But as I wheeled the car out of the lot I couldn’t help thinking it was the biggest emergency of my life.
I didn’t know where I was going. I had no idea beyond the vague notion of putting some miles behind me, heading north, maybe, until the corn gave way to forest, to pines as fragrant as the air that went cold at night and seeped in through the open window so that you had to pull a blanket over you when you went to sleep. The car—the rusted-out Volvo wagon Mallory’s mother used to drive to work back in Connecticut—shuddered and let out a grinding mechanical whine as I pulled up in front of the bank. I got out, mounted the three steps to the concrete walkway where the ATM was, and waited the requisite six feet six inches away from the middle-aged woman in inflated khaki shorts who was just then feeding in her card. The heat was staggering. My shirt was wet as a dishrag, my hair hanging limp. I wasn’t thinking, just doing.
It was then that I glanced up and noticed the silver Toyota parked in the lot of the ice-cre
am parlor next door. A woman and two kids emerged from the building, licking cones, and went off down the street, and then the door swung open again and there was the blond girl, her own cone—the pale green of pistachio—held high and her face twisted in a grimace as she said something over her shoulder to the guy behind her. He was wearing the same T-shirt he’d worn that day on the road and he didn’t have an ice cream of his own, but as he came through the door he twisted his face too, and snatched at the girl’s arm. She let out a cry, and then the ice cream, double scoop, which had already begun to melt in green streaks across the back of her hand, slipped from the cone to plop wetly at her feet, just like anything else subject to the law of gravity.
“You creep!” she shouted. “Look what you did.” And he said something back. And then she said something. And then I was no longer watching them, because, as far as I was concerned, they could go careering around the world on any orbit they wanted, just so long as it never intersected mine again. Space debris that collides in two wide bands of low Earth orbit, at 620 and at 930 miles up, can fragment and fragment again—things as big as satellites and rocket boosters and as small as the glove the astronaut Ed White lost on the first U.S. space walk. Eventually, it’s all going to come down, and whether it’ll burn up or crush a house or tap somebody on the shoulder in a dark field on a dark night is anybody’s guess.
The woman at the ATM seemed to be having trouble with her card—no bills had yet appeared, and she kept punching at the keys and reinserting the card as if sheer repetition would wear the machine down. I had time. I was very calm. I pulled out my cell and called Mallory. She answered on the first ring. “Yeah?” she snapped, angry still. “What do you want?”
I didn’t say anything, not a word. I just pressed my thumb to the off switch and broke the connection. But what I’d wanted to say was that I’d taken the car and that I’d be back, I was pretty sure I’d be back, and that she should feed the dog and pay the rent, which was due the first of the month, and if she went out at night—if she went out at all—she should remember to look up, look up high, way up there, where the stars burn and the space junk roams, because you never can tell what’s going to come down next.
PETER CAMERON
After the Flood
FROM Subtropics
THE DJUKANOVICS CAME to live with us after the flood because they had nowhere else to go. Well, that’s not really true. They had plenty of places to go, they had the whole world to go to, but they came to us, and that was because of Reverend Judy. It was her idea, and Reverend Judy’s a very persuasive person. I suppose that’s a good quality in a minister, but I have to say I find it somewhat grating. The Djukanovics had to go somewhere because their house was condemned. One wall had buckled and the roof had caved in. Everyone said how lucky it was that they weren’t all killed when the house collapsed, but they were not killed. Although they did lose pretty much everything they owned.
The Sunday after the flood, I was leaving church and Reverend Judy was standing in the vestibule saying hello or something cheerful (I suppose) to every person who passed by. This meant it took almost forever to get out of church, especially if you sit up front where Robert and I like to sit on account of the acoustics. Or lack thereof. Anyway, on the Sunday after the flood, when Robert and I finally made it to the vestibule, Reverend Judy clutched my hand—she really clutched it, and sort of shook it, as if it was frostbitten and she was trying to revive it—and told me she had something special to talk about with me and could she stop by our house tomorrow morning? Well, on account of all the people behind us pressing forward, eager to get this part of the day behind them, I agreed, because I didn’t have my wits about me to say no.
I am not a fan of Reverend Judy. She has been at the church for about a year, and most people are just crazy about her. For one thing, it bothers me that she calls herself Reverend Judy. Our last minister, George Abbott, called himself Pastor Abbott, and that was just fine. But Reverend Judy thinks she’s better than a pastor. And I don’t think the “Judy” goes very well with the “Reverend.” I mean, if you want to be called Reverend, you’d think you’d want the dignity of your last name, and call yourself Reverend Halliday-Ortiz (which is Judy’s last name). But no. Reverend Judy is part of this new generation of church folk who are all het up on making the church contemporary and attractive to young people. Her first sermon was all about bringing the church into the twenty-first century, as if we had been languishing in the Dark Ages. But as I said, I am in the minority as far as Reverend Judy is concerned. Everyone else in the congregation adores her, they think she’s just wonderful with her funny glasses (all different colors and shapes, she must spend a fortune on them) and because she adopted two little girls from China, or maybe Korea, named Isabelle and Carlotta.
Anyway, on Monday morning Reverend Judy arrived and we sat down in the living room. I made sure Robert was there because I didn’t want to be alone with Reverend Judy. I know that may sound silly since she is a minister after all, but I get these feelings about some people, and I had gotten a feeling about Reverend Judy that I couldn’t shake, so Robert and I sat on the sofa and Reverend Judy sat in Robert’s chair and we chitchatted awhile, and then Reverend Judy said the reason she was there was because the Djukanovics needed a place to live, and since we had this big house all to ourselves, she thought we would be the perfect refuge for them and she was sure it wouldn’t be long until they were back on their feet and she knew we were good Christians and would want to do the Lord’s work. Then she got up rather suddenly and said it had all been arranged, there was nothing for us to do except open our house and our hearts, and that the Djukanovics would be there that evening. Apparently there was some sort of ice-cream social at the shelter that afternoon that they didn’t want to miss.
After she had gone, Robert and I just sat there because we didn’t know what had happened or what we should do. I think we honestly both thought about getting in the car and driving away and leaving our house to the Djukanovics, but of course that wasn’t a very practical response, and Robert is a practical man, so he suggested we clear out the guest room, which he had been using as a hobby room, and then I remembered that the Djukanovics had one child and maybe more, but I was sure they had one because my friend Dorothy who teaches second-grade Sunday school told me that the Djukanovic girl was an odd little fish. She didn’t elaborate, but I thought it so uncharacteristic for Dorothy to call a girl a fish, and so it had stuck with me.
Could we put them all in the guest room? We did have a rollaway cot up in the attic we could bring down that would work just fine for the little girl, but Robert felt that since Alice’s room was right there across the hall from the guest room, and empty, and even though we always kept the door closed, they’d probably open it at some point and wonder why we had crowded all three of them (or more, if they had more children) into the guest room. So we decided we’d put the little girl in Alice’s room (Alice was our daughter) and her parents in the guest room (twin beds) and Robert and I would have to share the master bedroom. I forgot to mention that Robert had been sleeping in his hobby room ever since he’d had his hip-replacement surgery and needed to keep his leg at a ninety-degree angle, which he said was impossible with someone else in the bed, and by the time he was back on his feet (so to speak), I think we both realized it was really much nicer having our own bedrooms, and so we just pretended it had always been that way and continued. I find this often happens in long marriages. Robert and I have been married fifty-three years.
The other reason I was apprehensive about the Djukanovics moving in with us is that I felt I had gotten off on the wrong foot with them. Or at least with Mr. Djukanovic. They moved to our town about six months ago and showed up at our church soon after that, and one Sunday morning during the “Care to Share” part of the service that Reverend Judy had initiated, she made them stand up and then introduced them to the congregation and asked us all to welcome them to our town and church. Or something like that. Well
, at the coffee klatch after the service, I saw Mr. Djukanovic standing all by himself in a corner of Fellowship Hall, and although it was not in my nature, I decided to go over and chat with him. I have been trying to be a better Christian ever since what happened to Alice happened, because I read somewhere that adversity often turns people bitter, but if you make an effort and keep a watchful eye on yourself, you can turn in the other, better direction. So I went up to Mr. Djukanovic and introduced myself. He shook my hand, and I noticed that his hand was very warm, not unpleasantly warm, not moist, just warm and surprisingly soft. He was a big man. I suppose I was a bit unnerved by the pleasantness of his touch, for instead of saying something kind and welcoming, I said, “What kind of a name is Djukanovic?” Now, I meant this in a very nice way, not at all like it was a suspicious or bad or foreign name, but I know that’s how it sounded because Mr. Djukanovic looked at me oddly and said, “Well, what kind of name is Evarts?” And I said, “I think it’s just a plain old American name, but your name is so interesting and I wonder what it means.” “Means?” asked Mr. Djukanovic. “It’s a name, it doesn’t mean anything.” I realized by his hostile tone that my question had offended him, even though I had meant it in the friendliest possible way, so I tried to think of how to restore the balm of fellowship to our conversation. “Is it European?” I asked him, because no one can be insulted for being taken for a European, but this seemed to only annoy Mr. Djukanovic further, for he said, “No, it’s not European,” and he turned away and walked over to the doughnut table and grabbed a fistful of Pop’ems. And that was the extent of my relationship with any of the Djukanovics, and now they were coming to live in my house.
The Best American Short Stories 2014 Page 7
