In the Mean Time

by Tremblay, Paul

All Angie says is, “Story first. Story first.”

  Florida isn’t sure if this is a yes or not. Maybe.

  Angie tells of the areas around the big cities, places called the suburbs. How the stuff ruined everyone’s pretty lawns and amateur gardens, and then started taking root in the cracks of sidewalks and driveways. People poured and sprayed millions of gallons of weed killer, liquid plumber, lye, and bleach. None of it worked on the stuff, and all the chemicals leeched into the ground water. Water supplies were quickly poisoned.

  Like most of Angie’s stories, Florida doesn’t understand everything, like what ground water is. But she still understands the story. It makes a screaming noise inside her head, and it is all that she can do to keep it from coming out.

  She says, “I listened to your story, now you have to answer my question, okay?” Florida takes the book away from Angie, who surprisingly does not resist.

  “I’m tired.” Angie licks her dry and cracked lips.

  “You promised. When is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know, Florida. I really don’t.” Angie looks smaller somehow, with the blankets curled and twisted round her legs and arms. It’s as if she’s been pulled apart and her pieces sprinkled about their nest.

  Florida wants to shrink and crawl inside one of her sister’s pockets. She asks in her smallest voice, “Was this how it happened last time?”

  “What last time? What are you talking about?”

  “When Mommy ran away? Was this how it happened when she ran away?”

  “No. She wasn’t happy so she left. He’s going to get food and water.”

  “Is he happy? He didn’t look happy when he left.”

  “He’s happy. He’s fine. He isn’t leaving us.”

  “He’s coming back though, right?”

  “Yes. He’ll come back.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.”

  Florida believes in her big sister, the one who, on that very same spider-story day in the playground, punched a third grader named Elizabeth in the nose for putting a Daddy Long Legs down the back of Florida’s shirt.

  Florida leaves the nest and resumes her post, sitting cross-legged in the mud room, in the shadow of the front door. The wind continues to increase in velocity. The house stretches, settles, and groans, the sounds eager for their chance to fill the void. Then on the other side of the front door, brushing against the wood, there’s a light rapping, a knocking, but if it is a knocking, it’s being done by doll-sized hands with doll-sized fingertips small enough to find the cracks in the door that nobody can see, small enough to get inside the door and come through on the other side. The inside.

  Florida stays seated, but twists and yells, “Angie! I think someone is knocking on the door!” Florida covers her mouth, horrified that whoever is knocking must’ve heard her. Even in her terror, she realizes that the gentle sounds are so slight, small, quiet, that maybe she’s making up the knocking, making up her very own story.

  Angie says, “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Someone is knocking lightly. I can hear them.” Florida presses her ear against the wood, closes her eyes, and tries to finish this knocking story. Single knocks become a flurry issued by thousands of miniature doll hands, those faceless toys, maybe they crawled all the way here from New York City, and they scramble and climb over each other for a chance to knock the door down. Florida wraps her arms around her chest, terrified that the door will collapse on top of her. The knocking builds to crescendo, and then ebbs along with the dying wind.

  Florida rests her forehead on the door and says, “It stopped.”

  Angie says, “No one’s there. Don’t open the door.”

  3

  Angie hasn’t eaten anything in days. They are down to a handful of beef jerky and half a box of Cheerios. In the basement, there are only two one-gallon bottles of water left, and they rest in a corner next to the staircase landing. Flashlight in hand, Florida sits on the damp wood of the landing, plastic water jugs pressing against her thigh. It’s cooler down here, but her feet sweat inside her rubber rain boots. The boots are protection in case she decides to walk toward the far wall and hunt for jars of pickles or preserves her father may have stashed.

  Florida has been sitting with her flashlight pointed at the earthen floor for more than two hours. When she first came down here, the tips of the growing things were subtle protrusions; hints of green and brown peeking through the sun-starved dirt. Now, the tallest spear-like stalks stretch for more than a foot above the ground. The leafy ends of the plants would tickle her knees were she to take the trip across the basement. She wonders if the leaves would feel rough against her skin. She wonders if the leaves are somehow poisonous, despite never having heard her sister describe them that way.

  Earlier that morning, Florida decided she had to do something other than stare at the front door and listen for the knocking. She put herself to work and rearranged the candles around the fireplace mantle, and she lit new ones even though, according to her father, she wasn’t old enough to use matches. She singed the tips of her thumb and pointing finger watching that first blue flame curl up the matchstick. After the candles, she prepared a change of clothes for Angie and left the small bundle, folded tightly, on the couch. She picked out a green dress that Angie never wore, but Florida not-so-secretly coveted. Then she swept the living room and kitchen floors. The scratch of the broom’s straws on the hardwood made her uneasy.

  Angie slept most of the day, waking only to tell a quick story of the growing things cracking mountains open like eggs, drowning the canyons and valleys in green and brown and drinking up all the ponds, lakes, and rivers.

  Florida runs the beam of her flashlight over the stone and mortar foundation walls, but sees no cracks, and scoffs at the most recent tale of the growing things. Angie’s stories had always mixed truth with exaggeration. For example, it was true that Florida used to hunt and kill spiders, and it was true that all those twitchy legs were why she killed them. Simply watching a spider crawling impossibly on the walls or ceiling and seeing all that choreographed movement set off earthquake-sized tremors somewhere deep in her brain. But she was never so cruel as to pull off their legs with tweezers, and she certainly never collected their button-sized bodies. Florida never understood why Angie would say those horrible, made-up things about her.

  Still, Florida initially believed Angie’s growing things stories, believed the growing things were even worse than what Angie portrayed, which is what frightened Florida the most. Now, however, seeing the sprouts and stalks living in the basement makes it all seem so much less scary. Yes, they are real, but they are not city-dissolving, mountain-destroying monsters.

  Florida thinks of an experiment, a test, and shuts off the flashlight. She only hears her own breathing, a pounding base drum, so big and loud it fills her head, and in the absolute dark, her head is everything. Recognizing her body as the source of all that terrible noise is too much and she starts to panic, but she calms herself down by imagining the sounds of the tubular wooden stalks growing, stretching, reaching out and upward. She turns the flashlight on again, surveys the earthen basement floor, and she’s certain there has been more growth and new sprouts emerging from the soil. The sharp and elongated tips of the tallest stalks sport clusters of shockingly green leaves the size of playing cards, the ends of which are also tapered and pointed. The stalks grow in tidy, orderly rows, although the rows grow more crowded and the formations more complex as the minutes pass. Florida repeats turning off the flashlight, sitting alone in the dark, breathing, listening, and then with the light back on, she laughs and quietly claps a free hand against her leg in recognition of the growing things’ progress.

  Florida indulges in a fantasy where her father returns home unharmed, arms loaded with supplies, a large happily-ever-afte
r smile on his sallow face. He’s not squirrelly anymore, and he’s so pleased with how she’s managed the candles, taken care of the house and Angie. They throw open the shades and curtains. He lifts her and puts her on his back. She turns her head to the side and places one cheek on the back of his neck, the lump of his vertebra familiar and comfortable. Then they’re at the top of the basement stairs, and before they descend into the dark, Florida asks to keep the growing things alive in the basement. She asks if she can keep her secret garden.

  What would he say to that request? She doesn’t know.

  The daydream ends abruptly. In a matter of days her father has become unknowable, unreachable: a single tree in a vast forest, or a story she once heard but has long forgotten. Was this how it happened with Angie and her mother? Her sister was around the same age as Florida is now when their mother ran away. To Florida, their mother is a concept, not a person. Will the same dissociation happen with their father if he doesn’t come back? Florida fears that memories of him, even the small ones, will recede too far to ever be reached again. Already, she greedily clutches stored scenes of the weekly errands she ran with her father this past spring and summer while Angie was at a friend’s house, how at each stop he walked his hand across the truck’s bench seat and gave her knee a monkey bite, that is unless she slapped his dry, gruff hand away first, and then the rides home, how he let both daughters unbuckle their belts for the windy drive home up the mountain, Florida sandwiched in the middle, so they could see-saw slide on the bench seat along with the turns. Did he only tolerate their wild laughter and mock screams as they slid into each other and him, hiding a simmering disapproval, or did he join the game, leaning left and right along with the truck, adding to the chorus of his daughter’s screams? She already doesn’t remember. Florida cannot verbalize this, but the idea of a world where people disappear like days on a calendar is what truly terrifies her, and she wants nothing more than herself and her loved ones to remain rooted to a particular spot and to never move again.

  Florida considers asking Angie all these questions about her parents and more, but she’s worried about her sister. Angie is getting squirrelly. Angie didn’t even open the book for this morning’s story. And, when Florida left the living room to go to the basement, Angie was sleeping again, her eyelids as purple as plumbs. What if Angie runs away too, and leaves her all alone?

  Florida puts the flashlight down on the landing, leaving it on and centering its yellow beam in an attempt to illuminate as much of the basement floor as possible. She lifts a one-gallon water bottle and peels away the plastic ring around the cap, and then steps off the landing and walks toward the middle of the floor, unable to see anything below her ankles, which is as low as the focused beam of light hits. Under her feet, the disturbed and clotted earth feels lumpy and even hard in places, a message in Braille she cannot decipher. She hopes she is not stepping on any of the new shoots.

  She pries off the cap, jarring the balance of the bottle in her arms, spilling water onto her hand and her pyjama shorts. Her forearms tremble with the bulky jug set in the crooks of her pointy elbows. Water continues to spill out spastically and gathers on the leaves. She knows they can’t spare much, so she only pours out a little, then a little more, hoping the water reaches the roots.

  Florida puts the cap on the bottle and walks back to the landing. She’ll bring the water upstairs, pour two cups, and give one to her sister, force her to drink. Then she’ll curl up in the nest with Angie and sleep, thinking about her plants in the basement. She will do all that and more, but only after she sits on the landing, shuts off the flashlight, listens in the dark to the song of the growing things, and listens some more, and then, eventually, turns the flashlight back on.

  4

  She did not blow out the candles before collapsing and falling asleep on their nest of blankets. All but three candles have burnt out, or melted away. Wax stalagmites hang from the fireplace mantle. Florida wakes on her left side, and is nose to nose with her sister. Having gone many days without being able to bathe or wash, Angie’s acne has intensified, ravaging her face. Whiteheads and hard, painful looking red bumps mottle her skin, creating the appearance of fissures, as if her grease slicked face is a mask on the verge of breaking up and falling away. Florida wonders if the same will happen to her.

  Angie opens her eyes; her pupils and deep brown irises are almost indistinguishable from each other. She says, “The growing things will continue to grow until there aren’t any more stories.” Her voice is scratchy, obsolete, packed away somewhere inside her chest like a holiday sweater that was a gift from some forgotten relative.

  Florida says, “Please don’t say that. There will be more stories and you have to tell them.” She reaches out to hug her sister but Angie buries her face in a blanket, and tightens into a ball. Florida sits up, and the urge to be the next one who runs away from this house is a compulsion. Maybe the people who run away are the ones who are not alone. Maybe there’s a place where they gather and say things like what is to be done with all the foolish people left behind?

  Florida asks, “How are you feeling today, Angie? Did you drink your water?” On the end table between them and couch is the answer to her question: the glass of water that she poured last night is full. “What are you doing, Angie? You have to drink something!” An all-consuming anger co-opts her manic urge for flight, and Florida alternates hitting her sister and tearing the layers of blankets and sheets away from the nest. It comes apart easy. She throws Oh, the Places You’ll Go over her head. It thuds somewhere behind her. Angie doesn’t move and remains curled in her ball, even after Florida dumps the water on her head.

  Florida kneels beside her prone sister and covers her face in her hands, hiding what she’s done from herself. Eventually she musters the courage to look again, and she says, “Tell me a story about our father, Angie. About him coming back. Please?”

  “There are no more stories.”

  Florida pats Angie’s damp shoulder and says, “No. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’ll clean this up, Angie. I can fix this.” She’ll gather their nest blankets and sheets, and she’ll dry her sister and the rest of the water spill, force her to change out of the wet clothes and into the green dress, then they’ll really talk about what to do, where they should go if their father isn’t coming back.

  Florida stands and turns around. The nest blankets Florida threw into the middle of the living room have become three knee-high tents, each sporting sharp, abrupt poles raising their cloth above the floor. The poles don’t waver and appear to be supremely sturdy, as if they would stand and continue standing regardless if the world fell apart around them.

  Florida puts her fingers in her mouth. Everything in the living room is quiet. She whispers Angie’s name at the tents, as if that is their name. She bends down slowly, grabs the plush corners of the blankets, and pulls them away quickly, the flourish to a magician’s act. Three stalks and their tubular wooden trunks have penetrated the living room floor, along with smaller tips of other stalks just beginning to poke through. The hardwood floor is the melted wax of the candles. The hardwood floor is the poor blighted skin of Angie’s face. Warped and cracked, curling and bubbling up, the floor is a landscape Florida no longer recognizes.

  She believes with a child’s unwavering certainty that this is all her fault because she watered the growing things in the basement. Florida tries to pull Angie up off the floor, but can’t. She says, “We can’t stay down here. You have to go upstairs. To our room. Go upstairs, Angie! I’ll get the rest of the water.” She wants to confess to having poured almost half the one-gallon jug on the growing things, but instead she says, “We’ll need the water upstairs, Angie. We’ll be very, very thirsty.”

  Florida maps out a set of precise steps. The newly malformed floorboards squawk and complain under her careful feet. Green leaves and shoots on the tips of the exposed stalks whisper against her skin as she m
akes her too slow progress across the living room. She imagines going so slow that the stalks continue to grow beneath her, pick her up like an unwanted hitchhiker and carry her through the ceiling, the second floor bedrooms, and then the roof of the house, and into the clouds, then farther, past the moon and the sun, to wherever it is they’re going.

  Florida pauses at the edge of the living room and kitchen, near the mud room, and there is someone rapping on the front door again. The knocking is light, breezy, but insistent, frantic. She’s not supposed to open the door, and despite her absolute terror, she wants to, almost needs to open the door, to see who or what is on the other side. Instead, Florida turns and yells back to Angie, who hasn’t moved from her spot. Florida urges her to wake, to go upstairs where they’ll be safe. There are shoots and stalk tips breaking through the floor in the area of the nest now.

  Florida runs into the kitchen, and while there are the beginnings of stalk tips in the linoleum, the damage doesn’t appear as severe as it is in the living room. She takes the flashlight off the counter and opens the door to the basement stairwell. She expects a lush, impenetrable forest in the doorway, but the stairs are still there, and very much passable; her own path into the basement, to her garden, it’s preserved. She ducks under one thick, wooden stalk that acts as a beam, outlining the length of ceiling, and she descends to the landing, where the bottles of water remain intact.

  Once on the landing, which is pushed up like a tongue trying to catch a raindrop or a snowflake, Florida adjusts for balance and gropes for the water bottles. She tries picking up both, but she’s only strong enough to take the one full bottle and hold the flashlight at the same time. She contemplates making a second trip, but doesn’t want to come back down here. The half-full second bottle will have to be a sacrifice.

  Before going up the stairs, she points her flashlight into the heart of the basement, starting at the floor, which is green with countless new shoots. She aims the flashlight up next and counts twelve stalks making contact with the ceiling, then traces their lengths downward. The tallest stalks have large clumps of dirt randomly stuck and impaled upon their wooden shafts. There are six clumps; she counts them three times. One clump is as big as a soccer ball but is more oval shaped. Four of the other dirt clods are elongated, skinny, curled, and hang from the stalks like odd, over-ripened and blackened vegetables. Three stalks in the middle of the basement share and hold up the largest of the dirt formations; rectangular and almost the size of Florida herself, it’s pressed against the ceiling.