Coming of Age at the End of Days

by Alice LaPlante

  “We’re making good progress on our crisis garden,” Tom says immediately.

  Taking the cue, Marci adds, “We had a great harvest of winter vegetables: peas, spinach, cauliflower, and cabbage. Broccoli, too. Now we’re planning our summer crops.” She fiddles with her scarf as she talks. Anna sees dirt under her fingernails, at odds with her otherwise well-groomed appearance.

  Another silence. All three of them look at Anna.

  “What’s a crisis garden?” She begrudges having to accept her role in the conversation as the uninformed newbie. She has a lot of research to do, she realizes.

  “It’s one of the ways we’ll survive the coming Tribulation,” says Tom. He takes a sip of his ginger ale and then pats his hip. Anna is shocked to see he is wearing a gun. She’s not sure she’s ever seen an ordinary person with a gun before, and she involuntarily takes a step back. “After all,” he says, almost jovially, “we won’t be able to depend on supermarkets being open during the End Days. Self-sufficiency will be the name of the game.”

  Anna thinks of the hundreds of cans and dozens of gallon bottles of water her father has stored in the garage in preparation for the Big One. “But you can’t grow enough to satisfy all your needs,” she says, remembering the careful nutritional calculations that went into her father’s choice of foodstuffs to buy.

  “Of course not,” says Marci. She continues to fiddle with her scarf. Anna sees now that she, too, is wearing a gun on her hip. “We also have the usual stores put away. Lots of water. And gasoline. We also have our own generator. Tom has thought of everything.”

  “What’s the deal with the guns?” Anna asks. Her father laughs at the crazier ideas some people have about disaster preparedness.

  “We must be ready,” Tom repeats. Still holding his ginger ale, he makes a gesture with his free hand as if pulling his gun from its holster and shooting it. “And we have plenty of ammunition of course.” He doesn’t look like a vigilante or nut job. Neither does he look like he could survive a week without the comforts of civilization. He has no muscle tone whatsoever, but instead the kind of gut spilling over the waistband that plagues people with desk jobs.

  “What exactly do you expect?” Anna asks.

  “We know that we’ll face years of war and chaos and suffering,” says Marci, cheerfully, as if announcing what she would be serving for dinner.

  “And when the Godless armies rise up against the faithful, it is our duty to fight back,” says another man who has come up next to Lars. He is wearing a jacket over blue jeans, boots, and a wide floral tie. All that’s missing to achieve an urban cowboy look is a western hat. He must see something reflected in Anna’s face, for he continues talking, in a voice that indicates he is quoting a script. “You cannot trust your neighbors, for they will deliver you up and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.”

  Anna likes this. She smiles.

  Because the man spoke so loudly, people turned to look. Several more join their widening circle, Reverend Michael among them.

  “You will be tested,” Reverend Michael says, looking at Anna. “If you join us, you must be prepared to fight.”

  Anna finds that she likes this too, but looking around she can’t imagine a more unlikely group to be speaking in such bloodthirsty terms. Lars puts a hand on Anna’s arm, seems to read her mind. “We have preparedness sessions,” he says. “A member of our congregation owns a ranch in Gold Country. We schedule regular weekends there. Target practice. Lectures on survival techniques. All the skills we’ll need when the Tribulation begins.”

  “You’d train me to fight?” Anna asks. Despite her skepticism, her chest feels hot, under pressure.

  “If you pass His tests.” Reverend Michael says. “If you keep the faith.”

  “I will,” Anna says fervently. And then says the words foremost in her mind. “I burn to serve.”

  “That’s exactly what we want to hear,” Lars says in his thrilling voice. He bestows one of his rare smiles on both Anna and Reverend Michael, and takes Anna’s free hand into both of his. “Now it begins,” he says.

  13

  THE END DAYS. THE RAPTURE. What rational person hears of these things and doesn’t scoff? The previous year, a made-for-TV movie had dramatized it without irony. Anna watched it with her mother and her mother’s best friend Martha, they having insisted that Anna leave her bedroom and join them in front of the television. The movie showed buses and airplanes suddenly half-empty as the godly were taken up to heaven. The righteous also disappeared from offices, streets, and schools, simply shedding their clothes and shoes, leaving little puddles of possessions where they had been sitting, standing, or sleeping. Some of those left behind repented, attempted to change their ways, to earn themselves a place with the saints. Others celebrated the Tribulation with carnage and debauchery. Both churches and brothels filled to capacity as the earth descended into chaos.

  Anna’s mother and Martha drank too much wine and laughed uproariously throughout the film. “The post-rapture world will be very testosterone-heavy if simply having the sulks damns you to hell,” Martha had said when the film’s protagonist realized he’d been left behind along with a belligerent teenaged son he hardly knew, his wife and three beautiful daughters having been taken directly to God. Men with pitchforks roamed the streets, setting fire to cars, drinking from bottles, kicking dogs. The depiction of a truly evil world resembled nothing worse than a bad Western B movie. Anna had been indifferent. Her mother would have preferred more scorn, but Anna was incapable at that point of any emotion that required so much psychic energy.

  Now all is different. In the two weeks following her first visit to the Goldschmidts’ church, Anna attends four services. She has spent time scouring the Web, and understands more, and better. Reverend Michael’s congregation doesn’t believe in the Rapture—the taking of the righteous immediately up to heaven—as it had been depicted on television. That movie was heresy. The members of the true church will endure half the Tribulation—three and a half years under the savagery of the Antichrist, the false prophet—before they are taken up to Him. Three and a half years of glory. Of fighting, good against evil.

  Much of Reverend Michael’s sermons go over what the faithful can expect in the months and years leading to the End Days. Harassment. Exclusion. Banishment. Blacklisting. “And, finally, extermination—that is, if we aren’t prepared to fight back,” Reverend Michael said.

  Anna tries to explain this to her father. But she knows he won’t understand. Still, she wants to try. She knows better than to approach her mother on this subject.

  Anna catches her father alone one evening, he has changed from his suit and tie into jeans and a T-shirt; he is throwing off his lawyer persona and becoming the amateur scientist.

  “So you believe the end of the world is near,” he says. He is only half paying attention. He is hungrily downloading the latest USGS data.

  Anna almost doesn’t continue. She dreads his scorn. “You make it sound so silly,” she says.

  “Well? What do you believe, then?” Anna hesitates, then says firmly, “I believe that we will all soon be punished for our sins.”

  “Oh, really? By whom and for what sins exactly?” he asks, sarcastically as Anna’s mother would have.

  Anna pauses again. She is herself still unclear about some things. But she wants him to understand. So she tries again.

  “By God”—she has trouble saying His name out loud to her father—“and for our refusal to listen to Him.”

  “And what exactly is He trying to communicate?”

  This is one of the points that Anna is unclear about. She has her own dreams. The Red Heifer. But the story attached to that is such a strange one. She decides to challenge him.

  “You yourself say we don’t have much longer on this planet.”

  “That’s right,” her father says.
“But not because some abstract or outdated moralistic code has been violated. And not because some God figure is going to destroy us. We’re destroying ourselves. Humans are simply too stupid to take care of the world.”

  “Might not we be talking about the same things in different ways?” asks Anna. “I believe in prophecies about the approaching plagues and storms and earthquakes coming from a higher power, and you believe those things will happen because of man-made actions. After all, what is the boiling of the oceans predicted in Revelation if not the global warming you’re always going on about?”

  This gets his attention. Her father doesn’t look directly at her, but she sees one eyebrow rise and prepares herself.

  “But—if I understand how these doomsday cults think—you believe these things are happening because the world is falling into morally evil ways?”

  “Reverend Michael’s church is not a cult. And evil is already loose upon the world,” says Anna. Then, articulating what she is most sure of: “When the time comes, our job is to fight that evil by whatever means we have at our disposal.”

  “Wow,” says her father. “That’s pretty heavy stuff. You mean, it’ll be worse than when the Big One hits?” He makes a face of mock horror.

  “Don’t patronize me.” Anna has inherited her share of his temper.

  “No, really,” he says, moving away from his PC. She sees that he is attempting to control himself, to really talk to her. “Do you see yourself as a sort of Joan of Arc, leading the faithful into battle?” he asks.

  Anna is a little chagrined to discover that her fantasies could be so transparent.

  “No,” she lies. “But I am eager to be led.”

  “So this . . . church . . . you’ve been attending, it has plausible leaders?” Her father’s voice again mocking.

  Here Anna falters. She thinks of Marci and Tom, of the others she’s met from the congregation, of their postage-sized suburban survival gardens, of their grandiose talk. She thinks of Reverend Michael, his high voice and unconvincing laugh. She has not found His leaders on earth to be all that they should.

  “No,” she admits. Then, “But the cause is real. And the Goldschmidts are the real thing. Lars is the real thing.” Of this she is sure.

  “And you think there will be actual fighting?” her father asks. “You really think you’re up for that? For hurting, even killing, other human beings?”

  About this Anna is certain. “I’m hungry for it,” Anna tells him. For she is. She is eager to find out what she is capable of. In His name, of course. True believers will then be saved before the true Wrath of God, the Great Tribulation. “Much blood will be spilled,” she says. “For the battle will not be metaphorical, but actual.”

  This stops her father for a moment.

  “And where do people like myself and your mother fit in?” he asks. “Can we expect to be slaughtered in our beds one night?”

  “Dad, I’m serious,” Anna says. For she is. And her heart is breaking, for her parents will not be among the faithful. They will be, are, damned.

  “So I must accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior?”

  “No,” says Anna in despair. “Yes.” She has no words to describe what she wants of him, of them. She has no words to describe what has happened to her. If you believe in fairies clap your hands. Her parents would just as soon respond to that as to her entreaties on this point.

  Anna’s father continues with his mappings and his calculations, with his earthquake preparedness lists and survival plans. Like Anna and Lars, he’s getting ready. Dreaming and planning. Statistically, he has a shot of witnessing it in his lifetime. The Big One. Probably not on the San Andreas Fault. More likely the Hayward Fault. He lives for it. Nothing gives him greater joy than to see dogs and cats agitated, birds taking flight over the telephone wires. Great earthquake weather is his most cheerful greeting at breakfast. Like Anna, he lives for it. Lives for the End.

  14

  ANNA’S MOTHER AND MARTHA ARE sitting at the kitchen table, Anna’s father long ago having gone to bed. Anna is in her room, awake, at her usual listening post by the door. Martha and her mother are both worked up, but her mother in particular. These evenings after choir rehearsals at Stanford Memorial Church are always like this. Music put her mother in a place beyond reach. Tonight, too much Thomas Tallis, an excess of euphoria. Anna’s mother can’t sit still. She tries for a moment, then stands again. Then sits. Then stands. And paces. Up and down the kitchen, into the living room, through the dining room, back again to the kitchen. She puts the teakettle on, and, when it whistles, makes a pot of tea that Martha has already refused. While pouring, Anna’s mother knocks over the cup, spills hot tea over the counter and floor. Anna hears Martha groan. This is their routine. They are practiced. It has been nearly thirty-five years since Anna’s mother, laden with luggage, knocked on the door of the San Francisco apartment she’d found in the “Roommates Wanted” section of the Chronicle and found Martha waiting. Anna hears Martha getting down on her knees to wipe the floor. After a few moments, Martha sits heavily again on her chair. “No one tells you how much being fifty-five sucks,” she says.

  Martha being Martha, she then begins singing. She has an indifferent soprano, but nevertheless her a capella voice comes out lilting, the melody haunting.

  Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te

  Deus Israel

  Anna’s mother joins in with her rich contralto.

  qui irasceris

  et propitius eris

  et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis

  Together they finish.

  Domine Deus

  Creator coeli et terrae

  respice humilitatem nostram

  The duet ends on a disquietingly dissonant chord. Silence. Anna wills them to begin again, but the silence persists.

  Anna has always wanted a Martha. A confidante and co-conspirator. Neither Anna’s mother nor Martha makes a move without the other’s counsel. Five years ago, Martha appeared at the house unannounced at dinnertime. As Anna’s mother automatically set another place at the table, Martha casually announced her breast cancer diagnosis. Anna’s mother nodded. She sat down. Still holding a steak knife, she drove it a quarter inch into the oak table. Her voice when she finally spoke was low and calm. “Damn you,” my mother said. “God fucking damn you. How exactly am I supposed to process this?” Martha has now been in remission for eighteen months.

  Anna’s mother continues with her agitating, up and down, from this room to that. Anna hears the rattle of silverware, the crackle of newspapers. Music is not soothing, not to Anna’s mother. It is a stimulant, a hallucinogenic, even. Lately her mother has been playing Mahler no. 5 repeatedly on the old boom box she keeps in the living room, next to her piano. The second movement: Kraeftig nicht zu schnell. Anna hears her start the CD now, playing it too loudly, so even in Anna’s room it overwhelms the ears. But Anna likes it, the power, the urgency, the message that the abyss is near. It is true. It is real. Her father, to tease or please, Anna was never sure, programmed the horn solo into their doorbell at volume, so that anyone who comes to the house is greeted by the full force of its mournful wail. Abandon all hope, Anna’s father is fond of saying when he opens the door after the lone horn has brayed.

  Martha is talking freely. She has had too much wine. Because Martha talks too much at such times Anna finds out things about this mysterious creature, her mother, that otherwise would stay hidden. Because of Martha, Anna has learned many secrets.

  “Ah, Mahler. Horn solo. Still mourning the One That Got Away. Will you ever get over that?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “But he knows.”

  “Oh yes he knows. But no need to rub it in his face.”

  “Isn’t playing Mahler over and over quite an extreme form of rubbing?”

  “No. Not anymore. More of an insi
de joke.”

  “Except for what he doesn’t know.”

  “Except for that,” Anna’s mother says.

  Silence. Anna strains to hear what’s happening. Then, “You’ve got a more understanding husband than you deserve,” says Martha.

  “Yes,” Anna’s mother says. And then the important phrase, the one that makes Anna relive the moment again and again, to tear it apart, to parse and re-parse its meaning. “But I’m not ashamed of getting more than I deserve,” says her mother. “For how else would I learn what I do deserve?”

  15

  THEY ARE IN THE GOLDSCHMIDTS’ living room: Lars, his parents, and Anna. It’s Sunday, noon, and they’ve just gotten back from church. There aren’t enough chairs so Lars and Anna are sitting on the floor. Lars is worried about his parents, about their seeming helplessness in the world. He had been dismayed by Reverend Michael’s sermon:

  So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

  Upon hearing those words, Lars’s father had given a slight nod, and reached out and taken his wife’s hand. His parents were all too likely to take such words literally. They were wearing the same clothes they wore to work. Anna had wondered, not for the first time, how they behaved in their professional guises. For they deliberately deceived others. You could call their behavior deceitful. They hide their faith at work, he as an engineer for Lockheed, she as an accountant at a big tech firm in the valley.

  “But how can that be right?” Anna asks them now. “Shouldn’t you be bearing witness? Trying to save others, as Lars did me?”

  Lars’s father, as always, looks at his wife to take charge. Lars’s mother thinks before she responds. She has perfect skin and dark hair, just beginning to gray at the temples. A gracefully aging Sleeping Beauty. Anna sees her leave for work in the morning, always impeccably groomed, not a hair out of place, carefully made up, wearing that black blazer and a crisp white shirt, and either a black, gray, or dark green skirt. Mrs. Goldschmidt knows how to blend in.