“This is crazy,” he said. “If they were really worried about contamination, they would have done more than put up a sheet of plastic.” Partly, he was saying this to reassure himself. “Trust me. I’m fine.”
“For now,” she said. “For now you are.”
She watched him closely over the next few days, insisting that he sleep on the couch and eat his meals on the back deck. When he still wasn’t dead at the end of the week, she allowed him into their bed again.
“Aren’t you glad to have me back?” he asked, caressing her leg and sneaking his fingers under her slip.
“No, thank you,” she said, and knocked his hand away. “None of that just yet.”
“I never should have told you I went up to that apartment.”
“Poor baby,” she said, and then asked that he please stay on his side of the bed. “For now.”
• • •
Mrs. Oliver called again, finally, to report that Rob was no longer being held in Australia. They’d moved him briefly to a facility in Russia, where his body had been frozen and sealed in some sort of space-age container (the device had an unpronounceable Russian name), and after that, they’d moved him again, this time to an undisclosed location with heavy security. His brother, it seemed, was destined to be a traveler both in life and death.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Oliver said. “I know this must be strange for you. But they had to take precautions. One of the pathologists in Sydney, she died.”
“God. From the same thing as my brother?”
“It’s looking that way, yes,” Mrs. Oliver said. “She didn’t show up to work. They found her at home in front of the television. They’re still not sure how it was transmitted.”
Bert hadn’t told Mrs. Oliver about his visit to Rob’s apartment. The last thing he wanted was to wind up in some sort of quarantine.
“Am I ever going to see my brother again?” he asked.
“The honest answer,” she said, and sighed, “is that it’s looking less and less likely. Basically, at this point, he is the disease, you know?”
So, it had come to that. His baby brother, the disease. His baby brother, the human infection.
Rob hadn’t been the easiest person in the world to get along with, but surely he didn’t deserve this sort of treatment, being frozen and shipped all over the world as a scientific curiosity.
Mrs. Oliver was saying goodbye when Bert asked again about his theory, about the chances that Rob had contracted a long-dormant disease while down in one of the mines (a theory that, if true, would surely implicate the company to some degree). Mrs. Oliver, her voice deep and warbled, said, “Mr. Yaw, please, we just don’t know. You’d be astounded by how little we know. By how many theories there are! It’s a very sensitive case. It’s not for nothing that we want to keep this out of the news.”
All along Bert had understood the need for discretion. According to Mrs. Oliver, her updates were hinged on him not passing information along to anyone. She trusted him, she said, to keep this confidential, though exactly how confidential she never specified. That left him in a difficult position with friends who’d met his brother over the years and who sensed that Bert was withholding crucial details about Rob’s death. He was never quite sure how much to reveal to people. It was a concern, however, that Delia didn’t seem to share.
“They’ve got him on ice,” she told some of their friends over wine one night. “He’s contagious. No one can go anywhere near him.”
“Contagious with what?” their friends asked, impressed by the drama.
“Bert thinks it’s some kind of Jurassic flu,” she said, turning to him. “Right?”
“I have no idea what it is.”
“What will they do with the body next?” the friends asked then.
“What will they do?” Delia asked Bert.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
She looked at him, flustered. “Anyway,” she said, “it makes it hard to get any closure. The least they could do is burn a finger or a toe, and send us some ashes. Then we’d have something to bury and pray over. Wouldn’t that help, Bert?”
Bert wasn’t sure if that would bring him any peace. He thought of his parents’ graves. They were buried near their church in one of the greenest and most immaculate cemeteries Bert had ever seen. “They only keep it like this,” his brother had once noted, “because they really do think all these bodies will get raised from the dead someday. They really think everyone will come popping out of these perfect little graves. To meet Jesus, I guess.” It was an unappealing idea, Bert admitted, your soul like a nice clean hand jammed back into a dirty wet garden glove. It was one thing for Jesus to bring back Lazarus after only a few days in the tomb, but say you’d been dead for a thousand years, say your ashes had been dumped into the sea and swallowed by tuna and served up as sushi. What then? Sure, Bert could imagine a scenario in which all the elements that once constituted a body were instantaneously re-formed into the original body-shape, but what about the fact that atoms got recycled over time? No doubt his own body contained more than a few atoms that had already belonged to previous souls, and so who would have dibs come Judgment Day—the first claimant, or the holiest? It was a silly question, of course, but that was the problem with believing in anything too specific. Bert had long ago dropped his parents’ church for his wife’s uncharismatic Episcopal one, a church whose priest counseled people not to focus too much on the machinery of it all.
As far as Bert knew, Rob had not belonged to any religion at all when he died. “Quickest way to figure out a church,” he remembered Rob saying once. “Go to their website and Control-F for the words inerrant and infallible.”
Delia took another long sip of wine, eyes flicking back and forth between Bert and their friends. She was still waiting for him to respond. “Would it help if they sent you a toe to burn?” she asked again. “Though I guess it’s not like y’all were especially close.”
“We were close enough,” Bert said.
“News to me,” she said, then, “Sorry.”
Bert stayed quiet and sullen for the rest of the night. Delia had said too much about Rob’s condition, but he didn’t want to let on in front of their friends. She glanced over at him every so often, her eyes half closed and soft, her way of trying to communicate an apology.
“Don’t act like it’s top secret,” she said in the car on the way home. “It’s not. You haven’t signed anything. And frankly I think it’s a little odd how you’re suddenly so insistent that you and Rob were such bosom buddies.”
“Brothers don’t have to talk on the phone twice a week to be close,” he said. Delia was on the phone with her family constantly.
“Listen, there’s no need to play this game with me,” she said. “We both know what your brother was like. He was an asshole, okay? Don’t look at me like that. I’m sorry, but he was. Your parents let him get away with everything. Remember when he wrecked your Jeep and almost killed that stupid girl he was dating, and what did your parents do?”
“I was working by then. I didn’t need their help paying for another car.”
“Sure, of course, but that didn’t mean they needed to buy him a new car that same Christmas! Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean you have to be nice or lie,” she said.
They were almost home now. He was tired of fighting with her and was ready for bed. Plus, she was right.
My baby brother, the contagion, he almost said aloud. No one could say that Rob had ever been boring. No one could possibly say that.
• • •
Rob had been dead for almost four months when Mrs. Oliver started emailing all her updates. Bert didn’t mind this shift, though her written messages did tend to be short and cryptic.
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: SEPTEMBER 29, 2014 08:33:02 EST
TO: [email protected]
ANOTHER RESEARCHER DEAD. IN RUSSIA. FROZEN R JUST AS DANGEROUS!–MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: OCTOBER 2, 2014 08:16:59 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
R ON CONTAINER SHIP.—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: OCTOBER 4, 2014 08:42:28 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
SHIP ON THE ATLANTIC!!! MUCH DISCUSSION OF WHERE HE GOES NEXT. NATSEC ISSUE, AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, YES?—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: OCTOBER 15, 2014 09:14:22 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
HAVE YOU HAD A MEMORIAL YET? IMPORTANT TO GRIEVE, I THINK.—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: OCTOBER 18, 2014 23:01:13 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
THINKING OF YOU TODAY. NO WORD ON R. SORRY.—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: OCTOBER 20, 2014 12:30:56 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
TIBETANS SAY BODY IS EMPTY AFTER THREE DAYS. (MY AUNT IS A PRACTICING BUDDHIST!)—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: OCTOBER 31, 2014 11:44:08 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
CONTAINER SHIP FOUND!!! MORE SOON.—MO
Bert hadn’t realized that the ship had ever been lost, but he was glad to know that Mrs. Oliver had located it again. When he told Delia this bit of news, she only nodded. They hadn’t been talking about Rob as much lately.
“Is this ever going to end?” she asked him. “I never would have guessed it was possible, but your brother’s turned out to be more of a pain dead than alive.”
“I think that’s going a bit far,” he said.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told you,” she said. “Six years ago, the Christmas after your dad died, your brother walked in on me as I was stepping out of the shower.”
Bert waited for her to continue. “And?”
“And,” she said, “and he didn’t leave right away.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember. It felt too long. Nothing happened, other than that, but he just stood there, looking at me. Like a little reptile. And I could just . . . tell.”
“Tell?”
“Tell what he wanted.”
“Did you cover up?” Bert asked.
“Of course, yes,” she said. “What kind of a question is that?”
But he couldn’t help but wonder at the speed of that covering-up. Delia was a good-looking woman, and Rob had been an attractive younger man.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because,” she said, almost pleading, “Rob is not worth . . . all this energy.”
But Bert wasn’t sure. He’d read once in a magazine that even the Neanderthals, more than a hundred thousand years ago, had buried their dead, arms folded, panther bones and stone points scattered around the body. That this practice had been going on for so long, Bert figured, was significant. It was important to treat the body, no matter how irritating its former occupant, with a little respect.
Maybe, Delia joked once, instead of his having a tombstone as a memorial, the scientists studying him could simply name the disease after Rob. Bert relayed this to Mrs. Oliver, explaining that Delia had never been his brother’s biggest fan, that she’d been troubled by the way Rob treated people, specifically women. (And incidentally, he asked, surely they’d already ruled out the possibility of a sexually transmitted disease? Ha ha ha, Mrs. Oliver wrote back to that.)
His exchanges with Mrs. Oliver were an escape from the frozen-yogurt deliveries and the management trainings and the accounting, a little bit of international intrigue delivered right into his otherwise lackluster in-box. Perhaps it would continue this way forever, these reports on his brother’s never-ending itinerary, updates that conjured up an image of Rob standing at the bow of a ship, its prow slicing forward through a sea of churning gray waves on its journey to the end of the earth.
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: NOVEMBER 2, 2014 10:16:12 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
R MOVED ONTO A NEW SHIP. CDC VISIT PLANNED.—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: NOVEMBER 4, 2014 09:52:40 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
CDC ON SHIP WITH R TODAY. HOW YOU HOLDING UP?—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: NOVEMBER 4, 2014 16:16:28 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
R CAN’T BE CREMATED OR LIQUEFIED OR ANYTHING ELSE. TOO DANGEROUS, THEY SAY. NEW OPTIONS BEING DISCUSSED. MORE AS I HAVE IT.—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: NOVEMBER 19, 2014 12:02:14 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
TWO MORE PEOPLE ON SHIP CREW DEAD!!! MUCH REVIVED TALK OF WHAT TO DO WITH R.—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: NOVEMBER 20, 2014 21:40:04 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
MOST RELIGIONS SAY ZERO PERCENT OF SOUL REMAINS IN BODY AFTER DEATH. COMFORTING, YES? R WILL NEVER NEED THIS VESSEL AGAIN, I DON’T THINK.—MO
FROM: MARISSA OLIVER
DATE: NOVEMBER 25, 2014 23:01:21 EST
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: R
R HAS BEEN DECLARED A BIOLOGICAL WEAPON. WILL CALL WITH MORE AFTER THANKSGIVING.—MO
• • •
Bert was checking in on one of his Pop-Yop franchises (his busiest location, at the outlet mall) when he got the call. He took his cup of lemon tart soft-serve outside to an empty stretch of parking lot to walk the white parking space lines like tightropes as he snacked and listened.
“First,” Mrs. Oliver said, “I’d like to retract part of my previous message. The part about your brother being a biological weapon.”
“So he’s not, then?”
“Let’s just pretend I never said it. Can you do that for me?”
“Okay,” Bert said, and raised the little pink spoon to his mouth.
“But here’s the good news. In a few days his ship will come within a hundred miles of Norfolk. Any chance you could get to Norfolk?”
Bert stopped walking. Norfolk was a six-hour drive. “Maybe. Why?”
He could almost hear her smiling as she detailed the bureaucratic magic she’d performed on his behalf. She’d appealed to the right people, she said, and made them see how cruel it was to deny Rob’s family the right to properly grieve. So, when the ship passed close to Norfolk—that is, if Bert was up for it—they were going to put him on a helicopter.
“So I’ll get to see my brother then?”
“See your—” she said. “Oh, no. Bert, you can’t step foot on that ship. But they’re going to fly you over it. It’s the best I could do. Under the circumstances, I thought you’d be happy.”
He was happy, he assured her. She was very kind to have made the arrangements. She’d gone above and beyond what was required of her, he had to acknowledge that, but still, he’d need the night to consider. He drove straight home to talk it over with Delia, who was elated at the prospect. “Of course you’re doing it,” she said. “It’s not even a question. You’ll do this and we’ll be finished. Goodbye, Rob.”
• • •
They left the house a day early, before dawn, with fresh coffee in the thermos and turkey sandwiches in Ziploc bags. They had reservations at an inn in Colonial Williamsburg and arrived before check-in time. While Delia shopped, Bert strolled up
and down the cobblestone streets, stopping to watch women in bonnets churn butter and make candles. That night Delia and Bert had dinner at a tavern and talked about their kids, about Pop-Yop—about anything but Rob.
The next morning they were up early again. The radio news station crackled and died in the tunnel under the Chesapeake, and when they emerged again on the bridge, the sky was a dazzling blue pocked with flapping gulls.
Bert switched off the radio so Delia could read the directions to the base. Once there, a man at the front gate checked a clipboard before waving them through, and then, as instructed, they parked in front of a beige brick building not far from the entrance.
“You ready for this?” Delia asked, pulling her purse over her shoulder.
Inside the building was a small waiting room with white plastic chairs and a low table full of magazines with old fashions. The uniformed man at the front desk scanned Bert’s and Delia’s driver’s licenses and passports and then printed them both sticker badges. He pointed them toward the empty chairs, saying it wouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes or so before departure.
“So,” Delia said, “when do we meet the mysterious Mrs. Oliver?”
“I don’t think she’s coming,” Bert said. “At least that was my impression.”
“Shame,” Delia said, digging a book out of her purse.
They had been in a helicopter once before together, many years ago on their honeymoon in Hawaii. The helicopter ride was an expensive excursion that had taken them over an active volcano. Rob had been thirteen years old at the time of the wedding, but, at the insistence of their mother, he’d acted as Bert’s best man, his cummerbund so loose that it smiled below his waist. “Please tell me you already tested the goods,” Rob had said before the ceremony with a dumb teenager’s grin, braces shiny and sharp. (His brother, the biological weapon.)
Armed men arrived to escort them to the landing pad. Together they hustled outside and crouched low to pass beneath the giant whooshing blades of the aircraft. Delia struggled to contain the swirling mess of her hair. The pilot, an older expressionless man with aviator sunglasses over his eyes, twisted around in his seat and gave them a thumbs-up. Bert helped Delia with her buckle before working on his own. They were both given headphones that clapped over their ears and muffled the noise. The helicopter was about to lift off when another woman came galloping toward the craft. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and flat yellow shoes. Her hair was slick, short, and red.
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