Project Reunion

by Ginger Booth

  When the escalators deposited us up and out, into the big hall, my eyes lit up. My old friend Jean-Claude Alarie stood on top of one of the station’s beautiful solid oak bench-islands, above the sea of confused elderly humanity.

  I tugged on Emmett’s elbow and pointed, with a grin.

  “What’s this?” Amiri asked. He and his camera crew were ever vigilant, hungry for the spontaneous shot.

  “That’s our other special group,” Emmett explained. “Jean-Claude Alarie is with Doctors Without Borders. He travels with a gran caravan. The gran caravans have full amnesty today, to pick up new members. Elderly refugees only.”

  “You actually know these outlaws?” Amiri asked.

  Emmett tilted his head to yield the question to me. “Jean-Claude is a friend of mine,” I agreed. “Actually, Emmett met him the same night he met me,” I said sweetly.

  “Uh-huh,” said Emmett, with a crooked smile.

  “My knights in shining armor, come to save me and Amenac from Homeland Security.” I grinned unrepentant. “Jean-Claude’s caravan blew up the HomeSec building that night. I was surprisingly OK with that, at the time.”

  Emmett cut in to provide a more politically prudent sound-bite. “Jean-Claude Alarie and his gran caravan stayed with us last winter in New Haven County. They solved some survivalist problems for us up toward Litchfield. They made a good peacekeeping force. They moved on in the spring. You have enough footage of us yet, Amiri?”

  “Um… So you sorted all these refugees before they left Camp Yankee?” Amiri asked.

  “Yes!” said Emmett. “The first weeks, we did a lot more sorting here in New Haven. That was too complicated to scale up. So now, yeah, they’re sorted before we load them onto the trains. And refugees may be held back or moved forward a week, to group them by where they’re going. Anything else?”

  Jean-Claude and I were already waving to each other. I spotted DJ and Liddy too, with New Haven’s reception committee, come early to watch the circus.

  “That’ll do, I think,” Baz agreed. “We want to interview the refugees and volunteers. Any more good photo opps with you, before you head back to the Core?”

  Emmett grinned. “Not going back to the Core. I’m taking a few days leave. Surprise, darlin’!” I threw my arms around him in delight.

  After a kiss, Emmett turned back to Amiri Baz. “I might visit the Totoket railroad station tonight. Peek in on the family reunions, and people picking up their new refugees. I’d like to see the other end of all this. But that’s in Amenac’s back yard. You want to film someplace else.”

  Emmett pulled his right arm over my head, and reached for Amiri for a heartfelt handshake and hug. “Happy holidays, Amiri. See you back in the Core, gang.” He shook hands with all of Amiri’s production crew, and happily turned in his lapel microphone.

  At last, we were free to socialize our way through the big New Haven train station ticket hall. Jean-Claude displayed the same Gallic dramatic flair as always. He insisted on kissing Emmett on both cheeks. Emmett resisted the temptation to kiss him back, though I did. We soon let Jean-Claude get back to work, reassuring fragile elderly refugees that it was indeed true. In the gran caravans, they were actively sought and wanted.

  My heart ached with gratitude for the caravans for this. No one ever really forgets that childhood pang of being the last chosen, the one rejected by peers, unwanted for the team, left out. Home is where you’re wanted. I teared up again at the thought that these tough, amazingly resilient oldsters had found a home, with Jean-Claude and his crazy legions.

  Moving on, DJ mock-cried on Emmett’s shoulder. “When will you come home, boss?”

  Emmett just laughed. “I hear you’re doing great things, DJ.”

  “They hate me,” DJ reported, looking aghast. “People blame me for the ag reforms. I didn’t dictate the ag reforms!”

  “Uh-huh,” said Emmett. “Repeat after me: ‘You need to take that up with your community coordinator.’ Use that sentence. Lots. If an ordinary citizen is griping to you, they’re talking to the wrong person. Especially in New Haven. You’re not that guy anymore. Don’t undermine your Cocos, or you’ll get hammered from both sides.”

  DJ moaned, “Yeah, yeah…”

  In contrast, Liddy was euphoric. She insisted she was off soon to the Bronx, to join a mission with her church group. I wasn’t sure whether to believe her. The idea of an elderly wheelchair-bound double amputee moving into the Apple Core – to live and pray! – was the last thing I would have expected.

  Emmett, however, gave her a high-five and a hug. “You raise the rafters for me, Liddy! Let me know where to join you, Sunday mornings in the Bronx! Dee, Liddy brought me into her church in New Haven.”

  “Absolutely, Emmett!” Liddy cried beatifically. “We shall raise a joyful noise unto the Lord! All through that Big Apple!”

  “You went to church with Liddy?” I asked, as we moved away. “What kind of church?”

  “Evangelical,” Emmett replied. At my astonishment, he chuckled and squeezed my hand. “Zack warned me not to mention that up north. Yeah, I’m a born-again Christian, darlin’. Don’t worry. I won’t try to convert you. But I do love a good rowdy church service.” He shrugged. “I used to take Liddy to church in New Haven. She’s a lot of fun. Heart big as a planet.”

  “I never suspected this about you,” I said in consternation.

  “Uh-huh,” he said wryly. He tugged my hand toward the great outdoors.

  “Let’s go home,” he invited.

  -o-

  Emmett grew quieter as we approached home. Fortunately, his homecoming was a surprise, so I didn’t have any plans or preconceptions. He tentatively drifted into the bedroom to change out of his dress blues, trailing a finger along furniture and framed prints on the walls, once familiar.

  I imagined I knew what he was feeling. Coming back from my first semester away at college, my year abroad in Japan – returning to a place where the people and things were the same, but I’d changed, grown, become unfamiliar. Home looked small and strange. I let him be for a few minutes, and set out a late lunch on the table.

  He smiled when I knocked on the bedroom door before entering. He’d already changed into his favorite worn button-up jeans and button-down shirt, a Christmas-y dark green today, with soft grey ragg socks, his uniform neatly stowed away.

  “I should call Pam about that Christmas party,” I said, taking a seat on the bed. Near him, but not too close. Not crowding him. “Would tomorrow or the next day be better?”

  “Next day,” Emmett said. “Dee, there’s something I –”

  “Emmett, I’ve been meaning to –” We spoke at the same time, and laughed bashfully. “You first,” I invited.

  “No,” he said softly. He lay down across the bed, up on his elbow to face me, picking at the bed comforter. “You first.”

  “Um,” I said reluctantly, “I’d been meaning to ask you about your ex-wife. I’m not sure this is the time for it.”

  “God. Why?” he asked, rubbing his face. “Scratch that. What do you need to know?”

  “How you’re healing, I guess. It keeps coming up. Cam said ‘good luck with that,’ about our relationship. You blew up at me calling you ‘honey’ that time. Just thought…if we could air that out? Maybe you’d feel safer with me?”

  I couldn’t read his expression at all, but it didn’t look good. Then he bolted for the bathroom to throw up. I followed slowly, to hand him a cup of water and perch on the bathtub rim. “I withdraw the question,” I murmured.

  He closed the toilet and laid his head on folded arms across the seat, legs unfolded across the bathroom tile floor. He started talking dully. “I shouldn’t have married Susie. She was fun. We had a lot of laughs at first. But I thought my career needed an army wife. She didn’t want that life, didn’t want to be a wife. But I bullied her into it. She was right. I was wrong. It was ugly. I caught her in bed with another man, cheating on me the second time, maybe more. I hauled off and
was about to hit her. I couldn’t believe I’d become that person. I stopped myself and walked out. Applied for a divorce. She was happy to grant it. Dee, we never even lived together, really. Not even two years, beginning to end.”

  I smoothed his forehead. “I’m sorry. That must have been really painful. But Emmett, how long are you going to beat yourself up about it?”

  “Doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

  I considered the story. “Sounds like two people who made a mistake. I’m a little concerned by how much power you think you had. You bullied her. You almost hit her. But it seems to me she had the upper hand. She didn’t want to be married. She won.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Kinda sucks not to be omnipotent, doesn’t it,” I said. He sighed. “Emmett, you’re not a bully. And you couldn’t bully me if you tried.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure this was true. No question about it, Emmett was domineering. But that came from a place of being decisive and confident, not from disrespecting me. He could steamroll me when I was unsure. But when I knew what I wanted, he respected that.

  Apparently it was the right thing to say. He looked, if not happier, at least unburdened a little. He placed a hand on my calf. “Dee… I love you. I love your place here. And while we’re in the bathroom….”

  “Hm?”

  He swallowed, then whispered, “Cullen asked me to plan what’s next for New York City. After Project Reunion. Darlin’, I’m not coming back. Except to visit.”

  “Oh.” Maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it hit me like a sucker punch. My eyes welled tears. “Can you… No. You don’t want to fight it. Do you.”

  “Those bridges burned down. I do not get along with General Ivan Link. And Connecticut doesn’t need me. New York needs me. I admire General Cullen. I like working for him. Dee, I can’t ask you to follow me into the city. Not now, but… I do love you, girl.”

  “Don’t you break up with me,” I told him. We were both crying. “Don’t you dare.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Partners. Dee, I don’t know what I’m asking you to do.”

  Crying together hurts. But it does make you feel closer. Despite that yawning pit of despair that was New York City.

  -o-

  We walked to the Totoket train platform in the evening, to see the new migrant citizens as they arrived. We both felt too raw to get dragged on camera, so we hovered at the back. Like most of the small throng in the parking lot, we carried lit candles in lanterns cut from old plastic soda bottles. Aside from a couple electric lights on the train platform itself, Totoket was quite dark. Seasonable cold had blown in again, under leaden clouds. A hundred candles glowed brightly.

  Delilah and Jamal, the West Totoket co-Cocos, stood on the platform with a few militia and our local pastors. Occasionally, they tried to lead the crowd in singing Christmas carols, to half-hearted success. My camera woman Kyla was armed and recording by their side. I spotted Mangal and Shanti and their south Asian cronies in the crowd. Unusually traditional bright silks peeked from beneath their winter coats. A folding table below the platform stairs, staffed by pre-teens, offered cups of eggnog and hot cider. A big sign hung from their table, colored by the kids, proclaiming ‘Welcome Home!’

  The singing faltered and stopped, as the drumming vibration and clatter of the train approached. Brakes squealed the train to a stop. The train doors opened on a single car. Maybe 50 refugees emerged onto the platform, then down into the parking lot, to quiet murmurs of welcome. After only a few minutes of disembarking and head-count double-checking, the train doors shushed closed. The train chugged back to life and departed, to bear its remaining migrants further east up the coast.

  New Englanders and New Yorkers are among the world’s least outgoing people. The match-making had already been negotiated via Amenac, pictures and introductions exchanged online. To our shy northeastern souls, this amounted to an excruciatingly intimate way to meet complete strangers. Feet dragged across the parking lot, as dread and commitment drew homeless and homeowners reluctantly together. Mangal and Shanti claimed a fragile Jain woman in late middle age. Their Nepalese friends welcomed a man on crutches with two school-aged children. The final inches of separation were broached, as hosts offered physical support to help the newcomers to waiting electric cars, or a bus for those who had no private transportation. Half of the migrants carried no more than the clothes on their backs.

  As the crowd dissipated, a clump of six refugees huddled below the platform unclaimed. I couldn’t stop crying, at the thought of being left there, like a bride abandoned at the altar. We’d gone to so much effort at Amenac, with thousands upon thousands of volunteer hours, to prevent this ever happening. But still, in the end, some people had made a promise, and then not shown up. I felt mortified for Totoket that it was happening here. But tonight it must have been happening all over New England. It damned well better not happen when the North Pole Express pulled into Burlington with those orphans.

  “Should we…?” I asked Emmett, sniffling.

  We’d talked about it, whether to take in some refugees ourselves. But our situation was too unsettled. Our entire lives already revolved around Project Reunion. Emmett suggested we were doing enough, in our own way. More than enough not to feel guilty. And we deserved space to ourselves at home outside of Project Reunion, for the little time we had there together.

  He hugged me close. “They’re OK, Dee. See? The Cocos and the pastors will take good care of them. They’re part of the plan, too. Let’s leave them be.”

  “But you worked so hard, and –”

  “Shh, darlin’,” Emmett crooned, holding me close. “It’s all good enough. It’s not a perfect world. Not full of perfect people. Dee, today, all of it – this was a win. Or at least, no one’s called to tell me any real disasters. And I kinda think they would. Especially General Link. He likes chewing me out.”

  I snorted a laugh, snuffled myself back together, and nodded. “Congratulations, Emmett. Well done.”

  “Congratulations to you, too, Dee,” he murmured. We waved good-bye from a distance and walked home, our small candle lanterns lighting the way, tiny glimmers down winding cold dark roads.

  Chapter 26

  Interesting fact: Liddy Maxwell, and several others from her church in New Haven, did move to the Bronx that winter. Around the same time, Amenac implemented a new cyber-currency system, that allowed people to donate online from their food tax credit balance. Liddy’s Bronx Gospel Choir used it to sell recordings of their live performances. The cyber-currency could be cashed in for extra food deliveries direct to their community from outside the Apple.

  The Niedermeyers’ home was gorgeous. Wood-framed, sided in grey cedar shakes, it rose from a beautiful wide front porch that wrapped around octagonal corner towers, replete with windows. Pam or John clearly loved to decorate. Green garlands snaked along the white porch railings, accented with shining golden bows. Living long-needle pine had been cut fresh for the elaborate garland on the door, lashed in red velvet ribbons, strong fresh pine scent wafting from resin-heavy pine cones. It all looked picture-perfect for Christmas, especially with the half foot of white slush dripping everywhere in the angled December sunlight. The weather was schizophrenic that week.

  Alex and I traded unhappy glances, dressed in our best and feeling seriously outclassed. Alex looked back nervously at my practical but battered electric car, out of place in the beautifully landscaped semicircular drive, hitched to a seedy little livestock trailer. Boris the billy goat glared out malevolently. I nervously shifted my hostess gift, a homegrown spinach quiche freshly thawed from my freezer.

  Emmett couldn’t care less what the Niedermeyers’ house looked like. He just rang the doorbell. This was answered promptly by a smiling teenage version of Pam, just about Alex’s age, assured in her officer’s-kid hostessing skills. An older boy nearing adulthood helped wave us in and take our coats. Not being bald like his father, the boy also seemed to favor
Pam. They introduced themselves as Bets and John Jr., or JJ.

  Poor Alex stood frozen like a deer caught in headlights. Despite Pam and John waving us on to the living room, Emmett and I tarried in the entry hall to encourage Alex past his teen gauntlet. “D-do you like goats?” Alex finally managed.

  Wow, Pam’s kids were well-trained. Bets barely blinked an eye. “Goats are cool,” she agreed blandly. JJ nodded judiciously.

  I took pity on Alex and mixed in. “The goats are for Major Cameron,” I offered. “Alex, Bets and JJ are Captain Niedermeyer’s kids. Major Cameron doesn’t have children.”

  Alex looked momentarily crestfallen. Then Bets realized that we meant there were actual goats, right here for the petting. She squealed in delight, and the teenagers were off and running.

  “Watch out for the –” Emmett began to call after them, but gave it up with a shrug. They weren’t listening. We continued on to greet the Niedermeyers and the Cameron-Perards.

  “Machiavelli’s guide to the holidays,” Emmett said, sharing handshake and hug with Cam. They both laughed, and John Niedermeyer as well.

  “What was that?” Pam asked sharply. I was giving Emmett a sour look myself, though he’d casually moved on to trade hugs with Dwayne.

  “Inside joke,” John excused.

  “About that,” Emmett said. “Could I talk to you two in private a moment? Excuse us.” John led Emmett and Cam into his den, and closed the door.

  “They’re working at a Christmas party, aren’t they?” I said in dismay. “I’d apologize for Emmett, but he’d just do it again. Never off duty.”

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Pam said cryptically.

  We helped ourselves to slices of quiche and other treats from the lavishly decorated table, and settled down to socialize. I tried to squelch myself from asking Dwayne how the meshnet roll-out was coming along on Long Island. But then he brought it up. Avoiding talk of Resco business, politics, and Project Reunion, simply wasn’t going to work with this group.