How High We Go in the Dark(32)

Midway through the second film, we pause for cake. Patrice comes in with the candles already lit, and we sing “Happy Birthday,” even though Snortorious was released from his gestation pod in March of last year.

“Make a wish,” I say. And I wonder what goes through his mind, knowing that whatever he wished for will never come true. Maybe he knows this, too.

Charlie Brown is decorating his pathetic tree when I receive an email from Dean Hayes. Effective later this week, Snortorious will be relinquished from our care and permanently transferred to a facility off-campus under federal supervision. Ammie and Patrice, both sitting beside me, see the message, too. We share a look, remain silent on the couch behind Snortorious, allow him to enjoy the rest of the movie. I attempt to clear my mind of fear, muddle my thoughts with noise—an image of Fitch singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” during a school play, the lyrics to “Frosty the Snowman,” funerary television promos from Sal the Coffin King and Ernie’s Urns. Ammie types out a message on her phone, holds it in front of me: What are we going to do now?

We give him choices, I type back.

When the film is over, I turn off the TV. Patrice has tears in her eyes. Ammie sits on the floor, rests her head on Snortorious’s belly.

Sad friends. Sick pig. Sad friends. Pig go away.

“Yes,” I say. “Pig knows?”

Snortorious snorts, shakes his head. If he knows about being sent away, about his growing brain, what else does he know?

“We want what’s best for you,” Ammie says.

“We don’t want you to go away,” Patrice says, the words barely intelligible through her sobs.

“We’ll find a way to keep you safe,” I say. “We’ll find a way to make the rest of your life as happy as we can.”

The awkward silence and Patrice’s sniffles are killing me. I turn the stereo on low for background noise, realize we need some music from happier times. Snortorious sways his head to Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Only Wanna Be with You.”

Pig sick, he says. Friends get trouble.

“We can take care of ourselves,” I say. “Don’t worry about that.”

We go through two more songs before Snortorious speaks again. At this point, I’ve decided that we need to either return him to the lab or make a break for it.

Pig go back. Pig sick. Pig help people.

“I don’t understand,” Ammie says. But Patrice begins bawling again. She knows Snortorious is asking us to free him in the only way we really can.

Pig heart help.

“No, no, no, no,” Ammie says. Her voice breaks. “You can stay with us. See more of the world. Whatever time you have left.”

Pig go back. Pig help people.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Do you understand what you’re asking us?”

Snortorious sits up, touches his snout to Ammie’s forehead before walking over to Patrice and doing the same.

Pig sure.

On the campus quad, I sit with Snortorious and let him take in the first glimmers of sunrise. Orange. Purple. Yellow. Pink. Ammie watches us from afar. Patrice is already back in the lab making the necessary calls to hospitals in the tristate area in need of organs. I sit with our pig son on the frosted grass.

Beautiful, he says, shivering. I drape my jacket around him.

“It is,” I say.

Story time?

“Sure, what kind of story?”

Finish Fitch story, he says. Snortorious turns his head and looks straight at me as if to say I know about that, too. I know more than I could ever tell you. And almost as a reflex, I pull him closer and kiss his forehead. He rests his head on my shoulder, and I do my best to remember how the story goes. I tell him about the King of Gondor. On our short walk to the lab, I tell him about the hobbits returning to the Shire. Home, I say—family, like you. And in the operating room, as he’s slowly fading from anesthesia, I tell him about Frodo’s final journey, leaving Middle Earth with the elves, before I place my hand on his heart, now beating steadily for a boy two hundred miles away, and tell him thank you.





Elegy Hotel


They gave bereavement coordinators like me studio apartments on the top floors of the elegy hotels. Some of my colleagues had naive ideas about saving the world, but really we were just glorified bellhops for the mountains of Arctic plague victims awaiting cremation, for the families who wanted to curl up in a suite beside the corpses of their loved ones and heal. On any given day, the deceased from local hospitals lined the basement halls in biohazard bags, waiting to go through the three-part preservation process: sterilization, embalming, and our antibacterial plasticizing treatment. This bought families time to say goodbye while our crematoriums struggled to keep up with the demand. The job wasn’t rocket science and the pay didn’t suck if you could stomach it. For the nearly three years since the elegy hotels opened and cornered the funerary market, I had kept my head down, barely speaking about my past, carting bodies from the California king beds to the oven. But three months ago, my golden-boy science-fair brother showed up in the hotel lobby to invite me to dinner and to discuss our mother. I assumed his plan was to guilt me into coming home.

My mom and brother were already waiting when I arrived at the Lucky Fin on Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the last seafood places still open in San Francisco. Each table was contained inside its own little plastic bubble latticed with fairy lights, a throwback to earlier plague days, the fear that it was airborne. Many public spaces now kept these around for the ambiance.