How High We Go in the Dark(52)

Dear Aubrey,

I used to spend a lot of time after my mom died pretending I could find a way to make things right. Maybe I could save some kid from losing his parents. Orli went off to Los Angeles to play philanthropist—opening new plague wards at hospitals, leaving me with a dad who never really knew how to talk to his son. Before I came to find you, I thought I might go back to school with an eye toward epidemiology, if it weren’t for my shitty grades. Pretending was better than nothing, I suppose. So I started collecting articles about the plague. I read the published leaked journals of Cliff Miyashiro twice, how he and his fellow researchers had wanted to warn the world. Nobody ever thought this would happen. I marathoned reruns of medical dramas, wishing I could wear a white coat and help people. But you were real. You listened. You gave me a way to honor my mother.

Tatsu is waiting outside the bathroom with a glass of wine when I emerge.

“Thanks,” I say. The wine smells like vinegar and has a strong acidic bite. I down it in a couple of gulps anyway. I know Tatsu’s trying to be there for me, but I’m tired of pretending our relationship is one quick fix away from being okay. Orli escapes the gauntlet of aunts and uncles, joins me and Tatsu as we’re piling cubes of cheese on plastic plates.

“After things settle down, maybe you can come back to our childhood house,” Orli says. “No one will be there. It’s just me and seven thousand square feet of empty rooms since Laird was hospitalized.”

Tatsu excuses himself and goes to sit in a corner, eating summer sausage and grapes, staring at the floor like he’s an awkward middle schooler at a dance.

“That’ll be nice,” I say.

Orli is pulled away by another relative. I pour a heaping glass of chardonnay before joining Tatsu in the shadows.

“I appreciate you coming,” I tell him. I pick a sausage off his plate. “But I think I’d rather be alone with Orli for a while if that’s okay. I’ll see you back at home.”

“Will you be there in time for dinner?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ll call you.”

In Orli’s solar-edition Land Rover, I feel in my purse for the key Laird left me. We pass tech campuses that have been temporarily transformed into funerary processing centers and overflow clinics for the plague drug trials. A teenage boy pushes an older woman in a wheelchair across a clinic parking lot. A line wraps around the old offices of a dating app—people waiting for their loved ones to be scheduled for elegy hotels or burial or some hope that the funerary banks will provide bereavement assistance as life insurance companies struggle to pay out. In what used to be a Hewlett Packard Enterprises business park, a crane lowers a sign that reads FUNERARY FUTURES AND FINANCE. We leave San Jose for Saratoga, veer onto a winding road shrouded by oak trees. We pass a desiccated apple orchard, a burned-out field littered with the husks of dead horses. The stately Spanish-style villas that punctuate the drive are surrounded by lawns painted green, sprinkler systems spraying dye instead of water. I am holding Laird’s key in my palms like a talisman, wondering what it might reveal—a vinyl collection, journals, maybe a time capsule from his childhood.

“I don’t know what he has locked up in his desk, but you’re welcome to it,” Orli says, staring at my hands clutching the key. “All of this—the money, the society. It was never Laird, but we had some happy moments. He only really came back when Mom died.”

A cardboard Captain Kirk stares at me from the corner of Laird’s childhood bedroom. He’s standing guard beside a twin bed and a corkboard filled with articles about the plague. A collection of ray guns line the shelves, along with mason jars filled with cicada husks. I scan the room, rummage through drawers and feel like I can sense Laird’s presence—a framed Kraftwerk poster, an old turntable decorated with animal stickers, an acoustic guitar. I sit on his bed and notice a plastic milk crate filled with records peeking out from beneath his Star Wars comforter. I pull out the records and arrange them on the floor: Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, Sea Change by Beck, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde.

“When we were little, he used to do odd jobs for our neighbors. He’d beg our dad to take him to the swap meet so he could find more music,” Orli says, standing in the doorway. “He wanted to work for his music. He said it would mean more. In high school, he probably spent more time at the record shop where he worked part-time than he did with us.”

I pick up New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies and take the LP out of its sleeve.

I put on “Age of Consent” and sit at Laird’s desk, unlock the drawers. Inside are stacks of manila folders bursting with articles, everything from The Atlantic and The Economist to grocery store tabloids. There is a copy of his mother’s autopsy report, chest X-rays that show the shadows of growing masses. Orli quickly excuses herself and leaves me to it.

Miracle Tonic Developed in Kansas: Minister’s Prayer-Infused Potion Gives Elderly Hope

No New Plague Cases in Months, but Will Researchers Find a Cure before the Infected Die?

City of Laughter Drug Trials Discontinued by FDA due to Unregulated Stem Cell Use

Genetically Engineered Fast-Growing Pigs Buy Time for Those on Transplant Lists

When You’ve Done All You Can: Allowing Your Loved Ones to Say Goodbye with Grace

I read through the clippings, place them in an empty milk crate. Laird wanted me to see this, the extent to which his mother’s death made him who he was, the only Laird I ever knew. I don’t know what I’ll do with the files. It doesn’t seem right to leave them locked away. I imagine studying the artifacts or setting them on fire, like that time I saw a family friend burn what she called ghost money at her grandmother’s Chinese funeral, to ensure a rich afterlife. For Laird, I would burn the articles to set him free, to let him know he did all he could—a cosmic stamp of approval sent through the ether.