Future Home of the Living God(57)
“How about the Chinese? Have you trusted us?”
“Hey, we’re related, and you know it. I taught you all about the land bridge and you just smiled enigmatically. So mysterious. I didn’t know what the fuck you were.”
She laughs at me. “B-movie inscrutable’s my thing, right? I wanted to talk to you so bad. It was the hardest thing I ever did. Climbing down the wall was easier. Braiding that rope was easier. I really wanted to be friends with you.”
“Well, now you’re deserting me for your husband.”
“Dicks before chicks.”
“It’s the other way around.”
“I know. I do want to stay with you. We never talked about your guy, either, and I wanted to ask you so bad.”
“Okay. I’ll tell, but you first. You tell me about your guy. Is he Chinese too?”
“Nah. We went to high school together, never dated then. But I feel like I’ve known him, well, always. I went to kindergarten with him.”
“Private school?”
“Mmm.”
“I was Waldorf, then public school. My parents are that kind of liberal.”
“Mine moved to Arizona, and Clay’s died. His dad was a cereal company CEO—big house on Lake Minnetonka. Second house in Costa Rica, the Pacific side. If we can get down there.”
“With a baby?”
“I know. Maybe California.”
We’re quiet. “But you really love him.”
“I do. Maybe he’s a waspy Wayzata guy, but he’s smart, kind, sexy, makes me laugh. All that.”
Her voice drifts off. I try to reel her back. “I’m surprised they caught you. I mean, you seem so protected, right? Out-there suburbs in a big fort couldn’t you have just disappeared?”
“I took a chance, went to my studio. I just didn’t get . . . I really couldn’t believe that it was happening. That’s the problem with privilege, money, in this sort of situation. False sense of security. But they got me in the street, no ID, and I pretended to have no English. I know Clay is waiting for a sign from me. I’ll have him come and get me. Clay and I always planned that if one of us disappeared or there was a third world war or something went wrong in a big way, we’d stay home, guard the house, wait for the other person as long as possible. So I’m sure Clay’s there.”
“Tending the home fires.”
“Sort of, yeah.”
We sleep like the dead, a raw, black, hallucinatory sleep. We sleep away the afternoon and when we wake up it’s dusk—around five or six o’clock. Sera has sandwiches—real bread, real sliced turkey, even mayo. And canned milk heated up with cinnamon and chocolate. She leaves us alone with the food and we eat in little bites, sip the hot chocolate.
“So tasty, I could cry,” says Tia.
“It feels sort of sacramental, eating real food again.”
“You haven’t told me about your husband,” Tia says.
I look at her and don’t know how to start, but my expression must tell her quite a bit.
“That’s all right,” she says, after a moment. “We’ll catch up some other time.”
October 20
This notebook has become my life, or perhaps better to say that this notebook has become the way I remain connected with my life, and with you. The black hardbound cover has peeled in places, or scratched down to the gray pulp. But your tape-protected ultrasound looks perfect. The back, with its blank for your name or picture, surrounded by sticker garlands of roses, doves, and pointing cherubs, is smudged. These foolish little signs of romance are showing the wear of much handling. As is the photograph I took of the sign in the empty field. I have picked up bits of paper from the now and from the before, as mementos of the curious world you will be entering soon. Many tiny pieces of paper, blown from bags, fluttering off the giant pile, lie in drifts here and there in the Merf. I smooth them out and add them to the envelopes of scraps that I taped to the inner cover of your book. They have made their way here from all corners of the earth. Lemon candy wrappers from Spain and many tags—marked Made in China, Taiwan, USA, Sri Lanka, Berlin. There are cards printed in Korea and little decorative bits of gilt and lavender wrappers from France, Australia, Indonesia. Torn and smudged photos. Wine labels from New Zealand. Erection instructions to some long-lost tent manufactured in Taiwan. There are scraps of iconic American soup, mac & cheese, scouring pad, and laundry soap packaging. Envelopes with beautifully printed stamps juxtaposed for merely utilitarian purposes—yet bearing along some mysterious effect. In the facility’s medicine cabinet I find a bottle of glue, and a pair of tiny nail scissors. Fitting and gluing my little tag-bag of treasures together occupies me. Tia’s sleeping. Sera, I’ve barely seen.
Among the many items stored or jettisoned in the back room there is a small oil painting on masonite. The little painting is well done, though one corner is smeared with what might be congealed egg. Perhaps it was thrown out by mistake, the victim of a household purge. On the other hand, it may have been rescued from a flood or fire, for the background is dark. But looking closely, I see that is the result of careful work, not mud or flames. The painting is simple. A pomegranate and a water glass (either empty or full to the brim) are set upon a spotlighted piece of vast and perhaps even endless tabletop. When I first looked at the pomegranate and the water glass, I thought of two people. The water glass, one of those large bistro glasses good for iced tea, looks perfect from a distance and chaotic up close. The pomegranate is a swirl of tiny strokes—rose and mandarin pink and a smoky scarlet. It does not touch the glass, but casts a shadow into its interior. There seems to be a tense but loving relationship between the pomegranate and the water glass. Perhaps, I think now, like the relationship between you and me.