We Are the Ants(64)

People move as close to the equator as possible. Lakes turn to ice and food becomes scarce. Those who do not freeze to death, starve. There are no wars over the world’s meager resources; soldiers are too cold and hungry to fight.

On 29 January 2016, at 11:23 p.m. EST, a boat off the coast of Maryland becomes trapped in ice. It is the first reported instance of the Atlantic Ocean freezing. It is not the last.

By the time the sun grows bright again, no one is left alive on Earth to feel its warmth.





21 December 2015


The first time I visited Nana at the nursing home I expected to find her alone in a dreary room, sitting in her own feces while the orderlies ignored or berated her. Shady Lane was nothing like that. It was bright and cheerful, with sky blue walls and so many windows, they hardly needed to use the overhead lights during the day. The staff was friendly and seemed to genuinely enjoy their jobs.

A few days before Christmas, Audrey joined me to visit Nana. TJ was the nurse on duty, and we swapped small talk while he signed us in at the front desk before telling us we could find Nana in the community room. During my other visits, I’d only seen Nana’s room and the garden, but TJ assured us the community room was easy to find. We had only to follow the music.

Nana was playing show tunes on a weathered piano while a pair of older men—one a gravelly baritone and the other a tuneless tenor—sang along.

“Well, this is just appalling,” Audrey said, stifling a giggle.

I waited until they finished “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady, and added my applause to the smattering from the handful of patients and nurses seated about the airy room. “That was great, Nana!”

Nana’s eyes lit up when she saw me, and she played the opening notes to “Son of a Preacher Man.” “Henry, sweetheart.” She spun around on the bench to face us. “Have you come to take me home?”

Her question was a knife that slid neatly between my ribs and left me bleeding. The two men who’d been singing with her continued smiling with their big, glossy fake teeth. “Nana, this is my friend Audrey. You remember Audrey.”

Nana offered Audrey her hand. “Audrey, dear, a pleasure. My name is . . . is . . . I seem to have misplaced my name.” She looked distressed.

“You told me the first time I met you to call you Georgie.” Audrey’s grace under pressure was astounding. “But I don’t have a grandmother of my own, so it’d be an honor if I could call you Nana too.”

“Georgie,” Nana said. “That’s me, right?”

I hugged Nana as hard as I could, taking care not to break her. “That’s you.”

The men’s names were Miles and Cecil, and they knew all the words to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Dancing Queen,” and every song from West Side Story. Audrey and I sang with them until we were hoarse, and after, Nana showed us her room as if I’d never seen it.

Audrey gravitated toward the picture on the dresser. It was the only photograph in the room. “When was this taken?”

“Thanksgiving,” I said. Charlie looked like he was chewing a lemon, Mom’s smile looked painful, and I’m pretty sure the only reason I was smiling was because I was imagining pushing both of them out of an airplane without parachutes. The tension radiated from the surface of the photograph like heat off a summer sidewalk. Only Nana and Zooey looked genuinely happy.

Nana shuffled to stand beside Audrey. “That’s my family. Aren’t they lovely? My daughter could stand to eat less, but she always did have a sweet tooth.”

“Mom?” I asked. She liked her wine and cigarettes, but I couldn’t remember her eating many sweets.

Nana took the picture and sat on the edge of her bed. “Oh, yes. Eleanor was quite a little piggy growing up. She especially loved to watch me bake because I would let her lick the spoons and beaters. Once, she became very ill. Vomiting all night. I nearly called Dr. Wadlow to come out to the house, but your mother confessed that she’d eaten an entire stick of butter.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth, laughing. “Gross!” Audrey was also laughing.

“Why in the world would she eat butter?”

The lines and wrinkles seemed to smooth out on Nana’s face as she recalled the memory. Nana couldn’t remember that I’d visited her two days earlier, but she remembered every detail of something that had happened more than forty years ago. The farther we are from someone, the further we live in their past.

“Eleanor saw me put butter in everything I baked, so she must have thought it would be delicious on its own.”

“I bet that’s why Mom hates baking cookies,” I said. “She always made me take store-bought treats for the bake sales in middle school.”

Audrey shuddered. “I love cookies, but I’d never eat butter.”

Nana sighed and touched the picture. “And yet, cookies would taste terrible without it.”

Audrey and I hung out for another hour, listening to Nana’s stories. She told us about the detective who lived on the third floor and the nice woman down the hall named Bella who was a stage magician, while Audrey brushed Nana’s hair. I wasn’t sure how much was real and how much was fantasy, but it didn’t matter because it made her smile.

When we signed out, I flipped through the pages to see if anyone else had visited Nana. Charlie’s careless scrawl popped up once, but Mom’s was there every day.