Malorie(75)

Gary

Gary Gary Gary

Malorie makes to push but Olympia’s voice stops her.

“Mom, Mom. He’s okay. Tom. He’s looking…and he’s okay.”

The people around her explode with a cheer Malorie has long thought reserved for the day human beings discover a way to look at the creatures safely.

And has that happened?

And is today that day?

And is Tom the one to have done it?

Tom the man appears in her mind’s eye. A man who so desperately wanted the world to cheer just like this.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES!” Malorie yells. And her voice is torn fabric.

Olympia guides her, but even Olympia seems enamored with what has happened.

Where’s Gary?

“Where’s Gary?”

“Mom!” Olympia is crying. Elation in her voice. “Mom! Tom did it!”

“Where’s Gary?”

Then…a voice.

A man’s. But not Gary’s. As if in a dream tortured so long it’s become a nightmare, Malorie hears the voice of her father.

It comes from deep within the darkness, her darkness, a depth even she has never been. She tries to repudiate it, to shove back, to refuse it just as she tried to shove Gary moments ago.

Now isn’t the time for false hope. Now isn’t the time to dream again.

“Malorie?”

But it is Dad’s voice. Real or imagined.

“Who…” Olympia begins to ask.

“What’s going on?” Malorie asks.

“Who…” Olympia says again.

“Malorie Walsh?” the man asks.

Dad’s voice again. Out of the darkness. Close to her ear.

“Oh, my God…” Malorie says. She grips Olympia’s arm for support.

When it becomes real, the truth of it, Sam Walsh, here, his fingers to her face, it hurts. It’s so powerful, the implications of this voice, this real voice, that it turns the light on behind her fold for the first time in seventeen years.

“Help,” she says. Because she can’t take it. All of this. At once.

Sam Walsh speaks again.

“I heard the boy call your name,” he says. “And your voice…I recognize your voice…”

Fingers again, on her face.

“Mal?”

Malorie breathes in. She holds it.

She hopes.

“Dad?”

The familiar hands are on her shoulders now. Olympia is saying something impossible, telling her this could be her dad.

And Olympia can see him.

“Oh, my God, Mom,” Olympia says. “Oh, my God…”

“I’m Sam Walsh,” her father’s voice says. “Are you Malorie?”

Malorie falls to her knees. This can’t be. It’s simply too much. There are so many voices out here. Tom’s on a stage. Olympia’s by her side.

And her father…

She wants to tear the fold from her face.

But even now…she lives by it.

The man is beside her, low. He’s on his knees. Olympia describes the impossible scene. She tells Malorie yes, yes, as a crowd who leaves their dead unburied cheer for her son, her son who may be going mad, even as Olympia tells her he’s not, even as Olympia sounds excited by all of this, by Tom, but also by this man, this familiar touch and smell and sound, beside her, the two of them together on their knees in an impossible street in Hell.

“Mal,” her father says, this time with confidence. “Oh, my God. Malorie.”

They’re hugging. Malorie’s fold is wet with tears. Her fingers don’t feel strong enough to grip his shoulders, but that’s what they’re doing. They’re digging into him, deep as she can make them go.

“Dad…”

“Malorie.”

Sam Walsh is crying. He’s trying to talk, and she feels a fold on his face, and she laughs because Dad has lived by the fold, too. Because Dad is alive.

“We knew it,” Sam says. And his voice is unfathomable relief. “We knew if we came here we’d find you.”

Olympia is talking. Then, so is Tom, near now. He’s asking if Malorie is okay. He’s telling Olympia his idea worked. He’s asking Olympia why her eyes are open. “I saw them open from the stage,” he’s saying, “from behind the mirror. I saw your eyes were open.”

And a creature, too. He’s telling Olympia he saw a creature.

But through all this, a chaos more confusing even than the arrival of the creatures themselves, Malorie still hears what her father, her impossible, living father just said.

We knew if we came here we’d find you.

“Dad,” she says, her lips touching the fabric that’s wrapped around his face. “Dad, why did you come here?”

Sam laughs, and in his laughter she hears boundless, painful reprieve.

“You were always our rebel,” he says. “You took risks we were always too afraid to take.”

He’s hugging her, hard. And Malorie thinks, I was once the kind of person who took risks…

Where did that person go?

She hears dignity, elation in Tom’s voice. Astonishment in Olympia’s. The community surrounding them is getting louder, and Malorie realizes that, despite what Tom claims to have done, despite the unadulterated, unsafe joy of this crowd, she isn’t scared.