Black River Falls (28 page)

“Broccoli,” she said, pointing to a spot by the fence and then ticking off three more. “Radishes. Spinach. Cauliflower.” She slammed the book closed. “We're planting for a late fall harvest, so no tomatoes.”

Everyone moved away to start digging in the spots Mom had indicated. She looked a little less thin than she had the last time I'd seen her. There was a roundness to her face. A glow to her skin.

“Honestly, Sara,” one of the women said. “I don't understand what you're even doing here this morning.”

“Just wanted to get my hands dirty,” Mom said as she knelt in the dirt.

“Yeah, but don't you have to get ready?”

Mom ripped the top of a packet of seeds. “It's a party. We've thrown a dozen of them.”

I moved into a stand of trees across the street and watched as she planted row after row and then gently covered the seeds with soil. Eventually, the rest of the crew insisted that she go home and get ready for a party that was happening later that afternoon.

Mom took her book and left the garden, strolling down the sidewalk. I made a slow count to twenty, then fell in behind her. She ended up in the yard of a small yellow house at the end of a cul de sac, the same one I'd broken into that night weeks ago. She crossed the lawn then disappeared into the backyard. It wasn't long before others arrived, singly and in groups, and followed her. Some carried small boxes, others baskets filled with bread or bundles of flowers bound in twine. I watched them for a while, then started to leave. Before I could take more than a few steps, though, a group of men and women swept by me toward the house.

“Where ya going?” one of them called. “Party's this way!”

“No, I'm not—I was just—”

Someone laughed and hooked her arm through mine, pulling me along, even as I protested. Before I knew it, we were in the backyard, and the group dispersed. I knew I should leave but the scene behind the house kept me rooted in place.

The backyard was full of people, dozens of them, mostly milling around a long table loaded down with food and glass pitchers of water with thick slices of lemon floating inside. Everywhere I looked, there were flowers. Daisies mostly, and sunflowers, bundled on tables and on the seats of mismatched chairs. A man with a guitar showed up and then a woman with a violin. The crowd cheered as they started to play. So many infected in one place triggered this bone-deep instinct—to turn and go, to run, to get away. But then I remembered that I was safe. Immune.

I found myself weaving through the party in a kind of dream. Even though my clothes were ragged and grimy from old sweat and ash and blood, the people who noticed barely seemed to care. It was crowded enough by then that my arm or shoulder kept brushing someone else's. At first, I'd jerk away immediately, but they'd simply smile and go back to their conversations. Once, I passed by a man telling a story, and when he was done the people around him laughed so hard that I felt the rush of their breath against my skin and didn't even flinch. And the smells! Without my mask, I picked out the scents of sweat and soap, of fruit and grass and flowers.

By the time I made it to the other side of the yard my head was spinning. I grabbed hold of the food table to steady myself. There was a pitcher of water nearby. I filled a glass and drank it in one long gulp. It was cold and sharp with the flavor of lemons.

“Mind if I join you?”

I turned at the sound of the voice. Mom was standing just behind me, fanning herself with a folded-up sheet of paper. She was in khaki shorts and a button-up shirt that was covered with embroidered flowers. Her deep brown skin was glowing with sun and sweat. She came up to the table and poured herself a glass of water.

“Did you get something to eat?” she asked once she drained it. “There's plenty. More than plenty. Though, I hope you like tuna noodle casserole. There was so much canned tuna in the last supply drop, we have six of them.”

“Sara!”

Mom turned and waved at someone on the other side of the yard. “Jessica! Is Richard here?”

“He's right behind me. He and Jack are lugging the grill.”

“He's not going to throw out his back again, is he?”

“Fingers crossed!”

Mom laughed. I put down my glass and started to walk away. “I should probably let you—”

Mom grabbed my shoulder to stop me. “I hate to ask, but do you think you could help me with something?” She pointed up the back stairs to the porch door. “We're giving one of our neighbors a chair we don't need, and since you're the only strapping young man currently present, I thought maybe you could help me carry it down.”

“I—”

“Nope! Won't take no for an answer. Come on! It'll earn you an extra slice of cake!”

She threaded her way through her guests and up the stairs. It was cool inside the house, but there was an odd musty smell that made me think of mothballs and lace. I flashed back to the last time I was there. Fred on the ground. Mom screaming. I looked to see if there was any trace of blood left on the floor, but it had all been wiped away.

“Can I get you anything?”

Mom had gone to the kitchen and was pouring herself another glass of water from the sink.

I shook my head. “No. I'm fine. Thanks. Which chair do you want to . . .”

“It's the blue one,” she said. “But have a seat. I just need to cool down a second. Hot out there, isn't it?”

I dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, which was decorated with a vase of plastic sunflowers and a set of porcelain dog and cat salt- and peppershakers. Mom drained her glass, then drew aside the curtains over the sink. The sunlight made bronze highlights on her skin. I saw her in an airy dress of yellow and green tatters, gliding across a dark stage. I took the saltshaker and tried to become absorbed in turning it in small circles.

“That was Fred's mom's. He keeps talking about boxing up her stuff and putting it in the attic, but he never does.”

Mom moved from the sink and took a seat across from me. She toyed with the plastic sunflowers.

“He has all these old handwritten cookbooks of hers, and he's working his way through them, trying to relearn the recipes. He says when he smells her meatloaf, he comes this close to remembering her.”

Mom smiled at me over the flowers. For a second it was as if we were back before the outbreak, sitting at the kitchen table after school, as we had a hundred times before. In the weeks since I'd first seen her, I'd come up with a hundred things I wanted to ask, but all of them suddenly left my head. It had been stupid to follow her.

I bent down and reached for my backpack. “If you show me which chair you want moved, I can—”

“I know who you are.”

I froze, my hand suspended over the pack's strap.

“I saw you in the alley that time. And then again the night—” She took in a breath. “The night you came here.”

“I don't—”

“It's okay,” she said quickly. “I'm not going to—Fred didn't recognize you and I don't think . . . I don't know why, but I don't think you're dangerous. Are you?”

I shook my head.

“Why'd you come here that night?”

Her voice sounded exactly the same then as it did when we were little and one of us had gotten into trouble for something. Dad always yelled, but not her. She'd ask why we did what we did, as if she were just curious, as if we might have a reason and that the reason would matter.

“I thought that man, Fred—I thought he might have taken you.”

“Why did you think that?”

I shrugged. What could I say? There was a squeak as Mom's chair moved closer to the table. She took the peppershaker and turned it over in her long fingers, studying it as if a secret code had been scratched into its side.

“We knew each other before,” she said. “Didn't we?”

I started to speak, but then there was a surge of noise from the party as the glass door to the porch slid open.

“Sara! Everyone all right in here?”

Mom jumped up from the table and ran to Fred as he came into the room. She slipped her arm around him and kissed him on the cheek. “We're good! This is, uh . . .”

“Tom,” I said quickly.

“Tom. Right. He worked on the gardening crew with us. He was going to help me get that chair for Mrs. Beamon.”

“Ah, so he's a lifesaver then!” Fred crossed the kitchen in two brisk strides and shook my hand. I could feel the waxy scar I had given him just behind his knuckles. “I've had this twinge in my back for weeks and can't seem to shake it. In thanks, we'll send you home with thirty-five to forty pounds of leftover tuna noodle casserole.”

He turned back to Mom and clapped his hands together.

“Now! My dear one. My sweet. I'm sorry to say it, but the time is almost upon us.”

“Seriously?” Mom whined. “Can't we just skip it and run away somewhere? Come on, it'll be all mysterious.”

Fred laughed, and then, when he saw that I didn't understand, he said, “We promised our friends that if they brought their instruments, Sara and I would kick off the dancing. She's nervous.”

“I know it's silly,” she said. “But I'm positive that I have two left feet. I've never been more sure of anything in my life. I'm going to be a disaster.”

“You're going to be wonderful,” Fred said.

“I just have to pull myself together.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Bourbon's in the cupboard,” he said. “I'll go stall. Tom, thanks again. Feel free to come over and lift heavy things for me anytime.”

There was another rush of noise as he opened the porch door and closed it behind him. I followed as Mom moved to the living room, to a window that looked out onto the backyard. Fred was circulating through the crowd, catching up everyone around him in great bear hugs and then laughing.

“Not long after I met Fred, this guardsman was going door-to-door,” she said. “He had a stack of papers, and he was telling everyone who they were. Fred already knew who he was by then, but I didn't. When the guardsman came to our house, I had Fred tell him to go away.”

“Why?”

Mom's forehead wrinkled with concentration. “When I try to look into that place, into the time before, I have this feeling that . . .”

She shook her head, frustrated.

“What?”

“There were good things then,” she said carefully, as if she were making her way across an old bridge, testing each step before she committed to it. “I know that. There were people I loved, who loved me. But there's something else in that place too, something that . . .”

Mom took hold of an edge of the dusty curtain and crimped it between her fingers.

“I was helping Fred cook once,” she said. “I went to chop some carrots, but as soon as my hand touched the knife, I started crying and I couldn't stop. Every time I try to think about why, it's like I can't breathe.”

Tears came into her eyes. Outside the window Fred and some of their guests were clearing an area in the middle of the yard. Fred must have felt Mom looking at him, because he turned and waved expansively, like someone hailing a ship. She smiled and brushed away her tears.

“When I was first getting to know Fred, it was like . . . it was like I was walking by a pool on a summer day. I wanted to run right at it and dive into the deepest part without looking. Just to get cool as fast as possible, you know? I think maybe that's how I did things before, but I didn't want to do that with him. I eased in.” She smiled again. “As much as I could, anyway. Everything seems so simple now. We're just happy. It's like learning to walk. It seems so obvious once you know how.”

Mom swept away the last of her tears and then her hand fell to her side. I thought she was going to pull away when I took it, but she didn't. Her fingers curled around mine and pressed into my palm.

“You were right,” I said. “We did know each other. Before.”

Mom didn't say anything for a long time. She didn't move. The air in the house became perfectly still. Outside, her friends seemed to move in slow motion.

“How?”

When I didn't answer, she turned around.

“Will I be better off if I know?”

In that second it seemed like our whole life streamed by. Mom dancing. Mom bent over a garden washed in sunlight, her hands buried in the soil. Mom collapsed on her knees on the other side of your body.

“I don't know,” I said. “I really don't.”

There was a round of applause outside, and then the musicians started to play. Fred lifted his arms and mimed a waltz, grinning up at the window. I let go of Mom's hand.

“You should go,” I said. “You don't want to miss your dance.”

Mom looked into a mirror that hung by the window and smoothed her hair. When she was done, she crossed to the porch door, pausing there with her palm pressed against the glass.

“Do you remember a game called Monopoly?”

I nodded.

“We have a tournament every Monday night,” she said. “Fred and I and our friends. Maybe you could join us sometime. And then we could talk more. The three of us. I think I'd like that. I think we both would.”

A chant started up outside. “Sa-
ra!
Sa-
ra!
Sa-
ra!
”

She smiled. “Guess that's my cue.”

“Don't worry about the dance,” I said. “You're going to be great.”

“Fingers crossed.”

The crowd cheered as Mom went out the porch door and waved regally. I watched from the window as she descended the stairs, and then she and Fred moved out to the middle of the yard. At first Mom clutched at Fred, resting her head on his chest as he turned them through the grass and whispered in her ear. But then something seemed to ease in her, and her long legs swept across the grass, her toes pointed. Her chest rose and her head and shoulders fell back, making her body into this perfect swanlike curve. Fred responded immediately. His body straightened and lifted. It was as if the music had moved through the air and into Mom and then, through her, into him. Their bodies melded together and whirled through space, perfectly unmoored, gliding. As they came near the window, Mom looked up at me and smiled a radiant, laughing smile. The strangeness of it was overwhelming. It was her, but not her. It was then. It was before.