The Compound (12 page)

For a few moments, I felt like we belonged together, like we had bonded through the music if not through circumstance. At the end of the session, we put our instruments away in silence. Lexie stormed away quickly, while Mom fiddled with the latch on the cello case, distracted. Terese just smiled to herself and didn’t make eye contact with me.

My palms were sweaty and my stomach felt queasy. Music was supposed to be soothing. Like most of our music days, I found myself grasping my trumpet, taking my time as I shined it before putting it back into its case. Despite the discordance, I was reluctant to end the session. But with a click, the case closed and I was back to feeling alone.

In the middle of the afternoon, Dad came into the
library where I was reading. “I’m working on inventory and I need you to help,” he announced flatly. Inventory sucked.

I tossed Stephen King onto one of the leather chairs.

Dad sent me to one of the larger storage rooms and left me on my own with a yellow legal pad and a pen. Everything had to be accounted for. Every jar of pickles. Every bottle of laundry detergent. Every box of feminine hygiene products. Lovely.

The task took me about three hours, filled several pages, and yielded few surprises. For five years I’d done this chore, dutifully following my father’s orders. I’d watched the piles of jars, bottles, and boxes slowly shrink. Not to emergency levels, but still.

When I came to the boxes of cleaning supplies, our least necessary inventory in my opinion, I noticed an opening at the back, between stacks of paper towels and cartons of toilet paper. No clue why I bothered moving them aside. Before I’d always just estimated by the height of the stack. But as I shifted them for the first time ever, there was a plastic tub that seemed out of place with all the cardboard containers around it.

I lugged it down from the shelf and read the one word written in black Sharpie on the blue cover:

My knees buckled. I dropped to the floor. With one trembling finger I traced the letters. I hadn’t seen his name in writing for so long, hadn’t thought of him for a few
hours. Seeing those letters together, so familiar and heartbreaking at the same time … I tore off the cover.

Plastic bags of Jack Link’s. Lots of them. Beef jerky, turkey jerky, sausage sticks. Eddy’s favorite food on earth. I ripped open a bag of jerky and stuck my nose deep inside. I breathed in the one scent that could bring my brother alive to me. Inside the storage closet, I remained on the cement floor for a long time, inhaling my twin.

My stomach rumbled. It occurred to me I might be holding an important find. The wrapper crinkled as I bit off a hunk of jerky.

A bit past its prime. But still tasty. Still meat.

I downed two-thirds of a bag before replacing the top of the tub. I carried it into the kitchen. Terese sat at the counter. Mom sliced tomatoes for a salad.

Despite the deep circles under her eyes and slumped shoulders, Mom smiled when she saw the look on my face.

“What’s that?”

My hands guided the box onto the counter. I slid onto a stool.

Terese read the cover. “Eddy’s box?”

At one time, we all had a box, a box filled with our favorite treat. Snickers for me, plain M&M’s for Terese, coffee-flavored Nips for Mom, Corn Nuts for Dad. I didn’t know what Lexie’s was. She never ate junk food at home, but she must have had a box, too.

Mom lifted the cover and laughed. Her eyes lit up for
the first time in a while. “I hated this stuff. It smelled so greasy and smoky. He always reeked of it.”

I held up a bag. “It’s meat.”

Mom’s brow furrowed. “It’s still good? I don’t want anyone getting sick.”

The ingredients list didn’t indicate much. “I’m not sure it was ever good.” Yet moments before, chewing the jerky, I’d tasted the saltiness, felt the weight of it, the substance that vegetables and other foods lacked. “Yeah, it’s still edible.” I realized how much I missed meat.

“But it belongs to Eddy.” Little Miss Perfect looked from me to Mom.

Mom smiled at Terese. “Lovey, I don’t think Eddy would mind.”

Terese opened a bag. She gnawed off a chunk of jerky. “Rather difficult to chew.”

Mom reached for a piece.

Together, they chewed the jerky. Sloppy and loud.

“It’s not so bad.” Mom went back to making a salad.

Terese picked an unopened bag out of the box and ran from the room.

I told Mom, “Be right back.” There was a little business I had to take care of. In the hall, I caught up to Terese and grabbed her by her hood, yanking her back. “How’d you get in my room?”

Her mouth was full and she finished chewing as she tried to wrestle away from me. “Opened the door.”

I gripped harder and pulled, so that she was bent over backward looking up at me.

“You can’t have just opened the door, it was locked.”

“Ow, let go!” She put a hand on the wall to keep her balance.

“Tell me how you got in.”

She rolled her eyes. “I read
Oliver Twist.”

“Say what? And he picks locks?”

She twisted as far as she could to one side, but I had such a tight hold of her hood, she only succeeded in almost strangling herself. She huffed. “Not exactly. But it got me interested, so I found a book in the library.”

I shook my head. “On how to pick locks.” You’d think I might have found that one at some point.

She spoke fast, probably figuring I’d let her go as soon as she told me everything. “It was that one for kids that shows how everything is made. It tells how things work and I learned about locks and figured it out.”

I let her go and stepped back, leaning against the wall. I lowered my voice. “So what other locks have you picked down here?”

She stuck out her tongue as she skipped backward, away from me. “I’m not telling you!” And she ran off down the hall.

I went back in the kitchen. “She’s such a little freak.”

Mom shook a finger at me. “You shouldn’t say that about her. And I think she’s better now that she moved in …” She trailed off, like she didn’t mean to say the words.

“Moved in where?”

“The yellow room.”

“Mom! How could you let her do that?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Watch your tone. And she spends so much time in there, anyway. I didn’t see any harm.”

“Whatever. I just miss everyone being normal.” Then I smiled and tried to make light. “Actually I miss a lot of things.”

Mom sighed. “I miss …,” she hesitated, her eyes on the wilting lettuce. “I would give anything for a huge, whole milk, four-pump latte right now, with loads of caramel sauce.” She shrugged and went back to the salad.

I watched her for a bit. Her shoulders seemed slumped and her movements were mechanical, almost robotic.

“Mom,” I ventured, “you happy?”

She paused, staring into the salad bowl. “Happy? I’m alive. Warm. Reasonably fed. My family, most of it, is here with me.” Her eyes met mine. “I never dreamed I could be this miserable ever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. Grateful that my husband went to all this trouble …”

I saw the question in her eyes at the same time I felt it in my gut. “What are we surviving for?” I asked.

She nodded. “Did we survive simply for the sake of surviving? The rest of our lives, we just exist to survive?”

Tears welled up as she set a hand on her stomach. “I wanted so much for my children. For a while you had it all. Good schools, everything you could want to make a great childhood. And I was happy. Down here, though …” She took a deep breath and let it out. Her voice had a slight quiver to it. “You are all so affected by this place in your own ways.”

My first inclination was to disagree and I started to protest.

Her expression shut me up. “Don’t deny it, Eli. I want us to thrive again. But this isn’t it. It isn’t even close.” Her hands went up to cover her face as her shoulders shook.

I just sat there. Sat there and watched her weep.

Part of me wanted to hold her. All of me knew that’s what a good son would do.

Alas, I fell neatly into the category of lousy son.

I snatched some napkins off the counter and set them down next to her.

“Thanks.” She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. “You know your father and I aren’t … sharing a room anymore.”

I thought of the couch in Dad’s office, the pillow and blanket. Not like we had a guest room for him to retreat to. But I didn’t want her to know I’d noticed anything. “Since when?”

“For a while. We don’t agree on a few things.” She patted her belly.

It was pretty clear to me that the gesture referred to the Supplements. They meant only one thing to my father, yet clearly they were something else entirely to my mother. And all that time I had been suffering from the delusion that I could remain uninvolved, choosing to side with neither of them.

I put both my elbows on the counter and rested my chin on my hands. “Mom, if you could leave here, would you?”

She wiped her eyes again. “Only if it didn’t put any of you in danger.”

“You just said you want us to thrive.”

She nodded. “Yes. I do. But I also want you alive. And if surviving is all we can have at this point, I guess I just have to live with that.”

I sat back up. My fingers pulled at the collar of my T-shirt. “Do you think things are really like Dad says?”

She peeked in the oven door. “I have no way of knowing.”

I had expected her to reassure me, tell me that Dad knew what he was doing like he always did. But her answer gave me an opening, an opening to see if I could trust her. And I needed to trust her.

I swallowed. “Did he tell you the Internet is up?”

Mom grabbed the edge of the oven to steady herself. “What?” Her surprise was definitely genuine.

“I take it that’s a no.” I told her what Dad had told me.

She sat down. Her face was pale. “You know, my mother never wanted me to marry your father.”

“Why not?”

She’d never talked to me this way before. Like an adult.

“Oh, where should I start? He was such a complete package, you know. Smart, good-looking, rich. I usually liked taller men. But, you know, I figured he could always stand on his wallet.” She grinned, but it looked uncomfortable.

My forced laugh felt the same way.

She shrugged a bit. “Your gram just didn’t trust him. She said he seemed too controlling. All I saw was a man who could make my dreams, and the dreams of my future children, come true.” She paused.

I really didn’t want to hear any more. Despite everything, that had always been a constant for me. Something to draw strength from. My parents and the life they made together. Not perfect, but strong nonetheless. It was not pleasant to find out the foundation of your house had dry rot.

She continued, “And he was so involved with the orphanage. He never hesitated when I saw Lexie and knew I had to take her home with us. I knew my kids would never want for anything. I know it might sound shallow to you, Eli. But it was such a relief to know I was marrying a man I wouldn’t have to fight over money with.”

It was my turn to say something. All I could come up with was “And now?”

The oven’s timer buzzed.

Mom stood, pulling on her thick red oven mitts. “I honestly don’t know.”

I watched Mom pull a loaf of flat bread out of the oven. She chewed on the inside of one cheek, distorting her face. As she set the hot fresh bread on the cooling rack, the funny-smelling bread that no one but Dad would eat, I could tell what was running through her mind.

Dad came in then, sat beside me and asked for my inventory sheets. He scanned the page, and then scratched his neck. “I’m not sure where I miscalculated, but my last figures were off.”

Mom must have decided it was a good time to start talking to him again. “Is this where you tell us when the food will run out?” Her voice was full of worry, yet there was also a harsh tone to it.

Dad didn’t even notice. His finger trailed down a paper on his clipboard. “About a year before the fifteen years are up. Depending on the hydroponics, of course.”

He could have been giving us the weather report.

Mom tapped the knife on the cutting board. “The vegetables will last. We’ll have enough food.”

I spoke up. “Why can’t we just be vegetarians?”

Dad laughed a little as he dropped his pen on the clipboard and shoved it aside. “They rely on eggs and dairy products for protein.”

“What about vegans? They don’t eat any animal products, do they?”

Mom answered me. “Because they have soy products and nuts for protein. Your father was never a fan of soy and the nuts are long gone.”

Dad leaned his head to one side as he looked at her. He stood up and walked over to the counter. He sliced off a piece of bread and tossed it between his hands to cool. “By my calculations, protein will be totally lacking. We won’t have a choice.”

Mom snapped at him. “There’s always a choice.”

“Of course there’s a choice. Do you want to live or die?” He held out the bread to me. “Bread?”

“No!” Mom’s face fell as she looked from Dad to the bread. “I mean, there’s another loaf for the kids. Still baking.” She gestured at the oven. “This one’s all yours.”

Dad smiled. “Thanks.” He bit into the bread.

My head started to hurt.

Dad shifted his gaze to Mom. “Yes, there’s always a
chance we won’t have to go to extreme measures. But we won’t know until that time and we need to set ourselves up now. We must do what we can. We need to bolster our supplemental food supply.”

She glared at him. “Unless you’ve come up with something to guarantee multiple births, I’m already working at my quota.” But the look on her face showed she regretted her words.

He cut another slice. “Eli, come with me.”

Mom shook her head. “Don’t do this, Rex.”

His voice was low. “Eli, let’s go.”

She dropped the knife on the counter and watched us leave.

What was going on?

Dad walked slightly in front of me as we headed toward the direction of his office. “Eli, I’m going to need your help.” Both his hands started to scratch his face.

All that scratching was uncomfortable for me to watch. And it was making me itchy again. I wanted to grab his hands, make him stop. But I couldn’t. Instead, I looked down at my feet. “With what?”