Is that why they’re airing our episodes so quickly? In case someone dies?
I doubt that’s their primary concern, but it makes sense that they would anticipate the possibility of a production-halting accident. I think of how sick I got. That was close, not to stopping the show, but my role in it. And they’ve already populated this pretend world with a handful of dead-body props, a screeching baby doll, an interactive cameraman. A marauder isn’t such a far next step. In fact, I’m surprised all I’ve had to fend off so far is a bout of beaver fever and an animatronic coyote.
And this prattling boy, no matter his pretending, is on their side. Their side, not mine. I can’t forget that.
“I wanted to get away,” he says, swinging his plastic bags at his side. “Go somewhere I’ve never been before. And then I found you.”
Like our meeting was fate. But it wasn’t fate, it was casting.
“So,” I say, “I take it your mother’s dead?”
He breathes in sharply and nearly trips.
“I mean, she must be,” I reason. “The two of you jammed into a church with hundreds of others, everyone coughing and puking and shitting their pants. You’re clearly a mama’s boy, and you’re here and she’s not. So that means she’s dead, right?”
He doesn’t answer. I’d thought to prod him into putting some emotion into his performance, but this is even better. Silence.
As we walk, thoughts of my family slide forward in my consciousness. The family I chose and the family I was born to. My indifference toward the latter. My fear that if I have a child she will someday feel that same indifference toward me.
Odd how my dreams are always about a baby boy, but the possibility of having a girl is what scares me most. A daughter: It seems impossible to raise one well.
“Everyone you know is dead too,” says Brennan.
I turn to him, surprised. His face is so close to mine, his eyes are red, and tears are trickling down his scrunched-up cheeks. Snot runs from his nostrils over his lips. He must be able to taste it.
“Your family,” he says. “Your rafting friends. They’re floating down the river. Fish are probably eating their faces right now.”
“That’s…excessive,” I say. There’s something in his voice I can’t quite define. It’s not malice. I don’t think he’s trying to hurt me. I don’t know what he’s trying to accomplish.
“Facts are facts,” he mumbles. He shifts his plastic bags to the crooks of his elbows and crosses his arms. The watch face winks at me.
He’s sulking, I realize. The thought is laced with amazement. Then again—why not? He’s probably homesick. He probably didn’t know what he was signing up for either. I feel a little sorry for him, but mostly I’m thankful that he’s being quiet again.
What if my mother were dead? It’s a question I’ve pondered before; she’s only fifty-six but looks much older, mostly because of her skin. Forty miles each way twice a week to maintain her out-of-season hue, puffing on carcinogens all the way. Winter, summer, that deep tan is always out of season in Vermont when it lacks the sharp line of a farmer’s sleeve. Factor in her diet—a typical meal being frozen waffles topped with sausage patties doused in syrup and followed by a maple creamie—and she’s pretty much guaranteed an early grave.
She is dead.
I think the words, to see how they make me feel. They don’t have any effect I can discern. They should make me feel bad, I want them to, but they don’t. I remember when I got into Columbia and she lumbered all over town, bragging: It was her accomplishment, not mine. But anytime I fail—losing that derby when I was eight, not getting the Wildlife Conservation Society job two years ago—she gets this air about her like she knew I wouldn’t make it, like it was reckless of me even to try. And still I tried, for years I tried so hard. I remember my wedding day, how joyful I felt. How lucky. I remember my mother leaning in to kiss my cheek at the reception. “You look beautiful,” she said. “Just like me when I was young.” Her past: my present. Her present: my future. Like a curse. The worst part is I’ve seen the photos; I know she was happy once too.
My dad, though. That’s harder. We’re not close—somewhere in my adolescence we lost our ability to communicate, and I don’t think he understands why I worked so hard to get away from a place he loves so dearly. But I can’t think of him without a buzz of warm nostalgia, without imagining the sweet aroma of baking cinnamon and maple. Always maple.
“Is it possible to have a bad childhood memory about baking?” I wonder.
“What?” says Brennan.
“Never mind,” I say, and I think, These thoughts aren’t for you.
My dad and I shared eighteen years, but baking is pretty much all I remember. When I was little, I would help him in his shop before school. My specialty was mushing bananas for the maple banana bread. That, and sprinkling the maple sugar on top of the batter once it’d been poured into the loaf pans. I want to remember something else, something not about food, but all that comes to me is my fourth-grade birthday—whatever age that was. It was a dolphin-themed party, my favorite animal at the time, though I wouldn’t see one in person for years yet. My dad baked the cake, of course—dolphin-shaped, slathered in maple buttercream—and there was a pi?ata. Again, dolphin-shaped. Most of my class was there. David Moreau gave me a kite. We flew it together that weekend. Or was that fifth grade? I’m not sure. I remember my dad presenting the dolphin cake, and my mom gnawing on a thumbnail as she poured orange soda from a can into a clear plastic cup.
And then I have it—my dad cheering in the bleachers. It’s high school, a track meet my freshman year, long before I made captain. Was it my first meet? In my memory it has all the intensity of a first. I remember the gurgling nerves in my stomach, the slight pain as I stretched my hamstring. I remember my father yelling my name, waving. The meet wasn’t at our home track; it was in another town a half hour’s drive from my high school. Dad closed the shop early to come, to see me.
“Mae, I’m sorry.”
I blink. The race is gone; I don’t remember how I ran, if I placed.
“It’s hard to think about her,” says Brennan. “I miss her. And…and I just miss her.”
It takes me a moment to realize who he’s talking about.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m sure she’s watching.”
“I know,” he says. He crosses himself; the bag hanging from his arm thwaps his chest.
My cheeks immediately begin to sizzle. That’s not what I meant. Even if I believed his mother was dead I never would have meant it that way. What’s worse—now that he’s distorted my words they’ll probably air them. The thought of contributing, even mistakenly, to the meaningless spirituality that so pervades American media sickens me.
After a few more steps, Brennan starts rambling about his stupid fish, how he brought it to the church in its bowl, but then a neighbor’s cat ate it. He was in the bathroom filling water bottles when it happened.
“It was just a fish,” I blurt. “They’re meant to be eaten.”
“But—”
“Please, just—please stop talking for five minutes.”