“Okay. Florida Woman. But I’m not riding into the ring topless on an alligator.”
That gets everyone laughing again, and Arlene nods. “No nudity. We’re clear on that. Harlan is thinking your costume should be a play on what you were wearing yesterday, as it was described in the news.” She holds up a hand. “Which may or may not be true, so go with me a moment. Cutoff shorts, a tank top covered in blood, cowboy boots.”
Chelsea points down. “I was wearing these flip-flops.”
“Which is obviously the most Florida choice of all, but you can’t fight in ’em.”
“All due respect, ma’am, but I’ve seen folks get the everlovin’ shit slapped out of ’em with flip-flops,” one of the new people says.
Arlene tilts her head in concession. “Well, you can’t jump around a wrestling ring in flip-flops. We need closed-toe shoes for safety reasons here.”
Chelsea looks down at herself. She’s still wearing the outfit Arlene just described. She needs to ask if anyone has any spare clothes, or if they can make a Goodwill run or something, but she’s too proud. She’s never been a person who could ask for help. Living with her mother taught her that only weaklings asked for help, and that only suckers helped them. You take care of your business, you do your work, you mind your own beeswax. Yes, now Patricia is a pampered white cat, sleek and sated, who no longer hunts, but she was once a panther, and for at least the first five years of Chelsea’s life her mother was her hero, her idol, her everything. That’s what’s left of the Patty that once was: You take care of your business. Period.
But Chelsea has nothing, and she needs help, and asking her to do this right now, to dig deep and create a character as if this is some acting class in the college she never went to instead of a tawdry replay of the worst moment of her life that she’ll somehow never remember…it’s a lot to take in. Her eyes are prickling.
“Chelsea, are you okay?” Arlene is leaning forward, watching Chelsea, focused and intent and cautious.
“I just…” Chelsea trails off with an embarrassing sob. She can’t cry here. She can’t even wipe off her nose. But she can’t cry in the trailer, either. There’s always someone around, and the little berths don’t even hide the rustle of covers, much less choking sobs.
“Does it make you uncomfortable, the Florida Woman thing?” Arlene presses.
“Of course it does,” she snaps. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Why?”
Chelsea looks at Arlene like she’s an idiot, but Arlene looks at Chelsea like a fisherman at a prime spot who knows the bites are coming.
“Because Florida Woman is typically stupid and on drugs.”
“What else?”
Chelsea snorts. “Stupid and on drugs is bad enough.”
“We also think of Florida Woman as ugly and poor. The kind of woman who hurts children and animals, who has no empathy or self-control. That can hit you pretty hard, if you let it.”
Chelsea’s next breath is a gasping sob, and with nowhere else to hide, she doubles over, face flat on the table and hands over her head. The tears come like a hurricane, unstoppable, as it breaks over her.
She feels like all of those things. She is the kind of woman who has hurt an animal and a friend.
She doesn’t know how to feel worse about either death that she caused, and something about the way the Violence strikes prevents her from really connecting with it. She knows she should feel more guilty about it, that she deserves punishment and hate, and yet…she wasn’t really there when it happened. It wasn’t her. She was left with only the aftermath. It’s like she doesn’t have empathy but knows that she should, knows that something vital and human and real is just…missing. And the Violence removes all self-control. And she certainly doesn’t feel pretty right now, in yesterday’s filthy clothes and dirty underwear, still speckled with blood, after showering in a horse barn with cheap shampoo.
She would feel worse about the crying if Amy wasn’t crying, too. She can hear the sobs next to her, heaving gasps of breath, and between her own loud gulps for air, she sees that no one in the circle is unaffected. Even Matt has red eyes and keeps dashing away tears against his shoulder.
“I’m all those things now,” Chelsea says, low and moaning. “Everything but the drugs is true.”
“But it’s not your fault,” Arlene says, her voice steady and honest and strong. “You are a victim. You are suffering from a disease. You’re still human, and you’re not alone in these feelings. None of this is your fault.”
“I should’ve…I should’ve…”
“What, not gotten bit by a mosquito…in Florida?” The way Arlene says it makes it sound so obvious. “Not get a disease that took the world’s best scientists weeks to figure out the contagion point? Would you tell someone with malaria that they should’ve done something else?”
“I…”
“No. No, you wouldn’t. Because you would extend empathy to that person. We’re all doing the best we can. These are strange times and strange circumstances. But we are survivors.”
Chelsea lifts her head a little, called to Arlene’s voice, to Arlene’s burning eyes, crystal brown and so earnest.
She should run for office. Chelsea would vote for her.
“We are survivors of a new epidemic, and we have each other. The old world might be over, but we’re making our own way. Our own family, our own jobs. If you’re here, it’s because you had nowhere else to go, which means we all have nowhere else to go, which means we can only move forward. Together.”
Arlene stands up and walks to Chelsea, pulls her to standing, and hugs her, and Chelsea wants to tell her not to, knows that she must reek, that she’s trembling and soaked in snot and tears and yesterday’s blood, but being hugged by Arlene is a revelation. Arlene means this hug. It’s fully frontal, tight, solid, sturdy. It’s like the hugs on sitcoms that make everything okay, when the music hits a tender crescendo. It’s the kind of hug that Covid denied everyone for over a year, that feels all the more precious now. Then Arlene waves Amy over, and Amy joins them, still sobbing, and then everyone else, and then it’s like yesterday’s dogpile but completely different.
Seven people, crying together.
Seven people, arms wound around one another.
Seven strangers who met yesterday but are now more intimately connected than most people on the planet.
They are victims. They are infected. They are survivors.
“Okay, so I’m Florida Woman. Please tell me I get to hit someone with a rolled-up newspaper,” Chelsea finally says, unsure how long a hug can go on before it gets weird.
“All the newspapers are dead,” Matt says, looming over them all.
“Then I’ll throw a toy alligator.”
“That works,” Arlene croons like a lullaby. “That works.”
31.
Ella blinks, and she’s standing in Mrs. Reilly’s living room. She’s just had a thought, but now she’s forgotten it. Her eyes are burning like she’s been crying. Ah, well. Time to get back to…what was she doing? Lunch.
Then she notices the body on the floor.
It’s Uncle Chad.