Malorie, sick of the growing panic, speaks up at last.
“Everybody,” she says, “we have things we could be doing. Right here in this house. We need to prepare dinner. The shit bucket hasn’t been brought out all day. The cellar could be arranged better than it is. Felix, you and I could check the yard for tools, something we might have missed. Something we could use. Cheryl, you’ve got to feed the birds. Gary, Don, why not make phone calls. Call every combination of numbers. Who knows who you might reach. Olympia, it’d be really helpful if you washed the bedding. We did it a week ago, but with as little as we wash ourselves in this place, it’s the little things, like cleaner sheets, that make it bearable.”
The housemates look at Malorie like she’s a stranger. For a moment, she feels embarrassed for asserting herself. But then, it works.
Gary quietly walks to the telephone. Cheryl goes to the cellar door.
You’re close, Tom said to her before he left.
She thinks of this, as the housemates busy themselves with their chores, as Malorie and Felix go to get their blindfolds, she thinks of the things Tom and Jules might return with. Is there anything they could bring, anything, that would lead to a better life for her baby?
Picking up a blindfold, Malorie hopes.
thirty-three
The river is going to split into four channels, the man told her. The one you want is the second one from the right. So you can’t hug the right bank and expect to make it. It’s tricky. And you’re going to have to open your eyes.
Malorie is rowing.
And this is how you’ll know when that time comes, the man told her. You’ll hear a recording. A voice. We can’t sit by the river all day. It’s just too dangerous. Instead, we’ve got a speaker there. The recording will be playing on a loop. You’ll hear it. It’s loud. Clear. And when you do, that’s when you’ll have to open your eyes.
The pain in her shoulder comes in waves. The children, hearing her groans, offer help.
In her first year alone with the children, Tom’s voice came to her all the time. So many of his ideas were only spoken, never achieved. Malorie, with nothing but time on her hands, tried out many of them.
We ought to mic the yard, he once said.
Tom’s idea of updating the alarm system from birds to amplifiers. Malorie, alone with two newborns, wanted those microphones.
But how? How would she get her hands on microphones, amplifiers, and cords?
We can drive somewhere, Tom once said.
That’s madness, Don answered.
No, it’s not. Drive slow. The streets are empty. What’s the worst that can happen?
Malorie, rowing, remembers a definitive moment at the bathroom mirror. She’d seen other faces in the glass. Olympia. Tom. Shannon. All of them were pleading, telling her to leave the house, to do something more for the further safety of these kids. She was going to have to take a risk on her own. Tom and Jules weren’t here to do it for her.
Tom’s voice back then. Always Tom’s voice. In her head. In the room. In the mirror.
Make a bumper around Cheryl’s Wagoneer. Paint the windows black. Don’t worry about what you run into. Just go. Drive five, six miles an hour. You have babies in the house now, Malorie. You have to know if something is out there. If something is near. The microphones will let you know that.
Leaving the bathroom, she went to the kitchen. There she studied the map Felix, Jules, and Tom once used to plan a route to Tom’s house on foot. Their notes were still on it. Felix’s calculations. Using the scale, she made her own.
She wanted Tom’s advanced alarm system. She needed it. Yet, despite her newfound determination, she still didn’t know where to go.
Late one evening, while the babies slept, she sat at the kitchen table and tried to remember her very first drive to the house. It had been less than a year ago. Back then, her mind was on the address from the ad. But what did she pass along the way?
She tried to remember.
A Laundromat.
That’s good. What else?
Storefronts were empty. It looked like a ghost town and you were worried the people who placed the ad might no longer be there. You thought they’d either gone mad or packed up the car and driven far away.
Yes, all right. What else?
A bakery.
Good. What else?
What else?
Yes.
A bar.
Good. What did the marquee boast?
I don’t know. That’s a ridiculous question!
You don’t remember the sadness you felt at the name of . . . the name of . . .
Of what?
The name of the band?
The band?
You read the name of a band slated to perform on a date already two weeks past. What was it?
I’ll never remember the name of the band.
Right, but the feeling?
I don’t remember.
Yes, you do. The feeling.
I was sad. I was scared.
What’d they do there?
What?
At the bar. What’d they do there?
I don’t know. They drank. They ate.
Yes. What else?
They danced?
They danced.
Yes.
And?
And what?
How did they dance?
I don’t know.