A few minutes went by, both of us sitting there enjoying the morning. A large bird of prey flew high above the pond and I tracked it with my eyes as it headed back into the trees. Probably a turkey vulture, but I liked to pretend it was a hawk. I glanced at my neighbor and saw her head turned up, too, watching until the bird vanished. She looked back at me—of course I couldn’t see her eyes but I know she looked—and I nodded. We had watched the bird together. We had seen it disappear, and maybe felt together a needless longing for its return. We were almost companionable. Then she got up and went inside her house.
I was surprised, when she was gone, by a twinge of loneliness. How silly. I am always alone. Sometimes days go by in which the only other people I see are on TV. This house is in the woods between two small towns—villages, really—on a mountain in Tennessee. I live here by myself. It’s been years since I lived with another person. I don’t ever want to live with another person again. I’m nearly ninety-one now, unimaginable as that sounds, and I will be alone until I die. Before they put me in a nursing home, in forced companionship with the sick and the dying, I will fling myself into the pond. I’ll weight my pockets with rocks, like Virginia Woolf, whose books I did my best to understand. All her words float away when I think of her. I see her crouched at the edge of the water, searching for just the right stones.
The Miraculous Now
Milo is still asleep. It shouldn’t be a surprise to Jennifer that he’s sleeping in, given how lax she’s become about bedtime. Last night she resolved on a return to earlier, stricter routines, but when he reappeared at eight fifteen, twenty minutes after she’d said good night, wearing penguin pajamas and a sweet but calculating expression, her scolding held no conviction. “Why are you up?” she asked, and he said, “I want to snuggle with you.” Fear and worry have worn her down: she couldn’t resist. She let him curl up against her on the couch while she watched Back to the Future. Movies from her childhood are the only ones that interest her now. Milo, completely awake, watched the movie, too, and asked question after question for which she had no answers: “Why does he love her?” “Why does she love him?” “Can we go back in time?”
Now Milo is curled on his side with his face pressed against the railing on his toddler bed, one little hand dangling through the space between railing and mattress. She stands there watching him, holding her cooling coffee mug. His room is a mess, strewn with the tiny pieces of his complicated toys, while the colorful bins she bought to contain them go empty, pulled from the shelves and turned on their sides. In her old life she used to make him pick up, but now she doesn’t. In her old life she would have picked up some of the mess herself, but now she doesn’t do that either. All the urgency has fallen out of her days, leaving only a fluttering, purposeless anxiety. There is nothing she needs to do while he’s sleeping, except wait for him to wake up.
Thank God Milo is only four. She thinks with a shudder, for the thousandth time, of how much worse this all would’ve been if he were older. What she’s done to protect him would not have been possible. No matter how much of their old life she jettisoned, what could she have done about his memories? As it is she’s often surprised by how much has vanished. He exists in the miraculous now of early childhood. Already he’s forgotten that he used to have a different last name.
She doesn’t worry about someone recognizing her face. Or, if she does worry, watching the woman who opened her new bank account closely for signs of recognition, she knows the worry isn’t rational. Only the local press covered her story, and they’re far from home now, in this place she chose for its isolation. On the Internet she found a guide to disappearing, and she followed its steps as best she could. Not even her parents know where they are. She regrets the necessity of that precaution. But Zoe can’t know where they are, and what if Zoe asked, and Jennifer’s mother couldn’t bring herself to lie?
Milo sleeps on. Jennifer catches herself looking with calculation at one of his motorized trucks, lying on its back near her foot. When nudged, it springs to life with a violent beeping and whirring and spinning of wheels, as agitated as an overturned beetle. When Milo is awake it’s easier not to think.
Milo’s eyes pop open. She feels instantly guilty, even though she did nothing to wake him, she swears. “Mommy,” he says with satisfaction. He rolls onto his back and stretches.
She sets her mug on his dresser and kneels beside his bed to put a hand in his hair. “Hi, bubby,” she says.
“Scratch my back,” he commands, and she flips him onto his stomach and complies. He orders her to move her hand up and down and left and right. He’s got an impressive grasp on left and right. “Mommy,” he says, after a few minutes, “I need to tell you something.”
“You do?” she says.
“I want to wear my Iron Man shirt today, and then tomorrow I’ll wear my Spider-Man shirt, okay? I want to wear my Iron Man shirt to the playground.”