“Orne, bien s?r.”
“No, not at all. More middle class, a place where neighbors like having neighbors. They’re in high school—maybe sixteen—when they are all, simultaneously, diagnosed with cancer.”
“What? Oh my God, that is too grim,” said Soren. “Who’s going to read that? What are you thinking, sweetie?”
“Wait.” Morty gave Soren a sharp paternal look. “Their camaraderie gives them strength. They insist on going into treatment together.”
After a pause, Soren asked quietly, “What kind of cancer?”
Morty sat back, folded his arms, and shook his head. “Not even sure I’ll specify. Doesn’t matter. Maybe I won’t call it cancer. It’s a…tale. It’s not realistic.”
“Sounds too realistic if you ask me.” Soren’s voice was nearly a whisper.
Morty reached over and put a hand on Soren’s arm. “Actually, and don’t take this personally, I am not asking you. I’m working it out.”
Even after four years, Soren had not learned to do nothing but listen, to hold perfectly still, when Morty chose to talk about his work. Tommy remembered that a week before, over breakfast, Morty had commented on an article in the Times about the “cancer clusters” on Long Island and in a bleak middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts town.
“So they go through surgery together, and then they are scheduled for radiation together. Their parents take turns driving them to the hospital. In school, they take the same classes, so their days are now completely in sync. They get a dog they share from house to house….They begin to sleep in the same room, rotating families….I don’t know the little stuff yet. The home part, the parents—if they’ll even register as full, distinct characters—I haven’t figured out.”
Tommy could have reminded him that parents were always beside the point in his stories, but she said nothing.
Morty looked down at his plate, fiddled with his fork and knife, realigned them.
“There is an atmospheric flash,” he said suddenly.
“A what?” said Soren.
“Shh,” said Tommy.
After a long pause, Morty said, “They’re in their hospital johnnies, in the waiting room in the deepest recesses of the hospital, about to go in for their radiation, when it happens.”
Soren looked antsy. He frowned.
Morty sighed. “I have to do some scientific digging here, but you know how radiation units are always sealed with lead? So those inside are also protected from forces on the outside. I’m thinking there is some kind of countereffect whereby our three heroes are empowered against the sinister force causing havoc outside those walls—whatever it is. They venture out and, when they are unable to find their families, go on a quest, to purify the corruption, the toxicity. Or whatever trauma’s been inflicted on the world around them. Maybe it’s something local, not global. Maybe it’s New York they have to rescue.”
“But isn’t everyone dead after this…flash thing? Is it the Chinese?” asked Soren. “It’s got to be the Chinese. I’ve read they have these überhackers who—”
“I don’t want to wade into politics. I’m not sure it’s terrorism. It might be something cosmic—something that happens on the sun. But hacking…that’s food for thought. Thanks, Soren.”
Another long pause. This time, Soren held his tongue.
“That’s all I have right now,” said Morty. “But I see them clearly. Two boys and a girl. And the dog, he’s a kind of wolfhound mutt. I see him perfectly. Skinny, wirehaired, affectionate but clingy. The kind of dog who jumps up, who begs at the table, who eats the furniture when left alone. A needy mooch of a dog. Maybe that’s his name. Mooch. Moocho. They adopt him, together, when they start treatment. The parents can’t say no. Or he arrives, he just arrives. On their way to school, he emerges from behind a bush and follows them. Waits for them. There’s no saying no to this guy.”
Tommy smiled. This was Morty at his best, letting a subplot unwind the way a ball of yarn unspools as it rolls across the floor. So it surprised her that he had reacted badly to Soren’s gift earlier that evening. When he felt the spell of a story descending, he became magnanimous, even calm.
“It sounds amazing,” said Tommy.
“But creepy,” said Soren.
“That’s why,” said Morty, “it’s for older children. Children who aren’t really children anymore. Who understand what they’re seeing in the news. And in case you don’t remember, teenagers have innately dark thoughts they tend to keep to themselves—among themselves. They feast on fictional disasters. There’s a kind of comfort to watching the world burn inside a book. A book, like a furnace, can be closed, the fire contained.”
“Well, I’d say this calls for more champagne,” said Soren, and off he went to retrieve a bottle from the pantry.
Alone with Morty, Tommy said, “Can I ask you something?”
“You will anyway.”
“Isn’t this Colorquake in a different guise? Not that you shouldn’t go there again.”
“Yes,” he said, “and no. But what’s different is that I feel like it’s time to really write. Let the words matter more than the pictures. Tell a real yarn, with twists and turns. Knots and tangles. With fully complicated characters who speak their minds.”
“Can I ask if any of them die?” Immediately, she wished she hadn’t been so intrusive, but Morty looked pleased.
“Not in the first book,” he said.
“The first book?”
“I think I’m in for the trilogy thing. It’s all the rage.” He laughed. “Maybe we can buy a house in the South of France. Or on an Italian lake.”
“Italian lake gets my vote,” said Tommy, though she felt a pang of betrayal. By then, she would be somewhere else. She would be reading his trilogy-volume-one on the subway, going back and forth, like a normal working person, between home and job, separate places with separate concerns.
A month later, Frieda died in her sleep. The call from the center woke them all at seven on a Saturday morning. Tommy made breakfast. Soren went back to bed, saying he’d be more useful later if he could get a few extra hours of sleep.
Morty ate silently, wiping tears off his cheeks every few minutes.
When Tommy joined him, she said, “Don’t be upset you weren’t with her.”
“I’m not. I’m just sad that the old her—I mean the younger her—had to die without…”
“Without your getting to say goodbye.”
Morty nodded. “I just never really believed…”
She waited.
“That I’d never see that her, her old self, again. Ever.” Almost angrily, he wiped his eyes with a kind of finality. “But that’s it. It’s done! If I didn’t feel so damn guilty, I’d feel free. I should, shouldn’t I?”
Tommy put the dishes in the dishwasher. “Do you want me to drive you over?”
“No. I’d rather do this part alone.”
“Did you have plans today that need canceling?”