When it was her turn, she said, “I want to find out what it feels like to really fall in love with a boy.” This confession surely would have sundered Jared Norcross’s heart, had he been present to hear it. “I know the world’s easier for men, and it’s lousy, and it’s stacked, but I want a chance at a regular life like I always expected to have, and maybe that’s selfish, but that’s what I want, okay? I might even want to have a baby. And . . . that’s all I got.” These last words broke apart into sobs and Mary stepped down, waving away the women who tried to comfort her.
Magda Dubcek said that of course she had to go back. “Anton needs me.” Her smile was terrible in its innocence. Evie saw that smile, and her heart broke.
(From a spot a few yards distant, scraping his back against a pin oak, the fox eyed the blue bundle that was Andy Jones, nestled in the rear of the golf cart. The baby was fast asleep, unguarded. There it was, the dream of dreams. Forget the hen, forget the whole fucking henhouse, forget all the henhouses that had ever been. The sweetest of all morsels, a human baby. Did he dare? Alas, he did not. He could only fantasize—but, oh, what a fantasy! Pink and aromatic flesh like butter!)
One woman spoke of her husband. He was a great guy, he really, really was, did his share, pulled for her, all that. Another woman talked about her songwriting partner. He was nobody’s idea of a picnic, but there was a connection they had, a way they were in tune. He was words; she was music.
Some just missed home.
Carol Leighton, the civics teacher at the high school, said she wanted to eat a Kit Kat that wasn’t stale and sit on her couch and watch a movie on Netflix and pet her cat. “My experiences with men have been one hundred percent lousy, but I am not cut out for starting over in a new world. Maybe I’m a coward for that, but I can’t pretend.” She was not alone in her wish for ordinary creature comforts left behind.
Mostly it was the sons, though, that drew them back. A new start for every woman in the world was goodbye forever to their precious sons and they couldn’t bear that. This also made Evie’s heart break, too. Sons killed sons. Sons killed daughters. Sons left guns out where other sons could find them and accidentally shoot themselves or their sisters. Sons burned forests and sons dumped chemicals into the earth as soon as the EPA inspectors left. Sons didn’t call on birthdays. Sons didn’t like to share. Sons hit children, choked girlfriends. Sons figured out they were bigger and never forgot it. Sons didn’t care about the world they left for their sons or for their daughters, although they said they did when the time came to run for office.
The snake glided down the Tree and drooped into the blackness, lolling before Evie. “I saw what you did,” she said to it. “I saw how you distracted Jeanette. And I hate you for it.”
The snake said nothing in return. Snakes do not need to justify their behavior.
Elaine Nutting stood beside her daughter, but she wasn’t present, not really. In her mind, she was still seeing the dead woman’s wet eyes. They were almost gold, those eyes, and very deep. The look in them wasn’t angry, just insistent. Elaine couldn’t deny those eyes. A son, the woman had said, I have a son.
“Elaine?” someone asked. It was time for her to make a decision.
“I have things I need to do,” Elaine said. She put her arm around Nana. “And my daughter loves her father.”
Nana hugged her back.
“Lila?” asked Janice. “What about you?”
They all turned to her, and Lila understood she could talk them out of it, if she wanted to. She could ensure the safety of this new world and destroy the old one. It would only take a few words. She could say, I love you all, and I love what we made here. Let’s not lose it. She could say, I’m going to lose my husband, no matter how heroic he may have tried to be, and I don’t want to lose this. She could say, You women will never be what you were, and what they expect, because part of you will always be here, where you were truly free. You’ll carry Our Place with you from now on, and because of that, you will always mystify them.
Except, really, when had men not been mystified by women? They were the magic that men dreamed of, and sometimes their dreams were nightmares.
The mighty blue sky had faded. The last streaks of light were magnesium smears above the hills. Evie was watching Lila, knowing it all came down to her.
“Yeah,” she told them. “Yeah. Let’s go back and get those guys in shape.”
They cheered.
Evie cried.
4
By twos, they departed, as if from the ark beached on Ararat. Blanche and baby Andy, Claudia and Celia, Elaine and Nana, Mrs. Ransom and Platinum Elway. They went hand-in-hand, carefully stepping over the giant riser of a gnarled root, and then into the deep night inside the Tree. In the space between, there was a glimmer, but it was diffuse, as if the light source came from around a corner—but the corner of what? It deepened the shadows without revealing much of anything. What each traveler did recall was noise and a feeling of warmth. Inside that faintly lit passage there was a crackling reverberation, a tickling sensation over the skin, like moths’ wings brushing—and then they awakened on the other side of the Tree, in the world of men, their cocoons melting away . . . but there were no moths. Not this time.
Magda Dubcek sat up in the hospital room where the police had conveyed her body after they discovered her asleep in the room with the body of her dead son. She wiped the webbing from her eyes, astonished to see a whole ward of women, rising up from their hospital beds, tearing at the shreds of their cocoons in an orgy of resurrection.
5
Lila watched the Tree shed its glossy leaves, as if it were weeping. They sifted to the ground and formed shiny mounds. Strings of moss slid down, whooshing from the branches. She watched a parrot, its marvelous green wings banded with silver marks, arise from the Tree and pierce the sky—watched it flap right into the dark and cease to be. Whorls of speckles, not unlike the Dutch Elm that Anton had warned her about, rapidly spread along the Tree’s roots. There was a sick smell in the air, like rot. She knew that the Tree had become infested, that something was devouring it from the inside while it died on the outside.
“See you back there, Ms. Norcross,” said Mary Pak, waving one hand, holding Molly’s hand with the other.
“You can call me Lila,” said Lila, but Mary had already gone through.
The fox trotted after them.
In the end, it was Janice, Michaela, Lila, and Jeanette’s body. Janice brought a shovel from one of the golf carts. The grave they made was only three feet deep, but Lila didn’t think it mattered. This world wouldn’t exist after they left it; there would be no animals to get at the body. They’d wrapped Jeanette in some coats, and covered her face with an extra baby blanket.
“It was an accident,” Janice said.
Lila bent down, scooped a handful of dirt, and tossed it on the shrouded figure in the hole. “The cops always say that after they shoot some poor black man or woman or child.”
“She had a gun.”
“She didn’t mean to use it. She came to save the Tree.”
“I know,” said Janice. She patted Lila’s shoulder. “But you didn’t. Remember that.”
A thick branch of the Tree moaned and cracked, smashing to the ground with an explosion of leaves.