I stare at them, stunned by this sudden burst of volition. But I have no idea what they’re talking about. Before I can try to decipher their cryptic blurts, Abram’s voice crackles over the intercom.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are currently passing over Detroit, Michigan, America’s most thoroughly exed city, and will be approaching the Canadian border shortly. I don’t expect any turbulence but this is wild territory, so I can’t make any promises. Time to wake up.”
My kids continue to watch me expectantly. Their look says that I’m an adult, a powerful authority possessed of all knowledge, wise and capable and tasked with their protection, and that the world is mine to give them. But I’m a stumbling amnesiac afraid of his own name. I’m a bitter teen drinking bitter sermons and living in terror of the world. I’m a boy in a Mickey Mouse shirt, and these kids are beyond me.
They watch me back out of the bathroom. They watch me shut the door.
ABRAM’S ANNOUNCEMENT has stirred Julie and Nora out of their coiled sleep positions, but it’s not until the sun strikes their faces that they finally wake up, blinking and squinting against the hot rays. I take my seat next to Julie but I don’t say anything yet. She sleeps badly and wakes up worse. I’ve learned to give her a few minutes to shake off the shadows.
Detroit spreads out below us like a concrete desert. The totality of its ruination is visible even from this altitude, an uncommon grayness without even the usual sprawl of vegetation to cover its bones. I thought the notes in Abram’s cabin mentioned “facilities” in Detroit, but I must have misunderstood the shorthand because it’s impossible to imagine anything alive down there. There’s something almost unreal about it, a place so fully forgotten that it’s beginning to deliquesce. I feel a queasy sensation as I let it fill my vision; the flatness sinks and gains depth, the streets twist and flex—then Julie looks over my shoulder and the streets are straight. The ground is flat.
My need for sleep may be more dire than I realized.
“Good morning,” I tell her. It sounds inane, like a greeting from a hotel desk, but hearing my voice helps clear my thoughts.
She ignores me. She stares out at the city. “It’s so empty.” Her voice is low and croaky. I can hear the residue of her dreams in it, a lingering sadness. “Looks like it’s been empty for centuries.” No, not sadness. Disappointment.
I press my face to the window, scanning for any signs of activity, but from this altitude I wouldn’t see much even if it were there, just the abstract line art of the streets.
“Mom would cry if she saw this.” She sounds even less present now, like the dream is pulling her back in. “There were these artist communes trying to rebuild the city. Mom thought it was going to be the key to everything.”
Burned houses. Caved-in factories. Dead parks full of gray trees.
“As usual, Dad convinced her she was wrong. Which . . . it looks like she was.”
I watch the city dwindle into a sparse scattering of industrial buildings and then finally surrender to empty flatlands. I wonder how many “keys to everything” have come and gone throughout history, and why they never seem to open much. Have we been putting them in the wrong locks?
“R,” Julie says. “Can I ask you something?”
I hear a spike in her tone. Her eyes are still glued to the window, but her posture is stiffer, and the dreamy languor is gone.
“All those years you were out there . . . roaming or whatever . . . did you ever feel things from your old life?”
I hesitate. “Feel things?”
“I know you didn’t remember anything, but did you ever feel, like . . . the residue of a memory? Maybe a song that made you sad for no reason, or a piece of junk that you just had to take home?”
I try to intercept her gaze, hoping to discover what’s behind this abrupt change of subject, but she continues to look past me while she talks, the vacant stare of a medium conversing with ghosts.
“All those knickknacks you collected, you must have had some reason for picking the ones you did, right? They must have had some connection to your past.”
“I guess so,” I say, but I have to force the words out. Why is she taking us into this territory? It’s not safe here.
“So you weren’t totally blank, even then. There was still something nudging you.”
“Maybe?”
“What about . . . places?” She finally breaks away from the window and meets my searching gaze. Her face is placid; she’s doing a solid impression of casual curiosity, but I can see something else lurking behind her eyes. “Did you ever feel pulled somewhere? An instinct to take a certain road, follow a certain direction?”
She watches me intently. I’d love to give her whatever she’s looking for, but all her questions have the same answer: a vague and mushy maybe. This is as certain as things get in the world of the Dead. What could she be hoping to find there?
A friendly ding chimes on the intercom.