Текст книги "Bird box"

Автор книги: Josh Malerman

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

thirty-eight

D oes Gary follow you?

The sounds of someone behind them, distant yet in earshot, continues.

He’s trying to scare you. He could overtake you at any time.

Gary.

That was four years ago!

Could he have been waiting four years for revenge?

“Mommy,” the Boy whispers.

“What is it?”

She fears what he is about to say.

“The sound, it’s getting closer.”

Where has Gary been for four years? He’s been watching you. Waiting outside the house. He watched the kids grow. Watched the world grow colder, darker, until a fog came, one you foolishly thought would mask you. He saw through it. Through the fog. He’s seen everything you’ve done. He’s SEEN you, Malorie. Everything you’ve done.

“Damn it!” she yells. “It’s impossible!” Then, turning her neck, the muscles resisting, she yells, “Leave us alone!”

A row isn’t what it used to be. Not like it was when they started today. Then, she had two strong shoulders. A full heart of energy. Four years to propel her.

For all she’s endured, she refuses to believe it’s possible that Gary is behind her. It’d be such a cruel twist. A man out there all these years. Not a creature, but a man.

MAN IS THE CREATURE HE FEARS

The sentence, Gary’s sentence, only six words, has been with her since the night she read it in the cellar. And isn’t it true? When she heard a stick break through the amplifiers she retrieved with Victor, when she heard footsteps on the lawn outside, what did she fear most? An animal? A creature?

Or man?

Gary. Always Gary.

He could’ve gotten in at any time. Could’ve broken a window. Could’ve attacked her when she got water from the well. Why would he wait? Always following, always lurking, not quite ready to pounce.

He’s mad. The old way.

MAN IS THE CREATURE HE FEARS

“Is it a man, Boy?”

“I can’t tell, Mommy.”

“Is it someone rowing?”

“Yes. But with hands instead of paddles.”

“Are they rushing? Are they waiting? Tell me more. Tell me everything you hear.”

Who follows you?

Gary.

Who follows you?

Gary.

Who follows you?

Gary Gary Gary Gary

“I don’t think they’re in a boat,” the Boy suddenly says. He sounds proud for having finally been able to make a distinction.

“What do you mean? Are they swimming?”

“No, Mommy. They’re not swimming. They’re walking.”

Far behind, she hears something she’s never heard. It’s like lightning. A new kind. Or like birds, all of them, in every tree, no longer singing, no longer cooing, but screaming.

It echoes, once, harsh, across the river, and Malorie feels a chill colder than any October air could deliver.

She rows.

thirty-nine

Don is in the cellar. Don is always in the cellar. He sleeps down there now. Does he dig a tunnel where the dirt shows? Does he dig a tunnel deeper, lower, farther into the earth? Farther away from the others? Does he write? Does he write in a notebook like the one Malorie found in Gary’s briefcase?

Gary.

He’s been gone five weeks. What has it done to Don?

Did he need someone like Gary? Did he need another ear?

Don sinks farther into himself like he sinks farther into the house, and now he is in the cellar.

He is always in the cellar.

forty

It is what Malorie will later consider to be the last night in the house, though she will spend the next four years here. Her belly looks so big in the mirror that it scares her, looks like it could fall right off her body. She speaks to the baby.

“You’re going to come out any day now. There are so many things I want to tell you and so many that I don’t.”

Her black hair is the longest it’s been since she was a little girl. Shannon used to be jealous of it.

You look like a princess. I look like the princess’s sister, she’d say.

Living off canned goods and well water, she can see some of her ribs, despite the bulge of her belly. Her arms are twig-thin. The features of her face are sharp and hard. Her eyes, deeper set in her skull, are striking, even to herself, in the mirror.

The housemates are gathered in the living room downstairs. Earlier today, the last names in the phone book were called. There are no more. Felix said they made close to five thousand calls. They left seventeen messages. That’s it. But Tom is encouraged.

Now, as Malorie examines her body in the mirror, she hears one of the dogs growl downstairs.

It sounds like Victor. Stepping into the hall, she listens.

“What is it, Victor?” she hears Jules say.

“He doesn’t like it,” Cheryl says.

“Doesn’t like what?”

“Doesn’t like the cellar door.”

The cellar. It’s no secret Don wants nothing to do with the rest of the house. When Tom instigated his plan for calling the phone book, assigning each housemate a group of letters, Don declined, citing his “lack of faith” in the process as a whole. In the seven weeks since they shut the front door on Gary, Don hasn’t joined the others for meals. He hardly speaks at all.

Malorie hears a kitchen chair slide on the floor.

“You okay, Victor?” Jules says.

Malorie hears the cellar door open, then Jules calls out.

“Don? You down there?”

“Don?” Cheryl echoes.

There is a muffled response. The door closes again.

Curious and anxious, Malorie pulls her shirt over her belly and heads downstairs.

When she enters the kitchen, she sees Jules is kneeling, consoling Victor, who now whines and paces. Malorie looks in the living room. There she sees Tom is looking at the blanketed windows.

He’s listening for the birds, she thinks. Victor is scaring him.

As if sensing she is watching him, Tom turns toward Malorie. Victor is whining behind her.

“Jules,” Tom says, entering the kitchen, “what do you think it is? What’s scaring him?”

“I don’t know. Obviously something’s got him rattled. He was scratching at the cellar door earlier. Don is down there. But it’s like pulling teeth to get him to talk. Even worse to get him upstairs.”

“All right,” Tom says. “Let’s go down there then.”

When Jules looks up at Tom, Malorie sees fear on his face.

What has Gary done to them?

He’s introduced distrust, Malorie thinks. Jules is afraid of confronting Don at all.

“Come on,” Tom says. “It’s time we talk to him.”

Jules stands up and puts his hand on the cellar doorknob. Victor begins growling again.

“You stay here, boy,” Jules says.

“No,” Tom says. “Let’s bring him with us.”

Jules pauses, and then opens the cellar door.

“Don?” Tom calls.

There is no answer.

Tom goes first. Then Jules and Victor. Malorie follows.

Despite the light being on, it feels dark down here. At first, Malorie thinks they are alone. She expected to see Don sitting on the stool. Reading. Thinking. Writing. She almost says that nobody is down here, then she shrieks.

Don is standing by the thin tapestry, leaning against the washing machine in the shadows.

“What’s gotten into the dog?” he asks quietly.

Tom speaks carefully when he responds.

“We don’t know, Don. It’s like he doesn’t like something down here. Is everything okay?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve been down here more than we have lately,” Tom says. “I just want to know if everything is okay.”

When Don steps forward, into the light, Malorie quietly gasps. He does not look good. Pale. Thin. His dark hair is dirty and thinning. The features of his face are claylike in texture. The dark circles beneath his eyes make it look like he’s taken in some of the darkness he’s been staring into for weeks.

“We called the whole phone book,” Tom says, attempting, Malorie thinks, something bright in this damp, dark cellar.

“Any luck?”

“None yet. But who knows?”

“Yes. Who knows.”

Then they are silent. Malorie understands that the divide she sensed growing between them is complete now. They are checking on Don. Checking up on Don. As if he lives somewhere else now. Repair feels impossible.

“Do you want to come upstairs?” Tom asks gently.

Malorie experiences a wave of light-headedness. She brings a hand to her belly.

The baby. She shouldn’t have taken the cellar stairs. But she’s as concerned about Don as anybody.

“What for?” Don finally answers.

“I don’t know what for,” Tom says. “It might do you some good to be around the rest of us for a night.”

Don is nodding slowly. He licks his lips. He looks once around the cellar. To the shelves, the boxes, and the stool Malorie sat on, seven weeks ago, when she read the notebook in Gary’s briefcase.

“All right,” Don whispers. “Okay.”

Tom puts a hand on Don’s shoulder. Don begins crying. He brings a hand to his eyes to hide it.

“I’m sorry, man,” he says. “I’m so confused, Tom.”

“We all are,” Tom says quietly. “Come upstairs. Everyone would love to see you.”

In the kitchen, Tom pulls the bottle of rum from a cabinet. He pours a drink for himself and then one for Don. The two clink glasses, softly, then sip.

For a moment, it’s like nothing has changed and nothing ever will. The housemates are together again. Malorie can’t remember the last time she saw Don like this, without Gary crouched beside him, the demon on his shoulder, whispering philosophies, discoloring his mind with the same language she found in the notebook.

Victor rubs against Malorie’s legs as he heads back into the kitchen. Watching him, she feels a second wave of dizziness.

I need to lie down, she thinks.

“Then you should,” Tom says.

Malorie didn’t realize she said this out loud.

But she doesn’t want to lie down. She wants to sit with Tom and Don and the others and believe, for a moment, that the house could still be what it set out to be. A place for strangers to meet, to pool their resources, gather strength in numbers, to face the impossible, changing world outside.

Then, it’s all just too much. A third wave of nausea hits and Malorie, standing, stumbles. Jules appears, suddenly, by her side. He is helping her up the stairs. As she enters her bedroom and lies down, she sees the others are in the room with her. All of them. Don, too. They are watching her, worried about her. Staring. They ask if she is okay. Does she need anything? Water? A wet cloth? She says no, or thinks she says no, but she is drifting. As she falls asleep, she hears a sound, coming through the vent, the sound of Victor again, growling, alone, in the kitchen.

The last thing she sees before closing her eyes are the housemates in a group. They are watching her closely. They look to her belly.

They know the moment has come.

Victor growls again. Don looks toward the stairs.

Jules leaves the bedroom.

“Thank you, Tom,” Malorie says. “For the bicycle horns.”

She thinks she hears the bird box, banging lightly against the house. But it is only the wind against the window.

Then she is asleep. And she dreams of the birds.

forty-one

The birds in the trees are restless. It sounds like a thousand branches shaking at once. Like there’s a dangerous wind up there. But Malorie doesn’t feel it down here on the river. No. There is no wind.

But something is disrupting the birds.

The pain in her shoulder has reached a level Malorie has never experienced before. She curses herself for not paying more attention to her body these last four years. Instead, she spent her time training the children. Until their abilities transcended the exercises she came up with.

Mommy, a leaf fell into the well!

Mommy, it is drizzling down the street and it heads our way!

Mommy, a bird has landed on the branch beyond our window!

Will the children hear the recorded voice before she does? They must. And when that happens, it’ll be time to open her eyes. To look at where the river splits into four channels. She’s to pick the second from the right. That’s what she was told to do.

And soon she’ll have to do it.

The birds in the trees are cooing. There is activity on the banks. Man, animal, monster. She has no idea.

The fear she experiences sits firmly upon the center of her soul.

And the birds in the branches directly above them are now cooing.

She thinks of the house. The last night she spent with the housemates, all of them together. The wind was loud against the windows. There was a coming storm. A big one. Maybe the birds in the trees know it. Or maybe they know something else.

“I can’t hear,” the Girl suddenly says. “The birds, Mommy. They’re too loud!”

Malorie stops rowing. She thinks of Victor.

“What do they sound like to you?” she asks both children.

“Scared!” the Girl says.

“Mad!” says the Boy.

The closer Malorie listens to the trees, the worse it sounds.

How many are up there? It sounds like infinity.

Will the children hear the recording beneath the cacophony above?

Victor went mad. Animals go mad.

The birds do not sound sane.

Slowly, blindly, she looks over her shoulder toward what follows them.

Your eyes are closed, she thinks. Just like your eyes were closed every time you got water from the well. Every time you attempted to drive to fetch the amplifiers. Your eyes were closed when Victor’s weren’t. What are you worried about? Haven’t you been in close proximity before? Haven’t you been so close to one that you believed you could smell it?

She has.

You add the details, she thinks. It’s your idea of what they look like, and details are added to a body and a shape that you have no concept of. To a face that might have no face at all.

The creatures of her mind walk horizonless, open fields. They stand outside the windows of former homes and gaze curiously at the glass. They study. They examine. They observe. They do the one thing Malorie isn’t allowed to do.

They look.

Do they recognize the flowers in the garden as pretty? Do they understand which direction the river flows? Do they?

“Mommy,” the Boy says.

“What?”

“That noise, Mommy. It sounds like someone talking.”

She thinks of the man in the boat. She thinks of Gary. Even now, so far from the house, she thinks of Gary.

She tries to ask the Boy what he means, but the voices of the birds rise in a grotesque wave, nearly symphonic, shrieking.

It sounds like there are too many for the trees to hold.

Like they make up the entire sky.

They sound mad. They sound mad. Oh my God they sound mad.

Malorie turns her head over her shoulder again, though she cannot see. The Boy heard a voice. The birds are mad. Who follows them?

But it no longer feels like something is following them. It feels like that something has caught up.

“It’s a voice!” the Boy yells, as if from a dream, his voice penetrating the impossible noise from above.

Malorie is sure of it. The birds have seen something below.

The communal birdsong swells and peaks before it flattens, twists, and the boundaries explode. Malorie hears it like she’s inside of it. Like she’s trapped in an aviary with a thousand madcap birds. It feels like a cage was lowered over them all. A cardboard box. A bird box. Blocking out the sun forever.

What is it? What is it? What is it?

Infinity.

Where did it come from? Where did it come from? Where did it come from?

Infinity.

The birds scream. And the noise they make is not a song.

The Girl shrieks.

“Something hit me, Mommy! Something fell!”

Malorie feels it, too. She thinks it’s raining.

Impossibly, the sound of the birds gets louder. They are deafening, screeching. Malorie has to cover her ears. She calls to the children, begging them to do the same.

Something lands hard against her bad shoulder and she yelps, wincing in pain.

Wildly, her hand grasping her blindfold, she searches the boat for what struck her.

The Girl shrieks again.

“Mommy!”

But Malorie’s found it. Between her forefinger and thumb is not a drop of rain but the broken body of a tiny bird. She feels its delicate wing.

Malorie knows now.

In the sky above, where she is forbidden to look, the birds are warring. The birds are killing one another.

“Cover your heads! Hold on to your blindfolds!”

Then, like a wave, they hit. Feathered bodies hail from above. The river erupts with the weight of thousands of birds splashing into the water. They hit the boat. They plummet. Malorie is struck. They hit her head, her arm. She’s struck again. Again.

As bird blood courses down her cheeks, she can taste them.

You can smell it, too. Death. Dying. Decay. The sky is falling, the sky is dying, the sky is dead.

Malorie calls to the children, but the Boy is already speaking, trying to tell her something.

“Riverbridge,” he is saying. “Two seventy-three Shillingham . . . my name is . . .”

“What?”

Crouched, Malorie leans forward. She presses the Boy’s lips hard to her ear.

“Riverbridge,” he says. “Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom.”

Malorie sits up, wounded, clutching her blindfold.

My name is Tom.

Birds strike her body. They thud against the boat.

But she is not thinking of them.

She is thinking of Tom.

Hello! I’m calling you from Riverbridge. Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom. I’m sure you understand the relief I feel at getting your answering machine. It means you still have power. So do we . . .

Malorie starts shaking her head.

no no no no no no no no no no no

“NO!”

The Boy heard it first. Tom’s voice. Recorded and played on a loop. Motion activated. For her. For Malorie. If ever she decided to take the river. Whenever that day would come. Tom, sweet Tom, speaking out here all these years. Trying to make contact. Trying to reach someone. Trying to build a bridge between their life in the house and a better one, somewhere else.

They used his voice because they knew you’d recognize it. This is it, Malorie.

This is the moment you’re supposed to open your eyes.

How green is the grass? How colorful are the leaves? How red is the blood of the birds that spreads through the river beneath her?

“Mommy!” the Boy calls.

Mommy has to open her eyes, she wants to say. Mommy has to look.

But the birds have gone mad.

“Mommy!” the Boy says again.

She answers. She hardly recognizes her own voice.

“What is it, Boy?”

“Something is here with us, Mommy. Something is right here.”

The rowboat stops.

Something has stopped it.

She can hear it move in the water beside them.

It’s not an animal, she thinks. It’s not Gary. It’s the thing you’ve been hiding from for four and a half years. It’s the thing that won’t let you look outside.

Malorie readies herself.

There is something in the water to her left. Inches from her arm.

The birds above are growing distant. As if rising, rising, in a lunatic rush toward the ends of the sky.

She can feel the presence of something beside her.

The birds are growing quieter. Quieting. They fade. Rising. Gone.

Tom’s voice continues. The river flows around the rowboat.

Malorie screams when she feels her blindfold being pulled from her face.

She does not move.

The blindfold stops an inch from her closed eyes.

Can she hear it? Breathing? Is that what she hears? Is that it?

Tom, she thinks, Tom is leaving a message.

His voice echoes across the river. He sounds so hopeful. Alive.

Tom. I’m going to have to open my eyes. Talk to me. Please. Tell me what to do. Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.

His voice comes from ahead. He sounds like the sun, the only light in all this darkness.

The blindfold is pulled an inch farther from her face. The knot presses against the back of her head.

Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.

And, so . . .

forty-two

. . . she does.

Malorie sits up in bed and grips her belly before she understands that she has been howling for some time already. The bed is soaking wet.

Two men rush into the room. It is all so dreamy

(Am I really having a baby? A baby? I was pregnant this whole time?)

and so frightening

(Where’s Shannon? Where is Mother?)

that, at first, she does not recognize them as Felix and Jules.

“Holy shit,” Felix says. “Olympia is already up there. Olympia started maybe two hours ago.”

Up where? Malorie thinks. Up where?

The men are careful with her and help her ease to the edge of the bed.

“Are you ready to do this?” Jules asks anxiously.

Malorie just looks at him, her brow furrowed, her face pink and pale at once.

“I was sleeping,” she says. “I was just . . . up where, Felix?”

“She’s ready,” Jules says, forcing a smile, trying to comfort her. “You look wonderful, Malorie. You look ready.”

She starts to ask, “Up—”

But Felix tells her before she finishes.

“We’re going to do this in the attic. Tom says it’s the safest place in the house. In case something were to happen. But nothing’s going to happen. Olympia’s up there already. She’s been going for two hours. Tom and Cheryl are up there with her. Don’t worry, Malorie. We’ll do everything we can.”

Malorie doesn’t answer. The feeling of something inside her that must get out is the most horrifying and incredible feeling she’s ever known. The men have her, one under each arm, and they walk her out of the room, over the threshold, and down the hall toward the rear of the house. The attic stairs are already pulled down and as they steady her, Malorie sees the blankets covering the window at the end of the hall. She wonders what time of day it is. If it’s the next night. If it’s a week later.

Am I really having my baby? Now?

Felix and Jules help her up the old wooden steps. She can hear Olympia upstairs. And Tom’s gentle voice, saying things like breathe, you’ll be fine, you’re okay.

“Maybe it won’t be so different after all,” she says (the men, thank God, helping her up the creaking steps). “Maybe it won’t be so different from how I hoped it would go.”

There is more room up here than she pictured. A single candle lights the space. Olympia is on a towel on the ground. Cheryl is beside her. Olympia’s knees are lifted and a thin bedsheet covers her from the waist down. Jules helps her onto her own towel facing Olympia. Tom approaches Malorie.

“Oh, Malorie!” Olympia says. She is out of breath and only part of her exclaims while the rest buckles and contorts. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

Malorie, dazed, can’t help but feel like she’s still sleeping when she looks over her covered knees and sees Olympia set up like a reflection.

“How long have you been here, Olympia?”

“I don’t know. Forever, I think!”

Felix is talking quietly to Olympia, asking her what she needs. Then he heads downstairs to get it. Tom reminds Cheryl to keep things clean. They’re going to be okay, he says, as long as they’re clean. They’re using clean sheets and towels. Hand sanitizer from Tom’s house. Two buckets of well water.

Tom appears calm, but Malorie knows he’s not.

“Malorie?” Tom asks.

“Yes?”

“What do you need?”

“How about some water? And some music, too, Tom.”

“Music?”

“Yes. Something sweet and soft, you know, something to maybe”—Something to cover up the sound of my body on the wood floor of an attic—“the flute music. That one tape.”

“Okay,” Tom says. “I’ll get it.”

He does, stepping by her to the stairs that descend directly behind her back. She turns her attention to Olympia. She’s still having trouble shaking the fog of sleep. She sees a small steak knife beside her on a paper towel, less than a foot away. Cheryl just dunked it into the water.

“Jesus!” Olympia suddenly hollers, and Felix kneels and takes her hand.

Malorie watches.

These people, she thinks, the kind of person that would answer an ad like that in the paper. These people are survivors.

She experiences a momentary surge of peace. She knows it won’t last long. The housemates wisp through her mind, their faces, one by one. With each she feels something like love.

My God, she thinks, we’ve been so brave.

“God!” Olympia suddenly screams. Cheryl is quickly beside her.

Once, when Tom was up here looking for tape, Malorie watched from the foot of the ladder stairs. But she’s never been up here herself. Now, breathing heavily, she looks to the curtain covering the lone window and she feels a chill. Even the attic has been protected. A room hardly ever used still needs a blanket. Her eyes travel along the wooden window frame, then along the paneled walls, the pointed ceiling, the boxes of things George left behind. Her eyes continue to a stack of blankets piled high. Another box of plastic parts. Old books. Old clothes.

Someone is standing by the old clothes.

It’s Don.

Malorie feels a contraction.

Tom returns with a glass of water and the little radio they play cassettes on.

“Here, Malorie,” he says. “I found it.”

The sound of crackling violins escapes the small speakers. Malorie thinks it’s perfect.

“Thank you,” she says.

Tom’s face looks very tired. His eyes are only half open and puffy. Like he slept for an hour or less.

Malorie feels a cramping so incredible that at first she thinks it isn’t real. It feels like a bear trap has clamped down on her waist.

Voices come from behind her. Down the attic stairs. It’s Cheryl. Jules. She’s hardly aware of who’s up here and who isn’t.

“Oh God!” Olympia calls out.

Tom is with her. Felix is by Malorie’s side again.

“You’re going to make it,” Malorie calls to Olympia.

As she does, thunder booms outside. Rain falls hard against the roof. Somehow the rain is the exact sound she was looking for. The world outside sounds like how she feels inside. Stormy. Menacing. Foul. The housemates emerge from the shadows, then vanish. Tom looks worried. Olympia is breathing hard, panting. The stairs creak. Someone new is here. It’s Jules, again. Tom is telling him Olympia is farther along than Malorie is. Thunder cracks outside. As lightning strikes, she sees Don in relief, his features sullen, his eyes set deep above dark circles.

There is an unbearable pressing tightness at Malorie’s waist. Her body, it seems, is acting on its own, refuting her mind’s desire for peace. She screams and Cheryl leaves Olympia’s side and comes to her. Malorie didn’t even know Cheryl was still up here.

“This is awful,” Olympia hisses.

Malorie thinks of women sharing cycles, women in tune with one another’s bodies. For all their talk about who would go first, neither she nor Olympia ever even joked that both of them might be in labor at the same time.

Oh, how Malorie longed for a traditional birth!

More thunder.

It is darker up here now. Tom brings a second candle, lights it, and sets it on the floor to Malorie’s left. In the flickering flame she sees Felix and Cheryl but Olympia is difficult to make out. Her torso and face are obscured by flickering shadows.

Someone descends the stairs behind her. Is it Don? She doesn’t want to crane her neck. Tom steps through the candlelight and then out of its range. Then Felix, she thinks, then Cheryl. Silhouettes are moving from her to Olympia like phantoms.

The rain comes down harder against the roof.

There is a loud, abrupt commotion downstairs. Malorie can’t be sure but she thinks someone is yelling. Is her tired mind mistaking sounds? Who’s arguing?

It does sound like an argument below.

She can’t think about this right now. She won’t.

“Malorie?” Malorie screams as Cheryl’s face suddenly appears beside her. “Squeeze my hand. Break it if you need to.”

Malorie wants to say, Get some light in here. Get me a doctor. Deliver this thing for me.

Instead she responds with a grunt.

She is having her baby. There is no longer when.

Will I see things differently now? I’ve seen everything through the prism of this baby. It’s how I saw the house. The housemates. The world. It’s how I saw the news when it first started and how I saw the news when it ended. I’ve been horrified, paranoid, angry, more. When my body returns to the shape it was when I walked the streets freely, will I see things differently again?

What will Tom look like? How will his ideas sound?

“Malorie!” Olympia calls in the darkness. “I don’t think I can do it!”

Cheryl is telling Olympia she can, she’s almost there.

“What’s going on downstairs?” Malorie suddenly asks.

Don is below. She can hear him arguing. Jules, too. Yes, Don and Jules are arguing in the hall beneath the attic. Is Tom with them? Is Felix? No. Felix emerges from the dark and takes her hand.

“Are you okay, Malorie?”

“No,” she says. “What’s going on downstairs?”

He pauses, then says, “I’m not sure. But you have bigger things to worry about than people getting in each other’s faces.”

“Is it Don?” she asks.

“Don’t worry about it, Malorie.”

It rains harder. It’s as if each drop has its own audible weight.

Malorie lifts her head to see Olympia’s eyes in the shadows, staring at her.

Beyond the rain, the arguing, the commotion downstairs, Malorie hears something. Sweeter than violins.

What is it?

“Oh fuck!” Olympia screams. “Make it stop!”

It’s becoming harder for Malorie to breathe. It feels like the baby is cutting off her air supply. Like it’s crawling up her throat instead.

Tom is here. He is at her side.

“I’m sorry, Malorie.”

She turns to him. The face she sees, the look on his face, is something she will remember years after this morning.

“Sorry for what, Tom? Sorry this is how it’s happened?”

Tom’s eyes look sad. He nods yes. They both know he has no reason to apologize but they both know no woman should have to endure her delivery in the stuffy attic of a house she calls home only because she cannot leave.

“You know what I think?” he says softly, reaching down to grab her hand. “I think you’re going to be a wonderful mother. I think you’re going to raise this child so well it won’t matter if the world continues this way or not.”

To Malorie, it feels like a rusty steel clamp is trying to pull the baby from her now. A tow truck chain from the shadows ahead.

“Tom,” she manages to say. “What’s wrong down there?”

“Don’s upset. That’s all.”

She wants to talk more about it. She’s not angry at Don anymore. She’s worried about him. Of all the housemates, he’s stricken worst by the new world. He’s lost in it. There is something emptier than hopelessness in his eyes. Malorie wants to tell Tom that she loves Don, that they all do, that he just needs help. But the pain is absolutely all she can process. And words are momentarily impossible. The argument below now sounds like a joke. Like someone’s kidding her. Like the house is telling her, You see? Have a sense of humor despite the unholy pain going on in my attic.

Malorie has known exhaustion and hunger. Physical pain and severe mental fatigue. But she has never known the state she is in now. She not only has the right to be unbothered by a squabble among housemates, but she also very nearly deserves that they all leave the house entirely and stand out in the yard with their eyes closed for as long as it takes her and Olympia to do what their bodies need to do.