A Better World, page 14
Daniella:
Something happened last night. Call me so I can fill you in.
Anouk:
My fellow scholar! Please read and let’s discuss. I’m DYING to talk inherited trauma. If we can rout it, we can solve childhood illness.
www.moderneugenicsproject.org
Gal Parker:
UR listed so don’t be mad Im txting. I just ospit say Im sprrt I was meen. I’m not weel.
Empathy
By morning, Plymouth Valley’s landscape was changed. In front of nearly every house, sets of red candles joined by black ribbons had been burned to their nubs. They stuck to front curbs, the wax pooling out. Occasionally, in red chalk, someone had written names: Sebbie, Katie. This had happened in the night, probably while the Farmer-Bowens had eaten dinner or slept.
“What the hell is this?” Josie asked. They were driving along Sunset Heights in the direction of the school.
“I think they had a prayer vigil for those kids I told you about,” Linda said.
Car line was usually a quick in and out; every parent knew their routine. Today, the line wound down from the school for about two blocks. “Can you guys get out and walk?” Linda asked.
“I have all my PE stuff, which I usually wouldn’t but you took forever to clean it,” Josie said. She was cranky about what had happened to those kids, probably a little freaked out, too.
“Josie, get out of the car,” Linda said.
“I can’t!”
Hip was already out the door. He’d taken Josie’s backpack with his own. “Come on,” he said.
Josie took her time. The gap between Linda and the car ahead got to be three car lengths while Josie unbuckled, tied her shoes (which she’d untied in the car for some reason?), arranged her soccer bag and lunch. The car behind Linda pulled up beside her. The window rolled down. A smiling brunette called across. Her elementary-aged son was in the passenger seat, drawing on the dashboard in crayon. “Hi! You’re holding up the line!”
“Yeah,” Linda said. “Monday morning.”
“But now I have to pass you,” the woman said, still smiling. Her son smeared black crayon scribble over the vinyl vent, then stuck his tongue out at Linda, revealing a red-striped median, as if he’d eaten candy suckers for breakfast.
“You do what you gotta do,” Linda said.
The woman’s jaw went slack, like what she was hearing was insane.
Josie finally got out of the car. She and Hip started walking. “Have good days!” Linda called.
Hip waved. Josie shrugged, an embarrassed apology for causing trouble with the car line police. Linda shrugged back, to let her know not to worry.
The woman stayed beside Linda, dumbfounded. “You can pull ahead,” Linda told her. The boy pressed his black crayon so hard it broke. What kind of jerk lets their kid draw all over their car?
“But now you’re not even doing car line,” the woman said.
Linda lost patience and rolled up her window, pulled ahead and around. She found the root of the bottleneck: two parents had come to a full stop and gotten out of their class Cs—solar-powered sedans without lithium batteries. She caught the tail end of a tirade: “The right of way!” the tall guy shouted. His neck veins bulged with rage. They were standing close with puffed chests.
There may have been buildup. Tells Linda hadn’t noticed. But like all violence, it seemed to happen out of nowhere. The short woman swung, her fist half-open like a claw, landing hard against the tall guy’s chin with a swaack!
The tall guy staggered, cradled his jaw with the heel of his hand, eyes meeting his assailant’s: “You can’t do that outside a festival!” he cried, incensed and on the verge of tears.
Outside a festival?
The woman was too charged up for words to land. She quivered like a fallen wire after a storm, rearing for another swing, this time with a real fist, metal rings and all. Linda wanted to insert herself somehow, to stop it. But also to run from it. Inconceivably, she did neither.
But then, the crossing guard drew her lips against her teeth and hissed: SSSSSSS!
Like thunder, the sound rolled. Through open windows all around, in the cars that were luxury A class and B class and C class, everyone hissed: SSSSSSS. Linda found herself hissing, too. It felt good. It felt like doing something.
The sound seemed to remind the combatants of the time and place: eight in the morning, in front of the local school. Sheepish, the tall man retreated to his car. The woman dropped her fist.
Almost at once, the witnesses stopped hissing, including Linda.
She was still in a state of surprise, her heart beating fast, when that same mom with the obnoxious crayon kid tapped politely on her horn. A line had formed.
* * *
True to Daniella’s word, the hospital was busy, its typically empty parking lot completely full. Between driving around, looking for a place to park, and the fight in front of the school, she was five minutes late. She’d planned to check on the Parker family, but there wasn’t time.
Though the ER hadn’t admitted any true emergencies (gunshots, cardiac arrests), orderlies and nurses rushed to take vital signs and settle faint-feeling patients into beds and wheelchairs. Ringing devices in reception and triage played a jarring soundtrack.
Nine kids showed up before lunch. Most had nothing but phantom aches; Linda prescribed fluids and a return to school. Another needed a shot of one of the newer antibiotics. “Out of curiosity, can I ask why you didn’t take him to his pediatrician?” Linda asked the mother of the kid with strep.
“The line’s around the corner. I couldn’t get an appointment!” the mom answered.
Just before Linda’s shift ended, that same woman from Lust’s Bakery showed up, pushing that same stroller, screaming, sticky-handed baby inside. The baby’s stomach hurt and the under-slept, messy-haired mom, Tania Janssen, was bawling. “It’s cancer!”
Linda felt the baby’s belly. The child was otherwise healthy and had no bruising or marks. But Tania was convinced this was cancer, so Linda ordered an abdominal CT and bloodwork, both of which came back clean.
Tania was not mollified. Wanting to right the wrong she’d committed with Gal, and pay better attention, Linda pulled up a chair. “Babies aren’t good at distinguishing discomfort from pain. They scream about both like it’s the end of the world. And if you don’t mind my saying, I can tell she’s been keeping you up nights. You’re exhausted.”
Tania burst into tears. “You don’t know. It could happen. She could get sick.”
“Anyone could. But she’s not sick now, Mrs. Janssen. Have the pharmacy print up some polyethylene glycol. If it gets worse, come back. I’m here for you.”
Tania looked at Linda like she was the dumbest woman on earth.
“What am I missing?” Linda asked.
“You’re new. You don’t know anything,” she said as she snapped her baby into the stroller.
“I have a medical degree and fifteen years of pediatrics under my belt. I know some things. What are you worried I’m missing?” Linda asked.
“Anything! You don’t know anything!” Tania huffed, new tears emerging from the corners of her eyes as she walked away.
When her shift ended, Linda offered to hang around for a few hours and help out, but the doc on call was the guy whose shift she’d taken, and he didn’t want her around. After that, she checked the Parker family’s status on the floor console. The good news: Katie and Sebbie Parker really were in step-down, which meant their injuries were minor. The attendant photos of them showed a pair of adorable kids with straight black hair and big brown eyes. Less great: Gal was in critical condition. Linda stood at the console looking at room numbers, considering visiting, when her device pinged with a text from Rachel Johnson, asking her to come over right away.
* * *
“I ordered krill. It smells, but everybody likes it. Are you in?” Rachel Johnson asked when she opened her door. She was still in pajamas, her hair pulled tight in a ponytail, her feet in slippers. A powder blue suitcase nested just inside the front door.
“Yes!” Linda was starved. She’d been running around the hospital all morning. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Hellz no! My trip to Vegas tonight got canceled. Too hot to land. Thank God. I’ve had at least a hundred flights this year. Ignore my dissolute condition. I’m taking a personal day because my ears haven’t stopped popping.”
They were standing inside an oak-inlaid center hall with a winding wooden staircase that went up three flights. Beams of light crossed, illuminating a red velvet parlor couch and a sunken sitting area to the right. Crayons and toys were scattered all over.
“I have a red velvet couch, too,” Linda said. “It’s a weird choice.”
“Daniella decorates a lot of the houses around here,” Rachel said, pointing out the gaudy gold paint on the far wall that matched the furniture’s gold trim. “It was her side hustle before ActHollow. Everybody’s sitting area looks like a cathouse.”
“But a classy, put-yourself-through-college cathouse,” Linda joked. “Not the sex-slave-refugee kind.”
Rachel eyed her with amusement, started left behind the stairs. They passed a Hollow altar carved in a semicircle, a discreet foot and a half long, foot wide, and foot deep. The strung cranberries had dried without being replaced. She hadn’t seen that yet. Most places kept them very fresh.
They landed in the kitchen, where they sat at a small nook table. Wordless, Rachel got plates while Linda pulled sandwiches from the Sirin’s takeout bag. Though Linda’s visit with Daniella had been friendly, she’d never forgotten her place as subordinate. In Rachel’s house, there wasn’t so much ceremony.
On the table was a large stack of paper files, which Linda knew were meant for her to take. She was eager to read them. The nearby counter was kid-messy; drawings and report cards were magnetized by alphabet letters to the refrigerator door. She spotted a tangled Slinky, stretched long as if undergoing corrective surgery, and several pairs of small shoes, all seeming to have been tried on and cast off during the morning rush.
“How old?”
“Three and five,” Rachel said.
“The magical thinking years. Mine believed in fairies. They were always looking for them under plants in Kings’ Park.”
“Some people never outgrow that phase,” Rachel said. “Kai, for instance. He wants to leave PV.”
“Why?”
Rachel raised an eyebrow, lips sealing tight. She had great facial expressions. They were both comic and illustrative. “He feels trapped.”
“Huh,” Linda said. “He might change his mind once he tries living out there. Does he have a plan?”
“Man’s never held a greenback. Never done a load of wash. Never used a key, driven a car, or cooked. He’s the son of a board member, grandson of a board member. When I came here, they were in the process of kicking him out. He didn’t like any of the jobs—kept screwing up on purpose. Didn’t like PV or Hollow. Was in a rebel phase. But then we fell in love. My hazing stopped because I was with him. Everybody was happy, until we stopped being happy. I moved out of the bedroom this weekend.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Or, okay. Thank you.” Coolly, Rachel appraised her sandwich, gave it a withering look, like it had disappointed her, and sipped her mead instead. “He kept the master bedroom. I’m stuck with the guest room. What kind of man won’t move out? I’ll bet he’s never slept on a couch in his life.”
“It’s a myth. None of them do,” Linda said. “They’ve all got crap backs.”
Rachel liked this answer. She grinned, those eyeteeth protruding. “Mead?”
“Nope. I’m never drinking again.”
“Sorry about leaving you with Gal, by the way. I didn’t think you’d wind up hanging out with her. I thought you’d just go home. You weren’t looking for dirt, were you? My advice is stay away from that woman.”
“Dirt? No. Something was obviously going down between all of you and Gal, but I have no interest in knowing it. I’m just trying to get by around here, Rachel, and drama’s not my favorite subject. I was planning on going home but I was too drunk to use my car, and it seemed wrong to just leave her there, so I called us both a ride.”
“Shit,” Rachel said. “I forgot. You have a B class. We’ll have to fix that.” She finished her mead and poured more.
“Do you have any news of Gal or what happened?”
“It’s early so things are up in the air. I just heard this morning that the ex-wife, Trish, is going to take the kids—Katie and what’s his name? Sebastian. They’ll go to Palo Alto. Trish is a real piece of shit. Lowest of the low. But not even she expected Gal to do anything like this. It’s harder to know what to do with Gal. We might let the court system know what happened. But we might just expel her like we’d originally planned. Whatever we do, we’ll do it quietly. Everybody around here’s pretty worked up. I’ll bet the hospital was full.”
“It was,” Linda said.
“Figures. They can’t even let a tragedy happen without wrapping it around themselves, making it their own…”
“Daniella said it’s empathy.”
“I didn’t see them knocking on Gal’s door or offering legal advice before this happened. If it’s empathy, it’s the convenient kind.”
“A lady in the ER was convinced her kid had cancer. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her the kid was healthy. I thought it had something to do with Gal’s kids. Do you happen to know their diagnoses? She said it was a cancer called idiopathic leukemia and they both have it.”
“I stay out of Gal Parker’s business. But these residents”—Rachel shook her head in slow disgust—“they glory in this crap. Listen, if you’re having a hard time, and then I decide I care so much about your hard time that now I’m having a hard time—that’s not a useful reaction. Daniella’s much more forgiving of these dilettantes than I’ve ever been.”
Ever consider joining your husband and leaving PV? Linda thought. It doesn’t sound like you like this place so much, either. But this was too personal an observation to make. “There was a fight at school drop-off this morning. Two parents. A mom hit a dad—this awkward claw punch. The dad was all—that’s not allowed except at a festival! Then everybody started hissing and they both backed down.”
Rachel sipped more mead. “The hissing. They do it to show disapproval. So weird.”
“Where does it come from?”
“The birds? Damned if I know. Real fights hardly ever happen around here. They’re just worked up about that fire. It’ll die down once everything’s resolved.”
“They seemed bad at it—fighting. I thought the mom was going to apologize while also swinging. Or cry while swinging.”
Rachel grinned sidelong.
“I’m going to hell for making fun of people for being bad at fighting.”
“Take me with you.”
“But are people allowed to punch during festivals?”
“What?” Rachel asked. “Oh, no. I doubt it. If it happens, it’s in some kink room at the Winter Festival. Oh! Yeah, there’s also boxing as one of the competitions at Beltane. But that’s strictly volunteer and practically nobody volunteers. Keith Parson has held the title since he was fifteen and nobody wants to fight him.”
“Is it me, or is he an odd duck?”
“He’s a lot of passionate intensity and fucked-up conviction,” Rachel said.
“That’s spot on,” Linda agreed, and they both chuckled as she pressed her hands over the papers. She already felt proprietary. “Here’s a weird question. Did my house used to be Gal’s house?”
Rachel thought. “No. She was in your neighborhood, but I think next door.”
Linda made a sound of relief. “She told me my house was her house. She told me Russell has her ex-wife’s old job.”
“What? No. Same department, but different. Trish wasn’t numbers. She was a biochemist.”
“Oh, wow. That’s a real mindfuck. I felt so bad. Like I was replacing her.”
“I told you. She bites.”
“I’ll stay away, then. But ouch, the whole thing’s awful.”
Rachel nodded, her ponytail swishing. “The crazy part is, she used to be sweet. When she first got here, she was like clay. Whatever you told her, she did. Whatever anybody wore or said, she wore, she believed. I’ve always thought this place was wrong for her. She couldn’t handle it. She worshipped Trish and those kids. They were her baby ducks. She used to sew all their clothes and she was better at it than the weird-ass people who run the Fabric Collective. Her kids were the smartest-dressed babies in town. But then Trish screwed her over, her kids got sick, and everybody dropped her. She lost herself.”
“That makes me sad,” Linda said.
“Yeah. Me too. But enough about Gal. I can’t take on any more people’s problems.” Rachel tapped the pile of papers. “It’s all there. The applications for use, the budget, the schedules, the volunteers, the inventory, everything. Does Friday work for a tour? I might be out of town but Daniella and Anouk can do it.”
Linda’s heart double-beat. “So soon! That’s great! I’m so glad!”
“When you find out what a heavy lift this is going to be, you might change your mind.”
“No. I like work. I’m happy.”
Rachel finished the last of her mead, looked around like she wanted to get up and pour more, but Linda’s presence prevented her. “Listen, I don’t invite just anyone over. In this town, houses are private spaces.”
Linda waited.
“I think I might like you. You’re kind of a clown, but you’re real. So, here’s some advice. Everything here’s on a trial basis until you get your golden ticket. You might not like this job. It might not be a fit. We might not think you’re right for it. My advice is to be open to that. Daniella or Anouk might move you around to a different responsibility. If that happens, you’ll smile and say thank you. Even if you wind up manager, this isn’t your show, it belongs to ActHollow.
