Page 23 of The Last Stars in the Sky
As I turn onto the main road, it feels like nothing has changed. We see no other cars, but that’s not that unusual, and as I drive along, I can almost believe I’m just heading into Flintville for some gas, maybe some milk. I can even almost imagine that my dad is next to me, telling me to go easy on the brake or carefully around a curve, laughing a little as he grips the door handle.
“It’s here on the left,” Kerry says, the first time anyone has spoken since we got in the truck, and with a jolt I realize I’ve been so lost in my memories that I almost passed Darlene’s house.
Not that I’d even recognize it, at least not for certain. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been there—when I was a kid or a teenager, at least. It’s like a lot of other houses in this part of Ontario—small, weathered, built of clapboard, with a steep tin roof that allows the snow to slide right off. There is a small, fenced-in vegetable garden, bare now it’s winter but still looking neatly tended, and a henhouse surrounded by chicken wire, a front porch stacked with wood.
We get out of the truck.
Kerry goes in first and we follow, to a small sitting room with a large TV, a wood stove, and a single sofa. Darlene is stretched out on the sofa, her head back on the armrest, her face grayish. Her eyes flutter open as we come inside.
“Kerry…?”
“Mom, I got the nitroglycerin.” Kerry glances back at me, a bit accusingly, and I realize I never gave it to her. Wordlessly I hand it over, and Kerry administers it to Darlene, telling her to put it under her tongue.
Behind me, Ruby and Mattie fidget and shift; everything about this is strange to them, I know. It is strange to me, as well, and as I look around, I wonder how Darlene and her daughter are going to wait out Armageddon. There’s no generator here, and the little wood stove can only heat the house so much. There’s no water supply, either, although maybe there’s a stream or lake in the woods nearby. How much food do they have? And what if Darlene needs more care?
I glance back at her; I’m not even sure I would have recognized her after all these years, although I doubt she’s changed that much. I’m the one who has changed, who has let myself forget so much. Darlene is a petite, sturdy-set woman with curly gray hair surrounding her kindly face like a halo. She smiles at me when she catches my eye; I struggle not to look away.
Kerry slowly straightens. “Thank you,” she says, and it sounds like a rather curt dismissal, which should be a relief, because I want to go, but for some reason I don’t move.
I owe Darlene, I’m realizing, quite a lot, and I’ve never even bothered to say thank you—for keeping the cottage clean, for making our beds, making sure everythingworks. “Are you going to stay with her?” I ask Kerry, and she jerks her head in a nod, looking scornful; of course she’s going to stay with her mother. Besides, where else is there to go? I don’t know where Kerry lives, what her life is like. Does she live locally? She looks to be mid-thirties; what kind of job is there out here for someone like her? Does she have a husband, kids? Somehow, I doubt it. She looks like a loner; she acts like one too.
“Will you guys be okay here?” I ask, and Kerry juts her chin out, just a little.
“We’ll be fine.”
The little house feels cold; the fire in the wood stove has gone out. How much wood do they have on the porch? Enough for a normal winter, yes, certainly, but forthis?
“If you need anything else…” I say slowly, “will you let me know? I want to help.”
Surprise flashes across Kerry’s face, but then she nods. “Yeah. Sure.”
Still, I don’t move. I’m remembering, quite suddenly and vividly, how it was Darlene who showed my parents how to make maple syrup. It was Darlene who helped them with the garden, who taught them that a plastic cup of beer planted in the soil will keep slugs away from your tomato and zucchini plants, the kind of tip I could have googled, once, but not anymore. Darlene is the one who gave them a haunch of venison for the freezer from a deer that she’d shot herself; who said that scented dryer sheets placed between towels and blankets will keep the mice from nesting in them.
Darlene, I’m realizing, is a fount of backwoods wisdom that I have no other way to access now. I need her much, much more than she needs me, even if neither she nor Kerry realize that yet.
“Look,” I say, my voice a little too loud, and I feel everyone stiffen. “Maybe you both should come back and stay with us.”
Kerry simply stares at me, clearly completely nonplussed by this suggestion. Darlene’s eyes have drifted shut and her breathing is unsteady.
“I don’t like the thought of you guys here alone,” I continue, pretending, even to myself, that I’m not being mostly mercenary. “Especially without a car.” Still Kerry says nothing. “And, honestly, we could use some help.” For a second, her lips twist in contempt and I wonder if she thinks I mean with house-cleaning or something absurd like that. “What I mean is,” I continue hurriedly, “we’re not hardy pioneers the way my parents liked to pretend to be, you know? We don’t really know how tosurvive out here, and the reality is, we need to learn. Fast. And maybe if we pool our resources, our knowledge, and our stuff, well…maybe it could benefit all of us.”
No one says anything for what feels like a long, taut moment. I can’t tell anything from Kerry’s expression, and Darlene looks as if she’s almost unconscious.
“So, what are you saying?” Kerry finally asks. “We come live with you like, for good?”
I can’t tell from her tone what she thinks of that idea. I’m not sure whatIthink of that idea. I don’t know this woman at all. “Well…” I reply after a second’s pause. “Yes.”
Another silence. I glance at the girls, who are standing by the door, looking as if they’re longing to leave.
“I don’t know how long things are going to be like this,” I tell Kerry, and she makes a scoffing sound I can’t interpret. “Maybe things will be up and running in a couple of weeks—”
“Yeah right,” she cuts across me, and I nod in reluctant acknowledgment.
“However long it is, surely we’ll be better off together?” I let the question hang there for a moment, unanswered, before I continue, “We can load anything you want into the truck, take it with us now.” I’ve already clocked the chickens, the stacked wood. Who knows what else they have that could be useful? Like Daniel said, people up here have been readying for Armageddon for the last twenty years.
Daniel.
I can’t think about him now; I can’t let myself. I focus on Kerry. “What do you say?” I ask her, half wondering if I’m making a mistake, already knowing I can’t afford not to take this risk. “Do we band together?” I smile, like we’re about to embark on an adventure:jollyhigh-jinks together, let’s go!
