Page 53 of Longing for Liberty
But Jeremy had immediately seen the pink remnant of fingertip marks left on my cheek. When he’d puffed up, his shoulders rounding and his eyes darkening, I quickly shook my head and smiled. “I met Jane Fitzhugh today. She needed to punish me because I’d taken off my shoes. But I apologized and, um, I think they are being forgiving. I don’t think I’ll be fired. It’s a lesson and a blessing.”
Jeremy’s nose flared almost comically as he tried to rein in his anger. “How…giving of them. I don’t suppose you’ll be taking your shoes off again?”
“No,” I said. Knowing ole Jane could pop in at any moment was definitely sobering. “I made dinner.”
Potatoes pan-fried in a scoop of lard. And some sort of mystery meat link that tasted somewhere between a hot dog and a smoked sausage. Not bad until you bit into a hard piece of byproduct cartilage. My favorite part of dinner was the yellow squash. It had gone a little rubbery, but I chopped it and cooked it in a mix of water and milk with a little salt and honey.
We sat down, but Jeremy didn’t eat right away, just stared out the window. After a couple of minutes, I nudged his arm to snap him out of it. Just in time, too, because the State Force strolled right by just as he took a bite and raised his chin in a hello to them. Ugh, the two men who’d taken Stanley’s cheesecake. I forced a nod as well, and they finally moved on. In my mind, I flipped them the bird.
A soft touch on my cheek broke me from the foul thoughts, and I found Jeremy gazing at me, gently stroking the spot where I’d been slapped. I held his hand and closed my eyes, soaking in the love I felt coming from him. He was worried about me. I stroked his fingers with mine, trying to convey.
I’m fine.
I’ll continue to be fine.
And I’m still yours.
TWENTY-FOUR
STATE NEWS: VICE PRESIDENT WALINGER SAYS BLESSINGS ARE SHOWING IN THE RISING BIRTHRATES!
Amos didn’t showat the penthouse the next day. As I put his dinner away and left for the bus at five, I’d never felt so relieved. I wasn’t mentally prepared for the awkwardness of that conversation. Not that I thought he’d talk to me or give me any kind of explanation for the personal things I’d heard. And I kind of hated that it made me feel bad for him. It was impossible to know the true personalities of people you’d only seen on television, but I’d never expected his wife to be like that.
I tried not to think about the Fitzhughs as I went about my weekend. Saturday was end-of-summer neighborhood care. Everyone was outside. It was still hot, but not as hot as it had been a week or two earlier. We trimmed back bushes, pulled weeds, mowed, washed siding and windows, and picked the last of the peppers, tomatoes, and squash that thrived in summer heat but now withered. Soon we’d be planting broccoli, carrots, cabbage, and spinach.
My job for the day was to gather sticks and debris from the grassy areas and throw them back into the woods to make the area mowable. The sound of giggles and amused whispers made me glance over at a young couple talking to two State Forcemen. Something about their conversation made me uncomfortable. Maybe how close they all stood? I watched from the corner of my eye as they lowered their voices, and then one of the Force officers passed a small package to the husband, who tucked it quickly into his pocket.
Okay, very strange. I quickly moved away from the garden to the sidewalk and found Jeremy on a ladder cleaning gutters.
“What’s up?” he asked, coming down.
I whispered to him what I saw, and he made a face, running a hand over his head.
He spoke quietly. “I’ve heard about couples who…perform for State Force during the night rounds in exchange for things.”
Perform? I felt myself making a face as I realized he was talking about live pornography. Jeremy chuckled and said, “Yeah.”
Pornography was obviously outlawed, so their exchange had to be illegal, but if someone were to turn them in, it would be the couple to suffer, not the forcemen.
The tell-tale hum of a drone sounded, so I looked up at Jeremy on the ladder and asked, “May I help you here?”
The drone buzzed by slowly as Jeremy responded, “Yes. I’ve been aiming to throw this debris in that bucket but missed a few times.”
I was Jeremy’s helper the rest of the afternoon, and though we worked mostly in silence, I felt safe and uncharacteristically content.
* * *
The next morning at church,the energy was dark. I immediately put up my walls of numbness, preparing for bad news, and my intuition was right.
Both of the sick girls passed away during the week.
And now five more children from their neighborhood were ill, ranging from infant to teen, along with two mothers. Their neighborhood was closed for the week, meaning nobody in or out, under the guise of giving them family time and privacy…in another time, we might have called it a quarantine.
Even with my walls up, despair crept in. Summer colds were common, even severe sometimes, lasting weeks, but summer wasn’t a high death time. There were always childhood and adult mortalities throughout the year, especially in winter during flu season, but this felt different for some reason.
My mind rattled with worry the entire day. I’d been waiting for something like this to happen, and it was shocking to me that it hadn’t happened sooner. Our lack of ability to travel outside of the country was probably a big factor in the slower spread of transmissible diseases. But we couldn’t hold Mother Nature off forever. Fatal illnesses were bound to creep in.
Was it viral or bacterial? Was it something Jeremy and I, and most of the adult community, had probably been vaccinated against before the war? Or something new that we were in danger of getting?
