Authors: Daniel G. Keohane
The point of no return
, she thought.
So be it
.
Margaret explained her intentions to the group when they’d re-gathered on her front lawn. They would have to be careful not to cause the house to collapse on top of the supplies being stored in the basement – the glue, forty gallons of heavy black grease unopened since being delivered a month earlier, and the harnesses. If the worst happened, she supposed they would simply excavate it all from under the rubble and move on. Everything between this evening and the eighth of June would have to be this way. If it hadn’t been obvious before, it was now.
Her home was a lumber mine, waiting for excavation. What choice did she have left?
As she outlined her idea, no one objected. They simply stared at her in what she took as silent resignation. The cynical side of herself thought,
Of course, it’s not
their
house we’re about to demolish
.
“Estelle, what exactly do we need, measurements and everything?”
The woman adjusted her wheelchair to face the group. As she read off the list, rattling off the measurements for each piece still needed, Margaret broke people into groups, told them which room to use, and sent them in. Carl had temporarily shut off the power. Even so, Margaret sent each group in with, “And be wary of the wires. Don’t mark anything for cutting above an electrical outlet if you can help it.”
She accompanied Carl and Al up the ramp, which had become the only way into the front door since Tony Donato retrofitted the porch for Estelle. Every time she walked into her house, Margaret imagined herself boarding the ark. Each time she entered her home, there were butterflies in her stomach, a fear slowly building in her gut, reminding her how far she'd come in only a month with the complete dismantling of her life.
Katie was inside, watching with horror as people began removing photographs, dragging the china cabinet aside to expose a large section of bare wall. Margaret looked at her daughter but said nothing. She'd deliberately specified to everyone that the girls' room was off-limits. Katie was lost enough these days, and Robin had begun having her own tantrums, emulating her big sister. Neither needed to see their last refuge taken apart piece by piece.
The expression on Katie’s face when she looked at her mother cut a hole in Margaret's heart. But the girl said nothing, simply turned and ran into her room. Margaret heard her screaming once the door was shut, accompanied now and then by something hitting the walls.
She tried to put it out of her mind. Now that she was inside, she realized the amount of daylight had been misleading. Inside, a shadowy gloom pervaded every room. With the power off, it was already too dark to see any detail.
“Clear stuff away,” she repeated as she went room-to-room, “snd try to measure and draw out, but let's hold off on any cutting. It's too dark to risk any mistakes.” She sent Carl back downstairs to turn on the master power. Soon, every house light was on. Every bare wall had large rectangles drawn in marker or crayon across the wallpaper. They would cut each piece as big as possible, then trim to what was needed. The walls were plaster board. Margaret didn’t think they would work as well as straight plywood. But it might work for inside walls, especially coated with shipper’s glue. They’d have to wait and see.
People marked their cutting for the next day across wallpaper and painted walls, across the dark paneling of Vince's old den. Margaret reluctantly wandered into Katie’s room. The girl was on her bed, the lamp on its side atop the dresser, still lighted. The girl sobbed into her pillow. On the other bed, Robin sat upright, holding a stuffed dog. She stared with quiet, sad eyes at her sister.
Margaret sat on the side of the bed and reflexively ran her hand across Katie's back. Both of them tensed. She waited for the girl to explode with renewed rage against her crazy mother. Instead, Katie rolled towards her, half crawling along the bed, and crumpled in her mother's lap, still sobbing, but now crying against Margaret. She never spoke, nor looked up. But that one small gesture, and the sudden appearance of Robin on the bed beside her, hugging her mother and crying a little herself, told her that, at least among her small family, things might be all right.
26
Everyone slept in the house, scattered throughout the rooms in sleeping bags or covered with a single blanket. Except Carl, Al and Tony. Once everything had been marked, they left to stay with the ship. With the second police guard she'd added to her
payroll
at the common, Margaret insisted the threesome wouldn't need to stand watch. Nevertheless, they left in Al’s car. Margaret mused that the fire had burned more than the ark. Since the incident, most everyone carried something dark within them, as if they'd been personally violated. Each seemed to privately wish for someone, anyone, to try it again while they were there. These three especially, as they'd become nearly inseparable over the past days. Margaret could see the look of sadness come across Jennifer’s face when Tony stormed out with the other two. She’d be without him again tonight. Not that anyone considered doing anything more than sleep together in a house full of people, but to be able to hold someone close, and be held, was something Margaret felt envious of. That night, she, Katie and Robin all slept fitfully on Katie’s narrow twin bed. Robin had given up at some point before dawn and crawled under her own sheets.
The men returned to the house by seven the next morning. Margaret and the others were eating breakfast, mostly bagels Jennifer had gone out to buy earlier.
As soon as everyone was ready, Carl shut the power down again. That was when they'd all made an irritating discovery. None of the power tools worked. Thus began the slow process of shutting off one breaker, then the next, marking which outlets worked and which didn't on a sheet of paper Carl eventually taped to the circuit box door. Using extension chords, they were able to isolate the power to a select few outlets while shutting down the rest.
The cutting began. Margaret watched the large wall in the front room, the wall which once had held photos of Vince and the girls, of their wedding and her parents' wedding, explode in sprays of dust as David Whitman cut along the measured lines with a circular saw. As he progressed along, the large man kicked at the cord with his leg, keeping the bulk of it behind him. Margaret observed this interplay between cord and leg. Watching the actual cutting hurt too much. If she looked up, and saw the powdery gash following the progress of the blade, she felt dizzy. Eventually she left the house completely and grabbed a folding chair.
Estelle had gone out before the deconstruction began. Margaret put the chair beside hers, and laid her head on Estelle’s shoulder. She wanted to cry, wail in despair like Katie had last night. Instead, she only sighed. Estelle reached up and patted the side of her face. Neither woman said anything. They listened to the sounds of cutting and the shouts of the workers as they slowly, methodically, dismantled the Carboneaus’ home.
23
“Would you like some more water, Aunt Corinne?”
The old woman raised her right hand weakly, muttered something, which Father McMillan understood after so many visits to mean “no.” He took her hand gently and said, “Well, you just squeeze my hand if you want some, all right?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand. Though his aunt did not normally turn her head to him during these visits, she did so now. She moved her lips, as if in conversation, but no sounds came forth save the paper-wisps of her breath. Her furrowed brows told the priest more than any words could. She was confused by his visit. Even as she slipped further away from him, more every week, he was invariably caught off-guard by her sudden displays of lucidity.
He could pretend not to notice, but the woman's piercing gaze suggested otherwise.
“I suppose,” he said, almost sheepishly, “you're wondering why I'm here on a Monday rather than the usual Wednesday?” He shrugged, as if any answer he might offer was not worth her trouble to ask.
She squeezed his hand. McMillan smiled. “You truly amaze me, sometimes, Auntie.”
Her gaze narrowed, an unmistakable “get on with it” look.
He gently shook her hand. “It's nothing to worry about, really. I've just been taking some days off and thought I'd surprise you with an unscheduled visit. I always assumed on the days I don't come you're probably jumping on the bed causing all kinds of mischief.” He immediately regretted his words. Someone lying at death’s door didn't need reminding of the fact that they'll never jump on
any
bed again.
Corinne looked at her nephew for a moment, then away and up. McMillan turned to see what was grabbing her attention. Nothing there, save for a darkened television set.
His heart sank. Did the staff turn on the TV for her?
Slowly, reluctantly, he turned back towards the woman in the bed. She was staring at him again, her gaze soft. The look was such that, if she hadn't been so dehydrated, McMillan was sure he'd see tears running down her cheeks.
“I -” he began. “You watched the news?” He tried to make the question sound casual, but felt his composure crumple as the thin, fragile hand within his own gave a soft squeeze. He felt the bones, and the love, in that grip.
He sobbed once, fought to control the emotion as he’d done the night he'd cried himself to sleep after the police left. “I tried to stop it,” he whispered. “I tried to calm them! Why make everyone panic, frightened, when there's nothing they can do?” Another sob. He was losing control. Father Doiron, the associate pastor whom McMillan had abandoned to handle all the duties of the parish these past two weeks, tried to talk to him about the shooting that night, about the arks, but McMillan had only shouted in anger, asking if anyone cared about the elderly trapped in their houses, in nursing homes with nowhere to go. Did no one care how frightened these people probably were, knowing they would never be able to board any boat to save themselves?
They deserve to be told the truth, and the truth is only what their shepherd believes it to be.
You
believe, yet you let your people wander in the dark
.
The words were not his, yet he heard them in his own thoughts, in his own inner voice. He heard them every day, try as he might to ignore them. His aunt continued to stare at him, occasionally squeezing his hand with whatever strength she had. Could she be talking to him now, passing to him in her stare what she could not speak?
You have abandoned your flock to the wolves, rather than set their hearts on the path of preparation.
“No,” he whispered, and now his Aunt's expression changed, not understanding his remark. He wiped the tears from his face. Of course, she wasn't talking to him. It was his conscience, taking advantage of this sudden lack of control.
“I'll be all right, Aunt Corinne. It's just hard, knowing what's going to come.”
She mouthed words to him that he would never hear. Staring at her lips, he thought she might be saying, “No one knows what's to come,” but she could just as easily have asked for a drink of water.
He was alone, it seemed, in sorting this out. He should confide more in Doiron, who was a staunch denouncer of the prophecies uttered by the ark builders. And he would remain so, until the Vatican gave their official stance. A stance, McMillan feared, that might never come. The visions were for the sheep, not the shepherds. He wouldn't be surprised if God had already intervened to prevent the Holy Father from making any statements on the matter.
The thought sent shivers of fear down his back.
The priest rose, and the old woman's hand followed, refusing to release him.
“I have to go, Aunt Corinne. I'm sorry. I'll come back Wednesday.”
He kissed her on the forehead. So thin was her skin, so hard the bone. She held him one final moment, then released his hand. Never once did she take her eyes from him.
He did not return the next day, though he wanted to. Going back would have confirmed his aunt's suspicions that he was not returning to the parish. He spent the majority of the morning near Long Wharf, watching the derelict preacher. The man had lost a lot of weight since McMillan had seen him last. He wondered if he’d make it to the final day.
Aunt Corinne died at eight-thirty that night. He learned of her passing from a sullen Father Doiron when McMillan returned to the rectory near midnight, a practice the associate pastor learned to ignore as soon as he realized McMillan wasn’t going to confide in him. That night, though, the small man was waiting for him when he arrived so he could relay the message.
Seeing the shock on his pastor’s face, the deep sadness, Doiron laid a hand on McMillan's arm and said, “I'm sorry, Tim. I didn't know how to reach you. They contacted Monsignor Carelli instead for the last rites since he's the primary on-call for Catholics at the home. I wrote down what details I could. I assumed you'd want to contact them, or Carelli himself. Perhaps to preside over the - “
“Thanks,” McMillan interrupted, not wanting to hear any more. He sat down slowly, repeated, “Thanks, Father. I will.” He laid a hand on the pad of paper with the phone number and other details on his aunt’s passing. McMillan stared at the patterns of ink without reading. “I will, tomorrow. I just need to sit here a while if you don't mind.”
Doiron looked as if he wanted to say more, then sighed and said, “Good night,” before hurrying out. The phone was ringing in the other room. It rang all night these days. After midnight they generally left the machine on, especially since Doiron needed the extra sleep now that McMillan was “taking a few days off to recover.”
He sat in silence, hearing the priest in the other room consoling yet another parishioner. The calls would be coming in earnest, as the end of May approached.
Father McMillan lifted the pad of paper but still could not focus on the words. In the other room, Doiron hung up the phone. McMillan listened to his tired footfalls ascending the stairs.