The Fallback Plan (12 page)

She shook her head. Of course she didn’t know where the matches were. By the dim greenish light still coming through the windows, May followed me to the kitchen. The trees in the backyard flailed in the wind like dancers, and young boughs had already snapped and fallen to the grass. Where was Amy? Why hadn’t she come downstairs? She had been so reluctant to let us go, but then she must have forgotten us, or decided to let us fend for ourselves in the dark.

I found a long-stemmed lighter, the kind used to light birthday candles on cakes for octogenarians, and we returned to the other room. After I moved the candles away from the books I told May what we would do.

“We’re going to make dedications,” I said. “Every time we light a candle, something good will happen to whoever or whatever we say the candle is for. Do you understand?”

“Understand what?”

“Okay, watch,” I said, and lit the first one. “This one is for cats who don’t have a home to live in.”

“And mine’s gonna be for poor people.”

“And this one is for global warming.”

“And this one, my one, is for Emma McElroy because she has warts on her hands that are gross but she is still my friend because she knows how to swim without floaties.”

“This one is for May because she is friends with Emma McElroy.”

The candles smelled like vanilla and white lilacs. We made dedications to Dora the Explorer, the president of the United States, squirrels, Cambodian orphans, bugs you find in the house that you kill even though you should get a plastic cup and put them back outside, and broken toys, which we both decided should go to heaven when they broke. The room pulsed with light like a cathedral. When we had lit all the candles we could find, May asked for a story.

• • •

The Littlest Panda now has the keys to the house where the beautiful faun lives. She lets herself inside and finds a
long corridor, lit on both sides by beautiful, ornate wall sconces. Because there’s only candlelight, she can only see a few feet in front of her at a time, and she must walk carefully, through the darkness, just as she did when inside the armoire.

Then she hears a music box. It is playing “Silent Night.”
I must be walking in the right direction
, the young panda thinks to herself,
because the song is getting louder and louder
.

When she finally finds a door along the corridor, she hesitates only slightly before turning the handle, knowing that the room will either be full of everything she’s ever dreamed of or a horrible, horrible trap.

Luckily, the door opens into a cozy living room. There is a fire blazing in the fireplace, a plate of cookies on the table, and a kind-looking faun, who is sitting in a velvet armchair beside a frosted window. He is smoking a pipe. She doesn’t like the smell of pipe smoke, but is too polite to say so.

“Would you like some Turkish coffee?” is the first thing the faun says.

“I don’t know, sir,” the little panda says. “I’ve never tried it.”

He pours her a cup and she politely takes a tiny sip. It tastes awful.

“Like it?” he asks.

She nods.

“I hate it. I don’t know why I make it. Habit, I guess.”

The Littlest Panda isn’t sure if he’s joking. She doesn’t say anything, but takes an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie (her favorite) from the plate on the table so that she won’t have to taste the coffee.

After a minute, the faun removes the pipe from his mouth and blows a few puffs of smoke in the direction of the icy window.

“Anyway,” he says, “I’m glad you’re here. We have to save Hanukkah.”

Nate came home from work holding a newspaper above his head that hadn’t done much to save him from the rain. He walked in the front door with water running down the legs of his suit and pooling at his stockinged feet. He must have left his shoes at the front door to dry out.

“Oh, hello there,” he said, when he noticed May and me in the shadows of all the dancing flames. “It’s so warm in here.”

“The lights went out,” May explained, “so we made a church.”

• • •

Nate held out his arms to her, and she ran into them.

“Oh, Daddy, you’re sticky,” she said, before he could pick her up, and came back to the couch.

“Daddy’s not sticky, he’s just wet. The streetlights are all out along Roosevelt,” he told me, “and the stoplights aren’t
working. There’s a detour around the intersection at Main. The water’s two or three feet deep. Welcome to the end of the world, right?”

“Let’s build an ark,” I said.

“Can we?” May said.

Nate laughed and smiled at me instead of his daughter. May held still, waiting for an answer.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

“Let me get changed, and I’ll drive you home. I don’t want you to walk in this,” Nate said. “Is Amy home?”

Why wouldn’t she be home?
She was like Rochester’s first wife in
Jane Eyre
, the madwoman in the attic, but instead of threatening to murder Nate and me, she just kept her daughter on a leash and paid a recent college graduate to be her friend. I felt a pinch of guilt for thinking that—what if something had happened to her up there? What if she’d hanged herself?

“She’s still upstairs,” I said.

“I’ll change and be right down.”

After Nate left us, May clapped her hands twice and the electricity miraculously returned. She was as surprised as I was.

“How did you do that!”

“That’s what they do on TV,” she said.

She clapped again, but nothing happened. I heard the whole house come back to life. All the clocks flashed noon.

But I wished it had all stayed off. Our cathedral had
been destroyed, and our dedications were now just pools of melted wax.

• • •

After the faun explains the curse of the evil White Witch (“
Aryan
white, if you know what I mean”), and how she forbids everyone in the kingdom from celebrating Hanukkah (they are not even permitted to keep menorahs in their homes), and the unbelievably depressing situation of having to live in a place where it is always winter, the Littlest Panda says of course she’ll help. She’ll help in any way she can, to restore the faun’s kingdom to its previous glory, and deliver its people (and/or creatures) from the clutches of the evil Witch.

“Can I ask one thing, though?”

“Anything,” the faun says, reclining once more in his chair by the window and inserting his pipe between his lips.

“What will the Witch do if she catches me?”

He doesn’t hesitate.

“Probably do what she always does: tempt you with a delicious treat, promise you a rose garden, and then persecute you for your religious beliefs.”

“How awful,” the young panda says. A shiver goes up her spine. Maybe this is a riskier journey than she had bargained for.

“There is one thing that I can give you that will protect you against her, but I’m not sure if you’re ready.”

“Oh, I’m ready, sir,” the panda assures him.

“All right, then,” he says. The faun goes to the cupboard and brings back a dagger with a ruby-encrusted handle.

“Have you ever used a dagger?”

“Certainly,” she lies, and tucks it into the belt of her dress.

“Good. Now it’s time for you to go home, gather your brothers and sister, and then let’s go to war for some peace.”

• • •

When Nate got in the car, he wiped his glasses on the hem of his new, dry t-shirt. He smelled the way the hills of Ireland look in soap commercials. It wasn’t raining very hard anymore, but still he insisted on driving me; he said if I tried to walk and it started to pour again he would never forgive himself.

There were leafy branches cluttering the streets and clogging the gutters. The rainwater moved in slow whirlpools, looking for an exit.

There is a picture of you in my sock drawer
, I thought. I couldn’t get my brain to think of anything else. I was busy pretending that his Jetta was a Winnebago when Nate said something that I totally missed.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Amy was asleep in the attic,” Nate repeated, “when I went up there.”

“She was asleep?”

“With the door locked. I had to knock for a while before she got up to open it. She likes to sleep when it rains.” I couldn’t tell if he was irritated or amused.

He drove with both hands on the wheel and left the windshield wipers on low to catch the droplets that fell from the trees that we passed. I didn’t know what to say.
So, what do you do for fun? Are you a recreational user of prescription pain medication?
We drove west on Madison, past the police station, my old high school, the tennis courts, the track, the empty, shady acre beneath a row of pine trees where Summer had taught me how to smoke when I was sixteen, the places I normally passed each day while I walked to Amy’s, listening to my iPod, and fantasizing about what life would be like if I had brain cancer or botulism.

Nate drove the speed limit, or slightly under, and was especially cautious at four-way stop signs. Was he driving so slowly because of the wet streets? Or did he want the ride to last? Was he hoping we’d get in some minor accident, nothing fatal, so we would have a reason to stand together outside in the rain while we waited for the police to arrive, and talk about our dreams?

When trying to decide a course of action, it is usually helpful to ask yourself, What would Anne of Green Gables do?

Something brave and outrageous. Definitely.

Do something sexy
.

“A couple days ago I taught May how to jump on one foot,” I said, knowing as soon as I said it that it wasn’t sexy at all, but I couldn’t stop myself. “She can stand on one foot and hula hoop, too. Like a flamingo.”

“Isn’t that something,” he said, but he wasn’t listening. He continued to stare ahead at the road with the paranoid intensity of someone wanted by the law, and it made me remember a movie I had seen about a high school math teacher whose daughter is impaled on the fence outside their house. Unable to cope with her death, he starts to talk to the potted plants in the high school hallways. Did I want Nate for the same reason I had wanted Jack? Because I felt like they were hiding some sad or violent thing and I wanted to be the one to unearth it?

The streetlights were working again. Stopped at the next red light, Nate turned in his seat to look at me.

“What,” I said, but it came out all choked-sounding. I cleared my throat.

“Does Amy show you what she does up there?” he said.

“In the attic, you mean?”

“Her paintings? Anything?”

“No,” I said, slightly startled by my own answer. She didn’t. She never had.

“Just that theater that’s on your wall,” I added, as if that would make a difference.

“She won’t show me either.”

We both let the truth of that settle in. What did Amy do up in the attic? Watch May and me from the window and take naps on a pile of drop cloths?

“Sometimes when she comes downstairs, I see glue on her fingers and her nails are dirty,” I offered. “Maybe she’s building something.”

Nate didn’t say anything. He fiddled with the gear shift, keeping it in neutral. “May likes you a lot,” he said. “When you’re not there she asks when you’ll be back.”

“I like her a lot, too,” I said. The light changed to green, but Nate continued to stare at me.

“Are your eyes hazel or brown?”

“What?”

He leaned in closer. “Brown?”

“Hazel,” I said.

“Hazel.”

His were also hazel, but more flecked with green than mine.

“You can go,” I told him. “The light’s green.”

“I guess they just looked brown in this light.” He shifted into first and we drove the short remaining distance to my house. We passed the high school cross-country team; some boys were shirtless, soaked to the skin. Three years ago I could have found them good-looking, but if I looked now, I would be a pervert. I looked.

“Do me a favor, Esther,” Nate said as we pulled into my
driveway. “Next time you’re over, ask Amy to show you what she’s working on.”

“I’ll try,” I said, knowing even then that I wouldn’t.

I unbuckled my seat belt, but I didn’t really want to get out, didn’t really want to go home, would have rather stayed in a place where it was possible something might happen to me, and was glad when Nate asked if he could ask me one more thing.

“Yeah,” I said, “what?”

“Forget it. I can’t.”

“What is it?”

“Can you promise that my question will stay between the two of us?”

“Who would I tell?” I said.

Do you want to die in my arms tonight?

Why, yes, I do, thank you for asking!

“Do you, um, deal pot?” Nate said.

Oh, shit
.

“Do I
deal
pot?”

“Can you sell me some?”

“Are you a cop?”

“Of course I’m not a cop.”

“If you’re not a cop, how do you know I even smoke?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not a drug dealer.”

“No, I didn’t think you were. I just thought you might. You know.”

“Know what?”

“I feel stupid now,” Nate said. “Forget that I asked. Totally inappropriate.”

He put his hands on the wheel again. Ten and two. I felt embarrassed for him. I knew I was being paranoid, and paranoia isn’t sexy at all, but I’d been so surprised when he’d asked.

“Don’t feel stupid,” I said. “Theoretically, if I did have some, would you have anything to smoke it out of? Theoretically?”

“I guess not.”

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

I ran inside. My mom was at the dining room table, cutting something out of fabric. “I’m making Fourth of July napkins,” she said. “They’re red, white, and blue.”

“I see that,” I said, and went straight to my room. I threw a pipe and the Altoids tin where I kept it into my purse and went back out to the car.

“Where are you going now?” my mom called as I was leaving.

“Be right back,” I said, and locked the front door behind me so I wouldn’t be responsible if a murderer walked in.

“Drive,” I told Nate.

“Where should we go?”

“Go to the back of the middle school. Behind the soccer fields. There’s a parking lot.”