The Longest Night (44 page)

Nat thought Sharon Webb had gone to bed, but then she appeared in the living room in her nightgown and housecoat, her feet in ancient, flattened slippers. “Is everyone comfortable?” she whispered to Nat.

“Yes, we're perfect,” said Nat. She patted the space next to her. “Here, have a seat.”

“Oh,” Sharon said, easing next to Nat on the couch and smiling at the baby. “Look at her. Isn't she just a wonder? Does she sleep the night?”

The bottle had drained down to a few slow bubbles so Nat swung Sadie up onto her shoulder and patted her tiny back. “Not yet,” Nat said. “She takes another bottle around three or four.”

“That's not too bad.”

“No, I can't complain.” Nat said this and then winced slightly, because of course she couldn't complain, not now or ever.

But Sharon just smiled. “May I hold her?” she asked.

“Of course.”

For a moment in Sharon's arms Sadie perked up, registering something different, but the fullness of her belly soon won out. Sadie fell asleep with one fist up by her head and the other tiny hand resting delicately across her blanket-tucked belly, and Sharon Webb rocked and rocked her, smiling as if she could never tire of such a thing.

“It goes so fast,” she said. “One blink and it's all gone by.” She looked as if she might cry. “I remember everything about Johnny at this age. Every little thing. It does make me sad that I'll never have another one.”

Nat reached out to rub her arm, not knowing what to say.

“Isn't it odd, though? How everybody was someone's child this way?” Sharon asked. “Every little old lady you see, every big, galumphing man, was once someone's precious baby just like this.”

“I never really thought of that,” said Nat, her eyes flicking to Paul with his mysterious unknowable childhood, his family dead and gone. Had his mother loved him like this, rocked him in the dark of night, watched his curious dark eyes? It seemed impossible but it had to be, just like anyone else.

“Did I tell you?” Sharon asked, suddenly bright-eyed. “Did I tell you about last summer?”

“I don't believe so,” Nat said.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I don't want to wake the baby.” She lowered her voice. “Well, it was last summer—not this recent one but the one before, just when you all started up in Idaho. And I hadn't seen Johnny since he went into the army, you know, not since he graduated boot camp. He left here with a little bit of a reputation—some partying and a couple of fistfights. Elvira's a small town.”

“Sure,” Nat said.

“And so I was at work down at the Best Western. I've been there eight years, since I gave up drinking. Haven't touched a drop in all that time. That's why I drink a dozen cups of coffee a day.” She smiled self-deprecatingly, and Nat, who loved a harmless confession, laughed. “So I was down there, cleaning rooms with the girls, and we go in on morning break to have a smoke and eat the leftover muffins from the continental breakfast. If there are extras we get them free. And we're sitting there and suddenly in walks this tall man, this
man,
in an army uniform. And I say to him, ‘Can I help you find something?' And he says, ‘I'm looking for Sharon Webb,' and he's grinning at me a little goofy, and I'm thinking did the girls put this poor fellow up to this for a laugh? And then Marcella says, ‘Shari, that's your
son,
that's Johnny!' ”

“Oh!” Nat said.

Sharon wiped her eyes. “He looked like someone who'd been born like that—born finished. Does that make sense? Not like he'd been a scabby-kneed little boy, ever. I couldn't believe I'd had anything to do with this man standing in our break room holding his hat.”

“But you had everything to do with it,” Nat said.

“Oh, it was wild. He brought a bottle of champagne and we all had a little in the break room. Even me! After how many years as a teetotaler. The girls just
loved
it. That was when Johnny was on his way from Belvoir out to Idaho. You all must have been going about the same time.”

“I guess we were.”

“Ah,” Sharon said, passing Sadie back to Nat and then sitting a moment, her face glowing. “Just seeing him come in, I didn't recognize him. But on the other hand, I knew. From the minute I saw his profile I knew that was Johnny. I just didn't want to admit it to myself. I wanted to keep that moment where he was so grown-up and so perfect that I wasn't quite sure it was really him. I wanted to keep it like I could have it forever, over and over, that feeling of recognizing.”

“You'll always have it.”

“I will.” Sharon stood briskly, rubbing her arms. She looked around the room, at Nat's sleeping daughters, and at Paul, who was now facedown on the floor, his head turned away from them. “You're all right here? Do you need anything at all?”

“Not a thing,” Nat said.

“Good night, then.”

“Good night, Sharon.”

Nat laid Sadie in her bassinet, holding her breath as she lifted her hands to see if the sleep would stick. It did. So she took off her robe and climbed in her nightgown under the blankets next to Paul, turning over a few times on the floor. The carpet seemed ancient, dusty down to the boards, so she rolled onto her back again. Paul laid a sleepy arm over her. “I thought you were going to take the couch,” he murmured.

“No,” she said. “I'll sleep here with you.”

“Okay.” And he tucked her in close, his nose against her hair so that it lifted and fell with his breath. A clock ticked on the wall. In the bassinet, Sadie gave a small sigh; Sam pushed Liddie with her leg and Liddie rolled over with a grunt; Paul breathed beside her, up and down, healthy and safe, and it was as if Nat overheard her own body in five places at once.

S
HE'D ONLY SEEN
E
SROM
twice more since the day of the accident: first, the afternoon when, after five days at his cousin's cabin, he'd brought the girls home. Nat had nearly gone mad from missing her daughters. She'd longed for all three children, but especially for Sadie, on some visceral, hormonal level that defied explanation. When Esrom's pickup pulled in front of the house she felt as if her heart had been rocked by some small underwater explosion, a burst and reverberation. She raced down the walk as Paul watched from the doorway behind her. She kissed and hugged Sam and Liddie until they squirmed and trotted away, made shy by her tears. Sadie looked bigger; her satiny newborn arms had plumped and her eyes were more focused. “Oh,” Nat kept saying, “oh,” as if she hadn't before known the baby's sturdy, singular beauty.

“We had a good time,” Esrom said, “but they missed you.”

“I missed
them,
” she said, burying her face against Sadie's small body. She had missed Esrom also, but couldn't say it.

He had already stepped back toward his truck, his fingers twitching anxiously against the hem of his jacket. “Thank you for trusting me with them. Just leave the green car out by the curb in a day or two, with the key under the front seat. I'll come by and pick it up.”

“I can find a way to bring it by—”

He shook his head. “No, that's not a good idea.” Nat knew he was probably right; Paul wouldn't be happy to learn that she knew where Esrom lived, wouldn't like her driving the car over and getting a ride back. “I'll just stop by and get it,” he said. “I won't come in.”

“Thank you,” Nat said, and, heart pounding, she'd turned back toward Paul. She couldn't stand having the two of them in such close proximity, with so much unbearable intensity sparking back and forth from them to her.

But Paul hadn't stayed to monitor: He had taken the girls into the house. Nat was surprised and grateful. When she opened the door he was sitting on the couch with Sam and Liddie, and while she could tell it was momentarily difficult for him to look at her, he wasn't angry. He seemed softer, somehow. She handed Sadie to him and he seemed instantly absorbed; and if he noticed the way Nat paced in the kitchen, wringing her knuckles and fighting back tears until she could calm herself enough to return to him, he never mentioned it at all.

S
HE SAW
E
SROM ONE
last time the afternoon before they left Idaho Falls. She'd dashed downtown alone to pick up a few last-minute items for the road: powdered milk, saltine crackers, Paul's cigarettes. When she got back in the car she sat for a moment, and then, instead of heading straight home, drove toward the auto body shop instead.

The body shop was located at the edge of downtown along with a couple of car dealerships, two other mechanics' shops (one European, one American), and a large feed store with a giant rooster statue outside, now wearing a mantle of snow that made it seem almost grave. It was a small shop with a handful of dirty cars on blocks out front, apparently held in the same limbo the Fireflite had been. The garage door was closed, and this was nearly enough to turn Nat around and send her home, but a greater urgency propelled her to the small side door.

She rapped on the door, and a moment later a bristly faced older man answered. He had watery eyes, yellow-red at the corners, and he looked gruffly at Nat.

“Is Esrom in?” Nat asked.

“You here about a car?”

Nat paused. What did she have to lie about? “No,” she said.

He sized her up. “Then what for?” he asked.

She had not expected further interrogation and wished she had fibbed. “I just want to say good-bye,” she said.

The man looked as if he were about to inquire her name and relationship to his nephew, and she braced herself, but instead, with a twist of annoyance around his mouth, he turned and disappeared into the shop. A moment later Esrom came ducking out, and there it was: the look on his face she'd both dreaded and hoped to see, a sort of simultaneous illumination and flinch. It pulled her heart open and made her feel awful at the same time, and she felt she should not have come.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, closing the door behind him.

“We're moving away,” Nat said. She wanted to get it out of her mouth as quickly as possible.

“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Yeah. I thought probably you would.”

“To Illinois. We leave tomorrow.”

“Illinois?”

“There's a power plant there that'll hire Paul.”

“He hasn't had enough of those for one lifetime?”

“No,” Nat said, her mouth pulling to one side. “I guess not.”

“Well, thank you for telling me—”

“It's horrible to leave you,” Nat cried, suddenly overcome, stepping forward to wrap her arms around him. Even through his cold and heavy jacket, the feel of his anxious, kind self made her heart turn over. She was tall enough that no hug felt sisterly, her face toward his neck. “I wish we'd always live near you,” she said, “so I could see you every day.” Then, feeling his body twitch, she wished she could take back those overexcited words.

He cleared his throat as if to say something, but it was too much for Nat to have come in the first place and for her to be there still. She'd said what she wanted to say. So she pulled herself away and headed for the car, pressing her fingers into her belly. She listened for the body shop's side door to open and close, but it didn't, at least not before she had climbed into the car and driven away.

T
HE DAY THEY LEFT
Idaho Falls had been as cold as any of the ones before. It seemed darkly comical that their first destination was, of all places, Michigan in January. Paul got the car running and wedged a carpet square and a bag of road salt into the trunk. Nat had bundled the girls, wrapping Sadie in layers of blankets and tucking them tight, and arranged them all in the car, big girls in the back, Sadie's basket up front with her.

“Are we ready?” Paul asked, coming down the walk, a large suitcase in either hand.

“We're freezing!” Sam said.

He smiled. “Then we'd better hit the road.”

Paul hoisted the suitcases one by one and tied them to the roof. He yanked on the length of rope, leaning back to test its sturdiness, then knotted the loose end and gave the suitcases a jiggle. Apparently satisfied, he bent down to peer in the window at the girls. “Time to head out, explorers,” he said. He saluted Sam and then, catching Nat's eye, laughed almost bashfully.

Watching him, Nat felt her heart pull. Paul said he'd felt mostly fine since the accident, though he admitted to having what felt like a low-grade flu. He didn't want to see any more doctors. It made her uneasy. He admitted that back in reactor school a health physicist had told them the effects of radiation might not surface for years. And the human body was unpredictable—Paul might develop some rare cancer while he was still young, or never show any ill effects and live to be 105. He told her he wasn't losing any sleep over it. “That's kind of how life goes anyway,” he'd said. “Right? Anybody could live to a hundred or die tomorrow.” Nat nodded, and then decided that she would not ask about it anymore.

Later, over the years, they would hear of people—the nurse, the health physicist Vogel—developing rare, sudden cancers, malfunctions in their bones and blood, dying quickly and young. Nat would spend the years counting her time, watching Paul, as if she could spot the very instant that something went wrong. She would raise her hand, sound the alarm. But there was never any way to know.

He'd climbed into the driver's seat, adjusting the rearview mirror. Nat settled into the passenger seat and murmured down at Sadie, who waved her fist past crossed eyes and sucked on it.

Nat had taken one last glance at their little yellow house, empty now. She imagined that as this town grew over the years, the yellow house would begin to look smaller and plainer, as if it had shrunk, but really it was just that the world around it would have grown. Every few years a new military family would come into that house and leave signs of themselves here and there: a pot of flowers planted by the front step, a flag raised or lowered. These items would come and go with time, living brief lives of their own. People driving past might notice them or drift on without noticing, because the families inside were part of a long line of ghosts that the locals only partially remembered.