Chris Bohjalian - The Night Strangers

Becky studied the patrons in the diner-mostly senior citizens and mostly men in green John Deere ball caps-and seemed to be considering where they should talk. Then she spied an empty booth not far from where they were standing and motioned toward it.

“I really can’t stay,” Emily said. “I was planning to bring my sandwich back to my office and work through lunch.”

“Oh, I have work to do, too,” Becky told her, and she slid onto the red leather cushion. Reluctantly Emily sat across from her. She couldn’t decide whether she was about to get an earful now about her husband the pilot or whether this woman was about to try to invite her to visit a church or join a women’s group of some sort. Becky seemed normal enough, but the way her eyes had darted around before deciding they should sit suggested that looks in this case might be deceiving; perhaps she was one of the town crazies. She seemed a little flushed-the cold, perhaps-but she was fidgeting nervously with the zipper on her coat and her unease was palpable.

“You’re Hallie and Garnet’s mother, right?” Becky asked. “You just moved here from Pennsylvania.”

“That’s right,” Emily admitted, understanding this would not be about Flight 1611. It was, she decided, instead going to be about joining the elementary school’s parent-teacher organization. Maybe they needed her to bake cupcakes for something. In West Chester, it seemed she was always baking cupcakes for something. Still, she smiled and raised her eyebrows. “You’ll have to tell me why you’ve done so much homework.”

“Oh, everyone knows. Bethel is a small town. I live in the brick house with the white shutters about two miles from you. I imagine you pass it every day on the way in to Littleton. Still, our paths weren’t going to cross unless I introduced myself to you, because my boys are well beyond the elementary school. One is in high school and one is in college.”

“Where do you work?” Emily asked.

“I work at Lyndon State. It’s a long commute, I know.”

“Not by Philly standards.”

“I guess. And obviously I’m not there today. My parents are coming north from Asheville for the week and I took the day off to get the house ready. That’s my work this afternoon.” Now the woman was glancing behind her and peering out the large glass windows of the diner.

“You expect to see them on the sidewalk?” Emily asked. She couldn’t resist.

“What?”

“Your parents. You were looking around just now like you expected to see them wandering up Main Street.”

“No. Look, I’m taking a chance talking to you. Reseda Hill sold you your house and you work in John Hardin’s law firm. So, obviously, it’s crossed my mind that you might be…” She paused, the half sentence lingering awkwardly amidst the clattering dishes and burble of conversation in the diner.

“I might be what?”

“There’s no graceful way to say it: You might be one of them.”

“One of them? One of who?”

“But there’s obviously a lot about you on the Web-because of your husband,” she went on, ignoring Emily’s question. “I’ve read a lot. And I know the principal at the elementary school, of course. Doris LeBaron. She’s been the principal since before my older boy started there. And she’s told me a little about you, too.”

“Why was Doris talking to you about me? I mean, I hate to sound paranoid, but… why?”

“I could lie and say it’s just because of who your husband is. I’m sure you know, people talk about that. It’s human nature. But that wouldn’t be the truth-at least not the whole truth. Doris and I are friends. We walk together in the summer. We’re in the same spin class in the winter. And she’s seen you with your girls. And we both have the sense that you’re not one of them. Now, if I’m wrong, well then I guess I have just seriously-”

“One of who?” Emily asked again. “You didn’t say.”

“The herbalists,” she said, leaning in as she spoke and then pulling away. It was as if herbalists was a dirty word.

“Oh, I get it,” Emily said, and she had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. “Those women who have the greenhouses. I mean, I’ve heard something. And Anise and Reseda are indeed trying to look out for us. They’ve both been very helpful.”

“Anise, too,” Becky murmured thoughtfully, as if this were additional bad news.

“She seems eccentric-but nice. Really.”

Becky craned her neck to glance over Emily’s shoulder and abruptly stood up. “God, I’ve completely lost track of time. I’m so sorry, but I have to go.”

“You didn’t order anything. Aren’t you eating?” Emily asked.

The woman shook her head. “If you ever want to talk, call me,” she said. “My number is in the book.” She pulled on her gloves and strode purposefully down the diner corridor between the booths and the row of swivel seats at the counter, and then out the door. On her way out, she almost bowled over a regal looking fellow with massive shoulders and a bald head the shape of an egg as the two of them nearly collided at the front door. Emily saw the waitress was beckoning her from the register and holding up a white paper bag with her lunch. She rose. She couldn’t imagine how a woman like Becky Davis could seem so normal on the surface and so clearly unstable underneath. She didn’t expect she would ever have a reason to phone her.

A nd what of God? You pause in your work in the kitchen, replacing the paint roller in the tray and sitting back on your heels as you wonder: Where was He when Flight 1611 crashed?

The thing is, you went to Sunday school as a little boy, but by college you were no longer capable of reconciling childhood cancer, genocidal warfare, and mudslides that obliterated whole villages and buried babies alive with any kind of divine presence. Sometimes you and Emily worry that you have made a mistake not introducing your girls to any religious tradition at all-wouldn’t it at least have helped them to hone their moral compasses?-but between your travel and Emily’s work, Sundays really were nothing more than days of rest. Besides, half the time you weren’t even home on Sundays. When the girls were toddlers and Emily was alone with them, the last thing she was going to be capable of on a Sunday morning was getting them up and dressed and off to church. And certainly the geese that appeared before your windshield just above two thousand feet on August 11 have done nothing to reinvigorate your faith. Nothing at all. The thirty-nine people who died that day in the water died through no fault of their own. They were as innocent as the many millions who die every year of disease and starvation. The many millions more who have died throughout human history in war or been killed in genocidal slaughters. The casualties of fire, water, air. The victims of car accidents, train collisions, and… plane crashes.

And yet still…

Still…

Since the failed ditching in Lake Champlain, you have found yourself pausing as you gaze up at thunderheads and rainbows and at the snow that transforms these leafless trees in Bethel into skeletal sculptures of black and silver and white.

No one has brought up church here in New Hampshire. At least not yet. Everyone did back in West Chester after Flight 1611 broke apart in Lake Champlain. Maybe folks here are more circumspect. Still, it has left you surprised. Apparently, the Congregational church in the village has sparse attendance at best. You noticed few cars in the lot when you drove past it that first Sunday morning on your way to the ski resort. Maybe everyone here goes to the Catholic and Methodist churches in Littleton, or the Baptist one in Twin Mountain.

You shrug and dip the paint roller into the tray once again and resume work on the corner of the kitchen behind the pumpkin pine table and deacon’s bench. The irony that you own a piece of furniture called a deacon’s bench is not lost on you. In your old house, Desdemona would doze on it in the afternoons, when the sun would warm the long cushion. In this new house, the bench sits in a corner unlikely to see much sun, even in June and July. You wonder where the cat will doze now.