Laura Kasischke - In a Perfect World

“I just want you home,” Jiselle said. “I don’t care about the money.”

“Of course you don’t care,” Mark said.

Jiselle was about to object—she felt a warmth spreading across her chest as though a hot soaked cloth had been placed there—but by the time she finally was able to open her mouth to speak, Mark said, “This is it. They’re here. Gotta go,” and hung up.

Jiselle did the laundry outside in the rain barrel and hung it on the line Paul had stretched for her between the deck and a tree at the end of the yard. That chore alone could sometimes take an entire afternoon before Jiselle even realized how long she’d been outside. The ravine seemed empty and completely quiet behind her as she twisted the shirts and socks until they were dry enough to hang. Occasionally, Beatrice might waddle up out of the ravine for a surprise midday visit.

The grass, which they’d had to let grow since the mower ran out of gas, had grown a foot in only a few weeks. Returned to what must have been an earlier, wilder state, there were long pale grasses mixed in with the green ones, and wildflowers Jiselle didn’t know the names of—orange, ruffled cups swaying on thin stems, delicate white frills, purple beads and pearls on long straw-colored stalks—mixed in with those.

Now it was very unusual to see a plane, and when she did, it was almost always a military jet flying fast and high. The trees and sky seemed strangely empty even of birds. It was only the end of July. Could they have flown south early this year?

There had been news reports of dead birds, numbering into the hundreds, in yards and parks and in the streets of Chicago, but Jiselle had found, a few weeks before, only a single dead sparrow—a soft gray ball of feathers—in the backyard. One of its wings looked broken, spread out at a strange angle, and there was blood on its breast.

A cat?

She took a shovel out of the garage and buried the sparrow at the edge of the ravine.

The rodents, like the birds, seemed to have fled. Every morning, Sam’s traps were empty, and he and Jiselle never saw mice or rats on their walks into the ravine any longer. Their absence was not reassuring. Jiselle felt more abandoned by their disappearance than relieved.

It was one of so many disconcerting things. Wave after wave of disastrous statistics on the news were being made human now by a few familiar faces:

Donald Trump’s son. Brad Pitt’s brother. The woman who’d founded Mrs. Fields cookies, and her entire family.

All of these cases proved what they’d already been telling people for months—that no amount of money, specialized medicine, private planes, or island hideaways could spare you.

The Fieldses, it was said, had retreated together to a house in Idaho, thinking it was an escape from the infected areas with higher populations—but they were found there by a UPS man delivering blankets, which they’d had shipped to them from Denmark because they were unwilling to use blankets that had spent any significant amount of time within U.S. borders.

“These people did everything ‘right,’” a man who was identified by a caption on the television as “Health Expert” said, making elaborate quotation marks in the air, raising his bushy eyebrows knowingly, “which goes to show that you can’t flee from a virus that’s already circulating in your body. People need to keep themselves fit, mind their nutrition, and stay close to health experts who can help them at the first sign of illness.”

But the story that completely eclipsed the others was “A Mother, a Saint, in Maine.”

In Portland a mother of four had left a note on the kitchen table that read, “I know I have the Phoenix flu. I’m going away until it’s passed, so I won’t infect you.”

Her husband and children and the local authorities had mounted a massive search. They’d posted flyers and bought a billboard on the interstate: MOMMY. WE NEED YOU TO COME HOME. WE LOVE YOU. PLEASE. But she was found dead and alone a few days later by a maid at a Holiday Inn in Concord, New Hampshire—her bed surrounded by photos of her family.

Now the family was suing the local authorities because they’d had her remains cremated before the family had a chance to identify her, to say goodbye.

That night, on the couch in the dark, Sam was a warm weight at her side, his head on her shoulder, and Jiselle could feel both the steadiness of his breath and the depth of his concentration. The flashlight was a bright zero on the page they were reading together. His hair was a little longer now, and it tickled the side of her face. Occasionally she’d rub her cheek against the top of his head. He snuggled closer to her when she did.

At the same time there came in the door the funny old man who lived all alone on the top floor of the house—

As if on cue, there was a knock on the front door.

Sam and Jiselle both sat up fast, and Jiselle instinctively snapped the flashlight off and let the book fall closed on her lap. She was surprised to find her heart beating hard. She’d told everyone—Bobby and Paul Temple, Mark, her mother, the children, Annette, Brad Schmidt—that she wasn’t scared in the house, in the dark, alone with the children, without a gun, and she’d believed it.

But now she couldn’t move.

Sam whispered, “Who could it be?”

Jiselle shook her head. She put her finger to her lips. Another knock. Three times. More insistent. She felt every muscle in her body tense, as if her limbs were ready to take action, whether or not her mind agreed to it. A host of images flashed in front of her: Throwing herself over Sam to shield him. The ravine. Thrashing with his hand in hers through the brush and trees. The girls, in their nightgowns, running ahead of them. She wished that her feet weren’t bare, that Sam was wearing long pants and sleeves, that the girls did not sleep so deeply. She’d just begun to form the terrible question of how loudly she would have to scream to wake them, and felt herself inhale, and sensed the instinctive, welcome rush of what could only have been called courage beginning at the base of her brain, readying her to stand, to make some kind of decision, although only her body knew yet what that decision would be, when a voice she recognized as Diane Schmidt’s called through the crack in the door, which she had opened, because Jiselle hadn’t even locked it, “I am a little old woman.”

“Mrs. Schmidt!” Jiselle said, opening the door all the way. “What is it?”

“I am a little old woman,” Mrs. Schmidt said again. She was wearing a white nightgown.

“Oh, dear,” Jiselle said. “I’ll go find your husband. You stay here with Sam.”

As Jiselle ran across the yard to the Schmidts’ house, she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering suddenly, although she wasn’t cold. The moon lit up the backyard, and she hurried up the back steps, holding her flashlight in front of her. She knocked on the door. “Mr. Schmidt? Mr. Schmidt? Brad? ”

There was no answer. Jiselle tried to look through the screen door and the kitchen window, but the shades were drawn, the curtains pulled. There were no lights on inside. Maybe he was asleep. She knocked harder on the door, and then stood waiting on the steps. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called to the window, “Mr. Schmidt?”

Certainly, if he were in there, he would have heard her by then. But still there was no answer.

She turned the knob on the back door.

It was unlocked.

She pushed it all the way open and stood in the threshold.

“Hello?” she called to the darkness, shining her flashlight into the tidy kitchen before stepping in.

Jiselle had never entered the Schmidts’ house from the back door before. With her flashlight, she could make out checkerboard curtains on the windows. The cupboards were painted pastel green. There was a throw rug with a rooster embroidered on it beneath a Formica table. A little yellow rag was folded neatly over the edge of the sink. Jiselle walked through the kitchen toward the hallway that led to the living room, leaving the back door open behind her.