Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano - All Fall Down

James Henry found another question with sharp teeth: “How come Marshall doesn’t come around and watch me any more? He’s silly!”

“He is silly,” Louise agreed. “He doesn’t watch you so much any more because he did that while I went to my job. I haven’t been able to do that for a while now.”

“Why?” James Henry asked-the little kid’s favorite comeback.

“Because the company I worked for wasn’t making as much money as it wanted to, and so it didn’t need as many people as it had before. And I was one of the ones it let go.”

“Why?” he asked again.

“I don’t know,” Louise answered, which was the Lord’s truth. How much of all this he understood was liable to be a different question altogether. Talking about money with a preschooler was much too much like getting up on a stump in Peru and spouting Estonian.

Sure as hell, he just looked at her-looked at her with Teo’s dark eyes. She was his mother. She was Mommy . Of course she knew everything. That was a law of nature, same as the sun coming up every morning and going down every evening. It was a law of nature if you hadn’t started kindergarten yet, anyhow.

Tears stung Louise’s eyes. If only the world really worked that way! Mm-hmm, if only. When you looked at it from the far side of fifty, you wondered if you truly understood even one single goddamn thing. And the older you got, the less likely it seemed. She’d been sure about Colin. Then she’d been sure about Teo. Then. . At least then she’d had a job, for Christ’s sake.

Now. . Now she wasn’t sure of anything, and she didn’t have a job or much else. “Shit.” Her lips shaped the word again-silently, she thought. James Henry giggled, anyhow. Either she hadn’t been silent enough or he could read lips. Both possibilities made her want to go Shit one more time, but she didn’t. She fixed herself a drink instead.

* * *

Kelly’d got past the worst part of the pregnancy. She didn’t fall asleep if you looked at her sideways. She didn’t work at random times any more, either. They called it morning sickness, but what did they know? It had got her whenever it felt like getting her, as when those egg yolks started staring up at her so malevolently.

She wasn’t quite out to there yet, either, out to where she just wanted to have the kid and get it over with. It was going to be a girl. She and Colin were going to name it Deborah. You couldn’t go far wrong with a name from the Bible-well, not unless you picked something like Jezebel or Habakkuk. So thought Kelly, who didn’t have that kind of name, and Colin hadn’t argued with her. They didn’t argue much, which Kelly took as one more good sign.

She should have been happy, in other words. And she had been happy, right up till that dusty Toyota pulled up in front of the house and Vanessa got out.

She won’t stay for long, Kelly told herself. She kept telling herself, over and over. She won’t stay for long . Vanessa prided herself on making her own way. She couldn’t make her own way out of here soon enough to suit Kelly.

She didn’t know what the trouble was between the two of them. She believed that the first time it crossed her mind, anyhow. The first time, yes. Not the second. By then, she’d worked out what was going on-not what to do about it, but what it was.

She was a dog and Vanessa was a cat. It was about that simple. Kelly liked cats. But when you weren’t one and when you ran into somebody who was. . Life got more interesting than you really wanted it to.

Vanessa was younger than she was, prettier than she was, more graceful than she was. She’d been on the road for a while. She was grubby and looked tired as she walked up to the door. Kelly opened it. Vanessa looked at her and said, “Oh. You must be Kelly.”

In another tone of voice, or without that flat Oh , it would have been fine. As things were, Kelly’s hackles rose. She still didn’t know what they were, but, whatever they were, up they went, all right. “Uh-huh,” she said, her own voice colder than post-eruption winter at the South Pole. “Come in.” She had to make herself get out of the way so Vanessa could.

Once past the front foyer, Vanessa looked around. “It’s. . different,” she said, as if that should have been a hanging offense on the off chance it wasn’t.

“Yes. It is.” Kelly hadn’t known she could sound any chillier. She surprised herself, because she had no trouble at all. The decor everywhere but in Colin’s study had still been Louise’s when she started hanging out with him. The front room didn’t look like a rummage sale in a Russian Orthodox monastery any more.

“Well. .” Vanessa had said, and then, “It’s better than Camp Constitution, anyhow.” By the way she said it, it wasn’t one hell of a lot better than the enormous refugee camp.

“Thanks,” Kelly’d answered. “If it doesn’t suit you, I’m sure you can find a motel.” She knew that was a mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Too late then, of course. Things would have been bad enough even without a formal declaration of hostilities. Now? Now they’d be worse than bad enough.

“Where will you put me?” Vanessa had asked. It wasn’t No fucking way I’m going to a motel, lady , but it might as well have been.

“One of the upstairs bedrooms. Colin says it used to be yours a long time ago.” Stressing the last four words, Kelly’d hit back.

“Oh, boy. Back to high school,” Vanessa had muttered.

If they hadn’t already got on bad terms, Kelly would have forgiven her that one. Having to move back into your parents’ house was every grown American child’s nightmare. As things were, Kelly wasn’t in a slack-cutting mood. “Come on up, why don’t you?” she’d asked tonelessly.

Marshall was clacking away down the hall, behind a closed door. Eyeing the yellow tape on the door-POLICE LINE! DO NOT CROSS! — Vanessa’d curled her lip. “My God, hasn’t he changed at all?” she’d said.

“You’d know better than I would.” Kelly had knocked on Marshall’s door.

The clacking stopped. “What?” Marshall had sounded irritable, or as irritable as he ever sounded. He didn’t like getting interrupted while he was writing.

This was a special occasion, though, or Kelly thought it was. “Your sister’s home,” she’d answered.

After a few seconds, Marshall had said, “Cool.” He’d started typing again. Kelly wondered if he was ripped. She didn’t smell weed in the hallway. As far as she knew, he didn’t smoke much while he was working. He saved it for other times.

Vanessa’d looked ready to detonate. Again, even not liking her much, Kelly’d had trouble blaming her for that. But after a sentence-two at the most-the typing had stopped once more.

Out came Marshall. He’d nodded to Kelly, then (and only then) to Vanessa. “Hey,” he said to his sister.

“Hello, you big lunk. It is good to see you,” Vanessa answered. “So you finally graduated, did you?”

“’Fraid so,” Marshall admitted ruefully. He’d staved off the evil day as long as he could, till UC Santa Barbara requirements and Colin’s unwillingness to write any more tuition checks at last conspired to cast him forth into the real world.

“And?” Vanessa’d asked. Kelly was impressed at how much snark she could pack into a single word.

By the way Marshall’s eyebrow had twitched, so was he, and not favorably, either. “And so I’m back in San Atanasio instead of up at UCSB,” he’d replied. With a certain snarkiness of his own, he’d added, “You’re here, too.”

“Only till I find somewhere else,” Vanessa declared.

“Job market’s a little tough around here right now,” Marshall said. “Ask Mom if you don’t believe me.”