Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano - All Fall Down

No matter what it was, Louise got up and hugged her. “Good to see you!” she said.

“Good to be seen,” Vanessa answered. That was such a Colin thing to come out with, it cooled half of Louise’s pleasure at the meeting. But then Vanessa added, “Hi, Mom,” and you couldn’t go very far wrong with that. She eyed James Henry. “So, this is the new kid, huh?”

“This is James Henry,” Louise agreed. As Vanessa sat down, Louise went on, “James Henry, do you know who this is?”

“A lady,” her son said, a fry twitching at the corner of his mouth the way a cigarette would have in Gabe Sanchez’s.

“She’s not just any lady. She’s Vanessa, your big, big sister, the way Marshall is your big, big brother.”

“Oh.” James Henry digested that-and more of the french fry. “Is she gonna babysit me, too?”

“Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see,” Louise answered.

“This is all too bizarre,” Vanessa said. “I come back to SoCal and I’ve got a little brother and a tiny sister. I mean, bizarre.”

“That’s right. Kelly had her baby,” Louise said. “How is she?”

“Kelly’s okay,” Vanessa answered. “The baby is noisy. Like a yowling cat, only more annoying.”

So were you, dear . Before Louise could even think about saying it, the waitress came back. Louise did order the BLT, in memory of lost time. That was the name of a book, a book she hadn’t read. She didn’t suppose she was likely to start it now, either. Vanessa, unburdened by memories of sitting at this table before, chose the fried chicken.

In the end, Louise did ask, “And how are you getting along with Colin’s new wife?”

“Okay, I guess.” By the way Vanessa’s mouth narrowed, it wasn’t all that okay. She went on, “She’s pretty boring, if you want to know what I think. I mean, unless you’re talking about geology or something. And geology doesn’t get my rocks off-not even close.”

Louise needed a second to realize that was a pun. She sent Vanessa a reproachful look. The kids got that kind of bad joke from their father, too. Did that mean James Henry wouldn’t do such horrible things when he got bigger? She could hope so, anyhow.

When the food came, she discovered that the BLT wasn’t just like the one she’d had on that bad day with her ex. That one had been on wheat, before wheat got very scarce indeed. This one came on rye, and not the kind of rye they’d had before the eruption. It was more like chewy flatbread than slices off a proper loaf. It wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely different.

“How’s yours?” she asked Vanessa-the batter coating on the fried chicken wasn’t the color it would have been in the good old days, either.

But her daughter answered, “Hey, it’s fresh food. I’m not gonna complain. After all the MREs I’ve eaten, I bet I’ve got more preservatives in me than the stuffed animals at the museum.”

“Isn’t that something?” Louise said, to cover her own surprise. In her experience, Vanessa could always complain about something or somebody. Maybe the time she’d spent in Camp Constitution had done her some good after all.

Louise knew better than to say anything like that. Vanessa would only indignantly deny it. Vanessa was always sure she was fine the way she was, thankyouverymuch.

So Louise tried, “Had any luck finding a job?” She confidently expected to hear a no; she sure hadn’t had any luck herself. Then they could commiserate, and piss and moan about the miserable state of the world.

But Vanessa answered, “I think so. Looks as though Nick Gorczany wants me back at his widget works.” She added something else, too low for Louise to catch.

“I’m sorry. What was that?” Louise cupped a hand behind her ear. Sure as hell, her hearing was starting to go. She hated that. It was one more sign she was getting old, and off God’s warranty.

Vanessa’s eyes flicked to James Henry. He’d scarfed down his lunch and was busy coloring some more. He couldn’t have cared less. Vanessa repeated herself, a little louder this time: “I said , I didn’t even have to screw him to get him to offer me the job.”

“Oh.” Vanessa sounded uncomfortable, and she was. Said one way, that would have been the kind of sour joke women made when they talked about the pains of living in a world with men in it. But Vanessa hadn’t said it that way, or Louise didn’t think she had. Hesitantly, Louise asked, “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Christ, I wish I were!” her daughter said. Vanessa stabbed at the chicken thigh on her plate as if she were imagining a bigger, sharper knife piercing a different flesh. She chewed savagely and gulped ice water. Just when Louise decided she didn’t intend to go on, she did: “You do what you’ve gotta do, that’s all. We didn’t know how good we had it before the supervolcano erupted, and you can sing that in church, Mom. Life sucks now. Yeah, life sucks, and sometimes we’ve got to do the same goddamn thing.” She looked away, her eyes full of rage.

“Do you. . want to talk about it? To get in touch with your feelings?” Louise had always believed getting in touch with your feelings was the best thing you could possibly do. She sure hadn’t been in touch with hers through most of her marriage to Colin. Once she was, she got away. She got free. She found brand-new love, brand-new delight.

She also found single parenthood in middle age. There sat James Henry, happily coloring away. Well, anything you did in this old world was liable to have consequences. And wasn’t that the sad and sorry truth!

Vanessa shook her head, sharply enough to make Louise sure that gesture, like the way her daughter cut the chicken, was full of suppressed violence. “No, I don’t want to talk about it,” Vanessa answered. “And even if I did, you wouldn’t want to hear about it. Trust me on that one. What I want is to forget it ever happened. But you can’t always get what you want, can you?”

Louise thought of the Stones song. It was an oldie to her. To Vanessa, it would be from as deep in the past as “Stardust” or “Camptown Races.” From before she was born. What could be deeper in the past than that?

“Well, what do you want to talk about?” Louise asked.

Her daughter’s features softened a little. “I’ve got a new boyfriend,” Vanessa said. “This may be the real deal.”

“Tell me about him,” Louise urged. Vanessa had been sure Hagop was the real deal, sure enough to go to Colorado to be with him. Before that, she’d been just as sure about Bryce (since Bryce and Colin had stayed friends, Louise was anything but sure about him). And before Bryce, she’d gone on and on about how she was going to have her high school boyfriend’s babies. What was his handle? Peter, that was it. Louise hadn’t thought about him in years. Colin hadn’t been able to stand him, which made Louise recall him more kindly now.

“His name is Bronislav-Bron, if you have trouble with it. He’s been in the States for close to twenty years. He still has an accent, but his English is really good. He’s got amazing eyes. Eyes like a saint’s in a painting, all big and brown,” Vanessa said.

“What does he do?” Louise asked. St. Bronislav? she wondered, but only to herself. Vanessa had never talked about any of the other men in her life in those terms-for sure she hadn’t.

“He’s a long-haul trucker here, but back in Yugoslavia he was a freedom fighter,” her daughter said.

A freedom fighter is a terrorist we like . Louise could hear Colin’s voice inside her head. He’d probably been talking back to some politician or other jerk on the TV when he said that. She didn’t quote him to Vanessa. For one thing, she would rather have passed a kidney stone. For another, even if she had wanted to do any such thing, her daughter wouldn’t have listened. She didn’t need to be Henry Kissinger to understand that much about diplomacy.