Сара Пинскер - Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea - Stories

A group of reporters camps near us, their vans circled like covered wagons, their giant antennae piercing the sky. Occasionally one approaches us, but we don’t speak to them. It takes just a few minutes to discover the one who tries to infiltrate our group. Her details are wrong. She refers to “the baby,” not “my baby.” Her eyes aren’t haunted. When we ask her to leave, she smirks. I guess that she recorded us, and I wonder what she captured.

A woman arrives on foot. It’s unclear where she walked from, but her face blisters with sunburn. Heat radiates from her skin, even this long after nightfall. We lay her on the cool sand and pour a slow trickle of water into her cracked lips.

“Do you need a doctor? Medico?” Someone asks.

She shakes her head and points toward the dark sea. “Mijo.”

She is one of us.

I sleep dreamless on the damp sand. I’m wakened by a familiar hand, a familiar voice. I curl into Taya for a moment before I realize where I am.

“What are you doing here?” My throat is scratchy and sore from sleeping outdoors.

“I could ask you the same fucking thing.”

I hear the betrayal in her voice. Ordinarily, I would hate to be the cause of that hurt.

“How did you get here?” I ask.

“I sold the car to pay for a ticket. We’ll have to figure that out when we get back. Come on, babe. Let’s go get breakfast or something.” She holds out her hand to help me stand.

I shake my head. “I can’t go anywhere. Not without her.”

She rocks back on her heels.

“I would leave if I could, Tay. But I need to be here when they—”

“When they what? You’re acting crazy. What are we doing here?”

I wrap my arms around my knees and look out at the ocean. The children sit on the rocks, watching us. She’s right, but it doesn’t matter. I ought to leave. I can’t leave. I still can’t explain.

She sits down next to me. “Okay, if you’re staying, I’m staying, too. We’re both going to get fired, but we’ve got no way to get home and no way to get to work, so we’re screwed either way. But you’re still with me, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say. I don’t tell her I’ve already been fired. I know I should put an arm around her, but I don’t. I’m glad she’s here, but I wish she wasn’t.

The others stir and turn to face the water, to check that they are still out there.

“They’re talking about you on the news, you know.” Taya doesn’t look at me when she speaks. Her eyes are on the children, as ours are.

“Me? What are they saying?”

“Not you specifically. All of you. They’re calling it ‘mass hallucination.’”

“Hallucination? But they can see them too, right? Our babies were on TV.”

She winces when I say “our babies,” and doesn’t speak for a moment. When she does, her words are carefully chosen. “We see them. But nobody but you claims to recognize them. They’ve been taking photos of them since they showed up, comparing the photos to databases, missing persons, driver’s licenses. None of them are anybody.”

“Of course they’re not,” says the man sitting on Taya’s other side. I had spoken with him the previous evening; he had flown down from Vancouver. Mark somebody. “Why would they match your databases? They aren’t lost. We’ve been waiting for them to find us again.”

Taya sneaks me a look of “this guy is nuts.” How many times has it been me and her against the rest of the world? I know it hurts her when I take his side. If he’s crazy, I am, too. I don’t feel crazy. “What else are they saying, Tay?”

“There are only about two hundred and fifty children out there. There are more than three hundred of you on the shore, and more still arriving. There are people at airports all over the world screaming that they need to get over here, but a lot of them don’t have visas, or any way to pay for tickets. Some of us are throwing off the count, though. Me, I mean. For example.”

Mark doesn’t mince words. “Why don’t you leave, then? We don’t need you here.”

“I’m glad she’s here. I’m glad you’re here.” I direct the second one at her.

“So she can call us all crazy? There aren’t enough people doing that.” I guess he caught her “crazy” look at me a moment before.

“Maybe so she can explain that we’re not.”

He stands up in pretext of a stretch, then moves away.

“Asshole,” I say. Taya smiles.

A few more of us arrive, from much farther away. One woman came from Namibia via Johannesburg, Dakar, Amsterdam, New York. She braces in the sand as if she’s still on an airplane. Others from Belize, Iceland, Sri Lanka. Some of the wealthier among us have arranged for food and water to be brought to us. I’m grateful. The sight of food reminds me to eat, but I’m not hungry. The children on the rocks haven’t eaten. They look happy.

Taya leaves after three days. “I love you,” she says. “I love you and I’m worried about you. I would stay, but we can’t afford for me to lose my job, too. And I think this is something you need to finish for yourself.”

I kiss her. I want her to stay, but not as much as I want her to leave.

“I love you, too. I’ll see you soon,” I tell her. She turns away with tears in her eyes. Things we don’t mention: I have no return ticket; I have no money for a return ticket; I am waiting for my dream baby; I don’t know what happens next.

After she leaves, I find a note from her in my pocket. It reads:

1. The California ground squirrel disguises its own scent by chewing the discarded skins of the rattlesnakes that would kill it, then licking itself and its pups.

2. The cuckoo is a brood parasite. It lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, leaving them to do the hard work of raising the chicks.

3. I do not consider myself an unreasonable person. I make rational decisions in my everyday life. You do, too. We make reasonable, rational decisions together. Come back soon. Please. I miss you.

I fold the note up and put it back where I found it.

We are there for a full week before the children finally leave the rocks. Our numbers have dwindled by then, but only somewhat. A couple of people have been dragged away forcibly. Others have been persuaded by their loved ones to return home. They don’t go willingly, but they go. I wonder what the rest of their lives will be like: if they will always wonder if they had stayed. I guess that depends on what happens next.

What happens next is the children dive into the water. We track their progress with whispered pleas, under breath. I am taken in.

“Come on,” we call to them. “We miss you.”

I realize my child doesn’t have a name. It’s the first thing that gives me pause in any of this. How am I here, in California, calling to somebody I am so sure is my own child, but I can’t say her name? I think she had one. She may have had many. It bothers me how I can’t remember.

Memories of my baby’s childhood flood through me. Her third birthday party, with the cake shaped like a rabbit; she refused to let me cut it. Her school play, where she played a queen and wouldn’t take off the crown for a week afterward. Looking for shapes in the perfect O’Keeffe clouds. I wonder how these memories will reconcile with the girl swimming toward me now. Will she be eight for me again? Did those things happen, or are they yet to happen? I don’t even know if she’ll recognize me.

I put my hand in my pocket and feel the folded note. I’m not sure what Taya meant, not sure if I’m the squirrel, the snake, the cuckoo, the other bird. I want to go back to the minute before I had that thought. I try to picture how she’ll fold into our life back home. How will Taya treat her? What will they be to each other? We don’t even have a second bedroom. None of this was thought through. None of it was meant for thinking.