Maureen McHugh - After the Apocalypse

It’s true that we are free to do whatever we want, even go to France on a whim. We can make any choice we want. We can do anything we want. We just have to not care about consequences.

I didn’t care about consequences, but at about seven, I knew I wasn’t going to France. I didn’t say anything to anyone, not even Brian, who I knew was going. I could tell that several other people weren’t going. We just weren’t. We didn’t have the Going to France look anymore. I stopped at the ticket counter on my way out and explained to them that I wasn’t going and that I didn’t have any luggage so they wouldn’t think since I didn’t get on the plane that there was some terrorist threat. I didn’t want the people like Brian to be delayed. I canceled my ticket, even though it was nonrefundable. Maybe someone else could go. I got in my car and went home.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t go to France, it was just that I wasn’t. Maybe it had worn off. Maybe I had caught a mild case from the fliers, but it hadn’t lasted. I didn’t know. I felt kind of sad. When I got home, I didn’t want to go in my house.

I left my bag in my car and started walking to my mother’s house. My mother lived in the same house she had since I was ten, a little brick ranch. It was a couple of miles away and I had never walked there before because I had to cross several major streets. But that night, I walked. My neighborhood is full of old split-levels and even smaller houses, like mine, which only has two bedrooms and no basement. As I walked farther, I went through a neighborhood full of newer, bigger, two-story homes. One of the houses, which was brick on the bottom half and siding on the top, now had a huge clock in the side of it. The clock was set in a huge wave of metal, shining pink in the setting sun. I went this way to the grocery, and the house had never had a clock in it before. It was big, with an ornate hour and minute hand and no numbers, just an ivory face with a design like ivy down near where the seven would have been. But the siding around the clock had been changed into some substance like porcelain that rose and swirled, organic. Suburbia has always struck me as a little strange, but before it had been a boring, overly sincere falseness, and it was as if that clock was about a different suburbia full of beautiful manmade things, full of artifice.

I thought about my mother’s house, walking through the darkness. When I got there, it would be the end of the day and maybe I’d have a daiquiri or a Manhattan, and maybe my mother would have one with me. I didn’t really know if I wanted a drink, but it was a kind of punctuation on the day.

I was at an intersection; traffic lights, four lanes wide plus turn lanes in all directions, waiting to cross, maybe only half a mile from my mother’s house. A dry cleaner, a drug store, buildings all pressed close to the street without much space between them. A Ford pickup was stopped at the light in one direction. The sky was dark but still glowed purple and luminous the way it will some nights, especially before a tornado. A young unkempt guy with a beard sprinted across the light, and an SUV coming around the corner fast lost it trying to avoid him and went up on two wheels as it started to roll over and everything froze in place. I could see the underside of the SUV, all that car stuff of struts and differentials and muffler and catalytic converter. I looked around. Time wasn’t stopped. The DON’T WALK light was flashing, and although things were frozen, it was imperfect, and after a moment, like the moment of a held breath, the truck floored it and went through the intersection past the frozen tumbling SUV. The guy running had only one foot on the ground, but his raised left foot wiggled back and forth on his ankle, as if he was finding his way to movement. A big orange sneaker, with a big white toe, waggling.

I looked at it all and I knew it was all right. It was only just beginning.

I was an aggravated bride. It was a little after one in the morning, I guess. We were supposed to be on our way to the Hampton Inn in Columbus for our wedding night. I was aggravated a lot with Chris, but never this aggravated before. I was walking back toward Lancaster on Route 33, glad that for the reception I had changed into a pair of white canvas sneakers with sequins that my cousin Linda had decorated for the wedding. I knew that I wouldn’t want to wear heels all night. I’m a big girl, and I wasn’t going to miss dancing at my own reception because my feet hurt too bad. But I was still wearing my wedding dress and my veil.

Chris was in his F-150 pickup, driving slow so he could keep asking me to get in the truck. You wouldn’t think there were that many cars on Route 33 at that time of the morning, but there were, and they kept slowing down and carefully passing. Some guy called out the window, “I’ll give you a ride, honey!”

I gave him the finger.

“Please, please get in the truck, Kayla,” Chris said.

I wasn’t talking to him. Usually when I got angry, I started crying, which always loses you any sort of chance you have of making a point. But I was so mad that night, I never even shed a tear.

“I’m sorry. Baby, I’m sorry, I’ll make it up to you,” Chris said.

I couldn’t stand that. “Just how are you going to make it up to me?” I said. “How are you going to give me back my wedding night?”

He looked at me with big puppy eyes and said, “Don’t be like that, Kayla.”

It had been a really nice wedding. I saved the money. My dad’s on disability, so I wasn’t going to ask him for it. I’m an assistant manager at McDonald’s, and I’d taken a second job working for Allwood Florists. All last fall I had made Christmas ornaments—wooden soldiers and Santas and reindeer. I sold them at craft shows. The biggest sellers were dog bone ornaments that I would personalize with the dog’s name. I worked my butt off. Marty at Allwood gave me an employee rate for my wedding flowers; red roses and lilies. I got my dress in Pennsylvania, because if you’re from out of state you don’t have to pay sales tax. I spent a hundred and forty dollars on my hair, having it highlighted. I went to the tanning salon—my dress showed off my shoulders, which are one of my best features. I really did look the best I have ever looked. And the reception went pretty good. A lot of people didn’t stay, but a few people stayed until midnight.

I was really proud of the job I did. Chris had gotten a roofing job for his neighbor in June and said he would put the seven hundred dollars he earned toward our honeymoon. He wanted to take care of it. I gave him the money I had and he said he’d taken care of it. We were going to Cancun even though everyone said it was too hot in August. But I’d never been to another country. So we were supposed to go to Columbus, spend the night, and then catch our flight in the morning.

Except that while we were on our way to Columbus, Chris told me that he hadn’t actually taken care of it.

“Don’t be mad, Kayla,” he said. “Listen to me first.”

He and Felter and Carnegie had gone up to Windsor in June, right after the roofing job. I knew that. I figured that after we got married he wouldn’t be able to hang out with his friends as much and besides, I was working all the time anyway, paying for the wedding. They were playing blackjack and he won a bunch a money. “Almost six hundred dollars!” he said. “I was gonna use it on our honeymoon. I thought I was on a roll, you know?”

Chris was looking at me. He has really cute blue eyes. Usually I can’t believe that a heavy girl like me got someone like Chris.

“So what happened,” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I know, but you know, I can’t explain it. I wanted to win big. I wanted to get the honeymoon suite, you know? You worked so hard—”