Susan Pfeffer - This World We Live In

“Do you want me to ask Matt if you could borrow some of his clothes?” I asked. Why should I be the only naked one in the house?

“That would be great, thank you,” Alex said. “It’s just for a few days, until Julie’s rested up enough.”

“There’s no rush,” I said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Alex looked around my room. “You have a lot of books,” he said.

“Not that many,” I said. “And I’ve read all of them three times by now.”

“I miss reading,” he said, taking my copy of Pride and Prejudice off the shelf. “I miss learning useless things. Latin. Calculus.”

“I miss friends,” I said. “Friends. Family. Food. The three Fs.” I smiled, but Alex didn’t smile back.

“I miss home,” he said. “And the feeling you got in a library carrel, like nothing in the world mattered except the book you were reading.” He put Pride and Prejudice back on the shelf. “I miss pride. The sin of pride.”

“I don’t think it’s a sin to be proud,” I said, looking at my skating trophies. “Not if you’ve worked to achieve your goal.”

Alex shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s different for you. You work to keep your house clean, and you take pride in how it looks. That’s not what I mean.”

It annoyed me that Alex thought my only accomplishment in life was in the war against ash. “I take pride in lots of things,” I said. “Like how my family has come together. How we’ve fought to keep alive. To keep our hopes alive. I take a lot of pride in that. Do you think that’s a sin?”

“No, of course not,” Alex said. “But that’s not the kind of pride I’m talking about.”

“Oh,” I said. “You mean like vanity. Being proud because you’re good-looking or rich.”

“That’s not it exactly, either,” Alex said.

“Then what is it?” I asked.

He gazed out my window, at the perpetually gray landscape. “All right,” he said. “Maybe you’ll understand better if I tell you about the coin jar. We had to pay for our school uniforms, so my mother kept a coin jar. Every day we emptied our pockets and whatever change we had went into the jar. One day she caught my father taking out a handful of quarters. He was short on beer money. She went crazy. It was the worst fight I ever saw them have. My mother had ambitions for us. Every penny we saved was important to her.” He paused for a moment. “My father picked up the coin jar and threw it across the room. The coins flew all over. My mother got down on her hands and knees to pick up the change, but my brother, Carlos, shoved me onto the floor. It was my fault, he said. I was the one they were fighting over.”

“That must have been awful,” I said. Mom and Dad at their worst always let us know we weren’t to blame for their problems.

“I vowed I would never feel shame again,” Alex said. “But the shame wasn’t because my parents fought over me. It was the shame of crawling on the floor, sweeping pennies and nickels into a pile to pay for clothes other kids took for granted. The next day I got a job, started working wherever I could, finally got regular work at a pizza parlor. I paid for my own uniforms after that and my books, too. No more coin jar. My mother found some other way to pay for my sister’s uniforms. And I felt proud. Proud I was smart. Proud that people noticed me, respected me. Proud that I was ambitious. Proud that I was too good to end up like my parents. And now I beg for clean clothes for my sister. I beg for every bite of food we eat.”

“You don’t have to beg here,” I said. “We’re happy to share.”

“No one is happy to share,” he said.

Alex looked down then or I looked up. I don’t know how it happened, but we made eye contact, and for a moment I was drawn into his soul. I could see everything, the depth of his sorrow, his anger, his despair.

I feel sorrow and anger and despair. I don’t think there’s a person alive who doesn’t. I sometimes feel like my sorrow and anger and despair burn inside me the way the sun used to burn on a hot July day.

But that was nothing compared to what I sensed in Alex. His sorrow, his anger, his despair was like a thousand suns, like a galaxy of suns. It physically hurt me to look into his eyes, but I couldn’t break away. He turned his head first, and then he apologized, or maybe he thanked me. For Alex I think they’re the same thing.

He bolted out of the room, leaving me to stare at my bookcase and think about the sin of pride and the sin of prejudice and all the other sins I’d left behind.

Dad and I biked into town today to talk to Mr. Danworth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dad on a bike before, although I remember showing off to him when I rode a two-wheeler for the first time.

I’d thought it would be great having some time alone with Dad. We haven’t had any since he got back, and there was so much I wanted to tell him and so much I wanted him to tell me. But the weather was awful. Not raining, but cold with a harsh wind blowing in our faces. March weather in June.

Maybe it was better we couldn’t have a father/daughter talk, because by the time we got to City Hall to pick up our food and talk to Mr. Danworth, Dad was in full Bob Nesbitt mode.

“My wife and I didn’t know what to expect,” Dad said after he introduced himself. “Of course we hadn’t heard from Mom, but you can’t give up hope. And it is a miracle of sorts we’re alive. Our home in San Diego is gone, but we were visiting Sally’s brother, Charlie, when it all happened. There we were in Susanville. We would have stayed there, except for Mom. I was worried about her living on her own, with only Laura Evans and her kids looking in on her. So I convinced my wife and Charlie we needed to make our way east, and that turned out to be a miracle, too, since we were out of range of the volcanoes once they started erupting. Then on Christmas Day we had our third miracle when our baby, Gabriel, was born.”

“How many in your family, did you say?” Mr. Danworth asked, which I figured was a good sign.

“Five, not including Gabriel,” Dad said. “Although Sally needs extra food because she’s nursing. There’s Sally and me and our two older ones, Alex and Julie, and Sally’s brother, Charlie. Alex and Julie are amazing kids, the best a father could dream of. Alex is so bright. Well, when all this is over with, I know he’ll go on to college. And Julie’s been a second mother to the baby. Every day I look at them and I thank God for all my blessings.”

I felt really strange hearing Dad say all that. No, that’s a lie. I didn’t feel strange. I felt sick to my stomach. Not because I had to stand there and nod like it was all true, but because in a funny way it is all true. Dad may have only known Alex and Julie for a couple of months, but there’s a connectedness he doesn’t have with us anymore. You can see it in the way he looks at them, the way he seems to absorb everything Alex says or the way he smiles at Julie. He’s that way with Charlie, too. It’s like they’re all members of the same secret society, which no one else can join.

So when Mr. Danworth asked me if what Dad said was true and I said yes, it wasn’t as much of a lie as it might have been. Not that I could ever explain that to Mom, or to anyone else. Jon wouldn’t understand anyway, and Matt would understand a little too well.

“I suppose you folks are entitled to food,” Mr. Danworth said. “Of course we can’t give you any until next Monday, so you’re on your own till then. And I can’t guarantee any for your brother-in-law or extra for your wife. What we give you comes out of everybody else’s. It’s not like we call the government and say there are five more people in town so send us accordingly.”