Susan Pfeffer - This World We Live In

The guys celebrated the day by chopping firewood. Mom made her regular inspection of our food supplies. Gabriel, I suppose, cried, and Lisa most likely hovered around him.

Syl doesn’t eat breakfast. She says she never did and she doesn’t see any point starting now. This, of course, drives Mom crazy, but good mother-in-law that she is, she keeps her opinion about breakfast being the most important meal of the day to herself.

So when everyone was busy and Syl was hiding in Matt’s bedroom, I went up to talk with her. Which I’ve hardly done since I’ve come back, and which, frankly, I wouldn’t want to do except there was something I had to ask her.

I knocked on the door and told Syl it was me and she said to come in. She was lying on the sofa-bed mattress, covered with blankets even though the electric heater was going full blast.

“I’m never warm enough,” she said. “Except in the sunroom with the woodstove.”

“You could come downstairs,” I pointed out.

“I will later,” she said.

I looked at her and thought about how she’d let Horton out to die, and then I told myself not to think about that, because there was a chance Syl knew something that could help Alex and Julie. “There was something you said once,” I began. “About truck drivers.”

“What about them?” she asked, propping herself up with her elbow.

“You said they stopped sometimes when they were going to safe towns,” I said. “And picked people up.”

“Girls,” Syl said. “They never stopped for guys. And they never did on the way to safe towns. The trucks would be filled with supplies then. On the way back they might stop for a girl.”

“Did they ever stop for you?” I asked.

“What business is that of yours?” she said.

“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I was wondering if one of them told you where he’d come from, where the safe town was. That’s all.”

“No,” Syl said. “They knew better than to talk. They could lose their jobs if they told anyone where the safe towns are located.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry if I bothered you.”

“Sit down,” she said. “I hate the way you’re standing there, glaring at me.”

“I’m not glaring,” I said, but I did as she said and sat on the mattress by her side.

“It doesn’t matter where any of the safe towns are,” Syl said. “None of us could get in. We’re not important enough. They’re for politicians, people like that.”

Syl and Lisa have gotten pretty close. If Dad had told Lisa about the passes, Lisa would have told Syl. Dad must have kept that knowledge to himself, figuring it would upset Lisa. I had to be careful I didn’t let Syl know why I was asking.

“It’s stupid,” I said. “I thought maybe because Mom is a writer, we could get in. That’s all. I remembered you mentioned them, so I thought I’d ask if you knew where one is. But you don’t, and I’m sorry I bothered you.”

For the first time since I’ve known her, Syl looked uncomfortable. “Look,” she said. “There are things I’ve told Matt and things I haven’t, but the only reason I haven’t is because he hates hearing about them. All right? I’m not ashamed of anything I did. I’m alive and I’m here because of what I did. Matt knows that. He accepts that. But he doesn’t like the details.”

“I won’t tell Matt,” I said. “I swear.”

“Scout’s honor?” Syl asked, and then she laughed. “All right. I believe you. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I was in an evac camp. This was, I don’t know, maybe a year ago. Pretty early on. The camps have guards, military police, young guys mostly. And one of them had gotten his hands on some bottles of vodka, so he and his buddies decided to party. Which they did with some of us girls. We left the camp and broke into an empty house and had a good time.” She paused. “It was important to keep the guards happy. If one of them liked you, you might get extra food or a blanket.”

I understood why Matt didn’t want to hear any of this. And I started to understand why Alex and Carlos were so desperate to protect Julie.

“There were lots of girls at the camp,” Syl continued. “The guards had their pick, so you did whatever they asked and you tried to make them feel important, like they were the star quarterback and you were head cheerleader.”

“Matt isn’t like that,” I said.

“No,” Syl said. “Matt isn’t anything like that. Neither is Hal or Charlie or Alex. The guards wouldn’t have been like that, either, probably, if things hadn’t changed. But things did change, so they were full of themselves, and if you wanted some extra food, you acted like they were the greatest people on Earth. They loved reminding you how powerful they were.

“We were all a little bit drunk that night, and they started bragging about how many people they’d killed. Then they started talking about the first time they’d killed someone. And one of the guys said the first time he’d killed people was when he’d been assigned to clear out a college to make it a safe town. It was funny, he said, because it was Sexton University and he’d applied there and been rejected, and there he was, shooting professors who were resisting. I said I hope he got the dean of admissions, and he laughed.”

“How can you remember the name,” I asked, “if you were drunk?”

“I wasn’t that drunk,” Syl said. “And I was still trying out different names, so I thought about Anne Sexton, only Anne is pretty dull and you can’t call yourself Sex. So I went with Sylvia Plath instead. I like her more anyway.”

I had no idea who she was talking about but it didn’t matter. “Did the guard say where it was?” I asked. “Sexton University?”

Syl shook her head. “He’d said too much as it was,” she said. “The next day I heard the girls who’d been at the party were being rounded up and put in a holding pen. I left before they found me.”

“But if you knew the name, couldn’t you have found it?” I asked.

“I didn’t care where it was,” she said. “I was trying to make my way east to see if any of my family was still alive. Which they weren’t.”

“You have family now,” I said.

“That’s what Matt tells me,” she said.

There was nothing I could say to that, except to ask Syl not to tell anyone I’d been asking. I didn’t want Mom to find out, I said. Syl agreed.

And now I’m in my closet, writing all this down, trying to figure out how to find out where Sexton University is and what to do if I can find out.

I have no idea how many colleges there are in the United States, or how many there were, because for all I know now there aren’t any. But Dad used to work at Denning College, so I figured there was at least a chance he’d heard of Sexton University and might know where it was.

The only problem was I’d have to give him an explanation why I was asking. It’s not like I could say, “Well, I’m thinking about applying there next year because I’ve always wanted to go to a school named for Anne Sexton, whoever she is.”

I have a feeling he’d believe me more if I said I always wanted to go to a school that had Sex in its name, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe there are still colleges out there, but unless they’re biking distance from Howell, PA, I won’t reach it in time for orientation.

I’d have to come up with a different reason why I wanted to know, and there wasn’t one. It’s not like I could say it came up in conversation or in a game of Name the Most Obscure University. And Dad can always tell when I’m lying.

I figured he could break me down in two steps, if it took that long.

Most likely Mom’s heard of Anne Sexton, but that doesn’t mean she’s heard of Sexton University. And she could break me down in one step without even trying.