Lauren Groff - Arcadia

The doctor tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear, her hands shaking a little, and a warmth starts in Bit’s stomach and spreads. This place, she says. My uncle said that for a while after the commune broke up, high school kids came up here to fool around. There was this story about these two kids who looked up in the middle of getting it on to find a scary huge hippie with an ax glowering at them.

That would be Titus, Bit says, stinging at the thought of his old friend.

Then, of course, the film company came, the doctor says. We used to take field trips out in elementary school. All the other kids on the planet wanted to be rap stars and marine biologists, but we wanted to be animators. Everyone had a crush on that blond CEO. I used to dream I was married to him and rode around on horses out here all day long.

That was Leif, Bit says. His sister was my wife.

Oh. Her eyes scan his face, and he can see her decide not to ask about the was, or about the wife . She says, It was pretty traumatic for Summerton when the company left the area. We were just getting a downtown back, then it died again like every other town around here. I had a clinic for a little while, but it closed and I had to move to Rochester.

It was in Leif’s will for the company to stay here, Bit said. But you know stockholders.

What ever happened to him? she says. Nobody in town really knew. You should have heard the stories. He was eaten by a bear, he was extradited by Homeland Security. It was nuts.

The truth is weirder. He was lost in a high-altitude balloon, Bit says. That family has a genius for disappearing. He looks at her profile, the teeth caught on her lower lip, the crow’s-feet as she squints out toward the hills. My wife disappeared, too, he says. Eleven years ago. She went for a walk and never came back.

I’m sorry, she says. He notices a short yellow hair curled on her breast and stops his hand from reaching for it. She flushes, then picks it off. My dog, she says. I thought he’d be good protection for a woman living alone, but he’s scared of everything. Lightning, strangers, ice, the dark.

I’ve never had a pet, Bit says. We were never allowed to have dogs here when I was a kid. We considered it animal slavery.

Otto thinks I’m the slave, she says. I pick up his poop, after all.

They watch a little red fox come out at the edge of the forest, crouch, pounce, and carry off something gray in his mouth. The doctor’s small hand touches his arm.

Bit, she begins, too solemnly, and something seizes in Bit: she is going to say it, the things he knows deeply but can’t stand to hear: his mother is going rapidly; she’ll be in a wheelchair within a month; it is only her stubbornness that has kept her from one so far; instead of going with the slowness he’s been fearing, she’ll go with dreadful speed. If he hears the words, he thinks, it will come true. He has to fight himself to answer. What’s that, Dr. Ellis? he says, at last.

Ellis is my first name, she says and tries and fails to not laugh. Ellis Keefe. I didn’t want to correct you in the hospital. All I was going to say is that I can see why you love this place; and she gestures toward the forest that spreads all the way to the hills in the distance. In the motion, Bit sees what Arcadia had been, populous and full of song. Now it feels empty. Without people, land is only land.

That’s it? he says. I thought you were going to say that Hannah’s disease is progressing faster than expected.

She peers at him sideways, her mouth twisted.

Oh, he says.

I can manage to come up a couple times a week, if you want, she says. I love it out here.

We’d be thrilled to see you as often as you can make it, he says.

She turns her head to look at him. He is acutely aware of the fact of her, solid and real, her gentle gravity, her breath on his cheeks. I would like to see you too, she says, then shyly looks away.

In a small clearing where the Sheep’s Meadow used to sprawl, Hannah is on a blanket, eating Glory’s applesauce. Bit takes a photo and she preens. It is a new compulsion of his to snatch Hannah’s face with the camera whenever she’s not looking. Words have thickened past the point of clarity in her mouth, but he thinks she says, Surely, you’ve shot lovelier cover models.

Never, he says. You’re by far the loveliest. She beams as well as she can, posing.

Soon she is tired; she wants to go home. She struggles and waves him back. A slow one-armed push up onto her knees, a wobbly stand. Hannah stretches as he packs up their lunch. She takes one step onto the path, and he raises the camera to his face. Then she falls out of the frame, and he looks into the world to find her crumpled on the ground.

Hannah, he says.

I know, she says. I know. He half-carries her home.

Grete comes in, wearing her track sweatshirt, smelling of perspiration. She sees her grandmother in Abe’s old wheelchair and says nothing. But in the night, Grete and Luisa conspire. And when dawn brightens the window, it lights up the wheelchair, where a pillow sits, repurposed from one of Abe’s ancient cashmere sweaters; the wheels sparkle with glitter nail polish; there are pom-poms on the handles. A queen of hearts is lodged in a wheel, and it whirs when Hannah moves. So you can’t sneak up on us, says Grete. Hannah gives a wheel a spin with the knuckle of her better hand; she laughs until she cries and cries until she laughs again.

These days, the house is oddly full of Hannah’s laughter. She laughs about everything: the way she can no longer speak, a funny story on the radio, when Grete in her eagerness trips on her own shoes; when she and Grete drink cocoa from the beautiful bone china cups of her grandmother and Hannah’s hand goes rogue and shatters one.

Are you happier now? Bit says, alarmed by this excessive laughter.

No, she garbles, I’m petrified! And this, too, cracks her up.

The track is recycled tires, and when the wind rises and blows across it, Bit smells highway, the American longing to go. All he wants to do is stay. In this place, in this bright day, the children flitting in their uniforms like vivid butterflies, Hannah’s jerking smile. He tucks the blanket around her legs, more in protest against the wheelchair than against any chill. It is a miracle they are even here at the track meet: at the eleventh hour, the school superintendent saw how distant SARI was from them and grudgingly gave permission.

Hannah’s neck is weak today, and she rests her head upon Bit’s palm. Her skull is heavy and overly warm. I’m happy to be here, she says thickly.

He watches the boys, the brutes hurling shotputs like marbles. A girl spins a discus, and the meat of her arm ripples as she throws. The children go blazing by, and their parents dance and shriek. How it would feel, Bit thinks, to be young again, to lift through the air on a pole, to fly over the sand and land in a great explosion. He loves the good sediment of time, wouldn’t trade anything to have to go through that adolescent pain all over again. But, for a moment, he longs to be one of these runners, these leapers, these fliers; to be one of the lovers standing there, that boy holding the willowy girl, so easily able to forget the world because a pretty young person longs to press close to him.

It is time for the one-mile. Grete sends a nervous smile their way, her black wisps blowing under the folded green bandanna. Bit can hardly bear to watch the runners assemble on the line. The gun pops. There’s a blur of sharp elbows. Within a hundred yards, the pack thins out. The slenderest pull away, Grete’s legs longer than the two in front of her, turning over more slowly. The runners pass for the first time in a patter that Bit can feel inside himself. They dissolve behind the high jump; they reemerge. The second girl falters, falls behind. Now the race is between Grete and the leader. The track goes quiet. People watch the two in front spin by again, dragging the slower girls like a lengthening train.