Helen Phillips - The Need

She tossed both pennies into the cardboard box along with the other objects and tried to forget about them.

The Phillips 66 felt acutely abandoned. She kept having the sensation that this wasn’t quite the same workplace she had left on Friday. It was always odd to reemerge from the fog of the weekend into work on Monday mornings, but today it was a hundred times so. She questioned every object—the dimensions of her desk, the hue of her chair, the angle of her computer monitor.

She turned the computer on. She had to write a notice for today’s tourists. And then would borrow the language from that to write a press release. And then would send it to all the relevant news outlets.

As she waited for her computer to awaken, she began to compose the letter in her head: Dear Tourists . But that sounded off somehow. Dear Customers? Dear Guests? Dear Enthusiasts? Dear People? To Whom It May Concern? Her mind was too frenetic. She could sort out the salutation later. It has come to our attention that the artifacts that have been (lately? recently? in recent times?) discovered at our site alongside our (notable? noteworthy? legendary?) fossils are, in fact, as originally suspected by many, a hoax… an elaborate hoax… please forgive our… when initially unearthed, these objects defied our understanding, but… it has been proven beyond a doubt… with 100 percent confidence… with absolute certainty… after consultation with (multiple? numerous?) experts… have been found to be… including, most significantly, the Bible… we hope you can forgive… upon this revelation, were immediately removed from the eye of the public… the thorny road of truth… the thorny path of science… the… the…

The computer screen, now bright, confronted her with the photograph: the kids hugging each other, wearing adult backpacks and fearful expressions.

She couldn’t last a minute with those four eyes on her.

She had to get rid of the picture before doing anything else. She clicked on her desktop settings and began scrolling through the ravishing stock images: a waterfall cascading through ferns, a beach under a red sun, a forest of aspen and columbine.

“Molly!” Corey startled her. She had been absorbed in toggling back and forth between the waterfall and the forest.

“Hey,” she said. He had yanked aside the curtain in the doorway.

“We have to call the police.”

“Why?”

“Someone broke in. The cases are open. The Bible and everything is gone.”

“No,” Molly said. “I have it all. Right here.”

“Oh.” He gave a quick laugh. “Okay. Good. Shit. I was freaking out.”

“I don’t think we should display them anymore.”

“What?”

She didn’t know what to tell him or not tell him.

“Molly?” he said.

“The culprit,” Roz said dryly, appearing in the doorway behind him.

Corey looked at Molly, waited for her to speak.

“Molly doesn’t want to display the Bible anymore,” Corey said.

“Abandoning your pet project?” Roz said.

Molly loved these two, her dear colleagues, wry Roz and kind Corey, but right now they seemed somehow different to her, capable of unpleasantness.

“Think of the ticket sales,” Corey said.

She was sitting and they were standing. She disliked this difference in her position and theirs. She stood.

“What about all the hate mail?” Molly said.

“What about it?” Roz said.

“Getting used to it,” Corey said.

“What if someone—”

“Like what,” Roz said, “like some kind of religious extremist shooter or something?”

Molly didn’t know whether to be comforted or frightened by Roz’s immediate understanding.

“Well,” Roz said, “ vivir con miedo es vivir a medias .”

“What?” Corey said.

“A life lived in fear is a life half-lived,” Molly translated. “But I have kids.”

“I’ll put the stuff back in the cases,” Roz said.

“No.” Molly should have taken the Bible off-site, destroyed it, thrown it in the reservoir.

“Come on, Molly,” Corey said.

“No,” she said.

“I insist.” Roz could be fierce, and she was becoming fierce.

“It’s dangerous,” Molly said. “I had a—”

“A what?”

Molly couldn’t say it.

“A what?” Roz insisted.

“A dream,” Molly said, backing down.

“Of?”

“A bomber. My children—”

“Oh, your kids,” Corey said, kind again. “Oh, poor Molly.”

“Yes, poor Molly,” Roz said. “But a dream is a dream is a dream.”

“Well,” Molly said, at a loss, “it didn’t feel like a dream.”

“Well, sometimes they don’t,” Roz said. “So, hand it over.”

“Fine,” Molly said, brashness rising in her, “but if you display it, then I refuse to give any tours.”

How could she give a tour, every woman in a baseball cap a possible bomber?

“Okay,” Corey said. “Okay, that’s fine. You can do excavation today.”

But she couldn’t go into the Pit, sacrifice herself to the vagaries of a seam that might spit her out into a reality where her children were dead or whatever else. How ridiculous that she had ever taken comfort in the Pit, had ever leaned against its dirt wall and appreciated its solidity—the treacherous, porous Pit.

She was running so fast to get them away and then she ran over the edge of the Pit and they sort of fell down into it, the three of them, his body in her right arm and her body in her left arm, slipping and scooting down the mud, and because they were not laughing, she knew.

“Or,” Corey added, looking closely at her face, “you can do desk duty for now. I was going to update the website with the new schedule and file the hate mail and tabulate ticket sales and proofread the grant proposal.”

“No one should be giving tours,” Molly said. “No one should be excavating.”

“Okay,” Roz said, reaching under Molly’s desk to grab the box. “See you guys.”

Molly could feel her adrenaline draining away, leaving her feeble, empty. She didn’t even try to stop Roz.

“God,” Corey said, “do I seriously hear a tour bus already?”

After he was gone, she toggled back and forth between the desktop images for another long while before settling on the forest.

Then she began to type the hoax announcement. But her fingers didn’t work well on the keyboard; the words came too slowly, refused to blend into sentences.

After a while she had to give up.

She sat numb at her desk. Her milk came down but she did not pump. She thought of Moll in the basement. Wondered if her milk too had come down. If she was at this moment squeezing it out into the metal sink.

She was interrupted by Corey, dropping off a pile of hate mail for her to sort. He didn’t say anything, just placed the mail on her desk and shot her a sympathetic look on his way out.

The top postcard bore a Renaissance painting of Mary nursing Jesus, a surprisingly graphic portrait: both her nipple and his penis were exposed. Molly turned it over. No return address. Just a single word in graceful handwriting: See?

The word set off a physical reaction in her: a wavering of her vision, a weakening of her muscles.

She put the postcard down atop the other mail, the white envelopes that looked venomous in their similarity and anonymity, American flag stamps and blue ballpoint ink, implying all the typical sentiments contained within: UNDO THIS HORRIFIC SIN OR YOU WILL BE PUNISHED. GOD IS DISPLEASED. HEIS ENRAGED. YOU ARE ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH GOD AND HISFAITHFUL CHILDREN. BEWARE THE BLINDING LIGHT. HEALWAYS KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE.

She needed to get away from it. She needed to be around people. Corey, Roz. She burst out of her cubicle. She could see through the glass door that Corey was in the display room, in the middle of his tour.