Lydia Millet - Sweet Lamb of Heaven

Even the insurance forensics guys who came to inspect the house shook their heads as though the fire had been inevitable — we’d been asking for it by being so brash as to live in the house at all.

So it’s back to The Wind and Pines, where Don has set us up with two adjoining rooms close to the lobby. He keeps the security system updated since the kidnapping: he gave himself a crash course in the software after it happened. So we’re still surveilled, and the homeowners’ insurance is paying for our rooms until the repairs are done.

There are other motels in driving distance, of course, but Don is Will’s friend and Lena’s so fond of him, and besides the Lindas are still here, the sole holdouts of the group, still setting out on their beachcombing walks every morning, still not ready to part ways from each other and go home.

In the end, coming back here, it seems we didn’t have much choice.

WE ALL ATE in the motel café tonight, Will and Don and the Lindas and Lena and I. Somehow it felt like we were trying too hard to have a regular meal. No one from town was there; the café’s first emptiness had returned.

Don and I were left alone together after dinner, when the Lindas went to show Lena some video clips of kittens who were friends with tortoises; Will headed back to our rooms to unpack. We’d maybe had a couple too many glasses of wine, Don and I. Or at least I had. Don was drinking whiskey.

“At first, when it began,” he said, “I did worry. I knew there were antagonists who might also be attracted, antagonists like your husband. We’re a magnet for them.”

“You mean — a magnet? How?” I asked.

“Some people, historically, have heard the voice when — let’s say when danger is already near. But after a while, this year, I relaxed my vigilance because no one showed up. No one to worry about. And then they did. I’m sorry I wasn’t better prepared, Anna.”

“You did your best,” I said.

We sat in silence, likely both wondering if that was true.

“Kay sent you some emails,” said Don after a minute. “Didn’t she?”

“She was so upset. And with her diagnosis — I didn’t know what to make of them,” I said.

“You can credit them. She knew,” said Don softly.

I met his gaze for a moment, but there was something too plain or too frank there and I had to look away.

“She knows ,” I corrected, a little halfhearted.

“If you pay attention to the culture,” said Don, “you can see these threads of recognition. There are interferences and smokescreens all over, but the threads are perceptible if you know where to find them. Kay was right. And she’s sick, yes. She suffers from an illness of long standing. She’s struggled very hard against it. But she also has rare insight. These years are decisive, Anna. We’re in the midst of a great acceleration and a great implosion. These years are our last chance.”

I sat there sipping my wine and wondering if Don was , finally, a crank. I think like that when bold pronouncements are made; I wonder if both sides are nothing but cranks, with one simply more powerful than the other. Ned’s Bible-thumping friends think they’re right and all others are wrong — their powerful fear of other groups that turns to hatred and plays into the hands of the profiteers. But the profiteers themselves, with their millions of tentacles sunk deep into every crack in the earth, don’t give a shit about being right. They’re powerful. When you have enough power, right or wrong is for kids. Then there’s Don, with just us, this small crowd of overeducated, confused liberals who also believe the other side is dead wrong, his small stable of adherents to the Hearing Voices Movement.

“No,” Don said into the silence.

I guess I’d spoken out loud, though I could have sworn I hadn’t. But I was drunk enough not to worry about it.

I probably still am.

And I did know what he was talking about, I knew what he meant by last chance . He meant what Kay had written to me in her rambling and half-coherent email. He meant the world that had evolved over millions of years, the mass of living things through which all forms of intelligence cycle, through which a billion variations move and express themselves, the ark of creation over eras and eons. He meant the spirit and expression of all creatures and all people, their cultures and tongues and arts and musics, from the vaunted to the unknown; he meant what was organic and alive, the broad, branching tree of evolution that was history and biology and all kinds of astonishing bodies full of ancient knowledge.

He meant that it was on its way out.

THE PUSH IN FRONT of the subway train, all four tires going out on a fast road, the house fire while we were fast asleep — they seem too multiple for sheer coincidence, but they don’t add up to an understandable pattern. Also, after the subway push someone had grabbed me and pulled me back. That was the first attempt, if I want to see it that way. The second: our tires went out on the Interstate, but in the end we hit no other cars — not the car so close on our left, not the dinged-up, rusting gray guardrail on the right. And the third: Will’s house burning. But I woke up and I smelled the smoke, and ten minutes later Lena and I were standing safely outside in the snow, watching an empty building burn.

Will barely believed in the fire when I called him at work. He’s seemed to be in a mild state of shock ever since, a man who’s been pushed too far: many of his dear old books were destroyed, all the books on his living room shelves.

I want to tell him: Really, Will. You don’t have to be in this with me. I’m grateful. And I don’t know the difference anymore between gratitude and love. But I’m willing to cut you loose.

I know he wouldn’t go.

I wonder what’s more important, the fact that all these events occurred in the first place or the fact that they were only close calls, that in each case none of us have succumbed.

So far.

Since the fire I’m obsessed with when the next “accident” will occur, when the new onslaught will begin.

The subway episode was ten days ago. The car accident was less than a week. The fire was the day before yesterday. They fall closer together now.

I lie awake thinking of Lena, of what will become of her if something happens to me, or if she is also a target. She was there two out of three times, after all. I harbor wild thoughts, such as: Maybe I should have fallen in front of the subway train, because at least then I was alone. At least she might be safe right now. But I fear what would become of her if I die, so there’s cold comfort there.

I lie awake worrying about Ned having custody. It’s Solly I’d want to raise her, I guess, but since Ned and I aren’t even divorced I’m pretty sure there’s no way to legally exclude him. If he wanted guardianship, regardless of his craven reasons, he would get it. And I lie awake berating myself for my lack of leverage. I’ve brought this down on our heads, but I cast bitterness in Ned’s direction too. I blame myself but I also know hatred.

I never knew it before him.

I TOLD WILL I was going to turn in with Lena last night, that I was exhausted — because I was — and then I lay in bed wearing Lena’s earphones, which are large and shiny plastic discs in the shape of monkey faces. I thought of what Don had said to me, what Kay had written, of how I’d seen a city crumble beneath a cloud of dust.

Lena rolled away from me as I prepared to say Goodbye to Stress, and before long fell asleep clutching her duck.

The images didn’t feel like a dream. I was aware of the room as I lay there, the shape of the TV cabinet, the bathroom door slightly ajar, the mirror on the dresser showing glints in the dark. I lay in an indoor twilight holding those dim motel-room shapes in front of me as I began to sink under. Did I keep my eyes open?