All We Want Is Everything (12 page)

The Chads are dragging a case of empties toward the edge of the pit. Ty jumps up to join them and Kayla just shakes her head. Big Chad keeps telling her she can sleep at his place, and I’m afraid she might just agree. I don’t blame her, I guess, but I don’t want to imagine Big Chad’s tiny little tongue licking her spine.

“He always tells me you’re like him. You wanted to go in. Sometimes Mom gets up outta the bed and all she talks about is chasing after the little yellow rabbit. You were the only one she ever caught, you know that? The rest came out here at night and climbed the old fences. They came when no one else was watching, dropping like rain with no one listening.”

Kayla pauses and passes me another beer. Its bubbles spurt onto my hands, but I don’t wipe it away. I let it linger and wait for the bugs. At the edge, Ty and Big Chad swing the case back and forth between them. A few lonely ashes flutter down from the balconies. You can hear someone weeping through an open window. Big Chad releases his end of the case and lets it fly, but Tyler keeps a firm grip, like he’s going to pull it back up all by himself. Little Chad is the only one who screams. Kayla clutches my arm until the blood stops flowing, but she doesn’t say anything. I find my tongue is trapped between my teeth. Little Chad screams again, but Ty has already toppled over. Big Chad is on his knees at the edge, staring down into the black, calling for Tyler. The pit swallows each echo. Another empty can clatters down from the west tower. It bounces off the dead grass and rolls toward the edge, but doesn’t fall—as if it had a choice in the matter, as if it could decide.

“You can’t let it keep you up all night,” Dad says. He’s busy putting on his shoes, tying laces that will come undone before he reaches the elevator. They’ve got him on the night shift now, clearing out clogged receptacles and chutes in the belly of the factory. The grains roost in his wrinkles. He’s always covered in mealy dust. Only the rain washes it away.

“I’ll sleep when I want to, alright? You’re the one who sits in the living room all day instead of using an actual bed.”

“It’s bad for my back,” he says. “You try climbing stairs at fifty. School starts back up in like a week. You need to get back on a schedule.”

The police only came out after Tyler’s grandma threatened to call the paper and the local TV lady who needs to touch up her roots. People fall down there all the time, the officers said. There is visible, posted signage. It is a well-documented hazard. People approach it at their own risk. Compliance is too expensive to enforce. One of them said it would be like guarding every beach up and down the coast. The Chads stopped talking to me and Kayla after the officers questioned them for two hours in the basement of the north tower. The officers asked me if I had been intimate with Tyler. I asked them if that meant I slept with him. They just jotted down my response and said they would look into it.

Memorials at Willow Ridge don’t last long. Flowers and wreathes disappear in the middle of the night. Some tenants blame it on the pit, as if it’s got the power to drag down all our reminders, to make us forget what’s happened. Dad closes the door quietly behind him. He didn’t say much about Tyler falling in—he only asked if it was the kid with the lazy eye, who kept coming by our place to ask if I was home.

“So I can come out now?” Kayla says. She crawls out from where she’s been hiding under my bed all day. Arnold has moved into their place downstairs. He fills the fridge with whole chickens and the cheaper parts of pigs, frying their feet up on the stove. Kayla says the whole place smells like toilet water now, forever gushing down her throat when she tries to breathe. Her mother tore down the PIT GUARDIAN vest from the wall after she found out about Tyler. Kayla is wearing it underneath her coat, even though it’s warm out. I pull a backpack onto my shoulders.

“He won’t be back for like ten hours.”

Outside, the pit waits. The towers only make it look deeper. You can hear dogs crying from the bottom, coyotes that got lost looking for cats to snatch in the middle of the night. They have joined the bottles and the burnt couches. The spires are waiting to collapse. I can hear them trembling down to the foundation as we ride the elevator toward the ground. We’ve got a rope made out of bed sheets and some food and enough flashlights for three people. The pipes and wires in this place are unravelling, decomposing faster than the remaining residents, faster than we can descend. Outside, gnats are hovering above the surface, hovering above the trash and the curses and everything else we’ve thrown down there. Soon the towers will fall too. We have fed this hole long enough. This sinkhole was a warning: all things must come to an end eventually, little yellow rabbit. All things must come to a close. Even at five years old, I knew that.

Kayla and I just want to get there before everybody else.

“How many times do I have to explain this to you? Alright, number one: I don’t even work inside the plant. Can you get that through your head and then listen to me for one second?”

Janet is tossing cutlery into a big black garbage bag in the kitchen. Forks and knives are poking out of the bag, but she doesn’t notice. She pretends not hear me over the noise outside. Mrs. Gibbons is mowing the grass. Ever since her husband left her two years ago, she’s been doing all the household chores and going to yoga twice a week.

“Number two: I don’t even go inside there to go the bathroom. They’ve got this Porta-Potty set up, so I don’t have to duck inside the building if you don’t want me to, you know? I can just stand…”

Janet has moved onto plates now. Not the fancy wedding china. She took that in the third load last week. One of the old plates misses the bag and shatters across the floor. The motor outside cuts out and I can hear Mrs. Gibbons singing an Old Spice jingle to herself.

“If all you have to talk about today is Porta-Pottys Luke, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to listen. I don’t want to hear about the brochures either. What you need to do is pretty simple at this point. No one would hold it against you.”

Each word is terse. We’ve rehearsed this over and over the last six months. Ever since the Coopers’ baby was born with a third ear growing out of his left cheek. The doctors at the hospital said it was fully functional and otherwise perfectly formed. Cooper’s been in charge of reactor maintenance ever since I started at the plant. All I do is check their IDs at the gate. Six hundred feet from the nearest building, eight hundred from the closest reactor.

“I’m just trying to explain. Like I said before, they’ve got some real precautions in place, but everyone is just overreacting. Just because he works in the plant doesn’t really mean much, you know? We’ve got all this new kind of mixed concrete and you should see some of the stuff they’ve been doing on the inside…”

Janet slams another cupboard door. Dust is floating around us in the kitchen. It sits in a thin layer all around the house. She took all the cleaning supplies to her mother’s place in the second load. I don’t mind the dust so much. It reminds me where to put things.

“Alright, well how about this?” I say. “I read it the other day, at work, you know. They’ve got these girls down in South America, and they’re born, seriously, with legs fused together like mermaids. And they’ve got these Chinese babies in some mining town coming out with their eyes all covered up with calcium scales. And no one really knows why, you know? No definitive causes. Just genetics. You know how much of that stuff can go wrong. So I think you’re really just jumping to some pretty bizarre conclusions here, instead of weighing, you know, the facts.”

Another cupboard slams. Janet turns to face me. She’s got dust in her hair. Outside, the mower fires up again and sputters.

“I don’t need to hear any more of this Luke. You know I don’t. I’m tired. Tired of your excuse, and your three titanium barriers, and your two hundred feet of concrete, or whatever you want to believe. It’s all just numbers to me and guess what, Luke? I’m tired, like I said. I’m scared. I’m tired and I’m scared and I’m not going to stay here. You can come with me. I would like you to, but I know I can’t make you. I am going though. And no one is keeping you here.”

Janet walks across the kitchen, dragging garbage bags behind her. The sun catches the dust spinning in galaxies between us before she slams the door. I don’t say anything. Outside the mower roars and the starlings in the old pines whine for their mothers. I look at my watch as Janet’s car pulls out of the driveway. I need to get to work.

I lean on the glass in the security booth and frown at the greasy mark my forehead leaves behind. Someone has been playing hangman with Post-it notes on the day shift. All the answers are dick jokes. Caplansky and Gerry are getting bored again.

“My dick is so big it graduated high school three years before I did.”

A sedan pulls up to the window of the booth, and I recognize Larkin’s wrinkled face.

“Same shit, same shit?”

“Pretty sure that’s not how it goes, Luke.”

“You get the sentiment,” I say.

“After today, yeah.”

I haven’t seen Janet in two weeks, ever since all the inside employees started getting tested for radiation before and after they show up at the plant. Everything is low profile. No one wants to scare the herd and have property values plummet. No Hazmat suits. No clunky vans with onsite analysis. No lab coats. Just freshly pressed three-piece suits, blood tests, and urine cups.

“I’d just like to piss into something bigger than a coffee cup, you know?” Larkin says.

“Yeah, I hear you. Once you start, it’s hard to stop.”

“And the thing’s at most maybe a medium. Shit.”

“Oh yeah, that’s gotta burn if you’re running on a full tank,” I yawn.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe they’ll have a bigger cup.”

There have been two more babies in the last month. Larkin’s sister-in-law ended up with a kid with a tail. Not just a few extra bones, an actual tail. Doctor said if he cut it off the kid might never walk normally. Throw off his balance. Never drive, never play sports. At least this is what I’m told by the maintenance guy at the hot dog truck on break. They named the kid Evan.

The Tierney household only has to deal with two belly buttons on their newborn daughter. Side by side. Her name is Julia. All of this could be bullshit of course. Last summer, we convinced Adam Caplansky that there were teeth at the back of the vagina. A whole set, like the ones in a shark’s mouth. He believed us for a couple of weeks before his girlfriend found out.

Still, both fathers are on the inside of the plant doing whatever it is their salaries require. Tierney and Larkin’s brothers work deep inside. Out in the booth I know I’ve got some barriers in the way. I trust in what I can touch. Lead paint, titanium alloys, concrete barriers, monthly safety audits. Run your fingers over the digits and smell the metal in the air.

On the ride home, I notice For Sale signs that have sprung up along my street. Word gets around. The blinds at Mrs. Gibbons’ place leer open at me as the car bounces into the gravel driveway. The crabgrass I fought all summer is curling up in yellow and brown splotches on the lawn. Mrs. Gibbons has been dumping flyers for spiritual counsellors and emotional audits into my mailbox each day since Janet left with both our crock-pots and half the bath towels.

I open the door to the house, whistling for the cat. I never gave him a name. Growing up on a farm, I learned how foolish naming an animal could be. A calf steps into the wrong patch of ice and he’s gone. No Suckles or Jerome or Judith the Wise. Just a frozen side of beef, floating with its eyes open and unblinking under the ice. Wait until summer before you can pull it out safely.

I set the mail on the counter. Janet has been by again. She only stops in while I’m out now, slowly emptying her closet. The last few shirts lingering are stained with lime green paint from our kitchen reno. She’s grabbed most of her stuff, but she still sends these pictures. Postcards. Postcards I guess ’cause she started mailing them. We’ve stopped arguing. Her mother always denies she’s home, and I know Janet doesn’t want me driving over there. Last week I drove halfway and then turned back. Six hours wasted in the rain. The phone remained silent at home. No messages.

Instead of phone calls, I find these photos in the mailbox like postcards from Janet’s own personal apocalypse or something. Three-headed toads from the Amazon where Chevron’s been digging. Six-legged wolves stalking the ghostlands of Chernobyl. Indian children blind from birth, eyelids stretched taut over their sockets. African albinos butchered by tribal leaders for medicinal purposes. Most of the photos are grainy black-and-whites, like she’s pulled them from the tabloids. No words on the back. Just pictures. I know what they are saying. It does not take a thousand words. Leave. Find me. Come home. Be safe.

I feed the cat that has grown fat in Janet’s absence. I still make too much breakfast in the mornings. I plop myself down on the couch in front of the TV. All the shades are pulled down. On the screen, Godzilla battles Hedorah over a miniature city, flames raining down on the citizens. With drooping eyelids, I listen to the crackling screen for Janet’s voice to make its way through the static. The television is muted. Outside, Mrs. Gibbons drops something in my mailbox and the starlings cackle.

The first doctor we went to said it might have been my sperm’s motility. I had to ask what that meant. Movement and speed apparently. I remember Janet staring at me like it was my fault.

The second doctor said Janet might be suffering from polycystic ovarian syndrome. She just glared at him, thin fingers smoothing invisible wrinkles on her lap over and over. I made sure to write that one down so I’d be able to repeat it next time her mother called. There was a history of it in her family, according to the doctor. Her mother called two days later to tell Janet all about her new niece, Ellen, six pounds, four ounces. Perfectly healthy and coming home in just a few days. I went out and bought the cat that afternoon.

The third doctor told us to just keep trying. He handed a prescription for steroids to Janet, and checked me on the spot to make sure I wasn’t wearing tighty-whiteys. Those things work like a pressure cooker on your swimmers. He told us not to worry. I went through a regimen of cold showers and avoided drinking after work. Janet bought a calendar and started plotting out her cycle. She gave up smoking and started chewing gum. None of it worked. None of it helped. And a cat is just a cat.

Old soy milk bottles fill the overstuffed garbage can in the booth. I try holding my breath while scouring the Reader’s Digest for typos. The day shift must be on a health kick again. Two months ago it was bananas. Larkin pulls up to the gate. His face is thinner.

“No more piss taking?” I ask.

“Nah, we all checked out fine, Luke. People are always overreacting.”

“With two tails, they wouldn’t be swimming much anyway, would they?”

“Yeah really, I know, right?” Larkin says.

“So no more pissing in your coffee cup?”

“No, that’s over, thank God. Office was beginning to smell. Later buddy.”

In “Laughter Is the Best Medicine,” I find an “allgator” instead of alligator. I circle it in red pen and try to draw one in the margins.

The baby with the tail died in the hospital. The funeral was a mess of cameras and Larkin’s brother ended up charged with aggravated assault after he decked a photographer with the priest’s lectern. No press or protestors dare to come around here. I wouldn’t be able to do much even if they did. I can’t really run anymore, and I left that off my paperwork. Management never bothered to follow up on it.

When I was eleven, a bull shattered my foot. I went inside the barn to feed the heifers after dark. Dad had forgotten to lock him up. I just remember the smell of manure and a crack that traveled up my spine and exploded somewhere in my brain. They found me in shock on the floor half an hour later. My mother had to cut my boot off to bring down the swelling. Everything smelled like manure for weeks after. The bone never really knit itself back together like the doctor said it would. I can’t even handle stairs very well anymore.

I lock the gate to go on break. Even now, visitors are scared to go near the Larkin family. One of the maintenance guys tells me he’s heard about how contagious this stuff has become. The mother’s bedridden, the older kids experiencing growth spurts in all the wrong directions. Talking bent dicks and ballooning eye sockets, man. He grins at me from under a mangy three-day beard like a stray that needs a good kick. He drenches everything in mustard. Even relatives are mailing their condolences, he says. The postman leaves them at the very lip of the driveway, a surgeon’s mask tied over his face. Florists refuse delivery. The maintenance guy bites into his sausage, mustard seeping into his moustache. He grins at me. I dump onions all over my hot dog and walk away down to the water.

I should be back in the booth. Rearranging pens or leaving some Polack jokes for the day shift to read in the morning. Maybe leave them the answers too. Caplansky usually needs that extra push to get the punch line.

“Why did the Polack cross the road?”

“He couldn’t get his dick out of the chicken.”

There are fences down by the bay. I walk along the chain link and toss my tinfoil wrapper into the water. Sludgy waves smack against the heavy rocks they’ve lined the shore with to prevent erosion. Someone has cut a hole into the chain link. Kids used to come down here years ago to jump off the rocks until one cracked his head open on the way down. That’s why they hired me. I crouch and push my way through to the other side. The rocks are soaked. I sit down on the wet edge and stare into the water. I try to breathe and my mouth fills with rot. On the rock surface the algae seem to glow a sickly purple. I slide my feet down towards the water, heavy steel toes dangling into the muck. I look for a reflection. My feet are getting wet around the edges. Around me, the algae have lodged themselves. The fence is covered in small patches of it, like fur. I dip my feet all the way into the water. The cold seizes them. Closing my eyes, I imagine the purple working its way into my shoe, into my socks, into my flesh. Re-knitting. The cold clenches my feet hard; the water pushes deeper in between the cracks. Rebuilding.

I shake my head and pull my feet up. Violet algae cling to the laces and squirm their way into the eyeholes. I scrape each boot off against the fence and worm my way back through the gap. I don’t bother marking the hole in the fence down in my logbook. No one comes around here anymore. Not even the safety inspectors.

Back in the booth, I circle “asociate” on the contents page. I let my foot throb in rhythm with my pulse. I stick my head out of the booth to breathe in the air. My lungs fill with a sickly sweet smell rolling off the bay. The humps of the plant stare back and, in the breeze, they tremble.

Mrs. Gibbons is sitting on my porch when I get home. The fluorescent light makes her hair look dull. She smiles, but keeps her teeth behind her lips. The cat’s in her lap, licking her hands.