Dark Days (5 page)

“It's been fun and all,” said Mom, “but we're going to wrap this up.”

She picked up one of the cans of paint and slammed it up into his chin. He tried to say something, but instead of words there were just some brief gurgling noises before black liquid started pouring from his mouth. A second later his body dropped right in front of her. He was dead.

Meanwhile, I'd managed to get back to my feet, but the woman was still blocking my way back up off the ice, which was cracking even more.

“A little help!” I called out.

“Pulley!” shouted my mom.

I looked up and saw that there was a pulley directly above me. Normally it was used to help lift boats out of the water, but now it was my escape route.

I jumped straight up and grabbed onto it. Then, as the woman charged at me to pull me back down I did a double scissor kick and hit her in the head with each foot. She collapsed to the ice, dazed but not dead. That is, not until my mother pushed a rather large anchor over the edge of the slip and directly onto her. First the anchor smashed through the zombie, and then it broke through the ice as both of them sank down into the freezing water.

I hung there for a moment, my sneakers dangling less than a foot above the icy lake as I tried to catch my breath.

“Can you make it?” asked my mom as she reached out for me.

I swung my body back and forth a couple times until I got close enough for her grab my legs and pull me to safety.

We both plopped down onto the floor.

“You okay?” she asked.

I smiled. “I'm better than okay. How about you?”

“Well, you know how much I love it when we get to share these mother-daughter moments.”

We both laughed.

“It may not be a normal family,” I said, “but it's our family. This is what we do. This is who we are.”

“You got that right,” said Mom.

She turned her attention to the man and rolled him over onto his back. The massive stomach wound was actually more disgusting than I imagined, but I was too tired to get sick.

“Let's see what clues you have for us,” she said as she started checking the pockets of his coat and pants. She pulled out a phone, a wallet, and the paperback that he'd been reading.

She handed me the book and started digging through his wallet.

“Defending Manhattan,” I said, looking at the cover. “New York City during the Revolutionary War. Sounds boring.”

“We have a name,” Mom said as she pulled out his ID. “Herman Prothro. West Eighty-Eighth Street.”

She looked up at me. “That's a nice neighborhood.”

“So he's a rich zombie,” I said. “Any idea what Herman Prothro does? I mean, other than read boring books and attack Omegas.”

She pulled out a business card and held it up to the light to read it better. “It says that he's the vice president of the Empire State Tungsten Company.”

We shared a confused look for a moment before I asked, “What's the Empire State Tungsten Company?”

“I don't know,” she answered as she flashed a grin. “But I think they need a new vice president.”

She rolled him off of the wooden floor and he splashed through the hole in the ice. There was another gurgling, not unlike the one he made when he died, and then some bubbles as his body disappeared into the darkness.

We exited through the door they had busted open and walked in the park together for about forty-five minutes, until Mom felt confident that there were no other zombies following us.

Our walk ended up behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking out over the Great Lawn. Because of the cold weather there was hardly anyone on it, but during spring and summer the Great Lawn becomes the ultimate New York picnic destination.

“Do you remember when we used to come out here?” she asked. “Those amazing lunches that your dad made?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “Those are some of my favorite memories ever.”

“Mine too,” said Mom. “I want those to be the memories you have of me. Not images of me killing zombies in some freezing boathouse. I want you to remember me as a mother sitting on that blanket, reading stories to you.”

“Like Alice in Wonderland?” I said.

“Exactly. Remember me as the mom who read Alice in Wonderland to you.”

“It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then,” I said, quoting her favorite line.

She smiled. “You still remember that too?”

“I'll always remember that. And now I finally understand it. I can't go back to being that girl on the blanket. I was a different person then.”

“I guess you were,” she replied. “I guess we all were different people.”

She hugged me tight and I lingered in her arms.

“I don't know how long it's going to be until we see each other again,” she said, sadness in her voice. “I'm going to have to hide deep.”

“I know,” I said. “What should we do about Omega?”

“Nothing. Nothing unless you hear different directly from me. Until then Omega is done.”

I nodded.

“I mean it, Molly. It can't be like the boathouse, where you're supposed to wait for me but you don't.”

“Okay,” I said. “But that was a pretty cool move, wasn't it?”

She laughed.

“It was the coolest move I ever saw. But I still mean it.”

“I know.”

“I love you, Molly Koala,” she said, calling me by the nickname I hadn't heard in ages.

“I love you, Mom.”

O
pera? Are you serious?”

We were less than fifteen seconds into family night, and my sister Beth was already protesting the music that filled the apartment.

“Show some respect for your heritage,” Dad said as he handed her some bell peppers and a cutting board. “And chop these while you're at it.”

“We're only a quarter Italian,” she replied. “What about the parts of our heritage that made music, I don't know, in the last century?”

“You may only be a quarter Italian, but Molly's a quarter too and I'm half,” he said. “Two quarters and a half, what does that add up to, Molls?”

“One whole Italian,” I said, playing along with Dad's logic.

“There you go. There's an entire Italian person in this kitchen, so be polite,” he said with a cheesy Italian accent. “Besides, you know the rules. Tonight's my night and I get to pick.”

The rules of family night are simple but firm. Every month we each get one evening to plan. It can be anything, as long as we're all together. And to encourage fresh ideas, we're supposed to be open to new things . . . like opera.

When Dad's in charge of family night we often end up in the kitchen. I think he likes it for a couple reasons. First of all, he's a great cook and wants to make sure Beth and I learn the basics. But more importantly, he likes the way it squishes us all into a small space and forces us to talk and share as we literally bump into each other.

That night we were making kitchen sink spaghetti, which has nothing to do with the sink and gets its name from the fact that Dad puts “everything but the kitchen sink” into the sauce. He thought opera was the perfect addition. But rules or not, he didn't want Beth to be miserable, so he gave her a possible escape.

“How about this?” he said. “I'm going to tell you a story about this opera and once I'm done, if you still want me to turn it off, I will.”

“Why don't you save yourself the trouble and turn it off now?” she said with a sly smile. “Because I guarantee my opinion's not going to change.”

“Maybe, but that's not the deal,” he said. “I get to tell my story first. Then you decide.”

She was suspicious, but didn't really have much choice. “Okay, fine.”

“You have to keep cooking, though,” he said. “Both of you.”

We had specific jobs to do so that everything would come together perfectly. Beth was chopping vegetables, and I was stirring and seasoning the tomato sauce while Dad sautéed some Italian sausage. The combination of the sizzle and the smell was incredible.

“We're cooking,” Beth said. “Start talking.”

“Okay, your mom and I had been dating for about two and a half months . . .”

I knew then and there that Dad was going to win this argument.

“. . . and one day she told me she was planning to see
La Traviata
at the Met.” He turned from the stove for a second to explain to Natalie. “ ‘The Met' is what we cultured people call the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.”

She didn't miss a beat and came right back at him. “ ‘The Met' is also what you call the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You'd think for cultured people you'd be able to come up with different nicknames for different places.”

“That's funny. I never noticed that.” Dad said laughing. “Anyway, your mother was going to go with her sister, Fiona, no doubt because she assumed I was a caveman unable to enjoy something as sophisticated as opera. Now, I couldn't let her think that, so I told her that it was too bad she was going with someone else, because I loved opera.”

“Was that true?” I asked.

“No. I didn't know anything about opera except what I'd learned from Bugs Bunny. But I didn't want her to know that. Then she threw me a curve. She said that Fiona didn't really want to go and asked if I wanted to go with her instead.”

“Uh-oh.”

“No kidding. Of course I said yes, but I was in full panic mode. I was worried I wouldn't understand anything because it's all sung in Italian. I was worried that I was going to prove that I was, in fact, an uncultured caveman. So I spent three weeks studying everything there was to know about
La Traviata
. I memorized the characters, the plot, famous performances . . . I even knew the English translations of all the song titles. My plan was simple. I was going to dazzle her. But I had a problem.”

“What?” I asked.

“I was so focused on studying that I didn't realize I was scheduled to work that night. I had to swap with someone at the last minute just so I could go on the date. I ended up working back-to-back shifts, and by the time we got to the Met I was already pretty tired.”

Although her back was turned toward Dad as she chopped, I noticed that Beth was now closely following the story.

“Don't tell me you fell asleep,” I said. “Did you snore?”

“I didn't snore . . . but I may have nodded off a little during the first act,” he said with a smile. “I was just going to close my eyes for a second, but the next thing I know, there was applause. That woke me right up. It was intermission and I was worried that she was onto me so I just jumped right into my analysis. I talked about everything that I had studied. I could tell she was impressed.

I did a better job staying awake in the second act, and when it was over I picked up right where I left off. She couldn't believe how emotional I got as I talked about the tragic ending. I will never forget the look she gave me, hanging on every word I said. Even I almost believed that I was smart and cultured. We were right there next to the big fountain in Lincoln Center, surrounded by all those people in tuxedos and gowns and I had pulled it off . . . until I saw it.”

“What?” asked Beth, now fully engrossed.

“A giant banner advertising that night's performance of . . .
Il Trovatore
.”

We all started laughing, Dad loudest of all.

“You did not?” I squealed.

“Oh, I did. I totally learned the wrong opera.
Il Trovatore
,
La Traviata
, the names sound so much alike and they're both by Verdi. Everything I said had been wrong and your mother just went along with it. She knew what I'd done the second I started talking at intermission, and she just would not embarrass me. I should have known better than to think that I could put one over on her.”

Now Beth turned from the counter to face him, a wide smile on her face. “So how did she respond once the truth was out there?”

“Not like I would have expected,” he said. “She figured that if I tried that hard, it must mean that I really cared about her. And I realized that if she was going to go along with it just so she wouldn't embarrass me, well, that's when I knew I was in love. And seven months later when I proposed, I did it right at that fountain.”

He let the story simmer for a moment as he brushed a little garlic onto the sausage. Then he gave her a sly look over his shoulder and said, “But we can always turn it off.”

Beth just shook her head. “It's fine. We can keep listening.”

I had never heard that story before and I loved it. It had been more than two months since that day with Mom in the boathouse. I thought about what she said afterward, about how she wanted me to remember her. She wanted me to think of her as a mother reading stories on a picnic blanket. And here was another memory, of a young woman falling in love. I'm sure this is how my dad pictures her.