She Got Up Off the Couch (28 page)

I lay on my cot near the stove, in my sleeping bag, for hours at a time. I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the sad facts. It wasn’t just Melinda and the baby — everyone I loved, everyone in the world to me, was buried as we were. Mom Mary and Donita, my brother and his wife and daughters, my aunts and uncles and cousins, Rose and her family, Julie and hers, and the animals at their farm — I couldn’t think straight when I considered the possibilities. Why hadn’t Dad and I called them all, why hadn’t I gone to Rose’s and counted her blankets and checked her water supply? I could have comforted myself with the memory of the many freezers Rose’s family kept filled with everything from venison to last summer’s vegetables, along with bread and milk. Instead I concluded she was probably living on Velveeta cheese and those peculiar sandwiches she made with butter and sugar. That poor girl, I hated those sandwiches. And she was also most likely being made to read
Jane Eyre
again, just to escape her siblings. My eyes filled with tears and I ducked down inside my sleeping bag so Dad wouldn’t see.

On the twenty-seventh, the temperature stayed between zero and eighteen degrees, with a windchill still in double-digit negatives. The average wind speed for the day was twenty miles an hour, and twenty inches of snow had fallen.

On the twenty-eighth, when I woke up, it was three degrees and snowing. The phone was still out.

By the twenty-ninth of January, thirty-five inches of snow had fallen on South Bend, forty on some other parts of northern Indiana. In Chicago, snowfall totaled 74.5 inches for the year, setting the record for the city’s history. At our house we saw the sky for the first time in days, and by the time I got up Dad was pacing and waiting.

“We’re going to your sister’s,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette.

I rubbed my eyes, thought about it. “You’ve got a plan, I hope.”

He nodded. “First we’re going to dig, and as soon as we can open the door we’re going to walk.”

Well, there it was. I would die like Jack London, or Dad would, and eventually one of us would have to eat the other. Snow was drifted up against every window on the ground floor, and from the upstairs it appeared the specifics of the world had simply been erased — the cars were gone, the fruit trees in the garden were completely consumed, Dad’s little toolshed was just a roof floating on a white sea.

“I made us snowshoes,” Dad said, and pointed to the floor. He had cut the bottoms out of four clothes baskets, poked holes in a shoe shape in the middle, and lashed our boots to them with the long strands of leather I bought every year when we went to Friendship, Indiana, to watch the muzzle loaders and the people dressed up as cowboys and Indians. I always imagined something very crafty for those leather strips, something involving beads and perhaps feathers. I also talked my way into a deer hide and some rabbit fur most years, and my ultimate dream was to marry the leather, the beads, the feathers, and the fur in a grand design, after which I would truly understand Mother Earth and Father…something. Julie would know.

“Nice work with the leather,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“I probably ought to take my deer hide.”

“Probably should.”

We worked our way out, starting by digging around the door. In some places it seemed the snow went on forever, and in others we’d dig through to open air — the drifts undulated like dunes. By the time we actually strapped on the snowshoes and stepped out, I saw doom, even with the progress we’d made. We tested our shoes and for the most part they worked. The plastic was very stiff and held up even under Dad’s weight. They worked except for my left one, for which Dad had used a sort of flimsy basket. When I stepped on it too hard, the ends curled up and down that leg went, and I’d not only have to work my foot out, I’d have to drag up sixty-seven pounds of snow with the plastic spoon I was wearing.

“This is my truck,” Dad said, standing on what seemed to be snow. “And I think the car is right there.”

I couldn’t really take in what I was seeing, so I just followed behind him, mostly on my right foot. There was a lot to say but I kept quiet. The town continued to be silent and unmoving in a way that caused a winged feeling in my stomach; even through my hat, my hood, and the deer hide wrapped around my head I could hear Dad’s breathing as plainly as my own. If he hadn’t been leading the way I would have gotten lost, or at least confused. I had thought the trees would serve as markers but they didn’t. Weighed down with snow, its trunk buried, every tree looked the same, and the sunlight, weak as it was, was blinding.

“There’s Reed and Mary’s house,” Dad said.

I squinted. “Oh. You’re right.”

We trudged onward, and at some point Dad knew to turn on Jefferson Street. After that, it was a long, cold walk for him and a long, gamey hop for me.

I proceeded by looking down, but Dad looked in all directions. He paused in front of Max and Adeline’s house, but went on. He paused a few times, but kept walking. After what seemed to be days and days, just at the point I was going to start begging him for beef jerky and to just
let me sleep,
like in the movies, he said, “There’s smoke,” pointing at the roof of Lindy’s house.

I was quite certain he meant Melinda had burned the house down, but in fact there was just a ribbon of smoke curling out of the chimney. We stared at it a moment, both thinking that if the worst had happened Rick wouldn’t blithely be heating the living room. Surely not. We took a few more steps and I saw something, Dad saw something. It was a little Rick-shaped thing with a shovel, working like a mole, as we had. Dad called out and Rick looked up, yelled back that Melinda was fine, no baby yet. We broke the skin of that storm and set the world moving again. In New Castle, snowplows were already warming up, and all over the county men with big trucks were searching for door handles and some ground to stand on, most of them carrying flasks they would sip from throughout the day. I understood — it was a hard business. We would eventually help Rick, who had a terrible toothache, and we’d make our way inside where I would strip off my coat and deer fur and laundry baskets and swoop up Josh as if I’d just returned from ten years at sea. But first we stood there, on the top of a car or a well house or a chicken coop, and looked around.

“My, my,” Dad said. “It’s really something, isn’t it.”

“It’s beautiful,” I agreed. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Two days later, Rick had four wisdom teeth removed and Melinda went into labor. Only forty-eight hours to exhume the town and the cars, to get to the highway and all the way to New Castle. It wasn’t much time, but we took it. And if there was ever anything in the world for which I would feel permanently grateful, something I’d be thanking the universe for to the end of my days, it was that sliver of time. With every step toward civilization we made I said,
Thank you, universe.

I could hear Rick and Melinda talking in the bedroom as Melinda gathered her bags and her book for the hospital.

“No, I don’t think she’s too young,” Lindy said, and Rick said okay.

I was standing in the living room in front of the Franklin stove, in the very exact spot where I’d been standing the August before, twirling my baton, when my soap opera was interrupted to announce the death of Elvis Presley, causing me to sit down unexpectedly on my butt and also to be hit by my falling baton.

“And we don’t have anyone else. Dad and Mom are driving ahead of us to the hospital,” Melinda said, and Rick agreed. He made a noise of agreement, that is, because his face had swollen up from the surgery that morning so badly, and in two such distinct spots, that he looked like a neurotic chipmunk, one who hadn’t realized winter had already come and done its worst. I was helpless against telling him so, which was unfortunate. Also I had had to bury my face in the pillows on the couch
twice
because I was laughing so hard I feared my lungs had collapsed, not at
Rick
exactly but at
that sad little rodent.

He made some noises that sounded like, “She’s twelve,” or at least that’s what I heard, because I was twelve.

“That’s true,” Melinda said, “but we don’t have anyone else and we have to go.”

They were out the door with instructions and phone numbers and goodbyes, and I don’t know what Melinda expected to see on my face but she didn’t see it. I watched them creep off down the snow-packed streets behind Dad’s truck with the big snow tires, then I snuck into Josh’s room and sat on the floor, waiting for him to wake up. When he sat up in his new big-boy bed, talking and rubbing his eyes, I picked him up. He wrapped his arms and legs around me like a junior monkey and we sat in the rocker awhile, rocking. He sighed, waking a bit at a time, then sat up and pointed at the rug on the floor.

“Punt?” he asked. “Ummm, punter?”

Trucks, he meant, and tractors. Would I help him plow the rug in straight even rows with his trucks, his tractors, and his disc? I
absolutely
would. While we were sitting there I said, “Guess what?”

Josh looked up, shrugged.

“We’re going to be here alone together for at least three days and two nights. Just you and me.”

He stared at me, waiting to hear whether this was good or bad. I raised my arms above my head and said, “Yay!” Josh raised his arms above his head and said, “Yay!” We clapped awhile, plowed the rug. He was two.

I covered his high-chair tray with Cheerios and he sat very still. I knelt down in front of the high chair until he couldn’t see me, popped up above, and said, “Pee-boo!” in the voice dogs and children love. Josh jumped, smacked his tray so hard in surprise Cheerios went flying, then laughed so helplessly his nose wrinkled up and he had to put his head down right on the cereal. He raised back up and there were Cheerios stuck to his forehead and chin. “Again?” I asked. He nodded. I did it again, and again, until all the Cheerios were on the floor. Then I got him down and we ate them off the floor, as God intended.

Sometime that day Rick called and said we had a healthy girl. Those were his words, a healthy girl. I thanked him for calling and asked him to give my love to Melinda. What I really meant was “That makes no sense to me. Josh and I are coloring.”

After dinner and a raucous bubble bath, a bath during which maybe more bubbles got out of the tub than stayed in, as I was getting Josh ready for bed in his yellow footy pajamas with the bear stitched on, Rick came home. He looked so bad even I couldn’t laugh. I asked about Melinda and the baby and he nodded affirmatively, called the baby by name as he lay down on the couch, visibly suffering. Abigail.
Abby,
he said. I zipped up Josh’s pajamas but otherwise couldn’t move. I thought the word “Abby” and an arrow flew straight into my heart, it
slammed
into my chest, our healthy girl, a baby girl. Abigail. Josh walked over, patted Rick on the chest, said, “Nigh night, Daddy.”

Over the next two days, Josh wore his Robin Hood hat and rode his bouncy horse. We lay on the couch like drunkards and watched cartoons and I never said, “That’s about enough television, isn’t it?” We made art projects that came out very badly. When I said it was nap time he climbed up in his bed and went to sleep. If I thought he might be hungry I asked, then fed him. I kept the fire going in the Franklin stove and never once set the house on fire. After Rick came home at night and went to bed I lay on the couch in the dark. Abby. There was an Abby. I’d had no idea.