after living at the Ark in quarantine for so many weeks, Lizzie had been surprised by how hard it was to return to her solitary house. She’d thought she couldn’t wait for her quiet breakfasts again, with only the newspaper for company, for her own bedroom and her own bed, but sleep eluded her. Or so it seemed, though she must have dozed sometimes, because one morning she remembered a dream. She was in a boat with a blue-eyed man who turned out to be Mr. Finney. He stood. “Save me,” he said. He stepped onto the water and sank slowly, as if into mud—up to his knees, up to his waist, up to his shoulders, out of sight.
Lizzie had forgotten about Mr. Finney, and also about Jenny’s mother and her own plans regarding them. Currently she had no appetite for schemes of any kind. God would do as God would do. Why meddle? Besides, she’d no way to contact Mr. Finney.
In fact, she could think of nothing worth getting out of bed for. Donations had more than doubled during the epidemics, while the number of wards had significantly dropped. Many of the survivors had been removed at the first chance by relatives. They would not be back until the specter of death faded from everyone’s mind. As a consequence there were beds and shoes enough for everyone. The larder was stocked. Lizzie didn’t suppose the budget had ever been so healthy.
Take a rest, everyone told Lizzie, take a trip. Just when she hadn’t heart enough for either.
She lay one morning, hardly moving, under her mother’s quilt, a pattern like a shackle of rings in blue and white. The white was turning to yellow and the fabric was beginning to fray. A large spider web filled the corner of the bedroom window. Lizzie couldn’t see the spider, but on the sill beneath the web lay the dry, hollow corpses of two flies. The window and the curtains needed washing. Nothing was as it should be. What kind of world was it that required the deaths of children? What kind of magical juncture was that?
Are you happy with your life? Mrs. Pleasant had asked her on that first afternoon in the House of Mystery, and ever since the question, and only since the question, the answer had become no. How did she used to do it, take such pleasure in small things? How would she ever be able to do so again?
If there had been someone to bring her breakfast, Lizzie wouldn’t have gotten up at all. She would have asked for tea, blankets, a fire, a story with dragons in it—a story out of someone else’s childhood—or a lullaby from the same. But there was only the constant weight of Baby Edward, watching her lie there as if dead, when anyone could see she was anything but.
Finally she was too hungry. She went to the kitchen without combing her hair and made herself a poached egg on toast. Nothing spoiled food the way eating alone did. Flavors flattened, textures coarsened. Chocolate turned to copper. Chewing became audible and then thunderous. Lizzie looked back on her childhood in this very house, and it seemed to be all solitary meals, brought to her room on trays. She could not recall that she had eaten anything hot more than once or twice in her life before adulthood.
She decided to call on Mrs. Wright, who liked to tell stories and had few chances to do so. Lizzie had grown quite fond of her during their incarceration together. A visit would be an act of charity and, like all the best acts of charity, good for them both.
She found Mrs. Wright sitting in her chair in her bedroom at the Ark, facing the window, the curtains tightly pulled. There was little light in the room, and a cloying, medicinal smell, like fermented cloves. Mrs. Wright spoke before Lizzie had a chance to announce herself. “Did you have a nice time in the country, dear?”
Lizzie had talked of going to the country. “I haven’t left yet,” she said. She had no energy for holidays.
“You should. Birds and trees. God’s poetry. Nature triumphant. Of course, at my age the words bring that bit of a chill. Nature is as nature does.”
“Nonsense,” said Lizzie. “You’re in bloom.” After all, Mrs. Wright couldn’t see herself. Perhaps she would believe this.
“Nonsense back to you.” Mrs. Wright’s voice was made of salt.
Lizzie went to open the curtains. The clouds hung low and unbroken. The light was sullen and turned everything it touched green.
She pulled a chair into place beside Mrs. Wright and described the light to her. “I feel that way myself today,” Lizzie finished. “Colorless, sunless.” It was an intimate revelation. There was no reason for her to trouble Mrs. Wright with it.
“I expect you’re just tired. You should buy yourself something. Ask Mr. McCallum at the Bank of California. He’ll give you a draft on my account.” Mrs. Wright waved her hands as if Lizzie had protested. “You know how I love to see you in something pretty.” She felt for Lizzie’s lap, patted it, found her hand and squeezed.
She’d drifted again. Lizzie was glad to see that she’d landed in a time when she had money and could be with someone she loved. “I’ll do that,” Lizzie said. “It’s very kind of you.”
The orange cat appeared outside. It was stalking something small, a rat perhaps, or a mole. The cat slid along the sand with focused, watery grace. Lizzie, whose heart was all with the world’s little victims, could do nothing but refuse to watch. She looked instead at the lowering sky. “The city feels different to me now that I’m out in it again,” she said. “It’s grown around us so quickly I don’t often notice, but I see it fresh just now. Like a scab laid over the past. I remember when this was all sand and chaparral. I remember those gold and silver horses the Spanish used to ride. They were so beautiful. You never see those now. Of course, you remember it better than I.”
“Mostly I remember mud,” Mrs. Wright said, “with empty whiskey bottles sunk into it like cobblestones to make a sidewalk, and the way the fires kept on coming, one right after another.” She sucked on her false teeth with a wet, hissing sound, turned her face to Lizzie, her eyes white and veined as Florentine marble. “The land didn’t want us at first. We were the persistent ones, had to be. So bring on your tidal waves. We’ll survive them all right.”
Well, if nothing more than endurance was required, Lizzie decided she could do it. It occurred to her that probably some Indian woman about her age had once stood in these very sand dunes and thought the same thing. How many white people can there be? How long can they stay? How much can they change?
Still, some things do endure. All around us, all inside us, something ancient manages to survive. The cat had come up empty. It sat, licked at the bottom of one paw, and then turned its head so that Lizzie saw its blunt muzzle outlined against the sand.