PARENTHOOD HARDENED YOU. YOUR TASK WAS UPKEEP OF the body, and you understood what that entailed. The sight of vomit once made her retch, but her children’s—Amanda faced it. Crisis made her rational. She called to Clay. She washed her son’s body just as she had when he’d been a boy.
When they were babies, Clay and Amanda played man-on-man defense. That first wretched winter, Clay would take Archie to the New York City Transit Museum, an indoor attraction but always very cold, since it was built in an old subway station. Amanda would pace the apartment with Rosie, desperate for the tit, listening to the album Björk had made about how great it was to have sex with Matthew Barney. If she thought about it, Amanda could still hear the creak of floorboard underfoot in that one spot near the kitchen. If he thought about it, Clay could still picture the trains from a more innocent era—rattan seats, ceiling fans—parked on the museum’s obsolete tracks. Amanda stripped the soiled bedding. Clay took the boy to the living room.
“We have a thermometer.” Ruth, prudent, had stocked the bathroom. Analgesics for adults and children, bandages, iodine, saline, petroleum jelly.
“That would be great.” Clay helped the boy into his too-big sweatshirt; he smoothed his mussed hair. He sat beside him on the sofa, and they looked toward the back of the house, at the drama of the rain filling the swimming pool.
Maternal muscle memory was strong. Ruth returned with supplies. “Let’s take his temperature.”
So, too, was paternal instinct. G. H. helped Rose find the hidden stores: icing sugar, tubes of decorative gels, birthday candles, sprinkles rattling in plastic jars. Rose was not a fool, but happy enough to be diverted. They coaxed the cake onto a plate, and she spun it expertly beneath the spatula, stationary, thick with frosting.
“Thank you,” Clay said.
Ruth held the boy’s chin, placed the point of the glass tube beneath his tongue. “You do feel warm. But let’s just see how warm.”
“How do you feel now, bud?” Clay relied on these masculine affections when he was most worried. He’d already asked. Archie had already answered. He wanted to put an arm around him, wanted to fold him into his body, but the boy wouldn’t like that because the boy was nearly a man.
“I’m fine.” Archie mumbled through the thermometer, unable to achieve his characteristic adolescent disdain.
Ruth studied the inscrutable instrument. “One hundred and two. Not so bad. Not so good.”
“Drink your water, pal.” Clay pressed the glass into the boy’s hand.
“Take these.” Ruth shook out two Tylenol just as G. H. and Rose were peppering the cake with sugar confetti, a nice little duet.
Archie did as he was bid. He held a sip of the liquid in his mouth, then put the pills into that. He swallowed and tried to tell if his throat was tender. He wanted to watch television, or go back to his house, or lose himself in his phone, but none of these were possible, so he just sat there, saying nothing.
“I’m going to go help Amanda.” Ruth was pleased to have a problem to solve, or a problem that she might solve. “You just rest here.”
Finding the bathtub full of the water that was meant to save their lives, Amanda took the soiled sheets to the master bathroom, rinsed the (mercifully watery) vomit in the tiled shower. She squeezed them as dry as she could, twisting the cotton until she feared it would rend. She was angry, and this was something to do with that feeling. She dried her hands and went into the bedroom. How quickly they spread out: a tangle of dirty underwear, used paper napkin, magazine, glass of water, all these little signs that they existed and endured. Trees marked their lives in rings that can’t be seen; people, in the garbage they left everywhere, a way of insisting on their own importance. Amanda began righting the room.
“Knock knock.” Ruth said it like a character in a television show as she strode down the hall and into the room, laundry basket at her hip. “I don’t mean to interrupt. I thought I might do the wash anyway, though.”
Amanda performed a kind of curtsy for some reason. Well, it was the woman’s room. “I’m sorry. I can do Archie’s sheets.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just throw them in here. He seems fine. A temperature. One hundred and two.”
“One hundred and two?”
“It sounds high, but you know they are high when they’re kids. Those showroom-new immune systems working overtime. I gave him some Tylenol.”
“Thank you.”
“You can put your clothes in too. I just—while the power is still on.”
It was too intimate, but Ruth had foresight. It would save them the trek to the Laundromat when they got home. Amanda did not know that the Laundromat was closed. She did not know that the Chinese man who ran it was inside the elevator that carried passengers between the turnstiles and the platform at the R train station in Brooklyn Heights, and he’d been there for hours, and he’d die there, though that was many hours in the future yet. “That’s smart. Thank you.”
They considered each other like they were meant to duel. Maybe that was inevitable. Ruth pitied the woman. She knew what was required of her, and hated it. She had to pretend her way to being a good person. But what about Maya and the boys? “You know, you could stay. If you wanted.”
The little house as life raft. Ignorance as a kind of knowing. This did not seduce Amanda. An eternity (as though that were granted) with these people. Part of her still wondered whether this wasn’t a con or a delusion. It was torture, a home invasion without rape or guns. Still, this woman was the nearest an ally Amanda had. She shook her head. “Archie needs a doctor.”
“What if we all do? What if it’s inside us? What if something is beginning, or everything is ending?” This subtext was inescapable. People kept calling the Amazon the planet’s lungs. Waist-deep water was lapping against Venetian marble, and tourists were smiling and taking snapshots. It was like some tacit agreement; everyone had ceded to things just falling apart. That it was common knowledge that things were bad surely meant they were actually worse. Ruth wasn’t this kind of person, but she could feel disease blooming inside her body. It was everywhere, inescapable.
“I can’t think about what we don’t know. I need to focus on this. Archie needs a doctor, I’ll take him to a doctor tomorrow morning.”
“But you’re afraid. I’m afraid.”
“That’s not getting us anywhere. I can’t stay here. I can’t hide. I’m his mother. What else can we do?”
Ruth sat on the bed’s edge. She couldn’t go to town or beyond, to Northampton. She wanted to just lie in her bed. “I guess you’re right.”
“Say something to make me feel better.” Amanda was searching for friendship or humanity or reassurance or relief.
Ruth crossed her legs and looked up at her. “I can’t do that. Comforting.”
Amanda was immediately disappointed.
“Maybe I need it. Comforting.” She was eager to wash the clothes. The neutral smell of the soap, the thunder of the water. “So I can’t provide it. But stay. I think you should. I think it makes sense. Even if I can’t make you feel better. I can’t say something wise and churchy for you.”
“I know—I know you can’t.”
“At least you have your children here with you. I don’t know what’s happening to my daughter. I don’t know what’s happening to my grandsons. We don’t know anything about the world. That is what it is.”
Amanda knew this was the way it had always been. She couldn’t help but wish it were otherwise. Her clothes smelled of her son’s vomit, and the air smelled of her daughter’s cake. “Let’s eat something. I’m going to take a shower, and then we should eat something. I think that will help.” No, that wasn’t quite it. “I can’t think of anything else to do.”