I don’t know how long Catherine has been dead or how she evaded authorities, but the sound of the car must have drawn her out into the open. I can’t believe I let KC talk me into this. I should have listened to my gut instead of my head.
Actually, it wasn’t my head that I followed. It was KC’s incessant begging and pleading. Her insistence on connecting to her best friend was enough to push us right out of the house. If I’m going to be honest, it was my mutual need to get out that made me give in.
Gemma’s family is still a bit new to the neighborhood, but that didn’t stop KC and Gemma from becoming fast friends. Yes, KC was missing her friend, and yes, I needed to talk to an adult in person for a change, but I just drove over a speed bump named Catherine, so this will have to be the last outing we make until this all blows over.
As soon as we arrive we charge up Gemma’s driveway and pull right up alongside the front door, azaleas be damned. I check to make sure the coast is clear before we open the car door and cross the two-foot distance to the front door. As I look around I remember that I once admired the garden at this house. It was once a riot of color and diversity, but there’s nothing left to look at now. A combination of neglect and an unusually cold fall has turned the flowerbeds grey and brown. The trees have reacted to the trauma of a hot summer followed by the shock of a frigid fall and have given us a stunning show of color, but we know it’s only their swan song before dying. The only real sign of life is the steady creep of weeds that slowly reclaim the land.
Gemma’s mother, Grace, is waiting at the door with the phone, her hand shaking, her eyes wide with fear. The gore and smell of rot on my car need no explanation. “It was CrazyToiletBrush Lady!” KC blurts out as she races upstairs to Gemma’s bedroom. I take the phone from Grace’s trembling hand to call for the Pickup Truck. I give them the details of what happened and where and silently hope they clean up CrazyToiletBrush Lady before we go. I’ll be carrying enough of that woman back home on my wheels as it is.
I hand my gift to Grace. It’s not the bottle of wine we would have given in the old life, but the most valuable thing we have now—a bottle of water. “Heard from John lately?” I ask. I’d rather not ask about her husband, but somehow I feel like I’m supposed to. Under the circumstances, it’s the polite thing to do. Her expression tells me she hasn’t.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” I lie. “There have been rolling media blackouts in the last two weeks. I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you soon.” Grace and I are in the same boat with our husbands. Both of them are away; hers with the army, and mine was overseas when this whole thing started and is trapped there now. The difference between the two is that John puts his life on the line every day while he’s out fighting the Infected, whereas Grant is safe in a secure compound he helped create for his clients and their families.
I change the subject. “How’s the roof garden coming along?” Grace is fortunate to have a flat roof, and like many others, she has taken to growing as much food as she can on it. We only have a little balcony garden, and we are grateful to have that. It’s small, but all that matters is that no one can reach it from below.
“It’s going well, but I’m still too afraid to eat anything. I can only use rainwater to water it—what if the parasites live dormant in plant cells, waiting to be ingested by a hungry victim?“
I’ve had the same fears, but I’m not about to share them, so instead of saying how I really feel I point out, “They proved on TV that it doesn’t. Remember when the governor ate that tomato he plucked off the vine? He took his time eating it…if there were parasites, he would have been infected within a minute.”
Grace and I fall silent again. I search my mind for something to change the subject, something that won’t bring up the world as we know it, but my only thought is that someone must be cleaning Catherine off the street right now. Come to think of it, I’m tired of avoiding the present in our conversation. Instead of steering her attention elsewhere, I ask, “What do you miss most from your former life?”
Grace looks thoughtfully into the distance and eventually says, “I miss taking Gemma to visit my parents. I’ve felt so alone since we moved away, and I’m constantly worried about them. What do you miss?”
Suddenly I think of what I can say to turn this gloomy conversation around. “Oh, I miss the simple things, like being able to walk naked.”
Grace blinks rapidly, like she wasn’t too sure she heard me right. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said I really miss being able to walk naked. I used to walk naked every day, twice a day if the weather was nice.”
The look on Grace’s face shows she doesn’t know how to deal with this tidbit of information, or how to deal with me for that matter. “Didn’t the neighbors mind?”
“It’s never seemed to bother them. They’d just smile and wave.”
“And you, um, you really did this every day?” She’s blushing now.
“Well, if it was raining pretty hard or if I was out of town I didn’t. But I really did miss it if I didn’t get a chance to walk naked. Sometimes I’d be somewhere like the grocery store and think to myself ‘I can’t wait to get home and get naked’!”
Her eyebrows shoot up at this and the redness starts to spread from her cheeks to her ears. “Did you only walk n-n-naked?” she stammers.
“Not always. Sometimes I got naked in the car.”
Grace is now shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She probably regrets getting to know me. She’s fidgeting as she searches for something else to say. Finally she looks up and pointedly asks: “Was Grant fine with this?”
“He got used to it.”
“So how did he feel about you walking naked?”
“He didn’t really care. He just wished we didn’t name the dog Naked.”