To Paradise (63 page)

“I had to confess to someone,” he said, “which is part of why I’m telling you. But the other reason I’m telling you is because—David, I know you have a lot of resentment toward your father, and I understand it. But fear makes many of us do things that we regret, things we never thought we were capable of doing. You’re so young; you’ve spent almost your entire life living alongside death and the possibility of death—you’ve become inured to it, which is heartbreaking. So you won’t quite understand what I mean.

“But when you’re older, you do anything you can to try to stay alive. Sometimes you’re not even aware you’re doing it. Something, some instinct, some worse self, takes over—you lose who you are. Not everyone does. But many of us do.

“I suppose what I’m trying to say is—you should forgive your father.” He looked at me. “
I
forgive you, Charles. For—for whatever it is you’ve done with—with the camps. I wanted to tell you that. Norris never blamed you like I did, so he had nothing to forgive, and no forgiveness to ask. But I do.”

I realized I was supposed to say something. “Thank you, Aubrey,” I said, to a man who had hung the most valuable and sacred objects from my country on his walls like they were posters in a college dorm room and just two years earlier accused me of being a stooge of the American government. “I appreciate that.”

He sighed, and so did Nathaniel, as if I had somehow failed to play my part. Across the room, David sat with his face turned from us, so that I couldn’t see his expression. He loved Aubrey. He respected him. I could imagine what he was thinking, and I felt for him.

I wasn’t so selfish that I intended to actually ask him for his forgiveness right then. But even before I could stop myself, I was dreaming of our reunion: I’d move back in, and Nathaniel would love me again, and the baby would stop being so angry with me, and we would be a family once more.

I didn’t say anything, however. I just got up and said goodbye to everyone and went to our apartment as I’d planned, and then back to the dormitory.

I have heard—we both have heard—many terrible stories about what humans did to other humans over the past two years. Aubrey’s was not the worst, not even close to the worst. Over those months, there were reports of parents abandoning their children on subways, of a man who shot his parents in the back of their heads as they sat in their yard, of a woman who wheeled her dying husband of forty years to the scrapyard near the Lincoln Tunnel and left him there. But I guess what struck me the most about Aubrey’s story wasn’t even the story itself but, rather, how small his and Norris’s life had become. I saw them clearly: The two of them in that house I used to so resent and envy, every shutter closed to blot out the light, huddling in a corner together to make themselves small, hoping that, if they did, then the great eye of illness would fail to see them, would leave them be, as if they could elude capture altogether.

Love, C.

Dear Peter,
October 30, 2059

Thank you for the belated birthday message; I’d completely forgotten. Fifty-five. Separated. Hated by my own son and much of the rest of the Western world (what I do, if not me precisely). Somehow fully transitioned from once-promising scientist into shadowy government operative. What else is there to say? Not much, I guess.

There was a rather wan celebration at Aubrey’s house, where Nathaniel and the baby are now living full-time. I know I haven’t mentioned this, and I suppose it’s because it just happened, without either Nate or me really being aware of it. First he and David began spending more time downtown to keep Aubrey company in the weeks following Norris’s death. He’d text me when this was happening, so I’d know I could go back to our apartment and stay there
for a night. I’d wander the rooms, opening the baby’s desk drawers and rooting around; looking through Nathaniel’s sock drawer. I wasn’t searching for anything in particular—I knew that Nathaniel had no secrets, and that David would have taken his with him. I was just looking. I refolded some of David’s shirts; I stood over Nathaniel’s underwear, inhaling their scent.

Eventually, I began noticing that things were disappearing—David’s sneakers, the books on Nathaniel’s bedside table. One night, I arrived home and the ficus tree was gone. It was almost like something in a cartoon; I left during the day and all these objects scurried out while I wasn’t looking. But, of course, they were being moved down to Washington Square. After about five months of this slow-drip departure, Nathaniel texted me that I could move back in, into our home, if I wanted, and although I had been planning to refuse him on principle—every few weeks, we briefly discussed the possibility of him buying me out of the apartment so I could find my own, while being fully aware that he had no money to do so and neither did I—I was too weary by then, and so back in I moved. They didn’t take everything down to Aubrey’s, though, and in my more self-pitying moments, I am able to see the symbolism in this. The baby’s old picture books, a few jackets of Nathaniel’s it’s now far too hot to wear, a pot permanently singed by years of burned meals—and me: all the detritus of Nathaniel’s and David’s lives; all the stuff they didn’t want.

Nathaniel and I have been making an effort to speak once a week. Sometimes these interactions go well. Other times, not. We don’t fight, exactly, but every conversation, no matter how pleasant, is a brittle sheet of ice, and just beneath is a dark, freezing pool of water: decades of resentment, of blame. Much of that blame involves David, but so does much of our affinity. We both worry about him, though Nathaniel is more sympathetic to him than I am. He’ll be twenty next month, and we don’t know what to do with or for him—he has no high-school degree, no intention of attending college, no intention of getting a job. Every day, Nathaniel tells me, he disappears for hours, and only returns for dinner and a game of chess with Aubrey before disappearing again. At least, Nathaniel says, he’s still
tender with Aubrey; with us, he rolls his eyes and snorts when we ask him about finding a job, about finishing his degree, but he listens patiently to Aubrey’s occasional mild lectures; before he leaves at night, he helps Aubrey climb the stairs to his bedroom.

Tonight, we were having cake when the decontam chamber slapped close, and David appeared. I never know what kind of mood the baby will be in when he sees me: Will he be scornful, rolling his eyes at whatever I say? Will he be sarcastic, asking me how many people I’ve been responsible for killing this week? Will he be, unexpectedly, shy, almost puppyish, bashfully shrugging when I give him a compliment, when I tell him how much I miss him? Every time, I tell him I miss him; every time, I tell him I love him. But I don’t ask for his forgiveness, which I know he wants, because there is nothing for him to forgive.

“Hello, David,” I said to him, and watched an uncertain expression cross his face: It occurred to me that he could as little predict his reaction to seeing me as I could.

He settled on sarcasm. “I didn’t know we were having international war criminals over for dinner tonight,” he said.

“David,” said Nathaniel, wearily. “Stop. I told you—it’s your father’s birthday today.”

Then, before he could say anything more, Aubrey added, gently, “Come sit, David, come spend some time with us.” And then, when David still hesitated, “There’s lots of extra food.”

He sat, and Edmund brought him a plate, and the three of us watched for a while as he swiftly demolished it, leaned back, and belched.

“
David,
” Nathaniel and I said as one, and the baby suddenly grinned, looking at us in turn, which made Nathaniel and me look at each other as well, and for a moment, all of us were smiling together.

“Can’t help yourselves, can you?” asked David, almost fondly, addressing Nathaniel and me as a unit, and we smiled again: at him, at each other. Across from us, the baby forked into his carrot cake. “How old are you, Pops?” he asked.

“Fifty-five,” I said, ignoring the “Pops” provocation, which I hated, and which he knew I hated. But it had been years since he
had called me “Papa,” and then another period of years in which he had called me nothing at all.

“Jesus,” said the baby, but with genuine excitement. “Fifty-five! That’s so old!”

“Ancient,” I agreed, smiling, and next to David, Aubrey laughed. “An infant,” he corrected. “A baby.”

This would have been the perfect time for David to begin one of his rants—about the average age of the children removed to the camps, about the death rate among nonwhite children, about how the government was using this illness as an opportunity to kill off Black and Native American people, which was why all the recent diseases had been allowed to spread unchecked in the first place—but he didn’t, just rolled his eyes, but good-naturedly, and cut himself another slice of cake. Before he began eating it, though, he untied the bandanna around his neck, and as he did, I saw that the entire right side of his neck was covered by an enormous tattoo.

“Jesus!” I said, and Nathaniel, understanding what I’d seen, spoke my name, warningly. I had already been given a list of the many topics I wasn’t allowed to mention to David or inquire about, among them his degree, his plans, his future, how he spent his day, his politics, his ambitions, and his friends. But he hadn’t mentioned huge disfiguring tattoos, and I rushed to the other side of the table, as if it might disappear if I didn’t examine it in the next five seconds. I pulled down the neck of David’s T-shirt and looked at it: It was an eye, about six inches wide, large and menacing, and radiating from it were rays of light; written in Gothic script beneath it were the words “Ex Obscuris Lux.”

I let go of his shirt and stepped back. David was smirking. “Did you join the American Academy of Ophthalmology?” I asked him.

He stopped smiling and looked confused. “Huh?” he asked.

“ ‘Ex obscuris lux,’ ” I said. “ ‘From darkness, light.’ That’s their motto.”

For a moment, he looked confused again. Then he recovered himself. “No,” he said, tersely, and I could tell he was embarrassed, and then angry because he was embarrassed.

“Well, what’s that for, then?” I asked.

“Charles,” Nathaniel said, sighing, “not now.”

“What do you mean, ‘not now’? I can’t even ask my son why he got an enormous”—I nearly said “hideous”—“tattoo on his neck?”

“It’s because I’m a member of the light,” David said, proudly, and when I didn’t answer, he rolled his eyes again. “Jesus, Pops,” he said, “
The Light
. It’s a group.”

“What kind of group?” I asked.

“Charles,” Nathaniel said.

“Oh, Nate, stop with the
Charles, Charles
—he’s my son, too. I can ask him what I want.” I looked back at David. “What kind of group?”

He was smirking again, and I wanted to slap him. “A political group,” he said.

“What kind of political group?” I asked.

“A group that tries to undo the work you’ve been doing,” he said.

At this point, Peter, you would have been proud of me. I had one of those rare moments in which I foresaw, perfectly and vividly, where this conversation would lead. The baby would try to provoke me. I would be provoked. I would say something rash. He would respond in kind. Nathaniel would stand on the sidelines, wringing his hands. Aubrey would remain slumped in his seat, watching us with sorrow and pity and a bit of revulsion—that he should have us in his life, and that the three of us should have come to such an unhappy end.

But I did none of those things. Instead—in a display of composure not even I thought myself capable of—I simply said I was happy he’d found his mission in life, and that I wished him and his comrades all the best in their struggle. And then I thanked Aubrey and Nathaniel for dinner, and I walked out. “Oh, Charles,” Nathaniel said, following me to the door. “Charles, don’t leave.”

I pulled him into the parlor. “Nathaniel,” I said, “does he hate me?”

“Who?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well who I meant. Then he sighed. “No, of course not, Charles,” he said. “He’s going through a phase. And—and he’s passionate about his beliefs. You know this. He doesn’t hate you.”

“But
you
hate me,” I said.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “I hate what you did, Charles. I don’t hate
you
.”

“I did what needed to be done, Natey,” I said.

“Charles,” said Nathaniel, “I’m not going to discuss this with you right now. The point is, you’re his father. You always will be.”

Somehow, this wasn’t very comforting, and after I left (I had hoped Nathaniel would try harder to make me stay, but he hadn’t), I stood at the north entrance of Washington Square and watched the most recent generation of shantytown dwellers move about. A few were bathing in the fountain, and there was a family—two parents and a little girl—who had built a small fire next to the arch, where they were roasting an unidentified animal over the flames. “Is it done yet?” the little girl kept asking, excitedly. “Is it done, Daddy? Is it done yet?” “Almost, sweetheart,” the father said. “Almost, almost.” He pinched the tail off the creature and handed it to the girl, who squealed with joy and immediately began gnawing at it, and I turned away. There were about two hundred people living in the Square, and although they knew that one night their homes would be bulldozed away, they kept coming: It was safer to be here than beneath a bridge or in a tunnel. Still, I didn’t know how they slept, with those floodlights beating down on them, but I suppose people get used to anything. Many of the dwellers wear sunglasses even at night, or a piece of black gauze tied around their eyes. The majority of them don’t have protective helmets, so from afar, they look like an army of ghosts, their entire faces wrapped in cotton.

Back in the apartment, I looked up The Light, which was much as I suspected: an anti-government, anti-science group dedicated to “revealing the truth of state manipulation and ending the age of plagues.” It appears to be small, even by these groups’ standards; no major attacks to their name and no major claimed incidents. But I sent an email to my contact in Washington anyway, asking them to send me their full dossier—I didn’t say why I was asking.