To Paradise (70 page)

“Frances!” I called. “Ezra! Hiram! It’s Charles Griffith—Nathaniel sent me. Hello?”

But no one answered. There was a door separating the foyer from the rest of the parlor floor, and I pushed it open and nearly gagged. I stepped into the living room. For a while, I saw nothing, and then I heard a faint sound, a buzzing, and I saw that there was a small, dense cloud hovering over the sofa. When I stepped closer, the cloud revealed itself as a swarm of black flies, whirring and humming in a tornado-like pattern. What they were circling was the form of a woman, Frances Holson, tucked up into herself, dead for at least two weeks, maybe more.

I moved away, my heart pounding. “Boys!” I shouted. “Hiram! Ezra!” But again, there was silence.

I continued moving through the living room. Then I heard something else, a faint crinkling. At the end of the space, I saw something moving, and when I got closer, I saw that it was a sheet of clear plastic, one that filled the entire doorframe that separated the living room from the kitchen, and that sealed the kitchen off from the rest of the house. There were two windows cut near the bottom right corner of the sheet: One had two plastic sleeves drooping through it, into the living area, and the other was just a plain rectangle. It was this window that had come loose, and was moving in the breeze from some unseen source.

I looked through the plastic into the kitchen. The first thing I thought was that it resembled some kind of animal’s burrow: a gopher’s, for example; a prairie dog’s. The window shades were drawn, and every surface was covered. I unzipped the plastic wall and walked inside, and here, too, there was a stench of decay, though here the scent was not animal but vegetal. The counters were covered with dishes and pots and pans, and stacks of textbooks. In the sink, there were more pots and pans submerged in an oily scum, like someone had tried to clean them and had given up midway through.
Next to the sink sat two soup bowls, two spoons, and two mugs, all wiped clean. Pushed into every corner were bulging black garbage bags, and when I made myself untie one, I saw they were filled not with chopped-up human remains but with scraps of carrot and crumbs of bread so rotten they had gone slimy, tea bags that looked like they’d been sucked dry. The recycling bin was spilling over, a parodic cornucopia. I picked up a tin of garbanzo beans, and saw that inside, it was not just empty but meticulously empty, so clean it gleamed. The next tin, the same thing, and the next as well.

In the center of the floor, about a foot apart, divided by another stack of books, atop of which sat two laptops, were two sleeping bags, each with a pillow, and—a detail that upset me—each with a stuffed bear tucked beneath the top layer of the bag, their heads resting on the pillows, their black eyes staring at the ceiling. Around this sleeping area was a clear path, leading to a bathroom, where two oxygen packs were plugged into the wall; there were two glasses on the edge of the sink, and two toothbrushes, and a tube of toothpaste, still mostly full. The bathroom led to a laundry room, and here too nothing seemed amiss: The cupboards were stocked with towels and extra toilet paper and flashlights and batteries and laundry detergent; a set of pillowcases and two pairs of child-size jeans still lay in the dryer.

I returned to the kitchen and picked my way back through the detritus to the center of the room, where I looked around, considering what I should do next. I called Nathaniel, but he didn’t answer.

And then I went to the refrigerator to get something to drink, and inside was—nothing. Not a bottle of juice, not a jug of mustard, not a stray lettuce leaf withering in the back of a drawer. The freezer, too: nothing. And then a dread moved over me, and I began opening all of the cupboards, all of the drawers—nothing, nothing, nothing. There wasn’t a single edible thing in that kitchen, not even anything—flour, baking soda, yeast—that could be used to make something edible. That was why the cans were so clean: They had licked out every bit of food they could. It was why the kitchen was so messy: They had searched everywhere for something to eat.

I didn’t know why they had sealed themselves—or, more likely,
why their mother had sealed them—in the kitchen, except that it would have been for their safety. But once they had run out of food, I understood that they would have explored the entire house, looking for it.

I ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs. “Ezra!” I shouted. “Hiram!” Their parents’ bedroom was on the second floor, and it had been overturned as well: Underwear and socks and men’s undershirts vomited from the drawers; shoes were scattered outside the closet.

On the third floor, the same pattern: drawers emptied, closets in disarray. Only their own study was as tidy as I remembered it—they would have known it intimately; they wouldn’t have needed to search for what they knew wasn’t there.

Here, I stopped, trying to calm down. I called and texted Nathaniel again. And it was as I was waiting for him to answer that I looked through the window and saw, far below me, two forms lying facedown in the back garden.

It was the boys, of course. They were wearing wool coats, even though it was far too warm for wool. They were very thin. One of them, Hiram or Ezra, had angled his head to face his brother, whose own face was pressed into the flagstones. Their oxygen packs were still attached to their pants, the chambers long depleted. And although it was warm, the stones were cool, and this had helped preserve their bodies to some degree.

I stayed until the forensic team came, told them what I knew, and then went to the house to tell Nathaniel, who did not take the news well. “Why didn’t I go over there sooner?” he cried. “I knew something was wrong, I
knew
it. Where was their housekeeper? Where was their
fucking
father?”

I made some inquiries; I argued that this could be a public-health matter, and asked that a full investigation be conducted, as swiftly as possible. Today I got the report of what happened, or at least what is thought to have happened: The theory is that, about five weeks ago, Frances Holson became sick with “an illness of unknown pathology.” She, realizing it was contagious, sealed the boys into the kitchen, and asked their housekeeper to come by regularly with
food. For the first week, at least, she did. But as Frances deteriorated, the housekeeper was too frightened to return. It’s thought that Frances moved herself downstairs to be closer to her boys, and gave them the rest of the food she’d set aside for herself, handing it to them with sterile gloves through one of the windows cut into the sheet. The boys would have watched her die, and then lived with the sight of her dead body for at least another two weeks. It was thought they ventured out to hunt for food about five days before I found them, exiting through the door in the kitchen and climbing down the metal stairs to the garden. Hiram—the one lying facedown—had died first; it was thought that Ezra, who had turned his head to face him, had died a day later.

But then there were all the things we don’t know, and may never know: Why didn’t they—Frances, Hiram, Ezra—call anyone? Why hadn’t their teachers seen the disarray in the kitchen on their video lessons and asked if they needed help? Did they not have family they could call? Did they not have friends? How could the housekeeper just leave such vulnerable people there alone? Why had Frances not ordered more food? Why hadn’t the boys? Had they been infected by Frances’s unknown virus? They wouldn’t have starved to death in a week, or even two. Was it the shock of being outdoors? Was it the fragility of their immune systems? Or was it something for which there is no clinical name: Was it despair? Was it hopelessness? Was it fear? Or was it a kind of surrender, a giving up of life—for surely they could have found help, couldn’t they? They had a way to communicate with the outside world: Why had they not tried harder to do so, unless, perhaps, they had had enough of life itself, of being alive?

And most of all: Where
was
their fucking father? The Health Ministry team tracked him down, just a mile or so away, in Brooklyn Heights, where apparently he had been living for the past five years with his new family—his new wife, with whom he had begun an affair seven years ago, and his two new children, five and six, both healthy. He told the investigators that he had always made sure Hiram and Ezra were taken care of, that he sent Frances money monthly. But when they asked which funeral home he wanted his
sons sent to after the autopsy, he shook his head. “The city crematorium is fine,” he said. “They died a long time ago.” And then he shut the door.

I didn’t tell Nathaniel any of this. It would have upset him too much. It upset me. How could someone disavow their children so completely, so neatly, as if they had never existed at all? How could any parent be so dispassionate?

Last night, I lay awake thinking of the Holsons. As bad as I felt for the boys, I felt worse for Frances: to have raised them, and protected them so carefully, so vigilantly, only to have them die from desperation. And as I was about to fall asleep, I wondered if the boys hadn’t called anyone for help for one simple reason—because they wanted to see the world. I imagined them joining hands and walking out the door, down the steps, and into their backyard. There they’d stand, holding each other’s hands, smelling the air, and looking up at the treetops all around them, their mouths opening in wonder, their lives becoming glorious—for once—even as they ended.

Love—Me

My dear Peter,
April 19, 2065

Sorry for the lack of communication. I know it’s been weeks. But I think you’ll understand when I tell you what happened.

Eden left. And by “left,” I don’t mean that she vanished one night, leaving only a note behind. We know exactly where she is—in her apartment in Windsor Terrace, presumably packing her things. By “left,” I mean she just doesn’t want to be a parent anymore. That was how she phrased it, in fact: “I just don’t think I have it in me to be a parent.”

There’s really not a lot else to say, and really not much reason to be surprised. Since Charlie was born, I’ve seen Eden maybe six times. Now, granted, I don’t live in the house, so it’s possible that she was coming more frequently than just Thanksgiving and
Christmas and New Year’s, and so on, but given how careful and anxious Nathaniel always seemed around her, I somehow doubt it. He would never speak badly about her to me—not, I think, because he thought well of her but more because he felt that if he said aloud, “Eden is a bad mother,” then she really
would
be a bad mother. Though she already
was
a bad mother. I know it doesn’t make sense, but this is how Nathaniel thinks. You and I know what bad mothers are like, but Nathaniel doesn’t—he always loved his mother, and still finds it difficult to comprehend that not all mothers will remain mothers out of a sake of duty, much less affection.

I wasn’t present for the conversation she had with Nathaniel. Neither was David, whose own whereabouts are less and less known to either of us. But she apparently texted him one day, and said that she needed to talk, and that she would meet him in the park. “I’ll bring Charlie,” Nathaniel said, and Eden quickly said he shouldn’t, because she had a flu “or something” and didn’t want to pass it on. (What did she think, that she would say she wasn’t interested in Charlie anymore, and Nathaniel would shove her into her arms and run away?) So they met in the park. Nathaniel said that Eden was thirty minutes late (she blamed the fact that the subways were closed, although the subways have been closed for six months now), and that she came with some guy, who waited for her on a different bench a few yards away while she told Nathaniel she was moving out of the country.

“To where?” asked Nathaniel, after he overcame his initial shock.

“Washington,” she said. “My family used to vacation on Orcas Island back when I was a kid, and I always wanted to try living out there.”

“But what about Charlie?” he asked.

And here, he said, something—guilt, maybe; shame, I hope—flashed across her face. “I just think she’s better here with you,” she said, and then, when Nathaniel didn’t say anything, “You’re good at this, man. I just don’t think I have it in me to be a parent.”

In my new efforts at brevity, I’m going to spare you all the back and forth, the pleading, the many attempts to get David involved, the attempts at negotiation, and just say that Eden is no longer
a part of Charlie’s life. She signed papers terminating her rights, which leaves David as Charlie’s sole parent. But as I’ve said, David is rarely around, which means that in fact, if not in law, Nathaniel is now her sole parent.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Nathaniel said. This was last night, after dinner. We were sitting on the sofa in the parlor. Charlie was asleep in his arms. “I’m going to put her to bed.”

“No,” I said, “let me hold her,” and he looked at me, that particular Nathaniel look—half annoyance, half fondness—before transferring her to my arms.

For a while, we sat there, me looking down at Charlie, Nathaniel stroking her head. I had the funny sensation that time had fallen away beneath us, and that we had been given another chance—as parents, as a couple. We were both younger and older than we were right now, and we knew everything that we might do wrong and yet nothing about what might happen, and this was our baby, and nothing in the past two decades that had occurred—my job, the pandemics, the camps, our divorce—had actually transpired. But then I realized that, by erasing all that, I was also erasing David and, therefore, Charlie.

I reached over and began stroking Nathaniel’s hair, and he raised his eyebrow at me, but then he leaned his head back, and for a while, we remained there, me stroking his hair, he stroking Charlie’s.

“I think maybe I should move in,” I said, and he looked at me, and raised his other eyebrow.

“Do you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I could help you, and spend more time with Charlie.” I hadn’t been planning on making this offer, but now that I had, it seemed right. My apartment—formerly our apartment—had become less a place to live and more a repository for inanimate objects. I slept at the lab. I ate at Nathaniel’s. And then I went back to the apartment to change. It didn’t really make sense.