American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,258

Mrs. Greer must arrange for the next dinner party (which will be very nice indeed). Some of them even invite the children home, for despite their unusual appearance, the people of Wink have not seen their little siblings in so long, and taking care of one’s guests is what a proper host should do.

So, one by one, they return to their homes, and they go about their business. Even when the fire begins licking at the sides of the houses, even when it bursts through the kitchen windows and crawls across the kitchen cabinets, even when it dances in their beds and across their carpets, they do what they did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.

There is a way things should be. This is what we are. This should save us, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it? Now that we are these things, shouldn’t everything be fine?

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

The midday sun bakes everything, anything. It is so bright it has baked the blue out of the sky, the red out of the earth. The very air shimmers as if to get out of its way.

Mona sympathizes as she drives. She feels blackened, burned, both inside and out. She has walked through fire, now she is filled only with ash.

When she arrives at the mesa she sees things are much as she expected: Gracie, Parson, and her daughter sit on the shady side, under a shelf of rock. Gracie’s eyes are bright, bright red, veined and wet like peeled pomegranates. Her daughter sleeps in Gracie’s arms. The child’s fat cheeks make her lower lip jut out as though she is pouting over some recent slight.

Parson is waiting for her, as is someone else: a young girl of about ten, with mousy brown hair and yellow tennis shoes. She looks up at Mona with a piercing gaze, and she slowly stands as if this action normally causes her great pain.

“Mrs. Benjamin,” says Mona.

“Hello, dear,” says the little girl. “You’ve done quite wonderfully.”

“So that is you in there?”

“Yes. It is a bit unwieldy being so… short. But I manage.”

“It all worked?” Mona asks Parson. “You all got here safely?”

“We did,” says Parson. “Though some of us are the worse for wear.” He looks back at Gracie. “She has lost everything.”

Mona walks to Gracie, stoops, and holds her hands out. Gracie takes a moment to register this, then looks up at Mona and slowly holds out the sleeping child. Mona takes her and says, “You did a good job taking care of her, Gracie.”

Gracie stares into the stone. Her cheeks are so lacquered with tears it’s hard to see if she’s still crying. Any new ones simply dissolve and run down her face in a sheet.

“Thank you,” says Mona. “I really do thank you, Gracie.”

She sits down and holds her child in her arms. She stares at her daughter, and, without even knowing it, bends over to shelter her from the heat.

“What happened to Mother?” asks Mona.

“The wildling,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “He took her body, back to… wherever he resides. I do not know why, but I do not really wish to find out. I feel the answer would be unpleasant.”

“Then it’s over?” asks Mona. “It’s really all over?”

“Nothing is ever truly over,” says Parson. “At least, in my experience. But Mother’s efforts here do seem at an end.”

The little girl wakes and looks at Mona, then spies Mona’s watch and begins picking at it with her thumb and forefinger. “You want that? Here. Here.” Mona unclasps it and hands it to the girl. She holds it out as a fisherman would his prize, and smiles in glee and disbelief. “My goodness,” whispers Mona. “Isn’t that something.”

She revels in this maternal moment for a while, basking in the presence of her child like the warmth of a fire.

“What will you do with her?” asks Parson. “Keep her? Raise her?”

“Could I?” asks Mona.

“There is nothing stopping you.”

Her daughter’s interest in the watch wanes. She flops over, rests her head on Mona’s chest, and heaves a great sigh. “She’s tired. She’s had a long day.”

She thinks, I don’t have anywhere to put her to sleep. Then, with a shrill of fear: I don’t even know what name to say when she wakes up.

Once more she remembers the look on the face of the Mona in the lens.

“But she’s so beautiful,” says Mona softly, as if arguing with someone. “She’s even more beautiful than I thought she would be…”

“She is quite terribly pretty, yes,” says