American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,260

blank. Again, when Mona nears it she can feel it is like a door still slightly ajar.

“Are you quite sure about this?” asks Parson.

“Do it,” says Mona. Her daughter bows her back, tired of being held for so long. “Just do it.”

“We’ll need your help,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “You will need to give a push. But I think I’ve given you enough training on this, yes?”

Mona nods. The two of them start to hum, or the things inside them do. Mona faces the mirror. Her eyes search its depths. It suddenly does not seem flat, but concave, like she’s staring into half of a bubble, or maybe a tunnel…

Mona feels something give way in the mirror. And an image begins to solidify in the glass.

A yellow nursery, with polka-dotted curtains.

How she wanted that life in the mirror. How she dreamed of it.

“You can cross, if you want,” says Parson. “This is, after all, your own time, just slightly different.”

Mona looks at him, and he nods toward the silvery image. She takes a breath, and walks toward it.

She expects to feel something, as if she’s jumped into a lake or parted a veil, but there is nothing. It’s as if there’s just a hole in the world, and this pleasant nursery lies on the other side.

There is the fragrance of laundry sheets and diapers and Lysol and fresh bedding. Everything is neat and tidy; all the tiny little clothes have been properly put away; and unless she’s mistaken, there are lines in the carpet from a recent, vigorous vacuuming. Something inside her swells to see all this.

Mona wishes she knew what time it is over here; she thinks it’s just minutes after the child was originally stolen, but she isn’t sure.

She walks to the crib. The baby begins squirming, already anticipating being forced to sleep.

Do it now, or you’ll never bring yourself to do it again.

She lays her child in the crib and kisses her on the head. “Thank you for showing me that I would have been a good momma,” she whispers. “Your own momma might be kind of scared for a while. But don’t worry. She’ll get over it. It might take her a while, but… but I know she always gets over it.”

Mona begins to back away.

She knows this is the right decision, so why is she crying so much? Why does it hurt so much to accept how things are?

The child sits up and squawks a tiny protest.

Mona begins to walk back through the mirror. As she does, she hears a voice in the hall—her voice—say, “Wendy? Wendy, is that you?”

And she thinks: Wendy. Her name is Wendy. What a good name.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Through the chamber, through the door, down the dusky hall. She parts the dying memories with the blade of her hand, sends echoes scuttering over dusty stone. The spying eye of the past clapped to cracks in the air, watching, listening, snickering.

What more is there to this dark earth than halls and halls of empty rooms?

Up the ladder (her hands shake on each rung), up up and up, until the screaming red supernova erupts over her, sunlight howling and blistering and blank, pouring down the shaft to swallow her and fill her ears with silence, blissful silence.

The stone so hot her hands should sizzle. A sky shorn of clouds, all moisture scraped away. This land is so empty. And in the distance, the ribbon of black smoke, and the streak of gray where a town once stood.

I have lost her again.

She walks to the edge of the mesa. Gracie sits below, staring into the valley. She asks a question, but Mona cannot hear—she walks down and sits beside her and looks out.

In the shade the stone is cool. The air is redolent with pine sap. The wind blows southward, so each breath is free of smoke. Below her, among the trees, there is the flit of birds’ wings, and the buzzing, aimless twirl of grasshoppers.

Gracie says something. Her words have a dull ring on the shelf of stone.

“What?” Mona whispers.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Mona sits there, frozen, broken, empty.

Gracie says, “I think you did the right thing.”

She holds a hand out to Mona. Mona bows her head, reaches out, and takes it and squeezes and holds on as hard as she can, just as hard as she possibly can.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

They sit in silence for what feels like lifetimes. After a while Mona realizes Mrs. Benjamin and Parson are watching them from down the path. She feels