names and details had long since scattered. But as she talked, another voice was speaking in the back of her mind, saying, “Oh, Mama, what am I going to do with you?”
* * *
—
ONCE THE KIDS WERE OUT of school and stuck at home, Henry began calling them every morning at ten from Riyadh, so Jill could get out of the house. It was a daily battle trying to assemble money or find groceries. Most businesses were closed down, but black markets popped up in different neighborhoods, where everything was for sale. Cash hoarding caused the ATMs to run low on money. The federal government had a large reserve of currency that it was trying to push into the economy, but the reserve was largely composed of spurned two-dollar bills, which cash machines couldn’t accommodate.
The contagion had destroyed any sense of community. Jill recalled other natural disasters, such as hurricanes in North Carolina when she was a child. The city of Wilmington would snap into a well-organized humanitarian machine. Her father had a bass boat, and when the streets flooded, he rescued neighbors trapped in their houses. Nora made food baskets with her daughters. Jill and Maggie loved those purposeful and dramatic days when people pulled together and everyone seemed to care about each other.
Disease wasn’t like that. Neighbors were afraid of each other. They hoarded food. It seemed like everyone was armed—gun shops were the last businesses to shut their doors. The boldest people were the rapacious black marketeers. Jill had no doubt that most of the available goods were stolen. The sellers had made a calculation: this was their chance to make a killing. When the plague passed, they would be kings. All they had to do was survive. Jill traded a string of pearls for a sack of tomatoes and a pound of rigatoni.
The government was constantly trying to reassure citizens that everything possible was being done, but the reassuring lies only gave credence to the most flagrant conspiracy theories. Fearing each other, people withdrew from the common social rituals that protected a society under siege. The absence of truth and the breakdown of trust opened the door to terror, and that was tearing society apart.
One morning, Jill grabbed the chance to go for her regular run around Lullwater Park. The trail was still slightly damp from a recent rain. She felt like she was in a zombie movie where the town was deserted and the people who remained were in a tremulous state between living and dying. But for now, I’m alive, she thought. Without any people around, she took off her mask.
As she rounded the first hill, she came upon a dead bird. She stopped for a moment to examine it. Olive and yellow with a black cap and a black throat. Beautiful. Some kind of warbler, she thought. Maggie would know. Maybe this bird was common in these woods, but Jill had never noticed it before. If I live through this, she thought, I’m going to pay more attention.
She remembered the previous winter when the lake had partly frozen over. It never really froze solid anymore. She had been for a walk with the kids, and Teddy was the first to spot the dog under the ice. “Poor thing, he must have tried walking on it,” Jill had said, realizing it was Teddy’s first real encounter with death. He was shaken by the scene. He found a stick and tried to break through the crust. “Teddy, don’t do that,” Jill had said. “We have to wait till it thaws. The maintenance people will take care of him.” But Teddy continued to beat on the ice. “Think about the people who own him,” he cried. “Think about Peepers.”
“I know, sweetie. It’s sad. But he’s dead, and we can’t bring him back.”
Teddy knew about death—abstractly, the way kids talk about sex—but now he knew, he really knew, his body trembled with understanding. Remembering this conversation now, Jill wondered what else she could say about death to Teddy and Helen. They were frightened, but so was she. She longed now for her lost faith, for the near certainties that she used to feel about God and heaven when she was her children’s ages. They don’t have that, she thought. We didn’t give it to them. Maybe religion was all lies or myths constructed out of the fear of death that she was feeling now. There had been some pride in living without superstition, in the world of