It could happen at any time. The sky was gray; there was ice on the ground. And then I saw that Ned was crying. He was quiet about it. He didn’t make a sound. I don’t think I’d ever seen him do that before, so I quickly looked away. And then the coffin looked different. Shut tight. Over and done.
At my grandmother’s service, Ned and I were the only mourners. Same kind of plain pine box, same graveyard. We had never gotten around to putting a marker on my mother’s grave, and I was glad of this. I didn’t want to know exactly where she’d been buried. Maybe she hadn’t been buried at all. Maybe I’d been wrong and she had indeed flung open the wooden box to run through the dark and the cold the moment we’d left the gravesite. I looked for footprints, though it had been more than twenty years. Only the scratch scratch of birds. And something else — the tracks of a fox.
Ned had not only handled my grandmother’s affairs, he’d already done the research needed to set my life in order as well. He had found me a job, at the public library in Orlon, and a cottage to rent only a few blocks from the university campus. We debated the merits of a move. Statistically, the odds weren’t on Ned’s side. Had money been involved, I would have bet my future consisted of twenty more years in my grandmother’s house, wearing my bathrobe. But my brother was a worthy opponent, methodical if nothing else, and a challenge never deterred him, even if that challenge was me.
While I was moping about and eating cornflakes, Ned packed up the house, called the real estate agent, had new tires put on my car. And so it was. I was leaving New Jersey. My colleagues wanted to give me a going-away party at the library, but without me, there was no one to organize it. I took the cat with me. I had no choice. Giselle jumped in the car and made herself comfortable on my brother’s jacket, ensuring that Ned would sneeze all the way down to Florida.
It was an unseasonably hot day when we left. The air was sulfur-colored, gray around the edges, and the humidity was at 98 percent.
“This will get you used to Florida.” Ned was oddly joyful.
There was sheet lightning ahead of us on the New Jersey Turnpike, the silent sort that is so vivid it can light up the whole sky. My brother was delighted by the weather; his department was currently involved in a lightning study and he was one of the project advisers.
“Without thunderstorms, the earth would lose its electrical charge in less than an hour,” Ned told me.
He kept notes on the storm as I drove. I was used to being alone, accustomed to talking to myself; without thinking, I made another wish aloud, despite how it burned. I wished lightning would strike me.
“Like hell you do,” my brother said. One of the tasks of the meteorology department at Orlon was to work with a team of physicians and biologists, addressing neurological injuries found in lightning-strike victims. “You have no idea of the damage that can be done. None whatsoever.”
But it didn’t really matter. I had made another death wish, and I could tell what was to come from the bitter taste in my mouth.
It was too late to take it back.
II
The cat wasn’t at all happy with the move. I couldn’t blame her. Orlon was hardly a paradise. Cats, after all, are creatures of habit, said to become more attached to a place than to a person. This was certainly true of my alleged pet, who had never seemed to miss the original owner from whom I’d inherited her. Not for a moment had she sat by a window, waiting to be rescued. Why, she didn’t even seem to recognize the existence of human beings. My prize. My pet.
Giselle, I’d call when she was out in the garden, but she’d only ignore me and flick her tail, as though I were another fly, one of the thousands that seemed to be breeding in Orlon. Even my own cat disliked me. What had I expected? Life was no better here in Orlon, despite what my brother had promised, only hotter, buggier, far more humid than New Jersey at its worst. The library where I found myself employed was underfunded: there was one other librarian, Frances York, who had worked at the same post for forty years and whose eyesight was now failing — hence my job. Untrustworthy as I might be, I was to be her eyes.
This is what I saw: Most of the shelves were empty. Budget cuts. Public’s lack of interest. I had more books packed in cartons and left in storage in New Jersey than the Orlon Public Library had in its entirety. There were no computers available to the patrons, only one ancient word processor at the desk, and an old-fashioned card catalog was still in use. As for the reference department, there didn’t seem to be one. After several weeks at work, there’d been only three calls of any kind: two concerning the proper use of fertilizer, and a third from a second-grader wanting to know what medical school Dr. Seuss had gone to. Maybe I should have lied to my young caller, but it wasn’t in my nature to do so. When I told her that her favorite author wasn’t a doctor, that in fact his last name wasn’t even Seuss, she hung up on me. I suppose no one had told her before that she mustn’t trust words, not even the ones in books.