If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  “Pete, maybe if you weren’t so hard on yourself, you could be easier on the rest of us. You should forgive yourself, my love.”

  “Forgive myself?” He looked mystified, then his eyes widened. “Eddie told you?”

  “He was trying to explain your hot temper. He said I should cut you some slack. And I have, honey. I’m cutting you slack now.” I paused, watching Pete subtly nod his head.

  “So please cut the rest of us some slack. And please work on forgiving yourself. You saved your brother from that man, sweetheart. You did the right thing.”

  My tall, grown-up stepson, Peter Crenshaw, tough-talking libertarian carpenter, grabbed me in a constricting hug and sobbed like a broken man.

  FORTY-ONE

  THE SATURDAY AFTER OUR ARGUMENT, I overheard Pete talking to Sonja in the kitchen. They were alone in there for a rare moment.

  “Would you like to go to the park for a picnic?” Pete asked. Chances were good he was asking Sonja for a post-apocalyptic date, but she threw in some complications.

  “Yes! We should all have a picnic at the park. We can play ball, and Frisbee.”

  At the word picnic, kids began to appear out of nowhere.

  “Picnic?” Milo rushed into the kitchen from the living room. “I love picnics!”

  “I wanna go! Can I go?” Mazie twirled on her toes across the dining room, the ruffles that remained on her ragged skirt swirling around her.

  Pete sighed loudly. “Everyone can go.”

  “Go where?” Eddie said, coming in through the back door with Keno.

  “A picnic!” Mazie squealed.

  “Hey, yeah,” Eddie said. “Mom, do you still have Dad’s guitar? Pete had to leave his in Arizona. Pete, will you play the guitar?”

  “Hank’s guitar is up in the game room. So, when is this picnic? It’s just us, right? No neighbors?”

  “Right—just us.” Pete grimaced a bit—at the thought of neighbors, I’m sure, and also because “just us” included so many people.

  “We’ll do this tomorrow,” Sonja said, “if people will help prepare food today.”

  “I’ll help,” said Pete, naturally.

  “We’ll all help,” I said.

  Sonja made two kinds of refried beans, a coffee cake, and a delicious tomato-less salsa concoction out of jalapenos, garlic, onions, and finely minced cabbage.

  She taught Pete how to roll whole wheat tortillas. I think he played dumb to get more of her attention, but he must have rolled about sixty of those suckers. I made potato salad, Eddie made kale salad, and Keno roasted small sweet potatoes—which we’d taken to munching like candy bars lately.

  To get our ingredients, we had to dip secretively into the common food supply. I hadn’t taken rations for the Ibanez kids, or for Eddie and Pete, so I felt justified. All I was doing was catching up, but I didn’t want neighbors to ask annoying questions.

  It was simply too bleak around here. Something had to give. Part of me wanted to throw open the stores for a regular bacchanalia. We and the neighbors could eat ourselves sick. At least we’d have some fun to take with us to our graves.

  I found the last of our paper plates and plastic cups. I even came up with plastic forks and spoons and a crumpled packet of napkins. And I had a plastic tablecloth still in its package—purportedly disposable. Hard to fathom that we used to think nothing of creating so much garbage whenever we had a picnic or party.

  On that fifty-degree Sunday morning, we rose early and set to work. We loaded food, paper goods, and plasticware into wagons, along with balls, bats, gloves, Frisbees, ground blankets, Hank’s guitar, jugs of water and sun tea. Pete filled an extra wagon with folding chairs.

  Tasha had just finished throwing up and was lying on the living room couch with a damp rag on her forehead. “Y’all go on,” I told the others. “I’ll wait here with Tasha until she feels better, then we’ll come down.”

  “Want me to wait with you, so I can push your wheelchair?” Eddie asked.

  “No, I can push myself. Go on. Have fun!”

  “Why does Tasha barf so much?” Mazie asked. “It’s gross!”

  “Mind your own business, Mazie, and go have a picnic.”

  “Picnic!” she squealed, and soon they were gone.

  “Nana,” Tasha said, rolling over to face me. “Is Uncle Pete ever gonna forgive me?”

  “Sweetie, Uncle Pete has troubles of his own—bad things that happened to him that make him uptight. Try not to take him personally. He loves you. He’s just cranky.”

  “Like Grandpa?” she said.

  I laughed, surprised. “Yes, exactly like grumpy old Grandpa.”

  Before long, we joined the rest of our family at the neighborhood park two blocks east. We found them playing a rousing game of baseball. Tasha and I sat in the warm sun and watched the wild swings, the pop-up flies, the strikeouts, the diving catches and misses, the crazy escapes from being tagged. We hooted and hollered for everyone.

  My beautiful family—having real fun for the first time in months. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to laugh so much, though it used to be our normal family thing. Even Hank acted nicer when the whole family got together.

  Tasha took a turn batting with Milo as a pinch-runner. She hit a long fly-ball to centerfield, over Keno’s head. Milo danced and hollered his way around the bases, walking backwards over home plate with his arms in the air.

  We ate, the kids played soccer, and Tasha took a nap on a blanket. I sipped sun tea and laughed my head off. Pete played guitar and sang some country-ish songs, and the rest of us sang along when we knew the words.

  Tasha woke up for the singing and asked her Uncle Pete for a guitar lesson. She learned two chords, then played them with an uneven strum while Alma sang a song in Spanish. Cesar and Mazie did somersaults and cartwheels, and Sonja coached them on technique. Milo played some kind of war game with Pedro and Chris that involved a lot of jumping off the jungle gym and running in circles, screaming.

  Keno gave Alma a batting lesson, standing close behind her, his arms holding hers while they swung the bat together. I watched them, dreamily, then fell asleep in my chair.

  Around dusk when the near-full moon was beginning to rise, we packed up reluctantly to go home. As we started to leave, Pete touched Sonja’s arm.

  “Would you like to go for a walk with me?” he asked.

  “Oh, but I must take care of Cesar.”

  “I’ve got Cesar,” said Eddie. He stooped in front of the boy. “Climb on my back, buddy.” Cesar gleefully climbed on.

  “Can I have a ride?” Mazie asked.

  “Here, Mazie, ride on my back,” Keno said, and Mazie hopped on with a yippee.

  “Hey, I want a ride,” Milo said.

  “Milo, you’re almost as big as Eddie and Keno,” I said. “You wanted to be big, so here you are.” He frowned for a moment, then grinned and flexed his muscles.

  “So, a walk?” Pete asked Sonja.

  “Yes, a walk,” she said, smiling shyly.

  Tasha and the Ibanez kids pulled the wagons home. Milo started pushing my wheelchair. I had an uneasy feeling and looked back to see several skinny kids watching us from the tree line. Uh-oh. I should have known better than to flaunt our good fortune.

  I had some burritos wrapped in a tea towel in my lap. I sat the food on the picnic table and nodded toward those hungry kids. They started running toward us.

  “Please push me fast, Milo. Let’s catch up with the others.”

  When we got to our house, Chas was loitering in our front yard.

  “Tasha,” he said, “you must be better now. You’ve been out all day.”

  “I’m a little better.” She looked around nervously for me. “Nana, can I talk to him?”

  “Only for a minute.” I shooed the rest of the family into the house. I hurried upstairs so I could listen to their conversation through the window, but it was slammed shut. Opening it would draw their attention. I stood, pondering the window and peeking do
wn, until Chas led Tasha around the corner of the house. I rushed to the side window, but I couldn’t see them from there. I heard voices, sounding heated but indistinct.

  “What are you doing, Mom?” Eddie asked.

  “Trying to hear Tasha and Chas, but I can’t.”

  “Ooh, you’re bad,” he said, snickering. “I’ll go out back and see if I can hear them.” He dashed down the stairs and tiptoed out the back door.

  After a minute or two, Tasha yelled, “You can’t do that!”

  “Yes, I can! It will be better, believe me. No rules like here. No old ladies listening to everything we say.” His voice rose for that last statement. He wanted me to hear him.

  “Don’t do it, Chas,” Tasha pleaded.

  “I’m doing it, and you should come with me. They have cars.”

  Maddeningly, their voices dropped to a murmur. I was fixing to call Tasha in, when she ran inside and up the stairs to her room, leaving the front door wide open.

  Eddie came in the back door, and he shut the front one on his way up to me.

  “He wanted her to run away with him,” Eddie whispered.

  “My God!”

  “Don’t worry. She seemed to think about it for a minute, but then she said, ‘No. No. No!’ That shithead grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him really hard. Before I could react, she slapped him and ran inside.”

  “Bloody hell. Thank God she had the sense to refuse him.” I imagine she’d had her fill of trouble from that boy. “Stupid kid. Where does he think he can run to?”

  “Said he has friends with all the food you need, all the booze and pot. Even cars and gasoline.”

  “Where did they get all that?”

  “They probably stole it, Mom.”

  Eddie and Pete stayed with us for a total of eighteen days, during which they gave us a ton of help with gardens, outhouses, and repairs—and they put on a few pounds apiece. The many gallons of honey they harvested helped the whole neighborhood round out a bit. Now the neighbors were aware of the beehive, but that had turned out to be good. Eddie and Pete had needed scads of help harvesting the honey and extracting it from the combs.

  “We left about half the honey in there,” Pete told me.

  “That’s good. We’ll need it later,” I said. “You know, I’ve read that if you’re going away for a while, you’ve got to tell your bees, or they’ll swarm and leave the hive.”

  “Seriously?” Eddie said.

  Pete looked at me skeptically. “Oh, Mom.”

  On the morning that Pete and Eddie departed, Milo and I went with Eddie to say goodbye to the bees, so Eddie could tell them that Milo and I would be looking out for them now. Pete didn’t come with us, but he watched from the Pico backyard.

  “Guys,” I said to my stepsons as we returned to our yard, “don’t go. This whole endeavor seems useless.”

  “Don’t start, Mom,” Pete said, shaking his head.

  “We have to try,” said Eddie.

  “God damn it. We need you here!”

  “Dad needs us more!” Pete barked.

  “Jesus. Okay!”

  Tasha and Mazie clung fiercely to Pete and Eddie when telling them goodbye. Pete managed to get a hug out of Sonja, along with a big smile. If we hadn’t been watching, I’m sure he’d have gone for a kiss.

  Milo and Keno tried to be stolid and manly with their handshakes and goodbyes, but they looked like they wanted to cry. I hugged my stepsons as hard as I could, and I made them promise to come back to us within two months, whether they found their father, sisters, and brother or not. I didn’t allow myself to cry.

  FORTY-TWO

  ONE-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-ONE DAYS since the world fell apart.

  The absence of Eddie and Pete was palpable. My worry about what they might find in Waco banged around in my head like a shower of pinballs. I tried to put it out of my mind before my brain flashed a permanent “Tilt.”

  A few days after my sons departed, when Tasha’s morning sickness seemed confined to the occasional early morning, I had Keno take Tasha to the South Austin clinic in the bicycle cart. Sonja left Cesar with Kathy Zizzo and rode a bike alongside my grandkids as adult moral support. I wanted to go with them so badly, but I couldn’t fit in the cart with Tasha. I stood erect and stoic as I waved goodbye from my front yard.

  Jack sneaked up on me while I was lost in thought. He put his arm around me and pulled me tight against him.

  “Come on over to my place, Bea. I’ll give you some tea and show you my hothouse.”

  I followed him to his backyard, amazed at the flowers still blooming in the hothouse despite his lack of care.

  “You must have a magic touch,” I said.

  He peered into my eyes and stroked my face. “You used to think so.”

  I took a sharp breath. “Pretty corny, Jack.”

  “Yeah, but you like it, right?”

  “Seems like I do.”

  “Bea.” He studied my face. “I’m afraid Hank will come back, and I’ll lose you before I get the chance to have you again.”

  “I’m afraid of that, too.”

  He kissed me, and I kissed him back. I started to pull away, but he said, “Don’t.” He waltzed me into his house and toward his bed. I followed his lead willingly, aching for him.

  I won’t lie. I made love to Jack Jeffers, and I wanted and needed every minute of it—every touch, every kiss, every thrust and spasm. Hank and I had never made love like that. I made greedy love to Jack, and he grabbed me and possessed me and I practically begged him to do it, in almost the same way we’d done all those years ago, as though he belonged inside me, as if we were home at last.

  But I was plenty discombobulated afterward.

  I returned home to find Milo and Mazie in a state of distress. They’d been hunting for me all over the neighborhood and were mad at me for not being found.

  “Nana, we need you. You can’t go off and not tell us where you’re going!” Milo regarded me sternly. Good grief, I’d become the wayward child of my grandson.

  “We need you to fire up the grill,” Mazie said. “It’s past lunchtime. We’re hungry!” A tough disciplinarian, that Mazie.

  “Sorry, kids,” I said breathlessly. “Mr. Jeffers was teaching me about hothouses and how to grow things in them . . . stuff I need to know.”

  “Well, you shoulda told us,” Mazie said.

  “You’re right. I should have. Let’s start a fire and make some lunch.”

  I was tempted to tell my grandkids the truth, which would have been slightly insane of me. But I was sick of skirting the truth and omitting so many facts from the ones I loved. I chatted with the kids while we cooked and ate lunch, though all I could think about was how to sneak back to Jack and the warm feelings engulfing me.

  Late in the afternoon, Keno came crashing through the front door, carrying Tasha in his arms.

  “Nana, help! Come help!”

  Sonja ran in behind Keno, removing Tasha’s bike helmet, brushing hair from her face. “Bea, come fast, please!”

  I shuddered all the way down the stairs to my granddaughter, who was bleeding from the seat of her pants and onto the arms of her frantic brother. Mazie screamed. Milo ran into the room and stood there, gaping.

  “Lay her down on the floor!” I shouted. “Mazie get pillows. What happened?”

  “That fucker Chas is what happened,” Keno said, as he laid his sister gently on the floor. Mazie delivered a pile of couch pillows.

  Chas! Did he find out Tasha was pregnant and slug her?

  “How?” I said. “Boys, take Mazie and go outside or to the garage. I have to undress Tasha. Oh, sweetheart, what happened?”

  “I think I’m okay,” Tasha said, but she sounded weak. “Stupid Chas.”

  “We fell. The bike fell, and Tasha flew out onto her belly on the concrete.” Keno backed across the room, gripping the arms of Mazie and Milo. “Chas was chasing us, trying to talk to Tasha, but she didn’t want to talk to him. I shoulda stopped t
he bike and beat the shit out of him! I’m sorry, Tasha. I’m sorry, Nana!” Tears spurted down his cheeks.

  “Keno, accidents happen. We know you didn’t mean to fall. Go on outside.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Keno said, and he dragged his cousins with him out the back door.

  Sonja had been running around gathering up water and washcloths, towels and basins, sheets and blankets. Now she returned, and we carefully removed Tasha’s pants. Then we laid her on a blanket and put the pillows under her bottom, to elevate it and try to stop the blood.

  “Does it hurt, Tasha?” I asked with a rasping wheeze.

  “I have cramps. Bad cramps.”

  What an awful lot of blood—way more blood than should’ve been normal for a miscarriage. Sonja put towels between Tasha’s legs, and they were quickly soaked. Whenever Tasha cringed with a cramp, blood actually gushed. We only had about five liters of blood inside us. Must have been a liter or two on Tasha and the floor. God knows how much was in the towels. There was no way to stop this. How could we stop this?

  Sonja shot me worried looks and fussed over Tasha while I anxiously inspected Tasha’s clothing and the soaked towels, searching for a tiny fetus. I found blood clots, but nothing that resembled a miniscule baby. Did that mean the fetus was still inside her? Was she going to keep bleeding until it came out?

  “Sorry for the mess, Nana,” Tasha said.

  “Honey, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

  I threw a sheet over Tasha’s body. “Keno, you kids come here! I need help!”

  The three solemn kids rushed inside.

  “Why’s Tasha bleeding?” Mazie asked.

  “She’s hurt inside. Kids, run through the neighborhood and see if anyone knows how to stop bleeding. Tell them Tasha’s bleeding bad, and we need help. Now! Go!”

  They ran out the front door. Keno choked on a sob as he crossed the threshold.

  Fuck me!

  Why hadn’t I learned how to stop a hemorrhage in all my plotting and scheming for an apocalypse? I couldn’t catch my breath.