San Francisco
The drive from San Francisco to Provo was eleven hours with no traffic, but Brady didn’t leave right away after Thom summoned him. There were a few things he needed to tend to at home before going. He had no wife or kids of his own, and his only significant relationship was with his longtime girlfriend, Paula. The fires of romance were turned down to a barely perceptible level between them, though; they hadn’t been sexual in years and only saw each other once every few weeks. Brady wasn’t even sure what kind of relationship it was anymore, other than one of habit. He stopped by her place outside of Mill Valley to check on her in the immediate aftermath of the power going out, and she professed to be fine. Paula was even more of a loner than Brady was, and he believed her when she told him that she didn’t anticipate any real discernible change in her lifestyle without electricity, except perhaps that she’d get out less. Some of Thom’s prepper obsession had rubbed off on Brady, and then onto Paula. She had a basement full of canned goods, a generator with plenty of gas that she kept in a shed out back, and there were, of course, her cats to take care of.
Paula had no intention of going anywhere, and Brady wouldn’t have wanted to take her if she did, so as he left her place that afternoon he wondered if it was the last time he’d ever see her. He supposed it might be and tried to feel something, but it just wasn’t there.
Brady’s mother, however, was another matter. Madeline was in the middle stages of dementia, and Brady and his brother had put her in assisted living two years earlier. It was a decent place, largely paid for by Dennis, who ran the treasury department of a large mortgage lender, but Brady had chipped in financially, and he did most of the calling and visiting. There was no question of leaving Madeline in the care home; in an extended crisis it would be one of the first places to suffer loss of life. Brady decided, on his own, to go pick her up right away, rather than wait ’til events deteriorated to the point that they must.
Madeline had surprisingly few questions for someone who hadn’t been out of the building, other than for a walk around the block, for two solid years. She stared pleasantly as Brady packed her things, then sat in the lobby, holding her handbag in her lap and watching the families rushing in and out while Brady signed the discharge papers. Madeline looked up and down the chaotic street with bright curiosity as they inched their way across it to his waiting car, hanging heavily on his arm. Something was in the air, but damned if she knew what.
“Will we see Terrence?” she asked, as Brady put her seat belt on.
“No, Ma. We don’t care about him no more, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right,” she said, having no idea what he was talking about. “Not anymore. Don’t care.” She made a flippant gesture with her hand and smiled, as if batting away cares.
Terrence, the youngest of the three brothers, had been lost to drug addiction a decade ago, and after several years of frantic interventions, cell-phone tracking, and private investigators, his trail had gone cold, and the brothers gave up trying to find him. Perhaps Terrence got what he’d always seemed to want, which was to annul himself. Brady had mourned and moved on. Brady was good at moving on.
The drive from Madeline’s facility to Dennis’s house, on Marin Drive, was only about twenty minutes in no traffic, but it took almost two hours the day after the lights went out. Everybody was headed somewhere, some in a bigger hurry than others, and Brady drove cautiously. He was conscious of having his mother in the car but also mindful of the risk of an accident, with the whole world addled, anxious, and aggressive.
Despite Brady’s inability to call ahead, Dennis and his wife Holly weren’t surprised to see him, or to find that he had Madeline and her two small suitcases with him. They had a sprawling house at the foot of Mount Tamalpais, with a freshwater stream running through their backyard, and they’d often joked that they were uniquely situated to ride out the next COVID. Even though it had arrived in the form of solar chaos rather than microbial infestation, Dennis and Holly were fine with taking the old lady in. It had, in fact, been the original plan for Madeline’s sunset years, until dementia made her more of a medical challenge than they thought they could handle at home. Now they would just have to make it work. As Holly settled her mother-in-law into the first-floor guest room that had already been remodeled for her, Dennis and Brady stood in the living room, staring down the hallway, conversing without looking at each other, as was their custom.
“You sticking around?” Dennis asked.