What you couldn’t get used to—what she never got used to—was the quiet. In Times Square the lights changed red to green and back again and sometimes not a car went by. Overhead the gulls screamed and dove toward the empty harbor. When she spoke to her parents it was brief, a few minutes at a time; service was spotty and minutes were expensive and all they needed to know, really, was that the other was still alive. Sometimes she would ride through Central Park and see not a single person, not on the footpaths, not on the lake, no sign of a single other human except the tents that dotted the Sheep Meadow, springing up overnight, disappearing just as quickly when word of police sweeps came. In the silence between things there was too much time to dwell and no matter how fast she pedaled, she couldn’t leave her thoughts behind.
* * *
? ? ?
In the honeyed glow of the lamplight her hands tremble.
The Crisis. The Crisis. Bird has grown up hearing about it: We must never forget the turmoil of the Crisis, everyone has said, his whole life; we must never again go back to that. But it is impossible to explain what it felt like.
Evictions and protests daily, then nightly, people clamoring for assistance, for any kind of aid. The police fired rubber bullets and sprayed tear gas; cars plowed into the crowds. Each night sirens whirred to life and wailed away across the city; the only question was which way. Fires began to spring up all over the country—Kansas City one night, Milwaukee and New Orleans the next—frantic signal fires from those deserted and desperate. In Chicago, tanks rolled past department stores on Michigan Avenue, protecting their glossy wares. No one agreed on who to blame—not yet—and with no focus, outrage and panic and fear swelled over everything, hot and thick, rasping your lungs. It was there in the silent darkened streets after curfew, in the slate-gray shadows of the buildings and the echoing footsteps of your shoes on the deserted sidewalk. It flashed sharp and bright in the lights of the police cars as they went by, always on their way to somewhere else more urgent, which was everywhere.
How to explain this to someone who has never seen it? How to explain fear to someone who has never been afraid?
Imagine, Margaret wants to tell him. Imagine if everything you think is solid turns out to be smoke. Imagine that all the rules no longer apply.
I’m hungry, Bird ventures, and Margaret returns with a jolt, glances at her watch. It’s past noon, and he’s had no breakfast, either. She curses herself mentally. It’s been so long since she’s taken care of anyone.
She sets down the wire cutters and wipes her palms on the thighs of her jeans.
I know I’ve got something, she says, rummaging in a plastic bag beside the sofa. After a moment, she emerges with a single granola bar.
I get caught up in working, she says, almost embarrassed. I forget to keep food around. Here, you take it.
Bird peels the foil from the bar, then hesitates. It’s starting to make sense to him: his mother’s whittled features, the dark rings beneath her eyes. Whatever it is she’s doing, it is consuming her. She is barely eating, maybe barely sleeping, too. All day, all night, she is working—or whatever this is.
Eat, his mother says gently. Get some food into you. I’ll get more tonight.
From under the table she pulls another plastic bag: inside, bottle caps, the kind you’d unscrew from a two-liter bottle. Red, white, orange, sickly highlighter green—sticky, still smelling faintly of cola and caffeine and acid fizz. She sets a handful on the table, picks one up, inspects it. Tallies them two by two. For weeks she has been gathering them, these small bright rounds plucked from the sidewalks and the dark mouths of garbage cans.
But what are you doing, Bird says, between mouthfuls of granola, what are they for?
Margaret takes one cap and sweeps the rest to the side, plucks a transistor from the pile: red and yellow striped, like a sprinkle from a child’s birthday cake. She touches the soldering iron to one of its spindly wire legs and the hot biting scent of rosin fills the air.
Let me tell you, she says instead, about meeting your father.
* * *
? ? ?
She’d been a wild thing, when they met.
Two years into the Crisis: Fuck everything was her motto by then. People came and went, sometimes on purpose, sometimes without warning, and you’d never know where they’d gone, if it was part of their plan or an accident, or worse. Sometimes on her deliveries, people spat in her face, told her this was China’s fault, accused her of wringing America dry; she’d begun wearing a bandanna, pulled high to the bridge of her nose. Fuck this, fuck everything, she and Domi agreed, by which they meant: don’t get attached to anything, or anyone. Just survive. They said it to each other almost fondly, like a greeting, or a good-night kiss. Fuck everything, Domi would murmur as they fell asleep in the living room, and Margaret, rolled in a blanket on the floor, would squeeze her hand and whisper it back, the day’s sweat drying on their skin to a fine crystal grit.