Finally, I was back at Rockefeller, and I took a shower and made a bed for myself on my sofa. But I couldn’t sleep, and after a couple of hours, I got up and raised the blackout shades and watched the morgue helicopters make their deliveries to Roosevelt Island, their blades flashing as the klieg lights swooped over them. Here, the crematoriums never stop, but they’ve suspended barge transport because of the waterway closures—the hope is that they’ll deter those rafts of climate refugees, who were being dropped off late at night at the mouth of the Hudson or the East River and made to swim for shore.
And now I am very tired, tireder than I think I’ve ever been. Tonight, all of us are sleeping in separate places. You, in London. Olivier, in Marseilles. My husband, four blocks north. My son, three miles south. Me, here in my lab. How I wish I were with one of you, any of you. I have kept one shade open, so on the wall opposite, a square of light flickers and vanishes, flickers and vanishes, flickers and vanishes, like a code meant only for me.
Love, Me
Dear Peter, September 20, 2058
Today was Norris’s funeral. I met Nathaniel and David at the Friends meeting house on Rutherford Place. It had been three months since I had seen David, a week since I had seen Nathaniel, and out of respect for Norris, we were all excruciatingly polite with one another. Nathaniel had called me beforehand asking me not to try to hug David hello, and I didn’t, but he surprised us both by patting me on the back a little and grunting a bit.
During the service, which was small and modest, I stared at David’s face. He was sitting in the row in front of me, one seat to the left, and I was able to study his profile, his long bony nose, the new way he was wearing his hair, which made his head look like it was bristling with thorns. He had begun his new school, the one Aubrey had convinced him to attend after he dropped out of the other school Aubrey had convinced him to attend two years ago, and as far as I knew, there were no complaints, from them or from him. Granted, the school year was only three weeks old.
I didn’t know most of the people at the service—there were some I recognized by sight, from years-ago dinners and parties—but the feeling was of emptiness: They had lost more friends than I had realized in ’56, and although the room was half filled, there was also the persistent and troubling sensation that something, someone, was missing.
After, Nathaniel and the baby and I went back to Aubrey’s house, where a few other people had gathered as well; Aubrey wore his decontamination suit so his guests could remove theirs. Over the past year or so, as Norris slowly died, they had begun keeping the house dim, lighting the rooms with candles. It helped, somewhat—both Aubrey and the house looked less careworn in that gloom—but also made stepping into that space feel like entering some other era, one before electricity was invented. Or maybe it was that the house now felt less occupied by humans than by some other kind of animal: moles, perhaps, creatures with small, poor, beady eyes that couldn’t bear the full reality of sunlight. I thought of Nathaniel’s students, Hiram and Ezra, now eleven years old, still living in their shadowed world.
Eventually, only the four of us remained. Nathaniel and David had offered to spend the night in the house, and Aubrey had accepted. I’d take advantage of their absence at the apartment to pick up a few things and take them back to the RU dormitory, where I’m still living.
For a while, we were all silent. Aubrey had leaned his head against the back of the sofa and eventually closed his eyes. “David,” Nathaniel whispered, signaling to him that he should help rotate Aubrey on the sofa so he could lie flat, and the baby was standing to help him when Aubrey began to speak.
“Do you remember that conversation we had shortly after the first person in New York was reported diagnosed in ’50?” he asked, his eyes still closed. None of us answered. “You, Charles—I remember asking you if this was the one we’d been waiting for, the sickness that would eliminate us all, and you said, ‘No, but it’ll be a good one.’ Do you remember that?”
His voice was gentle, but I cringed anyway. “Yes,” I said, “I do.” I heard Nathaniel sigh, a soft, sad sound.
“Mmm,” he said. There was another pause. “You were right, as it turns out. Because then ’56 came.
“I never told you this,” he said, “but in November of ’50, an old friend of ours contacted us. Well, he was more Norris’s friend than mine, someone he’d known since college, when they had dated for a brief period. His name was Wolf.
“By this point, we’d been living out at Frog’s Pond Way for about three months. We thought, as did many people—even your lot, Charles—that we’d be somehow safer out there, that it was better to be away from the city, with all its crowds and filth. This was after the lootings had begun; everyone was scared to leave their houses. It wasn’t as bad as ’56—you didn’t have people lunging at you in the street, trying to cough at you and infect you because they wanted you to get sick as well. But it was bad. You remember.
“Anyway, one night, Norris told me that Wolf had gotten in touch with him; he was in the area and wanted to know if he could come see us. Well. We were taking all the recommendations seriously. Norris had asthma, and the reason we’d gone out to Long Island to begin with was to avoid running into other people. So we decided that we’d tell Wolf that we’d love to see him, but for his sake as well as ours, we didn’t think it was safe, though once things calmed down we’d love to get together.
“So Norris sends him that message, but Wolf writes back immediately: He doesn’t want to come see us; he needs to come see us. He needs our help. Norris asks if we can video-chat, but he insists: He needs to see us.
“What could we do? The next day, we get a text at noon: ‘I’m outside.’ We go outside. For a while, we don’t see anything. Then we hear Wolf call Norris’s name, and we walk down the path, but we still don’t see anything. Then we hear Wolf again, and we proceed a little farther down the path. This happens a few more times, and then we hear Wolf say ‘Stop.’
“We do. Nothing happens. And then we hear some twigs being crunched behind that big poplar near the guardhouse, and Wolf steps out into the open.
“It’s immediately clear that he’s very sick. His face is covered with sores; he’s skeletal. He’s using a magnolia branch as a cane, but he doesn’t quite have the strength to lift it, so it kind of drags behind him like a broom. He’s carrying a small knapsack. He’s holding up his pants with one hand: He’s wearing a belt, but it doesn’t help.
“Norris and I immediately step backward. It’s obvious Wolf’s nearing the end stage of the disease and is therefore highly contagious.
“He says, ‘I wouldn’t come here if I had somewhere else to go. You know I wouldn’t. But I need help. I’m not going to live much longer. I know what an imposition this is. But I’m hoping—I’m hoping you’ll let me die here.’
“He had escaped from one of the centers. Later, we’d learn that he’d approached a few other people, and all of them had sent him away. He said, ‘I won’t ask to come inside. But I thought—I thought maybe I could stay in the pool cottage? I won’t ask you for anything else. But I want to die indoors, in a house.’