The bird looked back down at the world from which he had come, and then at the sun. “Yes,” he said, and he no longer sounded jealous.
“Good,” said the sun. “There is still much to learn.”
And the jealous bird, no longer jealous, caught fire in truth this time, and shone as bright as any star had ever done.
6
The girls smile at two months—both of them at the same time, their mouths curling up as they watch one another. Their eyes follow her everywhere. On the rare days when sunshine filters through the front window, Heather spreads a blanket on the living room floor and lays them down. They stretch their arms to the ceiling. She whispers silly things into the soft cups of their ears.
On the rare evenings when the girls aren’t colicky and he is home from scavenging, B lies with her in the living room and makes funny faces at the babies. He calls them beautiful and gorgeous and Daddy’s favourite flowers. He picks them up and twirls them in the centre of the floor until their faces split with smiles, and then he goes into the kitchen and makes dinner for them all. His eyes say beautiful and gorgeous to Heather when he’s too tired—and they are both of them almost always too tired, now—to say the words.
He brings her wildflowers from the southern edge of town; tall daisies and tulips, irises and snapdragons. She throws the dried amaryllis into the backyard and this time B does not bring it back; the next day it is covered by Boston ivy.
B says he loves them in the food that he cooks, in the way that he dances with and sings to the girls. His voice soaring high and sweet, sounding so much younger than she feels.
At night he reaches for her again and again and weeps his hot tears into her hair. This, too, is a kind of love.
It’s a miracle that any of them survived. This family they have—a miracle.
The girls shine with a sticky magic that pulls her toward them, a force that feels older than love. Her children. The dark matter of her mind and heart is in constant, uneasy orbit around their flaming heads.
They are three months old, then four, then five.
She grows thinner. Everyone does.
Summer has given way to autumn. Daylight gives way to the dark. Heather and B go to bed earlier and wake up when the light comes, turning themselves toward the remnants of the sun. The sky is grey-tinged, with faint rust at the edges. There is no power in the city save for the generator that keeps Tasha’s clinic refrigerators going.
The girls have finally started to sleep for stretches at a time without wailing. Three hours here, five hours there. Still Heather walks them, and sometimes B comes too. He carries one twin, she carries another. Sometimes they even hold hands—the way they did before the girls came, when she was pregnant and life spooled in front of her, boring but safe. They walk up and down the streets and nod to the people they see. Everyone knows who B is, and they call out to him and smile.
One day, B finds a battery-powered radio in a heap of rubble and brings it back to the house. At night they put the girls down, then turn on the radio and search for news, all of which is ominous. One city has been hit with an unknown sickness—the doctors gone, the food almost nonexistent. Please, somebody help. We can’t do this much longer. A voice-over at another station complains of what they call the greening—the vines that crawl up to choke the buildings and the vegetation strangling the roads.
It’s a fucking referendum OF THE TREES, people! This from a man who identifies himself only as Nate. If you haven’t noticed the way the trees are taking the world back, you haven’t been paying attention! Hoard your matches! Don’t be burned—make sure you DO THE BURNING!
B doesn’t like Nate. B doesn’t really like the radio at all. Inevitably he is the one who goes to bed while Heather sits at the kitchen table with the volume low and searches for other voices.
Every night, B reaches for her when she finally comes to bed. His hand between her thighs and then his cock, his tears against her shoulder, his frustrated grunting in her ear. She looks out the window and up to the mountain. She does not make a sound.
“Where have you gone?” he whispers. “I feel like I’m fucking a ghost.”
Once, when she is feeding the girls dinner from jars of mushy peas and puréed carrots they’ve hoarded down in the basement, B comes across a station that is playing cello music. The notes burst into the kitchen, mournful and dark. The girls stop fussing, instantly. The only music they’ve ever heard is their mother singing to them in the forest. She watches, transfixed, as their eyes register the sound, as they twist their heads around to find where it is. B watches them too. As the music becomes more urgent, they break into open-mouthed smiles, and then they are laughing with joy in a way they’ve never done, and suddenly Heather is laughing too, then crying, and B comes to her, gathering her into his arms as she sobs into his dirt-encrusted shirt.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “Heather, we’ll be okay.” After the cello trails away, the girls stare at her, and then at B, uncertain.
That night she is the one who reaches for his cock, his face, his lips. She straddles him in the darkness of their bedroom and rocks in utter silence, the only sound the creaking of the mattress, B’s laboured breaths.
He laughs as he comes inside of her, soft and incredulous.
In the days after this she often turns the radio on. She lets the girls roll around on the floor as she looks for the music again. She finds the cello once or twice, here and there a violin or trumpet. She never finds anyone singing.
She burns through one pair of batteries and then another, and then B takes the radio away.
“We have to make our supply of batteries last,” he says. Even B has given up hope of someone coming to the rescue.
The next day, Heather goes to the strip mall, to where Annie is taking inventory in the clinic, which is filled with tired mothers and sniffling children. Tasha is nowhere to be found.
“Batteries,” Heather says by way of hello. “I want more batteries, Annie.”
“Everyone wants batteries,” Annie says, not looking up. She is borderline skeletal now, as they all are.
“I just want a couple,” Heather says. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Annie laughs. “A secret like all the other secrets you’re keeping?”
Heather blinks. “I’m not keeping any secrets.”
Annie snorts. “Sure. Sneaking off to that greenhouse by the mountain is what, exactly?”
Inside of her, a sudden bloom of irrational betrayal. “How do you know about the greenhouse?” She knows the greenhouse does not belong to her. Tasha can talk about it with anyone.
Annie rolls her eyes. “You’re not the only person sneaking away from work, it would seem.”
“I have children to take care of—”
“And I have an entire city to take care of!” Annie slams her palm down on the counter. “Do you care about that? Does Tasha?”
“Annie, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you go to the greenhouse,” Annie hisses. “I know that Tasha goes there too.”
“Tasha?” Heather asks, now thoroughly confused. “Alone?”
“Everyone is working so hard,” Annie says. “Tasha most of all. She won’t sleep, I can barely get her to eat—but she disappears into the forest and goes to a fucking greenhouse? For what—so she can pick some fucking flowers that no one can eat?”