An arrow points to Room 2, the Arboretum. Well, you could use a sylvan glade about now — an orchard or a grove — and because you walk purposefully, the room pops up just where the arrow indicates.
Like the Cold Room, the Arboretum is unlocked. Unlike the Cold Room, it soars skyward four or more floors, although its dome has an ebony opaqueness that hides the stars. You gape. Willows stretch up next to sycamores, oaks shelter infant firs and pines, disease-free elms wave in the interior breeze like sea anemones in a gnarl of current, and maples drop whirling seeds, in windfalls lit like coins by the high fluorescents.
Twilight grips the Arboretum.
Out of this twilight, from among the pillars of the trees, figures in cloaks of pale lemon, lime, lavender, ivory, blue, pink, orange, and other soft hues emerge at intervals. They amble forward only a little way, find a not-too-nearby tree, and halt: they decline to impose themselves.
None of these persons qualifies as a wrong-way orphan because all are too young: between thirty and forty. All stand on the neat margins of this wood like passengers with tickets to bleak destinations. Although none seems fierce or hostile — just the opposite, in fact — you prepare yourself to flee, if your nerve fails you. Your heart bangs like an old jalopy engine.
Pick one of us, a woman in a lavender cape tells you. She speaks conversationally from under a willow in the middle distance, but you hear her just fine. The acoustics here are excellent: maybe she’s been miked.
Pick one of you for what?
Condolence and consolation: as a sounding board for whatever feeds your angst. The woman advances one tree nearer.
You snort. You’ve had more sounding boards than a cork-lined recording room. Why take on another?
The people in coats and capes approach in increments, picking new trees much nearer you. They appear devoid of menace, but you think again about fleeing. Even in this twilight, their pastel garments are tinged by the shade thrown by overarching foliage: a disquieting phenomenon.
Pastel shades, you think. These people are pastel shades.
Soon your gaze picks up a man approaching steadily through a sycamore copse, a figure in gray twill pants and a jacket the pale ash of pipe dottle. He has boyish features, but crow’s feet at his eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard lift him out of the crib of callow naïfs. He wears a mild don’t-patronize-me smile and doesn’t stop coming until he stands less than an arm’s length away.
Ah, Ms. K—, I’m delighted to see you, despite the inauspicious circumstances that bring you here. His elevated vocabulary satirizes itself, deliberately. Call me Father H—. He gives his hand, which you clasp, aware now the pastel holograms beneath the trees have retreated. Their withdrawal has proceeded without your either ignoring or fully remarking it.
You’re not wearing colors, you tell Father H—.
Tilting his head, he says, Colors?
A host of pastel shades besieged me just now, but you, well, you wear heartsick gray. To illustrate, you pinch his sleeve.
Father H— laughs. Gray’s the pastel of black, and I’m a child of the cloth who always wears this declension.
If you say so, you reply skeptically.
He chuckles and draws you — by his steps rather than his hand — into the nearest glimmering copse. Tell me about Elise, he says. Tell me all about Elise.
Later, drained again, you return to the entry clearing still in the father’s company, unsure of the amount of time that has passed but grateful for the alacrity with which it has sped. Twilight still reigns in the Arboretum, but the clock-ticks in your heart hint that you have talked with Father H— forever. You touch his shoulders and yank him to you in an irrepressible hug.
Thank you, you tell him. Thank you. I may be able to sleep now.
The gray-clad pastor separates from you and smiles through his beard. I’ve done nothing, Ms. K—.
You’ve done everything.
His smile turns inward, but you feel like a little boy who makes mud pies and carries them to the hungry.
Padre H— takes your plastic card, which he calls a crib sheet, and accompanies you to the mailroom.
If you use this thing — he fans himself with the card, like some dowager aunt in an airless August sanctuary — you’ll look like a clueless newbie. He chuckles and shakes his head.
Am I the only one?
Hardly. Soldiers die every hour. But try to look self-assured — as if you belong.
The corridor now contains a few used-adult orphans, some walking in wind suits, some pushing mobile IVs, some hobbling on canes or breathing through plastic masks as they enter lifts or try the stairs. None looks self-assured, but all appear to know their way about. None wears an institutional gown, but beiges, browns, and sandy hues characterize the garments they do wear.
Raw depression returns to knot your stomach and redden your eyes. One or two residents glance toward you, but no one speaks.
Friendly bunch, you mumble.
They just don’t trust anyone they haven’t met, says Father H—. And who can blame them? You could be a security creep or an insurance snoop.
Carrying these bags?
What better way to insinuate yourself among them?
You enter the Mail Room by a door near the screen on the second gallery. This shadowy chamber teems with ranks of rainbow-colored monitors, not with persons, and Father H— bids you goodbye. (Where is he going? Maybe to hear the confession of a sinful yew?)
A young person in a milky-orange vest approaches. You can’t really tell if she’s male or female, but you decide to think of her as a woman.
May I help you?
I don’t know. I’ve just come. You hoist your duffels, aware now that they prove absolutely nothing.
Tell me your name, ma’am.
You do, and she takes you to a monitor, keyboards briefly, and summons a face-on portrait of Elise in her battle regalia. Several other people sit in this room (you realize now) before pixel images of their dead, trying to talk with them, or their spirits, through arthritic fingertips. You touch the liquid shimmer of the screen with an index finger, and Elise’s skin blurs and reshapes after each gentle prod. Your guide asks if you would like to access any family messages in her unit file, for often soldiers leave private farewells in their unclassified e-folders.
You murmur a supplicating Please.
A message glows on the monitor: either Elise’s last message or the message that she arranged to appear last.
Dear Mama,
Do you remember when Brice died? (Well, of course you do.) I recall you telling somebody after they’d shipped Brice’s body home, Elise was Mick’s and Brice was mine; now I’m forever bereft. You didn’t see me in the corner, you had no idea I’d heard.
From that day on, Mama, I began thinking, What can I do to become yours, if I’m not yours now?
Then it hit me: I had to change myself into the one you claimed — without betraying Dad or Brice or my own scared soul. So I tried to become Brice without pushing away Dad or undoing myself.
As soon as I could, I enlisted. I trained. I went where they sent me. I did everything you and they said, just like Brice, and you sent me messages about how proud you were — but also how scared.
If you’re reading this, your fears have come true, and so has my wish to do everything just like Brice, even if someone else had to undo me for me to become just what you loved. With all my heart, I wish you pleasant mourning, Mama, and a long bright day.