I missed a day again. Yesterday was very busy and included some pretty heavy news (I’m not just referring to the President losing any semblance of adulthood in front of a war hero). I’ll probably write about the other heavy news soon, but for now, here’s a continuation of my post-apocalypse. The previous parts are here:
Haley remained fairly quiet until we approached the highway. The park where Evelyn and I found her was up the hill from the modest commercial district of our town. In past years, the neighborhood where we found Haley would have been considered affluent. It was old, old enough that brick walkup apartment buildings co-mingled with homes that would accurately be described as mansions by anyone except the wealthy but progressive-minded or -perceived people who owned them. Those people are mostly gone now, but their ownership remains. There’s no one left to buy those houses now, even if the owners were alive to sign the paperwork.
That architectural co-mingling was a vestige of an even earlier period, when streetcars and politeness enabled department store owners to live near, and commute with, department store workers. Perhaps Haley’s dazed demeanor was a symptom of her location. The neighborhood displayed the physical remnants of a social reality that was out-of-time, the living ruins of an ancient civilization ripped from existence by epic cultural and political forces around the middle of the 20th century. We were walking toward another physical manifestation of those forces, the highway, a marker of the new civilization that made co-mingling defunct, along with the neighborhood. After a time of economic decay, the inevitable consequence of the collapse of civilizations, the neighborhood on the hill had been revitalized by money and well-meaning, destructive displacement.
The Epic of the neighborhood concluded, just as all Epics have now concluded, leaving behind configurations of bricks and concrete that once served a purpose. Now that all stories have ended, staring into the distance in a place like that park seems as good a response as any. Perhaps Haley’s consciousness had been sucked into the vacuum of the empty history surrounding her picnic table.
Perhaps Evelyn’s attention helped put Haley’s consciousness back where it belonged. It took some time, though, for the consciousness to feel secure. It took a while for Haley to speak, release her hold just enough to let some of herself back out to the world. It took seeing the highway.
“I used to play in that park every day as a kid,” she said. Evelyn and I had been vaguely chatting about our strategy for when we finally got to the Big City.
“What’s that, sweetie?” Evelyn asked.
“That park. There was a swing set when I was little. They took it down a few years ago. Dangerous, I guess.”
“Did you live near there?” Evelyn followed up. Good ol’ Evelyn. I’m glad she was there to carry the conversation.
“Yes. On Livingston. About two blocks down.”
Evelyn looked at me, just for a second. A few days scavenging with her, and she was already reading my mind.
“Sweetie, you asked me to take you home. You were right by home.”
“I don’t know why I asked that,” Haley said. I was worried for a moment that she was going back inside her mind, returning to whatever mental world she had constructed before we saw her at that picnic table. Only for a moment, though, as I remembered that Evelyn was better at this than I was.
“It’s alright. You’re with us. We’ll find a place in the City and build a new home. Some place where we can be stable. We’re going to make something new.”
We were getting close to the highway entrance ramp, which split off of 4th Street right past the bank I used to drive through every other Friday. The idea of walking up the ramp, traversing a path I had travelled countless times in a vehicle, putting my feet on a road meant for tires, was strangely disconcerting.
“My Grandmother supposedly grew up in a house right there,” Haley said, pointing at a spot about halfway up the entrance ramp.
“Really? How do you know?” I asked, somewhat surprising myself. I hoped I didn’t sound aggressive. I hadn’t really spoken to Haley before that moment.
“They knocked the house down when the highway came through. They knocked down the whole neighborhood. My Grandma had a picture of the house. I don’t know where it is now. My mom probably has it in the attic, so I guess it’s still there.”
“Do you want to go back and take anything from the house? We can go back,” Evelyn offered. I rolled my eyes a little but managed to stop myself before it was noticeable.
Haley stayed quiet for a few seconds, though we kept walking forward. Finally, she said, “No. Let’s keep going.”
Evelyn looked relieved, though I would never mention it. “How long has your family had a house up the hill? I’ve always loved that area,” Evelyn inquired. Apparently we were going to keep talking about this.
“It was my grandparents’ house, my dad’s parents. He grew up in that house, too, so it’s been in the family for a long time. My dad’s family is rich. My mom’s family is a little trashy, to be honest. My dad’s parents never liked them. I always thought they were kind of fun, though.”
Haley stopped talking, as if she had let out too much of the precious consciousness she had regained in the park.
I looked at her, trying to figure out what was going on. Her brow seemed a little tight, not pained, but slightly tense, her eyebrows scrunching toward each other, almost imperceptibly. Her mouth was also tight, expressionless, almost frozen.
“I never lived anywhere else,” she said, releasing her mouth muscles just enough to get the words into the world.
“Where would you have wanted to live?” Evelyn asked. It felt like dangerous territory to me, but this was clearly the Evelyn Show.
“I don’t know. Somewhere. I’m an adult. I should have lived some place I chose, at least once. Doesn’t it seem kind of pathetic? I just never did. I could have. It just made sense to stay in that house.”
“Well, now you’re going to,” Evelyn said. How did she do that? How did she make things seem better? Things were not going to get better. Was she just that good of a liar, or did she know something I didn’t know?
It doesn’t really matter. At this point, I’m alive and Evelyn is buried outside the warehouse. I’m not sure if that means she’s a liar or I am.
Well, there are Evelyns and there are Walters. And there are Haleys. I wish more Haleys had Evelyns to talk to than they had Walters to talk to. Maybe some of this could have been avoided.
It’s a moot point. Haley wasn’t quiet anymore. We were adding again, after so much had been subtracted.