Paul’s car and its clearing-of-a-throat engine finally chugs up their sleepy street and rounds the bend of the fenced front yard. His green Forester is a twenty-year-old beater; 200,000 miles plus and standard transmission. Another endearing/annoying quirk of his, claiming he’ll only ever drive used standards as though it’s a quantifiable measure of his worth. More annoying, he’s not a gearhead and cannot fix cars himself, so invariably his jalopy is in the shop and then she is left having to build extra time in her schedule getting him to and from the train station.
As the green machine crunches its way down their sloped gravel driveway Natalie struggles into a standing position. She unplugs and then deposits her phone in a surprisingly deep pocket of her unzipped gray hooded sweatshirt. In her other pocket are her car keys, which she has kept on her person since leaving Stonehill.
Natalie walks into the living room, her footsteps in sync with Paul’s march on the gravel. She stops herself from calling out to him. He shouldn’t walk so loudly; he needs to be more careful and soft-footed. Arms loaded with bundles [Dammit, yes, fine, they are “bundles”], he emerges from behind the car. The Forester’s rear hatch remains open and the little hey-you-left-a-door-ajar dome light shines an obnoxious yellow inside the car. She considers yelling out to Paul again, telling him to shut the hatch.
Paul comically struggles to unlatch the fence’s thigh-high entry gate without putting down any of the grocery bags. Only, he’s not laughing.
Natalie is on the screened-in porch and whispers out one of the windows, “Can I get that for you?” She has an urge to laugh maniacally and an equally powerful urge to ugly-cry. She opens the screen door, proud that she dares stick her head outside and into the quarantined morning. She briefly imagines an impossible time of happiness and peace years from now, regaling their beautiful and mischievous child [she will insist her child be mischievous] with embellished adventure stories of how they survived this night and all the others to follow.
Natalie returns to herself and to a now of stillness and eerie quiet. Exposed and vulnerable, she’s overwhelmed by the tumult within her and Paul’s microworld and the comprehensive horrors of the wider world beyond their little home.
Paul mutters his way through swinging the creaking gate halfway open, where it gets jammed, stuck on the gravel [like always]. He shuffles down the short cement walkway. Natalie stays inside the porch and holds open the door until he can prop it open for himself with a shoulder. Neither knows what to say to the other. They are afraid of saying something that will make them more afraid.
Paul waddles through the house into the kitchen and drops the bags on the table. Upon returning to the front room, he overexaggerates his heavy breathing.
Natalie steps into his path, grinning in the dark. “Way to go, Muscles.”
“I can’t see shit. Can’t we open the windows or turn on a light?”
“Radio said bright light could possibly attract infected animals or people.”
“I know, but they mean at night.”
“I’d rather play it safe.”
“I get it, but put it on just until I get all the groceries in.”
Natalie whips out her phone, turns on the flashlight app, and shines it in his face. “Your eyes will adjust.” She means it as a joke. It doesn’t sound like a joke.
“Thanks, yeah, that’s much better.”
He wipes his eyes and Natalie leans in for a gentle hug and a peck on the cheek. Natalie is only a disputed three-quarters of an inch shorter than Paul’s five-nine [though he inaccurately claims five-ten]. Pre-pregnancy, they were within five pounds of each other’s weight, though those numbers are secrets they keep from each other.
Paul doesn’t return the hug with his arms but he presses his prickly cheek against hers.
She asks, “You okay?”
“Not really. It was nuts. The parking lot was full, cars parked on the islands and right up against the closed stores and restaurants. Most people are trying to help each other out, but not all. No one knows what they’re doing or what’s going on. When I was leaving the supermarket, on the other side of the parking lot, there was shouting, and someone shot somebody I think—I didn’t see it, but I heard the shots—and then there were a bunch of soldiers surrounding whoever it was on the ground. Then everyone was yelling, and people started grabbing and pushing, and there were more shots. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen. We’re so—it’s just not good. I think we’re in big trouble.”
Natalie’s face flushes, as his tremulous, muted voice is as horrifying as what he’s saying. Her pale skin turns red easily, a built-in Geiger counter measuring the gamut of emotions and/or [much to the pleasure and amusement of her friends] amount of alcohol consumed. Giving up drinking during the pregnancy isn’t as difficult as she anticipated it would be, but right now she could go for a glass—or a bottle—of white wine.
What he says next is an echo of a conversation from ten days ago: “We should’ve driven to your parents’ place as soon as it started getting bad. We should go now.”
That night Paul stormed into the bathroom without knocking. Natalie was standing in front of the mirror, rubbing lotion on the dry patches of her arms, and for some odd reason she couldn’t help but feel like he caught her doing something she shouldn’t have been doing. He said, “We should go. We really should go. Drive down to your parents’,” and he said it like a child dazed after waking from a nightmare.
That night, she said, “Paul.” She said his name and then she stopped, watched him fidget, and waited for him to calm himself down. When he was properly sheepish, she said, “We’re not driving to Florida. My doctor is here. I talked to her earlier today and she said things were going to be okay. We’re going to have the baby here.”
Now, she says, “Paul. We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We’re under a federal quarantine. They won’t let us leave.”
“We need to try.”
“So are we going to, what, drive down 95 and into Rhode Island, just like that?” Natalie isn’t arguing with him. She really isn’t. She agrees they are indeed in big trouble and they can’t stay. She doesn’t want to stay and she doesn’t want to go to an emergency shelter or an overburdened [they said overrun] hospital. She’s arguing with Paul in the hope one of them will stumble upon a solution.
“We can’t stay here, Natalie. We have to try something.”
He puts his hands inside hers. She squeezes.
She says, “What if they arrest us? We might get separated. You were just telling me how crazy it was at Star Market. Do you think it’s any better on the highways or at the state borders?”