The Loudness Page 7

  “Must’ve been a good one,” Mom says, and I shoot her a look.

  “So,” I prompt again, straight business. “The news?”

  “Your mother and I—” Dad answers with Shakespearean pomp, “—are flying—in an aeroplane!” He gestures outward and pauses. “To the City.” Another dramatic pause. “To finalize . . .”

  “To finalize the Charter!” I shout, sloshing cucumber juice onto the table in my excitement. It’s the best news—the culmination of what we’ve all been working toward for the last eight years: financial reparations and independence from the federale government. The pressure’s been on recently because of all the construction—contractors working on spec, expecting to be paid once we get the Charter. Without a big paycheck to start fresh, we’d have a lot of unhappy construction workers on our hands. A few days ago I even walked in on Mom worrying out loud about riots.

  Riots.

  In the Green Zone.

  It would have been completely unimaginable if I hadn’t seen it happen before, after the Tragedies. With a Charter, though, we won’t have to worry about that anymore. The Grey will be Greened, the Library will be more like a real school, and everything will eventually get back to better than normal. It’s—

  “It’s . . . that’s amazing,” I say, with a smile so big it forces my eyes shut.

  And then I pass out.

  No out-of-body experience, no slow motion; just extreme happiness followed by the crash of silverware and china . . . and a profound delight, before I completely shut down, at the sound of soft cheese hitting the ground. And darkness.

  Darkness, but not nothingness.

  Instead, a pulsing, indistinct and unplaceable, except for its fuzzy volume. It’s all-encompassing, and I don’t seem to have a choice but to submit to it. And it’s not submission, really, because I don’t even enter into the equation. It’s just . . . it’s just the loudness.

  And then, behind that loudness, a determined beeping. The beeping and the loudness aren’t in sync, which becomes more insufferable as the beeping gets louder, competing with the loudness. When it’s finally too much to bear, I open my eyes . . . and am instantly blinded by a bright white light tracking between them.

  “He’s awake,” someone yells.

  “Oh, thank God,” I hear Mom say.

  It strikes me, then, that for all my worrying about Mom and Dad and Grammy, I’m the one stretched out on a hospital cot with a doctor checking my wrists for a pulse. I laugh, weakly.

  “He’s saying something,” Dad says. “What’s that, Hank?”

  The loudness is receding, but it’s still there, beneath, and a fifty-pound headache is building itself on top of it, encouraged by the continued beeping from the machine next to my bed. I roll my eyes, close them, and take a thick, deep breath.

  “This has been . . .” I say, my voice cracking dryly. “A strange couple of days.”

  I pass out for real this time, with no beeps and no loudness.

  When I wake up, I’m back at home, in my bed.

  It’s mostly dark in my room, except for the hall light peeking softly in through my open door. A fan is angled at my bare feet, and as I readjust the bunched-up sheet to cover them, I notice Tom’s guitar. My guitar. It’s reflecting the moon, which is still looming, and even some stars. Powerdown isn’t so bad after all, I think, suddenly content despite everything.

  “Look who’s awake,” Mom says. I turn my head to see her. She’s perched on my dresser, and there’s no telling how long she’s been watching me sleep. I raise my arms straight into the air, our old babyish shorthand for hug me, and she moves to the edge of the bed and obliges.

  “So what’s wrong?” I ask, and she smiles bravely.

  “Nothing’s wrong with you, Panky.”

  My nickname from when I was a flirty three-year-old shocking all the little girls with my two-volt kisses. I was at a real-life school then. Or almost real—that was when it was just the one Tragedy, not the Tragedies . . . I can barely remember it. Mom used to pick me up after work, and she’d always get an earful from the afternoon teacher. Too much Hanky Panky, they’d say. Mom would try to keep a straight face, only to explode into hysterical laughter later, telling Dad about it over dinner.

  “So why’d I pass out, then?”

  She furrows her brow. “That’s not you, Hank . . .”

  “My heart?” I ask, knowing the answer beforehand.

  “The doctors thought so at first, but . . .”

  I must look as surprised as I am, because Dad, now propped in the doorway, says, “Don’t look so shocked, you know you have a good heart.”

  “But . . .”

  “It’s not your heart, son . . .” he says, gesturing to the moon outside my window. “It’s something out there, some”—He makes finger quotes—“resonant electricity messing with it.”

  We all think this over for a minute. Or, they think it over. I’m having trouble doing anything except staring blankly at the midnight glow of the guitar. I don’t need to think, anyway. With everything that’s happened, there’s really only one gloomy thing on my mind. I give my parents time to compose themselves before I spring it on them, the question they must know is coming.

  “The thing is . . .” I say, baby-stepping into my dark question, but Mom cuts me off.

  “Hanky, listen. Your heart’s going to keep on pumping, no matter what. It’s just that . . .” She breaks off into a heavy silence. Dad, always eager to help, jumps in. Unlike Mom, who’s overwhelmed with emotion, he takes a more factual approach.

  “You know the Powerdown?” he says brightly. I give him a look. Of course I know the Powerdown. “Well,” he continues, ignoring my reproach, “We’re powering down because we plan to power up with our own stuff soon, after we finally sign this damn Charter.”

  He looks at Mom, who nods for him to continue. “We have our own power source now and everything, but, ehm . . .” He stops, deciding on the best way to put it. “Henry, it takes a lot of juice to power a city this size.”

  I must look confused because Mom cuts in again. “They’ve been trying to get the right levels and there’ve been some spikes. You’re . . . you’re sensitive to them, to the bursts, but we’re working on it now. It’s not anything you need to worry about anymore.”

  “You just need to take it easy, Hank, these next few days. We’ll have it all figured out in no time.”

  I’m relieved to hear that it’s not my heart. I can’t even bring myself to think about the possibility of another surgery, which is what I’d been both expecting and dreading. Neither, I can tell, can Mom, who’s started to cry on the bed. Even though it’s not anything to worry about.

  “Hey,” I croak, not wanting to see Mom like this. “I actually feel really great.”

  This makes them both smile, Mom through tears. “No, seriously,” I continue, sitting up in the bed. Mom puts her hand on my shoulder, pushing me gently back into bed.

  “Hank,” she says, her voice catching. “We still have to fly to the City tomorrow, me and dad—we may not get this chance again.”

  “Okay,” I say, resting my head back into the coolness of my pillow. For some reason, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me, their having to go to the City. If it’s just the Powerdown and there’s nothing wrong with my heart, then there really isn’t much to worry about. I know they have to go, and I’ll be fine here.

  I start to tell them that, but Mom interrupts again. “When you were at the Hospital . . .” she begins, then pauses. “As soon as Doctor Singh figured out what had happened, I . . . I drove out to the dam. I went out there to tell them to shut that . . . that thing down.”

  I reach out and hold her hand—it feels thinner than I remember, and hot to my touch.

  “Hank, they’re working on it. They can’t stop the river, but they’re going to figure out how to manage it.” She bursts into tears again, and Dad joins us on the bed, comforting Mom with a one-armed hug and squeezing my knee until we’re all
three of us a little drained. After a few minutes, he gets up, announcing that we have a big day tomorrow and everyone will be fine if we just get a little shut-eye. Mom stays with me for a while longer, though, stroking my hair until I fall into a dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, I wake up early to a hot pillow and birdsong. There’s music playing downstairs, a folksy band I haven’t heard before, and laughter. Yesterday seems unreal, and I wonder for a moment if I dreamt it. It would make sense—if last night really happened, I never would have expected to wake up to such a light and happy house. Not when the forecast called for thunderstorms and heart-wrenching goodbyes.

  I roll out of bed, still dressed, and hesitantly make my way to the top landing, trying to make out what’s going on downstairs without announcing my presence. I’m on my toes, splaying them out on cool wooden floorboards. Creeping. I don’t know why, either, it just seems like the thing to do.

  But it’s hard to make out anything specific from the third-floor landing; I’m too far up, and my parents are in the kitchen.

  I grip my fingers around the paint-chipped banister and stretch my arms, Scott-like, leaning over and looking down. Our house is too big, only a little smaller than the Library, which is an endless source of amusement for my parents (who never expected to live on the Avenue). But I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a big crumbly house, and all the rooms are tiny with too-tall, drafty ceilings. And we’re only here because of the Tragedies.

  Also, it’s impossible to hear anything from up here.

  I blow my cover and jump down the stairs, leap-frogging from landing to landing without touching any steps.

  “Stompy Hans,” my grandmother declares from her post at the kitchen table, stretching out every syllable like they’re saltwater taffy, “is awake.”

  I shuffle in, reprimanded, and the music fuzzes out. On the table is yesterday’s spread, starred cucumbers and fingerloaf wrapped and transported to our house by Grammy, who’s futzing with the tuning on our solar radio. I don’t have the heart to tell her that she doesn’t have a chance of making it work, not with me in the room.

  “So,” Dad says, clapping his hands together. “Glad you’re up!”

  I cut a slice from a bruised wedge of cheese while the radio whines and pings, then levels out, finally settling on an only slightly static-y country music station from Outside: some lady singing a love song to her accordion, its generous bellows and understanding valves. She’s singing in French and English, and it’s hard to make everything out above the white noise and her overenthusiastic washboard player. Mom’s two-stepping, prancing like a pony on its hind legs. She reaches for my hand and guides me into an awkward spin. I have to duck to fit under her arm and end up almost swallowing my cheese whole.

  “Morning, Panky!” she sings, looking happier than I’ve seen her in a long time.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” I address the room, “but is there a reason . . .”

  Dad and Grammy look at me expectantly while Mom clip-clops over to the plate of crudités, helping herself to a fingerloaf sandwich. The accordion song ends, and she keeps dancing as another, slower song starts, a bittersweet-sounding waltz.

  “I mean, last night . . .”

  “We got word from the dam this morning,” Dad says, slathering a layer of jam on a thick slice of toasted loaf. “They checked with engineering last night after your mom went down there and found a problem they didn’t even know they had. Which means you should start feeling better pretty soon!”

  “Mom wants to head down there after breakfast and check it out again before we catch our flight to the City,” he continues, taking a big, messy bite out of his toast. “Make sure everything’s good to go.”

  “Well, okay,” I say. “But still, why—why so happy?”

  “We’ll tell you on the way,” Mom, still dancing, sings. Grammy starts clearing the table, snatching Dad’s plate just as he’s about to put his loaf-toast back down on it. He shrugs and stuffs the rest in his mouth, full-cheeked and finished with breakfast.

  “Mwhemeber you’re ready!” he says through the toast, jumping up and wiping his hands on his pleated khaki shorts.

  In the car on the way to the dam, Mom points out improvements to the Zone in an informational tour guide voice, even though we’re intimately familiar with every little thing that happens here. “And of course,” she says, tapping on the driver’s-side window, “we gave the contractors that little shotgun on the corner as the model for renovations in the Grey. Floating foundation, raised eight feet above the water level on reinforced concrete stilts . . .”

  “Mom,” I say. “We know.”

  “And you should see the inside!”

  “What’s, um . . .” I start. “What’s the deal?”

  Dad’s in the backseat with Grammy. They both have their windows down and are looking out, nodding along to Mom’s spiel like they’re hearing it for the first time. Mom speeds up, driving a little too fast for the Zone, and I put my hand gently on her knee to try to snap her out of it. She looks over quickly, jerking, a manic look on her face that softens when she sees me.

  “Sorry Hank, just . . . it’s just nervous energy.” She turns back to the road.

  We have a long drive ahead of us.

  Our new power station is near the base of the river in the ghost of a neighborhood that hadn’t been obliterated in the Tragedies so much as just vacated. Ten years later, there are cars parked with open doors and bikes strewn in front yards as if everyone had simply disappeared, vanished in the middle of an otherwise normal day. Which is basically what happened. You’d think they were coming back, too, except everything is worse for the wear after a decade of neglect. A normal scene, except for moldy curtains flapping from open windows, a raccoon peeking out from the open trunk of rusted car.

  “So,” Mom continues after a minute or two of silence. “The reason I’m so happy is because we’re going to be able to fix all this after all.”

  “After all?” I ask.

  “We try to stay optimistic, Hank,” she says. “We have to stay optimistic. There’s no other choice . . .”

  “But?”

  “But for a while there, it looked like we weren’t going to pull it off—any of it: the Zone, your heart, the Charter . . .”

  She shakes her head, incredulous, and then smiles. We’re passing the old airport, which doesn’t have any planes sitting around; those, at least, made it out okay and never came back. Past the airport, there are no ruins or anything from Before, just a thin strip of marshy grassland, the river winking white on the left and the lake on the right, waving back.

  “What changed?” I ask, and she gestures with her chin toward the vista stretching out in front of us. A group of white egrets standing, statuesque, on the side of the road take off as we approach and pass them. They’re slow flyers, like they have all the time in the world. Beyond them, the river and the lake finally seem to meet.

  “Oh,” I say, under my breath, feeling like I’m on the ragged cusp of realization. “We just had to . . . go with the flow?”

  Mom looks at me like maybe I’m not her son. Dad laughingly pipes up from the back, “Hardly!” And even though she still looks incredulous, Mom turns around to defend me.

  “Well, no, Hank sort of has a point. . . . If we went with the flow, we’d all be underwater, but I can see what he’s getting at,” she says, stopping the car in the middle of the empty highway and pointing outward.

  “Henry, look.”

  I follow her finger and, past the glare of the sun on the water, make out a thick black line: a wall between the river and lake, its top fifteen feet above the lake on one side and only an arm’s length above the river on the other. Grammy yawns, waking up. “The spillway,” she says matter-of-factly, blinking at the lake. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it filled up all the way before.”

  “The spillway changed everything?” I ask, skeptical.

  “We used to picnic here on weekends,” Gr
ammy continues, fully awake and caught up in nostalgia. “Do you remember that, Sarah?”

  Mom—Sarah—doesn’t answer. She’s still staring at the wall in the water, squinting. The egrets, after flying around in rough circles for a few minutes, have resituated about a hundred yards in front of us. Slow flyers going nowhere fast.

  But beautiful.

  “It’s closed,” Mom finally says, looking back at Dad. “It definitely looks closed.”

  Dad’s squints too. “If it was open, we’d see it from here,” he agrees. “Definitely closed.”

  Mom exhales, then switches her attention to Grammy. “How could I possibly remember you coming here as a girl?”

  Grammy shakes her head, not doing a good job of hiding her exasperation. “I thought you’d remember me telling you about it,” she answers, a little sharply. And then, instantly relaxed, “Parties, potato salad, fishing—but that was just sticking a rod in the ground and catching a nap.” She laughs to herself and rolls her wrist outside the window, as if stirring dormant memories in the heavy summer air.

  “Well,” says Mom, abruptly turning the car back on. “Now it’s our power plant.”

  Grammy sighs, folds her hands in her lap, and very quietly agrees: “Now it’s our power plant.”

  “All right,” says Dad, compensating for the dip in mood with too much cheer. “Onward!”

  We drive for a few more minutes, heading first toward the egrets, and then, when they flock again, toward where the river meets the lake. As we get closer, it becomes more obvious that the meeting is forced, channeled into being by an enormous concrete wall—a monument to human engineering and rusted metal. And standing on top of it, the silhouettes of two people in hardhats, hands on their hips and looking out at the horizon beyond the lake. To the side, there’s a corrugated steel warehouse with a few dirty trucks parked on the crushed shell gravel that paves most of the facility.

  We pull onto a service road created haphazardly with the same, announcing our arrival with the crunch of wheels on shell, and Grammy’s out of the car before Mom even turns it off, leaving her door open and heading for the concrete waterfront. Dad squeezes Mom’s shoulder from the backseat while she takes a deep breath and then follows Grammy’s lead.