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smackenzieShe wheeled the cart out into the parking lot, which was still half-full, and up to her van. It was eerily quiet out. Even Oscar seemed to finally sense that something was wrong - he stayed very close to Marya and whined a little as she unlocked the van and started loading the groceries into the back.
"I know," she told him. "It's weird, isn't it." She'd read somewhere or someone had told her once that animals could sense approaching hurricanes and tornadoes, and she wondered if anyone's dogs had realized something was up when people started disappearing. Did anyone get any warning? She didn’t remember Cujo or Cujo II barking any more or any less than they always did, just that they had been outside yesterday for a lot longer than normal.
"Did you see this coming?" she asked Oscar. He just looked at her. "Nah, probably not. You can't even tell me when the pizza delivery guy is at the door."
She opened the passenger side door and let Oscar in the van, then climbed in the other side and turned the key in the ignition. She just sat there for a minute, listening to the reassuring, very normal sound of the van's engine and feeling it rumble through her seat.
She was halfway home when she remembered her grandma and that someone from the assisted living complex had called her.
"Shit," she said, "we have to check on Grandma." The assisted living complex was twenty minutes behind her, thirty in traffic, but there were no other cars on the road and half the streetlights were either out or blinking, and Marya gunned the van's engine and made it in just under twelve minutes. Even Oscar seemed a little windblown.
She brought him inside, just as she'd taken him into the grocery store, feeling that if there were people left in the complex, either residents or staff, they'd have too many other things to worry about besides a random dog. Besides, some of the staff knew her, and her grandma’s favorite nurse was also a dog person.
But apparently some people didn't have other things to worry about, because she had just crossed the lobby when someone yelled "Hey, you can't bring that dog in here!"
"I'm not leaving him in my van," Marya yelled back, turning towards the voice and seeing a youngish guy wearing the white scrubs of the junior staff, maybe one of the janitors or a nurse's assistant or an attendant. The nurses wore pink and the doctors wore blue and the desk staff - administrators and office people - wore street clothes. But this guy was probably an assistant with delusions of grandeur, because he trotted across the lobby and repeated that Marya couldn't bring her dog inside.
"I said I'm not leaving him in the van," Marya repeated, leaning down to take hold of the back of Oscar's harness. She wasn't sure this guy wasn't going to grab Oscar's leash out of her hand and take her dog away. Oscar barked, a short curious bark that usually meant "Who is this guy and why can't I jump on him and say hi?"
"You're not bringing him in here." The assistant or attendant or whoever he was put his hands on his hips. "This is a sterile environment. Some of the residents are allergic to dogs."
"How many residents are left? Do you know Marya Majewsky?"
"We're still trying to find them all."
"Still trying to find.... Tell me who's left." Oscar whined as Marya's grip tightened on his harness. For a deaf dog he was certainly talkative today. Although if Marya could spare any energy to think about it, she'd be glad he was talking at all.
"Not many! What? We're looking for them. A lot of the staff is missing too. Hey! Come back here! What did I say about the dog?"
Because Marya had let go of Oscar's harness, had wrapped the end of his leash in her fist, and had taken off down the hall. No wonder someone had called her - her grandma was probably among the missing.
She passed a common room, empty except for a older gentleman watching the news on the TV. She passed the dining room, likewise empty, although there were dishes and silverware and glasses on some of the tables, like people had been eating not long before and just hadn't cleaned up yet. She passed the art room, but the door was closed and she didn't want to stop to check if anyone was inside. She passed residents' rooms, one or two with residents inside but most of them empty. Her grandma's room was empty too.
"Shit," Marya said, sitting down on her grandma's neatly made bed. It still had her grandma's afghan spread over it. "Shit, Oscar. Shit. That's why they called me - they wanted to tell me she was gone."
Losing most of her neighborhood, that was one thing. Not being able to contact her dad, that was something else. He could be out of range, he could have lost his cell phone service, the wires could be down in central California, it could be something really simple. He could have gone on one of his ridiculous hiking expeditions and just be too far from civilization and thus understandably out of touch. Sometimes her dad did the normally-responsible adult version of just wandering off. But Marya's grandma, the first Marya, was not in the habit of taking a hike.
Oscar whined and put his head on Marya's knee. She stroked his head. "I should, I dunno, maybe I should take some of her stuff. Just in case." As far as she knew, no one who had disappeared had come back, but it had only been two days, maybe if she waited....
Most of her grandma's stuff was still in the house, but there was the afghan, which she had crocheted before Marya went to college and always meant to give her as a going-away-to-college present. There were some framed photos of Marya and her dad, her dad's sister as a little girl, her dad's stepbrother, her dad's father. Marya's grandma had been her grandfather's second wife, his first wife having died of cancer when his first kid was five. Marya's stepuncle had never particularly liked her dad, her aunt, or her grandma, although her grandma had tried very hard to make the guy feel like part of the family, as much her child as the children she'd actually given birth to. Marya hadn't heard from or about her stepuncle in probably eight years. She had no idea where to look for him, and until now hadn't even thought to try.
"Dammit, Dad," she said. "Why don't you answer your phone?"
"Who's there?" someone demanded outside. "Marya? You come back?"
"No, it's her granddaughter," Marya called. She stood up and went to the door, where she almost walked into an older black lady in a purple shirt. Oh thank god, she thought, Jasmine's alive.
Jasmine was her grandma's best friend. She called Marya "Little Marya" and her son always referred to her as "Marya Junior". Jasmine had grown up in Kansas City and every so often would bitch mightily about how terrible the barbecue was out here and why wasn't she allowed in her daughter-in-law's kitchen? That girl could burn water, she was probably poisoning her children with all kinds of sugar-free, salt-free, taste-free crap. Sticks and grass, that girl fed them, what was wrong with her?
"Little Marya!" Jasmine cried. "Thank god. Your grandmother's gone, honey. I've looked and looked, I even called your father. I made the staff call you, what little staff there is. Bernie's coming to fetch me - you should come with us. Safety in numbers, my mother always said."
Safety from what? Marya thought. It's not like the secret police are stealing people out of their beds.
"Hi, boy," Jasmine went on, bending to pat Oscar on the head. He licked her hand. Jasmine loved dogs, but her late husband had been allergic to them. Early in her grandma's residency here, Marya had brought her a photo of him in a frame, because Jasmine had told her she was tired of listening to stories about this dog she'd never seen. The few times Marya had brought Oscar with her, she and her grandma and Jasmine had walked around the grounds - because apparently you could have dogs on the complex grounds if you picked up after them and didn't let them inside and they were well-behaved - and Jasmine had told them about her father's hunting dogs and how her son Bernie had wanted a dog so badly he'd volunteered at the local SPCA for several years, because they couldn't have a dog in the house and Jasmine's husband had finally suggested the boy get a job in a pet store or something so he'd stop bothering them.
Jasmine stepped around Oscar and gave Marya a hug. "How are you doing?" she asked. "Have you talked to your father? I couldn't get through. I thought it was the phones here."
"I left a couple messages," Marya said. "I couldn't get through a lot either. I think he might have gone hiking or something, and he only takes a satellite phone with him so he can call the forestry service if he gets in trouble or hurt. I don't have the number for it." Otherwise he would have gotten her messages and called her back. Otherwise he would have called her himself.
"I sure hope he's ok. Look, honey, are you sure you won't come with me and Bernie? Josette and the boys are all fine. He doesn't have much space in his house, but Soot is good with other dogs" - Soot was the daughter-in-law's pug - "and the boys would love Oscar. You should be with people, honey. There are so few of us left."
"You're taking this really calmly," Marya said. She sat back down on the bed.
"I've made my peace. I had a good life, and if this is when it's going to end, I want to be with my son and grandchildren. I'm just glad Kenny passed on - he loved people. He thought cities should be full of them. This would have broken his heart."
"Do you, uh, do you want anything? That was Grandma's. To remember her."
"She crocheted me a matching hat and scarf for Christmas last year. Purple." She grinned and gestured to her shirt. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to take a photo, though, and this will sound silly, but she had a bottle of perfume, not a fancy bottle, just glass, that your father bought her. I always loved the scent, and she kept promising me she'd ask him to get me a bottle too, but she never did. Your grandmother was a kind, kind woman, honey, but her memory was not good."
Well, Marya knew that. That was one of the reasons her dad had put her grandma in assisted living. She couldn't take care of herself any more.
"You can take some pictures, sure," Marya said. "And the perfume. I won't wear it."
"Thank you, honey." Jasmine found the perfume bottle on the dresser and picked out a picture in a plain lucite frame - herself and Marya's grandma in what Marya assumed were Easter bonnets, big straw hats with wide brims, decorated with ribbons and flowers and fluffy white feathers. Her grandma was a good Christian woman in the best sense - quietly religious, strong in her faith, firm in her belief that living as a good Christian meant living as a good person and doing the right thing without making a big deal out of it. She hadn't belonged to a regular church since before Marya's parents were married, but she went to services when she could and believed very strongly that all you needed to get to heaven was to live your life as a good and honest person, regardless of what religion you followed.
She didn't believe in the Rapture, at least not that it would come in her lifetime, and she probably would've laughed with the little old lady who lived next door to Marya, who'd said she didn't believe that fundamentalist crap. But she would have laughed at the idea that it was terrorists, too.
Marya's grandma was not easily scared. Marya's dad said it was because she was a simple woman, but Marya's grandma just said it was because she had faith in the goodness of people and in the ability of god and the universe to make sure those people were ok.
Marya hoped that whatever had happened to everyone who had vanished, however it had happened, that her grandma's soul was where she'd want it to be - in heaven with her husband and her sisters and her parents and all the people who'd died before her.
"Oh, honey, don't cry," Jasmine said kindly, sitting on the bed next to Marya and putting her arms around her. "Your grandmother's ok, wherever she is. She's not wandering around lost somewhere. She's looking out for you now."
"I don't even know if she's dead," Marya sniffled. "I can't bury her or anything. What am I going to tell my dad?"
"Tell him she's ok. Tell him he doesn't have to worry about her any more."
"Oh god, Dad, I really hope he's still out there somewhere. Look, Jasmine, thanks, but I should go. Tell Bernie I said hi, I'm glad he and his family are ok, but I can't go with you. I need to find my dad."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"If you're sure." Jasmine stood up, a little stiffly. "When you see your father, give him a kiss for me." She kissed Marya on the forehead, gave Oscar a last pat, and left.
"You know what Grandma told me?" Marya asked Oscar, when she was sure Jasmine was out of earshot. "She said Jasmine told her once that Grandma was the first white woman she'd ever been really close to. I guess she hadn't known a lot of nice white girls." She stood up. "Ok. I'm going to pack some stuff to take home with us, I'm going to unpack the groceries, and I'm going to try Dad again. I should probably call Cass, make sure she's still alive." Oscar barked. Cass hadn't particularly liked him, but she said that deaf dogs made her uneasy. She couldn't communicate with anything she couldn't whine at. "Ok, ok, I won't call her yet. You think Grandma had a box to pack stuff in? Maybe there's something in the building I could use."
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"I know," she told him. "It's weird, isn't it." She'd read somewhere or someone had told her once that animals could sense approaching hurricanes and tornadoes, and she wondered if anyone's dogs had realized something was up when people started disappearing. Did anyone get any warning? She didn’t remember Cujo or Cujo II barking any more or any less than they always did, just that they had been outside yesterday for a lot longer than normal.
"Did you see this coming?" she asked Oscar. He just looked at her. "Nah, probably not. You can't even tell me when the pizza delivery guy is at the door."
She opened the passenger side door and let Oscar in the van, then climbed in the other side and turned the key in the ignition. She just sat there for a minute, listening to the reassuring, very normal sound of the van's engine and feeling it rumble through her seat.
She was halfway home when she remembered her grandma and that someone from the assisted living complex had called her.
"Shit," she said, "we have to check on Grandma." The assisted living complex was twenty minutes behind her, thirty in traffic, but there were no other cars on the road and half the streetlights were either out or blinking, and Marya gunned the van's engine and made it in just under twelve minutes. Even Oscar seemed a little windblown.
She brought him inside, just as she'd taken him into the grocery store, feeling that if there were people left in the complex, either residents or staff, they'd have too many other things to worry about besides a random dog. Besides, some of the staff knew her, and her grandma’s favorite nurse was also a dog person.
But apparently some people didn't have other things to worry about, because she had just crossed the lobby when someone yelled "Hey, you can't bring that dog in here!"
"I'm not leaving him in my van," Marya yelled back, turning towards the voice and seeing a youngish guy wearing the white scrubs of the junior staff, maybe one of the janitors or a nurse's assistant or an attendant. The nurses wore pink and the doctors wore blue and the desk staff - administrators and office people - wore street clothes. But this guy was probably an assistant with delusions of grandeur, because he trotted across the lobby and repeated that Marya couldn't bring her dog inside.
"I said I'm not leaving him in the van," Marya repeated, leaning down to take hold of the back of Oscar's harness. She wasn't sure this guy wasn't going to grab Oscar's leash out of her hand and take her dog away. Oscar barked, a short curious bark that usually meant "Who is this guy and why can't I jump on him and say hi?"
"You're not bringing him in here." The assistant or attendant or whoever he was put his hands on his hips. "This is a sterile environment. Some of the residents are allergic to dogs."
"How many residents are left? Do you know Marya Majewsky?"
"We're still trying to find them all."
"Still trying to find.... Tell me who's left." Oscar whined as Marya's grip tightened on his harness. For a deaf dog he was certainly talkative today. Although if Marya could spare any energy to think about it, she'd be glad he was talking at all.
"Not many! What? We're looking for them. A lot of the staff is missing too. Hey! Come back here! What did I say about the dog?"
Because Marya had let go of Oscar's harness, had wrapped the end of his leash in her fist, and had taken off down the hall. No wonder someone had called her - her grandma was probably among the missing.
She passed a common room, empty except for a older gentleman watching the news on the TV. She passed the dining room, likewise empty, although there were dishes and silverware and glasses on some of the tables, like people had been eating not long before and just hadn't cleaned up yet. She passed the art room, but the door was closed and she didn't want to stop to check if anyone was inside. She passed residents' rooms, one or two with residents inside but most of them empty. Her grandma's room was empty too.
"Shit," Marya said, sitting down on her grandma's neatly made bed. It still had her grandma's afghan spread over it. "Shit, Oscar. Shit. That's why they called me - they wanted to tell me she was gone."
Losing most of her neighborhood, that was one thing. Not being able to contact her dad, that was something else. He could be out of range, he could have lost his cell phone service, the wires could be down in central California, it could be something really simple. He could have gone on one of his ridiculous hiking expeditions and just be too far from civilization and thus understandably out of touch. Sometimes her dad did the normally-responsible adult version of just wandering off. But Marya's grandma, the first Marya, was not in the habit of taking a hike.
Oscar whined and put his head on Marya's knee. She stroked his head. "I should, I dunno, maybe I should take some of her stuff. Just in case." As far as she knew, no one who had disappeared had come back, but it had only been two days, maybe if she waited....
Most of her grandma's stuff was still in the house, but there was the afghan, which she had crocheted before Marya went to college and always meant to give her as a going-away-to-college present. There were some framed photos of Marya and her dad, her dad's sister as a little girl, her dad's stepbrother, her dad's father. Marya's grandma had been her grandfather's second wife, his first wife having died of cancer when his first kid was five. Marya's stepuncle had never particularly liked her dad, her aunt, or her grandma, although her grandma had tried very hard to make the guy feel like part of the family, as much her child as the children she'd actually given birth to. Marya hadn't heard from or about her stepuncle in probably eight years. She had no idea where to look for him, and until now hadn't even thought to try.
"Dammit, Dad," she said. "Why don't you answer your phone?"
"Who's there?" someone demanded outside. "Marya? You come back?"
"No, it's her granddaughter," Marya called. She stood up and went to the door, where she almost walked into an older black lady in a purple shirt. Oh thank god, she thought, Jasmine's alive.
Jasmine was her grandma's best friend. She called Marya "Little Marya" and her son always referred to her as "Marya Junior". Jasmine had grown up in Kansas City and every so often would bitch mightily about how terrible the barbecue was out here and why wasn't she allowed in her daughter-in-law's kitchen? That girl could burn water, she was probably poisoning her children with all kinds of sugar-free, salt-free, taste-free crap. Sticks and grass, that girl fed them, what was wrong with her?
"Little Marya!" Jasmine cried. "Thank god. Your grandmother's gone, honey. I've looked and looked, I even called your father. I made the staff call you, what little staff there is. Bernie's coming to fetch me - you should come with us. Safety in numbers, my mother always said."
Safety from what? Marya thought. It's not like the secret police are stealing people out of their beds.
"Hi, boy," Jasmine went on, bending to pat Oscar on the head. He licked her hand. Jasmine loved dogs, but her late husband had been allergic to them. Early in her grandma's residency here, Marya had brought her a photo of him in a frame, because Jasmine had told her she was tired of listening to stories about this dog she'd never seen. The few times Marya had brought Oscar with her, she and her grandma and Jasmine had walked around the grounds - because apparently you could have dogs on the complex grounds if you picked up after them and didn't let them inside and they were well-behaved - and Jasmine had told them about her father's hunting dogs and how her son Bernie had wanted a dog so badly he'd volunteered at the local SPCA for several years, because they couldn't have a dog in the house and Jasmine's husband had finally suggested the boy get a job in a pet store or something so he'd stop bothering them.
Jasmine stepped around Oscar and gave Marya a hug. "How are you doing?" she asked. "Have you talked to your father? I couldn't get through. I thought it was the phones here."
"I left a couple messages," Marya said. "I couldn't get through a lot either. I think he might have gone hiking or something, and he only takes a satellite phone with him so he can call the forestry service if he gets in trouble or hurt. I don't have the number for it." Otherwise he would have gotten her messages and called her back. Otherwise he would have called her himself.
"I sure hope he's ok. Look, honey, are you sure you won't come with me and Bernie? Josette and the boys are all fine. He doesn't have much space in his house, but Soot is good with other dogs" - Soot was the daughter-in-law's pug - "and the boys would love Oscar. You should be with people, honey. There are so few of us left."
"You're taking this really calmly," Marya said. She sat back down on the bed.
"I've made my peace. I had a good life, and if this is when it's going to end, I want to be with my son and grandchildren. I'm just glad Kenny passed on - he loved people. He thought cities should be full of them. This would have broken his heart."
"Do you, uh, do you want anything? That was Grandma's. To remember her."
"She crocheted me a matching hat and scarf for Christmas last year. Purple." She grinned and gestured to her shirt. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to take a photo, though, and this will sound silly, but she had a bottle of perfume, not a fancy bottle, just glass, that your father bought her. I always loved the scent, and she kept promising me she'd ask him to get me a bottle too, but she never did. Your grandmother was a kind, kind woman, honey, but her memory was not good."
Well, Marya knew that. That was one of the reasons her dad had put her grandma in assisted living. She couldn't take care of herself any more.
"You can take some pictures, sure," Marya said. "And the perfume. I won't wear it."
"Thank you, honey." Jasmine found the perfume bottle on the dresser and picked out a picture in a plain lucite frame - herself and Marya's grandma in what Marya assumed were Easter bonnets, big straw hats with wide brims, decorated with ribbons and flowers and fluffy white feathers. Her grandma was a good Christian woman in the best sense - quietly religious, strong in her faith, firm in her belief that living as a good Christian meant living as a good person and doing the right thing without making a big deal out of it. She hadn't belonged to a regular church since before Marya's parents were married, but she went to services when she could and believed very strongly that all you needed to get to heaven was to live your life as a good and honest person, regardless of what religion you followed.
She didn't believe in the Rapture, at least not that it would come in her lifetime, and she probably would've laughed with the little old lady who lived next door to Marya, who'd said she didn't believe that fundamentalist crap. But she would have laughed at the idea that it was terrorists, too.
Marya's grandma was not easily scared. Marya's dad said it was because she was a simple woman, but Marya's grandma just said it was because she had faith in the goodness of people and in the ability of god and the universe to make sure those people were ok.
Marya hoped that whatever had happened to everyone who had vanished, however it had happened, that her grandma's soul was where she'd want it to be - in heaven with her husband and her sisters and her parents and all the people who'd died before her.
"Oh, honey, don't cry," Jasmine said kindly, sitting on the bed next to Marya and putting her arms around her. "Your grandmother's ok, wherever she is. She's not wandering around lost somewhere. She's looking out for you now."
"I don't even know if she's dead," Marya sniffled. "I can't bury her or anything. What am I going to tell my dad?"
"Tell him she's ok. Tell him he doesn't have to worry about her any more."
"Oh god, Dad, I really hope he's still out there somewhere. Look, Jasmine, thanks, but I should go. Tell Bernie I said hi, I'm glad he and his family are ok, but I can't go with you. I need to find my dad."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"If you're sure." Jasmine stood up, a little stiffly. "When you see your father, give him a kiss for me." She kissed Marya on the forehead, gave Oscar a last pat, and left.
"You know what Grandma told me?" Marya asked Oscar, when she was sure Jasmine was out of earshot. "She said Jasmine told her once that Grandma was the first white woman she'd ever been really close to. I guess she hadn't known a lot of nice white girls." She stood up. "Ok. I'm going to pack some stuff to take home with us, I'm going to unpack the groceries, and I'm going to try Dad again. I should probably call Cass, make sure she's still alive." Oscar barked. Cass hadn't particularly liked him, but she said that deaf dogs made her uneasy. She couldn't communicate with anything she couldn't whine at. "Ok, ok, I won't call her yet. You think Grandma had a box to pack stuff in? Maybe there's something in the building I could use."
words: 2462
total words: 6047
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Date: 2007-11-15 03:12 pm (UTC)