Jim, who had moved behind the folding tables to join the grannies, threw back his head and barked a laugh at this.
“Whoo!” Vivian said. “An evil conspiracy! Haven’t had one of those yet.”
“Well, we’re a democratic conspiracy. Everyone gets a vote. Even the kids.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that one. My kids would probably vote for ice cream for dinner and no bedtime. Did you get to vote on your bedtime?” she asked Nick, bending down to look into his face.
“I’m afraid he’s deaf,” said the Fireman.
“You’re British!”
“All the best evil masterminds are. And if my son did get a vote, he would probably vote for chicken stew before filling out forms.” Harper almost missed him saying my son, but she didn’t miss it when John put his arm around her waist and added, “My wife, too.”
Vivian put them down just as he said: husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Rookwood. Harper didn’t object. She felt that, in many ways, John had told the truth. She put her head on his shoulder while Vivian asked her questions and scratched down the answers.
Vivian wanted to know how far they had come and where they had set out from. She asked when they got sick and where they had traveled since their infection. She wanted details on their symptoms, if they were prone to hot flashes, charring, smoking.
“Not at all!” Renée said. “We have a technique for pacifying the infection: daily sing-alongs. Keeps it from going critical. You can bring the spore under control with almost any kind of group activity that gives pleasure. Something to do with a hormone your brain releases, oxytocin? Nurse Harper can explain it best.”
But Nurse Harper didn’t need to explain anything. Vivian smiled. “I understand group therapies are very popular on the island and are still the most successful treatment. They have eighties sing-alongs after breakfast. Toto and Hall & Oates.”
“In that case,” the Fireman said, “I think I’d rather burn alive.”
There were a lot of questions about the impending baby. All of the women were excited, and the plump old woman who took their photos told Harper at length about her own first grandchild, little Kelly, who had been born three weeks before, and who she said sounded just like a sheep when she cried.
“Baa! Baa!” said the older woman, laughing.
But when Harper said she was hoping to talk to someone about adoption for the baby, assuming it was healthy, the newly minted grandmother began to fiddle with her camera and looked vexed. “This thing!” she said, and wandered away.
Farther down the table, the Portable Mother was opened and searched for weapons by a thin, indifferent woman with a sharp, narrow face and nothing to say. Yet another lady handed them blue folders, a thick stapled packet inside each. Harper saw a photocopied thirty-page document, Free Wolf Island: A Guide to Health and Safety, published by the CDC.
Each folder also had a real estate listing in it. Harper and John and the kids had been offered a two-bedroom, two-bathroom cottage at 3 Longbay Road. A smeary black-and-white photo showed a small white cottage and a leaf-strewn backyard with a child’s play set in it. Renée was offered a bedroom at 18 Longbay, in the Longbay Bed & Breakfast, which was a kind of dorm for half a dozen others. Some color photocopies showed the island from above, on a fall day, the trees dressed out in their autumn colors, a patchwork of rusty oranges and buttery yellows. A map of town marked out the clinic, the communal greenhouses, the town library, a former general store that was now serving as a supply-distribution center, and other points of interest.
At the end of the line of tables a beaming Asian granny dished out paper bowls of stew and paper cups of milk, and they were directed to sit and rest their feet on a stack of hay bales just outside the pavilion. Harper couldn’t eat. By the time they had made their way through processing, she was having contractions—bad ones—and her stomach was boiling with sickness. She sat on the edge of one of the bales and clutched her abdomen in both hands, grimacing. Her distress unsettled John, who skipped his meal as well and sat beside her, rubbing her back in circles.
“I haven’t seen you like this,” he said. “Do you think you’re going into labor?”
Her stomach cramped and she made a small sound of unhappiness, then shook her head. “Get something to eat, John. You need your strength.”
“Maybe in a minute, Harper,” he said, but he never did get up, although Nick brought him a creamy, sugared coffee.
They sat on the bales, on the outer edge of the light, John stroking Harper’s back and Harper waiting for her contractions to pass. They did—eventually—but the nasty slick feeling in her belly and intestines remained. Filthy clouds of black smoke rolled back up the beach from the boat and when she caught a whiff of the stink, it took all her will not to gag.
Before they departed, the woman named Vivian approached, holding a little shoe box. She brought it to Nick and held it out to him, then spoke to the Fireman, so he could translate.
“These are all my Doctor Who episodes,” she said. “There’s a boy who went over to the island three months ago. He’s a few years older than Nick here, about fourteen, and I happen to know he’s a science-fiction fan. I promised I’d get him my collection so he’d have something to watch. Will you tell Nick to give these to Jared Morris? And please tell Nick he can watch them, too. I think Jared would like that. I think Jared would also like a smart friend who can teach him sign language.”
“You’re too kind,” John Rookwood said, and explained to Nick, who solemnly took the shoe box full of DVDs.
When Vivian stood, her eyes glittered with tears. “You people. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I pray every night you’ll be healed. A lot of us do. Someday you’ll be back and you’ll be well, and what stories you’ll have.”
“Thanks for everything you’ve done,” Harper managed.
“I wish it was more,” Vivian said. “Turkey stew and old DVDs for people who have been through hell.”
“Turkey stew and old episodes of Doctor Who comes pretty close to my idea of heaven,” Renée said.
Vivian nodded. She couldn’t speak, was obviously overcome with emotion. She held her gloved fingertips to her faceplate and mimed kissing them and then reached out and touched Nick’s cheek. “Tell Jared his aunt loves him.”
She raised her hand in a last wave and turned away, blinking at damp eyes.
“Did you like the stew?” Renée asked Allie.
Allie gave her a blank look. “’S’okay. Can we get this show on the road?”
“Yes!” Jim said, walking over to them. “Let’s. Your yacht awaits.”
32
The boat beat its way down a wide inlet, into the hard slap of the waves. Harper threw up over the side before the lights of the pavilion were out of sight. John stroked her neck while she gasped and spat.
“Want some of my coffee?” he said. “I’ve still got half. It’ll get the taste out of your mouth.”
She shook her head. He tossed the rest of his coffee over the side and the paper cup, too.
“It wasn’t very good anyway,” he said.
The ship was grimy, the deck slopping with a quarter inch of nasty water. An exhaust pipe protruded from the rear of the little captain’s cabin and the wind blew the smoke back down on them, where they sat in the open on the stern. They huddled on cushioned seats along the sides, squeezed into their orange life vests. Nick’s vest was so big on him, most of him had disappeared behind it: there was nothing left to see of him except his head poking through the collar and his feet sticking out below.
“Is it raining?” Harper asked. Cold, salty spray drizzled down on them.
“That’s coming off the chop,” John said.
“I think I hate the open ocean,” Harper said.
They banged through a wave and Harper turned her head and vomited into their wake again.