Love it or hate it—or hate it—suburbia had a simple central thesis: put all the amenities in one place and all the residences in another place; that way, we could drive from our homes to the amenity hub where we did our errands and business without the discomfort of interacting with people whose lots in life abutted something other than our property lines.
It was just the price of the dream.
Seacrest Heights’ hub was historic Seacrest Square. The Square was historic in the sense that, once, it had been the intersection of the two main streets of a small town, and then the bulldozers came, and it wasn’t that anymore. The topography was very nice, though. Seacrest Heights was a pair of plateaus in the middle of some of the larger hills on the far side of Elpeck Bay. By the decision of the Seacrest Heights Homeowners’ association, these were called Topside and Downside. Residences could be found on both plateaus, and on the gently sloping hillside that linked the two of them together, but the most desirable properties—like ours—were located up on Topside. Meanwhile, Seacrest Square was at the heart of Downside.
Though the architecture was certainly striking, the best part of Seacrest Square was the charming axial park that sat in the middle of the square, though that quaint piece of arcadia was surrounded on all sides by a road, and, in turn, sprawling, asphalt plains encroached upon the road, providing the parking lots needed to access the Square’s main amenities, those being a Behr’s Department store, a cineplex, and a Gilman's supermarket. Holographic ads played out over the cineplex, projecting giants in the sky. As for the Gilman’s—our Gilman’s—it looked like a robot’s idea of a pork-pie hat. It was shaped like a rectangle, with rounded corners that were just short of sharp. The “hat” itself was a pastel green, and its beige “brim” provided an overhang that would keep the rain away from the door. A mix of pale hues formed a checkerboard pattern on the thin, rectangular spire that rose from the building’s front end. The Gilman's brand name sign adorned the spire’s top in sleeping neon. A couple scraggly cypresses fringed the building’s corners, though the flowerbeds they grew out of were more like deathbeds. Even from several blocks away, Jules could tell the trees looked awful. They’d shed their needles, as if they’d been poisoned, and that was certainly foreboding, but it wasn’t what made Jules lurch forward in her seat.
Havoc played in the Gilman’s parking lot.
Jules pointed at the chaos. “What’s gotten into them?”
Eyes widening, Pel slammed down on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt. “There goes the neighborhood,” she muttered.
Seacrest Square was stuffed to the brim with people and cars. Vehicles crammed into the parking lot like sardines, spilling out onto the road in a nearly motionless rush hour. People were everywhere. Horns honked. Voices yelled. Wheels screeched on the asphalt as cars started and stopped among the pedestrian throng.
Jules craned her neck. “Mom, pull over. Pull over!”
“I’m doing it,” Pel said, “I’m doing it!” She flung her arm back and looked over her shoulder, parallel parking with the ease most people reserved for breathing. Their spot was about a block away from the Square.
Of the two of us, I was the boring driver. Pel, however, was the artist.
“Cry the Lassedites…” Pel muttered.
From where the car was parked, Jules could clearly see that the Gilman's automatic doors were stuck wide open. Somebody must have jammed a shopping cart in there—or something—to stop the doors from slowing down the people rushing in or out. It was like the whole Shrovestide shopping season stuffed into a single time and place. The shopping carts coming out of the Gilman’s were filled to the brim with supplies: toilet paper, disinfecting cleaner, food up the wazoo, and bottles upon bottles of alcohol—from rubbing alcohol, to diet beer, sketchy Odensky vodka, and everything in between.
“If this keeps up,” Jules shook her head, “there’ll be nothing left!”
Pel unbuckled her seatbelt. “So it’s a good thing we got here in time.” She looked her daughter in the eyes. “You’re sure your mask is on properly?”
“Yeah,” Jules replied. For extra measure, she made the Bond-sign.
While Pel rolled her eyes at our daughter, Jules leapt out of the car. The weather was almost too perfect. The sun warmed her hair and skin, and her dress was just enough to keep the light sea breeze from chilling her. She wore a dark green vest atop her school uniform. She liked the contrast between the vest and plaid skirt’s blues, whites, and dark browns. And though maybe it was just because of how much use it got, but Jules felt her uniform was the most comfortable set of clothes she had that weren’t her PJs, except for the polished, black, buckled shoes, so, fuck those; she wore her softball sneakers instead.
Jules pressed her back onto her mother’s car, wary of the handful of other shoppers who had also decided to avoid the chaos and parked at a distance. She just wished that distance wasn’t so close to where her mom had parked.
The sun-warmed metal felt good against her back.
Jules looked into the window. Her mother was leaning over the passenger seat somewhat ungainly. She pulled something out from the glove compartment.
I’d better get it while she’s distracted.
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In addition to the level-headedness that I excelled at pretending to have, Jules had gotten her mother’s instinct for prudence, particularly of the unreasonable sort. The instant Pel had announced she was going to the grocery store, Jules had volunteered to accompany her, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she rushed into the room that was once Rale’s and now Rayph’s, slid open the closet and then reached up and rifled through its upper shelf to get a tool that a conviction deep within her being told her she’d likely need.
And as usual, she thought, I was right.
Following the chrome highlights around to the bumper at the back end of her mother’s car, Jules pulled the hidden handle, opened the trunk and pulled out her brother’s softball bat.
Rale’s softball bat.
One of the many tragedies of my first son’s life was that he loved softball to death—that, and professional frisbee—but his congenital Wernstrom’s Syndrome meant that he was unable to do much more than play a couple rounds of catch before it felt like he couldn’t get the breath into his lungs. We’d scheduled his surgery right after Shrovestide, and, in my excitement, I’d gone ahead and purchased a carbon fiber softball bat for him. I figured he’d want to play as soon as he had sufficiently recovered from the procedure.
The bat was just as light in Jules’ grip as when she’d helped her little brother open the packaging it’d come in on that cozy Shrovestide morning. The soft, squishy padding around the handle gave her grip just the right amount of traction. Stylized yellow suns decorated the bat’s lacquered, pitch-black surface, like Night shot through with day. Rale was over the Moon when he first laid eyes on the darn thing.
A week later, he was dead.
Jules had never shown much interest in sports up till then, but not long after Rale died, she took up softball. It was her memorial to him. She never needed to say it out loud. We all understood it.
It had been a long time since she’d last used Rale’s bat. Fortunately, Jules could hardly think of a worthier cause for which to use it.
Softly but firmly, Jules shut the trunk and walked up to the driver’s side of the car right as her mother stepped out and closed the door.
Pel clutched something in her hands. Several somethings: a couple of small, multi-chambered plastic bags. Some of the chambers were filled with powder; others, liquid. They couldn’t have been more incongruous with my wife’s cultured presentation if they tried, especially with the mask and goggles. Pel’s maroon dress was hidden beneath the soft-edged suit that wrapped her body like a sheath, save for the folds in front and back that gave her room to flex. The fabric’s pattern was like polished granite, and her the perfect folds of the maroon dress’ mid-length skirt stuck out beyond the hem of her suit like a flower unfolding. Her white dress gloves went up to her elbow, and she wore the protective latex glove atop it.
Pel scowled at the bat in Jules’ hands, but her indignation turned to remorse when she realized whose bat it was. Pel had been the one to insist on storing the bat in the closet. It hurt her to think about what the bat represented—and, to be honest, it hurt me, too.
“Why do you have Rale’s bat?” Pel asked, sternly, so as to keep her cool.
Without a word, Jules swung the bat at the car, only to stop an inch short of it in a feint so convincing, it sent her mother staggering back, flinching in surprise.
“Jerk deterrent.” Jules smirked.
Pel tut-tutted, her eyes narrowing. “You snuck it into the trunk, didn’t you?” She sighed. “Put it back.”
“Mom, no,” Jules scowled, “we need this. Just look.” She pointed at the folks who’d parked nearby and were now walking toward the Gilman's. “Most of them aren’t wearing face-masks, and of those that are, most are just surgical masks, not F-99s.”
Pel smiled, nodding in approval. “You really were paying attention to the video.”
Jules nodded with gumption. “Yep, and—pardon my language—”
“—Pardoned—”
“—But this country is filled with assholes who don’t give a damn about anyone’s safety but their own.”
Both of them were aware of the important Margaret-related subtext of Jules’ words, but neither of them said anything about it.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit excessive?” Pel asked.
“Look who’s talking.” Jules pointed at her mother’s multiply gloved hands. “What’ve you got there?” Jules stepped forward, even as her mother tried to hide her supplies behind her back, but Jules’ mouth widened behind her F-99 mask when she saw the cartoonish labels on the plastic packages.
Jules looked her mother dead in the eyes.
“Mom… why do you have stink bombs?” She crossed her arms. “‘Cuz I’m pretty sure those are stink bombs.”
Jules had spent a moment expecting a brilliant comeback from her mother when Pel simply closed her eyes, sighed, and shrugged. “Fine, you can take the bat. You probably won’t need it, anyway.”
My daughter had always been somewhat intimidated by her mother. Jules felt her mother was a badass, particularly in moments like these, as she walked onto the sidewalk and toward the Gilman's with a frisbee and stink bombs in hand. Jules followed along, mindful to keep her distance from strangers.
“Seriously, though,” Jules asked, as she caught up with her mother, “why do you have stink bombs?”
“I did some research,” Pel said. “I was expecting a crazy crowd.”
The noises grew louder as they walked onto Seacrest Square. Car horns honking; panicked voices bickering and yelling.
Pel shook her head. “I’m glad I packed extra,” she muttered.
Both in the road and the parking lots, many of the cars had their doors open. Families were splitting up, with women, children, and the elderly staying behind in the car while the able-bodied went into the market.
Pel beckoned her daughter with a wave of her arm. “Honey, stay close to me. Here,” she said, offering Jules the stink bombs, “gimme the bat; you take the bombs.”
Jules stared, confused. “Mom… you don’t play softball.”
“Exactly.” Pel nodded. “Now, c’mon, we need to get closer.”
For once, Jules dutifully obeyed, following her mother as she weaved through the car-marsh on the supermarket’s sprawling parking lot. Pel moved stealthily and with grace, and that was because her designer shoes didn’t have raised heels.
Fashionable and functional.
You couldn’t duck behind a car for cover while wearing stilettos. Jules joined her mother, sheltering behind a dark, empty car.
“Stay here,” my wife said, looking our daughter in the eyes. “I’ll be right back.”
And so Jules waited, lowering herself into a crouch as people streamed by, rolling shopping carts laden with food, disinfectants, and mounds of toilet paper. About thirty seconds later, Pel returned, accompanied by rattling metal.
Jules frowned. “Only two shopping carts?”
Her mother had brought two. Rale’s bat rested in one of them.
“We need maneuverability,” Pel said.
I guess that makes sense, Jules thought. Though that still didn’t explain the stink bombs.
“For the third time,” she asked, “why do—”
Pel waved her hand as she lowered herself beside her daughter. “—Keep your voice down.”
“Why do we have stink bombs?” Jules whispered.