Lime Jell-O
Today, Lourdes Valeria Wilkes takes off her prescription lenses for the first time in 61 days. She has grown used to falling asleep in them. Every few days those first couple of weeks, she would wake up and her glasses would be mangled out of shape. She took to sleeping upright in her chair, but she is still now down to her last pair. Between the constant domestic travel, the briefings and debriefings, the hundreds of emails and phone calls, and all the rest, the pairs that aren’t broken are lost.
It has been almost three hours since Lourdes pressed that poor son-of-a-bitch’s hand to the launch mechanism. Since then, she has been whisked to some southern state—she guesses Oklahoma given the temperance when she got onto the tarmac—and stowed away several hundred feet underground in a bunker meant for the President. Some rational part of her mind thought about asking someone where she was or what day it is or what the status on the island is or the death count, but she didn’t; speaking felt too exhausting. Some aid in her young twenties asked Lourdes if she wanted coffee or tea or water. All she did was stare at the young woman blankly. Making a decision, no matter how small, just felt far too exhausting.
The bunker is richly furnished, all things considered. There is wood paneling on the walls. Two 86’’ flat screen Roku TVs, one projecting an immersive idyllic forest glade scene. Nice bookshelf with all the classics. One queen bed and four cots with vacuum-sealed sheet sets stacked in one corner. Lourdes sits at the foot of the queen. She figures that if the President shows up, she can damn well tell Lourdes to go get a cot or get one herself.
“Ms. Wilkes?” a voice projects from some unseen speaker system following a middle-pitched humming beep. “It’s Phineas. I have some drinks here for you and a piece of correspondence, too.”
Lourdes remembers dimly that Phineas is the aid’s name. “Yes, sure,” Lourdes strains to raise her voice and mostly fails. Silence stretches too long and she wonders if there was a button she was supposed to find and press before responding. Then, Phineas appears through a door Lourdes doesn’t remember being there. The graying woman startles and chokes on her own spit.
“Are you okay?” Phineas asks.
Lourdes recovers quickly. “I’m fine,” she says, wiping what she hopes is not too much visible spittle from her chin. Phineas is wearing a bright white blouse with lace around the short sleeves and a black structured skirt that falls to her knees. She is freckled and her face is pleasantly round. She carries a salver with a few boxes of teas, a stack of teacups, and two carafes, one coffee and one water. There’s also an ornate glass bowl full of bright green Jell-O. “Thanks for bringing so many options. Sorry that I just stared at you like a neanderthal when you asked.” Lourdes adjusts her glasses.
Phineas exhales through her nose and sets the selection down on the rich mahogany coffee table. “That’s alright. Way I was trained, regardless of what they say when you ask, you’re ‘sposed to bring them everything anyway.” She hands over a piece of pale blue stationary paper folded thrice. “This came for you as well.” Lourdes notices that Phineas has a small southern drawl.
“So are you always here just in case someone important needs something?” Lourdes asks as she unfolds the paper. She wonders heedlessly whether the question was rude.
Phineas exhales out of her nose again. “Usually I’m in the White House attending Madame President.”
“Wow,” Lourdes remarks genuinely. She absentmindedly horks down a too-big bite of Jello-O. “Well, it’s an honor, then. Your service is exceptional.”
Phineas nods, smooths her hands over her skirt, and goes to get a cot. Lourdes takes another spoonful of Jell-O (how long has it been since I ate anything?) and realizes that Phineas is here to stay. She wonders errantly how long they will be stuck together. Sighing, she is relieved to see that the correspondence is short. She mutters something to no one in particular about paperwork and reads:
L,
I have some people looking for your family. Your son, N, is holed up in a shelter in Nova Scotia. It’s the big Anglican church. I’m still looking for A.
Sorry my behavior was so shit. I’m taking steps to make sure that you never have to see me again.
RL
Jell-O-flavored bile leaps up into Lourdes’s throat. Tears sting her eyes. She scrambles off the queen and finds a small ergonomic trash can next to the coffee table. Through her retching, she hears Phineas cooing softly behind her. She collapses face down on the hardwood after there is nothing left in her stomach to expel. “Phineas?”
“Yes, ma’am?” the young woman says softly. She rubs small circles in Lourdes’s back.
“Did you imagine this is where you’d be spending the end of the world?”
“My parents’ house was out in the middle of nowhere in Toppenish County. It got the worst of the damage more or less right after the hurricane formed,” Phineas says. Her voice is measured, just as soft and coaxing. “If there were anyone left, you bet that’s where I’d be.”
Lourdes rolls onto her back and regards Phineas. Her eyes are dark and dutifully focused on some middle point between Lourdes’s eyes. She has seen those eyes before. “I’m so sorry.”
“My parents called me Finnie.” Phineas helps her off the ground. “What about you, hun?”
“I thought I’d be with my son.”
“Oh, dear. That’s truly awful, sweetheart,” Phineas’s voice breaks. “How old was he?”
“He’ll be eleven in June,” Lourdes says. “He’s still alive out there somewhere.”
Phineas looks away quickly, but not before Lourdes can see the horror turn to pity in her big cow eyes. They’re so familiar; whose eyes are those? “Well, I’m just so sorry you can’t be with him.”
Phineas sits her down onto the queen bed gently, and Lourdes lays the rest of the way down. “Sorry if it smells like Jell-O vomit in here after I’m gone.” Phineas makes some vague murmuring of dismissal as she wanders to the other side of the cell to tend something. “Thanks for talking to me a while, Finnie.”
The aid’s head snaps up at the sound of her nickname, but the only thing left to suggest Lourdes Valeria Wilkes was ever there is a pair of discarded reading glasses on the bed.
The water is shallow and warm. It bobs so gently. It reminds Lourdes of how easily she used to fall asleep in the car; it was always more difficult to fall asleep after Neil was born. Her vision is pleasantly blurry like how it looks to wake up and see that the numbers are still too low on the clock to get up just yet. Floating on her back, she sees the corners of the very few tall buildings in Monte Key Cay reaching up into a lovely cerulean sky interrupted only by a fat grey jet stream. She must be on some central street on the island. It takes an enormous effort, but Lourdes lifts her head to look. The few people who are out stumbling panickedly in the street or gazing helplessly up at the plume of smoke blur in Lourdes’s vision until they are less than a suggestion. Then, she feels all the rest of the natives—holed up in their basements and their bedrooms, in the church, clutching each other close, praying, crying, comforting each other—recede like sand through a sieve.
“Can you see, Reed?” Lourdes murmurs. Then, her vision sharpens like sleep is being cleared from her eyes. The only ones left in this place are her and the judge.
The same judge. The judge who was there on the day when she and Neil went into town and got pizza. There she is, standing with the water up to her ankles right outside of a Dunkin. She is dressed the same as she was that day: the gold jewelry, the black wedges. After making sure Lourdes can see her, she extends her arm and points up, up.
Please, Lourdes’s world asks her. Look.
This time, she does. There, at the mountaintop, is the destroyer of worlds. In great detail, better than she ever remembers being able, she can see an old man with a great serpent and a young man with wings holding the missile back with all their might. She watches their muscles finally, finally give out.
Instead of trying to conjure some poignant last words, Lourdes Valeria Wilkes closes her eyes and permits herself to enjoy the water.