One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

Author:Laurie Frankel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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I take the long way home and try to decide whether the fact that River thinks I’m as likely to leave home as my sisters puts him on the side of the angels (big-hearted, faith-filled, and not just faith in general but faith in me) or the demons (completely oblivious). It was only a few years ago it occurred even to me to wonder how—literally how—I will someday live when Nora does not. Maybe I’ll go on her heels, like a brokenhearted lover, from grief but also lack of care. I need a lot of help to be me. It’s not that I couldn’t hire people. I could, of course. It’s that no one on earth could ever do it as thoroughly and thoughtfully and devotedly as Nora. Mother love is a powerful force. She is so essentially a part of me—like a limb, an organ—that maybe without her, I will simply cease to be.

But it’s bigger than that. Maybe we’ll all find Bourne was only ever for a little while, and as our beleaguered parents age away, the next generation will peter into nothing. We’ll leave if we can, stay if we can’t, but many of us won’t survive, won’t live without our platoon of parental carers, won’t have children of our own, and Bourne will shed its citizens softly like trees do their October leaves, green fading to gold fading to brown, then quickly, quietly, returned to dust. The remaining shops and suppliers will go, the post office and Tom’s depot. Some of us will die almost at once without meds, filled G-tubes, emptied catheter bags. Some of us will go up in flames when there’s no one to help with the stove or herd us away from steep stairs or run baths with no more than four inches of not-too-hot water. Others will go more slowly as our wheelchairs shudder to still without anyone to repair, push, or recharge, as our implants stop whispering, our joints no longer bend, our Voices fall silent. And then, sooner than we imagine, when there’s no one left, the plant will finally close again forever. Our homes will crumble back to dirt, our buildings rot to stone and soil. The library will overgrow with trees who remember when all those pages used to be theirs. Our streets will bristle with weeds. Maybe the flowers will come back. And the river will flow on, as rivers do, as rivers must, and if its waters eventually run clean again, it will not matter anyway because there will be no one left to drink.

It sounds dark, I know, but it will happen to you too, to you and your family and your town. It sounds dark, but that’s apt for somewhere that’s had its day in the sun. These places, they don’t last long. They don’t stay. But while they’re here, they’re safe and whole, like cocoons, like eggs, on the way to somewhere else, yes, but for the moment, a world entire.

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