Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders Read Free Page B

rashes, on poisonous household items, on the arsenic contents of apple seeds, for example. But they seemed to have no interest in such matters, were too interested in delighting in their children—as if it were a friendly game, a cute endeavor, something to put in a rosy frame and sigh over in their dotage. They all seemed to be constantly singing in their heads the same chorus to some cheery song. Even their complaints were laced with unwieldy joy. It was as if childhood were a sing-along, and I didn’t know any of the words or even how the bouncy tune went. Really, I felt like I was always fighting the urge to grab the other mothers by their shoulders and shake them angrily, shouting, “Don’t you know what’s at stake here? There’s nothing cute about this! It’s life or death!”
    And so the party was abysmal. While Ruthie dogged her father everywhere, I drifted to the patio, holding Tilton, saying that she needed some fresh air. I was sure that she was allergic to smoke and nearly everyone smoked—a roomful of dirty factories. I didn’t keep her outside long, though. She was as frail physically as she would turn out to be mentally. I carried her into the bathroom, where I peeked at her diaper and washed my hands with dubious soaps cut into flower shapes, heavily perfumed. Tilton and I lurked around the food table and watched people cough on the hors d’oeuvres. I sipped alcoholic drinks because at least perhaps the alcohol worked as a purifier. Maybe I was a bit tipsy. Maybe that was why I was letting myself fight with George on the drive home. I usually tried not to.
    He started fiddling with the radio stations, impatiently flipping before I could even recognize a song. The rain was coming down so hard now that it was drowning out Ruthie’s fit. But George hadn’t upped the speed on the windshield wipers or bothered to slow down. He cut off the radio angrily.
    “Slow down, George! It’s raining like mad! Can you see anything out of that windshield?” I was going to tell the story of a recent car wreck I’d read about in the papers. But I didn’t get the chance.
    A streak of lightning scissored across the sky and ended in an explosion. For one blazing moment, the sky seemed to be on fire. Even though I didn’t see it happen—as George said he did and recounted later—it was there in my memory: a plane buzzing through dark clouds struck by an infinitely bright bolt.
    “Shit! Goddamn it!” George shouted. He hit the brakes. The tires caught a scrim of water, and the car seemed to be weightless, floating. I turned and somehow grabbed Ruthie by the wrist while throwing myself onto Tilton’s crib. The casserole flipped off my knees.
    A massive hunk of burning metal was falling toward us. An enormous fiery engine, perhaps not so much falling as being hurled at us. It landed with a deafening thud in the middle of the highway, and the road cratered around it.
    The tires caught, mercifully, and the car skidded to a stop. How far were we from the crater’s lip? Were we nose to nose with the engine? That’s the way I recalled it. There was such detail—the heat, the engine’s innards loosely exposed, the rain snapping at it, the steam lifting. It was like eyeing a beast—something that seemed alive—a heavily breathing bull.
    I scrambled to get Tilton out of her crib. I unbuckled Ruthie and, while urging her out of the car, lifted Tilton to my chest. “Out, out!” I was shouting. “Before someone comes along and rams us!”
    George opened his door and walked to the engine. His shirt was quickly splotched with rain. He turned slowly and looked across the cornfield at a small house surrounded by trees. The airplane’s severed wing had landed on the house’s garage.
    An old man ran out of the house, wearing a raincoat over pajamas, and staggered around in his yard. He was wobbly, bowlegged, his arms spread wide, as if looking for someone to embrace.
    George and I stepped onto the muddy cornfield.