"You keep correcting me so you can avoid hearing what I'm saying."
She knew it was true, so again she sat back into the couch and looked out the window. "I'm listening."
"You said that the early Christians, when the plagues came to the Roman Empire, they nursed the sick, they fed them, they kept them warm, and that saved half or two-thirds of the ones who would have died."
"Yes, that's true. I guess that means you read the book."
"I did," said Mark. "It's like it was talking to me. Saying, This is what Christians do, and you're not doing it."
"It's not what thirteen-year-old Christians in America do when the sick people are all in Africa."
"It'll get here soon enough," said Mark. "But if I already went to Africa, and nursed the sick, and caught the virus myself, but had a ninety-percent chance of living through it because the people I helped now help me in return, then I'd come back here completely immune, so I could help take care of the family when the nictovirus finally does get here."
"I see you have it all planned out," said Cecily.
"Except the part about whether I live or die, but I figure that's in the hands of God."
"Yes, isn't it, though. Except it's also in my hands, because you're not going."
"I could die right here—a terrorist sniper, food poisoning, meningitis, a traffic accident, a bolt of lightning. Think you can prevent any of those?"
"Food poisoning for sure. Traffic accident probably."
"You know you can't," said Mark. "It's like the lady on TV said, the one from CGA. Which is better, to save my life by not helping and just letting the government kill the sick people who try to get away, or to risk my life doing what Jesus did?"
"He didn't risk his life healing the sick, he could just heal them."
"Excuse me?" said Mark. "Jesus didn't risk his life?"
"Who's being sarcastic now?" asked Cecily triumphantly.
"I don't get sarcastic when I'm wrong," said Mark. "I get sarcastic when you're just being silly."
Cecily laughed. "Oh, my, you're way too good at this. I'm not sure you should get married without letting the girl take serious fighting lessons."
"And once again you're dodging the point."
"Mark, you can't go. This CGA—if they actually get permission to enter Africa, it's going to be hard enough for them to get anything done without having to worry about a thirteen-year-old. You'd have to have a guardian with you."
"I know," said Mark. "That's why I asked Aunt Margaret."
"You actually talked to her before you talked to me?"
"I talked to you weeks ago," said Mark. "Just because you ignored me doesn't mean I didn't try."
"I never ignore you," said Cecily. "I just hoped that you'd get past this phase."
"And I'm hoping you'll get past yours," said Mark, rising to his feet angrily.
"My decision is not a phase, young man."
"Neither is mine," said Mark. "Adults talk about 'phases' whenever they don't want to take kids seriously. But I'm thirteen. If I were a Jew, I'd be a man."
"I'm sorry I said 'phase.'"
"Aunt Margaret won't take me," said Mark.
"I'm not surprised."
"She says she's too old, she'd just catch it and die before she emptied a single bedpan."
"She's probably right," said Cecily.
"But she said she'd live in our house and take care of Nick and Lettie and Annie and John Paul if you decided to take me."
"I can't take you!" said Cecily. "My children have only one parent left. I'm not putting the other one at risk!"
"How odd. You drive in District traffic all the time."
"The odds of catching the nictovirus in Africa and dying of it are way higher than the odds of dying in a traffic accident."
"You risk dying to go talk to the President and make money and help him block Christians from going to care for the sick in Africa," said Mark. "People risk death all the time to do whatever they want to do. You like being somebody who the President talks to all the time, so it's worth the risk."
"You are so far over the line, young man, that you can't even see it anymore," said Cecily.
"I'm speaking truth to power," said Mark. "That's what you raised me to do."
"I'm not 'power,' I'm your mother."
"The only person in my life with more power over me is God," said Mark. "Dad liked being a good soldier and serving his country. He died doing that, but it didn't mean he didn't love us. And the way he died set an example for us. For me. I learned that my life is only as important as the things I'm willing to die for. Well, I'm not brave or strong, I'll never be a soldier. But I can be a Christian because anybody can. All they have to do is be willing, and I'm willing. How dare—" Then he stopped himself.
"Go ahead," said Cecily, challenging him.
"Did you mean any of the things you taught me about being a Christian?"
"Go upstairs," said Cecily, turning away from him. It hurt too much to look at him. Because she was never going to let him go, and he was going to hate her for it. He was going to believe all his life that she had deprived him of something vital, a chance to do something that mattered. That's what young boys hungered for more than anything—a chance to be men, to do something real, to know in their hearts that they deserved the respect of good men and women. And she was taking it away from him.
But she had attended all the funerals of family members that she intended to. God could not possibly want her to bury one of her sons. Or worse, have him die on some far-off continent and never even know where he was buried.
When she turned back to look at him again, he was gone.
The television was talking now about the new hurricane that was going to pass across Cuba and head for Florida or, possibly, any point on the Gulf Coast. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe without crying for her brokenhearted, too-good-for-his-own-good son.
All the people living in those places were steeling themselves for the possibility of evacuation, devastation, rebuilding.
Cecily saw herself in a hurricane. Rushing with her minivan full of children, trying to get out of town as the storm surge battered against the coast. In the passenger seat, Nick was shouting. Something about a little girl out in the water. Drowning. In her dream, she stopped the car and commanded the children to stay inside. She ran out to the water, but the waves were so high. She was a good swimmer, but was she that good? What was the point of her adding her own death to that of the little girl?
But how could she drive on and leave her to die? So she plunged into the water, walking when she could. The girl was clinging to a piling of an old wharf, mostly gone, just a few poles sticking up above the water. Cecily swam from pole to pole, trying to reach her. And finally she did, and the girl clung to her, and Cecily turned to go back, terrified now of making the swim with this extra weight around her neck.
And there were her children, every one of them, in the water behind her, a human chain from the last pole to her. She was able to swim alongside them; they bolstered her, helped her stay afloat with the added burden, to get her to the next pole. And once she was there, Mark swam out boldly ahead of her to the next pole, the other children clinging to him one after another, remaking the chain. Once again she swam alongside them. In the way of dreams, she kept going and going, and always there were her children beside her, and without them she could not make it, but with them she could.
They got to the shore, to high ground, and she looked over to the road where she had left their van, just as a storm swell reached it, raised it, floated it up, and then sucked it out into the ocean, where it rolled and sank under the waves. And she knew that if the children had obeyed her and stayed with the van, she would have lost them—them and the little girl she was trying to save.
She woke up gasping, surprised to find her clothing dry, the television on, and the day outside the front window sunny and hot-looking. There were tears down her cheeks, and she realized that her fingers had been ticking through an
imaginary rosary during her fretful nap. But she had not been saying any Our-Fathers or Hail-Marys. She had been saying, Thank you for my children.
She pressed her hands to her face. What did this mean? It was just a dream, brought on by her argument with Mark combined with the hurricane story on the news. She imagined death, rescue, it all fit together. It was just a dream.
But it felt like so much more than a dream. It felt like an answer. It felt to her as if she had been given this dream to make things clear to her. But what was clearer now? What was she supposed to see? That she should take the whole family to Africa? Absurd. They didn't even want to go. Leave them, then, and take Mark, and trust in God and Aunt Margaret to take care of the younger kids if she died there?
Or maybe she was supposed to learn from it that the hurricane strikes where it will, and when it will, and to spend your life trying to keep your kids away from the hurricane won't work. The hurricane will find them. They'll plunge right into it. All you can do is prepare them to be brave and good and make the best of whatever comes to them.
No! she silently shouted at herself, or whatever voice it was making her think these things. I am not taking Mark to Africa.
Three days later, the Christians Going to Africa were still on the news, but now they were dominating it, because the demonstrations were bigger each day. And it wasn't just the Baptists and Pentecostals of Christians Going to Africa now. There was a Catholic group calling itself Mother Teresa Alive, and there were black churches and white churches, Methodists and Presbyterians and Mormons and Jews and Muslims of every stripe, with their own signs, their own quotes from scripture.
The polls still said that most Americans thought of these people as lunatics, but approval of the demonstrators was rising—up to thirty percent now and rising. She was not surprised when President Torrent called her in to take part in an emergency meeting of his kitchen cabinet.
"It's beginning to look bad," said the President's favorite poll reader. "Even people who hate do-gooders and/or Christians are saying that you should let them go. So their approval is at thirty-two but support for letting them go is at fifty-five. Even when the question is phrased as negatively as possible, they still think that a quarantine is meant to keep the disease away from America, not keep Americans from going to where the disease is."
Others at the meeting talked on and on, as always, with Torrent listening politely to everybody but shutting down anyone who tried to turn it into an argument.
It's like helmet laws for motorcycles, someone said. People with a death wish need to be protected from themselves.
It's just political, they're trying to make you look bad, they can't attack the quarantine itself but they can make you look like you hate black people or Africans or Christians.
You can't be seen to give in to demonstrators.
You have to talk to them, to show you're sensitive.
Let's get the former presidents to rally around you on this, go talk to these people together.
Ignore them and they'll give up, it's insane and you can't be seen to bow to such madness.
Torrent allowed his advisers to say almost anything. He listened not only to what they said, but also to who was saying it.
Which is why Cecily was unsurprised when he stopped an ongoing discussion and looked at her across the large table. "Cecily," he said, "what's the view from the Christian Right?"
"Is that what I am?" she said. "I always thought of myself as the Catholic Left."
That got her a few chuckles around the table, but not from Torrent. "You actually talk to these people, I need to hear from you."
"'These people,'" murmured Cecily.
"Unfortunate choice of words," said Torrent impatiently.
"No, no, it's a very good choice of words. It's very us-and-them. Only I'm in the wrong meeting."
"What do you mean?"
"I have a thirteen-year-old son who is demanding that if I really believe any of the things I taught him about religion as he was growing up, I'll take him to Nigeria myself so we can help nurse the sick."
There was dead silence around the table. Most of them were probably imagining what it would be like if one of their children got such an absurd notion. Some of them were no doubt thankful to the God they didn't believe in that they hadn't polluted their children's minds with any religious nonsense.
But Torrent was focusing on her, his face expressionless but relentless.
"I told him no," said Cecily. "I told him no so many times in the past few days that he's stopped asking me, though I know he's making plans to do it anyway. He feels it like a calling. The way some people feel the call to be a minister, or to be a scientist, or an artist, or a soldier, or President of the United States."
Still silence, still the President watching her, waiting.
"So I think of all those people out there demonstrating as my children. They're not afraid of death for themselves. They don't want to die, but they've found a cause worth dying for." She looked around the table. "Those people aren't crazy and they aren't grandstanding and they aren't secretly hoping you don't let them go. They actually think they could do some good in Africa, especially if you let them take supplies and get resupplied the way you're doing with our troops over there."
Torrent's gaze turned cold. "It's not the same thing."
"The landings and offloadings are. Charity groups could send food and medicine."
"We're already shipping plenty of medicine and food," an adviser pointed out.
"And letting the corrupt remnants of the government turn them into black market fortunes," said Cecily. "These groups would send supplies to their own absolutely trustworthy people there on the ground in Nigeria and the other countries where the epidemic is spreading. Far more of it would get where it was needed. So my question is, Why not? They want to go, let them go. Donate the use of the planes to take them there."
"It's a one-way ticket," said another adviser angrily. "Don't they get that?"
"They get that," said Cecily. "My son said he figures that you'll only let back into the States people who caught the virus and lived through it. Immune people. He says that Africa will produce a group of American nicto survivors who can come home and treat the victims of the epidemic when it gets to our shores."
"It will never get to our shores!" roared the adviser who thought he was closest to the President.
"Calmly," murmured Torrent.
"Never," the man repeated, but more softly.
"That is a foolish thing to say," said Cecily. "We all know that this virus is going to become endemic, like measles and smallpox and the common cold and cholera and malaria and sleeping sickness, killing steadily at a low level. Even if you can prevent it from seeping out of Africa now, or for ten years, or twenty, someday this antiseptic curtain will fail, and it will reach us. President Torrent is a historian. He knows this."
"I know what I know," said Torrent softly. "This meeting is about what you know."
"I know that the map of Africa is going to be redrawn at the end of this crisis," said Cecily. "The language groups, the nations, the tribes, to use the old politically incorrect but perfectly accurate term, they'll reassert themselves and it will be a new continent. They'll come out of this stronger than ever. If you don't let these charitable groups go to Africa and help, then what will Africa believe about America, about the whole world outside their continent? 'You were content to let us die,' that's what they'll believe. These people demonstrating out on the Mall are offering us a chance to redeem America in their eyes."
"All very nice," said another adviser, about to begin a refutation, but Torrent raised a hand.
"There are millions of people in Africa," said Torrent. "What are the odds that any of them will actually be nursed by these few do-gooders?"
"The odds are very good that those who are cared for by the 'do-gooders' will survive at a markedly higher rate than those who are left without help. However few or many they are, there will be more of them
in relation to the general population than the raw numbers would indicate."
"You've really thought this through," said Torrent quietly.
"Yes," said Cecily.
"You never liked my quarantine policy."
"I kept looking for a better national policy, and I couldn't find one.Then I realized that I'm not the President, and what I should be looking for is a personal policy. That one I've found."
"Demonstrating?" asked Torrent.
"No, I'm not going to picket. Or call a press conference. I'm just going to take my oldest boy with me and go to Italy, where Catholic Charities is on the verge of reaching an agreement with the Italian government to fly them into Nigeria, with permission from Libya and Niger to cross their airspace."
Torrent looked angry now for the first time. "The Italians haven't told me that."
"I'm not working through government channels now," said Cecily, rising to her feet. "I'm submitting my resignation, effective immediately. Mr. President, I'm going to Africa."
Torrent also rose. "No you're not. I'll revoke your passport."
Cecily shook her head. "Don't make idle threats," she said. "The moment you oppose me, I will go on the air. Former adviser to President Torrent and all that. Much better if you make it look like this was your idea. Your own adviser, the widow of Reuben Malich, is leading the way to Africa. The administration is fully behind the effort to provide relief for Africa, and all those Americans who catch the nictovirus there but recover fully from it will be welcomed home as heroes."
Cecily looked around the table. Most of them weren't even looking at her—she had embarrassed them. The few who did meet her gaze seemed more amused than anything.
"You know that's the only way to play it," she said to them all. "It's the only way that turns this into a plus." She looked Torrent in the eye again. "Use me or oppose me, that's your choice. But my son Mark and I are going, one way or another."
"What about your other children?" asked Torrent.
"Yes, will you look in on them from time to time?" she said. Then she smiled. "I'm their mother. Don't imagine for a second that I haven't arranged for them to be well taken care of, no matter what happens to me."