A Worry for Another Day

“Brad, everything in me is saying this intel is good. We’ve got…hours to get the word out, mobilize a shitload of C-17s. Someone’s gotta activate the alert system..”

A waterfall of the right things to do and the complete impossibility of getting all of it done in time cascaded through my brain and I suddenly felt like I was drowning. I felt the panic begin to strangle me and took a shaky breath to steady my voice.

“Even still, there’s just nowhere near enough landing zones or birds- or pilots!- even for all of DC, much less the whole country. It’s gonna be..mayhem. Something this scale..hysteria. And the President! I-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, man,” Brad interjected. “Slow down. You’re getting all hyped up on a hunch. We don’t need a national evacuation or C-17s or any of that bullshit. It’s a bluff, Frank. It’s all fine. The President doesn’t need to know anything because we don’t know anything. Look, send me the transmissions and I’ll check it out, but really- I’ll tell you when to worry.”

The vise on my chest tightened. “Brad, I think you’re wrong. I think we’re fucked.”

Brad took a long drink from a beige mug stained brown around the rim from years of mainlining jet fuel-strength coffee in a bid to keep his mind focused on tens of thousands of rows of ciphers dancing across the screen at his station.

“Well, Frank…if it’s as bad as all that, there’s no hope anyway. So I’m gonna enjoy my coffee, and then I’ll take a listen to those transmissions, and we’ll circle back.” He smacked my shoulder with a rolled up file and hoisted himself to his feet, then lumbered away. “But don’t worry- I guarantee it’s nothing,” he called over his shoulder.

Soon flames were licking at the fire screen covering the firebox, orange fingers curling around the blackened metal mesh, and the odd delicate flake of ash floated down to the hearth where in collapsed in on itself in the tiniest molehill of gray fibrous fuzz. The fresh fir logs- Nell had made a special trip to Fulgram’s to pick up a net bag of firewood just for the occasion- cracked as the flames gained momentum, and Franny jumped at the sharp snap. From across the room, Jeremy chuckled without glancing up from his phone. A car door slammed and Nell rushed out of the den towards the foyer, smoothing down her blouse as she went. By the time she rounded the corner, I was already sitting on the second-to-last step of the gently curving marble staircase, pulling my tie loose with my index finger. With my other hand, I rubbed my temple and let out a soul-deep sigh.

Nell dropped down beside me and rested her hand on my knee, like she’d done a thousand times before. A slow smile played on my lips, and I pulled her in closer, draping my arm around her. She smelled like vanilla and smoke, and her cheeks were still raw and red from venturing out in the cold to Fulgram’s.

“Did you start the fire?”

She didn’t answer, in the way that wives sometimes don’t when they know the conversation will circle back around soon enough.

“How was your day?” She asked instead.

“I quit,” I said, so softly I scarcely heard it myself.

“You…you what?” Nell pulled away and blinked at me.

“I quit,” I said again, louder this time.

“But. Why? What happened? What’ll we do? Frank, we can’t afford-” She was gesturing up at the (admittedly grandiose) vaulted ceiling and the crystal chandelier and the marble bannister, mentally tallying the cost of our life, weighing it against the debited pension that wouldn’t be coming now.

I leaned toward her again, closing the space she’d put between us, and pressed my lips to her windblown blonde curls. The faintest beads of sweat were gathering at her hairline.

“That’s a worry for another day.” I steeled myself, willing my voice to stay level and nonchalant. “Tonight, I just want to be with you, and the kids, and forget about the rest of the world outside this house.” I squeezed her hand in mine and pulled her to her feet, tossed her a light smile as we walked back toward the den through the darkened hallway. “I’ll tell you when to worry.”

The beeps from the gray monitor that marked Gary’s heartbeat came excruciatingly slowly: so far apart, that another would come just as you began to wonder if it was all over. He’d been asleep for three days now, and his gray, sunken face looked nothing like my little brother anymore.

“Dad,” I started, and my voice cracked. “He said he was coming home because he was done with treatment.” I could picture him, beaming, almost giddy, less than a week before, in a homemade t-shirt with I BEAT CANCER in Sharpie across the front, damn near illegible in his elementary school scrawl.

“He didn’t finish, did he?” A sob caught in my throat, and I pretended to cough in the hopes that my father wouldn’t notice. Gary groaned in his sleep.

“He did, Frank,” my father whispered, running the palm of his hand tenderly across the patchy ginger stubble on Gary’s head, which seemed now to be all angles and sharp edges. “He finished his treatment, the full course. Dr. Mundy said the cancer was completely unaffected. Still spreading. There’s no more treatments we can try.”

The full weight- suffocating, claustrophobic- of what he was saying settled itself into the pit of my stomach. I coughed again.

“Why’d you tell him he was all better?” I cried. “He thought he was cured. He told me he was going to try out for basketball this fall.” The sobs were choking my body now, and I couldn’t try to hide them anymore. Great heaving gasps filled my lungs but still I felt I couldn’t breathe. I slid down the nicotine-yellow wall and hugged my legs to my body, buried my face in my knees.

Slowly, my dad lowered himself down to look into my eyes.

“Frank,” he started, in a voice so defeated it sent a thrill of fear racing up my spine, “how do you tell a nine year old he’s going home to die?”

I didn’t say anything, didn’t think I was supposed to. Dad gulped and looked away.

“One day, you may have to lie to your children, and tell them everything is okay when it isn’t, because the truth is too heavy a burden to bear.” A low, sorrowful moan escaped his throat and he took a deep breath. “How could I have told my boy there was no hope?”

We huddled together, crying with abandon on the sticky linoleum, and it wasn’t until minutes later we realized the beeps had stopped.

Jeremy stood up and clapped his hands together when Nell and I entered the room. “Well, now that everyone’s here, let’s eat and then I gotta get going to Nate’s so we can study for that big bio test next week-”

I waved my hand. “The bio test can wait. We’re gonna stay in tonight and spend some time together as a family. No phones, no distractions.” I squeezed Nell’s hand again, then walked over to the thick velvet curtains and pulled them shut.

“But Dad? The test? If I don’t get at least a C-”

“It’ll be alright, son. I’ll help you cram this weekend. A storm’s coming in and I’d rather we all stayed put. It’s been too long since we all spent an evening together. Your mom’s made this inviting fire…let’s have a picnic on the carpet like we used to when you two were little. Franny? What do you say?”

Franny shot out of her seat, always ready to be my champion. “Love it.” She wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her head on chest. When she pulled away, she handed Nell her phone. “Come on, Jeremy, you too!” She cried.

Nell ferried all four of our cell phones to the safe at the back of the house- a bit of dramatic flair courtesy of our pre-teen daughter- and Jeremy laid out thepicnic blanket on the carpet just in front of the hearth. Nell settled down onto the blanket with the kids, tucking her feet under her skirt, and I closed the doors to the den, then shut off the lights.

We ate dinner by the light of the crackling fire, and as it burned down into ash, the four of us laughed and talked about our days. Jeremy pulled a deck of cards out of his jacket pocket and we started a game of Crazy 8s, there on the floor.

As Nell won the fourth game in a row, all of us roared with laughter, so loud no one heard the sirens, muffled through the velvet curtains, filling the still winter air outside.

And when Jeremy threw the last log onto the fire, a sprinkle of hot red ash whooshed out and Nell gasped in that way that moms do, and all of us dissolved into giggles, no one could hear the alert notifications blaring through our phone screens across the house.

And when Franny sighed happily and leaned back into her mom’s lap, then closed her eyes as Nell ran her fingers lovingly through her long golden waves, no one could see the red flash illuminate the sky on the other side of the heavy drapes.

The floor vibrated for a moment, and my family paused, each one seemingly internally assessing whether the others had felt it too.

Nell reached out for my hand and smiled broadly. “We should do this more often,” she said, just as the first shockwave reached the house and