The Girl in Red

“And you’ll stay here, too. Is that how it is? The two of you stay here and die while Adam and I go skipping into the woods like in some fairy tale, hand in hand with our bread crumbs,” Red said to her father, and she hated the way she sounded, so accusing.

If this was the last time she saw her parents, this should not be how they spoke to each other, but she couldn’t help it. It felt like they were giving up and that made her so angry, because they had a plan and they weren’t supposed to give up. Giving up was something for other families, not hers.

“How can I leave her?” Dad said, his face long and tired. “I don’t want to live without her.”

“I don’t want to either,” Red said. “But you’re telling me to do what you won’t do. You’re telling me and Adam to go on living and abandon you.”

“Do as I say, not as I do,” Dad said, with a little half-smile. “Isn’t that what parents always say? And I’m probably going to be sick soon, too.”

Red gave him a long, steady stare. “And what if you’re not? Are you just going to stay here by yourself and desiccate slowly? Or are you going to follow us?”

“No,” Dad said.

“No to which?” Red said.

“No to both.”

The unspoken hung there in between all of them, binding Dad and Red and Mama together. After Mama died, if Dad wasn’t sick, he would kill himself.

“This was not supposed to be how it would go,” Red said. “I knew the rules. I knew, and we were going to avoid all the stupidity that kills people in a story. We were not going to be like those people. We were all going to get to Grandma’s house safely. We were all going to live.”

“You can’t write this like a story, Red. This is life, and it doesn’t follow your rules.”

“‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,’” Red said.

It just came out, a thing she had unconsciously memorized. She’d always liked Macbeth the best. She liked horror movies, and Macbeth was a proper horror story, with ghosts and witches and blood.

“I didn’t know you read Shakespeare, Delia,” Mama said, a little wonder in her voice. “But I would be hurt if that’s what you really believed—that life is worth nothing. Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean my life is worth nothing. I had you and Adam, didn’t I? You’re the piece of me that goes on.”

“Of course I read Shakespeare,” Red said, ignoring the rest of Mama’s statement. She didn’t want to be the one to go on. She wanted her mama to live. “My mother is a distinguished Shakespeare professor. How could I not?”

She’d read several plays in secret, because she wanted to understand her mother, but she didn’t want Mama the Professor quizzing her about it.

Mama put her arms around Red, crying now. “I always thought there was so much space between us, and as you got older it seemed the gulf got wider and wider. But you were always trying to close the gap, weren’t you? I see that now. I wish I’d seen it sooner.”

Red didn’t say anything, couldn’t, because all her tears were choking her and she didn’t want to weep, not now. And she realized that Mama must have been just as certain as Red that Red wouldn’t get sick, or else Mama wouldn’t have put her arms around Red’s neck like that and breathed so close to her face. Red was going to live, and instead of triumphant victory it suddenly felt like a horse she’d have to drag with her all the rest of her days. The only consolation in being a survivor was that you’d survived.

Adam came into the kitchen then, carrying his too-heavy pack and looking clueless, Red thought. It annoyed her that he didn’t know what had just happened, the decisions that had been made, and it annoyed her that the thought was unreasonable. How could he know if he wasn’t there when they were all talking about Red and Adam leaving Mama and Dad behind to die? But there he was, with his stupid face not knowing anything and rubbing her raw because he was giving them all that put-upon look he did so well.

“I am ready for the unreasonable trek,” Adam said, sighing. “I still think this is dumb.”

“Well, I don’t want to hear about how dumb you think it is because it’s just going to be you and me until we get to Grandma’s house and I’m not listening to you whine for that long,” Red snapped.

Adam glanced from Dad to Mama to Red. “What’s going on?”

Red was going to say there was no time for a recap, and she didn’t want to drag it out anyway. Wasn’t everything terrible enough without running over the same ground again? But then there was a sound, a very unexpected sound, and they all froze.

“Truck,” Red said. “It’s a truck, it’s one of those patrols coming to see if there are any survivors. It just turned in at the bottom of the drive. We’ve got to go now.”