Local Girl Liveblogs the Apocalypse
Chapter 17 – Your Mother is Just Trying to Keep You Alive
Previously… Katherine witnesses a break-and-enter of one of her neighbours’ house. Among other things, an expensive solar power bank is stolen by two men and a teenaged boy in a black SUV. Katherine calls 911, who take an unnerving length of time to answer, only to receive the report and never send a squad car. The collapse is encroaching.
“It's the battery,” I say. “Shit, they took the battery.”
“What battery?” Mom asks, pouring a few ounces of coffee for us both.
“The battery from the Lundys' solar set up. I was up all night wondering what the hell that thing was that he was carrying. That means they'll be back.”
“What do you mean? How do you know?” Her long fingers encircled the mug and brought it protectively to her chest.
“I mean, all the have to do is drive down and street and see who has solar panels on their roof. You don't usually have panels without a battery. So they'll know that Jake and Cassie have one, and Molly D. I bet you anything they'll be back for Molly's.”
“Well, I guess I'm glad that we didn't get one set up,” Mom says, looking down at the table. “At least we aren't a target.”
I shake my head, pulling my hood up over my head to keep from letting the chill of sleeplessness seep in. “I can't let them take it. I want to go get it.”
“And bring it here, giving them a reason to try to get in here and look for it, and who knows what else?”
“Mom, we're going to need it. You can't seriously believe the hydro is going to stay on indefinitely?”
“I'm balancing that against the risk of harm coming to us, to my family, over a battery.”
“I – ”
My mom pushes her mug back and flattens her hands on the dinner table on either side of it. She looks just past me as she speaks, her aversion to conflict not letting her meet my eyes. “You know what? I'm actually a little tired of being treated like I don't know what the fuck is going on. You three kids running around in every direction, making all your stuff a big emergency. Well, you know how I watch the news – you certainly comment on it enough – and I do know what's going on, probably more than you. Other communities are being burned down. They are being pillaged, Katherine. So forgive me for wanting to keep my family safe the only way I know how, by keeping you close to me with a roof over your heads. And you want to – to –”
I know where my mom is going next, I can feel the shift in her voice, the thickening of her vocal cords. I don't want to, but I can't leave her to feel it alone, so I close my eyes and wait.
“You want to put yourself in danger. You could get hurt – have you been paying attention to what's happening in emergency rooms across the province?”
I shake my head. “Mom, I –”
“I already almost lost you,” she says, her voice lowering to a strained whisper. “And I still will. I'm going to lose you, and you want to hasten the end by being in the exact same place a burglar wants to be.”
I'm quiet, letting the warmth from the meagre cup of coffee slip into my stiff fingers. My mom wants to say more but I can see her pulling back on herself. We both fix our eyes on a spot on the table between us.
“It's because I'm dying that I want to do this,” I begin. “I don't know how long I have, but I have a feeling I'm not going to be here to see this all happily resolved, if such a thing were even remotely possible.” I press the sleeves of my hoodie into my eyes, absorbing the tears. “I just want to try to keep us safe. Just us. I thought maybe more women would join, but I'm... it's not ready.”
I take a deep breath and exhale away from her, a habit from COVID that I never dropped. I try to keep my exhales to myself. “I think we need to think about getting out of here.”
My mom stands, takes our mugs, looks into mine to see I have some coffee left and drops it back on the table in front of me. “I'm not leaving my home. Honestly, Katherine, you were always like this. Always going at the wrong speed – too fast or too slow. It's too soon to talk about leaving. It's sad that the Lundy's had their house robbed, but they left and they probably don't even know it happened.”
“I'm going to have to get that battery, Mom,” I say, apology heavy in my voice.
“Don't know why I thought you'd listen to me,” my mom says. Her cup lands violently in the sink, ceramic hitting stainless steel at the exact moment the power goes out.
Tricia's shout falls down the stairs before her footsteps do. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” my mom and I shout back.
She comes into the kitchen, phone in hand. “Cell network is down too.”
The kitchen is the brightest room in the house, with morning light entering the east windows and ambient light through the others. Only the sudden absence of all electrical sounds gives away the power outage.
“Hope it's back soon before we lose the fridge contents,” my mom says, moving on to the next thing to worry about.
Which is good for me, because I have to get next door to Molly D's battery backup.
“Can I talk to you for a sec, Tricia?” I ask, walking to the hallway.
She nods, a lifetime of under-breath conversations cluing her in that we need to speak where our mom can't hear us.
“Let's go outside,” Tricia says. We slip on our shoes and leave through the front door. There are a couple chairs out front, weathered and well used. We both sit and Tricia pulls out her vape and presses a button to heat up the mini oven inside.
“Aren't you worried you won't be able to charge it if you use up the battery?” I ask, taking a sip of the vape when offered and handing it back.
“What am I going to do, save it for New Year's Eve? Battery will die even if I don't use it. If I can't vape, I'll smoke it or eat it. All good.”
I nod, admiring my sister's adaptable attitude. My own brain is running on a mobius of 'it's going to get so much worse' and 'what are we going to do?' with no answers, just endless branching options, all ending at brick walls of suffering.
“So what's up?” Tricia says, pulling deeply on the vape. It doesn't make huge clouds like were popular when vapes first became ubiquitous. Over time, some vaporizer companies decided to try to sell discretion, and thus another dividing line was drawn in the vape wars. A wisp of vapour slips from Tricia's nostrils, and after a few moments, she turns the vape off, opens it, and dumps the crispy brown plant material into the garden bed beside her.
“The guys that broke in to the Lundys' house, they took the solar battery. I'm worried they might come back for more.”
“So we keep an eye out and call the police again?” Tricia's phrasing is entirely a question; she's asking if that's what I have in mind.
“They didn't even come,” I remind her. “I think I need to go into Molly's place and take hers.”
Her eyebrows rise. “You mean... steal it?”
“Well, no. Keep it safe.”
“So you want to go get it and bring it here and when those guys come back, what? Hope they don't decide to see what our house has to offer since her's didn't have what they were looking for?”
“It's a little risky,” I admit. “But I really don't want them to have it. We might need it. We do need it: this power outage won't be the last and who even knows why it went out, it's the middle of a cloudless day – no storms, no wind to bring trees down onto power lines.”
“We can't even ask Molly for her permission, with the cell network down.”
“I feel like she'd say yes.”
“I feel like she won't want to get robbed in the first place.”
I agree, but at the same time, Molly doesn't feel very relevant to me. She's somewhere safe and likely took most of her valuables.
“Okay,” I say. “Who else on the street has a solar set up?”
Tricia shakes her head. “You don't even know that's what they're after – you said they took a bunch of stuff. Maybe they're just taking expensive stuff in general?”
“Batteries are worth more than gold right now,” I say, leaning forward. “And with every power outage, their value just rises. Sure, they can steal TVs and trinkets, but in terms of what's going to sell at the highest price point, it's gotta be solar set-ups and batteries.”
Tricia doesn't answer, just looks past me out to the road. After a moment, she says, “Claudette's got one, looks older, really boxy panels. And the family with the chickens, can't remember their name. And then Molly, that's it. Oh, and I think Alicia's family has some freestanding in the back yard, because of the tree that shades her house. But you can't see that from the road.”
“I think we should go talk to them.”
We look into each other's eyes, the very idea causing deep, shared sorrow. Knocking on the door of someone you know and love is bad enough. Strangers, awful. Neighbours? For any generation after and including millennials, there could be few things worse than spontaneous in-person communication with third-degree acquaintances.
“I'm going to need more weed,” Tricia says.
Already tired, I add, “I need a nap.”