Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez

do until Cole wakes up. I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. I swore to him Miles was going to get over the flu, and technically he didn’t die of the flu, though I was told the attack was probably triggered by inflammation caused by the virus. I had to ask a stranger to help me get Miles to the hospital. He kept telling me it wouldn’t do any good and I knew he was right, but if Miles was past saving I was determined at least to get his body out of the house. I didn’t want to be like all those poor people forced to live with their dead or secretly dump them somewhere. What will happen to his body now I don’t know, I suppose it will be burned, or buried in some mass grave. My god, I can’t believe I just wrote that. I feel like a big part of me still hasn’t taken it in.
    I’m not sure how much Miles understood what was happening, either. His last lucid moment was around noon two days ago, when for a little while he was able to breathe a bit more freely and he could talk. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, We blew it, baby. I still don’t know what he meant. I thought he might have been talking about us separating, but it’s possible he was talking about the flu and how we’d blown our chance to get away. He may not have realized there was nowhere to go. But these were his last words to me, and I will never get over that. I can’t bear to think of him dying under the weight of such a heavy regret. And it was the first time he called me baby in such a long time.
    But I can’t let myself think like this right now or I’ll go mad. I’ve got to think about Cole. And now that I’ve been to the hospital and seen with my own eyes what it’s like, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to do something. I’ve made up my mind to volunteer at the clinic they’ve set up at the college, at least for a few hours a day. It will mean leaving Cole home by himself but I think he’ll understand. Besides, if I’m around him all the time it just gets on his nerves. Poor Cole. When I think of all the trouble we’ve been having with him, how badly he’s doing in school and how cold and sullen he’s gotten with me, and now he’s even smoking on the sly—how small all these problems seem now. Can you imagine losing Mom or Dad when we were that age, and without even being able to say good-bye?
    Cole stopped scrolling and went upstairs to get his cigarettes.
    It was chilly outside but he didn’t put on a jacket. He paced back and forth on the porch, shivering, as he smoked a Marlboro down to the butt—first time he’d ever smoked a whole cigarette all at once. Cough, cough, cough. It stung his lungs and made him so woozy he had to sit down. He was afraid he might throw up.
    The sky was the solid blue of any fine Midwestern winter day. Across the street, on the graveled drive, the calico sat cleaning itself just as if the end of the world were not taking place.
    She should have woken him. It was all wrong. She was always wrong! He felt the heat expanding in his chest, the heat of his rage, but at the same time he was ashamed, for to be so angry at his mother now was all wrong, too.
    He stared up the street, toward the house of the man who’d been in their house last night, an old geezer Cole had only glimpsed once or twice. Lumber jacket, ear-flap hat. One of the last people to touch his father. Cole beamed his anger there. That man should have stayed with his mother. That man should have done more to help them!
    Cole was freezing now, his teeth actually chattering so that he bit his tongue. He went back inside.
    A whole Marlboro turned out to be way strong—almost strong enough to knock you out.
    He weaved up the stairs, but instead of going to his own room he found himself walking into his parents’ room and diving into their rumpled bed. Immediately, his father’s smell engulfed him. He pulled the covers over his shivering body, he pulled them up over his head, he burrowed his face in