The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker Page A

woman who grew her own wheat grass in a greenhouse out back and then squeezed her own wheat grass juice. “All we can do is give in to it. We have to let the
earth
guide
us.
”
    I didn’t know what to say next. But the slow turn of the doorknob let in another awkwardness—the next student was arriving, and I knew who it would be. Seth Moreno hadn’t spoken to me since the eclipse.
    A wind chime made of seashells rang and echoed from the porch and was followed by the soft clench of the door meeting the doorframe. I could hear my heart pounding in my head. Usually, Seth and I overlapped for only a moment or two, slipping quickly past each other in the entry hall, letting small nods of the head stand in for hellos.
    “I wasn’t sure when to come,” said Seth. His tennis shoes squeaked on the wooden floor. He flicked his head to the right to clear his shaggy bangs from his eyes. His hair was damp, fresh from a shower and, I happened to know, from soccer practice before that. “Because of the clocks and everything.”
    A walnut grandfather clock in the living room reported a nonsensical time—ten o’clock—but it was midafternoon. I had learned to ignore all the clocks.
    “So I just sort of guessed,” he said, shifting his music books from one arm to the other.
    “This is fine, Seth,” said Sylvia. “We’ll only be a few more minutes.”
    He sat down on a worn leather armchair in the corner beside the birdcage. A potted fern hung from the ceiling above his head, suspended from a ropy net of macramé. There must be certain details that I no longer recall about the interior of that house, but when I close my eyes, it seems to me that the entire house and its contents remain to this day intact in my memory, preserved like a crime scene, exactly as it was.
    Sylvia cleared her throat, and we were back in the lesson. “ ‘Für Elise,’ ” she said, resetting the metronome. “One more time through.”
    I’d played only the first few notes when the telephone rang in the kitchen. Sylvia ignored the phone, but it rang again. The ringing seemed to aggravate the finches, who screeched and called out from their cage. Sylvia stood to answer, but the machine caught the call and then projected through the house the first scratch of a man’s voice.
    Sylvia picked up the phone and shut off the machine. She seemed to know who it would be.
    “I’m teaching,” she said, as if annoyed. “Remember?”
    But she looked pleased and embarrassed, her face the face of a woman much younger. Sylvia was about forty at the time.
    I’d never seen her with a man. I imagined a dusty outdoorsman with a ponytail and beard, calling on a cell phone from a pickup or a van.
    Sylvia laid the phone on her shoulder and motioned to Seth and me that she would be right back. Then she went upstairs, the phone pressed to her ear, the hem of her white linen dress brushing the backs of her legs as she moved.
    Seth and I were alone in the living room. Neither of us moved. He rearranged his music books on his lap, letting the pages slide against one another. I stayed on the piano bench and studied the keys, too embarrassed to look in his direction.
    Eventually, Seth fished his cell phone from his pocket and began to play a game with his thumbs. Tinny music radiated out from the phone like the sounds of a distant carnival. I wondered if this was how he passed his time in hospitals while doctors operated on his mother or injected toxic chemicals into her blood.
    I pulled the rubber band from my hair and remade my ponytail, smoothing out the tangles. I was breathing fast, but I tried to conceal it.
    In the distance outside, I could hear the shouts of younger children. A cherry ball was smacking the pavement. Through the window, I thought I saw something dark fall from the sky.
    One of Sylvia’s finches let out a loud screech. Seth turned toward the cage. He studied the birds for a few seconds. The music from his game played on.
    Finally, I said: “Do they