“The bat,” she commanded in a whisper, pulling her hand out of Viv’s, waggling her fingers with impatience, her eyes always on the lid of the coffee table.
“Okay,” Viv whispered, placing something soft and leathery in Molly’s palm.
It was the stuffed animal that Aunt Norma had given Viv last Halloween: a bat.
14
She was relieved that this particular tour group happened to include more smilers-and-nodders than usual. During the Q and A following the tour, back outside under the awning, they asked all the expected questions.
She was responding to the one about carbon dating (no, couldn’t be used to date the fossils, since they were too old; no, couldn’t be used to ascertain the authenticity of the artifacts, since they were too recent, with the exception of the potsherd, but since no organic material had been found in its vicinity, carbon dating wasn’t an option) when it struck her that she was supposed to have watered her aunt Norma’s plants days ago. She had intended to go over with the kids on Sunday night, but then David had gotten the call about the Argentina gig. Norma was particular about her plants, and her plants were particular too. Probably dead by now. Molly was wondering whether she’d have time to swing by Norma’s after work (Norma’s key was on her key chain, wasn’t it?) as she called on the middle-aged man sitting in the first row of chairs with two of the kids on his lap, his hand raised high.
“Excuse me,” he said, more loudly than necessary, “but you seem like a nice lady.”
Molly immediately came to, alert. Anxious.
“I see that you’re wearing a wedding ring,” he continued.
She nodded reflexively, then clasped her hands behind her back, her fingers damp.
“Do you have any children?” he said.
She paused—Wasn’t it a violation of their privacy for this random man to know about them? But what was the harm in his simply knowing that she was a mother?—before nodding.
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. That’s great. Congratulations.”
Was it only she who felt the almost unbearable tension, some threat muting the midday noise of highway and birds, something perhaps about to take place in this desolate field? Or were the people on the tour also staring at the man, uncertain, apprehensive, maybe even protective of her, their guide?
Twin droplets of milk emerged from her nipples, dampening her bra ever so slightly.
“Do you mind,” the man said, “if my kids and I pray for your soul?”
15
Molly threw the bat on the floor.
“You hurt Batty,” Viv said, stricken.
She grabbed Viv’s hand and started pulling her down the hallway, back toward the closet, so she could get the baseball bat and guard the children at the same time.
Viv resisted her, bare feet planted on the wooden floorboards, her skin squeaking with each of her mother’s yanks.
“You come with me right this second,” Molly scream-whispered.
“But there’s a deer in our coffee table,” Viv said.
And there was.
The lid of the coffee table had been thrown back on its hinges. A deer head floated above it.
The deer head wasn’t floating. It was just that its wearer was standing in a dim living room in a black turtleneck and black hoodie and black pants.
It took Molly a second to account for the sensation of simultaneous surreality and familiarity that overwhelmed her: it was her deer mask. David’s birthday gift to her. Her milk came down again, more insistently. He had made it of papier-mâché and spray-painted it gold. The mask, which covered the entire head, had a slender snout, narrow eyes, sharp antlers.
She gripped her children as though the three of them were poised at the edge of a cliff, wind whipping around them, pebbles giving way beneath them. She could not move. She did not know how to pass through the next seconds of her life.
By some impossible sleight of hand, Viv slipped her fingers out of Molly’s grasp.
The child’s motion broke her mother’s stillness.
Molly cried out twice, once at Viv and a second time for help.
But Viv was already stepping away from her, was already reaching to retrieve something from the deer’s black-gloved hands: The Why Book.
16
The man who wanted to pray for her soul loaded his kids into the dented minivan and pulled out of the parking lot. She stood under the awning, watching, making sure they were gone.
Despite his question, the Q and A had ended placidly enough, a smattering of applause, a couple of shy stragglers—the only genuine paleobotany buffs on the tour—sticking around to ask her about particular fossils.
She wasn’t proud of her response to his question—a nod, a smile, a murmured Thank you, and moving on. She was unimpressed with herself: unbrave, adverse to friction, her outrage mute.
But then again, what if his question hadn’t been intended aggressively? What if he was actually trying to be kind?
She was impatient to tell Corey about the man who wanted to pray for her soul, but she didn’t dare mention it to Roz, who was sitting at her desk in the former snack aisle, licking an envelope. Her elbows pointing sharply outward. Molly could already imagine Roz’s flat, flinty reaction to her unease. Yeah, so?
“Licking envelopes,” Roz said, “is very primal. Tour okay?”
“Fine,” Molly said.
“Did you see this?” Roz extricated a magazine (hip font, muted colors) from the anarchy of her desk, the endless grant proposals and scientific publications and unpaid bills and whatever else, sending a cascade of paper to the floor but making no move to clean it up. “ ‘. . . a bizarre new attraction for your next road trip, Americana to the max,’ ” she read. “Is that condescending?” Without waiting for Molly’s reply, she flicked on the light of her compound microscope and began fiddling with the dials.
“I’m going to the Pit,” Molly said.
“Don’t work too hard.” But Roz expected everyone around her to work too hard all the time.
Molly found Corey in the lab, using a dental pick to unveil a Macginitiea leaf. He hummed sympathetically but distractedly as she told him about the man on her tour. She stopped short of saying what she was really thinking: Should we be more worried about all these threats? Should we stop giving tours?
“Look, I’ll take the four p.m. for you,” he said, putting down the dental pick and plucking up a needle. She and Roz mocked him for his tendency to use random utensils to prep fossils; still, he was the best prepper among them.
“You sure?” she said. It had only halfway been her intention to get him to make this offer. There hadn’t even been a 4:00 p.m. Friday tour until it had become a necessity three weeks before.
“Perfect way to start the weekend,” he said, sarcastic yet sincere.
Before heading out to the Pit, Molly stopped by the display room. She loved it at this time of day, between tours, the lights off, the fossils and artifacts emitting a certain quality of silence, a certain fragrance of dust. She wasn’t religious, but this Bible did something to her, quickened her blood. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters she called Seas: and God saw that it was good. Without quite meaning to, she pressed her hands together, as though to pray.