Rough Landing

They’d landed on a thin strip of bumpy tarmac less than ten minutes ago. Staring out the window, Ava didn’t spot the ground until they broke through the thick smog and suddenly there it was. The wheels collided with the ground, leapt back up, then dropped again. Ava bounced in her seat, hands clutching the armrests. Then as the small plane slowed to a stop, the flight attendants stood and started handing out thin masks.

Outside the window was dim despite it being day. That was how much the smog had thickened since she’d last been home. She came from New York City where she worked for an environmental company trying to slow and the downward slid the globe had taken years ago. Ava squinted through the oval window. She knew somewhere inside that brownish cloud her sister and mother were waiting.

“Please remember to securely attach your own mask before assisting others. That includes children and the elderly.”

The woman in the seat across from Ava, who fitted her son’s mask before her own, fixed a glare for the flight attendant, but the attendant already moved on to the next row of passengers.

“These people.” The woman was shaking her head, tugging the elastic band over her head. “It’s like the think we haven’t done this a thousand times already.”

Ava wasn’t sure if the woman was speaking to her. She already had her mask securely attached, the plastic grooves biting into her face around her mouth and nose, creating a barrier between her lungs and the air outside.

The woman looked to her. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

Ava smiled, making sure to pinch her eyes so the woman knew it was genuine.

She kept talking, wrapping her arm around her son and pulling him close, speaking to him, “We learned our lesson years ago, didn’t we sweetheart?”

The boy looked up and smiled inside the mask. Ava bit her lip, trying not to stare. The boy’s nose was attached lopsided like it’d grown at the wrong angle then tried to correct itself but only ended up with a twisted mess with upturned nostrils. One eye bulged out from his face and was pinched closed. Ava could make out the movements of an eyeball underneath though she doubted he could see much through such a tiny gap between eyelids. The bulge pinched at the corners as the boy grinned back at his mother.

She dropped a kiss on his head then turned back to Ava shaking her head. “This world just wasn’t made for some people.” Ava supposed she was right. They had destroyed their home.

Ava smiled back then returned to the window. Birth defects had become common since the crack in the ozone widened and the sun’s rays blasted their feeble human bodies with particles they could not handle. The initial wave paraded through the young and elderly. Those already sick grew sicker, those carrying children either lost the baby or gave birth to something only somewhat resembling the human being they were accustomed.

The flight attendants waved their arms forward and everyone stood at once. There was a readiness to escape the confines of the plane but an equal hesitance to step outside. They all started talking. As their feet hit the tarmac they walked straight toward a blinking flashlight at the end of the runway where they knew their people would be waiting.

“Ava!”

She turned. Olivia barreled into her from the side. She threw her arms around Ava’s shoulders, grinning wildly. “Welcome home!”

The two broke apart. “You look good, Liv,” Ava said.

Her sister blushed. Their mother hobbled up through the smog.

“Ma, look who’s here,” Olivia said.

“I know very well who is here. I’m not that old.”

“Hi, Ma,” Ava said.

“Well, the city hasn’t killed you yet.”

Ava forced a smile. There was an empty space in her family. She could see the weight of Dad’s death pushing Ma’s shoulders into a slouch. Her face looked tired. Olivia wore a smile that never quite reached her eyes.

“Come on,” Olivia said. “Let’s get home. I’m starving.” She wrapped her arm through Ava’s, squeezing her wrist. “Are you hungry too?”

Ava nodded.

“Let’s get on then,” Ma said.

It was about a thirty minute walk from the runway to where Ma and Olivia had settled in. The runway, which was actually a long stretch of abandoned highway, hadn’t been used for years. After the first few hundred deaths, the government banded cars and public transportation, telling people to walk or get a bike. Airplanes were still used, but rarely.

They walked down the highway. Ava had slung her backpack over one shoulder. Olivia walked between her and Ma. She heard the rumbling of the plane’s engines igniting and knew it was going to be a long time before she got another place ride back to the city. She supposed they’d figured there was little they could do for the environment a long time ago, but the continuing fight gave them hope and at this point, it was all they had.

With Olivia leading the way, they arrived in the neighborhood. There was no one on the streets, but gas lamps lit windows as the only sign of life present. Olivia unlocked the front door of a two-story townhouse with peeling paint and cloudy windows. She pushed the door open and held out her arm for Ma and Ava to enter with a grin saying, “Home, sweet, home.”

“Ma, have you thought anymore about moving?” Ava asked as they entered the house. It was freezing and nothing like the house she remembered growing up in. “You could come live with me - ”

Ma scoffed. “I will not live in a place responsible for this mess. This here is my home so stopping asking.”

“It’s not the city’s fault,” Ava said.

“It is. With all the cars, and people and waste and no one taking care of it properly. Those streets were covered in trash.”

That was the end of the conversation for Ma. She took down the hallway, the carpet squeaking under her nimble footsteps. She used her shoulder to plow open the bedroom door and went inside.

Ava turned to her sister. “You have to get her out of here.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” The sisters went to the kitchen. Half the backyard had become the river that was once miles away, an impact of the glaciers melting. “Now that Dad’s gone she’s even more set on staying.”

Ava folded her arms across her chest and leaned back into her chair. “How’s she doing?”

Olivia shrugged. “I think she’ll feel better now that you’re here.”

Ava laughed. “Didn’t you hear her? She’d be happy if I never came home again.”

“That’s not true. She just misses Dad.”

“How about you. Are you okay?”

“I’m doing better than Ma. You know his body is still in the house.”

Ava felt her stomach pinch. “You haven’t taken him out?”

Olivia shook her head. “Ma won’t allow it.”

“That’s disgusting, Liv.”

“Tell that to Ma though I suggest trying to be sensitive.”

“I can be sensitive.”

“Bullshit,” Olivia said laughing. “But really, you should see him one last time.”

“Then we’ll bury him.”

“Sure. We’ll put him out back.”

“Where is he?”

“In his study.”

Ava stood from the table, taking one of her mother’s scarves from the back of the chair and wrapping it around her mouth and nose. She went to see her father.

The door to the study stuck. Ava used her shoulder to shove it open. She stumbled into the room and immediately smelled the sick combination of rotting flesh and wood. She pressed the scarf tighter and entered.

He was laid across the desk, face pale and damp, wire-like dark hair. His glasses were gone and that suddenly made him look less like her father.

Ma never ceased to remind them how much their father had given up for them to live a comfortable life. He spent his life working to build other people’s homes so they could have one and so both girls could get a decent education. The doctors said working outside in the filthy air was what brought on the lung cancer. After two months, his entire crew was diagnosed too. Disease swept across the country and Dad was dead three months later.

She’d received a letter from her mother just a few days before her plane touched down. The timing was lucky. There hadn’t been another plane heading for Iowa in four weeks. This was the first time she’d heard from Ma in months. Dad was dead. There would be no funeral. People were worried about other things these days.

The smell became too much. Ava took one last look at her father and left the room.

Over the next few days Ava’s encounters with Ma were brief. Ava made breakfast which Ma ate in her room with the radio playing old smooth jazz. She and Olivia spent the days alternating between cleaning around the house, gossiping and listing the reasons why their mother should move to the city. None of them spoke about Dad. Not even when she and Olivia spent an entire afternoon digging in the water-logged backyard. By the time they reached six feet, the bottom was thick with mud.

They wrapped his body in a sheet from Ava’s bed. Olivia took Dad by the shoulders, Ava at his feet, and they set him as gently as they could into the hole. Mud immediately started seeping around his body until it covered everything but his face, chest and toes. The sheet molded to his features. His daughters said nothing as they started filling in the grave.

“You could stay,” Olivia said once they’d finished.

Ava wiped her hands on a towel. “I have a job.”

“They have plenty of people to do that job.”

“I like what I do.”

“Ma hates it.”

“Ma hates everything I do, Liv. Nothing is going to change that.”

“Coming home might,” she replied then disappeared into her room and Ava didn’t see her again that evening.

That night Ava crawled onto a bare mattress and allowed herself to cry. She listened to her mother in the room next door settle into her own bed. Ma coughed for a few minutes. Ava heard her spit. The house fell silent. She thought of Ma spending her final days in this kind of hell, her younger sister doing what she could but knowing it would never be enough. She thought of herself returning to the city and forgetting about from where she’d just come. She thought about these things and her chest folded in on itself. Ava took a deep breath and tasted mildew in the back of her throat. She fell asleep with tears still wet of her cheeks.

Late in the night a pair of hands shook her awake.

“Ava.”

Ava opened her eyes and saw a dark outline of her sister standing above her. She flipped on the flashlight and shined it toward the ceiling. The light cast a ghostly glow across Olivia’s face, the bottom half covered by a shadow.

“You’re going to want to hear this,” Olivia said, and Ava climbed from bed.

When they emerged into the living room, Ma was already there. The old radio was on, a man’s crackling voice filled the room. Ava took a seat on the couch near Ma, Olivia took the chair opposite. They sat together and listened.

The man on the radio spoke in short words. The barricades between New York City and the rivers surrounding had fallen. Water rushed in and everything flooded. No one had seen it coming. It had been dry then suddenly there was water flowing through everything. People packed what they could and left, moving further inland.

It was then Ava understood she would not be returning to the city. It was then she also realized New York was no longer a city, rather a graveyard for human civilization seated inside a river. It really hadn’t been a city for a long time.

The radio cut out to static and Ava felt Ma’s frail and trembling hand fold around hers. Olivia flipped the radio off, the room fell silent. She remembered when she was seven and her best friend died from a lung cancer she contracted from the smog. And she remembered when her mother took her hand and led her from the cemetery. From that day on, Ma taught Ava to never leave the house without wrapping her mouth and nose in a scarf as if that would keep out the toxins.

It was the first death of many that became their world, a sign screaming that something was wrong. Humans had finally pushed their planet to her breaking point.

“Maybe we should have a funeral for Dad,” she suggested. “Just us three.”

“That’s a good idea,” Olivia said. “Ma?”

Ma’s hands squeezed hers, Ava squeezed back and that earned her a smile.

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