Our Missing Hearts

by Celeste Ng

It’s been months since they saw each other, but somehow Sadie seems younger rather than older, less wary and watchful, as if she’s finally able to breathe after a long time without air. As if she no longer has to fight her way through the world alone. He knows this feeling, or something like it: it is what he felt last night, when he’d called his mother and she came to him; it is what he felt this morning, waking under the comforting weight of her coat.

Poignant Return of some innocence

His own eyes go liquid and hot. He thinks of everything his mother has told him, of all the years his father has been trying to protect him. Of the man in the pizza parlor, the man at the Common. The woman with her dog. Sadie’s parents, his mother’s parents. His father’s parents retreating from their lives, Mrs. Pollard crouched anxiously beside his computer, D. J. Pierce’s spit falling inches from his shoe. Everything that needs to be changed feels immense and immeasurable.

Spirare, Bird hears his father say. To breathe. Con: together. So conspiracy literally means breathing together.

Tomorrow, Domi and Margaret will bring them back to the city. Where everything will be different, they are sure, because of whatever Margaret is doing. It’s happening, right now, Sadie says with glee. Bird, just think, it’s happening, and Bird has no reply.

They will never find all the speakers, but sooner or later they will trace her signal, the wi-fi that connects her to those speakers in a trail of tiny digital footprints; they will follow those footprints back to this house, where she sits with a microphone and her stack of notebooks, their covers softened and curved from being carried on her body for so long. By the time they arrive, she will be gone.

Parallels Ethan's footprints in the snow

It is hard for anything to be heard and even if anyone hears it, how much of a difference could it really make, what change could it possibly bring, just these words, just this thing that happened once to one person that the listener does not and will never know. It is just a story. It is only words.

She does not know if it will make any difference. She does not know if anyone is listening. She is here, locked in her cabinet, drawing cat after cat, slipping them through the cracks. Unsure if they will sink even one claw into the beast outside.

I really like this

Maybe, she thinks, this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging, all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life. What Bird will learn, then: That his mother is fallible. That she is only human, too.

For the first time they are able picture it: the long months of waiting, far away here in the woods. Wondering what was happening in the world beyond, worrying about when it would reach them. Dreading what kind of world would await them when they reemerged. They’d had the luxury of retreat, nestled in this cozy house with plenty of food and running water and warmth. They’d been able to bunker down and wait for the worst of the Crisis to pass. Now here they are, huddled together, and finally they understand it, too: the cabin feels like the only safe place, a refuge they clutch with desperate hands.

feels pandemic informed

When they peek outside everything seems blurred, everything outside uncertain and obscured. No longer trees but an impression of trees: green blurs sliced by wet, dark streaks.

Rhyme

the Online Etymology Dictionary, various message boards on linguistics, and my father’s research on the history of Chinese characters were invaluable in inspiring Ethan’s etymologies, though any errors Ethan makes are of course mine alone.