We next see Tom outside the New York Public Library. He’s admiring it.
I’d love to get in there, but they sealed it up tighter than … than … oh, some woman who was famous for keeping her virginity. God! It’s terrible how things slip away!
Anyway, they sealed it up tight and put pure nitrogen inside. I could have opened it up earlier with a jackhammer, but how would I get a jackhammer running these days? And I really don’t want to trash something that wonderful just for my selfish use.
He looks at us.
Strange thinking, isn’t it?
But I do use the park. I grow a garden there. I’ll run out of seed packets next year, and I’m not enough of a farmer to know how to make my own seeds. But it gets me my fresh vegetables for now.
But enough about now. You still want to hear about the exciting times, don’t you? You want to hear about the time when Amy was my wife and, even with Jesus around, the world couldn’t have looked better.
What followed my rescuing Amy was the happiest time of my life. Amy and I rented a houseboat while the cabin was being fixed and we moved back in when it was finished. We read newspapers and magazines, we surfed the Internet, we knew what was coming: The world was going to be emptied and the works of mankind would be mothballed, as if the world would become a giant museum for someone, someday.
Our goal was to survive The Message of Jesus and become repopulators of Earth. Amy and I would not let humanity disappear! It was a powerful goal, a very uniting goal. We both felt good about it and we felt really good about working together on it.
In retrospect, while we were on that houseboat I filled my new bride-to-be with a little too much man juice. By the time we got back to the house she had missed a couple periods and she could feel her uterus was swelling. She was with child.
We talked about abortion, considered it, but we both felt it just seemed so out of place in this situation.
Amy laughed, “This is so strange again. If I was a coed at Dartmouth, in a normal world, there’s no question in my mind that I would get one. But … it’s a strange, strange world we live in now, Master Jack.” (That last was from one of our favorite folk songs from the 60s that we’d picked up on satellite radio a couple times.) She smiled at me and cuddled, I kissed her back and rubbed her womb, then I carried her upstairs and filled her up with even more man juice.
The next few months were intense. Amy’s belly grew larger and we both researched and trained on how we would survive in an empty world.
We tried to link up with others too, but that was getting hard to do. There were fewer and fewer non-believers, and increasingly vigorous groups of “missionaries” were developing whose goal was to convert every person. For them this goal was part of Jesus’ message. Uncle Mike told us that the media was ambivalent. Some aired editorials decrying this as fanatic, extremist behavior, but the daily news always ended with “upbeat stories” interviewing people who had been found in strange places and were now so happy that they had the message. Occasionally even the Wall Street Journal carried a similar story in the human interest column of its front page.
Those strange places were truly strange. Amy and I often looked at each other in amazement over where people had been found: In remote jungles and deserts, mines and caves, boats, abandoned buildings, even behind false walls in busy city buildings. It reminded me of the Jews hiding during the Holocaust.
We took more and more precautions in our own day-to-day lives and it was good we did—people did come snooping around the house.
Tom’s face falls. He looks up into the sky for a long time before he looks at his hands and continues.
The good times ended rather quickly. In month eight, Amy got sick. Her face and hands started swelling. We checked her: High blood pressure and protein in her urine. We both cried; she had preeclampsia. We read up on it more and cried more. The only cure was getting the baby out—induced labor, C-section, or late term abortion.
We thought about it for a day and then cried some more. This was not part of the plan. How can you be Adam and Eve if Eve can’t have babies, lots of them?
Tom looks down and sobs as he recalls that moment.
God! Damn! It!!
He looks up, stone-faced.
We talked and that night we agreed. Tomorrow I would take her to the hospital.
His stone face flushes a little as he recalls this next part.
When we agreed that was the plan her face turned bright red. At first I thought she was having an attack, but instead she said, “Do you want to come with me? You know we would be happy.”
Now it was my turn to turn bright red. I took her hand. Even swollen, it was as so soft and lovely … I told her, “I … I … I know we would.”
Tom stands up and turns away.
God! Damn! It!!
He gets control again. He sits down and is silent for a while.
I did not want this choice. I really, really did not want this choice.
She came to stand behind me, she put her arms on my arms. “It’s your free will. You have the choice.”
“But … but … free will, or not, I do love you so!”
She hugged me and cried.
That night we both cried again and made love.
The next morning I drove her to the hospital … I turned to go back to her twice on the way home. God, I loved her! Was free will worth this?
Tom finishes his meal in silence. He doesn’t want to talk more.