The Darkest Evening of the Year

the dream. She touches fire to the sock puppets. Bear’s hands are all fire.
    In the dream, Piggy says No, no, this isn’t how, not fire, it was a knife.
    Now Bear’s hair is all fire. He tells Piggy Run. Run. Run, Piggy, run! Bear’s mouth spits fire, his eyes melting.
    Piggy sits up in bed. Throws off covers. Gets out of bed. She stands hugging herself, shaking.
    She feels so alone. She’s afraid. She’s afraid alone is forever, all the days there are ever going to be, and then that many more.
    She hurries to the big chair, lifts off the cushion. Cushion has a cover. Cover has a zipper.
    With the Forever Shiny Thing in her hand, Piggy does the Worst Thing She Can Do.
    It is really a good thing. It makes her feel not so alone. Makes her remember Bear not all fire, no knife in him, just Bear smiling.
    Bear calls it the Worst Thing She Can Do because Mother will get the Big Uglies, maybe bigger than big, if she catches Piggy doing it.
    When the Worst Thing She Can Do is done, the Forever Shiny Thing put away, Piggy washes, dresses. She is Ready for Anything.
    Bear says when you have HOPE , you are Ready for Anything.
    She eats broken cookies from yesterday. She saves food when she can. Food won’t always come when you want it.
    She thinks what Bear said in her dream. Run, Piggy, run!
    He means not just in her dream but now. Bear is warning her.
    She remembers what she read in Mother’s eyes last night, Mother with the like-Bear knife, her eyes so ugly.
    Run, Piggy, run!
    If Piggy looks at the bottoms of her feet, she will see what you get when you try to run. That was long ago. But the marks are there, you can see them.
    What you get when you try to run is hurt, you get hurt. You hear a click, then you hurt.
    Mother’s thumb turns fire on. Then off. Then on. If you try to run.
    Piggy sits at her desk and takes a box out of a drawer.
    In the box are pictures. Lots and lots. They are all the same but different.
    She has been cutting them from magazines a long time, not for all the days there are ever going to be and then that many more, but a long time.
    She will paste them together in a way that makes her feel good. She has saved them and saved them from so many magazines. Now she has enough. She is ready to start.
    The pictures make her smile. They are so nice. Lots and lots. Standing and sitting. Running and jumping. Dogs. All dogs.

 
    Chapter
57
    A n infinite army all in white marshaled in the west and rolled eastward on silent caissons, seizing the great bridge without shout or shot.
    Golden Gate was the name not of the bridge but of the throat of the bay, and the bridge was orange.
    The stiffening trusses, the girders, the suspender cables, the main cables, and the towers began to disappear into the fog.
    As Amy drove north toward Marin County, there were moments when she could see nothing of the surrounding structure except vertical cables, so it seemed that the bridge was suspended from nothing more than clouds and that it conveyed travelers from the white void of the life they had lived to the white mystery beyond death.
    “In those days,” Amy said, speaking of her years of marriage to Michael Cogland, “although I had been raised to believe, I wasn’t able yet to see . Life was vivid and strange and at times tumultuous, but in the rush of days, I was oblivious of patterns. A wonderful dog named Nickie had come to me when I was a girl…and now into my life had come this girl whose nickname became Nickie, and I thought it amusing and sweet, but nothing more.”
    As her husband grew more remote and as Amy became increasingly estranged from him, Michael began to travel more frequently and to remain away for longer periods, sometimes in Europe or Asia, or South America, supposedly on business, but perhaps in the company of other women.
    Her daughter, Nicole, her second Nickie, at five years of age, had recently begun having bad dreams. They were all the same. In sleep, she found herself wandering in a snowy night, lost in dark woods, alone and afraid.
    The woods were those behind their house, thickets of various evergreens, where the great beam of the lighthouse did not sweep.
    Amy suspected that Nickie’s dreams were a consequence of having been all but abandoned by her father, who had at first charmed her and won her heart as he had charmed and won her mother.
    One night, in her pajamas and sitting on the edge of the bed, Nickie had asked for slippers.
    Mommy, last night I was barefoot in the