The Leftovers

against your bare feet, and, best of all, a bathroom right across the hall. A little vacation, Laurie thought. She got undressed while Meg was showering, exchanging her dirty clothes for a loose-fitting G.R. nightgown—an ugly but comfortable garment sewn from an old sheet—then knelt to say her prayers. She took her time, focusing on her children and then moving down the list to Kevin, her mother, her siblings, her friends and former neighbors, trying to visualize every one of them dressed in white garments and bathed in the golden light of forgiveness, as she’d been taught to do. It was a luxury to pray like this, in an empty room with no distractions. She knew that God didn’t care if she was kneeling or standing on her head, but it just felt better to do it right, her mind clear and her attention undivided.
    Thank you for bringing Meg to us, she prayed. Give her strength and grant me the wisdom to guide her in the right direction.
    The Night Watch had gone pretty well, she thought. They’d lost track of Grice and hadn’t run into anyone else whose files they’d reviewed, but they saw a fair amount of action in the town center, accompanying people from bars and restaurants to their cars, and walking home with a trio of teenage girls who chatted cheerfully among themselves about boys and school as if Laurie and Meg weren’t even there. They’d had only one unpleasant encounter, with a couple of twentysomething jerks outside the Extra Inning. It wasn’t horrible, just the usual insults and a crude sexual invitation from the drunker of the two, a good-looking guy with an arrogant grin, who put his arm around Meg as if she were his girlfriend. (“I’ll fuck the pretty one,” he told his buddy. “You can have Grandma.”) But even that was a useful lesson for Meg, a little taste of what it meant to be a Watcher. Sooner or later, someone would hit her, or spit on her, or worse, and she’d have to be able to endure the abuse without protesting or trying to defend herself.
    Meg emerged from the bathroom, smiling bashfully, her face pink, her body lost inside her tentlike nightgown. It was almost cruel, Laurie thought, draping a lovely young woman in such a dull and baggy sack, as if her beauty had no place in the world.
    It’s different for me, she told herself. I’m just as happy being hidden.
    The water in the bathroom was still warm, a luxury she no longer took for granted. In Gray House there was a chronic lack of hot water—it was inevitable, with so many people living there—but regulations required two showers a day regardless. She stayed in for a long time, until the air was thick with steam, which wasn’t much of a problem since the G.R. prohibited mirrors. It still felt weird to her, brushing her teeth in front of a blank wall, using chalky no-name paste and a crappy manual brush. She’d accepted most of the hygiene restrictions without complaint—it was easy to see why perfumes and conditioners and antiaging creams might be considered extravagances—but she remained unreconciled to the loss of her electric toothbrush. She’d pined for it for weeks before realizing that it was more than the sensation of a clean mouth that she missed—it was her marriage, all those years of mindless domestic happiness, long, crowded days that culminated with her and Kevin standing side by side in front of the dual sinks, battery-operated wands buzzing in their hands, their mouths full of minty froth. But that was all over. Now it was just herself in a quiet room, her fist moving doggedly in front of her face, no one smiling into the mirror, no one smiling back.
    *   *   *
    DURING THE Training Period, the Vow of Silence wasn’t absolute. There was a brief interlude after lights-out—usually no more than fifteen minutes—when you were allowed to speak freely, to verbalize your fears and ask any questions that had gone unanswered during the day. The Unburdening was a recent innovation, meant to function as a kind of safety valve, a way to make the transition to not talking a little less abrupt and intimidating. According to a PowerPoint Laurie had seen—she was a member of the Committee on Recruitment and Retention—the dropout rate among Trainees had declined by almost a third since the new policy had been adopted, which was one of the main reasons why the compound had become so crowded.
    “So how you doing?” Laurie asked, just to get the ball rolling. Her own voice sounded strange to her, a