At sunrise she was still at it, though running out of trash. Only a few random pieces left. I was drained and sleep deprived and prayed she wouldn’t want to make another foraging trip.
Maybe she sensed my exhaustion.
“Almost finished, Mother. Just these last pieces to fix in place and I’ll be done. But they’ve got to go in exactly the right spot at exactly the right angle, so bear with me.”
…in exactly the right spot at exactly the right angle…
She had to be joking. The shelter, the construction, the thing was a totally random, asymmetrical, eight-foot pile of junk stretching from floor to ceiling. Further proof that this was no longer my Ellie. My Ellie wouldn’t make something like this. My Ellie liked order, not chaos. This was pure chaos.
I slumped on the bed and watched her standing on a chair while she worked with her protractor on those last pieces.
Almost finished…then what?
I decided to ask: “So Ellie, what are you going to do with this when you finish it?”
Her response came out garbled because she had her protractor clamped between her teeth while she held something in place, but it sounded like she was going to take shelter.
“Shelter from what?”
Garbled again, but I thought she said so she could be by herself.
I looked askance at the little arched space at floor level and said, “But how are you going to be—?”
And just then Bess rang from the downstairs vestibule and I buzzed her in. When she arrived she froze in the doorway to Ellie’s room. She hovered there and stared for what seemed like a long time, then stepped inside, still staring.
She made that Gaudi remark, then said, “No, not Gaudi, more like objet trouvé.”
“Could you speak English?” I said, more sharply that I intended. I was so tired.
Bess seemed not to notice. She kept staring. “It means ‘found object’—it’s an art form. Yo, Sis. Where’d you ever learn to do something like this?”
“In my coma,” Ellie said, still standing on the chair. “I learned that the angles have to be just right. I learned a lot in my coma. Like how to heal my burns and how to build a shelter, and all about what’s coming.”
“Heal your burns?” I said. “What does that mean?”
Instead of answering, Ellie hopped off her chair and pulled it aside, then stepped back to appraise her work, cocking her head this way and that.
“Uh-huh,” she said, nodding with satisfaction. “I think I’ve got it right.”
Bess gave a soft laugh. “How on Earth would you know if you got it wrong?”
Bess had a point. Ellie’s objet trouvé had no symmetry, no rhyme or reason. It crumbled over the arched base, then undulated up the wall, widening here, narrowing there, shooting branches left toward the window, then right toward the room’s corner, back and forth until it stopped at the ceiling.
“We’ll know in a few minutes,” Ellie said.
As I tried to fathom what she meant, I noticed a tube of glue on the bed. I didn’t want it to leak on the spread, so I bent to pick it up…and as I did—
One of the branches disappeared.
I gave a little gasp and straightened, and suddenly the branch was there again.
“You okay, Mom?” Bess said.
I didn’t reply. Instead, keeping my eye on the branch, I bent again and…slowly it faded from view.
“Oh, dear God! Something’s wrong with that thing!”
Bess stepped to my side.
“What do you—holy shit!” Obviously she’d seen it too. She stepped back. “Ohmigod, the whole top just disappeared. Ellie, do you see this?”
“Uh, huh. It’s all a matter of getting the geometry just right.”
Bess moved again. “Now the top’s back but the whole left side is gone! Ellie, what the fuck!”
“Bess!” I said, but I knew how she felt. What the fuck indeed.
“Nothing’s actually gone,” Ellie said, keeping her eyes fixed on the lower part of the construction. “It simply angles into another place.”
“‘Another place’?” Bess’s eyes were wide. “What does that even mean? Another plane of existence, another dimension, the other side of the wall, what?”
Ellie shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Sort of.”
“‘Sort of’? Wh-wh-wh-wh—” Bess sounded like a stuck record.
And then I felt a warm breeze against my shins. It flowed from under the bed. No, it came from the pile, from the arch at its base, and flowed under the bed.
And the arch…the opening was dark now. Where I used to be able to see the floor molding and some of the bedroom wall…only blackness now.
“Oh, excellent!” Ellie said. “I did get it right.”
Get what right? I wanted to say, but couldn’t take my eyes off that dark space.
Ellie dropped to her hands and knees. “Okay, I’m going in.”
“Going in where?” Bess said with a laugh. “There’s no place to go.”
“Sure there is. See you later.”
With that she crawled through the arch and disappeared inside.
“Ellie!” I cried. “Ellie, don’t.”
Her voice, strangely distorted, echoed back about being by herself.
Bess wasn’t laughing anymore. “That’s impossible! Mom, she can’t—don’t let her go!” She dropped to her knees beside the arch and reached inside to grab Ellie’s foot or leg but came away with nothing. “Mom, she’s gone! But she can’t be gone! It’s not possible!”
My brain was numb but I knew what she meant.
Ellie’s construction lay against an outside wall. A hole in the wall could lead only to empty outside air. Yet Ellie had crawled all the way through and beyond. I rushed to the window and looked out. The outer wall was unmarred. Nothing extended beyond it.
I dropped beside Bess and stuck my head inside. Warm, odorless air flowed against my face.
“Ellie? Ellie! You come back here! You come back here this instant!”
Faintly, as if from a great distance, I heard, “…fine…little while…myself.”
Bess fumbled with
