Page 122 of One Adult, Please

"Mom, there's a zombie apocalypse."

"I know there's a zombie apocalypse. I've been sitting in this shelter watching the news and worrying about you for days. Do you know what it's like to sit in a community center gymnasium surrounded by strangers and their blankets and wonder if your daughter is alive?"

"I know, Mom. I'm sorry. My phone died and the power was out and we just got the communications working. I'm sorry. I'm here."

"We. You said we."

My mother catches the we.

"There are..." I look at the door.

Joel's face is doing the thing where he's pretending it's not doing a thing and the pretending is so tender it's almost medical.

Beck's eyes are on me and his face isn't doing the grin.

Grant's looking at me with the full weather report on display: overcast clearing to brilliant, the sun coming through, everything visible, everything warm.

"There are three of them," I say into the phone. "Three... people. Men. Three men."

Static crackles. The signal flickers. My mother's voice cuts through it. "Three men?"

"It's not... they're... we're a team. A survival team. Joel keeps the water running and the buildings standing and he does math about whether I'm going to fall off things and his face does a thing, Mom, you'll see when you... and Beck, Beck has an axe and a fish vest and he gives me scores when I accidentally hit zombies with things and he laughs, Mom, he laughs like a person who forgot how and remembered. And Grant, Grant has a wallaby in his jacket and he told me my brain was a feature and not a malfunction and nobody's ever said that before, Mom, nobody's ever..."

I stop because my voice did the cracking thing.

"Grace," my mother says. Her voice is the one she used when I was seven and I fell off the monkey bars and broke my wrist and she held me in the emergency room and said "I know, baby, I know" and the knowing was enough. The knowing was everything.

"Are they good to you?" she asks.

"Mom, they're... Joel made cardboard signs on every building in the park."

I'm fully crying into a beige government phone about cardboard signs.

"He sounds like a keeper," Mom says.

"They're all keepers. That's the situation. The whole situation, there are three of them and they're all... it's a thing... a group... we call it the group heart situation and I know that sounds... I know..."

"Grace."

"Please don't... I know it's unusual, I know it's not..."

"Grace Elizabeth."

I stop.

"Are you happy?" My mother, sitting in a gymnasium shelter surrounded by strangers, asking the only question that has ever mattered to her about anything I've ever done.

"Yeah, Mom. I'm happy."

"Do any of them cook?"

"Joel can make canned chili. Beck can operate a funnel cake machine. Grant feeds a wallaby with a bottle every four hours."

"The wallaby one sounds nurturing."

"You can't pick one."

"I'm not picking, I'm ranking. There's a difference. Mothers rank."