Weather Woman

by Cai Emmons

  She considers going back to bed. She has hours before she’s due to meet Reed, who is coming up from Cambridge—11:00 a.m. at the Blue Skiff for an early lunch so she can bring him by the cabin after they eat and still get to work on time. She needs the rest, but she’s far too wired for sleep. She fixes herself a pot of strong coffee and takes a mugful to the porch where she collapses on the Goodwill couch to watch the day lighten.

  Since she moved a year ago from Cambridge to this little cabin on the Squamscott River in southern New Hampshire, she has spent much of her free time on this porch. She has a weather station set up in one corner, and by the couch there’s a high-end Celestron reflecting telescope for clear nights, as well as a pair of 10x42 Zeiss binoculars on a tripod that can airlift her straight to the center of the river’s wildlife.

  The day is not developing well and, while she rarely wishes the weather were different, today is a day when she fervently hopes for sun—not cloud-filtered gray light, but the visible ball of hydrogen and helium itself, burning against a backdrop of histrionic blue. Most days any weather is just fine. She takes it as it comes, watches and monitors and speculates, appreciating its every occult aspect. But today is different. Today is Reed’s visit, and he has not yet visited her here. In the year since she moved, she has been the one who has done the weekend traveling to Cambridge. Reed has been swamped in studying and has wanted to maximize his time, so she was perfectly willing to make the hour-long drive early Saturday morning, returning to New Hampshire on Monday morning in time for work.

  But a couple of months ago it began to feel strange that he hasn’t even seen where she lives. She began to pressure him to visit. Twice he had plans to come then canceled at the last minute, once on her birthday. Of course that hurt, though she’s tried hard to take it in stride. She knows he’s been stressed, busy with classes and exams—soon the bar exam—and trying to line up a job. Their last visit was three weeks ago. She went down to Cambridge, and he had just begun studying for the bar and was unavailable for most of Saturday, so she walked the rainy streets of Cambridge alone, feeling uncharacteristically nostalgic, wondering if she’d made a mistake in leaving. When she ducked into the Harvard Coop for shelter, who should she spot but Bruce. Fortunately he didn’t seem to see her, and she hurried back out into the rain.

  That night she and Reed went for dinner at the apartment of one of Reed’s law school classmates. It was a group of eight, all lawyers but she. Reed got drunk and fell asleep as soon as they got home. On Sunday he was hungover and glum, and she left that afternoon instead of Monday morning. After that she was confused and miffed and didn’t attend his graduation where she would have had to interact with his parents. Reed has said he understands, it was okay she didn’t come, he isn’t mad, but honestly, she wonders—shouldn’t he be mad? Does his lack of anger mean he doesn’t care enough and is pulling away? This visit, she thinks, will be a bellwether; it will show her the truth. He can’t spend the night, but she’ll show him as much as she can in a few hours. She wants him to love this place as much as she does, love seeing the life she’s been able to make. She’s hoping he’ll begin to picture his own life here too, the two of them side by side. He has always made her feel so safe.

  She has spruced up, bought new accent pillows and soaps, cleaned as much as she could. It’s a modest cabin, a rental, but all she can afford now. The porch screens are full of holes that let in flies, several boards on the front steps are broken, and in various places pink insulation pokes through the wall-seams like tufts of cotton candy, the result of an amateur’s attempt at winterizing. She took the place not for its internal charms but for its location. Its two secluded acres lie on the bank of the Squamscott River, where egrets and owls and hawks are regular visitors and the river rolls indolently by on its path to the Atlantic.

  Yes, she loves this place, but she’s well aware that Reed’s standards are higher than hers. He grew up in an affluent suburb of Boston in a fancy house with acres of yard and meticulous landscaping. His father is a doctor and his mother works in publishing, and they’re the kind of people who never shop in discount stores. While Reed makes fun of his parents’ snobbery, some of their attitudes have rubbed off on him. It still makes Bronwyn wince to remember one incident early in their courtship. She bought a sexy, cherry-red taffeta lingerie outfit from Target. It was mostly a joke, though she thought Reed would like it, but when she put it on and sidled into the bedroom trying to parody a striptease artist, his face could not conceal his deep disgust. She was mortified. It’s—I don’t know—vulgar, he said, but it felt as if he was saying she was vulgar, and suddenly she did feel vulgar and beneath him in ways that could never be changed. In Reed’s world, or at least in the world of his parents, any child of a single mother and an unknown father had to be a little suspect, and it didn’t help that Bronwyn’s mother, after being laid off from her job as a school secretary, spent her final working years as a house cleaner before dying of breast cancer. Bronwyn and Reed do not discuss any of this, her uncertain paternity, her mother’s menial work, the lingerie incident.

  Dawn is arriving slowly, impeded by the clouds, but in the reluctant gray light she sees the cabin’s defects more clearly than ever. It is unlikely Reed will be charmed. He might, however, overlook the cabin’s deficits if the day were to be sunny. When he announced he was coming he put in a specific request for sun—It’s no fun being at the ocean without sun, he said—and like the rest of the world he seems to think that she, a weather forecaster, can do something about it. It doesn’t matter how often she reminds people, at the station or anywhere, that she doesn’t make the weather, she only reports it, they still seem to hold her responsible.

  Bronwyn, still in her nightgown, feels the light tread of molecules along the bare skin of her arms and legs. Her pores take full measure: temperature, humidity, air pressure, dew point, wind speed. Over the years she has learned to sense these things with relative accuracy. There isn’t a scintilla of wind. The air is so still it carries reports of rustling wildlife at the river: an egret preening; a Great Horned Owl, the one who’s been a regular visitor of late, consuming the last of a mouse. She can feel the ocean thrumming thirteen miles in the distance, can almost smell the low tide’s sulphury scent. What are the odds of sun? She should be able to guess, but after nearly a week of strangely stagnant weather, she honestly doesn’t have any idea what will come next, and neither does the National Weather Service. They’re saying things, of course, turning in their usual meteorological predictions as if everything is business as usual, but she evaluates their online data and predictions every day at the station, choosing what to say in her own broadcasts, and it’s apparent to her that the National Weather Service has no better idea of what’s happening than she does.

  She opens the porch door and steps outside. Coffee sweat trickles behind her ears. Something grazes her face—a dangling spider. She blows, sending the spider sailing into the semi-darkness, her breath traveling past the creature, down to the river. A strigine chuckle wends to her from the poplar trees along the river bank. This owl is often here at the end of his night patrol when Bronwyn is drinking her coffee. The owl wants something, it seems to her. Or maybe he’s offering advice. Bronwyn hoots back and the lonely sound traces the path of her breath, through the still air to the river and on out to sea.

  It is close to 8:45 a.m. when Bronwyn awakens the second time. She has dozed on the couch without meaning to, despite the cup of rocket-fuel coffee. The owl is still nearby and hoots as if welcoming her to the day. An auspicious sign, she thinks. But, as she expected, the day is dark, its light strangely sepia-colored. She thinks of calling Reed and telling him to hold off until the weather is better. But they need to see each other, and he has only a short break before his bar review course begins.

  She pops up and checks her weather station numbers. Temperature: 80 degrees. Air pressure: 1010 millibars and steady. Humidity: 63%. Wind speed: 0 knots. All the measurements are the same as they h
ave been for three days. Actually the data aren’t precisely the same—the humidity has gone up ever so slightly. There’s a soggy hum in the air, and moisture clucks and stutters through the azaleas like a flock of hens.

  She needs to get moving. First do a final cleaning. Then figure out what to wear. Will clothing ever cease to be an issue? The station—read: her boss, Stuart—likes her to dress in body-skimming dresses and skirts, high heels, and subtle jewelry. She spent much of her first two paychecks on new outfits. It was fun, but not altogether comfortable. She still feels unlike herself in these clothes, a poseur only acting the role of a professional. When she can inhabit these clothes unselfconsciously, she thinks, she will have truly become a responsible adult others can trust and respect. Before this job she’d been wearing the attire of a budget-conscious graduate student: jeans and T-shirts, everything from Goodwill. She usually managed to look nice no matter how skimpy her budget was. Her natural attributes helped—big green eyes, long bushy hair, waifish figure. Reed has always liked her simple dressing style, and he doesn’t like her to use makeup, which isn’t her habit anyway, though she’s required to wear it on the air. Today he’ll have to accept the “professional” Bronwyn, as she won’t have time to change between lunch and work.

  She feels rushed and unreasonably nervous. It’s only Reed, for heaven’s sake, Reed who she’s known for three years now. They’re buddies, old friends. He’s irreverent and fun; he makes her laugh. She hopes he’ll come with her to the station so she can introduce him to people. Her pals, Archie and Nicole, Stuart too, she supposes, if he’s around. Reed has certainly heard enough Stuart stories over the last year to pique his curiosity.

  She cruises from living room to kitchen to bedroom, eyeballing everything with Reed in mind. In the bathroom she pulls a few hairs from the sink drain and slaps a sponge at a patch of congealed soap. Enough already. He’ll have to accept. It’s not as if he’s such a paragon of cleanliness himself.

  She dresses in a long-sleeved red knit dress, then thinks of the lingerie fiasco and takes it off. She stares at her closetful of other options without inspiration and finally chooses a sleeveless black sheath. Black is always safe, though it looks very formal at this hour of the day, and she’ll be way overdressed at the Blue Skiff. She can’t be bothered with that now. Her blood pressure is rising like a vertical shear. She needs to calm down. She covers the sheath with a short black jacket, puts on some black pumps, no stockings, and hooks some silver shell-shaped earrings into her ears. She can do her makeup at the station—Reed will appreciate seeing her face au naturel. She brushes her hair and leaves it long, which he also likes. She’ll either tie it back or put it up for the evening broadcasts.

  You look okay. Okay is good enough. Breathe. Relax. She sets out at 10:25 a.m. under a grimy sky, heading east to the coast in her ancient orange Volvo, twenty-eight years old, only two years younger than she.

  She parks in the lot of the Blue Skiff and gets out, intending to ignore the sky. But the sky is hard to ignore by the ocean, especially with clouds pressing down as they are now, inescapable as the heedless black boot of an overhead giant. But she refuses to let the weather alter her mood—embracing all weather as she does on principle—and she enters the restaurant with newly minted optimism.

  It was her suggestion to meet here because of the establishment’s unusual location. It is situated on an outcropping of rock as close to the Atlantic Ocean as it is possible to build. It has suffered repeated damage from storms, but each time, due to the brevity of human memory or the force of human optimism, it is rebuilt as if such an assault will never happen again. When she suggested it, however, she neglected to think about how little the atmosphere and food are suited to Reed’s tastes. It’s a place for tourists, replete with the tacky décor that romanticizes coastal life—fishing nets suspended from the ceiling like hammocks, lobster pots carefully stacked to convey nonchalance, plastic starfish Krazy-glued to the walls, ceramic terns and seagulls perched on shelves to gaze eternally out to sea. And the food is unremarkable American food, carb-ridden and greasy: fried clams, lobster rolls, burgers and fries.

  She pauses in the foyer and peers through a veil of plastic ferns by the hostess stand. Reed sits at a table by the window, gazing out at the ocean. He’s dressed informally, but preppily, in belted khakis and a short-sleeved blue linen button-down shirt, reminding her of a golfer or a sailor, someone of the leisure class. She guesses this attire is part of preparing himself for entry into the legal profession where one must be ready at every turn to encounter potential clients and contacts. The sight of him planted there, so substantial—confident and handsome in a sandy-haired, waspy, thinking-man’s way—and almost a certified lawyer, sets her blood pressure soaring again on a tide of deep affection. He has a certain languor about him, a certain immovability—if he were a wind he’d be a headwind, constant and forceful. It is a sharp contrast to her own gusty, mercurial nature. He knows who he is and what he stands for, which will make him a good lawyer, she thinks. His solidity would make any person, client or mate, feel confident in his presence.

  She pushes past the hostess, pointing at Reed and navigating through the tables, most of which are still empty. He doesn’t notice her until she stands beside him, and then he looks up almost sheepishly and smiles. She expects him to rise and embrace her, but when he doesn’t she bends to kiss him, hand on his shoulder. How unexpectedly awkward it is to touch him after three weeks apart. She withdraws quickly and takes a seat opposite him.

  “You look quite formal,” he observes. “Have I ever seen you in heels that high?”

  “Work clothes,” she says. “Not my choice.”

  He nods. “Not that you don’t look good. I’m just not used to it.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “When I set out from Cambridge I thought it might rain.” He flicks his gaze out the window, then to her, then to the menu on the table, then back out the window.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  He raises a single eyebrow. She laughs instinctively, nervously, then stops herself. He hasn’t laughed yet. Usually he would have found something to laugh at by now. Something weighs him down, holds him back.

  “It might get nice,” she says. “You never know. New England and all—famous for its changeable weather. I keep being amazed that people don’t realize that weather changes dramatically everywhere, not just here.” She pauses. “Thanks for coming up here. I really appreciate it.”

  “Of course.” He reaches across the table to pluck something from her hair, then drops whatever it is to the floor before she can see it.

  “What?” she says. She thought she checked herself carefully and feels remiss.

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m hoping you’ll come by the station to meet some of my friends.”

  He frowns. “We’ll see. I don’t have a lot of time—”

  “But at least you’ll come to the house? Cabin, I should say.”

  He smiles. “Are you happy here? You seem happy here.”

  “It’s good. It’s not exactly where I want to end up. I’d rather be in a place with big weather events, like Florida or Oklahoma, but for now I’m learning a lot and I think I have a knack for it.” She takes a quick breath. Her palms are sweating. She smiles extra broadly. Why is she addressing him as if he’s a stranger?

  “I don’t mean this as pressure—but everything would be so much better if you were here. I’m sure you could find a good job in Manchester. It’s really booming now. Or Portsmouth, which is smaller, but really quaint. Well, I know you’ve been there, but maybe not recently. There are some great new restaurants and—” What is that look in his eye? “I’m sorry. I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”

  “You’re fine,” he says. He looks down at his menu. “I guess we should order.”

  She could kick herself. She can almost hear him thinking, She hasn’t asked word one about me. “How are you? Graduation went well?
”

  “Yeah, sure. But come on, you don’t really care about that. If you cared you would have been there.”

  “So you are mad I didn’t come—”

  He shrugs. “It is what it is.”

  Something comes over her; his body casts a long entrapping shadow. “I guess I could point out that you didn’t come up for my birthday either.”

  May 15. Not just any birthday, her thirtieth birthday. A totally depressing occasion. The day went by with the usual pro-forma Face-book greetings, the usual lame comments about her being over the hill. Flowers arrived from Reed with a note that said: HB xo R. Like Morse code, for god’s sake. Only Lanny sent an actual present and card. Then, after the last broadcast, Archie came through. He brought out a bottle of champagne and a plate of nachos—her all-time favorite food—and he got the crew to sing. Then they all left, declining champagne, citing exhaustion, so she and Archie went out to his truck and ate and drank alone. She would always be grateful to him for that, but it wasn’t the thirtieth birthday a girl would imagine for herself.

  A membrane surrounds her, discrete but permeable as the amniotic sac. Heat lays siege to her abdomen, spreads like water. A tone pulses through her entire body, as much movement as sound. What’s happening? She glances out the window to regain her equilibrium, wishing she were outside, plunging into those truculent clouds, lancing them. She blinks. Her vision telescopes. Sounds tumble away. From somewhere in Mongolia comes the tink of silverware and the murmur of voices. Her eyes are awls, forceps, piercing and gouging the clouds. Her lungs make the lewd sucking sound of a mud flat. Her retinas ache. She expels breath with explosive force.