by Cai Emmons
If Lanny had not been there, insisting something unusual happened, and if there had not been that earlier moment on the beach, then Bronwyn would have decided she’d imagined the impossible very deeply. But she has to concede Lanny might be right—maybe she did do something. There is little to be gained in denying the possibility.
A mouse has come inside the cabin through one of the holes in the porch screen, and it has settled under the couch where Bronwyn is sitting. She can hear it scratching around, finding cracker crumbs and dried-up nachos. It’s probably a regular feast under there, given the number of times Bronwyn has eaten makeshift meals on this couch. She was hoping to sleep here tonight, but she won’t with a mouse at large. She can’t stand the thought of a rodent scurrying over her chest while she sleeps.
Her mind rolls it over and over as a tongue investigates a dental problem. There is a dual difficulty: first proving that something happened, then explaining it. Subjectively, it felt that a high volume of energy was pouring from her brain, annihilating the storm. It was as if the heat in her head could boil oceans, evaporate clouds, mollify the overexcited elements. But what happened empirically? The brain is a self-contained adiabatic system, functioning without the gain or loss of heat. She has never heard of a brain transmitting energy beyond that system. Did her brain really somehow generate a massive amount of heat on its own? If so, how? And how could such energy pass through her skull? If that is indeed what happened.
She thinks of her old college boyfriend Anish, who is now a brain surgeon. What would he have to say on this matter? They broke up because his parents wanted him to marry an Indian woman, but they stay in touch, albeit infrequently. She’d be embarrassed though, trying to explain herself to Anish.
Occam’s razor, a fundamental precept: In evaluating hypotheses, the simplest explanation is usually the best. But in this case, even a simple hypothesis is hard to put forth. She thinks about the monks in the Himalayas known for being able to raise their body temperatures dramatically. But even that exertion, impressive though it is, is contained, not a transmission of energy outward.
She must monitor herself closely and keep a low profile. No one can know about this. She has sworn Lanny to secrecy. Any small breach of confidentiality could have unpleasant consequences. Things go viral so easily these days. And people are not merciful.
The absence of Reed in her life makes the weekend seem extra long and aimless. Her phone is morbidly silent, her inbox dead. It is surprising to realize how much of an organizing principle Reed gave to her life, even when he was physically absent.
She sleeps in the bedroom on Saturday night instead of on the porch, grabbing rest in short snatches, worried about the mouse. She dreams of a wind with leering eyes that morphs into Reed’s new woman, a blonde, statuesque femme fatale.
At nine o’clock Sunday morning she is at the grocery store, watching the checkout clerk beep her items. Chips, cheese, salsa, refried beans, and mousetraps. She’s lost her appetite and might as well eat one of the few dishes that still appeals. But even so she feels ashamed by her purchases and averts her eyes, answering the clerk’s cheerful, How’s it going? with a succinct, Good.
She sets traps in every room, using cubes of cheese as bait. She makes a plate of nachos and takes it out to the riverbank. The day is sunny and warm, not too hot. There’s some low-lying haze to the east, but it’s clearing fast, making the day one about which no one can lodge a complaint. The river is lazy; the dragonflies and flies and bees are lazy; and the sun’s warmth encourages human laziness too. She releases herself to this tide of inertia. Her syncopated internal rhythms ease. She pictures her blood thickening like red mercury, slowing to a crawl. The saccades of her eyes cease. Fat flies come circling to sniff at the melted cheese. They move so slowly they are easy to bat away, but they keep returning. Eventually she gives up and lays the nachos in the grass where the flies swarm to feast on the grease.
The river’s dark water is black and blue in the sunlight. It is such a benign river, but, like many rivers, it conceals complicated currents. She has not tried to swim in it though she isn’t sure why, as she loves to swim. Fear of the unknown sums up her reluctance. The possibility of snapping turtles and water snakes, though she really has no idea if they exist in this water. Perhaps she doesn’t swim in it because she hasn’t seen anyone else swimming in it. There are two houses on the opposite bank within view, but she never sees people coming and going there.
A few years ago she took an online test whose results concluded she was a person of “thin boundaries.” It defined such a person as undefended, vulnerable, flitting between fantasy and reality, often incapable of separating thoughts and feelings. Much as she had suspected this, the confirmation frightened her. Ever since, she has worked hard to conceal this shameful part of her character and armor herself more effectively against it. She is aware that her social reticence makes her appear more armored than she truly is.
She has never shared the results of this test. A scientist, she is quite sure, is hampered by having thin boundaries. Thin boundaries could make a researcher too easily seduced and persuaded by scant evidence. Nevertheless, without her supposedly thin boundaries would she sense the weather as she does, receive it so accurately, be so attuned to the nuances which signal change? Without thin boundaries would she see and hear, even smell, so much?
Back inside she dumps the remains of the nachos into the garbage and checks the traps. Not one, but three mice have been caught, an infestation. Who knows how many more are creeping around beneath the furniture. Now she must summon the bravery to dispose of the flaccid bodies. For the time being she leaves them where they are. Her phone’s ringtone sounds with the melody she programmed, “Singing in the Rain.”
A text from Lanny: We have to talk. I need to know what’s happening, if you’re alright.
I’m fine, Bronwyn texts back. Let’s try to forget it happened.
I won’t ever forget it! We could have died out there—you saved my ass!
Bronwyn doesn’t respond. There’s an email from Stuart expressing concern about her illness, hoping she’s better, confirming how much he admires her work and reminding her he expects to see her on Monday. Another from Diane, who says she will soon be on her way to Maine for a two-week vacation, and she’d love to take Bronwyn out to dinner. I have an ulterior motive, she writes. The thought of seeing Diane is paralyzing, especially in light of recent events. For all the encouragement Diane has given Bronwyn over the years, Bronwyn is still sometimes afraid of her mentor, who is imposing and opinionated and readily divides the world into “we” and “they.” Bronwyn is aware of how easy it would be to unwittingly find herself in the wrong camp. Yet Bronwyn can’t say no to Diane who has been so good to her for so long. Supportive and generous with her time, Diane has always made Bronwyn feel she had a viable future. The ulterior motive Diane mentioned is no secret. She wants Bronwyn to return to school and be a member of her research team. Bronwyn wonders if Diane has seen any of her weather broadcasts. She sincerely hopes not. Diane made it quite clear that in taking this broadcasting job Bronwyn was demeaning herself. She tries to imagine sitting across the table from Diane, eating a meal and navigating a conversation about her career in atmospheric science, while concealing the events of the last few days. Now more than ever, she’s sure she has no future in academia.
She closes her email, leaving both Stuart’s and Diane’s messages unanswered. She must change her ringtone. “Singing in the Rain” once seemed clever; now it’s a cruel joke.
8
A memory comes in the middle of the night. It has the hazy erratic texture of a dream, though she knows it’s a memory, not a dream. She was ten or eleven, and she and her mother had just had an argument. What was it about? She can’t quite get to the specifics, but she remembers standing in her room upstairs, so shaky with rage and helplessness her cheeks and neck twitched. She wanted to defy her mother, but didn’t dare. She gazed out the window to the small back yar
d. A thunderstorm hit as she stood there watching. What luck! She couldn’t believe the weather could match her mood so perfectly. Each time lightning flashed she felt it trembling inside her body—she was sure it must be glowing through her skin. She counted to the next clap of thunder, throwing her anger out into the yard so it snarled and growled in unison with the elements. She spread her arms as if conducting things. She was Zeus, wronged and righteous, inflicting a storm on someone who’d rebuked her.
Her mother rushed out to the yard to bring in the outdoor furniture. Metal furniture—didn’t she know better, she shouldn’t be touching metal with all that electrical energy flying. Another flash of lightning illuminated the yard like a movie set. Her mother’s eyes were dark tunnels of terror. She could get killed out there, Bronwyn thought, and for a moment Bronwyn hoped she would be killed. The memory chills Bronwyn, even after all these years.
Awake, alone in the dark, she misses her mother. Sleep wands back over her, gloving her in stillness and oblivion. She awakens feeling ready, sniffing the air, laughing a little to herself. A memory of power has attached to her like a palimpsest.
She drinks a quick cup of coffee, drops the dead mice into the garbage and, without even a glance at her weather station, she goes outside and down to the river’s edge. A light rain falls, a mist atomizing her skin. This rain will keep up for a while, she thinks. The few days of sun she forecast last week have come and gone. She doesn’t care. She sticks out her tongue, tastes the molecules that once made up a cloud. Inside her head she senses the movement of atoms.
As a child she used to wonder what would happen if all the forces of energy gave out entirely: the sun’s radiation, the pull of gravity, wind, ocean currents, human metabolism. All movement, all light and heat, suddenly deactivated. All human intention and will snuffed. The Earth ceasing to orbit or spin. Insects and birds falling from the sky. Blood coagulating in vessels. Synapses fizzing to a halt. Everything inert. When she thought of this she would begin to run, to prove to herself that she, at least, could still generate energy.
Something inchoate surfaces in her. A desire to feel that power again. Not Zeus’s power, but Athena’s. She plants her bare feet more firmly in the scratchy crabgrass, lanky dandelion stems grazing her calves. She trains her gaze on the dark river, takes a breath and holds it, sensing the atoms inside her body as they begin to oscillate synchronously, heat filling her belly and rising to her chest. It fans out to her arms and legs. As deliberately as she can she directs the heat to her head, disciplining her consciousness to stay in the moment so she will remember later. Behind her forehead the heat ignites, a conflagration almost out of her control, though not quite. She hears a thrumming, feels the pulse. The world falls away. Her eyes soar and she thrusts the heat rhythmically, struggling to stay alert, taking aim at the river’s midpoint. Her body seems to rise. She swoops, broad as a condor, over the water’s surface. The current picks up speed. Small ripples appear, the ripples become whitecaps, and soon the water rushes over itself, eddying and back-splashing. Full-blown rapids flash by, a huge volume of water, quick and dangerous.
She floats back down to the riverbank, gasping for breath, gradually rejoining the known world again, her vision widening and clearing. She turns around, suddenly self-conscious. Has anyone seen? The river still rages, rambunctious and deafening in its sudden haste to join the sea. The sight of it brings her up short. What has she done? She has to stop it, but she’s too spent. She sits on the muddy grass and waits, both hyper-vigilant and incapable of moving, never so alone. She can’t leave the river surging hysterically like this. It could wreak havoc: floods, drownings, habitats destroyed. She tries to attach her gaze on the midpoint of the river again, but her focus is shot. Her gaze flits. She still hasn’t caught her breath. Her face is hot, but the rest of her body is wracked with shivers. She needs to refuel, she thinks. She drags herself upright and lumbers inside.
The refrigerator is perilously empty, except for the nacho ingredients. The thought of nachos disgusts her right now. She takes out the peanut butter jar, and dips a spoon into it, and sucks on the spoon, still standing with the refrigerator door open, the river roaring behind her. She shouldn’t be playing around with natural forces, altering them at her whim. Who does she think she is? Who do you think you are? The refrain of her childhood. Don’t think you’re so great. The peanut butter jar slips from her hand, shattering at her feet, a hunk of glass and shit-colored goo. She tosses the spoon into the sink and takes herself outside.
The rain still falls and the feisty river still churns dangerously. The choler gathers until she can scarcely hear herself think. She plants her feet, though her legs are quivering and barely supportive. She stares at a place where the waves leap up like truculent cowlicks. She locates the atoms that support her intention, prods them. The heat blooms again, this time like a liquid flooding her heart. She keeps it there, forces it up, up, up, to her brain which seems to snap audibly. Synapses crackle, ignite to a bonfire. There is no other sound but the slow ballooning of her lungs. She contains the blaze, shrinks it to a manageable size, and lobs it directly ahead. Tottering, she keeps her gaze on the leaping water then hurls the fireball again.
Slowly, slowly, the obstreperous current slackens, composing itself as if it’s been chided. She collapses on the muddy embankment, staring out at the quiescent water with relief. Less than a minute has passed, though to her it could have been a millennium. A few skater bugs, oblivious to the rain, skim along the water’s tamed surface. Laughing quietly, she vows to remember.
9
By the time Bronwyn leaves for work the misting rain has intensified; it drubs the foliage into submission and outpaces her windshield wipers. The National Weather Service has corroborated her hunch, predicting this rain may persist for close to a week. People at the station will be complaining, no doubt. They feel entitled to days of endless sun as soon as summer hits. In an effort to show them things aren’t all that bad, she will tell them, as her “Fun Weather Fact,” the story of The Summer That Never Was.
The summer of 1816 was exceptional around the world. June frost was seen at various locations in New England; fog reddened and dimmed the sunlight; snow fell in New York and Maine; in July and August ice was observed in lakes and rivers as far south as Pennsylvania. Temperatures swung from ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit to near freezing within hours. Cool temperatures and heavy rains were seen in Britain and Ireland. In China, the cold killed trees, rice crops, even water buffalo. In Hungary, there was brown snow; in Italy, it was red. Around the world widespread crop failures resulted in famine.
Two primary causes are cited for these worldwide anomalies. First, there had been an increase in volcanic eruptions, beginning in 1812 and culminating in the Mount Tambura eruption in Indonesia in 1815. The explosion ejected vast quantities of volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere and caused an overall lowering of the Earth’s average land mass temperature. That, coupled with a period of unusually low solar activity, made for the extremely “bad” weather. The current rain in New England is, by comparison, a mere inconvenience.
She enters the station furtively. It feels as if she’s been gone for eons. So much has happened in her days away. She is not the same Bronwyn she was last week, and as she dressed for work she could see that so clearly. Her face appeared in the mirror as a hologram, ghosted by another face, shifting between the two. She has sprouted invisible sentient whiskers all over her body. She moves through space as if the air itself is a piece of fabric that might be lifted and examined. She is in love with the Earth as never before. But words are a challenge.
The station is windowless and dimly lit, its décor an investigation of all the hues of brown. It would be a perfect place for illicit activities. The inner rooms are soundproof, but in the lobby, where Nicole sits at her desk, the rain outside sounds catastrophic.
Nicole hops up. She is a spring breeze of a girl, Bronwyn thinks. Full of hope. “I have to show you,” Nicole says. She pulls a
large box from beneath her desk and beckons Bronwyn to the women’s room. The dress that has been under discussion for weeks billows from under its tissue paper, a summer cloud of chiffon and beaded taffeta, a young girl’s Cinderella dream of a dress. Nicole lifts it as if it’s fragile as eggshells, and eases it to her chest, mugging for admiration.
“Oh. Yes. Beautiful.” Is it beautiful? Bronwyn honestly can’t say. She has lost the framework necessary for ascribing beauty to anything man-made.
Nicole frowns. “You don’t like it?”
“Of course I do. You’re going to look gorgeous. What does Mike think?”
“He hasn’t seen it. Not until I walk down the aisle.”
“I didn’t realize people still did that.”
Nicole stows the dress back in the box as if tucking it in for sleep. “But what if it rains? I am so afraid it’s going to rain like today. I’ll die if it rains.”
“I’ve heard that rain on a wedding day means good luck. But don’t worry, it won’t rain. I promise.”
“I wish. Hey, you’re coming aren’t you? You haven’t RSVP’d.”
“I’m sorry. Yes, I’ll be there.” Until this moment she wasn’t sure, dubious about her social skills, certain she’d be out of place.
“Good, because I’m setting you up with my cousin like I promised.”
“Oh, Nicole. I’m not ready. It’s too recent.”
“You might be ready when you see him.”
Bronwyn scuttles down the hallway, averting her gaze from the offices on either side. The heavy door to the sound stage thuds closed behind her. The room is empty, thank god. She hurries to her perch.