The Gulf

by Belle Boggs

  “A hurricane party!” she announced, once they were inside Janine’s room. Immediately the room’s smell changed, from peanut buttery and mildly sweaty to expensive and perfumed. Janine thought of those women who were so bossy they altered the schedule of your menstrual period—it was all done through smells, wasn’t it?

  “I haven’t been to one of these in years. I would have invited y’all to my place but then I thought this would be more fun, like camping.” Lilian lighted one of her travel lamps and set it next to the candle, where it glowed with a medicinal white light that canceled the flickering candles. “And look! I found these notebooks at a back-to-school sale when I was out shopping. I got one for each of us.” She reached into one of her grocery bags and handed around speckled composition books, the pages tightly stitched into the spine.

  “Thank you,” they said, holding the notebooks like schoolchildren and eyeing the bags of groceries, packed tightly with sea-salted taro chips, cans of smoked almonds, and imported chocolates. Lilian positioned a second lamp on the nightstand between the room’s two beds but did not offer any food.

  “Some roads were already closed by the time I was driving over. This could be a big one,” she told them, shucking off her shoes and getting into Janine’s bed. Janine still sat at the foot, holding her notebook. Lilian stacked all the pillows behind her and propped her notebook against her knees. In the antiseptic light, her powdered face looked pale and ghostlike, her penciled eyebrows vaguely menacing. “I hope my husband does come back to the condo. I hope he makes a wrong turn and gets washed out to sea. Do you know since class was canceled I’ve written five poems?”

  “Congratulations,” Janine said. She hadn’t written a word since Thursday morning. “That’s really a lot of poems.”

  “These newest ones are through the eyes of his Russian bride-to-be—did I tell you he’s decided, apparently, on the Russian? That man never changes his password on anything. The poems detail the realizations she has about his faults.”

  “Hey, Lilian, mind if I pass around some snacks?” Donald didn’t wait for her answer but moved for the bags.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “There’s wine, too.”

  Janine opened the wine, which had a twist cap, and poured it generously into the small paper cups she found tucked among the snacks. She passed a cup to Donald, then Lilian, and left two out for Eric and Tom, who should have been back by now, she thought.

  “I’m taking these chips down to Marianne,” said Donald, pulling on Lilian’s raincoat. “I feel bad for her, all alone. She’s next door, right?”

  “Two doors down,” Janine said. “But come right back, so we don’t worry.”

  “That was such a great reading you gave,” Lilian said, after he’d left. “Both you and Donald were great. I was impressed.”

  “Thanks,” Janine said. She wasn’t sure if Lilian understood the context of her poem, but it didn’t matter. “Now I wish I hadn’t given it, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because of the newspaper article,” Janine said quietly. “And Tad Tucker being there, giving a speech. I don’t agree with everything he says—”

  “Tad Tucker didn’t write your work for you, did he?”

  “No,” Janine said.

  “He didn’t change what you wrote, or how you read it?”

  “No.”

  “And he isn’t keeping you from writing now?”

  “No,” Janine said. The wine wasn’t bad, she thought. She hoped there were more bottles. “I guess not.”

  Small debris pinged, then thudded above them.

  “I don’t know about you, but I just feel like I have so much to say,” Lilian said. “It’s like somebody has been tamping me down all my life, and now it’s my time. Nobody’s gonna stop me, you know what I mean?”

  Janine nodded, though she knew it was too dim for Lilian to see her. Janine did not drink, did not even keep alcohol in her house (Rick stored six-packs of beer in the garage fridge), but there were exceptions to every rule: at weddings, she toasted the bride and groom, and at hurricane parties, she consumed whatever was offered until the storm was over. You had to drink to get through the waiting, the wondering, the thrashing wind and rain, the hours without electricity or contact with someone you loved. You had to drink to get through the doubts about a God who would do such a thing as send a hurricane right to you, a storm that might destroy your house or kill your family, your neighbors. And on top of that, a God who would make a member of that very family a weather reporter! You had to wonder about a God like that.

  Everyone had those doubts, she’d wanted to tell Marianne, but the words stuck in her throat. I haven’t believed in God, Marianne had said in the interview. Not for a long time.

  But what if everything Marianne said was true? What if Lorraine didn’t care whether she was radical or not, but was only looking for a paycheck? All those webinars—each time, she’d paid the administrative fee willingly, propping her debit card against her keyboard and typing in the numbers—what if they’d just been a scam, a way of collecting money and information? It was true that she hadn’t learned much from them. It was true that they’d asked a lot of personal, irrelevant questions at the end. Lilian opened a second bottle, and Janine held out her cup for more.

  Just then, Donald opened the door, and somewhere a tree limb came down with a great crack. He jumped over the threshold, slammed the door behind him.

  “You didn’t invite her back?” Janine said.

  “She wouldn’t come,” Donald said. “She went looking for Eric and Tom. I told her not to, but she said she’d be okay.”

  “Why can’t people just stay inside?” said Lilian.

  Selfish, muttered Janine. She was sorry she’d let anyone leave the room. It had been hours since she’d heard from Beth. She would be fine—of course she’d be fine, Janine saw her live on the Weather Channel—but that did not loosen the tight, sickly knot of worry Janine felt in her stomach. She sipped and sipped Lilian’s red wine, which tasted like wet leaves and cherries, and listened to Donald’s fears: the thin roof would cave in, they would suffocate in the heat, they would drown or be crushed. Janine reassured him each time—that seemed to be what he was looking for—but privately she wondered. From the sounds of things—creaking and moaning and crashing, several leaks already dripping from the ceiling—either the storm was especially bad, or their shelter especially flimsy. Humbly—for wasn’t realism a form of humility?—Janine prayed it was one thing or the other, but not both.

  Please not both, she prayed. In the beginning of the night, she had been praying for her children’s safety, for Beth in her weather van and Rick and Chrissy at home, but suddenly it occurred to her that where she was—in a converted motel, feet from the shore—was possibly the most dangerous place of all. That she could die, leaving her children motherless and her husband a widower, was not something that she ever thought about. That she could die at a Christian writing school that was not even founded by an actual Christian suddenly seemed very possible. She wished desperately to be back in her old life, writing poems that no one would ever read, making dinner, washing dishes. Doing laundry: in the close, humid room, she wanted nothing more than the orderliness of her laundry room. She’d been vain to apply for school, to waste the money on something that would never help her family, that only made her cross and impatient with them, that made her want to be alone.

  “I’m going to look outside,” Janine said. She stood, and told herself the dizziness she felt was from the heat, the claustrophobia. “Selfish!” she said again, this time loud enough for Lilian and Donald to hear.

  “She’s in love with him,” Donald said. “That’s all.”

  “Who?” said Lilian.

  “Marianne. She loves Eric. That’s why she’s gone after him.”

  Someone knocked clumsily, and Janine lurched for the door—it would be Marianne, she told herself, back with Eric and Tom, all of them soaked and relieved and back to believin
g in God again.

  She opened the door, was met with nothing but cooler air, a metallic smell, the sound of wind shuddering the eaves. “Marianne?” she called. Looking down, Janine saw the source of the knocking sound: a garden statue, tipped over on her side, had washed up against the sill. Upright, her arms were outstretched in a fleeing posture, but lying on her side she appeared to be swimming, her face contorted in an expression somewhere between delight and fear. Janine crouched down to move her from the doorway and was surprised that she was not made of stone at all, but of some cheap composite material that had been painted to look like stone. She was easy to lift with one hand.

  The parking lot coursed with water, the edge of a flood lapping the concrete walkway outside the door. Peering through the rain, Janine could make out the shapes of other statues floating along, headed down the sloping lawn toward the beach. The entire campus appeared to be in the midst of a large, ever-expanding lake, with a current that ran to the gulf.

  “Oh no,” said Janine. “Oh no.”

  The weight of her voice was enough to summon Lilian and Donald, who now stood next to her in the doorway.

  “My car,” Lilian said. “I should have parked up the hill. But see, the water isn’t over the walkway, it isn’t above my tires.”

  “But what if it rises?” Donald asked. “What if it comes up from the beach? What if it floods us?”

  “It won’t,” Lilian insisted. “It never has.”

  “But Marianne—if she went to find Eric and Tom, she’s out in the storm now.” The thought of her out there, unsaved and drowning, gave Janine a pain in her chest. No one deserved to die alone in a storm.

  Donald grabbed her arm. “Janine, don’t you go too.”

  She stepped out onto the walkway, without even a jacket, and immediately felt the wind pulling her, wrapping around her legs and arms and torso like a living thing. She pictured herself toppled into the flood with the statues, floating out to sea, and flattened her back against the wall. She inched along, the plywood over the window rough against her T-shirt, rain splashing water onto her feet and her shins, until she reached the end of the walkway.

  “Janine!”

  She turned slightly at the sound of her name, afraid to step away from the wall, and saw her friend behind her. “Donald!” she yelled back, but her voice was small compared to the wind.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said. He grabbed her hand, and she clutched his tightly.

  If someone had told Janine that one day she would be holding hands in the dark with an entertainer of questionable reputation while hurricane-driven wind and rain lashed her legs, she would not have believed him. But she could not imagine letting go, no more than she could imagine abandoning Marianne to the storm.

  They fought their way into the wind, passing dormitories and classrooms where days before people had been worrying over the tiniest things: who was cooking dinner at home, why was the internet out again, what had someone really meant by a critique? Janine remembered the two lines Lorraine had not crossed out in her poem, how pitiful and lonely and disaster-stricken they’d looked on the marked-up page, but now the lines themselves were gone—she couldn’t remember a single word.

  20

  It was raining hard when Marianne left her room, with heavy wind and patches of lightning overhead. She called for Eric and Tom, but if someone answered she didn’t hear him. She looked up at the sky; maybe the rain was slowing. How long was a hurricane supposed to last, anyway? Whatever time it was, it was not supposed to be dark like this, black clouds moving fast against a slate-gray sky.

  And her feet—they weren’t supposed to be so wet, so heavy from the few minutes she’d spent running, aiming her flashlight to check each building she passed. Empty, empty, but so far she did not see any roof damage or downed trees, and she could see that everything would be better when the storm was over. Everything could be fixed, everything could be righted. When she found Eric they’d take off her shoes and wring out her socks. They’d talk about what to do next.

  But where was he? Aiming her flashlight toward the empty beach, she saw that the gulf was nearer than it usually was, swallowing the mangroves with great black gulps. And how was it that the gulf approached from two sides—in front of her and behind her, from the west and the east, water pouring down from the parking lot in a great river, running over her shoes and up her ankles?

  The water slipped up her calves, so cold she gasped. It hit behind her knees, knocking her over, and as she tumbled down the suddenly steep hill, under and over the water, scraping her legs and elbows and palms and head against gravel and sand and tree branches. This must have been how her mother felt when the cancer returned, when she knew that she would die. Shocked and betrayed and angry and helpless and sorry, so sorry to be leaving. She felt herself letting go. It’s over, she thought. What now?

  21

  Dear Ms. Somers,

  I would like to respectfully withdraw from the Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch.

  I tried calling to talk to you, but I just got a recording directing me to your website, and then when I tried to type what I wanted to say in the “contact us” box it was too long, so I hope this letter finds you. I suppose you all are busy with the rebuilding or reorganizing, so I won’t take much of your time. I want to explain why I don’t think I’m fit to continue at the school, but also to say how much I appreciate everything you tried to do for me. It was an honor to see my work posted online and to receive the Tad Tucker “Inspiration” scholarship, and I mean that more sincerely and more deeply than it sounds. The idea that anyone thought I had something to say and that anyone would want to read it has meant a great deal to me.

  You are probably thinking that the protests and the article and my feelings about the reading are the reason I’m leaving, but that isn’t it. The main reason I am leaving and think you should give the scholarship to somebody else is what happened after the storm, not before. It was what happened after the storm that made me rethink things, that made me realize that Marianne Stuart was right to go to the papers, if wrong in the way she started the school.

  I want to cancel the interview that you have scheduled for me with ABC News. When you told me about it, I was still too surprised to tell you what I thought, to tell you no definitively. You know that feeling you get, when something seems so wrong that you don’t even feel that it could possibly be about you? You leave your body and go … somewhere else?

  I know it would be better to tell you this over the phone, but like I said, I tried, and I’ll send this overnight so you have some notice. I will make a written statement of what happened, though, so you can have it for your records and for insurance purposes and for my records, too. I hope that will be good enough.

  On August the fifteenth a hurricane was predicted to hit the coast of Sarasota. It made a sharp and surprising turn, so we weren’t exactly expecting it, and there was trouble getting out for some of the students. I had the means of evacuation, but my daughter, who studies meteorology, had an opportunity to do reporting for the Weather Channel and I agreed to stay with her. In any case, I wasn’t the only one: Marianne Stuart, Donald Goldston (Davonte Gold), Tom Marshall, and Eric Osborne all stayed at the Ranch. Some of us had experience in storms and some of us had no choice and none of us thought it would be as bad as it turned out. We had plenty of food and water, and we boarded up all the windows and did normal storm-preparation chores.

  We lost power about six thirty, and shortly after that, Lilian Avery arrived with more provisions. She was excited to have a hurricane party.

  Everybody came to my room, except for Marianne. We had not spoken since her interview with the paper. In my room the rest of us talked, we played cards, we drank wine; she may have heard us through the thin walls. The storm didn’t sound too bad at that point, just lots and lots of rain. Eric had told me earlier that the rooms we were in never flooded, so I thought we were safe.

  I don’t mean to blame him, but I don’t see
why he and Tom had to go out in the storm over a motorcycle. If they hadn’t done that, Marianne wouldn’t have gone out after them, and Donald and I wouldn’t have had to go out after her.

  I understand that I keep veering away from the facts, the story, throwing in my commentary. I’m not a prose writer or a reporter. I’m a poet, so feelings come into it for me, and the story doesn’t always take a straight line. But I will try.

  Donald and I decided Marianne went in the direction of the fiction classroom, where there was a garden shed, so we went that way. We kept as close to the buildings as we could to cut down on the wind. I had my flashlight and could see, once I passed the dormitories, that the water was rising fast. The gulf was eating up the shoreline, coming up past the mangroves, and water was just pouring down the banks. I thought that if Marianne was anywhere else on campus she’d be okay, but if she’d come down here looking for Tom and Eric she’d be in danger of drowning, literally getting washed out to sea.

  I lost my flashlight somehow, but I didn’t feel afraid for my life, as you wrote in one of your press pieces. I was a swimmer in high school, I’ve always been a good swimmer, and I knew that I would be okay. I felt God with me and Donald, keeping us safe. It was a powerful feeling, as strong as I’ve ever had in church or prayer.

  Somehow, even without a flashlight and with all the clouds and the rain, there was a reflection on the water, and that gave us enough light to see Marianne clinging to the side of the shed, her arms and legs wrapped around a post, her eyes shut tight, like that would help hold her where she was.

  The story I listened to you tell me—even though you weren’t there—was that Donald swam across the washed-out gully to reach her, pulled her down, and swam her back to me. That is not what happened. The truth is that the current was way too swift, and full of fast-moving debris: tree limbs, trash, pieces of metal peeled off from roofs. Donald and I tried wading into it, but the water was still rising, and it just about pulled us under.