I decide to avoid her until after she leaves. The sole thing I have to work out is how I will cash the checks my grandfather sends every month for living expenses. I figure I can write checks off her account to send for bills, I’ve done that many times, but I don’t know how I’ll use checks to shop for food and things I need. I don’t have my own bank account.
Also, I don’t have my car license yet, although I’ve been driving with and without her permission for a few years. It started a few years ago during a snowstorm when she got stuck in Boston and David and I ran out of milk. I got David to swear he wouldn’t tell Wendy if I drove the car to the market down Withensea Avenue. Afterwards, he did the same, on occasion, when he needed to.
But I don’t want to take the chance of being arrested without a license if Wendy is going to be gone for a long time. So I need to ask her to stock up the cabinets with canned foods and fill the freezer with frozen stuff before she leaves.
I write a letter with instructions for her and leave it on the kitchen table when I go to school in the morning. In the afternoon, when I’m back from school, the cabinets and the fridge are absolutely stuffed with food.
This is the fastest response to a food request I’ve ever gotten from Wendy. This evening, when she comes back, I find out why.
“There’s supposed to be a storm coming in a few days. I’m flying out tomorrow so I’m not stuck here,” Wendy says as I walk by her bedroom.
“Tomorrow? Fine. Have a good time. Thanks for the groceries.”
“You’re welcome,” is all she says. She flicks on the TV and starts watching a show called Dallas. She becomes transfixed whenever it comes on. In my room I start a school report due on Monday.
I study more at the house lately because without Jack and the constant party there are actually more nights that it stays quiet and I can focus. The truth is, even though I yelled at Wendy about the parties and stuff, it’s been fairly normal around here lately. Wendy still smokes dope on a regular basis, but she’s slowed down on the drinking. I’m glad for this, but I’m not convinced it won’t change back to the way it’s been before. I hate Wendy. I hate the way she treats me. I hate the way she treated David before he left for college. I hate that she was such a rotten mother when Moses was alive, and even though she didn’t do anything directly to cause his death, I’m angry at her for leaving me in charge of him all the time.
I’ve been studying for about two hours when Wendy knocks.
“What?”
“Can I come in?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“You won’t be up when I leave in the morning. I want to say goodnight and good-bye for a while.”
I realize I don’t know how long she plans to be gone. I assume it will be a few weeks, but now I’m curious. “How long are you going for?”
“At least a month, maybe longer.”
A month? At most she’s left for a couple of weeks in the past. All at once I’m shocked, angry, resigned, rejected—and, in the midst of this, almost giddy with a sense of adventure. I have no idea what will happen if I don’t have to worry about her and Jack. I know I’ll be able to do exactly what I want, when I want, but I’ve had this freedom for years. Still, this will be different; thirty days (or more) of previews of coming attractions for my solitary adult life. In a month, I can construct a new life.
“Give me a hug?” She steps toward me and awkwardly opens her arms.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I don’t move. We never hug.
“Give me a hug?” she says more insistently.
“I’m not going to hug you. I’m pissed at you. It sucks you’re leaving me alone here.” I say this not fully believing it, but I want to punish her anyway.
“Fine,” Wendy says. “You’ll be fine, and I’ll call and check in with you from time to time to see how you’re doing.”
She walks through the doorway and I call out, “Shut it, please.”
She turns around and smiles. “Okay, I’m shutting the door.”
She opens it again.
“By the way, I’m taking the car into Boston and Dorothy’s gonna give me a ride to the airport. I got the food, and I’m leaving you a hundred dollars. You can take the bus if you need to go somewhere. It’s not legal for you to drive without a license.”
“You do lots of illegal things,” I shoot back.
“And you can do them too, when you’re old enough to make those choices,” she says.
I think she feels as happy to be leaving me as I am to see her go.
Twenty-three
Jules, 16 years | February, 1978
THE BLIZZARD OF ‘78
WHEN I WAKE up Wendy is gone.
The fog hangs thick and wafts up from the ocean as I make my way around the corner to Timothy’s. My nostrils fill with brine, the scent sticks to the insides of my nose. The fog rolls off the ocean quickly and the weather has grown colder than it’s been in a while. I wonder if the storm will come in more quickly than Wendy thought.
By the end of the day, long after I’ve come home and Wendy’s plane has left, the rain starts. It rains off and on all night as the temperature continues to fall.
In the morning it’s still raining. Leigh and Timothy and I decide to cancel our plans to meet at my house—we’ll wait until after the storm. We’re excited that we’re going to have a parentless place at our disposal for an entire month.
I spend the day in a blissful daze, drawing. I realize it’s the first time I’ve done an art project in the house since Moses drowned.
It was still raining this morning when I was on my way to the bus stop, but now the rain has turned to snow. When the buses come early to pick us up from school, everybody buzzes with the news that a major storm is howling toward us. School will probably be cancelled tomorrow, and we’ll have a snow day.
I feel elated. I usually hate snow days because they mean long days stuck with Wendy, who inevitably grows irritated and screamy. But now I have time to myself, and I feel like celebrating.
By the time the bus drops us off, Timothy and I are so excited we practically blow down the road. When he says good-bye and heads in the direction of his place, he tells me he’ll call me that night to check on me. As I turn the corner and change my direction, straight into the wind, I’m hit full force with the power of the storm. I swing my body forward into it, but I’m still blown back. My face stings with the sleety snow. I didn’t bother with a scarf this morning, so I’m especially glad for my warm hat and gloves. I curse my hastiness as my face becomes an icy mask.
The snow has already begun to pile up along the road, and the sky has grown so clotted with it I can’t see the ocean over the cliff. I can barely see ten feet in front of me. I walk in the middle of Alethea Road until I hear a car approaching from behind me. As I move to the side, the car pulls up next to me and Mrs. O’Connell rolls her car window down. “Would ya be wantin’ a ride?”
“Oh, no thanks, I’m almost there now.”
“Jump in anyway, dearie. Ya don’t want to be walking around in this mess.”
I slide into the passenger seat and almost instantly feel sorry I did.
“I seen your mother leave the other day with a big suitcase. Are you on your own through this storm?”
Before I can answer she continues.
“If you need anything, dearie, come over. Anytime, you hear, sweetheart? Come over and we can see about it.”
She passes her own driveway across the road and pulls into our driveway to drop me off. The electric blue of our house paint stands out like neon in the snow.
“No chance getting lost in a snowstorm with a paint job like this,” I joke.
“Well, we wondered at it when your mother chose the color, but to each their own, they say, right?” Mrs. O’Connell smiles and winks at me.
I smile back. “Thanks a lot. For everything. I appreciate the offer. I might take you up on it.” I pile out of the car and onto the snowy street. As I walk up the steps, hunting for t
he key in my pocket, I turn to wave her good-bye and slip a bit on the stoop, which is already layered with ice and snow. I can’t see her face through the snowy windshield anymore, but I smile and wave anyway as I let myself in.
Once inside, I peel away my coat, hat, and gloves, which are frozen stiff. I walk over to the thermostat and crank the heater up. I head up and savor a long, steamy shower.
The storm has become a blizzard by the time I wake up. The wind howls and rages all morning. Alone on the cliff, our house has become a target. With no development around it to buffer the gales, the roof groans and branches from our trees scrape across the wooden shingles, making unearthly noises. The power has gone out, the telephone lines are down, and the heavens still dump snow. I decide to start a fire in the fireplace. We still have quite a bit of wood left in the backyard, and the cupboards are full. But I have a new problem—a refrigerator and freezer full of food. I know it all won’t last more than a day with the power out.
It takes the better part of an hour to dig a hole in the snow in the backyard where I can store the food. The snow still pounds down, and the wind howls at huge speeds. Once I finish digging, I transfer the food outside. I have no idea if everything will be fine, but I figure it’s probably my best bet, and with the phone lines down I have no way of contacting anyone to ask. I know if I need assistance I can ask the O’Connells, or another neighbor, or even walk around the corner to grab Timothy. I feel glad to find a solution myself, though, and when I finish and sit in front of the fireplace, warming back up, I feel industrious.
Someone knocks. Mr. O’Connell cowers on the stoop. I’m surprised because neither he nor Mrs. O’Connell has ever come over. I unlock the door and try to brace it as the wind blows it open. “Hello there. Come in.”
He steps inside and we push the door closed against the wind. “Hello Jules. The Missus sent me over to check and make sure you were all right here. I understand you’re roughing it on your own for a few. It’s a nasty storm and a full tide. I expect we’ll see enormous damage when we’re through here. I heard there’s another going to move through tonight and the tides will be high again.”
“I’m fine, but thank you,” I say.
“I see you’ve got a fire going. Keep the grate up and be careful of the down-drafts, they’ll blow the fire right back in on ya. Did you need anything? Food or a flashlight for tonight? It’ll be awhile before they pull the power up again. You can join us for dinner if you like?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got a flashlight and lots of batteries. I put the food in a snow bank out back to keep it cold. How long do you think it’ll keep that way?”
“Oh I expect as long as it’s freezing out there it’ll keep, as long as an animal doesn’t route it out. That was smart thinking, young lady. Remember to keep the faucet running a bit in the sink so’s the pipes don’t freeze.”
I hadn’t thought of this. “I’ll keep the fences locked and the faucet running.”
Mr. O’Connell moves to go. “You do that. I’ll be checking back. You come over if you’ll need anything. All right?”
“All right. I will, and thank you for stopping over.”
“It’s no problem, Jules. You come over if you need anything. Anything at all.”
I’m overcome with his kindness and don’t know how to express my gratitude. “Thank you,” I manage to say as I push and he pulls the door closed. I watch him make his way gingerly down the slippery walkway, the snow now almost knee high, although I shoveled it away just this morning.
I have another visit later that day from Timothy, who comes carrying a basket of goodies from his grandmother. I have more than enough food, so I invite him in to share it with me. We eat canned oysters, water crackers, and homemade canned peaches. Afterwards, we play backgammon and he teaches me how to play Blackjack and Gin Rummy.
Before the sky darkens again he helps me carry several loads of wood in to stack by the fireplace. He bundles up and makes his way back home after I assure him I’m fine. I have several good books and my flashlight. I make up my sleeping bag in front of the fireplace and settle in for the night.
In the middle of the night I wake up to what sounds like a freight train roaring outside. I’ve never heard the wind so strong and loud and scary-sounding.
I hear a long, loud, groaning and cracking sound.
The old willow tree in the backyard.
It comes down with a giant thud that makes the foundation tremble, and when I look outside I can see it lying perfectly perpendicular to the back stairs. A few more feet and the branches would have taken out all the windows on the back side of the house. I clutch the flashlight and make a round of taping all the big windows on the north side of the house. The panes rattle in the sills, and I worry the wind might blow them in.
I think about calling Timothy. He has a private phone and I know I won’t wake up his family. Then I remember the phone lines are down.
The blizzard continues for another full day.
After perusing our library wall, I find one of the largest books I haven’t read yet, Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The power is still off. I bundle up in my sweatshirt and coat in front of the fireplace. I don’t sleep at all, but the book keeps my mind off the storm.
When I take a break early the next day and check, the power and phones are still down. The storm has stopped, but the sky is still draped in a deep, pearl-gray shroud.
I settle back in with my book, but a knock at the door soon breaks my concentration. Timothy poses in the doorway with a huge grin on his face. He lifts a pail up. “Grab your boots. I wanna show you something.”
“What’s going on? Where are you taking me?”
“Down to the beach.”
“Are we going clamming?”
By the time we’ve gotten halfway down the cliff, I see something I’ve never seen before.
The beach swarms with lobsters. I’ve never seen so many crawly things except in a horror film.
“Oh my gosh! We are going to have a lobster feast!”
The craggy rocks that line the jetty are covered in icy snow, and the lobsters must have slid over them, falling back onto the beach. The high tides have created a strange dividing line between the rocky sand and the mounds of snow that blanket the seawall down below. The lobsters dot the snow mounds like slow-moving bites of red licorice.
As we scramble down the beach path I ask, “Why is this happening?”
Timothy calls over his shoulder. “The high tides, the changes in water salinity and temperature … so many things can cause their movement.”
“Will they find their way back to the water?”
“Most of them will, but let’s move the ones by the seawall back towards the water. They won’t live more than a day out of the water.”
First we fill our pail with the lobsters that were moving in the wrong direction, toward the cliffs, and we dump them back at the water’s edge. We do this until we can’t find any more stragglers. Then we fill our pail with lobsters and seaweed to bring back with us. I figure I can cook them all and store what we don’t eat out in the igloo refrigerator I’ve built in our backyard.
Back at my place, we drop the pail of lobsters on the porch. After throwing off our wet boots and coats inside, we grab newspaper from the fireplace and lay it out on the kitchen floor and around the sink. Lobster makes a mess. Timothy brings the pail inside and helps me stuff them all in the sink while we get everything else ready. They drip all over everything.
I put our lobster pot—a beat-up big old silver-colored thing—in the sink, covering the bottom of the pan with water. After transferring the pot to the grate in the fireplace, I boil the water with salt and white vinegar. Timothy helps me grab the backs of the lobsters, lift them, and throw them into the pot headfirst to stun them. I throw the lid on and wait for it to boil again. They’re small lobsters, so they’ll be tasty. I set the timer on the stove for ten minutes. The lobsters knock against the pot like they’re doing a sabre dance. Without opening
my mouth I make a high-pitched sound in the back of my throat to make Timothy think they’re screaming.
“Stop that!” he laughs. “It makes me sad to think they have to die so we can eat them.”
After a while the sabre dancing stops inside the pot. I have a smaller pot on the grate. I run outside to my snow igloo of food, and I bring back a stick of butter to melt in the pot.
When the timer goes off, the lobsters are carnelian red, my favorite red. I use a long-handled wooden spoon to test the tails and make sure they’re all curled tight. I move the pot into the kitchen sink and let it cool down with the lid off. I can smell the salty cooked lobsters and start to taste it in my mouth. By this time the butter smell is mingling with the salt, and I can feel my stomach grumbling.
“Plates are in that cabinet,” I remind Timothy. We hardly ever eat here, so he doesn’t know my kitchen very well.
We are moments away from savoring cracked lobster. I grab the tiny tined forks from the drawer, and then remember I need more newspaper for under our plates on the counter.
By the time I’m back from the living room Timothy’s already put the lobsters on our plates and soaked the floors and counter with the briny water.
“This floor is a Slip ’N Slide,” I exclaim.
“Whoops.” Timothy grins.
After mopping up what I can with the newspaper, I grab the hammer from the tool drawer we keep in the kitchen and we go to work—first twisting the claws off, then bending back the claws to expose the soft, pinky-white flesh inside, then trading off with the hammer to open the hard shells. We pull at the meat with our tiny forks and dip it into the small saucepan set on countertop. I worry that it might burn the Formica, so I grab a couple of potholders to put underneath. I figure they’ll catch any unruly butter drips.
The lobster is tender and sweet. We’re quickly creating a pile of lobster carcasses, passing the hammer back and forth. We grab spoons from the drawer to drizzle butter over the midsections before we suck the juicy meat out of the small, sharp-edged holes. I almost lick the buttery spoon, but remember my manners. The meat is moist, sweet, and salty. Lobster heaven! We eat every single one.
The Belief in Angels Page 25