by Anna Woltz
“What?”
“Believing.”
He sighs. “Do you want a quick rundown of my family?”
I nod.
“Okay, hold on tight. My dad hasn’t had a job for three years and he drinks too much. My mom’s really smart but she works days in a supermarket and cleans offices at night. She’s convinced that God is going to save her from this vale of tears, but the Old Guy’s still keeping her waiting. I am the son who should have made everything right. But instead I just messed it all up.” He sniffs again. “Now it’s your turn. A quick rundown of your family of unbelievers.”
I hesitate. And then I jump in.
“My mom’s an artist and she’s pretty famous. Nora Quinn—ever heard of her? My dad was the principal of my high school. Last week he had to resign because he’d been sending disgusting text messages to a student for months. And I was the perfect model daughter—until I sneaked onto a plane to New York.”
Jim is silent for a moment. And then he starts to grin.
“Whoa! Those crazy atheists! Is it really bad of me to laugh about the text messages?” He sees my expression and quickly says, “Ah, yeah, I thought it probably was.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “So … do you have any idea what he said in these text messages?”
“Seriously?” I cry. “You really want … ”
“Never mind,” he says. “Sorry, I’m just a filthy teenager and God will surely punish me. But no, let’s just be serious for a moment. It makes quite a difference, what was in those messages. If it was hard-core porn or something more along the lines of, um, your hair looked so beautiful and glossy when I saw you in class this morning … ”
I can tell he wants to laugh again, but he manages not to.
“It was more that kind of thing,” I say.
A few of the text messages leaked and are now dancing around online. They’re nothing like pornography. My dad sounds more like a thirteen-year-old nerd falling in love for the first time. He writes that he forgets all about vector spaces and diagonal matrices when he sees Juno. Tells her that every evening he calculates the chance of bumping into her in the hallway the next day. And that she shines like Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.
He’s clearly into recycling. Because my dad always used to say that thing about the brightest star to me.
“So there wasn’t a single text message about her boobs?” Jim asks. “Or about his big wooden desk and how much he’d like to … ”
“You complete sleaze!” I thump him on the same arm as the half-amputated finger and he winces. “When some horny president does that kind of thing, you’re allowed to laugh. But this is my dad!”
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Emilia. I’ll pray for him tonight.”
We walk on and he starts talking about the financial crisis again. About houses that have to be sold and about ordinary people losing their jobs while big bankers are still getting bonuses of millions of dollars a year. I know now that he’s not just talking about generalities and abstract figures. I understand that he’s telling his own family’s story over and over again. A true story about a dad who’s been unemployed for three years. About a mom with two crappy little jobs. And about a son who left it all behind and escaped to New York.
As soon as we’re through the sliding glass doors of the hospital, I stop. I can smell the blood and the sickness. I can see people with drips and slippers and wheelchairs.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “This was pretty dumb of me. I can’t go in there with you.”
“But I bet I’m going to have to wait forever!” says Jim. “It’s going to be mind-numbing. If you’re there, then you can at least tell me some more fun stories about pervy text messages.”
“Come on, Jim, how … ”
“Sorry,” he says. “I can’t help it. Oversexed teen, yadda yadda.” He sighs. “Seriously, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Usually I’m pretty good with girls. If I do say so myself. But with you … Is that why you don’t want to come with me? Because I’m a jerk?”
I don’t look at him. “I just didn’t think this through.” I turn around and walk back through the doors. Away from the warmth, back to the cold.
Jim comes after me. “Can’t stand the sight of blood? Is that it?”
“No. It’s bacteria I can’t stand, okay? I’m a freak.”
“Hey, wait a moment!” He catches up with me. “At least take this.” He pulls the giant package of Reduced Guilt Air-Popped Popcorn out of the shopping bag. “It’s still closed, so there’s guaranteed no bacteria.” And then he smiles at me. “Yeah, you’re a freak. A pretty cute freak, though. With cool hair.”
When I’ve walked three whole blocks, when my knees are completely back to normal and I’ve forgotten his smile, I stop. I clean my hands with a disinfectant wipe, open the purple package, and start eating.
Half an hour later, I finally understand the hurricane checklist. Why they said we needed comfort food. It wasn’t for during the hurricane. It was for now.
I am a popcorn machine. My hand dips into the bag over and over again. My jaws munch. My legs walk. And my brain stays calm. All around me, shivering tourists wander along the wet streets, but I have my own supply of food with me and I’m safe. For now.
No one looks at me. Last year in the Netherlands, after a heavy snowfall, people smiled at one another in the street. Because it was special and it made everyone think of Christmas. But today the street isn’t glistening with a happy layer of snow. New York after Sandy is so unrecognizable that it’s disturbing. The center of the world should not be closed. At the center of the world you shouldn’t have to be scared of the moment when it gets dark.
I eat my popcorn and walk farther and farther to the north. I don’t stop until I come to a giant glass cube on the corner in front of Central Park. An apple with a bite taken out of it hovers in the middle of the glass, and if you look down through the cube, you can see a bright white store full of iPads. There’s another pathetic line of sandbags in front of the door, and lots of people are standing around the cube in silence, shivering in their wet coats.
For a moment I wonder if it’s some kind of ritual. Are these people worshipping the latest iPhone? But then I understand. The store’s closed, but the power here is still working—and that means there’s Wi-Fi. If you hold your cell phone close to the cube, you’re online!
As quickly as I can, I fold the bag of popcorn closed, clean my hands again, and start swiping my fingers across the screen of my cell phone. The people around me, on all four sides of the cube, are doing the same. I assume they’ve walked up here out of the darkness too. But I’ll never know, because I don’t speak to them.
Fuck solidarity, I think, WE HAVE WI-FI! I open Google and start searching. I want to find out how we’re doing in New York. What we’ve been through these past hours. Where exactly everything went dark. What it all looked like. And what we’re thinking now.
• • •
I finally tear myself away from my cell phone at three thirty. My fingers have changed into dead twigs—any longer and my touchscreen won’t even recognize me as human. I must be about an hour and a half from home, and I really should get going. Or I won’t be back before dark.
As I walk through the gray city, mechanically eating popcorn again, I think about the devastation I saw online. I think about the photos of water gushing into subway stations and the people who have lost everything.
Because Hurricane Sandy really was as bad as all that. She destroyed entire houses. Roads, electric cables, trees, cars, and bridges. And people.
While we were sitting safely inside our hurricane shelter, there were dozens of deaths. And people are still in danger. Old folks who live on the fifteenth story of an apartment building are imprisoned now that the elevator’s stopped working. Thousands of people are without dry clothes, hot food, warm beds.
I wish I could help. On a website I saw that they need volunteers to distribute food and to visit old people and to clean away the mud. B
ut I don’t dare. I don’t want to get any colder and dirtier than necessary. How can I spend a whole day scrubbing mud and then come home to an ice-cold apartment with no shower?
I can feel the blackness closing in.
Another three blocks and there won’t be any power. I send a text message to my mom and dad to let them know it’ll be at least eighteen hours before I have a signal again. At a diner that’s actually open, I buy two large bottles of water and, shuddering, I visit the bathroom.
Just before the border, where the stoplights on the other side of the street are dead, I see a camping table covered with power strips. The table’s on the sidewalk in front of a brightly lit supermarket, and handwritten signs say you can charge your phone here for free. Dozens of people stand waiting around the table, gazing at a tangle of chargers and cables and cell phones.
“Oh, it feels so good!” shouts a boy with spiky hair. “Power at last!”
My hands shaking, I take the charger from my bag. There’s just one socket free in one of the power strips, and I go for it. I gaze, hypnotized, at the charging symbol on the screen of my cell phone.
“I was just at this hotel uptown,” says a skinny girl in a crocheted hat. “I wanted to charge my cell in the lobby, but they threw me out. Can you believe it? They have no idea what it’s like down here!”
“We are the People of Darkness,” a man with a Mohawk and a scruffy dog on a rope says. “During the daytime we may enjoy the pleasures of a city with working traffic lights and heating. But then we must return to our City of Darkness.”
As my phone sucks up power, I listen quietly to the conversations. The people around me haven’t showered today, but I stay anyway. Because here, finally, I can feel it. We share something. I’m standing on a freezing sidewalk in New York, surrounded by people with Mohawks and hipster glasses, and I understand them.
It’s getting dark, but I don’t want to leave. It’s crazy. I understand these people better than my own parents. We’ve been a family over there in the Netherlands for fifteen years now, but how many times have I ever felt that we were going through the same thing? How many times have we seen one another out walking in the snow and smiled?
I stand there looking at my phone as the sky slowly gets darker. The scruffy dog lies down and people talk about their day. About just one day, in fact—one day that we’ve all lived through today. And they share tips: There’s an Indian restaurant on Second Avenue that’s selling takeout from a dark doorway. The Korean deli on St. Mark’s Place is partially flooded, but it’s still open; the owners are proud that their store has never been closed for a day or a night during its entire existence. And that includes now.
I can no longer feel where my feet end and my boots begin, but still I stay. Because I want to.
Power at last.
I seriously underestimated those last few blocks home. Without lights, the streets are lethal. Cars can race across half of Manhattan and not encounter a single stoplight, and it’s almost impossible to cross the street.
Am I really the only one who’s out walking? My first few days in New York, when it was still light, I saw some homeless people out on the streets. Not many, but a few. Where are those people now? Are they happy that it’s finally dark in their bedrooms? Are they waiting around the corner to leap out at me?
There’s a vicious wind blowing but I can still feel sweat on my back. I open my eyes as wide as I can and do my best not to trip over curbs, basement doors, and cracks in the sidewalk.
I’m out of breath by the time I finally reach our street. As fast as I can, I head to the front door of our building, but just as I’m about to put my foot on the first step, I collide with something that’s alive. I scream. Really loud.
“It’s me,” says Seth’s voice.
“Jesus!” My heart is pounding away. My whole body is tingling. “You nearly gave me a heart attack … ” For a moment I think I’m going to cry, but then I start laughing. “I thought you were some homeless person, or a burglar, or … ”
Seth clears his throat. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you?”
I can’t see his face, but he sounds pretty mad.
“We didn’t agree on a time, did we?” I say. The adrenaline is still bouncing around inside my body. “We said Jim and I would be here sometime after five. That was all. Wasn’t it?”
“But you didn’t come back with Jim!” There’s a catch in his voice. “Jim’s been here an hour already, while you were out wandering around goodness knows where in a pitch-black city. Without anyone being able to contact you. I thought you’d gotten lost, or been murdered or kidnapped, or at least hacked into pieces.”
“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?” I say. But at the same time I’m thinking: He was waiting for me. In the cold. In the dark. He was worried. Not about some girl who looks like a cheerleader, but about me.
“Emilia!” Abby beams as I come in. “Bridget gave us some candles and I’ve made the place supercozy.”
I look around the room and hear the tune from that singing, jingling park in my head again: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas … The apartment hasn’t completely cooled down yet so, compared to outside, it’s warm. It smells like oranges and there are tea lights everywhere: on the window ledge, on the counter, in front of the antique mirror.
“Hallelujah!” Jim calls from the couch. “The Dutch atheist is still alive. We had to send Seth outside, because the poor boy just couldn’t stand it anymore.”
I drop down next to him on the couch. My legs are exhausted from all that walking.
“So? Did the hospital pull off your finger?”
He nods. “According to my calculations, I only have eight fingers left now.” He picks up a rectangular cardboard box from the floor. “I brought you a present.”
By the flickering candlelight I read the label: “Single-use medical rubber examination gloves.” One hundred pairs of disposable gloves.
“For the freak,” he says quietly. “Handy, eh, now that we don’t have any water? You can take a pee or pick your nose a hundred times without getting your hands dirty.”
At first I think he’s joking. That he’s trying to make fun of me, like they do at school. But he’s not laughing.
“Were they for sale at the hospital?”
“Let’s just say they were lying around. And I thought: No one could put those things to better use than Emilia. Am I right?”
I give him a surprised nod. So the glamorous movie star can be a nice guy too.
• • •
Seth has remembered that there’s a ton of food in the freezer in the basement. It’s all thawing, of course, so tomorrow or the next day we’ll have to throw it out. But right now it’s still icy cold inside the big box. So our first actual hurricane meal is a five-course dinner.
At a table covered with tea lights, we eat tomato soup and hamburgers and corn on the cob and meat loaf and pancakes with lots and lots of syrup. And then Jim makes mulled wine so we can get extra warm before we have to go to our cold beds. He takes a big pan and mixes a bottle of red wine with fruit from the freezer, cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves, and a few big spoonfuls of sugar.
“Mom says I’m not allowed to drink wine,” says Abby. She’s looking into the pan as Jim stirs.
“I’m heating it up,” he says, “so the alcohol evaporates. Seriously, I know what I’m doing. My grandma makes the best mulled wine in all of Michigan.”
I stand close to him, on the other side, because it’s reassuringly warm next to the stove. I have no idea if I’m allowed to have alcohol. I talk to my dad about the universe and about prime numbers. I talk to my mom about art. But we don’t talk about alcohol, condoms, cigarettes, or drugs.
Another subject we’ve never discussed is the fact that it’s not appropriate to send text messages to underage students.
If only I’d given him better advice. He obviously needed a good daughter-to-father chat.
“Ready!” says Jim.
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I wonder if he’s heated the wine for long enough, but I don’t say anything. I help him fill four mugs and take them to the couch. It’s ominously quiet outside. There are no cars and no people out on the streets. It feels as if the polar night has begun.
Abby and I sit down next to Jim on the couch, and Seth takes a chair opposite. I can see that he thinks we’re paying too much attention to the movie star. But can I help it that Jim got such a great recipe from his grandma? And that he’s been so nice for the past couple hours that I actually feel brave enough to talk to him? My knees sometimes forget to go weak for a whole fifteen minutes.
I take a cautious sip of the wine. The spicy concoction is bitter and sweet at the same time. I can feel the warmth sliding down my throat and spreading through my body.
“Wow,” I say, “this is good.”
I take another sip and Abby does the same. Her eyes begin to sparkle.
“Wow, this really is fucking great!”
Shocked, Seth stares at his little sister.
“What?” Abby asks defiantly. She quickly takes another sip. “Jim says fuck all the time.”
“People say a lot of things.” Seth frowns. “But you don’t have to parrot everything some high-school dropout says, do you? Surely you’re smart enough to come up with a better word?”
Jim stays admirably calm.
“So do you have something against sex?” he asks Seth in a friendly voice.
“My sister’s eleven years old!”
“And? She knows how people reproduce. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?” Jim tilts his head. “But perhaps you’re the one who feels uncomfortable with that word? Because you’re worried? Because you’ve never … ”
“Eeww!” I yell. I put my hands over my ears and shake my head. “I don’t want to listen to this. I flew across an entire ocean just to escape that kind of talk!”
To my surprise, they fall silent. I hadn’t taken the eleven-year-old into account, though.
“Actually,” says Abby seriously, “I don’t really get it. Reproduction, I mean. How does it all, like, fit together?”