Wave

by Mara, Wil

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. The inclusion of all her personal items had given it considerable weight and bulk, but she didn’t appear to notice.

  “Good luck, honey,” Myra said, rubbing her back.

  Karen pushed the front door aside and headed for her car, first in a brisk walk, then a moderate jog. She wiped the tears away, leaving dark mascara streaks in their wake. The bag was thrown into the passenger seat, the rattling keys jammed into the ignition. The engine roared to life, and she thanked God her husband was diligent about car care. Mike wasn’t a mechanic but he could’ve been if he’d chosen to. He could fix or build anything. He took care of all the handy-work around the house and was more or less fanatical about making sure everything ran at peak efficiency. Karen sometimes teased him about his anal behavior, but inside she was comforted by it. She had scores of girlfriends whose husbands had to be goaded, bribed, or outright threatened to do anything around the house.

  As soon as she pulled onto Route 72 she saw them—the two thick lines of traffic on the westbound side. There was a traffic light about a hundred feet up, and it had been turned off. A cop was standing at the intersection, urging everyone forward. His patrol car was parked next to him, lights swirling.

  She suddenly noticed a car on her side of 72 coming toward her. For a second she was nearly paralyzed by confusion. Then she moved into the right lane and saw that there were others behind it. They’re using the eastbound lanes to get people out, too. For some reason that made it more frightening; here was further confirmation that systems were breaking down, that the glue that held this community together was beginning to melt.

  She became acutely aware of her place in all of this—thousands of people pouring off the island while she headed back to it. Her heart pounded and perspiration broke out all over her body. She lowered all the windows because it was suddenly too hot and difficult to breathe.

  She wiped more tears from her eyes and, perhaps a little cruelly, forced all thoughts of Patrick and Michael aside. They would distract her, and right now she needed to concentrate. If she got into an accident—Jesus, she didn’t even want to think about that. What would Mike say? What would he do if she didn’t get back in time?

  She decided it was time to try calling Mike again. Without taking her eyes off the road, she reached into the bag for her cell phone. When she was blocked by the profusion of personal items she’d stuffed in there, she turned the bag over and shook everything onto the seat. In direct support of Murphy’s Law, the phone was the last item to fall out. She snatched it up and, using only her thumb, hit MEMORY and then 2. She knew it was illegal in New Jersey not to use a hands-free headset when making calls on the road, but there was no time for that now. She cradled the phone between her chin and shoulder and waited.

  At first there was only silence. Then a cheerful female voice said, “We’re sorry, all lines are busy. Please try your call again later.”

  She tried again but got the same message.

  As she approached the intersection, the cop who had been directing traffic spotted her. He was tall and heavy, with a gut that bulged like a full-term pregnancy. He wore his cap low, like a drill sergeant, and had a dark mustache. Karen watched him—watched and waited for the inevitable reaction. He moved to her side of the highway and started waving his hands.

  No, please don’t. Don’t walk out into the road to stop me.

  She wondered what she’d do. Run him down in cold blood? If not—if she stopped—how much time would be lost? Would it make all the difference? Would she regret it later? Would the day come when she wished she had run him down?

  Mercifully it never came to that. The cop couldn’t make it to her lane because too many cars were speeding by in the other westbound lane. Just before the car at the front of the line—a pearl-white Lexus sedan—reached her, the driver stuck his arm out the window and jabbed a finger westward. You’re supposed to be going that way, stupid! was obviously the message. He was honking his horn, too. In fact, she noticed for the first time, a lot of people were honking. She glanced at the cars on the normal westbound side. Almost every face in every vehicle was staring at her. There were other finger-jabbers, too.

  “I’m going to get my children,” she said through clenched teeth to no one driver in particular. “So you can just stuff it.”

  She crossed the intersection, and the cop screamed over the roof of a passing car, “Stop or you’ll be arrested at the next checkpoint!”

  She kept going.

  The cop yelled, “Hey!” again, and she could see him in the mirror, pointing and blowing his whistle. Then, to her horror, he took his walkie-talkie from his belt, never once taking his eyes off her. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw someone who looked so pissed off.

  She turned back to the road, and her heart jumped into her throat—some idiot trying to play policeman’s little helper had moved his ancient Ford pickup into her lane to act as a barrier. The driver stepped out—tall and lanky, long golden hair with a full beard and mustache. A young dark-haired woman was in the passenger seat and looked utterly terrified. But her boyfriend/husband/whatever was grinning in that way only a man can when he’s sure he’s going to get the best of someone.

  Karen registered all this in a span of maybe two seconds. That left about two more to react. She jerked the wheel clockwise, driving off the pavement and onto a sandy area that acted as a makeshift shoulder. The car bumped around like a ride at an amusement park. She screeched a few obscenities and prayed, internally, that she wouldn’t hit the idiot who had forced her to do this. She was vaguely aware of him as he passed by the open window, could hear him yell a few expletives of his own, and saw him jump back to avoid being struck.

  She twisted the wheel and returned to the road. It was worse than getting off—new pavement had been set down less than a month earlier, creating a rough-hewn lip of nearly three inches. She heard a loud knock, then an angry metal scrape as the undercarriage dragged across the hard surface.

  The car fishtailed into position, and she jammed the pedal to the floor. The engine screamed in protest. Tough shit, she thought cruelly. Now’s the time I need you the most. The urge to look in the rearview mirror itched like a rash, but she resisted it. She had to be on the lookout for others who had heroic aspirations. Once word got around, she realized, there’d definitely be others. For a second or so this frightened her, but then the fear faded, as if it had been tossed in a tray marked “For Later.” Some kind of liquid strength—cold and potent—flooded into her.

  Let them come, she thought as she passed the pizza place where she and her family had eaten just a few weeks ago. I dare them.

  BethAnn wasn’t sure what to take with her, and her mind was spinning so much stark fear that it was almost impossible to concentrate. She had virtually no book-learning skills to speak of—she’d finished up high school with a glowing D average—but she had a natural cleverness about certain things. She knew enough, for example, not to bother with the television set. It was old and outdated, and the insurance money would cover a new one anyway. (This kind of excited her, actually—she fantasized about what kind she’d get, and decided one of the flat-screen, high-definition models ought to suffice.) Same with the fridge and most of the furniture. There was almost no jewelry, and what she had was cheap costume crap. Her engagement ring (which Kenny had given her at the Carousel Ice Cream Parlor, in Barnegat Light, buried in a banana split) and her wedding ring were both history, sold on eBay for about five percent of their original price. The money was long gone.

  That left only a small collection of family photos and the videotapes. She was sure she wanted the former, so she hustled down the hall into the bedroom. The stench hit her like a boxer’s punch—the dirty clothes that formed a small mountain in one corner, the empty food containers. On the nightstand was a plate with orange streaks of hardened cheese sauce. A fork was welded to the surface. Over the bed, the one and only window in the r
oom was covered by a piece of cardboard that partially bore the logo for Tide laundry soap.

  The folding closet doors were already open. She dropped to her knees and dug madly though the rotting sneakers until she found a shoebox with a rubber band around it. It weighed no more than a couple of pounds, but it was still an effort for her to pull it out of there and heft it onto the bed. Sifting quickly through the contents, she rediscovered different stages of her life. The deeper she dug, the farther back through history she went.

  She found a shopping bag under the kitchen sink and slipped the shoebox inside. Then she grabbed three bags of junk food from the cabinet over the fridge—cheese doodles (crunchy, not puffed), caramel popcorn, and pork rinds. She knew she’d want something to munch on while she was in the car. It would keep her from chewing her fingernails down to the skin.

  She went into the living room, the bag slung over her shoulder like she was some kind of Bowery bum or maybe a Santa Claus wannabe. The TV was still on, CNN’s Bill Hemmer still giving up-to-the-minute reports on this latest world event. The headline along the bottom now read Tsunami Expected to Strike Southern New Jersey Coast at Approximately 11:30 a.m. BethAnn consulted the clock on the wall—two brass strips on a slab of jagged-edged wood forever trapped in about eighty coats of clear glaze—and gasped when she saw that it was almost ten. Her first impulse was to run—just jump in the car, hit the gas, and keep going until the Causeway was nothing but a shrinking shape in the rearview mirror.

  But the tapes, the videotapes she had amassed and cataloged over the years…what to do with those? She had been so meticulous that she even surprised herself. She’d buy blanks in bulk—packs of five, six, sometimes ten. Then she’d insert one into the VCR and set the timer. After a show was successfully taped (she always thought of it as “captured”), she’d write the information (name, subject, date aired) on the label affixed to the side. Her handwriting had always been damn near illegible, but for some reason she went out of her way to write neatly. As the collection grew into the hundreds it became one of the few aspects of her life she took pride in.

  Did she really want to throw that all away now?

  There wasn’t enough room for the tapes in the bag she had, so she went back to the kitchen and got another one—a dark green garbage bag that was large enough, she hoped, to carry the entire load.

  She kept the tapes in a tall cabinet next to the TV. She’d bought it at the Wal-Mart in Manahawkin and put it together herself. It took almost a full day because she had no patience when it came to reading directions, and it was a bit crooked because she had no mechanical skills, either. It had cost her $69.95, and she didn’t really have the money to spare, but three weeks of careful skimming and creative accounting at Acme had covered it.

  She tried to pull the doors open, but they were locked tight. Then she remembered—the previous Friday, after she’d come home from a grueling six-hour shift, she had wanted to watch a particular episode of Jenny Jones she’d taped awhile back, but couldn’t find the key. She had planned to do a trailer-wide search but never got to it.

  She wrapped all ten fingers around one handle, set her foot against the opposite door, and…

  “One…two…three!”

  The staple-shaped handle ripped free of the wood, and BethAnn went sprawling. She tried valiantly to maintain her balance, flailing like an alarmed chicken, but her legs gave way and she plowed into the end table next to the couch, sending the contents of a large Tupperware bowl—a two-day-old supply of party mix—flying.

  Cursing loudly, she scrambled to her feet with uncharacteristic nimbleness, grabbed a wooden chair from a set of four that surrounded a circular table, and began beating the cabinet with it. She was running on pure adrenaline, pure fury. She aimed for the lock at the center but would be just as satisfied if one of the doors simply crumbled. She could hear the tapes clattering inside, tumbling from their shelves in what amounted to a major earthquake in their little world.

  The tantrum ended when there was nothing left of the chair, and one of the cabinet doors had split down the center. Then, like a contestant in a shopping spree, she grabbed everything in sight. The bag quickly became too heavy, so she dropped it to the floor and began using both hands. It took almost two full minutes to retrieve all one hundred twenty-four tapes.

  Before she turned to go, she spit into the empty cabinet and told it to go fuck itself. She wanted to give it a brisk kick and knock it over, too, but she was too winded.

  She knew she wouldn’t be able to carry both bags, so she decided to bring the tapes to the car first. She expected them to be heavy, so she tried to mentally prepare herself. She got to one knee, wrapped the bag’s yellow tie-loops around her hand, then turned herself so they were over her shoulder. One thing she’d learned from doing inventory at Acme: Let your legs do the work, not your back.

  She rose slowly, and the moment the bag left the ground and the full weight of it became her burden, an unbelievable dizziness overwhelmed her—she had no idea they’d be this heavy.

  She staggered around like an exhausted dancer, trying to maintain both her footing and her consciousness. Then, without warning, the bottom of the bag split and the tapes gushed out. They bounced and slid in every direction, some of them disappearing under the couch.

  Already trembling with anger from the confrontation with the cabinet, BethAnn willingly gave up her remaining hold on sanity. She let the deflated garbage bag fall away and grabbed another chair. Instead of directing her rage on the tapes themselves (which had caused the problem) or on the bag that had broken (how do you hurt a goddamn garbage bag?), she simply began swinging at anything that looked like it could be damaged in a satisfying way. A tall bamboo shelf with a rounded peak that she’d always hated became the first victim. It had been in Kenny’s dorm room the one year he went to college. As she hit it broadside it folded like someone taking a blow to the stomach. When it toppled over in agony, she proceeded to beat it until it was nearly flat. All the cheap little porcelain figurines that had been on it were reduced to sharp white crumbs on the gold carpet.

  Next came the glass-topped coffee table that Kenny had found at a factory tag sale for about ten bucks. She had always claimed she hated it, but what really steamed her was the fact that it actually looked pretty good with the rest of their furniture. She thought of herself as the interior decorator in those days and didn’t appreciate the way he’d invaded her turf. The smoked glass shattered into a billion tiny, glittering pieces on the first shot. The frame, more pressboard junk, also yielded with minimal resistance.

  The round table that she and her ex-husband had eaten hundreds of meals on (and twice had sex on) broke neatly in two after the third blow, as if it’d been chopped in half by a martial-arts expert. The two pieces fell forward and were left leaning against one other.

  She paused for a moment to find the next target. When she spotted Paula Zahn on CNN, her blood began boiling. Another little princess with straight white teeth and no hips. There was a speck of hesitation, though—did she really want to smash the TV? Then she remembered that the insurance company would get her a new one, and the light in her head went from red to green. A smile stretched across her doughy face.

  She ran sideways, bringing what was left of the chair back like a baseball bat. She had never participated in sports in school and hated gym class with a passion, but she did have some natural ability. The swing in this case was perfect. Broad and powerful, it made contact at just the right spot in the arc. The great glass eye exploded in a shower of sparks, and smoke seethed out from all sides, bleeding through the plastic vents like steam from a city sewer grate. She wrenched the chair from the hole and struck again, this time on top. That took out the cable box, which was fine with her; their service always sucked anyway. The third and final blow, on the side, knocked the set from its perch. It tipped over with comical dramatic slowness. As it hit the floor, it yanked the plug from its socket, which BethAnn took as a sign of surrender. />
  Furious energy was still surging through her, but she was finished with the destructive aspect of the tantrum. She tossed the remains of the chair aside (where it landed only inches from the last one) and went back to the kitchen. This time she took not one but three garbage bags from the cabinet under the sink, tripling them up so there’d be plenty of support.

  She dropped to her knees and gathered all the tapes she could find. She decided not to waste any time counting them; if she got the bulk of them, that’d be enough. When the bag was full, she hefted it over her shoulder, got to her feet, and went to the door. It was locked, of course. She didn’t want to take either hand off the bag, so she gave the door a hard kick. It swung back violently and banged on the wooden handrail. The sunlight was fierce. The heat, too, poured in with a vengeance, as if it had been waiting for the chance to get in there. She loaded the tapes into the trunk of her ancient Toyota Celica, then went back for the second bag.

  She paused at the doorway for the briefest moment. She appraised everything once, quickly scanning the catalog of memories she’d amassed since buying this place. She realized she had absolutely no emotional attachment to it. She was leaving with more or less exactly what she had brought six years ago—a box of photographs and her physical self. The tapes were simply a by-product of a personal interest that could’ve been administered anywhere, anytime. Six long years she’d been here, and virtually nothing had changed. At least nothing for the better.

  Leaving the door wide open, she turned and left.

  “Have you spoken to your parents yet?” Brian asked. Then he answered his own question—“I don’t think you have.”