The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

by Michele Young-Stone

  He said, “This is my house. My rules. You break curfew, you pay.”

  There was no point in trying to explain that she couldn’t miss the movie’s happy ending. She adored Clark Gable: so charming and suave.

  An hour later, her mother had knocked at her bedroom door. It was late. Mary’s father was asleep. Her mother brought baked pears and warm milk.

  “I’m not hungry,” Mary had said.

  “He doesn’t mean it.”

  Mary took her notebook into the kitchen, the pear aroma staying with her. She fixed a Jim Beam and Coke. Her hands were aged now; brown spots mingled with freckles. It was funny to see them this way, reminding her of her mother.

  My mother loved me. Mary sipped from the sweating glass and cried.

  Her mother would say, “There’s no sense crying over spilled milk or bourbon and Coke.”

  Craving a jar of her mother’s pear preserves, Mary fixed a grape jelly sandwich. A lot of the women at the Dogwood Estates retirement center, where she now taught poetry, were like her mother—stubborn and ornery, remembering their lives as well lived, as good, and hell, Mary thought, they ought to remember them that way. She sipped from her glass. Who wants to be old and full of regret? Who wants to be old and sorry for the life she’s lived? Who wants to be eighty and thinking “I shouldn’t have done that. I wish I could take that back.” Her mother would say, “Regret the things you haven’t done, not the things you have. Learn from life. Live every day as though it’s your last.” God, she thought, my mother was full of clichés. Mary finished her drink. Smoothing a page in the old notebook, she wrote: It’s never too late to make peace with the world.

  Excerpt from

  THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  Education is your best defense.

  Brigitte McCray, survivor from Chilhowie, Virginia, said, “When I was sixteen, I thought I was invincible. A few thunder booms didn’t scare me. When I got struck, I saw God. I was too young to see God. Now at the first sign of a storm I go inside. I stay away from the phone, the plumbing, and the windows.”

  A poet and artist, Brigitte also travels to schools in southwestern Virginia to educate teenagers about the dangers of lightning.

  [26]

  Emphysema and Apple Pie, 1988

  After one year, the pantry was piled with warped canvases of unfinished nudes and still lifes and oils never left to dry.

  Christopher Lord, Becca’s professor, met her for pizza on Bleecker Street. Becca called him Apple Pie in spite of his steel-studded leather jacket and his get-in-free card at CBGB’s. She called him Apple Pie because of his wife and two kids on Long Island. Because of his board memberships and tenure—something her father had never managed.

  Across the table, he squeezed her hand.

  She said, “This is the sketchbook I was telling you about.” She called it “Mon Histoire, My History.” She felt the need to share it with him, wanting his approval. There were charcoal and oil pastel depictions of Grandma Edna, pen-and-inks of the woman selling watermelon in Yeatesville, of her dad in Barnacle Bob’s, of her mom on the kitchen floor. There was a pencil drawing of Kevin Richfield.

  He flipped quickly through the pages. “When did you do these?”

  “Last year, when I first got to SVA.”

  “Don’t show them to anyone. They’ll think you shouldn’t be here.”

  It was cruel.

  “Who’s the old lady?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “It’s so commonplace, Becca.” He was disappointed.

  Becca didn’t eat anything. After Apple Pie finished his third slice of pizza, they went back to her place. They drank the wine he’d brought. They had sex-sex. Apple Pie could last until he was sure she’d climaxed. He liked to yank her red curls, pressing her naked against the exposed bricks. She liked it too. She was falling hard for him.

  Every Friday after Apple Pie’s two o’clock studio class, he went to Becca’s loft. She promised not to tell anyone about the affair, although she did tell Jack and Lucy—her neighbors and closest friends in New York, and for some reason, though she felt compelled to confide in her mom, she didn’t.

  In Chapel Hill, Mary quit smoking.

  Despite profiting from Rowan’s work for Atkins and Thames, she didn’t want to line his or his whore wife’s pockets with any more cigarette money. She quit cold turkey by pretending (to herself) that she had emphysema. (She also pretended to have emphysema with the boy who bagged her groceries and a cashier at the Rite-Aid.) Claire said on the telephone, “That’s a strange, deceitful way to quit,” but, thrilled that Mary did so, she added, “Whatever works.”

  Carrie majored in economics at UNC Chapel Hill, and Mike worked construction for his dad’s company. They got engaged. Mike’s mother, twice divorced, gave him one of her old wedding rings.

  As for Whiskers, he waited for Becca’s return. She’d spent the night away before. He knew she’d be back. He waited on her bed.

  Months passed. He waited. Every time the front door opened, he ran to meet her. He paced the purple flower rug, and Mary didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter (who was finally free of Chapel Hill) that the dog’s heart was broken—that he was waiting for a ghost of a girl, a girl who would never return.

  Mary tried cheering him up. She took Whiskers for morning walks, and she took him to work. He wagged his tail, seeming to perk up, but every time Mary took him home again, he went to Becca’s bed and waited. Finally, Mary shut him out of Becca’s room and he lay with his salt-and-pepper back pressed against her door. Mary tried to coax him into her own bed, but nothing doing. He was waiting on Becca.

  Fourteen months after Becca’s departure, Mary found Whiskers, his salt-and-pepper back pressed against Becca’s bedroom door, dead.

  The vet ruled Whiskers’ death congestive heart failure, but Mary knew the truth: a broken heart.

  Becca was in the throes of Apple Pie then. She hadn’t called home in a good while, and when Mary telephoned New York with the sad news, Becca wept.

  She met Apple Pie outside his office door. He was with colleagues. She said, “I need to talk to you.” It was obvious she’d been crying.

  He said to his colleagues, “She’s upset about her grade.”

  “Please, can I talk to you?”

  “I don’t budge on grades. I’ve explained this. Art is subjective. Consider me the audience for all work while you’re enrolled in my class.”

  One of Apple Pie’s colleagues patted him on the back before they left Becca crying in the hallway.

  You might think Becca would toss Apple Pie aside, but she’d grown accustomed to the men she most revered discarding her like garbage. She was a smart girl, but some lessons are hard, taking years to learn, and even more years to master.

  Excerpt from

  THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  A lightning strike is not contagious. Don’t hesitate to administer CPR. Don’t think twice that you will be electrified by touching a victim. The human body does not hold an electrical charge: This fact is disputed by one victim, Sarah X., who reported, “I got struck when I was fifteen years old and ever since then, every time I touch someone, they get zapped.” Sarah wouldn’t meet with me to prove her claim, but I thought her story worth mentioning. One thing is certain: Electricity, lightning included, affects people differently. Sarah X said, “I’m cursed. I don’t feel like I can touch my own grandbabies without suffering them some little bit of harm.” (Sarah X.’s claims have not been substantiated by doctors, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t true.)

  [27]

  Mamma Mia, 1989

  After The Handbook was complete and out there in the world, Buckley’s only escape from loneliness was work. He worked longer shifts. He worked doubles and triples. He stayed at Damici’s when he was off the clock. He sat at the bar, eavesdropping—anything to avoid being alone with his thoughts. Unfortunately or fortunately for Buckley, his new neighbor, Mia, didn’t abi
de sulking or introverts. She also wore heavy black boots, which she used to kick at his door. “Wake the fuck up!”

  When she first moved in across the hall, she introduced herself, saying, “I’m punk rock.” Her boyfriend, wearing studs through his nose and eyebrow, said, “She’s hell on wheels.”

  Buckley said, “She doesn’t have wheels.” He was trying to be funny.

  “It’s an expression,” the boyfriend said.

  Mia wore black eyeliner and black lipstick. Younger than Buckley, she said, “We’ll hang out together. We’ll be pals. When I’m out of beer, you share, and when you’re out of beer, I’ll share.”

  He said, “I work a lot. I don’t drink.”

  This morning, as she kicked his door repeatedly, a neighbor shouted, “What’s wrong with you? Stop that!”

  Mia said, “Screw off.”

  The neighbor said, “I’m calling the landlord,” and pulled her door shut.

  Mia kept kicking. “You’re getting me in trouble,” she shouted at Buckley’s door. “Don’t get me in trouble.” She kicked some more. Her boots were good for more than moshing. “Open up!”

  Buckley said, “Go away.”

  “No.” She kicked some more. “Open up!”

  “Please stop.”

  She kept kicking. She was relentless. Buckley was not. It required too much energy.

  They sat side by side on Buckley’s sofa, Buckley’s hands between his knees, his eyes to the floor.

  “I want you to come over Friday. I’m having a party.”

  “I have to work.”

  “Then after work. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “I’ll smell bad—like grease and garlic.”

  “I don’t care. If you don’t come, I’m bringing the party to you.”

  “I really just want to be left alone, Mia.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here. I revel in torture. See you Friday!”

  It was after midnight on Friday when he got home, but he could hear the party still going strong. He showered. He didn’t want to go. The New York Nighttime Music Hour was on TV. He sat on his bed and stared at a nail in the wall, wondering why when he felt sad he couldn’t cry like a normal person. He showered and dressed.

  Mia served cheap beer and vodka punch. There were potato chips and French onion dip—the kind you make with Lipton dried soup. The food reminded Buckley of the reverend. Maybe he should go back to Arkansas. He could rot away there. No, he’d rather rot in the Bronx. Mia got Buckley some punch. It smelled disgusting, but he drank it.

  In the morning, he woke up bare-chested on Mia’s floor, his shirt tied around his head. He vaguely remembered dancing on Mia’s coffee table. (And he didn’t know how to dance!)

  Mia was in a burgundy robe, her dark hair draped over one shoulder. “I told you you’d have fun.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. You had some fun.”

  “I don’t remember. Tell me.”

  “Do you want coffee?”

  “No.”

  She sipped her coffee. “You want to hear the worst of it or the best of it?”

  “Whichever.”

  “You were cute. Everyone loved you. When Sheila said her uncle died last week, you started crying. You took off your shirt to dry your tears, and then you got up on the coffee table, got everyone’s attention, and told us how your mom got struck by lightning and how your girlfriend got shot in the face. That part was heartbreaking. And then everyone hugged you and said you should write songs because you had the bluest life they’d ever heard. You said, ‘I never cry. I’m crying!’ And then you tied your shirt around your waist and passed out.”

  “This is why I don’t drink.”

  Mia made a pouty face. “You were adorable.”

  On Sunday, Mia took Buckley a paper plate piled with chocolate chip cookies. She said, “I didn’t make them or anything, but I think when you take them out of the blue wrapper and put them on a plate, they taste better. It’s the power of suggestion.”

  Buckley poured two glasses of milk. He said, “I’m not a mean guy, but I’m cursed. Everyone I love dies. I don’t want to be friends with you or anyone. Just leave me alone.”

  Mia dunked a cookie in a glass of milk, ignoring his short speech. “So I must tell you that on Friday night, after you told us all about your mom and stuff, and before you passed out, you and my friend Sheila made out. She told you that you could call her Clementine. I think she totally likes you. Be-ware! She’s a psycho when it comes to men.”

  “Please tell me that you’re joking.”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I’m never drinking again.”

  Excerpt from

  THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  If you are a lightning strike survivor, understand that you are not alone.

  If you were struck when the sun was shining, you were still struck. If you were struck without one drop of rain, you were still struck.

  Lightning can strike as much as ten miles from rainfall, and there is no way to predict the first strike.

  Don’t be afraid to tell your story. Although an estimated 400 people are struck each year, this is a low estimate. Not everyone seeks medical help. The heart may or may not stop. It may or may not beat erratically. You are in shock, both literally and figuratively. Your thinking is changed, affected by the voltage that’s traveled through your body. You might or might not lose consciousness. You might or might not cry.

  [28]

  Men, 1989

  I’m not an idiot. I have feelings. I deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. “She’s upset about her grade.” Who does he think he is?

  She called Apple Pie at home. She took the Valium and drank the beers and waited for him to rush over or call a fucking ambulance.

  Instead, he said, “Don’t call here again.”

  The next night, she was desperate and messy, complicated and bursting with apologies about why she kept calling. It was her dog. Whiskers died. He was gone. She didn’t get to say goodbye. Was that too pathetic? She’d had too much to drink. She’d never call him at home again.

  She waited outside his office at ten o’clock. He always stopped there after his studio class. She’d win him back. She’d make him desperate for her. She’d done it before. She was special. She didn’t realize that there were four special students before her.

  She leaned against the wall of the narrow hallway facing his office door. Maybe she should hide, but there was no place to hide. So she waited. She stared at a white knot of wood, like a bleach stain, just below the doorknob. It spiraled outward, growing darker and darker with each spiral, but the center was completely white. She was naked beneath a raincoat and army boots. She’d become desperate the way Aunt Claire had been for Tom—not fat like Aunt Claire, but the other extreme: waiflike, subsisting on cheap wine, Cheerios, and Fig Newtons.

  Who the hell does he think he is? “Don’t call me”?! “Don’t call me”!?

  She was drunk. She was mad. It was ten-thirty. She was sorry. She was seething. Floyd, the custodian, walked past, pretending not to see her. She fingered the white spot below the doorknob, hearing the tick-tock of the clock down the hall. She sat with her back against the door, her freckled white legs poking out from under her coat, bouncing the back of her head off the white spirals, pressing the rubber soles of her boots onto the opposite wall. At midnight, she kicked Apple Pie’s locked office door and hurt her big toe despite the heavy boots. She hopped on one foot in the tiny hallway, cursing his name.

  Apple Pie had messed with the wrong woman. She wasn’t going to let him get away with it. He said he loved her. He said he only stayed with his wife “for the children.” He was a liar. All men are liars.

  After Apple Pie, there were one-night stands. There was Chris-with-no-last-name. There was a Joseph, a Danny, and a Richard. They came and went. Some of them were artists or musicians, but a lot of them were professionals with nine-to-five jo
bs. In a few years, they’d be nine-to-six jobs, eventually eight-to-six. “If you want to be successful and if you want to get ahead, you work: longer and longer hours.”

  It was 1989. AIDS and Republicans ran amok.

  Lucy told Becca, “You’d better get tested.”

  “I use protection.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You should get tested.”

  In Panama, U.S. troops captured General Manuel Noriega in Operation Just Cause. Richard Martin, Buckley’s biological father, hid in a Panama City hotel, while nearby, his longtime girlfriend, Gabriela, fled her house with another of Richard’s sons—Hector. Her house, her whole village, caught fire and burned to the ground. She saw people fleeing. She saw people shot. She wondered if Richard would really take her and Hector to Miami. There was nothing left in Panama for them.

  The CIA found Richard in his hotel room three days after U.S. forces took Noriega into custody. They also found six kilos of cocaine and one plane ticket to Miami. Richard had a penchant for ditching women.

  He was flown to Miami first, next to Washington, D.C., where he was charged with treason and international drug trafficking. He claimed repeatedly that Noriega had set him up. Buckley’s biological father, Richard Martin, was a liar.

  Gabriela met a U.S. Marine named Claiborne Dodge, who gave her his rations. She gave him a photograph of herself that she’d saved from the ashes.

  In New York, Becca took Lucy’s advice. She got an HIV test. Two weeks later, she waited on a cushioned white table, kicking her feet back and forth, for the results. The nurse practitioner opened Becca’s folder and said, “This test is confidential. Do you understand?” She said a number of other things, all implying to Becca that there was bad news. She kept asking, “Do you understand?”

  Becca thought she might vomit. “Yes, I understand.”

  “The test is negative for HIV.”

  Becca was fortunate, and she knew it.