A peculiar 23-year-old named Olive leaves her mother living in a hoard and her husband in Lashona, Washington, to find what she thinks is her alternate life being lived by someone else.
She has hitched a ride with a woman named Alanna who is on her way to visit her aging father. Olive crashes overnight on the couch, waking in the pre-dawn hours to snoop around the house.
Olive abandoned the quest, instead making her way to the stairs. She climbed with soft steps, and once at the landing, she looked to the left then to the right at the two closed doors before popping into the bathroom.
She left the light off. No stars or moon were visible out the small window but there must have been something on the other side of that cloud cover, she thought. She heard one of the doors open. The floor on the landing uttered a creak. She stopped with her hand on the faucet and listened.
She was just about to wash her hands when the bathroom door started to swing open and she called out, “I’m in here.”
A profound, startled howl came from the figure on other side of the door followed by a calamitous shriek. The door was pulled closed with force and Olive could hear a series of sickening thuds as well as the crack of what could have been wood. She drew in her breath and clasped both hands over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut tight.
Olive didn’t hear the other door open, but she knew Alanna was in the hallway. Olive turned the bathroom light on and flung the door open, and Alanna screamed, “Oh god!”
“Dad? Oh nooo, nooo!” she moaned at the top of the stairs, and made her way down, gliding her hand along the wall.
Olive came out and leaned on the landing rail, and she stepped on something soft—a slipper. She descended the stairs, stopped a few steps from the bottom and crouched. She clung trembling to the wooden balusters, one of which broke away in her hand. She tried not to cry, as Alanna rifled through her purse for her phone then dialed.
“What happened?” she shouted through tears at Olive, as her purse tipped off the dining room table, spilling its contents. Alanna put the back of her hand to her upper lip and paced, pressing the phone to her ear with the other hand. “Come on, come on, come— Hello, hello! … Yes, up on the hill, please! My dad fell down the stairs— I don’t know!” she sobbed. “Please, just hurry!”She bent down and wobbled onto one knee in front of her dad. “Yes, he’s breathing, but he’s— just hurry!“
She hung up and dropped on the wood floor fumbling for the dying man’s hand. “Dad, stay with me.”
Olive struggled to pull herself up. “Is he going to be okay?”
“Ohhh,” Alanna sobbed into her dad’s shoulder. She looked up at Olive and wailed, “What the fuck happened?” as she looked over her father.
“Nothing.” Olive croaked. “I was in the bathroom and he came in… I just said I was—“
“Why’s he only got one slipper?” Alanna said.
Olive scrambled up the stairs and grabbed the other one. “It’s here, Alanna,” she warbled. She picked her way down the stairs holding the slipper out in front of her.
The sound of the sirens came up, low, like they were bouncing off the ceiling of clouds. Olive stopped, one foot a step above the other. “I can’t be here,” she whispered.
“Just hide. And drop the damn slipper!” Alanna barked at her. “Go. Go hide in my room, and don’t come out until they’re gone.”
Rain fell in sheets. At night it tapped out staccato symphonies on the oversized windows in Maggie’s room, and on the roof vents. On the day Maggie finished her book, the rain was accompanied by fierce wind. The widowed writer once again became Margaret Goldwyn: Children’s Book Illustrator as she worked out a sketch of the finale of her hometown hero’s coming-of-age tale; what was left of the girl’s childhood destroyed by a lightning-strike.
Cars glided down her street past her house kicking up puddled water as she sketched by the grey filtered light of the dining room’s picture window. It was the same lovely light that graced the upstairs rooms at the northwest corner and was wonderful to draw by, even on such a dreary day. She sat back in her chair and admired her lines and shading, then looked around the room when her eyes had gobbled up all they could of the artwork. It was a study. She’d refine it later, coming in behind her pencil marks with ink, then maybe some muted colors from art markers.
She heard some shouting outside, and saw a couple cars backing up her street. Someone in a slicker jogged past, and in the near distance she could hear a backup alarm. Her first thought was that the wind had pulled loose a few slack tree branches.
She hurried to the windows in the other rooms for the best possible three-sixty view to get a sense of the deluge. It wasn’t just her intersection, off to the north the gutters she could see were torrents, and the storm drains were failing. She grimaced and went back to her room. She grabbed the newsie and pulled it tightly onto her head, and looked out the window one more time. The water was up to the neighbor’s front door and lapping ironically at the boat on its trailer parked next to their garage, which was surely flooded.
Maggie fled down the stairs barely avoiding tripping over Bruce who bounded after her. She pulled on her anorak and trotted out the door and down her driveway. Her house must have been at a higher elevation, because it didn’t seem even vaguely threatened. Her heart sank when it occurred to her that more than a few of her neighbors would surely be submitting insurance claims if they had insurance at all. What on earth they would do in the meantime was a heartbreaking puzzle—stay at the local motor lodge most likely, or with dry friends and family.
She approached the expanding pond with empty hands, not sure how she could be of service. Some men from city maintenance had pulled a truck up to the cross street and while she couldn’t see the lights on it, she could see the reflection of orange flashes. They had waded in up to their thighs at the corner, presumably trying to clear the drain. The man in the slicker sidled up to her. He was huge, and wore a disgusted look on his face under his hood.
“This is not good,” he said, not necessarily to her.
She glanced at him, and turned to look back the other way up the street. The house they were standing in front of, her immediate neighbor to the south, was inundated up to its little porch slab.
“I’m pretty sure these people are in Mexico,” Slicker-man said, motioning toward the porch. “They’re gonna come home to a fuckin’ disaster.”
She looked at their tiny little house, about a quarter the size of hers and asked, “Do you have a contact number for them?”
“Nah, but they don’t usually get back until Spring.” He shook his head and said, “My basement’s flooded halfway to the rafters.”
“Oh shit,” she said.
“Yep, basement’s a fuckin’ swimmin’ pool.”
He moved off and she watched him go, back up the street to the opposite intersection, which was now holding two large puddles of its own. She had no idea which house was his. Someone had parked a car in the middle of the intersection to indicate to drivers that the street was impassable.
Maggie took to the sidewalk and headed around the corner. It would be dark soon and many of her neighbors’ houses looked to be in imminent jeopardy. Some folks were packing up their vehicles, others were stacking sandbags. Most of the intersections were dysfunctional with water, and municipal trucks criss-crossed the neighborhood with their orange lights ablaze.
She headed north towards Poppy’s house thinking she’d check in and see how they were faring.
His basement.
He said his basement was half flooded. The house she’d shared with Levi didn’t have a basement, it was built on a slab, but the farmhouse did. Fuck! She turned another corner and started heading south back to her house, abandoning her plan to check in on her friends, and quickened her pace. What if the basement floods up to the outlets? She started to jog and had to maneuver to avoid a moving vehicle.
She geared down to a brisk walk once back on her street and saw that the water hadn’t receded at all, but neither had it advanced. Out of breath she crossed her squishy lawn to the front door. She entered and flipped the porch light on just to see if there was still power, half expecting a small electrical calamity. She dropped her soaking wet anorak on the foyer floor and moved into the dining room to turn on her desk lamp. At least there was power. Bruce barked a single little yelp at her, and wagged his tail furiously when she glanced down at him.
He sat down and chewed at his back leg, and it was quiet enough for her to stop and listen, though she didn’t know what she was listening for. She headed into the kitchen to the basement door, and pulled it open. Bruce trotted right down the stairs and she listened again to his paws on the wood. She followed him down into the darkness, and paused midway to let her eyes adjust to the dark.
When Bruce reached the bottom, she could hear his claws clicking on the cement floor, and it was a relief. She descended the rest of the way and yanked on the cord for the light, but nothing happened. She pulled it again, and still nothing. There was no bulb in the fixture, which was odd, because she specifically remembered screwing a bulb into it, didn’t she? She must have, because… well, because it’s dark and usually full of things you can bang your shins on, because that!
Her joy at finding the basement dry was replaced with frustration that she couldn’t visually confirm the fact, even though her eyes had adjusted pretty well. She could make out the washer and dryer, and the door to the storage area as well as the furnace. The dark recesses were a total loss, of course, and she had no idea where Bruce had got to. She walked around with care guided by her memory of the placement of things. She didn’t feel her boots slosh through any water. She grabbed the doorknob to the storage area, it wasn’t locked and she opened it a gap releasing a foul waft. That was all the excuse she needed not to investigate further. She shut the door again and gave it a tug to make sure it was latched firm.
She called to Bruce just as the door glided shut at the top of the stairs. She assumed the backdoor had popped open again letting in enough air to catch the basement door. The floor creaked over her head and she stopped dead, her hand on the bottom end of the rail. She held her breath. Bruce sniffed in the darkness and she gasped, then silenced herself. The floor creaked again three more times near the foyer at the base of the stairs, then came a series of little thumps, then silence and rain.
Sheryl and I made a pilgrimage on a Sunday afternoon in the spring to a park in my new neighborhood. Uncle Lawrence had sold the stable-side bungalow and the three of us moved into a bigger house a few blocks from school. I’d started working part time at the mall, but my boss usually didn’t schedule me on the weekends, which was fine with me. I much preferred to work nights after school. Sheryl and I journeyed there to examine the site where a girl from the next town over had been attacked, and to hang out, and maybe get some burgers for lunch.
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We were near a grouping of benches, standing there with our big purses, looking at the ground. I imagined moonlight and shadows outlining heavy boot prints in the mud, and a girl our age lying alone after midnight, still and prone, blood pooling in the hollows of her shut eyes. Her name was Lisa, a very common name, but she also shared a less common last name with a friend of mine who’d moved to the same town the previous summer.
“Fuckin’ —A…” was all we could say, while Lisa recovered in a bed at the medical center a mile or so away.
“She was the one at your birthday party?” Sheryl puzzled.
“No no, it’s not her. I forgot to tell you.” We’d heard most of the details of the attack from people at school, rumors swirling in the quad and exaggerations in the locker room over the previous week. Finally and thankfully, a school photo of the girl published in the paper revealed that it was not my relocated friend.
“Ohhh, okay.” Sheryl said, with a look that acknowledged it didn’t matter which one of us it was or wasn’t. “But still…”
“Yeah, no shit.” I answered.
When we tired of staring at cut grass and acorns, we plopped down at a stone bench to smoke. We talked about those who were alive and uninjured: Danny, Jamie, our math teacher, Sting. We talked about walking to over for some chicken tenders. I hadn’t left my uncle a note and would need to get home by four or so. He’d gone to church and was planning to drive to Gram’s for the afternoon. A scruffy dude at another bench had been hunched over scratching something into the seat of it, but had now taken an interest in us. I glanced at him every so often, and this time he was erect and staring us down.
“Do you know that guy?” Sheryl asked.
“No. But he’s coming over here.” The man rose and executed a series of twists with his left wrist, afterward jamming the hand into his trouser pocket. He’d closed and concealed a butterfly knife. I only knew that’s what it was because Jamie had one with perforated brass handles. He’d taught me how to flip it open and closed.
The man stood in front of us. He was wearing too many shirts.
“Hey, I’m not a weirdo or anything.” He wasn’t much older than we were. “I just wanted to say ‘hi’ and see if I could bum a dime.”
“I’ve got some change,” Sheryl said and pulled a slitted rubber coin pouch from her bag.
The man plopped down in the grass in front of us and reached into the pocket of his oversized flannel outershirt.
“Oh.” He made a little noise and looked down at his pocket, tugging at the front tail of the shirt to keep it taut.
“Ohhhh my gaaaawwwwddd!” Sheryl cooed, her eyes widening.
“Is it alive?” I asked when I saw what he was holding.
The grey and white fur quaked in his cupped hands and Sheryl leaned in to get a better look at what seemed to be the cutest kitten in California.
“He’s the runt. He can open his eyes, he’s just been sleeping.”
Sheryl insisted on holding him, and the babe stretched in her palms, pushing two tiny white paws in the air and opening its mouth.
“He’s older than he looks.” The man assured us that he was old enough to be off mother’s milk, but he still needed some food.
“Don’t you need to get him home for feeding?” I said.
“We’re homeless. That’s why I was hoping you guys had some spare change.”
“Oh yeah, no problem.” Sheryl said. “This little guy is going to need to be fed four times a day… at least.” She handed the squirmy kitten to me and emptied her coin purse into the man’s hands.
“Oh thank you!” He stood up so fast it startled us both. “Hey, can you guys watch him for a minute? I need to go get some supplies.”
“Sure,” we said, and Sheryl mentioned a store around the corner.
“Great.” He turned and stopped. “Actually, I have to go to a friend’s house to pick up a fanny pack. My buddy is fixing it so the cat can ride in it.”
“Oh, okay.” Sheryl and I looked at each other. “Should we come with you?”
“Naw, it’s just right by here.” He turned forty-five degrees and walked off saying, “I’ll be back.” I rubbed the kitten on my cheek, and we smiled at each other. When I looked back up at the man, he was striding a beeline to the West, then turned, in the middle of the park, another forty-five degrees and continued along the new trajectory.
The kitty kept us occupied for a while. We let him walk around on the concrete tabletop, dragged the corner of her bandanna in front of him as a makeshift toy, and giggled at his clumsiness. He was a runt, but certainly not sickly, and he did open his eyes.
“What time is it?” I asked and scanned the park. There was no one else there aside from an ownerless dog carrying out a sniff inventory of every tree.
Sheryl consulted her ring watch. “It’s almost four. He’s been gone over an hour.”
“I’m hungry.” I suggested we get lunch, keeping our tiny companion concealed in one of our purses, and hope we run into the man on the way back. We could get a milkshake for the kitten.
“Don’t you have to be home by four?”
“I can’t go home with a kitten, my uncle wouldn’t be very happy.”
“I can’t take him, we live in an apartment,” she countered.
“I know.” We both sighed and scanned the park. The dog was gone.
Our return from lunch was just as fruitless. We sat at the same bench and ate. By five-thirty, the best plan we could come up with was to walk around the area and look for the man, and that’s what we did. The later it got, the more I knew I’d get an earful when I got home, and that it would be much worse if I had a kitten in my purse.
We walked exasperated up the avenue and a big stupid car pulled up beside us. I was grumpy and thought it was some joker flirting, then I realized it was Danny and I felt hopeful. For no valid reason I thought the presence of a guy would make everything better. We crawled into his car and briefed him as we drove around. At six forty-five there was still no sign of Kitten-Man and I instructed Danny to take me home.
Sheryl came in with me to help explain the situation to Uncle Lawrence, which turned out to be pointless. He was acrimonious, but the cat was just an excuse. I went to my room and slammed the door, plopping down frustrated on the edge of the bed and held the sleepy animal.
Sheryl came in and handed me a photocopy. “Your uncle wanted me to give you this.” It read:
Tired of Being Harassed By Your Stupid Parents? Act Now! Move Out… Get a Job… Pay Your Own Bills. Do it While You Still Know Everything
A stray bit of moonglow found Asher asleep on the couch, the only sound his faint snoring breath. Just about every nook and corner of the house was still, Bruce was asleep on a rug in the hallway, and there was a summer breeze outside as evidenced by the swaying branches of the young maple outside the dining room window. It was a warm night, and the back door had been left open. Maggie slept in her upstairs room, worn thin from the week’s events.
A streetlight revealed the tiniest movement at the kitchen door. A funny little smiling face, the face of a clown, but half painted blue bobbed into the kitchen through the back door. The weird little clown poked up out of a backpack slung on a small trespassing figure.
Rand flipped on the switch to the overhead light and one of the fluorescent tubes flickered and refused to light all the way. He flopped down in the chair and threw the stack on the desk. The letters splayed, and one of them caught his eye. He knew what it was by the return address and had no intention of opening it. He put his feet up on the desk and snatched a ball cap off the shelf behind him pulling it down over his eyes. He laced his fingers across his midsection and shut out the world.
***
Lily dragged a dining room stool out to the backyard where she’d already set up her watercolors on the plastic patio table. She clipped a canvas into her easel stand and sketched out a stone fountain with some birds and an almost grotesque version of their hedge that vanished into an exaggerated distance, and when she started filling in the colors, a pair of eyes appeared among the laurel leaves. The sky above the greenery was daytime blue but she graded and blended it to midnight indigo as it reached to the edge of the canvas. She’d included a full moon in the sketch and it mirrored the eyes in the shrubbery after she tinted them to match. She dabbed the three songbirds with gay colors, not particularly caring what kind of birds they might be, and she arranged them splashing and preening, oblivious to the concealed voyeur.
***
Early poked his head into the office and informed Rand that he was going to get some lunch. “Nice hat, man,” he added. Rand moved slowly to pull the cap off his head and get to his feet while Early sneered at him. “Haven’t been sleeping much,” he said. “Ah, sorry bud.” Rand slipped out from behind the desk, one eye on the letter, brushed past Early and said, “I’ll hold down the fort. Get me a sandwich?” “Yeah, you bet.”
