Waveland Page 12

  On TV, hurricanes meant dopey announcers at high-rise hotels. Vaughn didn't blame them for wanting to see what it felt like to be knocked around by hundred-mile-per-hour winds, he blamed them for doing it on TV. And he was jealous, too. And he figured they knew they were just doing what everybody else wanted to do.

  As coast people understood, hurricanes were pretty before they were anything else. They usually didn't do much harm. They cleaned things out, knocked over some extra trees, ripped up some cheesy gas stations and old shacks. They were a thrill not otherwise available. They were big and they shook the house, the glass in the windows bent, things flew around. It was exciting to watch, to go out driving around when the rain was so thick you couldn't see a thing. There would be poles down in the street, wind gusts that could lift a man up off the ground, trees cracked thirty feet in the air, awnings ripped off buildings, roofs, too, gas station overhangs twisted like aluminum foil, glass storefronts shattered open, the guts of carwash places blown out—it was great stuff. And the residents were all in their houses with duct tape or plywood on the windows and the bathtubs filled with faucet water, with candles and more candles, flashlights and extra batteries, jars of peanut butter on the kitchen cabinet, store cakes, and chips and ice in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator that was soon to lose power, and bags of M&M's, books to read if things got slow, bread, and maybe hams—storm provisions.

  Coast people knew all about it, they had been through it so often; and finally, though it was a little scary, it was still a pleasure to be alive and in the middle of it when the storm bruised up the sky, the light went shadowy, the world turned unearthly colors—green sky, lemon sky—as the storm swirled in, wreaked havoc on a scale that excited, like some fantasy monster, a benevolent and enormous wash cycle, howling into the night, screeching metal torn, any hinged thing banging endlessly, electrical lines snapping and shooting sparks into the weather's rage. And the natives got the best seats in the house.

  It made static wonders of the world seem trifling. At least until you had one like Katrina, a killer, a storm of such power that everyone in its path went instantly from excitement to fear, fun to horror. Katrina had been the first hurricane of that sort he'd experienced up close, and the experience had tempered his ardor.

  Vaughn and Gail had ridden out Katrina in the big brick house and come away unscathed, but the experience had been terrifying. The noise alone was enough to provide a constant threat of tragedy. Like standing next to a speeding train, everyone said, and that was close. It felt as if the place would fly apart, collapse at any moment, trees bent ninety degrees, ripped by winds, debris sailing by nonstop, catching momentarily in tree limbs, on twisted street signs, fire hydrants, half-toppled chimneys. Limbs whacking the house and the roof, shooting by when torn off their trunks. Most of the glass in the house was covered with half-inch plywood, screwed to the window frames, but on the east and west ends of the house, in a few places where the windows were protected by structure, Vaughn had used duct tape, and the open glass there gave them a frightening view of the storm. The constancy of it, the blow-your-house-down constancy. Once it got to them—their house was several miles inland, and well-east of landfall—it beat at the house for hours, with only a short respite in the middle as what must have been the edge of the eye passed nearby. When Katrina was done, and the morning light came, the destruction was mind-numbing. Even in Vaughn's inland-protected and fortunately located development the force of the storm was extraordinary. The area looked as if it had been strafed. Two houses on Tilted Tree Lane were opened up at their roofs. Trees were down on three others, and sixty-foot pines were strewn like pickup sticks on the ground, on cars, on the roofs and sides of houses—some snapped only feet off the ground, some snapped thirty feet in the air. And the confetti of tree limbs, leaves, pine cones, bicycles, plastic sheeting, shutters, plywood sheets, mailboxes, tangled wires, bags, clothing, framed pictures, shingles, lumber, tin roof vents, windshield wipers, hoses—the sight was jaw-dropping. Neighbors came out and walked around in stunned silence. People asked one another how they were and the answer always came back a shrug, as if no one knew how he was, no one could actually say.

  The people in his neighborhood cleaned up pretty quick, and things got back to normal, though they were without utilities for a couple of weeks. There was a lot of generator noise in the neighborhood, and people driving far and wide to get gas to run the generators—you had to go up to Interstate 10, or worse. But the weeks after the storm were a mixed time—relief to have made it through all right, stunned disbelief at the extent of the damage across the coast. Everything stopped. It was as if they were suddenly back in the nineteen-forties. Every day had time for no more than two projects—getting gasoline for the generator and finding ice. Or setting up an outdoor shower with the hose and a tarp after the water came back, and helping a neighbor remove a pine tree from the street. And it was hot. Gail and Vaughn spent a lot of time together. All conveniences were gone; they showered in the yard, pissed off the deck in the dark of night, shit on paper towels on the bathroom floor and packaged the result in Ziploc storage bags as if that were a likely adult diaper disposal system. It was hot. They slept in the living room with the doors to the deck wide open. When they used the generator they ran box fans, targeted at the bed.

  When they got a chance they tried to drive the beach highway, but the Marines were there and they weren't keen on gawkers. The destruction closer to the beach was, as best they could see, total. A-bomb stuff. Like nothing they'd ever seen before.

  Gail was in the room for a few minutes before he noticed that she was there. “What's this?” she said, pointing at the TV.

  “Hurricanes,” he said. “You guys back?”

  “Is there a hurricane?” she said.

  “No. This is about hurricanes.”

  He got up, kissed her on the cheek, went through the kitchen to the garage to see if there was something he could carry inside. She followed him.

  Greta was in the garage using the bug killer to spray her car. “Ants,” she said as he opened the door. “We've got ants. We're spraying the car. What've you been doing?”

  “Watching TV. Praying,” he said.

  “There he goes again,” Gail said, waving a hand at Greta asking for the spray can.

  “Yeah, I'm unstoppable,” Vaughn said.

  “What're you praying for!” Greta asked.

  “He just prays for no reason,” Gail said. “It's a Catholic thing, I think. Sometimes he does it without even knowing he's doing it. We used to sit and watch TV and sometimes I'd catch him moving his lips, you know? He was saying Hail Marys.”

  “She's got me now,” Vaughn said.

  “That's new to me,” Greta said. “Does it do any good?”

  “Dunno,” Vaughn said. “I'm just, like, saying old prayers I learned as a kid.”

  “Those are the best kind,” Greta said.

  “Amen,” Gail said. She was shooting bug spray up under the dashboard. It was kind of hard to breathe there in the garage.

  16

  At mid-week they were all in the kitchen when Eddie arrived with Monkey. “I brought him over because he seemed lonely over at the place,” he said.

  “He's not the only one,” Greta said.

  “I make no bones about it,” Eddie said. “I'm not afraid of my vulnerability. There isn't much going on over there when you guys are over here all the time.”

  Gail seemed to be talking to Newton a lot on the telephone. Now they'd taken up text-messaging each other. It was annoying—her cell made this little squirting noise when she sent a message and then she would be giggling at the tiny screen, then thumb-typing for ten more minutes just to say “Cnt tlk. At mov. Cll U ltr.”

  “Why don't you either talk to him or e-mail him? This text stuff is ridiculous,” Vaughn said.

  “Chill, Vaughn,” she said. “We like to text.”

  “Great,” he said.

  “Eddie, why don't you come visit me
in my room where I am going to be folding warm clothes just out of the dryer,” Greta said.

  “We'll take Monkey,” Gail said. “We're going for a walk.”

  Vaughn got up from the kitchen table and took the leash from Eddie. “Thanks,” he said.

  When Vaughn and Gail got outside it was cool, more than usually cool. The sun was almost down and the light had that quiet look about it. He gave her the leash and they walked down the street.

  “I had an idea,” Gail said.

  “What?” he said.

  “What if we went ahead and got married again? In a church this time? It might put something back into the marriage, something that's been missing for a while. Something I can't put my finger on.”

  “Probably not,” Vaughn said.

  “I think it would help me settle down,” she said.

  “You seem pretty settled down already.”

  “I have trouble keeping things straight in my head,” she said. “A new marriage sanctified by the Church would help me keep everything in order.”

  “I don't like marriage anymore,” he said. “It screws everybody up.”

  “No,” she said. “Or maybe it's the other way around?”

  For some reason Monkey decided to bow up and do his business right in the middle of the road. Vaughn looked around to see if any of the neighbors were watching.

  “What's that about?” Gail said.

  “I've never seen him do that before,” Vaughn said.

  “We'd better get it,” she said.

  He headed back to the house for a shovel. He didn't know what to make of her proposition. Was she dreaming? Did she not get Greta? It was crazy talk, really. Just after the divorce he could have imagined it, but now? Or did she see something in his connection to Greta that told her he wasn't that intrigued? It was true Vaughn was not swept away by Greta, but it was also true that he did not see himself as likely to be swept away by anyone. The time for swept away was too long gone, replaced by a constellation of smaller, less vibrant, slower pleasures. Greta was low-key, easy-does-it, no maintenance, pleasant to be around, took care of herself—a nice woman. They had gotten something started against the odds, and he wasn't in any hurry to shut it down. Still, Gail's crack-ball suggestions unnerved him, put him to thinking about what he was doing, apart from saving his ex. He had been so busy splitting up with her for the last year that he hadn't thought so much about what the future held with Greta. And with Gail, he wasn't sure what would happen if he just said one day that she ought to move on, that they were never getting back together. He'd tried to say it lots of ways, but Gail wasn't quite listening, or at least she appeared to not quite listen. It was impossible to gauge how she might react to such directness. It might be a stark, harsh rebuke, throwing her into crying jags, more depression, more coming-apart-at-the-seams party nights; it might be the tonic that was needed. There was no way to know. His own personal reality show.

  In the time since the move, Vaughn had looked at Gail and Greta, trying to see them afresh, even when he knew this wasn't a healthy project. He watched the ways they moved, how they talked, how they walked, sat, smiled. Often they seemed to be mimicking each other, even to the point of being one person in two bodies. They liked each other far too much for the circumstance. They picked up each other's gestures, remarks, asides just because of the proximity, he guessed. But they did it so effortlessly that it may have been something more. At close range they weren't, after all, as different as they might seem. He listened to them, their jokes, their affections and reprimands. He watched the ways they walked, the ways they treated their forearms and wrists, how they held their hands, how they placed their knees when sitting, what they did with their feet, how they moved their hair with their hands, facial expressions made with the eyes and mouth, cheeks and eyebrows—they became more alike every day.

  He hadn't told Greta that Gail had brought up getting remarried a week before. He figured it for some momentary lapse. Now, the repeated proposal had an awkward realness.

  They got Monkey's trouble cleaned up and headed inside. Eddie and Greta were watching TV, a murder documentary about a Christian polygamist who had killed one of his wives and sawed her teeth out and cut off her fingers so that she would not be identified if discovered.

  “I don't think we ought to be watching this,” Vaughn said.

  “It's American Justice,” Eddie said.

  “We're keeping up with modern crime,” Greta said.

  “‘Why?’ the detective said, his eyebrows lifting remotely,” Vaughn said.

  “Hmm,” Greta said. “He has a point.” She clicked off the TV and patted Eddie's shoulder. “Time to motor on,” she said. “Monkey needs to get home.”

  The party broke up just like that. Eddie departed without another word. Gail said good night and retired to her bedroom. Vaughn and Greta repaired to the kitchen for ice cream and cake.

  She said, “You look like something's bothering you.”

  “Look at you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “No. I mean, yes. Something's going on. I think the whole game is going off the rails. Gail says she wants to get remarried. In the Church, she said.”

  “Whoops,” Greta said.

  “She said something last week, but I thought it was—I don't know—some kind of wouldn't-it-be-lovely moment.”

  “Remarriage something you're interested in?” Greta said.

  “Probably not,” he said. “But it makes things harder.”

  “Well,” Greta said, carving some icing off the cake they'd uncovered on the kitchen table. “You're a popular guy.”

  “Thanks, Vernon.”

  “She has a weakness for you,” Greta said.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe she's just thinking backward. All we have to do is turn her around face front and she'll be totally repaired.”

  He cut himself a ridiculously large slice of cake and toppled it over on its side on his plate. Then he realized it was way too big and tried to cut it horizontally, from the middle of the broad outside arc toward the pointed edge of the wedge. That wasn't working too well when Greta took the knife out of his hand.

  “Let a cake girl do this, will you?” she said.

  “I can't believe she's serious,” Vaughn said. “I mean, she's just talking, isn't she? Bored, alone, as tired as the rest of us. Just wants a friend. Think about it that way, you can't blame her.” He wagged his fork at Greta. “Her idea is you can stay, too. Even Eddie. We become the Addams Family.”

  “Probably not going to happen,” Greta said.

  “Why do we bother to do any of this?” he said. “I mean, we do stuff and you know up front it's not going to work. I guess we're just passing time, waiting for her to get better, or waiting for things to change. Reminds me of my father.”

  “Dead, you mean?”

  “Cute,” he said. “No. I was thinking half-smart. He played the system to make a career. Taught me to do that. I was supposed to be this designer and what I really did was steal stuff and paste it together. I guess you gotta have an eye for what to steal. Then turn it on its ear and present it with authority. Not rocket science. Roughly the equivalent of wearing funny clothes.”

  “I would have liked your father, I think.”

  “He was okay. He wasn't a genius, or a hero, but he wasn't bad. There's something to be said for knowing, even belatedly, your limitations.”

  “True that,” she said.

  “My father taught me stuff, all kinds of things—taught me about tools, drawings, pencils, and later, about getting jobs, how to hold a woman while dancing. He taught me all this stuff, but it was peculiar, an odd mix. There was, for him, always an ideal form. Every act, every gesture, every remark, everything could eventually be discovered in its ideal state through focus and study.”

  “You're lucky, then.” Greta got the ice cream back out of the freezer and dished herself another scoop. “You want one?” she asked, pointing at Vaughn with the pink plastic ice crea
m scoop.

  “He had studied many things and had already discovered the ideal forms,” Vaughn said. “I, on the other hand, had a lot of bad haircuts. My father took pictures of every one of them, a chronicle of constant errors.”

  “That wasn't so nice of him. Maybe he was just fond of taking pictures of you? I mean, that's another possible explanation, isn't it?”

  “Hey, I never thought of that.”

  “Fuck you very much,” she said, smiling.

  “I don't know,” Vaughn said. “I'm feeling poorly about myself and my fellow creatures. This deal seems easy, but it's a tiny nightmare for me, and I'm thinking a nightmare for you, too, and for Gail, well, her three.”

  “People make errors,” Greta said. “They find out later. It's fine.”

  “I wish I was a better architect,” he said. “I always liked the art end of the business, peculiar architects who did peculiar things. It seemed possible to make a world that provided psychological beauty and stability sufficient to guide the user, or to counterbalance the effects of others. When I was in school my stuff was erratic. I was the patch-it-together guy. Got that from my instructors, I guess, before they fell off the planet. Ad hoc-ism, or something. Worked great when combined with haughty one-upmanship. Lo and behold, soon I was the hero student.”

  “And the rest is history,” Greta said. She yawned and collected the plates, bowls, plastic silverware, rinsed everything in the sink and placed the pieces in the dishwasher.

  “You don't have to rinse them for this dishwasher,” Vaughn said. “Gail demonstrated that for me once. It's in the manual.”

  “Got you coming and going, huh? You ready for bed?”