The rain drives so hard that Nick imagines it puncturing the roof of the Saab. He peers through the wiper blades swatting at the windshield and rechecks the gas level. The Texaco shouldn’t be much farther. Just beyond the McDonalds and that bail bonds place. If only they could get through this intersection. He’s lost count of how many cycles of green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red they’ve sat through already. Clouds the color of charcoal edge across the midday sky, and with every spark of lightning and clap of thunder comes that shriek, so goddamned predictable.
“You okay, Roxy?” Nick glances back at his daughter snug in her car seat. Her eyes find his through a chaotic mass of brown curls, and she pushes the sides of her mouth into that maniacal grin she’s been wearing lately. “It’s not funny, Roxanne,” he says. “If you don’t like the thunder, put your fingers in your ears. No screaming. Daddy can’t focus on the road with you doing that.”
“It’s your fault we’re here,” Joelle tells Roxy. “You and your stupid mouth.”
“Enough,” Nick says, though Jo’s not wrong. Both girls are supposed to be at YMCA day camp, improving their swimming, or learning how to tie knots, or macramé, or whatever the hell they do there. It lasted two days before the call came.
“She’s just too much of a distraction,” Pam, the camp’s director, explained when Nick picked them up that afternoon.
He had tried to assure Pam that Roxy’s behavior was temporary — the screaming, the foul language — that she’d calm down eventually. He suspected Roxy was acting out, in part, because Lisa was gone for one or two weeks. Maybe more. His wife had been emphatically vague when she left their Galveston Island home for a conference of some kind in the Hill Country. Or maybe it was a spa. She said she’d done all she could for him. Needed space. Nick got that — he wouldn’t want to be around him anymore either.
But he didn’t lay such speculation on Pam, of course, so she just nodded and gave him one of those solemn, meaningful looks he found so irritating. “Temporary or not, she can’t stay. Maybe she’ll be ready next summer,” Pam said, staring at Nick for what felt like too long.
Nick estimates that it’s another 400 feet to the gas station. They should make it. Then again, the car’s running on fumes. He can hear Lisa chiding him for not filling the tank yesterday, using the same tone she gets when asking whether he’s remembered to take his medication, or if he’s contacted that headhunter, or would it kill him to do a load of laundry and wash the dishes since he’s going to be home all day.
Nick hates that his life has devolved into an endless charade, the perpetual remolding of himself into someone qualified for something — anything other than teaching. Yet there’s no hiding the fact that his job as the physical science teacher at Stephen F. Austin Middle School represents his single professional credit. What does he know about anything else? For fifteen years, he’d relished introducing young minds to the scientific method, atomic structure, chemical bonding, matter in motion. He’d believed this would remain his mission until retirement, or at least through the Reagan administration.
He just wasn’t prepared to explain the physics of how certain materials could balloon under the stress of ignition. How the collapse of a fuel tank could release liquid hydrogen and oxygen into the atmosphere, causing them to detonate into a ball of fire thousands of feet in the air. How a shuttle’s component parts could break apart and shred from the pull and thrust of this matter in motion, volatile, destined to fly. His brain had tried to comprehend those initial moments of horror, the recognition seeping in as he and his students watched the unthinkable unfurl live on CNN.
The media and public would comfort themselves believing that the seven crew members, a fellow teacher among them, had died the instant those white blades of smoke and gas sliced through the winter blue sky, but Nick knew otherwise.
It should’ve been him up there.
He could recite from memory the lesson he was prepared to give had he made it past the final round of interviews. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he was still proud that he had been one of the ten remaining candidates. But after five months of trying to reconcile what he should know with what he couldn’t accept, he’d lost the desire to recite or explain anything to anyone. His students deserved better than his paralysis. His principal thought a three-month leave of absence would help get his mind right. Nick didn’t tell her he might go permanently.
Now, he’s got to get his daughters to his mother’s house on the mainland, so he can spend the next week scanning the phone book and newspaper ads for temp agencies before falling asleep in front of All in the Family reruns. He’s promised Lisa that he’ll have something lined up before handing in his official letter of resignation.
The car makes it through the congested intersection, and Nick feels it pull up. The engine coughs, and the car slows and sputters to a stop. “What the…No. No-no-no. Shit!”
“No-no-no, shit,” echoes from the back seat.
“Roxy, so help me…”
“Are we out of gas?” Jo asks. Her eyes dart from Nick to the gas gauge and back to Nick. The car rocks in the percussive rain, and Nick looks at his oldest daughter, small for her seven years but smart enough to know they’re screwed.
“Yes,” he says, amid the blare of car horns behind them.
“What are we going to do?”
Nick doesn’t answer. Gusts of wind yank the car from its rain-battered rhythm, and his heart drums a rapid staccato in time with the windshield wipers.
“Dad,” Jo says again.
“Yeah. Yes. I’m…I’m thinking.” He needs to get them out of the road, but the steps to accomplish that goal elude him. He puts the car in neutral and lifts the parking brake. “I’ll push it the rest of the way,” he says finally. They’re positioned in the innermost lane of three lanes of traffic on a six-lane thoroughfare. He needs to push the car almost the length of a football field to get it across three oncoming lanes and to the station.
Nick hits the flashers, unbuckles his seatbelt, and inches the door open. Rain thrashes the inside of the car, and he feels the rush of water underneath, four to five inches deep. Has it really risen that quickly? Of course, it has. Twelve hours of rain collects then flows with the urgency of a ruptured dam. Matter in motion. Soon the car won’t need gas to move from its present location.
He steps into the road and feels the water seep into his shoes and soak the bottoms of his pant legs. He stares into the cars steering around him, honking, frantic and indignant. They lurch through the intersection, heaving water at his knees, each driver ignoring his pleas for help.
Nick returns to the car and collapses into his seat. “Fuck!” He punches the steering wheel, causing Jo to jump. He pounds again, repeatedly, until the stinging forces him to stop. He waits for the anticipated response from Roxy, but it doesn’t come. When he turns to face her, she stares back, eyes wide, tiny hands cupped over her ears.
“I’m sorry,” he says, mostly because nothing else comes to mind. “It’s gonna be okay, girls. Has to be.” Nick exhales and looks down at Jo. He wonders whether her feet will reach the brake pedal, whether she’s strong enough to hold the brake and wheel in place. Why hadn’t he opted for a model with power steering? He’ll move the seat all the way up.
He tries not to think about the rising water. Or how far it is to the gas station. Or what Lisa would say of their situation. The forecasters said the storm — no, tropical depression — wouldn’t come ashore for another six hours. But knowing others thought it was safe to drive won’t lessen his wife’s judgment. It isn’t lessening his.
“Okay, Jo, you’re going to slide over here,” he says.
“What? No Daddy, I can’t drive.”
“You’re not going to drive. You’re going to help me guide the car.”
“No, I can’t.” She shakes her head and shrinks away from him into her seat.
“Yes. Yes, you can, honey. Sit up, Jo-Jo. Look at me. We need to do this now. The water’s rising, we need to get the car to higher ground, and we don’t have a lot of time.” He suspects he sounds more agitated than reassuring.
Joelle nods slowly, wincing at a jagged bolt of lightning. Storms have always frightened her. He should say something comforting, but Lisa is the one who usually calms her down, who coaxes her back to sleep when the skies erupt at night.
“It’s going to be okay, you guys. I promise,” he says.
Nick lowers the steering wheel and gets out of the car. Jo crawls into the driver’s seat; her feet dangle just above the floor mat. He pulls the seat forward.
“Now, put your foot here on the brake pedal,” he tells her. “Press down and leave it there until you hear me tell you to lift it. Got it?”
“I think so,” she says. Nick hears the hesitation in her voice. He brushes a strand of hair hovering over her left eye and tucks it behind her ear. Her hands tremble, but she clasps the steering wheel, scoots to the edge of the seat, and presses her foot against the brake pedal.
Nick releases the parking brake. “Good. That’s good. Foot on the brake until I say lift it. Keep the wheel where it is; hands ten and two. If it wobbles, just hold on tight.”
Joelle nods, says nothing. Such a compliant kid. She’d given Nick and Lisa premature confidence in their parenting skills before Roxy bounded into their lives and met their every instruction with attitude and suspicion. Nick looks into Jo’s pleading eyes, sees his own staring back. The rain pummels the back of his head and streams down his neck. He should close the door now, but it feels like he’s leaving them. He leans in and kisses Jo’s forehead. “You’re a good girl,” he says. “You too, Roxy.” She gives him a half-smile, hands still over her ears, and Nick shuts the door and wades around to the back of the car.
“Okay, lift your foot up, Jo,” he shouts, as the wind slaps his jacket collar against his chin and whips rain into his eyes. He pushes, but the car won’t budge. Maybe she didn’t hear him. “Now, Joelle,” he shouts louder into the squall. He pushes again, and this time the car begins to ease through the murky water now swirling about his shins.
The thick stench of motor oil, salt, and sewage shrouds the air. Cars swerve around them, scattering water like glitter in the steady blaze of lightning. Nick pushes the car through the muck — five feet, ten feet, twenty. After several minutes, he begins counting the beats of his heart, then each step. How many feet to go? 300? 250? The blinding rain and flashes of light make it difficult to estimate. But he can see the Golden Arches ahead, and the car wash, and the drive-thru bank, and that surf shop Jo’s always bugging him to take her to.
He wonders whether the wailing car horns exist only in his mind, whether they signal more than just the other motorists’ aggravation. Could one of them end up pinning him to this trunk? A shard of pain cuts through his arms to his shoulder and neck. His saliva tastes like metal. Or maybe that’s blood. Maybe he’s bitten his lip.
Nick opens his mouth and lets the water slide in and around and onto his tongue, warm but bitter. Every breath is a negotiation. He might as well move the car through a river of molasses. His hands stiffen and tingle, so he adjusts his grip. What had his shrink told him last week? You need to allow yourself to feel, Nick. Well, he sure as shit can feel everything now. In his neck, shoulder, arms, legs, even his groin, and he hasn’t felt anything in that region in several months, reason enough for Lisa to want to leave. Maybe he’s given himself a hernia.
With every step, every inch of road, the destination appears to retreat farther into that obsidian void. As if he can see the end coming but no light. Maybe it was like this for the crew, bracing against the force of gravity, against the free fall, anticipating the inevitable plunge into blackness.
Maybe the water will swallow him, too.
Nick doesn’t know how long the car’s been stopped when he hears Jo’s cry, muffled but unmistakable, the sound knifing him in the gut and forcing his hands off the car. His eyes strain into the sheets of gray as he calls her name. No answer. He doesn’t know what he notices first: the water suddenly at his thighs; the folks ahead bailing out of cars that drift and circle each other in a slow-motion tango; or his own car filling with water, rotating away from him, unmoored. He doesn’t know if his mind or limbs react first, but he pulls open the door, unfastens the car seat, and lifts Roxy into his arms, then wades around to grab Jo who is both petrified and determined, insisting she can walk on her own, promising to hold on tight and never let go, not ever.
Nick hoists Roxy onto his shoulders and steadies himself within the roiling brown water. Roxy tugs at his jacket collar as he grips her legs with his left arm and presses them into his chest. Jo clings to his right arm with both hands, tight enough to cut off his circulation. He has no idea where to go; he only knows to move. Ahead he sees scattered hordes of stranded motorists begin to converge and migrate towards what he assumes is higher ground, and he follows. The water is chest-high on Jo — if it rises higher, he’ll have to carry her, too.
He wishes they could move faster, wishes they had a raft, wishes he could just let go and allow the water to carry him wherever he’s meant to be.
But then he has a vision of himself as a child, with his friends, trudging through the surf, far into the Gulf, diving over the arcing waves only to be swept back and deposited ashore in white foam and seaweed. Once, near a fishing pier, a rip current caught him and drew him slowly, steadily away from shore. He’d been warned this could happen. A friend of a friend had died after being dragged down by the undertow; he’d been told. But Nick knew the term was a misnomer — you couldn’t really be pulled under. Somehow, he knew not to panic or resist but to swim parallel to the shore until he was out of the current’s grip.
Nick’s legs buckle as the road seems to collapse beneath him, and Roxy’s fingers fan across his eyes and press against his temples, squeezing his head as though she thinks it will keep them upright. He peels her fingers away from his face and back to his shoulders and tries to regain his footing. But from below the surface of the water other hands grab at his legs, and he realizes that Jo has slipped from his grasp and is under him, bobbing and sputtering. Nick holds his breath as he crouches and reaches and swipes and misses, again, and again, his thighs burning to maintain his balance, until he catches Jo’s outstretched hand and pulls her back to her feet.
“You’re okay; I gotcha,” he says. He draws her trembling frame against his waist. She coughs into his stomach and rests her head awkwardly next to Roxy’s leg. “We’re almost there,” he says, not knowing where there is. “Almost.”
“Hey, heads up!” a voice calls to him. Nick looks to his left and sees a man standing in the bed of a pickup parked in front of the surf shop. “Take this and head there,” the man says. He tosses Nick a black inner tube and points to a side street just beyond the shop. Nick pulls the tube in; Jo grabs onto it. He looks down the side street and sees a 7-Eleven lit up like Vegas. Higher ground. Nick maneuvers them around clusters of cars listing in the water like abandoned bath toys. He sees other folks headed in the same direction, while others remain atop their cars, viewing the scene like it’s some cinematic version of the apocalypse.
“Thanks, man,” Nick says to him.
“No problem,” he says. “Hell of a thing. It’s like the water rose from fuckin’ nowhere.”
“Yeah.”
“Daddy, he said ‘fuck,’ Roxy notes. “Fuck. Fucky, fuck, fucker…”
“I know, Roxy, I heard him. Let’s get you guys dry.”
Inside the 7-Eleven, they’re surrounded by beleaguered eyes and soaked bodies, clustered among the aisles of junk food, comics, and motor oil. Cigarette smoke drifts and coils into the unforgiving light. Nick spots the payphone towards the back of the store. “Girls, stay here near the register,” he says. “I’m gonna call Mom. Then I’ll get us something to eat.”
At the phone, Nick touches his back pocket and feels for his wallet where he’s placed the paper with the phone number Lisa gave him. Only his wallet is gone. Of course. It’s either buried with the car or on its way out to the Bay and Gulf and beyond.
Nick has no plan B. Why can’t he ever have a plan B? He has a quarter in his pocket, so he lifts the receiver, deposits the coin, and punches the zero. A disinterested alto answers. “Operator. How may I assist?”
“Hi. Hello. Okay,” Nick stammers. “See, my wife is at a conference — I think it’s at a hotel near Austin, but I don’t know the name, and my car is…My daughters and I…Look, can you maybe find me the number?”
“Sir, you’re going to need to be more specific. What’s the name of the hotel?”
“So, that’s the thing. I don’t know. It was on a piece of paper in my wallet. But I don’t have it, and I thought maybe you could look it up and…”
“No, sir. Not without the name of the hotel. You need to give me a name.”
“Look, you don’t understand. I don’t have the name. I don’t have anything. That’s why I need to talk to my wife.” The numbers on the dial pad blur and crisscross, and Nick closes and opens his eyes, willing them to focus.
“Sir, I can’t find a number without the name…”
“I just need to talk to my wife. I need my wife.” Gulf waves crash in his ears, and his voice sounds like he’s speaking underwater.
“And I need you to give me the name of…”
“Listen to me. Please listen. I need to talk to my wife. I need to explain to her that I didn’t see it coming. I wasn’t prepared. Okay? Can you just tell her that? I didn’t see any of this coming.” The throbbing in his head feels like nails that pierce his nasal cavity and melt into his mouth. He places his hand against the booth to steady himself.
“Sir, we don’t relay messages. I’m disconnecting you.”
At the drone of the dial tone, Nick replaces the receiver and rests his head against it. He needs the spinning to stop. He needs water. Better yet, a stiff drink and a cigarette.
“Hey there. Other folks are waiting for that phone,” a man calls from behind him. “You ain’t the only one in here.”
“Yeah. I know,” Nick barks back. He could deck the guy, but he hasn’t any strength left in his arms, nor the energy to feel genuine rage.
Nick stumbles down the aisle, brushing past wet elbows and shoulders. At the end of the line, a tattooed arm shoves a roll of paper towels into his chest. Nick doesn’t look up but stops, takes the roll, and leans against the shelf next to a rack of sunglasses. He studies his reflection in the curved mirror above the rack. Sees his defeated, stubborn eyes. His chapped lips. His cheeks blotched with rain and sweat, making it appear as though he’s been crying, absolving the real tears that, for the last several months, have refused to come. The pain in his head has dulled, and he inhales and exhales, slowly, deliberately, summoning long columns of air from deep within his gut until it, too, begins to unclench.
Nick wanders back towards the front of the store where he finds Jo and Roxy sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the Donkey Kong machine. Somehow, they’ve managed to score bright red Slurpees and a bag of Doritos.
“Where’d you get those?” he asks.
Roxy points to a man behind the cash register. Manuel, Manager, his name tag reads.
“He said we could pick out whatever we wanted,” Joelle explains, her voice calm and matter of fact.
“But I told him we’d share the chips. There’s a lot of other people here.”
“Right.” He notices the tranquility of the room, everyone milling about, wringing water out of clothes, shedding the heaviness of the day, accepting that the loss of their surroundings in a pool of darkness is an inescapable element of nature and nothing more.
Nick rips off two sheets of towels and hands them to Joelle. He tears off another, drops to his knees, and blots the water from Roxy’s matted curls. “We’re okay, Daddy,” she says between chews. Dorito crumbs dot the corners of her mouth. He looks into her eyes and nods. He’s about to go the register to thank Manuel when someone taps him on the shoulder. He turns and sees a young woman, or older teenager. She looks familiar, and Nick realizes she’s a former student, from five or six years ago. What was her name? Started with a D – Dahlia, Darla?
“Hey, Mr. K. You all right? Remember me? Delia.” Her blonde hair is mostly wet and gathered into a loose ponytail. Faded turquoise-blue shadow crowns her bloodshot eyes, and she smells vaguely of weed. “Looks like you could use one of these,” she says, sliding a cigarette from a pack of Lucky Strikes and pointing it at him. She stands uncomfortably close, but Nick doesn’t move. He briefly wonders whether she’s a hallucination.
Nick looks down at the girls. They don’t know that smoking was once a habit of his, one he’d given up as soon as he and Lisa decided to start a family. He clears his throat and takes the cigarette. Roxy looks up at him but remains silent, then wraps her Slurpee-stained lips around the fat straw and begins to make those loud sucking sounds that drive Lisa insane.
“Thank you,” Nick says. Delia offers him a light, and he accepts — his first drag in almost eight years. It’s not the sweet relief he’d anticipated, but it feels like the only appropriate response to the absurdity of the situation.
“You still teaching at Stephen F?” Delia asks.
“Yeah. I mean, no. Not really. Not for a while. It’s complicated.”
“Huh. Well, if you aren’t, that’s too bad. I mean, I know I wasn’t all that there — man, you were so patient, but…Hey, you sure you’re okay, Mr. Kerrigan?”
“Yes, Dahlia.”
“Delia.”
“Delia. Sorry. Yes. I am. I’m getting there. I think. I’m just going to sit down with my girls now. If you don’t mind.”
“Yeah, okay, sure. Y’all take care.”
Nick slumps to the floor and stretches out his legs. The cigarette dangles from his lips; droplets of water crawl down his scalp. He should continue drying off, but it feels like forever since he’s sat. He doesn’t know the time, or whether it’s day or night. Any marker he might rely on to draw such distinctions has dissolved in a watery grave. Maybe this should make him feel cleansed, renewed, redeemed — his shrink will have an apt metaphor.
Mostly, he just feels drowned. He doesn’t know what comes next, can’t remember the last time he did. But if they have to sleep and eat and wait on this cold, mud-streaked floor until the rain stops and the water recedes, that’s what they’ll do. That’s his plan: Slurpees and strangers and a cigarette haze, his daughters’ arms holding on, never letting go. Because the one thing he remembers is to not steer himself against the tide.