20 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019
PERSONAL HISTORY
HURRICANE SEASON
After the storm.
BY DAVIDSEDARIS
ILLUSTRATION BY TAMARA SHOPSIN
G
row up in North Carolina and it’s
hard to get too attached to a beach
house, knowing, as you do, that it’s on
borrowed time. If the hurricane doesn’t
come this autumn, it’ll likely come the
next. The one that claimed our place—
the Sea Section—in September of 2018,
was Florence. Hugh was devastated,
while my only thought was: What’s
with the old-fashioned names? Irma,
Agnes, Bertha, Floyd—they sound like
finalists in a pinochle tournament. Isn’t
it time for Hurricanes Madison and
Skylar? Where’s Latrice, or Category 4
Fredonté?
Florence, it was said, gave new mean-
ing to the word “namaste” along the
North Carolina coast.
“Are you going to evacuate?”
“Namaste.”
Hugh and I were in London when
the hurricane hit, and was followed al-
most immediately by a tornado. Our
friend Bermey owns a house—the Dark
Side of the Dune—not far from ours,
and went over to check on the Sea Sec-
tion as soon as people were allowed back
onto Emerald Isle. He found our doors
wide open—blown open by the wind. A
large section of the roof had been ripped
off, and the rain that had fallen in the
subsequent days had caused the ceilings
on both floors to cave in, the water drain-
ing, as if the house were a sieve, down
into the carport. Bermey took pictures,
which looked so tawdry I was embar-
rassed to share them. It seems that rats
had been living in the second-floor ceil-
ings. So there were our beds, speckled
with currant-size turds and tufts of
bloated, discolored insulation.
All the interior drywall would need
to be replaced, as would the roof, of
course, along with the doors and win-
dows. We were left with a shell, essen-
tially. Had ours been the only place
affected, it might have been easy to have
the repairs done, but, between the hur-
ricane and the flooding, thousands of
homes had been either destroyed or se-
verely damaged—and that was just in
North Carolina.
Our other house, luckily, was rela-
tively unscathed. It’s next door to the
Sea Section, and when it came up for
sale, in 2016, Hugh disregarded my ob-
jections and bought it. His argument
was that if he didn’t get it someone would
most likely tear it down and construct
the sort of McMansion that has become
the rule on Emerald Isle rather than the
exception. The size of these new houses
was one thing—eight bedrooms were
common, spread over three or four sto-
ries—but what came with them, and
what you really didn’t want next door
to you, was a swimming pool. “It hap-
pened to us ten years ago,” moaned my
friend Lynette, who owns an older, tra-
ditionally sized cottage up the street
from us. “Now all we hear is ‘Marco!’
‘Polo!’ over and over. It’s like torture.”
The place that Hugh bought is an-
cient by Emerald Isle standards—built
in 1972. It’s a single-story four-bedroom,
perched on stilts and painted a shade
of pink that’s almost carnal. Like the
Sea Section, it’s right on the ocean, but
unlike the Sea Section it’s rented out to
vacationers. At first, Hugh went through
an agency, but now he does it himself,
through a number of Web sites. Our
friend Lee across the street rents out his
place, Almost Paradise, as do most of
our Emerald Isle neighbors, and all of
them have stories to tell. People leave
with the pillows and coat hangers. Peo-
ple grill on the wooden decks. They
bring dogs regardless of whether or not
you allow them, and small children,
meaning all sorts of things get flushed
down the toilets: seashells, doll clothes,
dice. And, of course, people complain
about absolutely everything: The TV
only gets ninety channels! There’s some
missing paint on the picnic table!
Lee once got a comment from a renter
