J
ames is home early and he says
we goddammit really seriously
need to pack. Hup hup, time to
go. It’s the weather again, and it bores
me so. We live where the water loves
to visit. Just a little rain of the coast,
that’s all, and it’ll rise into our home.
It loves to soak our rug and climb up
the walls and, once, it seeped into our
electronics, inside the TV cabinet, and
destroyed our precious entertainment
center, which keeps us—or me, any-
way—from raiding the medicine cab-
inet at night for other pleasures. Oth-
erwise, well, we have brilliant sunsets
and the kind of grass that is absurdly
tall, taller than you or me. I don’t know
how it doesn’t just fall over. You’d think
it had a long slender bone in each blade.
Some original, beautiful creature that
needs no head or limbs, because it has
no enemies. Who knows.
James bustles around the house, grab-
bing what he can. He says to pack light
and to pack smart. I like this military
side of my husband. I almost feel
charmed. The evacuation is mandatory
this time—something mean and seri-
ous is barrelling down on us—and I al-
most wish we had a pretty siren in our
little community for occasions like this
one. A siren adds a feeling of gravity to
a catastrophe, a feeling that something
important is happening, which one so
rarely gets to feel. James says that he’ll
grab our “go bag,” which I didn’t even
know we had. What has he put in it?
Pears, medical marijuana, Percocet, and
frozen Snickers bars? Something tells
me that it’s more of a batteries-and-
rope-and-candles-and-matches kind of
bag. James is hufy and swollen and red
as he loads the car. This is all a little
much for him. Still, it’s nice to see him
excited, in charge, alive. It’s been hard
to watch a man his age slowly lose his
sense of purpose, as he’s been doing,
shuling around the kitchen trying to
perfect his long-simmering sauces, most
of which get poured out on the back
lawn when he’s done, since how much
gravy-drenched flesh can the two of us
reasonably consume?
There is only one road out of here,
and everyone we know is on it, moan-
ing silently, I imagine, gently rending
their summer linens at this unwelcome
disruption. It gets tiring waving at them
all—stressed-out, wrinkled accidents of
the human form, with white hair, or no
hair, or nubby yellow sun visors, grimac-
ing, hunched over their steering wheels,
as if they were being chased by men
with guns. We know these people by
their cars, which are long and dark and
quiet, just like ours. We could simply
call one another, share information, and
prop up one another’s nervous systems
with voice-based medication, but peo-
ple are saving their cell-phone batter-
ies. We’ve been through this drill be-
fore. Also, James prefers that I not talk
on the phone when he’s driving. He
does his best to tolerate it, bless him,
but he tenses up so terribly that I fear
he will break open and spill everywhere,
even while he insists, sometimes angrily,
that he really doesn’t mind. Really, re-
ally, really, with spit fluing out of his
mouth and a look of murder in his eyes.
I feel that he is daring me to make a
call, but, when I consider the risk, I sort
of daren’t. After all, I am a passenger in
the vehicle that he is driving, and I must
consider my own safety, too.
“This is the hardest part,” James
says. “Getting out of here.”
Well put, and doesn’t that just apply
to any old situation: a meeting, a party,
a relationship, a life? Always that sticky
problem of the exit and how to squeeze
through it.
When I don’t respond, James says,
“Do you agree?” It’s what he often wants
and needs. Assent. I tend to pay out as
much as I can, with my mouth and
otherwise, but one must always mon-
itor the personal cost, careful not to
add to the deficit, which can build up
and trigger a low-grade rage. Not my
prettiest style. I never knew that I would
be so relentlessly called on to agree
with someone. Mother never said. Ask
not, I guess, and I sort of haven’t.
I touch his leg. “Oh, I do. I was just
thinking, in fact, how right you are.
This is the diicult part. This right
here.” I would so love to point at the
two of us, the fact of us, here in this
car, on this road, on this day, with a
storm coming, in this particular life, to
say that this is the diicult part. Be-
cause, well. But the precise gesture
eludes me. Hands can signify only so
much. Usually they should just rest in
one’s lap, sneaking beneath the garment
now and then for a wee scratch. This
is possibly why one is supposed to useone’s words. I think. Plus, James is fo-
cussing all his energy on the road ahead,
which is really just an endless line of
cars pointing west, away from the storm.
We will be here a while. We might as
well table any immediate feelings.
“This is about the only time I hate
this island,” James says. “When it keeps
us prisoner.”
“Yup,” I say. “Me, too.”
It’s not really an island, or it wasn’t
until some developers got clever. Be-
cause people love an island. I guess we
love an island. I’m told they used explo-
sives. They bombed a little spit of land
that connected two bigger blobs of
coastal blah, then built a baby road over
the obliterated spit, the road we are now
stuck on. And, poof, our little town be-
came an island, and the houses suddenly
cost more. The wind was arguably
sharper and cooler after that, the light
more intense, more light-like. Accord-
ing to the marketing, anyway. Oh, it was
instantly spectacular, and all it took was
some dynamite stufed into the gaping
pores of an old, rotted peninsula. “Blow-
ing Your Way to Beauty” might have
been a nice slogan. Island life.
“What’s strange,” I say, as we idle
in traic, “is that the sun is out. It’s
such a fine day. So weirdly beautiful.”
James cranes his neck to look out
the window, trying maybe to be fair,
and he has that expression, as if he’d
evaluated all the evidence but, still, he’s
very sorry to say that he just cannot
bring himself to agree. It would vio-
late his deepest moral principles to cede
any ground here. “I’m not sure that’s
so strange,” he says, as if there were a
superior adjective he’s reluctant to share.
“Quiet before the you know, and all.
Plus I see some.. .” And he points to
nowhere, where there is maybe noth-
ing, and I’m sure I don’t even need to
look.
He’s probably right. What do I know
when it comes to strange? Gosh knows
I’m no expert on the uncanny.
“Yes, well, should we have music,
or just listen to each other’s bodies
complain?”
“You think I’m complaining?” James
says. “Because I’m not. This is a little
stressful. I’m trying to get us out of here.”
“I understand,” I say. And I do. It
needn’t be said aloud, but I was refer-
ring to the sounds we make, each of