Hurricane

A story about a difficult time.

The hurricane blew a hole straight through our safety, destroying everything we’d built together in the last three years. This type of s**t had been all too regular: late winter storms going into April and tornadoes touching ground in New York City of all places. These were stories you heard coming out of the mid-western and southern states - not the northeast. I guess we’d been lucky a long time here, though the winters have always been so damn cold. Now we get hurricanes.

It was an early Sunday morning in August when the rain started and my wife and I had set about staying in bed to ride out the storm. There were a couple jugs of water on the dining room table and some canned tuna. I’d even filled the bathroom tub with water in case we needed to wash our hair or something if it was turned off. My wife had been in a winter storm that was so bad, her power and water were out for five days; five long winter days with no heat, no power, and no showers, so she felt the need to prepare for an outage. Nobody expected a flood.

We were forced to leave by some stranger in a yellow poncho, banging on our apartment door and screaming bloody murder about a dam break. I was still in my boxers and she was in the bed, cuddled up with a blanket and a book. I wish I’d grabbed something, anything, whatever my arms could carry. I wish I’d taken a last look or a photograph, just to keep the idea of our home together. I remember the brown microfiber sofa and chair set we’d bought last year to finally replace the free blue sofa that was there when we moved in. My wife was so excited about them; it was a real step towards domesticity. She’d swear up and down that they were the most comfortable things she’d ever sat in. I kind of missed the old blue sofa �" it felt lived in.

There was also the record collection by an old vinyl player, each one carefully placed in plastic sleeve protectors - reminders of a summer spent garage sale hunting for old classics we rarely ever listened to. The fun was in the hunt, not in listening to the used, worn out copies of Thriller or The Doors that popped and hissed as the needle passed through.  

My wife was frantically running from room to room, tearing the place apart to look for her purse. I grabbed her shoulders and tried to calm her down but she pushed me away and told me to put some pants on. I hated the yellow-poncho man - no bedside manner at all.

The apartment had two equally small closets - one in the bedroom and one in the spare room. I gave the bedroom closet to my wife under the guise of being a good guy. Really, I didn’t want her nagging me on the way I hang up clothes. Who cares if the shirts don’t all face the same way; it got the job done. The spare was room turned into an office with two bookshelves - one for her books and one for mine. Nicholas Sparks and Gregory Maguire titles clashed somewhat with Stephen King and Hunter S. Thompson, so there was a definite need to segregate the books.

I grabbed my pants out of the closet and ran with my wife to the car. The apartment complex parking lot was bustling with activity: people coming out of their homes carrying clothes and boxes with collected junk thrown in haphazardly and a howling wind that threatened to throw everyone to the ground. A loud booming sound could be heard through the noise that turned out to be a dumpster lid being forced open and closed in the wind. There was an infant tree that had been planted a few months back thrust against our car window; it’s roots seeping mud and dirt like blood across the hood of the car. I grabbed it and quickly tossed it aside.

The rain and wind cut down visibility to almost zero as we drove out of the apartment complex we’d called home, hammering the roof of the car with bursts and showers. When added with the increasingly threatening dark sky and the panicked pedestrians running to high ground, I was overcome with a profoundly surreal feeling. Movies sometimes get close, but can never adequately interpret the sense of anxiety and fear. We eventually made it to her father’s house, located on the top of a hill and away from any danger. It was ten in the morning when we left the complex, and half past six in the afternoon when the storm stopped.

There was no news about our area other than a passing remark about scattered flooding. Apparently some nameless senator had been caught with his pants down which monopolized every news cycle. Priorities seemed on the right track.

We weren’t allowed to go into the complex the next day; the road had been blocked off by police. I could see the resting water from the side street creating an image of lakeside properties that would definitely raise our rent if the owners could capitalize on it. We weren’t happy waiting around and overheard some other neighbors hatching a plan.

That night, we drove near the complex and parked a half-mile away. The power had been shut off all around, turning the familiar area into a ghost-town and making me miss the orange glow of street-lamps. We walked quietly in the pitch-black night, hearing some far-away car alarm that gave a small link to civilization. The moon provided the only source of light and cast haunting shadows of bent trees against the side of the buildings. The road heading into the complex was completely flooded with water that rose up to our chests. It was very cold and looked dirty.

We reached the parking lot and saw a twisted reflection of reality. A car was completely submerged with the alarm honking on and off, solving the disregarded mystery. The headlights shone through the water, creating small paths of light that ended abruptly. The dumpster had literally floated from one side of the lot to the other, crashing into one of the roofed parking areas and staying there. A yield sign had bent to the side, possibly from being hit by the dumpster. Trees and bushes floated around like broken rafts in a swamp.

The water fell, coming right above our knees as we came closer to our building which was built on slightly higher ground. We found the door into our apartment and unlocked it, pushing it open against the water. A wooden baseball bat floated out and disappeared in the parking lot. The smell hit us first. It had been a hot day that had spread a musty stench throughout the rooms, as if someone had left clothes in a washing machine for days. We each had flashlights that we clicked on, reflecting shimmering patterns that danced across the ceiling and walls.

My wife began to cry. We sloshed through a mass of swollen paper and plastic that turned out to be the record collection. I pushed it out of the way and walked further into the living room. The new sofa and chair were still there; the brown cushions had turned black from the absorbed moisture. I sat down and kicked my feet up, making my wife laugh a little at the absurdity before she started to cry again. This was the room I’d proposed in. This was the room we’d spent most of our time together - the furniture we’d hand-picked out, the pictures and wall hangings and everything else that was slowly built up, like a puzzle showing a portrait of our lives. The landlord had allowed us to paint the walls whatever we wanted and we’d decided on a very classy sky-blue, but for some reason, she wanted one wall in the living room to be brick-red. She called it an “Accent Wall,” and said it would pop more than the rest of the apartment. I don’t know why, but it worked.

I got up and moved behind her as she walked to the office. Something had knocked over the bookshelves which landed face-down in the water, revealing stray paperbacks that had floated up to the surface. I opened the closet door and breathed a small sigh of relief - my clothes were hung higher than the water and were mostly okay, save for a smell that would probably come out in the wash. My shoes were a different story, all floating around and bumping into each other. I left the closet and moved on, noticing a waterlogged copy of The Shining that followed us into the next room.

The bedroom was a total loss. All of the furniture already showed signs of water damage. The mattress had absorbed so much water, it made a squish sound when I touched it. The carefully selected bedding had been thrown on the ground in our panicked exit and was wadded in the corner by the window. My wife opened her closet and looked around at the damage. Before she met me, she’d collected designer Coach purses, the only extravagance a single woman with two jobs had allowed herself. Now they laid in ruin, with water poking out of the cotton bags that only protected the purses from dust.

I walked into the bathroom. There was the tub, still filled with untouched water, the flood water safely lapping at the side. An idea came to me that water wouldn’t be a problem anymore and I started to laugh. I continued to laugh harder and couldn’t stop. My wife came in to see what was happening and began laughing as well. It was a nice relief that ended in tired chuckles. I put my arm around her and kissed her head. I looked her in the eyes and tried to find the right words to say that would let her know everything would be okay; that it was just stuff and we were safe and that was all that mattered. I couldn’t get the words out but she heard them all the same.