Crazy for the Storm

I’m tired, Norman. Very tired.

I know, but you can’t sleep. My dad said when you freeze to death you feel warm and then you fall asleep and never wake up.

Her head moved toward me and I saw that her eyes were wide open. She was staring at me but was focused somewhere else.

Big Norm is dead, she said.

The bad thoughts tried to get me. I lolled my head and arched my shoulders.

We have to go now, I said.

They’re coming.

They’re not coming.

She stared at me. I studied the wound caving in one side of her forehead by her hairline, her dislocated shoulder that made one arm dangle like a partially severed branch. She receded farther under the wing, as if to hide this from me, and her eyes dimmed and her face looked like a skull.

Sandra. We have to go, I said.

No.

I’m going, I said.

You can’t leave me here.

Then come on.

I waited. Scoped out the conditions. Heavy snow falling. Now there’s going to be a layer of snow dust over the ice. It’ll be really difficult to tell where the grippier snow is. Shit. How will we hold on? Especially Sandra.

I reached up and touched the branches sheltering me. Some of the branches were stiffer than others. I broke off two long stems, then snapped off as many twigs and needles as I could. My hands were frozen again and my dexterity was awkward.

We have to go now, I called to her.

I kneeled down to see under the wing. She was squirming, her good arm oaring her forward like a bird flopping along the ground dragging a broken limb.

Sandra emerged from under the wing. Her eyes lolled in their trenches and the skin around them strained as if trying to compose the landscape.

It’s icy, I said. Use this like an ice axe. Okay?

I illustrated by jabbing the stem into the snow and tugging on it.

I can’t use my arms, she said.

Use that arm.

I handed her the stem. She gripped it and held it up to her face like a baby pondering a toy she didn’t understand.

I’ll go below you. Use me to step on, I said. Stay right above me so I can stop you from sliding. Okay?

Fuckin’ hell.

Okay?

Your face is cut open, she said.

I touched my face. Felt around. Traced frozen blood over a gash in my chin. Another gash on my cheek.

It’s not bleeding, I said.

Am I okay? she said.

You’re fine. Let’s go.

CHAPTER 18

MY DAD AND I took the ferry directly from Puerto Vallarta to La Paz, avoiding any chance of running across those federales again. From La Paz we drove the Baja highway north, homebound. In Tijuana we went to a bullfight. I rooted for the bull.

We spent the night in a hotel in San Diego and the next morning my dad woke me and we were in front of my mom’s house on Topanga Beach. He opened the door to the side walkway and I listened for sounds of Nick coming down the corridor. My dad knocked on the sliding-glass door.

Hey hey, said my mom as she opened the door. It’s the Dynamic Duo.

I peeked inside. She leaned down and kissed me.

Hi Mom, I said.

Look at you. Brown as a berry.

My dad stepped inside and went to the fridge. My mom patted the back of my head.

So blond, Norman, she said. How was the trip?

Good, I said.

My dad bit into a peach and he shut the fridge and peered at me over Mom’s shoulder. In his eyes not a trace of those rifle barrels or the gunshot or the days we spent adrift—just the afterglow of tube rides and sunshine.

So it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be? she said.

I shook my head.

It wasn’t until dinnertime that I asked about Nick.

He’s away for a few weeks, said my mom.

I switched on the TV to my favorite show, All in the Family, and we watched it while we ate. When the first commercial came on I turned around and looked at my mom. No bruise, no scratch, exactly the same as the other eye.

It was quiet around the house for the rest of August. My mom didn’t have to teach for a few weeks and I just hung around Topanga and skateboarded and surfed and played with Charley and Sunny. Everybody on the beach was talking about eminent domain and I gathered the county or the state, somebody, was trying to kick us off the beach. Someone said they could do it because we didn’t own the land, just the houses. That seemed impossible.

Hockey camp filled my weekend mornings and football practice filled my weekday afternoons and I alternated my nights among my mom, my dad and Eleanor. Eleanor was the only one I talked to about Nick and my mom. She mostly asked me questions, and I liked how she listened carefully to my answers.

One night Eleanor and I were in her kitchen preparing dinner. She asked me how I felt when Nick called me a failure and a liar and such, or when my dad made me get up at four in the morning to go to hockey practice. I didn’t like it of course, I told her. Then her husband Lee opened the front door, walked in and set a broom against the cabinet, heading for the bedroom.

Where’s the rest, honey? said Eleanor.

What do you mean? said Lee.

The chicken and the salad dressing.

You never said anything about getting chicken, said Lee.

You think I wanted you to go to the market at nine o’clock at night to buy a broom?

Well. I thought it was kind of strange.

They stood watching each other. They were both very small people, very gentle and sensitive. So they studied one another as if trying to feel the other out.

Lee, said Eleanor. It took you forty-five minutes to buy a broom?

I wanted to get the exact right one for you, Eleanor, he said.

Like gas leaking from a balloon laughter seeped out of my mouth. I couldn’t control it and I threw back my head, surrendering. Eleanor was next, then Lee, and soon the three of us were keeled over in the kitchen.

Lee said he was exhausted from the laughing and had to go lie down. Eleanor prepared dinner. While boiling the spaghetti she explained to me about bad pretends and good pretends.