Flights have been canceled. They’ll be out tomorrow if they’re lucky, though there’s no accounting for this crazy weather. Yesterday hail. A few odds and ends at home and then back, again. So much to do but for now, a tornado somewhere: Midwest or lower—farther south. Near Texas but not on the border, north.
All right, Larry says.
An omen, Jules says.
Oh God, Larry says. Here goes, Larry says.
There’s a consensus but still people do not believe there’s a consensus. They think it’s an act of God.
God is dead, Elizabeth says. If nothing else, she remembers her Nietzsche.
Is that Shaw? Larry asks.
Nietzsche, Elizabeth says. They have invited her down so she will not be alone in this weather: the wind howling, the subways closed—the storm appearing out of nowhere. Everyone advised to stay precisely where they are: Pete at work in his shelter-in-place, Ben at Progressive K–8 in his shelter-in-place. It’s a Citywide lockdown: shut the windows, bolt the doors.
And tornadoes, Jules says.
Enough! Larry says.
I mean, yes, there have always been tornadoes, but did you see this one? Did you see the news? Whole parking lots, everything, crushed. We looked like ants swarming over it.
Aren’t you glad you’re here, Elizabeth?
Where else would I be? Elizabeth says. She’s trying not to get worked up. She’s trying to look on the bright side.
It will pass, Marie had said, opening the door wide for Elizabeth, who had said yes, she would feel a lot better in company.
I love you, Pete texted.
I love you, too, she texted back.
At the door Elizabeth held up the fishing tackle box Pete had put together, the one he labeled CONTINGENCIES. I’ve got contingencies, she yelled to the boys in the kitchen.
And we’ve got chips! Larry called back.
Now they sit around Marie’s old table drinking the rest of the sherry Jules found in the Antoinette cabinet—not just the bottle but the cut-crystal tumblers and the snifters and the sterling silver nut bowl Larry insisted on polishing with toothpaste before the almonds were procured. Circa 1973, these almonds, he said. Nuts don’t get old, Marie said, to which they all laughed.
“In honor of Great-Aunt Eleanor. Elegance at all times,” Jules had said, pouring.
“Cheers!” Marie said.
“I feel like Marlene Dietrich,” Larry said, clinking his glass. “I need a turban.”
They’ve already had a lot; they’ve already had enough. In the ancient dust on the sherry bottle they scrawl their names, the date. Just in case no one finds them. Larry was here, Larry writes. From the sherry to the wine, bottles a thousand years old. There is not much else to do but wait it out and drink. Anyway, Marie says, in the place where she is going they will require a note of approval for alcohol with dinner. In the place where she’s going she will have to share a room, and she will have to share a living room, and she will have to share a dining room, and when she gets infirm, if she gets infirm, she will have to share an infirm dining room.
“At least there’s company,” Jules says, watching as the first gusts bend the cherry tree to the ground and fling it up again, its blossoms hurtled like so much window confetti. Make it rain, he would say to his father. Pink rain best, he would say.
“Look,” he says now.
And they do. They watch the miracle of it all: how the tree does not snap but bends this way and that, throwing off its glorious pink, a survivor.
“Onward,” Marie says, watching.
What If your life suddenly gives out on you?
What If your home sinks into the sea?