Patrick Kelty put down the debris-filled wheelbarrow and caught his breath against the February chill.
It had been more than three months since Sandy destroyed his family home, along with much of his neighborhood. Three months since the bay swept over Father Capodonna Boulevard that terrible night, filling up Midland Beach like a giant tub, reducing the place where his family lived to an abandoned, demolished war zone and the house he grew up in to rubble.
Three months and still no power, apart from generators. No settlement from the insurance companies; not a dime yet from FEMA to help any of them build back their lives.
It was on the way, he was told. Always on the way. Congress had just approved an aid bill. Last night it snowed and people were shivering in their homes, protected only by taping blankets over their windows to keep out the frost. Those who hadn’t had their homes torn apart by the sea.
A few of the heartiest returned as soon as the waters had receded. Amid the morass of mud and bricks, cars washed into others’ lots; downed trees and power lines; boats tossed around like bath toys. There was the overwhelming deflation of having everything you had in your life ruined. Every possession; every item of value; every memory, lost. Those who hadn’t lost their parents or friends. No shelter or clothing against the cold.
Most of them had nowhere else to go. For weeks no one could even get near their gutted homes. Midland Beach, like Tottenville to the south, and Oceanside, was barely more than a debris-filled lake. For a week, the only way to even get around was by an inflatable raft or a small powerboat. When everything finally receded, there was nothing for the eye to see in every direction but ruin.
Patrick took a leave of absence from the NYPD. His career didn’t matter now. Not as much. Everything he knew, had grown up with, traced his roots to, was in shambles. His father was in failing health and completely on his own. The rebuilding was massive and slow. And it wasn’t just Patrick’s home. It was the whole block, Baden Avenue. The entire neighborhood. Everything was down. Friends he’d grown up with, those he’d gone to Father Aquinas with and mass at St. Margaret Mary’s; played CYO hockey and touch football with on Midland Field. All down. A lot of those who were left behind were older and couldn’t fend for themselves. Like Mrs. O’Byrne. She’d lost everything. Everyone felt cold and abandoned. There were mouths to feed. The Jersey shore and the Rockaways, where that terrible fire razed a hundred homes, captured all the attention.
The world seemed to forget they were even here.
The way Patrick figured, it wasn’t just homes that had been battered and destroyed. It was their lives. Everything they had all grown up with and looked at as a way of life. Their history.
Like the Giorgios two houses down, who were in their eighties and whose kids had long moved away. Or the Flynns, who bought the white Queen Anne across the street and whose son suffered from Down syndrome.
Who would help them rebuild?
Or his dad. A proud man who’d never taken more than a week off at work until the day he called it quits. Who now picked up scattered photos of his wife, their home in ruin, holding back tears. “Just feel blessed that Paula is no longer around to have to see this.” He shook his head. She’d lived on Baden Avenue for forty years.
So Patrick had volunteered to come back. That had always been his way. He’d gone to Cornell on a hockey scholarship, majored in government. Then it just seemed right to join the force after he graduated, a year after 9/11. There was such a gaping hole in the world and he felt it was his calling to help fill it in just a bit. He went straight into the Street Crime Unit and not too long after, married Liz, who he’d known in college, but she didn’t see life going quite the same way—the force, Staten Island—and it didn’t last. A couple of years later he moved into social services as an NYPD liaison to the mayor’s office, specializing in community relations. Before he left he’d been the department’s point person on the controversial Stop and Frisk program.
He’d put in a solid month helping his dad, believing that by now they’d be able to start the rebuilding.
But to date, whatever had been done had been borne solely on their own backs. And money. The building department still hadn’t even finalized the new requirements for how many feet homes must be raised to ensure this wouldn’t happen again.
So they pretty much just cleared—their houses and their neighbors’. In place of cranes and bulldozers, they had shovels and Dumpsters. They found their own people to help pitch in: carpenters and electricians, neighbors and volunteers. Patrick watched his father age in front of his eyes—angry and heartbroken.
But mostly it was like it was today. Shoveling rubble into trucks against an endless tide of debris. Handing out blankets and food to those who remained on the street. Helping whoever needed help, like making sure Mrs. O’Byrne’s portable generator worked or that her food delivery had reached her.
Then ten days ago his dad said he had something to take care of up in Connecticut and he never came back.
It was sad. His father was a proud and lonely man who kept trying to find a reason to live without his wife or his job. Then the storm took the rest out of him. Who knew what he was even doing all the way up there? Joe had grown withdrawn and secretive over the past few weeks, and Patrick was so wrapped up with the house and helping out, maybe he hadn’t paid the closest attention. His dad had made it his mission to try and help Mrs. O’Byrne, who’d lost everything. For thirty years, he and Paula and Tom and Sheila had been the closest of friends. Patrick grew up with the sight of the four of them playing euchre on Friday nights, going to Mets games, and putting their American flags out on Fleet Week when the ships sailed under the bridge into New York Harbor.
What had Mrs. O’B said when Patrick told her about the accident? “Then it was all for nothing,” she said. “Nothing.” Then closed the door and went back into her shambles of a house.
Now he could see in the cleared-out streets the houses starting to be framed again. Families coming back—even those still living with portable heaters and plasterboard covering the windows to protect against the cold.
He could see that there finally would be an end to this. That one day Midland Beach would be back like it was—that was the type of people they were. With rebuilt homes and kids playing ball in the parks again. The flags flying. But the task was endless. Every home was freezing and damp. Everyone was wearing down.
Patrick bent and noticed something under a pile of bricks. He dug with his pick and pulled out a child’s teddy bear. Filthy and soaked, one beady black eye missing. These things that had washed ashore turned up all the time.
“Hey, guy …” He wiped off the caked mud and grime.
Yes, the storm had cost them all a lot. Most everyone in Midland knew someone who had died.
But when he looked around—the rubble, the broken lives, the now empty house he had put his own life on hold to rebuild—Patrick knew that while his old man might not have been washed away that night like so many others, or struck down by a falling tree, the storm had taken something personal and vital from him that could never be rebuilt.
He propped the bear up against a post on the porch and waved. “Keep an eye on things for me, Joe, would ya?”
It had taken his dad.