“Excuse me?” the woman asked, her hair still undone, her face now stricken. “Why is that so sad?”
“It is sad, isn’t it?” I replied. Suppressing my relief at her reaction, I reached for the tape recorder and turned off the man’s misery in mid-sentence. Now I could leave it behind. “It was sitting here on the bench when I arrived,” I lied.
The woman made no comment, still affected by that voice, so I added, “I was curious about the tape inside. I wonder what language he’s speaking.”
“Not a clue,” she said, “I’m only a meteorologist.”
Again she waited and I did too, still not sure what she expected.
“You know, on TV—a weather lady?” She laughed. “I’m deeply hurt you don’t recognize me. I’m supposed to be a local personality. Though not for long.”
She’d given me an opening, and I took it. “Moving to a new job?”
“No. I’ll probably be fired.”
“But you were so good at—” I began, gesturing at the sky.
“That? A simple trick.” She paused, now looking through me, surprised, perhaps, at a decision rising within her. “Look … you’ve never seen my weather report, right?”
I nodded, and leaned back on the bench, a tiny retreat that I’d discovered sometimes encouraged people to speak more than they intended.
She sighed. “So. What the hell. Do you mind if I vent?”
“Sure,” I said, “feel free to—”
“This will only take a minute,” she cut in with a wry smile, and then glanced up and down the gravel path, reassuring herself that I would remain an audience of one. “I don’t believe in what I do any more. The odds aren’t high enough for getting the weather right—temperature, cloud cover, humidity, whatever—when a rainstorm can pop up in less than an hour. It’s depressing, I’m about as accurate as the horoscope. Check the other channels, listen to any radio station, call up the weather number. None of us predicts the same thing, even if the difference is only a matter of a couple of degrees.”
“But a little variation doesn’t seem—”
“This is supposed to be science, it’s supposed to be exact. Take the Five Day Forecast … if there’s anything I can guarantee, it’s that what I predict on Wednesday about the weekend weather will be different from what I predict on Thursday and Friday. Who checks, who cares, who really pays attention to the weather report? That’s not the point. I’m a practitioner of bad science.”
Two boys, probably brothers, sped down the path on bikes and she watched them pass. “Every day I review Weather Service reports, satellite photos, radar, and supercomputer programs. But any prediction can be undone by the flap of a wing. Ever hear of the Butterfly Effect?”
“I’m not sure. Is it—”
“A part of chaos theory. A computer can make a detailed forecast, but one minute later the tiniest atmospheric fluctuation sets off a chain reaction that knocks the weather off- kilter. All because some butterfly flapped its wings.”
I understood the concept well enough. Too many words I’d said, decisions I’d made, had opened unpredictable paths.
“And to think I used to love butterflies when I was a kid.” Sylvia shook her head. “Anyway, my doubts seem to be giving me away when I’m on the air—it’s getting harder to drum up commercial sponsors for my segment. Which reminds me, if I don’t hurry I’m going to be late for an appointment.”
She turned to leave, but first I’d give her something of me. “I think I know what you mean,” I said. “See the shadows of those leaves over there, by your feet? Those are sugar maple leaves. And those three lobes connected to the stem? They remind me of little temples, like pagodas. But watch when a breeze starts up, don’t they look more like the wings of birds or bats flying away?”
She looked from the shadows back to me, as if I’d suddenly appeared for the first time. “Nicely done,” she said almost to herself, and then continued on her way.