Altered Seasons_MONSOONRISE

by Paul Briggs

  “I know this family doesn’t do begging,” she said, “but under the circumstances… has anybody heard from Sandy?”

  “Nope,” said Chelsey. “Not a word. You really all that surprised?”

  “Well… yeah. I mean, we’re still friends. At least, we used to be.”

  Chelsey laughed. “You’re supposed to be the smart one, chunkybutt,” she said. “Girl spends half her time getting sued by people she used to be friends with. Did you hear she even screwed over her pop?”

  “No… I didn’t.” Isabel had never met Sandy’s father, or heard much about him.

  “Him and her used to be co-owners of the diamond business—it started out in his garage. A couple years later, she bought out his share for ten million dollars.”

  “Unless he gave her eleven million to begin with, that sounds pretty darn good.”

  “His wife didn’t think so. A little while later she sued Sandy for like a billion dollars, but it got thrown out of court. You know… rich people.”

  “That sounds like a story I want to hear the other side of.”

  “Anyway, I never liked her,” said Chelsey. “Nobody did. She was such a know-it-all. But after the thing with the bee, Mom and Pop just had to keep her around. Like a good-luck charm.” She sighed. “All that time she spent hanging out with you, telling you about stars and planets and shit… you really think a girl would spend her free time with somebody five years younger if she had friends her own age?”

  I never thought of that. Why didn’t I ever think of that? But that left Chelsey open to an obvious response. “Excuse me—you married somebody twelve years older.”

  “Yeah, and look how that worked out.”

  “You want something to drink?” said Kristen.

  “What have you got?”

  Opening the little fridge, Kristen found that they had two beers left, which was awkward. If there’d been three, they all could have had one. If there’d been one, Isabel would have been given it as the guest. If they’d had some glasses, they could have poured two-thirds of a beer into each glass. To resolve the situation, Chelsey drank one, and then she drank the other.

  There were no tablets or other computers here, apart from their phones and Chelsey’s e-reader. (Which was just as well. This wasn’t a place Isabel would have wanted to keep anything expensive.) Once dinner was out of the way, there was nothing much to do except talk. And for once, Isabel had to do more than her share of the talking—Kristen wanted to hear her stories, and the beer had hit Chelsey’s Jellicoed brain, so her reception wasn’t clear enough to take part in the conversation.

  Isabel tried telling them about the biofuel plants she’d helped build and the trouble with Group 77, but there was a limit to how technical she could get before Kristen’s eyes started to glaze over. Chelsey’s eyes were already glazed over—the Jellicoe again.

  It turned out that Kristen had actually been having some adventures of her own. Texas Foxtrot was full of schizophrenics and other people who needed regular medication but weren’t getting it any more. So when they got violent or suicidal, somebody had to come along and either physically restrain them, talk them down, or both. Kristen was turning out to have something of a knack for the latter. “A woman I met last week said we were better than police,” she said. “She always used to be afraid to call the cops because she’d heard of mentally ill people who got shot by them. We always go in unarmed.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Isabel. “Unarmed. In a room with a crazy stranger.”

  “Yeah. The idea is, if… things go wrong in there, that’s when they send in somebody armed.”

  “So you find out if these people are really dangerous by… going in there and seeing if…”

  Kristen shrugged. “Is there another way?”

  Isabel took her by the hand. “Damn, girl, you… some time when I wasn’t looking, you grew an awesomeness.” Part of her wanted to tell Kristen to stop doing this, but the rest of her knew she had no right to make such a demand. Tomorrow she’d be headed back to Maryland, Kristen would still be here, and everyone here would still have the same problems. And Kristen wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  “I just tell myself it’s what you would do,” she said. Isabel wanted to say that this was not what she would do, but then she remembered that she’d knowingly spent the night in bed with a sweehead two months ago, so she decided to keep her mouth shut.

  “And I pray, of course,” said Kristen. “Can’t go in without backup.”

  The thought of Kristen doing anything dangerous, even with backup from the Supreme Being, still seemed wrong to Isabel. Her little sister was one of those people that other people were supposed to put themselves in harm’s way on behalf of, not one who went there herself. Or so she’d always seemed. It looked like there was more to her than anyone had realized.

  And at least this meant that her sisters were somewhat more likely to be safe here. In a place like Texas Foxtrot, being useful to the community was probably better protection than a lock on a door. But then, all sorts of things were better protection than the lock on the door to this place.

  * * *

  After five, it started getting dark. Over dinner, three cans of reheated beans, which Kristen still managed to sound genuinely grateful for while saying grace, they started reminiscing about the good old days of five to ten years ago.

  “It’s the little things that get to you,” said Kristen. “You know what I miss? Bananas. Real, ripe bananas. The kind that tasted like… um…”

  “Like bananas?” said Chelsey, who was starting to come back to herself.

  “Well, I didn’t want to say so, but yeah.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Chelsey. “I miss cheap coffee—real coffee. Remember when you could get it at Royal Farms? Or 7-11?”

  “Chyq tastes pretty much the same,” said Isabel.

  “Blasemphy and lies,” said Chelsey, who never could say “blasphemy” but seemed to enjoy trying.

  “That’s what I love about you,” said Kristen at almost the same moment. “You take everything in stride. You don’t let things get to you.” How little you know, thought Isabel.

  Kristen rested a hand on Isabel’s wrist. “It helps me face the future knowing you’re still out there,” she said. “That way I know whatever happens, one of us is always gonna be okay.”

  Isabel looked into Kristen’s clean blue eyes and tried to smile. No. Not good enough. If I’m okay and you’re not okay, that’s not okay. She couldn’t even relate to the thread of the conversation. For her, it had never been the little things. It had always been… everything.

  * * *

  Isabel had to stop for a moment when she stepped into the bedroom. What she saw was one of those scenes that was so weird you couldn’t take it all in at one glance. The stripped-down bunks, the naked women, the hammocks, the leaves—they didn’t add up to anything the brain could immediately recognize.

  There were six bunks, three on each side. All the pillows, blankets, and mattresses were gone. Scattered over the floor and the bunks were leaves—mostly green, but some of them starting to turn yellow. A sealable plastic bag, full of Chelsey’s and Kristen’s clothes, hung from a nail driven into the doorjamb. A small light sat on an exposed beam on the far wall, illuminating the room. A space heater, aimed at the middle of the room, sat on the floor. The wooden floor. Isabel suddenly remembered the burned-down cabins she’d seen.

  Two wooden poles were resting with their ends on the middle bunks, lying across the aisle. Three hammocks made of nylon rope were hanging from these poles. Chelsey and Kristen were in two of them, leaving the middle one empty.

  Both of them were naked, without even blankets. Kristen was lying on her left side with her legs tucked in front of her. She was already asleep, her left arm curled under her head and her right arm across her chest and draped over the side of the hammock, her pink fingertips hanging over the floor as if to taunt whatever bedbugs were already trapped on the bean-leaf
cilia. Chelsey was lying flat on her back, reading an e-book by the light of that little lamp. Her breasts had flopped down to cover her armpits. It was like a porn scene made by people who’d forgotten how to porn.

  So, these were the sleeping arrangements. The first thing Isabel did was to get one of the folding chairs from the other room and set the space heater on it. That would reduce the odds of the three of them waking up all brown and crispy on Christmas morning in this firetrap of a building.

  Next, Isabel took off her clothes and stashed them in the bag with her sisters’, then resealed it. She ducked under the pole and climbed into the center hammock, taking care not to wake Kristen, step on any of the leaves or get her hands and feet tangled up in the rope matrix. There wasn’t really enough room for her between them, so her left shoulder pressed against Chelsey’s right shoulder, while her right arm was pushing Kristen’s left arm into her breasts. Isabel was now the middle bead in a Newton’s cradle made of sisters.

  The walls in this part of the cabin were so thin she could hear everything happening outside. The conversations of passing strangers were mostly in Spanish or something that wasn’t Spanish—possibly Arabic. In the cabin next door, a family was singing something that, from what Isabel could understand of the lyrics, was a Christmas carol.

  “You remembered to lock the door, right?” whispered Chelsey, who didn’t even know any Spanish and probably thought they were singing about gang violence or something.

  “Of course.” She had indeed secured the lock that a slightly-stronger-than-average woman could break with one hand if she wasn’t careful.

  “Good.”

  Isabel lay there, staring up at the lath-and-tarp ceiling. There was no chimney, and although she must at some point have believed in Santa Claus, she couldn’t remember when it was. The night felt chilly, but that didn’t mean much when you were naked in midair—it was probably seventy degrees, or a little less. It was just cool enough to make her acutely aware of her bare skin, and how exposed it was to all the hungry little insect mouths in the room. Also, her butt and thighs were going to have some embarrassing net marks in the morning.

  Isabel shut her eyes, listening to Kristen breathe. Her sleep was untroubled and peaceful. She was untroubled and peaceful. As if, somehow, despite everything she could see and hear, God was whispering to her don’t worry, I got this.

  She didn’t belong here. And Jourdain didn’t belong here, separated from her mother as well as her father. And Mom and Pop who had worked all their lives, and Mom-mom and Pop-pop who had worked all their lives, and Scott who had been such a good student until the money ran out… and what the hell, it was Christmas Eve, Chelsey didn’t belong here either. There has got to be a way of getting these people out of this place.

  Well, I’m not going to think of it tonight. Isabel slowed her breathing in the hopes of getting to sleep faster, and listened to the voices of the last few passersby.

  “You know what I want to do right now?” whispered Chelsey.

  “What?”

  “Get out of this hammock… open the door… invite the whole neighborhood in and say ‘Merry Christmas.’”

  Isabel needed a moment to think of a response to that.

  “Well, you can’t,” she finally said. “We’ve got bedbugs. And you drank all the beer.”

  Chelsey laughed—almost too loud. Isabel glanced over to her other side to make sure Kristen hadn’t woken up.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” said Chelsey. “Never change.”

  * * *

  The bean leaves seemed to have done the trick—Isabel woke up the next morning with one bite mark on her foot. Still, she and her sisters spent the first half hour or so of Christmas morning meticulously checking their clothes and themselves for any bedbugs that might be stowing away. The last thing any of them wanted to do was spread this problem around.

  That done, they went over to Mom and Pop’s cabin for breakfast. Kristen led them in saying grace. That would have been Pop’s job, but by general agreement she was the one best suited to sweet-talking the Almighty.

  “Amen,” said Isabel along with everybody else, feeling like a hypocrite. She thought of herself as an agnostic, but she suspected that what she really was somebody who hadn’t put much thought into the question. Given the role the churches had in making this place halfway livable, she felt like she owed God a favor whether He existed or not.

  Once she’d said her goodbyes to the rest of her family, she ventured out toward the camp entrance with Pop and Scott behind her—not to protect her, but to carry the gifts back. Most people were still inside, but all through the camp Isabel heard Christmas carols and the excited shouts of children. For the first time, this place seemed something close to all right.

  She meant to arrive in the parking lot at five minutes to eleven, just to be on the safe side, but Pop met someone in the militia and got drawn into a conversation. She arrived in the parking lot at 11:01 a.m.

  The car wasn’t there.

  She looked around for some place it might be idling, or somewhere it might have parked. Had it left already? Where is it, where is it, it’s supposed to be here, if it’s gone I’ll never get out of here…

  Then she turned her phone on and noticed she had a message from her car, sent at precisely 11:00 a.m.

  Of course. She’d told it to come back at 11 a.m. not to arrive at 11 a.m. The computer’s software still needed some work. Or maybe her software did.

  * * *

  The nutria hindquarter was ready. Isabel took it out of the oven, put it on a big plate next to a still-hot baked potato, poured on the gravy, and set them down at her kitchen table. Since she didn’t have a proper wineglass, she poured the Cabernet Sauvignon into a heavy glass tumbler.

  The Cab had been a gift from the director at Marshpower. The wine guide said this wine was “angular” but otherwise well-balanced, with an aroma of “red and black fruits” and a flavor of ripe black raspberries, “cassis”—whatever that was—and “cigar box.” WTF? There were also said to be notes of cherries, blue violets, smoke… leather… and “moist black earth.” Ohh… kay.

  With a certain amount of trepidation, Isabel sipped the wine. It tasted like wine. That was as far as her palate could go. Just as well, really. Drinking an angular cigar box sounded like a bad experience. And Cab was supposed to go well with game.

  She sighed. It wasn’t exactly that she was lonely. On the contrary—after the hours of conversation with her family, and the conversations with strangers on the train going both ways, Isabel was feeling drained. She desperately needed at least one night to herself.

  At the same time, it was two days after Christmas and here she was with roast haunch of swamp rodent, potatoes and gravy, and a reputedly decent Cabernet Sauvignon, and nobody to share them with. That felt like a kind of failure. Hunter or Laurie or somebody ought to be here, even if they didn’t say anything. That was something she missed about Hunter. The two of them had reached a point where they could be comfortable together in silence.

  And even thinking about her personal problems felt wrong, considering what her family was going through. They seemed to have a relationship with the community that kept them more or less safe from other people, but that wouldn’t help if Chelsey got careless with a space heater. And if Pop-pop’s health took another turn for the worse, a place that couldn’t get medicine to schizophrenics certainly wouldn’t do him much good.

  At this point, Isabel’s phone gave a little chime to let her know she had a new message.

  It was from Sandy.

  Isabel! It’s great to hear from you! I’m sorry it took so long to respond. I spent Christmas Day catching up on my personal contacts.

  We’ve got to bring each other up to speed. Should we talk online, or in person? If you can spare the time to come up to New York, I’d be happy to pay travel costs. You can spend the night at my place. I’ve got all this room I’m not using. Come any time you like.

  I’m mostly in my
office these days—you should probably visit me here right after work hours. If nothing else, you’ve got to see the renovations they did on this floor.

  Isabel read this several times. She’d missed social cues before, but she couldn’t see any way it was a message from somebody trying to politely discourage somebody else. It sounded completely the opposite.

  She offered to pay travel costs. So it literally costs me nothing to go up there and talk to her. And maybe she wants to help. Chelsey never got a response, but that was Chelsey. She and Sandy never did get along, and honestly, how much money would you give her? Things might be different with me.

  Even if she’s okay with this, do you really want to be taking her charity?

  Why is it okay to accept nutria meat from the Comegys family, but not to accept money from Sandy?

  Isabel responded with another message:

  * * *

  Laura Bronzino’s latest album included a song called “December 28.” It was all about being alone between the holidays and trying to find things to do to fill up the time and missing someone who wasn’t there. Isabel had liked this song a lot better when it wasn’t about her.

  You brightened up the time we shared

  in a thousand different ways

  Baby, with you there were no empty days…

  Needless to say, on the titular day itself every radio station in the country, with the possible exception of the weather stations Pop favored, played the song again and again until even Isabel was ready to stuff Laura Bronzino into a cannon and blast her over the horizon.

  Just as well that she wasn’t staying home on this particular day. She’d driven up to Wilmington and was on the bus to New York City. She had pajamas and a change of clothes with her, but that was it. As the bus got closer to the city, Isabel got her first look at the famous balloon turbines of New Jersey.