The Development

by John Barth

  Nay, more, now that I think of it: I find myself staying put in the little apartment that I share with a ten-gallon tropical-fish tank and a past-its-prime computer and losing my fucked-up self in what I've long wished, to no avail, had been my true vocation, the writing not of interoffice memos but of serious-type fiction stories. Like maybe one about an only-child daughter who, coming to realize that she's a lez, leaves small-town Maryland after high school, goes to university somewhere Midwest, and returns thereafter only for dutiful visits to her parents—unlike the tale's author, who never left "home" but often wishes she had, instead of winding up as a sexless spinster in an entry-level Egret's Crest condo partly financed by her folks and miraculously spared by Giorgio's tornado. A tornado that never actually occurred, it occurs to her to imagine, except in her heartbroken, wish-granting imagination—wherein, while she's at it, she fancies that she's only fancying that she "stayed behind" in Avon County! Or, on the contrary, that she long ago left it and never moved back ...

  Thus do I find myself by losing myself: While the directors of Tidewater Communities, Inc., at their next board meeting, observe a moment's silence in honor of their late colleague and his Mrs., and then debate the pros and cons of rebuilding Heron Bay Estates—weighing the projected (and environmentally ruinous) ongoing population surge in the Chesapeake Bay region against the recent nationwide slump in new and existing home sales and the predicted hyperactive hurricane seasons, with their attendant steep hikes in H.O. and flood-insurance premiums—"I" invent a pleasant, "eco-sensitive" gated community called Heron Bay Estates, replete with a natural preserve, recreational facilities, good neighbors and Peeping Toms, toga parties and progressive dinners, neighborhood- and community-association meetings, house renovations and teardowns, adulteries and suicides—the works. Sometimes I almost get to thinking that the place is real, or used to be; even that I am, or once was. Other times, that I dreamed both of us up, or anyhow that somebody did.

  In whichever case (as happens), B followed A, and C B, et seq., each perhaps the effect, at least in part, of it's predecessors, until ...

  Rebeginning

  WHERE IN THE WORLD to begin, and how? Maybe with something like In the beginning, Something-or-Other created Creation —including what became our local galaxy and solar system ...

  On whose third-from-the-sun planet, a primordial land mass divided over the eons into a clutch of continents ...

  Along the eastern coast of one of which (named "North America" by a certain subset of an animal genus that evolved together with the geography), the of-and-on glaciations and other geological morphings developed that particular planet's largest estuarine system—called "Chesapeake Bay" by the "English" colonizers who displaced it's aboriginal human settlers after appropriating many of their place names along with their place ...

  Which those newcomers then named "Maryland" ...

  In what their descendants would call "the USA" ...

  And lo, on the "Eastern Shore" of this same river-intricated Bay, near the small college town of "Stratford" in ever-less-rural "Avon County," an enterprising outfit trade-named "Tidewater Communities, Inc." developed in the "1980s" a soon-thriving gated community called by it's developers "Heron Bay Estates" ...

  Which project prospered just long enough for it's thousand- and-some inhabitants to begin to feel that their variously laid out and well-shrubberied neighborhoods constituted not only a successful residential development but a genuine community ...

  Until, a mere two dozen years after it's inception, that development was all but totally flattened in fewer than two dozen minutes by an F3-plus tornado, rare for these parts, spun off from an ever-less-rare tropical storm—the one called "Giorgio," in the "October" of "2006," during that year's annual hurricane season—and here we refugee-survivors of that freak twister freaking are, and that's more than enough already of this strung-out, quote-mark and hyphen-laden blather, the signature stylistic affliction of Failed-Old-Fart Fictionist George I. Newett, emeritus professor of more-or-less-creative writing @ the above-alluded-to Stratford College, who here hands the figurative microphone to his former colleague and fellow displaced Heron Bay Estatesman Peter Simpson, just now clearing his throat to address the first postapocalyptic meeting of the Heron Bay Estates Community Association (HBECA, commonly pronounced "H-Becka"), convened faute de mieux in a StratColl chemistry lecture hall thanks to Chairperson Simpson's good offoices as associate dean of said college and open to all former residents of that former development. Your podium, Pete, and welcome to it: Rebegin, sir, s.v.p.!

  "Yes, well," Dean Simpson said to the assembled—then paused to reclear his throat and adjust with experienced hand the microphone clamped to the lectern perched between lab sinks and Bunsen burners on the small auditorium's chemistry-demonstration rostrum: "Here we-all are indeed—or almost all of us, anyhow, and thanks be for that!" He shook his balding but still handsome late-fiftyish head and sighed, then with one forefinger pushed up his rimless bifocals at the nose piece, smiled a tight-lipped smile, and continued: "And the question before us, obviously, is Do we start over? And if so, how?"

  "Excuse me there, Pete," interrupted one of the six official neighborhood representatives seated together in the lecture hall's front row—plump Mark Matthews from Spartina Pointe, Heron Bay's once-most-upscale detached-house venue—"I say we oughta start over by starting this here meeting over, with a prayer of thanksgiving that even though Heron Bay Estates was wrecked, all but a couple of us survived to rebuild it."

  "Amen to that," some fellow gruffed from an upper rear row—beefy-bossy old Chuck Becker, Pete saw it was, from Cattail Court, in his and Debbie's own much-missed Rockfish Reach neighborhood—and there were other murmurs of affirmation here and there in the well-filled hall. But "Objection," a woman's voice protested from elsewhere in the room—the Simpsons' friend and (former) neighbor Lisa Bergman: Dr. Dave the Dentist's wife and hygienist-partner, and HBECA's trim and self-possessed rep from their late lamented subdivision. "If we're going to bring Gee-dash-Dee into this meeting," she went on, "—which I'm personally opposed to doing?—then before we thank Him-slash-Her, at least let's ask Her-slash-Him to explain why He/ She killed George and Carol Walsh and wrecked all our houses, okay?"

  "Hear hear!" agreed her swarthy-handsome husband and several others, including Pete's afore-mentioned Debbie, the Stratford poet-professor Amanda Todd, and her spouse, Yours Truly, the of-and-on Narrator of this rebegun Rebeginning. Enough present objected to the objection, however—both among the official representatives from what used to be HBE's Shad Run, Egret's Crest, Oyster Cove, Blue Crab Bight, et al., and among the general attendees of this ad hoc open meeting from those several neighborhoods—that Peter was obliged to restore order by tapping on the microphone before proposing that in the interests of all parties, a few moments' silence be observed forthwith, during which those inclined to thank or supplicate the deity of their choice would be free to do so, and the others to reflect as they saw fit upon the loss of their homes and possessions and the survival of their persons. "All in favor please raise your hands. Opposed? Motion carried: Half a minute's silence here declared, in memory of our late good neighbors the Walshes and our much-missed Heron Bay Estates."

  While all hands prayed, reflected, or merely fidgeted, their chairperson could pretty well tell who was doing what by raising his eyes while lowering his head, stroking his short-trimmed beard, and noting the lowered heads with closed eyes (Spartina Pointers Mark Matthews and his self-designated trophy wife, Mindy; Mark's investment-counseling protégé Joe Barnes from Rockfish Reach; and his afore-mentioned cheerleaders Chuck and Sandy Becker, among others), the defiantly raised heads and wide-open eyes (notably Pete's own wife, Debbie, of whom more anon; the afore-noted Bergmans; the weekly Avon County News columnist Gerald Frank from Shad Run; and us Newett/Todds, late of Blue Crab Bight), and other somewhere-betweeners like Pete himself (e.g., Joe Barnes's wife, Judy; Gerry Frank's Joan; the tirelessly upbeat part
y hosts Tom and Patsy Hardison from Annapolis and Rockfish Reach; and, somewhat surprisingly, the Oyster Cove expastor Matt Grauer, whose conversion from Methodist minister to educational consultant perhaps reflected some weakening of faith?). As Dean Pete makes his unofficial tally, your pro tem Narrator will take the opportunity to stretch this thirty-second Moment of Silence into a more extended patch of what in the trade we call Exposition before getting on with the business at hand and this story's Action, if any—rather like that other windbag, our Giorgio tornado, expanding it's few-minute life span into what seemed an eternity to us hapless and terrified HBEers huddled in our basements and walk-in closets while windows and skylights blew out and trees and walls came a-tumbling down.

  Okay, okay: weak analogy; scratch it. But whether or not this Moment of Silence helps any present to decide where we go from here, both as individuals and as a community, there's no doubting that those other moments of horrifying wind-roar changed the lives of most of us who survived it (not to mention the Walsh couple who didn't) and of many others lucky enough to have been in Stratford or elsewhere at the time but unlucky enough to have lost their primary or secondary dwelling place.

  E.g., in that latter category, those Matthewses, Mark and Mindy, whose weekend-and-vacation establishment—an imposing faux-Georgian McMansion in Spartina Pointe—had scarcely been finished and landscaped when F3 all but wrecked it. The pair were over in Baltimore at the time, Mark in his downtown office at Lucas & Jones, LLC, whereof he is CEO, and his ex-secretary Mindy in their nearby harborfront penthouse condominium. Thanks to it's no-expense-spared construction, enough of their Heron Bay house remains standing to make it's restoration feasible, but for Mark the question is whether to rebuild at all in a community that may or may not follow suit, or to take what insurance money he can get, claim the rest as a casualty-loss tax deduction, clear the ruins, list the lot for sale, kiss HBE bye-bye, and build their second second home on higher ground somewhere less flood- and hurricane-vulnerable, like maybe the Hunt Valley horse country north of the city or the Allegheny hills of western Maryland. With their well-diversified equities portfolio, their Baltimore condo plus a couple of other "investment units" here and there, and a certain offshore account in the Cayman Islands, they're in no great pain. Indeed, for pert and upbeat Mindy the wreck of 211 Spartina Court is as much opportunity as setback: Long and hard as she'd worked with architect, designers, and decorators on that house's planning and construction—including radically changing it's original "design concept," at no small cost, from mission-style hacienda grande to Williamsburg colonial—they had enjoyed the finished product just long enough for her to wish that she'd done a few things differently: better feng shui in the floor plan, especially in the mansion's wings, and maybe one of those "infinite edge" swimming pools instead of the conventional raised coping right around. Something to be said for going back to Square One, maybe, whether with TCI in a redesigned and even better-amenitied Heron Bay or with some other architect/builder elsewhere ...

  No such temptations for the Hardisons, among others: those prosperous, high-energy Annapolis lawyers whose Rockfish Reach palazzo was the second most expensive casualty of the storm. They want the status quo ante restored as quickly as possible, not only at their Loblolly Court address but in all of Heron Bay Estates, so that they can get back to their weekend golf and tennis, their costume parties, progressive dinners, and Chesapeake cruising on their forty-foot trawler yacht, Plaintiff's Complaint. While for the elderly Beckers (who have flown up from their winter retreat on Florida's Gulf Coast to attend this meeting), the question isn't whether to rebuild what had been their primary residence on Rockfish Reach's Cattail Court or to build or buy another elsewhere in the area, but whether instead to give up altogether their annual snowbird migrations between two houses, shift their primary domicile to state-income-tax-free Florida, and escape it's sweltering summer season on cruise ships, Elderhostel tours, and such—including, for Sandy Becker especially, frequent Stratford revisits to keep in touch with her many Episcopal church and Heron Bay Club friends.

  Nor any such options and luxurious dilemmas for us reasonably well-off but by no means wealthy Simpsons, Bergmans, Greens, Franks, and Newett/Todds, whose wrecked houses and ruined possessions were our only such, and who've been reduced to making shift as best we can in generally inadequate temporary lodgings—motel rooms, in some instances—in small-town Stratford while still reporting daily to our company workplaces, our college or other-school classrooms, or our improvised laptop-and-cell-phone "home" offices. For pity's sake, cry we, let's get old HBE up and running, however rudimentary it's resurrection! And the same goes in spades for those elderly widows and widowers like Rachel Broadus, Reba Smythe, and Matt Grauer, who had been managing well enough, all things considered, in their Shad Run condos or Oyster Cove villas, but are now renting unhappily like us or squatting with their grown children, and in either case wondering whether the time has come for them to pack it in as homeowners and shift across the Matahannock River to TCI's Bayview Manor Continuing Care Community.

  End of overextended Exposition. Back to you, Peter?

  "Okay," that ever-reasonable fellow declared to the assembled, glancing at his agenda notes and tapping the microphone again to end their memorial Moment of Silence: "Let's start again—which of course is this meeting's agenda exactly." Comradely grin; stroke of close-cut gray-black beard. "The questions are Where, and How, and To What Extent, and In What Order we do whatever we end up deciding to do." Sympathetic head-shake. "I quite understand that most of you have your hands as full as Debbie and I do, squatting in temporary quarters while we deal with insurance adjusters"—boos and hisses from here and there, not directed at the speaker—"and scrabble around to make do while trying to keep up with our jobs and all. It's overwhelming! I want to emphasize that what each of you does with your damaged or destroyed property is entirely up to you, as long as you bear in mind HBE's covenant and building codes. All rebuilding plans for detached houses need to be cleared with our Design Review Board, obviously, just as they were back when those neighborhoods were first built. The condominium and villa and coach-home communities we presume will be rebuilt pretty much as before—assuming they are rebuilt—by a general contractor selected by each of the neighborhood associations, and the plans passed along to H-Becka, whose unenviable job it'll be to coordinate and monitor the several projects. Reconstruction of the Heron Bay Club and the Marina Club and piers will be up to each one's board of governors, subject to the same review protocols. And TCI, I'm happy to report, will be standing by to advise and consult on HBE's infrastructure and on any changes we may want to make in it's overall layout—even though it's our baby these days, not it's original developer's."

  He paused, glanced around the hall, readjusted his eyeglasses, and returned to his notes. "I know that several of you have ideas and proposals for a 'new' [finger quotes] Heron Bay Estates, while others of you would be more than content to have things put back as much as possible the way they were before. It's important for you to understand that this meeting is for preliminary input only, not for any final decisions. And some kinds of things can be put off till we get our homes rebuilt and reoccupied—may the day come soon! But even in that department there may be some suggestions that we ought to be considering as we plan our repairs and reconstruction. So the floor's open, folks: We'll make note of any and all proposals, talk 'em over in committee, and report back to you at our next open meeting. Let me remind you that you can also make written suggestions and comments on the H-Becka website." Smile of invitation. "Who wants to go first?"

  Several hands went up at once, among the neighborhood representatives (my wife's, for one) and in the general audience (among them, mine). Before the chair could call on any, however, Mark Matthews heaved to his feet, turned his ample dark-suited back to Peter Simpson, and loudly addressed the hall: "Friends and neighbors! Mark Matthews here, from Spartina Pointe and the Baltimore office of Lucas and Jones—an
outfit that knows a thing or two about turning setbacks into opportunities, as Joe Barnes yonder, from our Stratford office, can testify. Am I right, Joe and Judy?"

  In a fake darkie accent, "Yassuh, boss," the male of that couple called back. A few people chuckled; his wife, sitting beside him, did not. Nor did Pete, who raised his eyebrows and stroked his chin but evidently decided not to interrupt, at least for the moment, this interruption of normal meeting procedure.

  "Now, then! Mindy and I personally haven't made up our minds yet whether or not to rebuild our Spartina Court place, but I can tell you this, folks: The current downturn in the housing market—all those contractors hungry for work?—is such a golden opportunity for all hands present that if TCI isn't interested, Charlie Becker and I might just get into the construction racket ourselves! You with me there, Chuck?"

  That elderly Becker (in fact the retired CEO of a Delaware construction firm) grinned and cocked his white-haired head as if considering the suggestion. And "Hear hear!" duly seconded Joe Barnes.

  "But if we do," Matthews went on, "it won't be just to get back to where we were. No sirree! It'll be to build a bigger and better Heron Bay Estates! And here's how." Raising his stout right thumb: "First of, we buy us a couple hundred more acres of cornfields and woodlots, either next door or across the highway or both, for an HBE Phase Two!" Now his thick forefinger: "Then we build us a couple more mid-rise-or-higher condominium complexes and detached-house neighborhoods—to raise our base, know what I mean?" Middle finger: "Plus we build ourselves an Olympic-size indoor pool and spa complex at the Club to use in the cooler months, and maybe even a second golf course on some of that useless preserve acreage of ours that just sits there. Et cetera et cetera: a whole new ball game!"