by Richard Cox
“That’s right,” she said. “I guess there will be some kind of memorial. Maybe a parade?”
Stuart didn’t seem to find this funny.
“Did it hit your house?” he asked.
“It missed us by two blocks. But my dad is a storm chaser. He saw the tornado when it was still outside of town and his car got hit pretty bad. He almost died.”
“Shit,” Stuart said. “A storm chaser in the 70s. I didn’t know they existed back then.”
“Yeah, he was so into it that he got a new job that didn’t tie him to an office. I don’t know how he could stand to chase after what happened back then, but he loves it. Was your family affected?”
“No, we lived up near the Air Force base, so it wasn’t close to us. Thankfully.”
She couldn’t think of anything else to say about the tornado, and apparently neither could Stuart, because for a few moments they sat there staring at each other.
“You want to get out of here?” he finally asked.
“I don’t think I’m going to eat any more of this salad.” Her stomach made a sound angry enough that she wondered if Stuart had heard it. “For some reason I’m not so hungry this evening.”
Another quiet moment passed, and even though there was no chemistry between them, it seemed to Alicia like something incredible was about to happen. She wasn’t sure what, exactly. But it had been a permanent fixture of adulthood, this idea that something big would eventually come along and alter the story of her life forever. Maybe another reason she had loved Brandon was because his work at the particle accelerator had seemed so exotic, like it might someday change the world. But he was gone now and she was still here and Alicia wondered if all along she had been wrong, that nothing about her life would ever change. Every day in Wichita Falls was the same as the one before. The same people wearing the same clothes all dining at the same chain restaurants. If the definition of insanity was to expect a different result from unchanging behavior, then it was time for someone to lock her up. Maybe she was already locked up. Maybe right now she was being watched from beyond some giant, one-way mirror that to her looked like life.
Stuart was mustering the nerve to ask her something.
“So I hear there’s this new cover band playing over at Toby’s,” he said, finally. “They play a lot of 80s music. They’re supposed to be pretty good.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you say you liked 80s stuff?”
“I don’t think we talked about it,” Alicia told him.
“Do you want to go over there for a little while? Have a drink or two and check out the band?”
“I appreciate you asking, but I think I should call it a night. This is going to sound so lame, but I don’t feel well.”
“Oh,” Stuart said.
She felt guilty turning him down, really she did, but a storm of some kind was developing in her digestive tract.
“You do look a little green,” Stuart said. “I could take you to the drugstore, get some Pepto maybe.”
The apartment didn’t have to be in Manhattan. She could probably live in Brooklyn, where it was cheaper, there was always a way if you wanted it badly enough, right?
“Alicia?”
“That’s okay. Probably better if I just went home.”
“Sure,” Stuart agreed. “Okay.”
In the parking lot she began to feel worse, and the noise was almost too much to bear. Chili’s was located on Kemp Boulevard, where every weekend teenagers in oversized pickup trucks shook the street with loud, throaty mufflers and thunderous speaker systems. Traffic barely moved as the kids threatened and cajoled and made lurid advances upon each other, and normally it amused Alicia to watch this ancient mating ritual, since in high school she had cruised the strip all the time. But at the moment she was sweating, shivering, and someone appeared to be doing chemical experiments in her stomach. She thought how silly she must look, how much of a whiny, high-maintenance bitch he probably thought she was. Alicia felt like laughing. She felt like crying.
Stuart, walking alongside her, seemed to take offense.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“What? Me?”
“No. Of course not.”
“I’m sorry. I just thought we might go do something else tonight.”
“I told you I don’t feel well.”
Alicia stopped next to her car.
“This is me,” she said. “Thank you so much for dinner.”
Gas ballooned in her stomach. The night air was uncomfortably humid and warm. Stuart took her hand in his.
“I enjoyed being with you this evening,” he said.
“Yes, dinner was fun.”
“Would you like to go out again soon?”
Alicia didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t bring herself to shoot him down right here in the parking lot.
“Call me,” she said. “Let’s talk again, okay?”
“Okay.”
He stood there, maybe trying to decide if he should kiss her. Alicia leaned forward and hugged him instead.
“I’m sorry I don’t feel well. Give me a call, okay?”
“Okay.”
In the rearview mirror Alicia saw herself as Stuart had just moments before. Her forehead was damp. Strands of hair were stuck there. Her face was pale and punchy-looking, the whites of her eyes bloodshot. She had been trying to grow out her hair for several months now, but it was still in that awkward, between stage where she couldn’t do a damned thing with it. The blonde hair of her childhood had turned dark long ago, but lately she’d been thinking of bringing back the lighter color, reconnecting with her past.
Traffic on Kemp was barely moving, and Alicia thought she might die right here in the car. Or at least vomit her salad out the window. This was quite an existence, she thought deliriously, that she had settled into while waiting for fate to light a fire on her doorstep.
During her teen years Alicia had hoped for a storybook life, like marry well and maybe become a doctor. But when she left town for Texas A&M, unexplained depression seized her almost at once, and the only way she could cope was by drinking. It made no sense that going away to college should be so stressful, because Alicia had been waiting for years to escape her hot and dusty hometown. But night after night she found herself unable to sleep because of a nagging sense that she had left something unfinished behind, that something immense and unreal was out there watching her. Waiting for her. The only way she could banish these thoughts was to have a drink or two or ten, and in this compromised state she could make no sense of electron shells and atomic weights. Along with Chemistry, Alicia gave up any hope for undergraduate pre-med, and in her second semester she entered Blocker, home of the College of Business. Here she found android students stalking the halls in search of an easy degree and entry into the tedious world of market penetration and core competencies and customer delight. Her depression intensified.
After graduation the only job offer she received was from The American Heart Association in San Antonio. She gladly accepted and prepared for the obligatory U-Haul move. But then the phone rang, the day before she was to leave, and Alicia learned her mother had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Her father, a regional sales manager who spent two weeks every month on the road, asked Alicia in a broken voice if she would consider coming home for a little while. He couldn’t bring himself to admit what he meant by “a little while,” but he didn’t have to—retirement was still ten or fifteen years away.
Alicia had cried for days afterward. Cried with her mother and father, cried by herself. But strangely, once the initial shock of the diagnosis had worn off, Alicia found her depression had evaporated. Maybe this was because she had finally found real purpose in life—to care for her mother—but an insistent voice deep in her subconscious whispered that the real reason for her recovery was the return to Wichita Falls. That something here was waiting for her. Something here needed her.
By the time she emerged from the glut of traffic on Kemp, Alicia’s stomach had begun to calm itself. She was sitting at the intersection of Southwest Parkway when she noticed a flicker of red in her rearview mirror. At first she thought a cop might be behind her, but as the flashing lights approached she realized they belonged to a fire truck. It rushed past her in a blur just as the traffic light turned green, and once the truck was a safe distance ahead she started forward, essentially following it. Since her neighborhood was only a few blocks away, she naturally watched to see if the truck would turn in that direction.
It did.
But there were many houses in the neighborhood. Scores of them. It was easy to fear the worst, but what was the likelihood that her home was the one on fire? If any of them were? Maybe someone’s cat was stuck in a tree.
Ahead of her, the fire truck turned onto her street.
Okay, this made the odds different. There were maybe twenty houses on her block, and now it seemed certain one of them was on fire. She could smell it in her car even with the windows rolled up—a smoky, chemical odor.
As she approached her street, Alicia’s palms began to sweat. Any second she would know for sure. Hers was the third house on the left.
Before she even made the turn, Alicia could see her house was an inferno.
There were actually two fire trucks on the scene. One of them was already set up and shooting a jet of water at the roof. Alicia couldn’t understand why they were aiming there when flames were shooting out the front windows. Her valuables were not on the roof. They were in the rooms where the flames were brightest and angriest. She stopped her car and approached one of the firefighters.
“Oh, my God!” she screamed. “Oh, my God!”
“Ma’am,” responded the fireman. He looked both bored and determined. “You need to get back. Go stand across the street.”
“But this is my house!”
Now his expression softened.
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Is there anyone inside the house you know of? Any pets?”
Alicia hated to cry, especially in front of people she didn’t know, but right now she felt helpless to stop herself. Flames were shooting out of a gaping hole in the roof. Storm clouds of smoke rose above the flames. The heat was scorching. And the worst thing of all was there was no one to call, no one immediately available to help her. Her father was scheduled to be out of town all week, and who else would she ask?
“No. It’s just me. I live here alone.”
Up and down the street, neighbors watched the spectacle from porches and front yards. Neighbors she hardly knew. Almost everyone (including her) spent most of their time indoors, and if they ventured outside it was to mow the yard or walk a dog. On a typical day she didn’t even see many kids around, which was vastly different from her own childhood, when Alicia had spent half her time at the houses of friends or exploring the neighborhood on her bicycle. Back then it seemed like everyone knew each other. Today, many of the parents she knew were afraid to let kids out of their sight.
Images from her childhood made Alicia think briefly of the year she had met Jonathan Crane and David Clark. Arson had been a problem in the summer, first a house down the street from hers and later a restaurant owned by David’s dad. The kid blamed for the crimes was named Thomas or Todd and had been friends with both Jonathan and David. Alicia had been thirteen that summer, and it was the first time she could remember feeling special, as if life had something unique in store for her. But now she was thirty-eight, she lived less than three miles from her parents, and there was no standard by which her life could be judged as anything but ordinary.
A crash inside the house startled her. Sparks shot out of the hole in the roof like fireworks. A teenage girl squealed. Or maybe it was Alicia herself squealing. She knew there would be a moment soon when the reality of the fire would seize her, and she would mourn the loss of her home and the years she had spent accumulating the things contained within it. But at the moment all she could do was watch. And cry. And wonder what on earth could have caused it.
Was this the incredible thing that had been lying in wait all these years?
Was this the way her life would change forever?
8
There were times when Adam Altman feared his life was an illusion. He was thirty-eight years old, yet sometimes it felt as if the hours and weeks and years of his adult life had crept by almost undetected. Had it been only yesterday when he crouched in the hall closet, enduring the roar of the killer tornado, or had it really been twenty-nine years? The empirical answer and the reality he felt in his bones did not match. It was true that Adam was a married adult male, father to a five-year-old daughter, but on a morning like this one he could recall almost nothing of the many years that were purported to have elapsed between the death of his sister and today. For that matter, he could not be entirely sure yesterday had occurred. He knew it must have, because he had just stepped out of the shower, presumably to wash away the oils secreted after a night’s sleep, and he planned after breakfast to visit his project in Tanglewood. The project was a new home being constructed upon the site of an old home that had fallen into disrepair. Adam himself was the builder, and while he didn’t physically build anything, he did manage the various smaller projects that equaled the construction of a residential home. Taken together, these details about his work and life were clues that his existence was not an illusion. But they were hardly enough to allay the sense of mounting dread he had felt all morning.
Beyond the bathroom door, in the bedroom, someone was stirring awake. That would be his wife, Rachel. It was a little before seven o’clock and time to get Bradie ready for school. Here were more details of an authentic, ongoing life. Rachel would dress their daughter and feed her frozen waffles and brew a pot of coffee. Adam would kiss them both goodbye, climb into his pickup, and drive off to begin another day.
When he went into the kitchen, the television was on but no coffee was brewing and no waffles were cooking. Off-schedule mornings usually meant Rachel had encountered some difficulty with Bradie. Common problems included clothing disputes and unruly hair, and indeed as he approached his daughter’s room, Adam could hear she was crying.
“I hear tears,” he sang to Bradie. Rachel was sitting next to her on the bed.
“She had another nightmare, Adam.”
He joined them on the bed and took his daughter’s soft and small hand into his own.
“Was it the bad kid again?”
Bradie nodded. “He comes after me and I know he’s there but I can’t see him or hear him. It’s so hot in there and all I see is white.”
Bradie reached across Rachel and clutched his waist. Adam looked down at his crying daughter and felt a sense of déjà vu so staggering that he put his hand on the bed to steady himself. It was no surprise that Bradie bore a striking resemblance to Christi, who had died many years ago in the tornado, but from this angle the resemblance was unnerving. Adam stood up and brought her into his arms and she held on desperately. Christi had been the same age when she died as Bradie was now.
“Listen to me,” he said. “No bad kid is ever going to get you. Do you understand? Your Mom and I will protect you from anything. You’ll always be safe with us.”
“I know,” Bradie said. “But in the dream you can’t help me. No one can help me.”
“But you’re awake now, see? There’s no bad kid around.”
“Maybe you could sleep with me, Daddy? And if I start dreaming, maybe you’ll have the same dream and you can keep the bad kid away?”
“I don’t think it works like that, Honey. But Jesus is everywhere and He wouldn’t let you get hurt in a dream. When I can’t be there to help you, He will be. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Bradie doubtfully.
Adam left them to get ready and went back into the kitchen. He made coffee himself and found half a bagel in the bread box. The national news was on and they were talking again about the burst of the housing bubbl
e, a topic that had been the lead story on the morning shows for what seemed like months. Adam didn’t need the television to tell him the problems with real estate prices, because he lived with the reality every day. Right now he was managing only two new construction projects, and there was nothing behind them in the queue. Even remodel business had dried up in the past year. During the spring months Adam had nervously joked with Rachel about the possibility of another tornado, something small that wouldn’t hurt anyone but that would create demand in town for new construction. Rachel hadn’t found this funny. Tornadoes were funny to no one in Wichita Falls. But neither was the desperate state of his family’s personal finances.
The national news went to break while the local station discussed weather and a few top stories.
“Investigators have said arson may be the cause of a devastating house fire two nights ago near Kemp and Southwest Parkway,” said a deeply serious news anchor wearing a dark suit and a powder-blue tie.
“The home belonged to thirty-eight-year-old Alicia Ulbrecht, who has lived at the residence for eight years. She says she has no idea why someone would have set fire to her home.”
Adam stopped chewing his bagel and closed his eyes. He saw flames devouring walls and carpet and ceilings. Sparks shooting out of the roof. Smoke rolling toward the sky like thunderclouds. A pair of eyes in the darkness, eyes he had not expected to see, that none of them had expected to see.
“I’m just devastated,” said a female voice. “Why would someone do this? Maybe it was an accident but they’re telling me someone poured gasoline around my house and set it on fire.”
Adam opened his eyes and realized Alicia Ulbrecht was onscreen. It was difficult to reconcile this face with the girl he had known many years ago. She was still attractive but not quite the starlet who had been an object of fascination for the boys in Tanglewood. He hadn’t seen her since high school graduation, twenty years ago, and now here she was on television, her home a ruin of cinders behind her.
Seeing the burnt skeleton of Alicia’s house robbed Adam’s legs of their strength. He wobbled slightly and grabbed the countertop to steady himself. Behind him, Rachel and Christi were laughing. No, Rachel and Bradie were laughing. Apparently the nightmare had been forgotten and now they were braiding her hair, and this was amusing them for some reason. Adam braced himself against the countertop and closed his eyes again. He saw Alicia riding her bicycle past his house. Todd was imploring Jonathan to call her. There was music.
