The Stormchasers: A Novel

by Jenna Blum

  Karena tilts her head at the non sequitur. “Once, on my honeymoon in Mexico. Why?”

  “Because then you know about the bends,” says Kevin. “When you’ve been down sixty, seventy feet, you need to come up in stages. That’s really why I wanted to stay here tonight. The reentry can be rough otherwise.”

  He orders Karena prime rib to go with her salad because of the chasers’ custom of getting steak when they’ve seen a tornado. “And we missed our chance in Pierre,” Kevin says. “Ideally, though, we should be at the Big Texan in Amarillo, where they have the infamous seventy-two-ounce sirloin. A fitting counterpoint to that horrific wedge—”

  He breaks off and takes Karena’s hand across the table, and they are both quiet for a while.

  The next morning they wake early and turn to each other. “Austin Wiebke,” Kevin murmurs as he moves inside Karena, and “Faith Wiebke,” she whispers back. They have morning skin, sweet and musky and slightly sticky. Outside the window the day dawns fine and fair.

  Afterward they go down to the lobby for breakfast. It’s only seven thirty on a Sunday, but there are a fair amount of people in the dining area, still in sweats or combed and washed and smelling of aftershave, moving among the food stations in a sleepy travel ballet. Again Karena is struck by fear and wonder at how populated it is here, the babble of world news from the big flat screen—goodness, she has a lot to catch up on—and the sheer volume of traffic flowing past the window, beyond the Best Western’s manicured grounds. The TV shows a thirty-second segment on the cleanup efforts in Oweeo, and Karena stops, arrested by the sight of so much remaining debris, those whittled trees in bright sunshine.

  She gets coffee—better, but still the first thing she’s going to do when they near the Twin Cities is hit Caribou—and carries it to the table where Kevin is checking e-mail on his laptop.

  “Dan says hi,” he says as she sits.

  “Oh,” Karena exclaims, “how is he? How is everybody?”

  Kevin turns the laptop toward her, and Karena swivels it a few more inches still to move the screen out of the sun. Dan has written two lines:

  Made it back to OKC despite active embedded cells on the night of the 22nd, gave us a good light show. Guests all departed on time, currently I’m en route home. DM.

  Karena smiles. “Bless,” she says in a British accent, imitating Fern. “When you write back, will you please say hi from me?”

  “Will do,” Kevin says.

  Karena starts to ask if he thinks Dennis will be receptive to her writing to make amends when her cell phone starts buzzing madly in her pocket. Apparently it has just discovered it can get a signal and is downloading all her messages. Karena scrolls them: several from the Ledger, though nothing urgent, since Karena’s Oweeo story has earned her a few days’ rest. Reader comments, mostly. There’s also a photo from Lisa in the newsroom of a squashed-looking infant—she’s had a boy! And a text from Tiff: Where the F ARE YOU? That tornado article was CRAZY. Get the F HOME!!!!!! Karena smirks and saves this. She has stories to tell Tiff, all right.

  But there is nothing from Charles or anyone who might have seen him.

  “Kevin, do you mind if I check Stormtrack when you’re done?” Karena asks.

  “Not at all. But as of ten minutes ago there was nothing new from Chuck.”

  Karena nods, then picks up Kevin’s hand and presses it over her heart. Kevin blinks at her, surprised. He looks this morning much as he did the first few times Karena saw him, hair wet from the shower now, clean Whirlwind T-shirt. His eyes are very bright.

  “Thank you, Laredo,” he says, kissing her hand. “Okay, if you want breakfast you’d better hustle. I want to hit the Spam Museum before the lines get too long.”

  “Yeah, because that’ll happen,” says Karena, standing.

  Kevin smacks her on the behind. “Get movin’, mouthy,” he says.

  Karena floats over to the breakfast stations and browses them, plate in hand. She can’t handle anything too heavy after the steak last night, her stomach is already groaning, but she takes a few wilted slices of microwave bacon because they’re there. And two pieces of whole wheat toast, but what she really wants is an egg. She is starved for protein after all those banana-and-pretzel breakfasts on the road. And they do have eggs here, or at least they have a single hard-boiled one left, rolled into the corner of its steam tray. Karena transfers her plate to the other hand to reach for it, smiling as she remembers her mom saying Karena and Charles were the easiest kids in the world to cook for, because all Siri had to do was boil an egg and Karena would eat the white, Charles the yolk.

  But somebody else reaches for the egg at the same time. Karena knows as soon as she sees his hand, large and square and brown, even before she sees the ring. The silver-and-turquoise Lakota ring with its stern and ornate face.

  She looks up.

  “Hi, Charles,” Karena says.

  Her brother grins.

  “Hi, sistah,” he says.

  PART II

  KARENA AND CHARLES, 1988

  27

  The Hallingdahl house is a little ranch, sitting in a modest yard near the intersection of Lincoln and Main. Across from the B&M gas station, two doors down from Ellingson’s Used Cars. Pretty small house for a lawyer, people say. They wonder why Hallingdahl didn’t buy one of the Sprague houses, the stone edifices the banker erected for his daughters at the turn of the century. Or the old Alma mansion on St. Paul Street, set high on the crest of its sloping lawn. They don’t know that when Frank Hallingdahl was a boy on the farm he watched his mother get worn down by the caretaking of just such a big three-story house, rubbed away bit by bit, and he vowed that his own family would have a modern home, as lightweight and easy to care for as possible.

  Inside, the Hallingdahl house is carpeted throughout in beige and smells like the interior of a lady’s handbag, dusty, sweet, a little mysterious. If people tend to decorate at a time in their lives when they’re full of energy and optimism and let it slide thereafter, then the lawyer’s wife, Siri Hallingdahl, hit her peak era in the late nineteen-sixties, early seventies. There is a sunburst clock on the wall in the kitchen. The table is Formica, the chairs aluminum and red vinyl. The bathroom wallpaper is a psychedelic field of green, orange, and pink poppies. Everywhere there are afghans, ashtrays, newspapers, glasses, and plates, because Siri is an indifferent housekeeper at best. She likes to visit with her friends, to play bridge, to sit in the sunken sunporch off the kitchen and smoke and watch television. Her prize possession is the desk she bought in La Crosse as a young bride, a heavy piece of walnut furniture with a glass top under which photos can be slid. The family is preserved there in snapshots. Newlyweds Siri and Frank honeymooning in the Wisconsin Dells; Frank squinting in front of his newly opened practice; the twins as infants; the twins in a wading pool, their bowl-cut white hair and plaid sunsuits identical although they themselves, of course, are not—there was some talk about dressing a boy and girl alike, but Siri has always been considered progressive. There’s Siri’s brother Carroll, who lives up in the Twin Cities, mustached and paranoid behind huge sunglasses. There are plump pink-faced cousins, gray-haired elders, children whose shy school smiles bristle with braces. In spots liquid has gotten under the glass and stuck the photos to it, erasing the faces to milky blurs.

  28

  When Karena lets herself into the house, creeping in from the garage, she hopes her mom will be asleep, but no such luck. Karena smells smoke, hears the laugh track from the TV. She tiptoes past the sunroom, whose louvered pocket door is closed. Smoke curls out from beneath it as from a genie’s lamp. Karena tries to make it across the kitchen linoleum without hitting the creaky spot, but it doesn’t work: The sunroom door accordions open with a smash and Siri, revealed there, says, “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

  Karena freezes. “No kidding,” she says.

  “Where have you been?” Siri retreats to the scratchy green couch, but Karena knows Siri can move quickly if she
wants to, could be in the kitchen in an instant to take a smack at Karena or flick a dish towel at her head.

  “Nowhere,” says Karena. “Around.”

  She opens the refrigerator to buy time. Besides, she’s thirsty. The cigarettes and beer have dried her mouth out. But Siri has drunk all Karena’s Diet Pepsi. There’s only one half-open can left, and it will be flat. Otherwise the fridge is littered with mystery dishes, Bakelite bowls containing two carrots, a handful of canned string beans, Jell-O. A moldy stack of olive loaf. Karena slams the door.

  “Jeez,” she says, “doesn’t anyone ever go shopping around here?”

  “You could go,” Siri suggests. “Nothing wrong with your legs.” She fires up a Marlboro, her lighter clicking and hissing. “Come over here so I can see you. I bet you’re drunk.”

  Karena makes a psht noise. “You’re right, Ma. I am soooooo drunk. How’d you guess? By the way I staggered in here? By the way I can hardly stand up?”

  “Get over here. Now.”

  Karena minces with exaggerated care to the sunroom.

  “There,” she says. “Happy now?”

  Coolly, Siri surveys Karena from top to bottom, squinting extra-hard at Karena’s neck to check for hickeys.

  “You look like a slut,” she says, turning back to the Golden Girls cavorting in the big old TV.

  “I do not,” says Karena, stung. Of course, she does, and moreover, this is just the effect she was trying so carefully to achieve before she left the house. Not to be slutty exactly, but her acid-washed mini and matching jacket, her pink tank top with its glittering sequined heart, her hair permed and sprayed to twice the size of her head—all of this is meant to telegraph availability to a certain someone. But her mom is hardly the person Karena was aiming for.

  “You know what that outfit says?” Siri continues. “It tells everyone your brains are between your legs. I suppose you were out necking with that Mike Schwartz again.”

  Karena flushes.

  “God, no, he’s a troglodyte,” she says. “And you’re so out of it, Mom. Necking,” she scoffs. “Please.”

  Siri ashes in the waist-high ashtray. “Whatever you want to call it, Karena Lien, I know what you were doing. And let me tell you one thing: If you get pregnant, forget about college. Forget coming to me for help. In fact, don’t bother coming home.”

  Karena’s mouth hangs open a little at the irony of this accusation. There’s no way she could get pregnant—she’s still a stupid virgin! She wasn’t even with Mike Schwartz tonight. She would have loved to have been. They did hook up over the weekend, in the backseat of Mike’s Bronco, doing what Karena and Tiff call Everything But. However, despite her best efforts Karena must not be very good at Everything But, because has Mike Schwartz called her since then? Has he talked to her even once? No, all he does is stand with his friends and laugh whenever Karena’s nearby, that mean, goatish boy laughter whose only intent is to hurt, and tonight Karena has been driving around with Tiff in Tiff’s dad’s truck, smoking and drinking beer from Tiff’s dad’s fishing cooler and trying to act as if she doesn’t care, as if she were just practicing on Mike Schwartz; trying not to ask Tiff what she did wrong and pounding warm Old Milwaukee as if her stomach were not one big cramping ball of misery.

  “Don’t worry,” she tells Siri. “If I got pregnant I’d never come to you. I’d go to Dad.”

  Siri laughs through her nose, exhaling.

  “Really?” she says. “Great. Good luck.” And Karena has to concede the point. She hasn’t seen Frank for more than breakfast for months. Some big corporate case in Des Moines has been keeping him away. Justice waits for no man. And admittedly Frank is pretty useless when it comes to practical matters outside the law, like pregnancy. Karena imagines her papery little dad, with his glasses and iron-gray hair, confronted with this news. Clearing his throat and rubbing his hands together. Well, he would say. Well.

  “All righty then, good night,” Karena says. “Thanks for the mother- daughter chat. I feel ever so much closer now.”

  “Oh, don’t be so thin-skinned,” says Siri in one of her classic about-faces. “C’mere.”

  She pats the cushion next to her. Karena stands in the doorway a moment more, then walks in and sits on the very edge of the couch. Is it a trap? What kind of mood is Siri really in? Covertly, Karena examines Siri while Siri watches TV. She is sitting cross-legged, a paperback novel tented on her thigh for the commercials. Next to her is a jar of cold cream, tweezers for pulling what Siri calls her witch hairs out of her chin, a couple of hair combs, and a soft pack of Marlboro Reds. This is all standard—Siri’s nests, Charles calls them. Siri makes them wherever she goes. But there is also a box of Kleenex, and when Karena tips forward she sees the ashtray bowl is full. Okay, what has happened with Charles?

  Karena waits until the commercial comes on, then asks casually, “So, where’s Thing Number Two?”

  Siri glances at her, and Karena is struck by the purple-brown half moons beneath her mom’s eyes.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” she says, and Karena thinks, Uh-oh. She tries to remember when she last saw Charles—this morning, at breakfast. Eating Lucky Charms straight from the box, scattering purple hearts and blue moons and pink diamonds all over the linoleum. Karena relaxes a little. That’s not so bad. Charles can’t have gotten into that much trouble in twelve hours. Then she remembers something else.

  “Oh my God,” she says. “He took the Healey, didn’t he.”

  Siri nods. “It was gone by the time I came back from Sandy’s,” she says. “He must have found Frank’s spare keys.”

  “Holy crap,” says Karena, with some awe. The Healey, unlike the other cars Charles has wrecked, is her dad’s favorite, his pet. He drives it only on special occasions, in the summer, with the top down. He shines it with a chamois cloth.

  “Dad’s going to go ballistic,” Karena says.

  “Good,” Siri says with sudden viciousness. “Maybe when Frank runs out of cars, he’ll get his head out of his . . .” Then she shakes herself and takes a deep drag of her cigarette. “Don’t listen to me, honey,” she says. “I’m so tired, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “You do, though, Ma,” Karena insists. “And it’s okay. You have a right to say we need Dad’s help with Charles.” Although Karena can’t imagine anything Frank would do that would make the situation anything but worse. What could he do, bribe some judge buddy of his to lock Charles up? Which reminds Karena.

  “Did you call the sheriff?” she asks, scissoring her second and third fingers together toward her mom’s cigarette.

  Siri pushes the pack of Marlboros across the couch cushion. “Light your own,” she says, and Karena does. Siri exhales, staring at the silent TV. “No,” she says, “not this time. What’s the point? All he can do is bring Charles back and give him a slap on the wrist, and meanwhile there’s more public humiliation. I’m through with that. I’m so sick of people talking. Just for once I’d like to walk into the IGA without everyone pretending they don’t feel sorry for us.”

  “Amen,” says Karena, because this is one part of the conversation she heartily agrees with. She too is so tired of the half-hidden grins when she enters a room, watching people labor to come up with some New Heidelburgian witticism about Charles’s chases.

  Siri grinds her cigarette in the ashtray and immediately lights another. The first continues to smolder, so Karena reaches past Siri and puts it out. “I mean it, though,” Siri says. “I literally don’t know what to do anymore. What can we do with him? More drugs? Different ones? Should we . . . put him away somewhere? I can’t even stand to think about it.” She drags deeply, the ember lighting up and emphasizing the clown lines running from her nose to the corners of her mouth. She shouldn’t have permed her hair, Karena thinks with pity. Sure, it’s the style, but Siri looked so much better when her hair was a long, shiny sheet, or pinned up with combs. Now it is a pyramid of light brown frizz.

  “What did I d
o?” Siri is asking. “Where did I go wrong? How did I make him turn out this way?”

  Karena rolls her eyes, she hates these questions so much. “Nothing, Ma,” she says, exhaling an exasperated cloud of smoke. “You know that. Dr. H said it. Everyone says it, all the books. It’s a chemical thing, remember? It’s like—having a recipe not turn out right or something when you’ve made it a hundred times.”

  Siri smiles wanly and reaches out to tuck Karena’s hair behind her ear, pulling her hand back when Karena ducks her head away.

  “You’re sweet,” she says. “Thank you for trying to make me feel better. And I know you’re right, logically. But in here”—she thumps her chest and sips her Diet Pepsi—“you just feel so guilty,” she says, “when you’re the mother. You’ll never be able to stop feeling responsible for your child. You’ll see.”

  Karena puts out her cigarette and stands up. If she doesn’t go to bed now Siri will start listing all the genetic predecessors, both on her side and Frank’s. The uncle who drowned in his boat on the Mississippi. The great-aunt who jumped down a well. Siri’s brother Carroll, who’s gay and God knows what else.

  “It’s not your fault, Ma,” Karena says again. “Besides, you’re not coping with it alone. There’s me, remember?”

  Siri squeezes Karena’s hand. Karena sits back down. “You are such a help to me,” Siri says. “You’re my good girl.” She shakes her head, her eyes reddening. “And Charles is good too,” she insists. “He is. Underneath it all he really is. What is going to become of him? Poor baby. What can become of him? What is he going to do in this world? How is he going to survive?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Ma,” says Karena. “I’ll take care of him.”

  “That’s not your job,” Siri says. But she is smiling again.

  “Of course it is,” Karena insists. “He’s my twin.”

  “Oh well,” Siri says, opening a new pack of Marlboros and adding the cellophane to her nest. “Maybe we’re just borrowing trouble. Maybe he’ll bring the car back tonight safe and sound and he’ll stay on his medications and get into college or get a job, and all of this worry will be for nothing. Right?”