The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

by Michele Young-Stone

  “I don’t think so,” Becca admits.

  “It’s got to be here.”

  “Maybe look for it tomorrow.”

  “Today is St. Patrick’s Day. Not tomorrow, Rebecca.”

  “Oh, right.” It’s best not to disagree with her mother when she drinks this much. It’s best to keep quiet or say what Mary wants to hear.

  Becca’s father stays upstairs.

  Becca goes upstairs to bed, tiptoeing past her parents’ door. She can’t see her father, not now. She just can’t. She didn’t have dinner, but she goes to bed with a stack of Chips Ahoy cookies wrapped in a paper towel, leaving her mother passed out downstairs, a pile of wrinkled photographs under her cheek.

  No one yells—not that night, the next day, or the next week. No one speaks.

  Rowan parks the Austin Healey in the backyard and sleeps in the garage on an old army cot. Becca’s birthday is April first. Carrie spends the night, and they eat cake with Becca’s mom. Later, they play the board game Life in the garage with Becca’s dad. After the house is dark, Carrie whispers, “This must be the worst.”

  Becca says, “It is.” She had one wish on her birthday. I want my parents to love each other again.

  Carrie asks, “What did you wish for? Did you wish for Kevin Richfield to like you?”

  “I can’t tell or it won’t come true.”

  Throughout April, Becca’s dad stays in the garage, smelling of kerosene and lying to Becca, telling her that sleeping in the garage is fun, just like camping out. She ought to spend a Friday night camping out in the garage with him. She tries. She doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. They play six hands of gin rummy. Becca loses every time. In the middle of the night, she goes back inside to use the bathroom and falls asleep in her own bed.

  Losing at cards isn’t fun and neither is sleeping in the garage.

  The world can be fuzzy or sharp or somewhere in between. After Bo was struck by lightning and Grandma Edna died, things were painfully sharp for Becca. When it thundered, she worried that she would bring the lightning to her house and accidentally kill her own dog, Whiskers. She didn’t want to hurt or kill anyone, and even if she’d had nothing to do with Bo’s death, she nonetheless felt responsible. She took precautions: staying clear of windows, water, and electrical wires during thunderstorms; bathing in the morning when storms are less likely; and wearing only rubber-soled shoes.

  Sitting crouched in the den with Whiskers curled between her legs, she checked the bottoms of her shoes for sticky bits of metallic bubble gum wrappers, pennies, and paper clips. When it wasn’t storming, she had other things to worry about. There were the bombs and the Russians and the whales being brutally harpooned. There were seals being clubbed and foxes being trapped. She worried that Whiskers was aging prematurely. She worried that her mother would pass out one night and never wake up. She worried that her father would leave the garage and she’d never see him again. She worried that if it weren’t for her escapes—TV, books, and art—she’d go crazy. She was too young to go crazy. When she worried, she drew pretty pictures. Like in Mary Poppins, she jumped into those pictures, imagining bright sunny places without sticky liquor drinks and cheating husbands. Her other escapes included The Wonderful World of Disney and The Six Million Dollar Man, praying to Grandma Edna in heaven, and eating Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies for dinner. Becca’s world, she knew, was sharp. It had a point, and she’d prefer a dull edge—like a butter knife’s.

  That summer, Becca and Carrie straddled their bikes outside the 7-Eleven, counting change to buy Coca-Cola–flavored Slurpees. They watched the comings and goings of the Chapel Hillians. Sometimes Becca saw things that weren’t there and had to look twice. She saw a twenty-something man in dark sunglasses leaving the store with a six pack of Budweiser and an arm full of red roses. She asked Carrie, “They sell roses at 7-Eleven?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The roses.”

  “You need glasses, Bec.”

  Becca looked again and saw that the roses were a crinkly bag of pork rinds. She had to look twice at a lot of things. Sometimes at night, as she sat in the den with Whiskers, the door leading to the backyard flew open. Whiskers started barking. Once, Becca saw Grandma Edna and Bo. When she looked again, they were gone. She shut and locked the door, marching upstairs to tell her mother.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to see that scary movie. I told you.”

  “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t scary. It was Grandma and Bo.”

  “Please leave me alone.”

  Becca shut her mother’s door and went back downstairs to the TV.

  In early July, Becca’s dad moved back into the house. Becca wasn’t sure what it meant exactly but hoped that the philandering would stop. She hoped that her parents would reconcile. They might fall in love again. As sharp-edged as her life was, there were nuanced things she remembered and mentally cataloged. For instance, she took haloed photographs. She saw roses instead of pork rinds. Once in a while, she propelled the second hand on a random timepiece to tick counterclockwise. Truthfully, Becca couldn’t live in the world without hope. She was a girl. She was not a disbeliever, a naysayer, or a cynic. She was a girl with her whole life ahead of her.

  Mary Wickle Burke, saving crumpled photographs of an unrecognizable life, decided to extricate herself from this life too: First, she quit chemistry socials on Thursdays; next, her Wednesday-night card game. She boxed her most expensive gowns and donated them to the Salvation Army. She resigned from the Garden Club board and the Historic Preservation Society.

  When she’d quit everything that occupied her time, she took her calendar off the wall, crammed it into the garbage, and in permanent black marker wrote I QUIT where the calendar had hung.

  She drank her cocktails at home and smoked cigarettes in the backyard. Rowan slept in their “marital” bed, but he didn’t touch her. He wouldn’t say he was sorry about the babysitter, just “It didn’t mean anything” and “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m being ridiculous,” she muttered. “I’m being ridiculous,” she said again, her voice louder. “Me! I’m ridiculous!”

  He told her, “Settle down. What is it with you that everything has to be dramatic?”

  He had no idea that what he’d done did mean something. It meant that he didn’t respect her. It meant that he didn’t love her.

  Pathetically, she still loved him.

  Absolutely, she was ridiculous.

  Excerpt from

  THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  Victims who don’t suffer post-traumatic stress can still suffer acute unreasonable fears of lightning, partly due to a natural response, but equally due to the damaged nervous system, responding to both internal and external stimuli. For example, if a victim gets goose bumps or feels a tingling sensation, he may relive the strike, reacting with trepidation even when there’s not a cloud in the sky.

  [12]

  Barbi Benton, 1972

  Buckley’s first day of eighth grade at Galveston Junior High was like fifth grade show-and-tell in Mont Blanc, except that Buckley was the purple-spotted lizard scooped out of the shoebox, and Buckley, like the lizard, was a huge hit in his new hip-hugger jeans and eagle-patterned shirt. He didn’t know how to act in the odd campus-styled school where he walked from one class to the next outside in the sunshine and girls smiled and giggled behind their notebooks, and a group of boys, dressed much like himself, huddled around Buckley, asking him if he knew how to surf, if he’d seen the Barbi Benton shots in Playboy. Charlie said, “My dad collects them. Barbi’s the best.” Buckley didn’t say much for fear of fouling everything up, and surprisingly, his quietness made him cool.

  Marty Bascott, a flame-headed girl, fittingly nicknamed Flamehead, pinned Buckley with his back to the red-brick school at three-thirty. He’d been going to school in Galveston for two months. She said, “I don’t know if Theresa said she likes you, but she’s a lesbian. If you don’t know
what that means, it means she likes girls. She likes doing it with them.”

  “I know lesbians.”

  “Your sister?”

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “I do. She’s a bitch. Do you want to come over?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to come over?”

  “Now?”

  “No. In fifty years.”

  “I can’t. I want to, but I’m going over to Charlie’s.”

  “To look at Playboy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s only got that one issue.”

  In fact, Charlie Zuchowski, a dark-headed thirteen-year-old boy with premature stubble on his chin, had far more than the March 1970 Barbi Benton pictorial. He had every Playboy from 1968 to the current October issue. His father was a Playboy collector. Charlie said his dad was a connoisseur of the ladies. Buckley pretended to know what that meant. Charlie pulled three issues, including his favorite, from his dad’s bedside drawer. “My dad said I can look whenever I want.”

  They drank Cokes in Charlie’s faux-wood-paneled den. They crouched on the shag carpeting. Charlie, Buckley, and Charlie’s best friend, Eddie Smart, flipped from one page to the next until Buckley had seen all nine amazing, beauteous shots of Barbi Benton, including the centerfold. “She is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Charlie.

  “I’d do it to her,” said Eddie. Eddie said he’d do it to everybody.

  “No you wouldn’t.” Charlie got up from the shag and walked into the adjoining sunroom. “Buckley, Eddie says he’s not a virgin.”

  “Because I’m not.”

  “Eddie said he did it with Theresa’s mom.” Charlie began to laugh.

  “I did.”

  “Did you?” asked Buckley, pulling at the waist loop of his hip-hugger jeans.

  “Yeah, I did. I gave it to her.” Eddie thrust his hips forward. “And she was screaming, ‘Oh, Eddie. Oh, Eddie!’”

  “Tell Buckley the rest.” Charlie stood in the doorway between the sunroom and the den, his pinkish hands pressed into the sides of the archway. The afternoon sun lit the top of his chestnut hair, casting Buckley and Eddie in shadow.

  Eddie rolled his eyes. “Theresa’s mom had been drinking.”

  “Tell Buckley how much she’d been drinking.”

  “She was drunk. So what! It still counts.” Charlie laughed again, and Buckley joined in, smacking his palm on the carpeting for emphasis. It was funny. “Does she remember doing it with you?” Buckley guessed Mrs. Cormier, Theresa’s mom, was no Barbi Benton. Buckley rose from the shag and high-fived Charlie. “I’m no virgin.”

  “I’d rather be a virgin.” Charlie shook his head in disgust.

  Eddie said, “Flamehead’s got a thing for Buckley.”

  “Marty Bascott?” Buckley asked.

  “I heard she was going to invite you over today.”

  “She did, but I told her I was coming over here.” Charlie and Eddie both said, “You should’ve gone there. She goes to second base.” Buckley felt ignorant. He didn’t know what second base was.

  Eddie said, “I like older, more experienced girls.”

  “Like old ladies,” Charlie added. “Old, drunk ladies.”

  Buckley had no retort, only regret. Flamehead was pretty. Maybe she’d ask him over again.

  Mr. Zuchowski, Charlie’s dad, arrived home at six, and after his standard martini (the man was a big Hugh Hefner fan), he took the boys to Tony’s Pizzeria on Seawall Boulevard.

  Buckley stuffed his face with pepperoni pizza.

  Mr. Zuchowski ate a salad. He said, “What did you boys do today?”

  Charlie said, “I told Buckley about Eddie’s drunk sex with Mrs. Cormier.”

  Mr. Zuchowski nodded. “It’s a good story.” Buckley felt queasy. It seemed weird that a grown man should know about a boy having sex with a divorcée and act like it was no big deal.

  Eddie said, “She liked it. It doesn’t matter that she was drunk. Next time I do it with her, I’ll make sure she’s sober.”

  Mr. Zuchowski laughed. “Be sure and take pictures.” Turning to his son, Charlie, he said, “When you turn fifteen, I’ll take you to Trina’s. We’ll take Buckley too. There’s no point in taking Eddie since he’s got so much experience already.” Trina’s was a whorehouse. Everybody in Galveston knew Trina’s.

  Without thinking, Buckley said, “Don’t take me.”

  Mr. Zuchowski nodded. “Don’t worry, Buckley. It’ll be all right. We won’t force you to go.”

  But why wouldn’t he go? What was there to fear? There might be a girl at Trina’s who looked like bubbly Barbi Benton. She’d fall in love with Buckley and leave Trina’s behind. Buckley sipped his Coke. It was incredible that after a lifetime of worrying about his mother’s health and safety, of worrying about the reverend humiliating him, of worrying about the bullies at school beating the shit out of him, of worrying that Winter would scream at him, this was now his biggest fear: embarrassing himself at a whore house. Life was good.

  Some people, like Paddy John’s son, Tide McGowan, get lost in the filthy crevices of life, and they never get found—at least not whole. Sitting across from him, Abigail Pitank recognized Tide’s position, as if dog fur and dust clung to his very being, not just his clothes. As he talked incessantly about his mother, Abigail worried that he’d already suffered too much damage to recover. There was something in the way he spoke quickly, manically, as if at any second, this scene, the four of them sitting in the Sizzler, could implode. Tide said, “Judy from The Jetsons is just like my mom. Her name’s Judy, like Judy Jetson. Judy. Have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz? Judy Garland stars in that as Dorothy.” Tide’s face was slick from buttered hush puppies.

  Buckley sipped his Coke from a straw. Why were they at the Sizzler? Reverend Whitehouse had liked the Sizzler.

  Padraig John put his arm around Abigail.

  “Where’s Judy now?” Buckley asked Tide.

  Abigail shot him a disapproving look.

  “On TV.”

  “What show’s she on?” Buckley pressed.

  Abigail said, “That’s enough.”

  Tide stuffed a hush puppy in his pocket. Padraig John said, “I think she’s still taking acting classes.”

  “That’s right,” Tide said, reaching over the table. To Abigail he said, “Are you going to eat your hush puppies?”

  Buckley looked disgustedly at Tide.

  “No, sweetheart.”

  Tide stuffed them and her packets of margarine in his pockets. “After my mom finishes her acting classes, she’ll probably get a part on a soap opera like Days of Our Lives. She’s always watched that show, and I’ve seen her practice the lines.”

  “Where does she take acting classes?” Buckley asked, knowing full well that Tide’s mother was somewhere getting stoned or what ever it was junkies did. He wasn’t sure if they used needles or snorted or what kind of drug they took, only that Tide’s mom was a junkie.

  Tide said, “She’s close by. She hates for us to be far apart. When she moves to Hollywood, I’ll go with her.”

  Paddy John said, “I’ll get the check.”

  Abigail said to Buckley, “It’s rude to pry into someone’s business. You don’t need to pester Tide with so many questions.”

  “Sorry, Tide,” Buckley said. “Sorry, Mom.”

  Tide said, “It’s okay. I like talking about my mom.” He pulled a hush puppy from his pocket and took a bite before putting it back.

  Since Judy McGowan, Paddy’s former wife, had disappeared, leaving behind a few possessions, some tattered furniture, some black-and-white photographs, a thawed turkey on the kitchen floor, and Tide, her son, Tide had moved into Paddy John’s home. It was a small one-bedroom apartment, but it was clean, which Tide appreciated. Afraid to sleep alone, he slept with Paddy John, insisting the door remain open, the hallway and bathroom lights lit. Tide was terrified of the dark. Paddy John had
called social services, not to find a more suitable home for Tide, but because, having experienced the trauma of war, he could tell that his son had been traumatized in his former wife’s care. On the phone, he explained, “The boy needs someone to talk to.”

  “We’ll send a caseworker out as soon as one’s available.” Months passed. Still no social worker.

  Tide hoarded food such as hush puppies, apples, American cheese, and bologna beneath his pillow. Every day, Paddy John threw the rancid food away, took the pillowcases to the laundromat, and tried reassuring his son: “There’s plenty to eat. Hell, my girlfriend works at a restaurant, and if worse comes to worst, there’s an ocean full of fish out there, and I’m a hell of a fisherman. Please don’t worry.”

  In kindergarten, Tide volunteered to pick the other students’ lunch trays up from their desks. He stuffed his pants with their discarded rolls and butter packets. He ate the rolls he’d saved after Padraig John was asleep, or he hid them beneath his pillow. Padraig John, unsure how to handle the situation, returned to the laundromat. It was pretty clear that Tide hadn’t been well fed while he was in Judy’s care. When Paddy John asked about life with Judy, Tide said, “It was fine.” He wouldn’t talk about what ever it was he’d endured. After consulting the school guidance counselor and Tide’s teachers, Paddy John was told that it might be years before Tide was willing or capable of discussing his past. It wasn’t much comfort to Paddy John, who wanted his son to be happy. When he asked Tide, “How are you feeling today?” Tide answered, “Fine.”

  He always claimed to be fine, despite his food hoarding, fear of the dark, and elevation of his junkie mother to famous Hollywood actress status.

  Across town, on the waterfront in a dilapidated red-curtained house, Judy McGowan squirted baby oil into her palm. She massaged Charlie Zuchowski’s dad, Mr. Zuchowski, starting with his shoulders. She said, “It feels good, doesn’t it?”