The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

by Michele Young-Stone

  A blue fish. Not exactly blue: its scales a smattering of silver, green, and violet. The fish’s gills puffed and its mouth, dime-sized, swelled and deflated in Becca’s shadow. The fish was thirty feet from the tide, but it was alive. Without thinking, Becca lifted the fish with both hands, expecting it to flop about, but it was motionless.

  She carried it across the sand, through the surf, to where she was waist-deep in the water. A school of tinny minnows swam in her path, or rather she in theirs, a few darting between her thighs. She lowered her fish into the calm green water. As if deciding what to do, where to go, her fish didn’t move. She waited, and then he swam away.

  For the rest of her life, Becca would try over and over to paint that fish, and she would fail. She didn’t remember every detail of that Pea Island beach day as she had promised herself she would, because the details of that cloudless day were overshadowed by darker days, like the day the wind shifted and the flies came and they bit at the tourists’ ankles and scores of puffer fish inexplicably washed ashore, and the flies buzzed around the rotting fish, and Becca threw up. She remembered thinking she had saved a fish. She remembered her mother’s hand on her father’s thigh, the salt dried on her face and back, her father lifting her into the air, and the sea spray speckling her cheeks, but she couldn’t keep those memories close. She couldn’t paint that fish. She couldn’t gather that much hope or that much beauty because it hurt too much. Besides, there would be other fish to paint and other things to feel. At twelve years old, Becca had the rest of her life to feel.

  The westerly wind blew the black biting flies from the Pamlico Sound across the swampy brush and clapboard houses, across the main highway and the beach road, over the dunes and sea oats to the beach. Along with the black flies that nibble on your ankles and calves, the westerly wind brought Patricia from Chapel Hill, Patty with two t’s, not two d’s. Patty who wrote a note to Rowan four years ago, a note that seemed insignificant, but to Becca and her mom, intuitively not. A note that was first in Becca’s mother’s palm, next in Becca’s mother’s jewelry box, and then stolen and stashed for four years in Becca’s vanity drawer.

  It was no coincidence that Patricia Heathrow—Patty—was in Barnacle Bob’s.

  Barnacle Bob’s was a dark hole-in-the-wall with exposed oak beams and row upon row of black-and-white photographs of the old lifesavers—the Midgett family and other early inhabitants, who’d rowed wooden lifeboats through surf and stormy sea to rescue distressed seamen, from fishermen to sailors.

  Rowan and Mary sat at a table with their captain-for-hire, Paddy John McGowan. They’d been on the water all day. Becca, due to sunburn, had remained behind at Barnacle Bob’s with Paddy John’s son—who was supposed to entertain her. He was fourteen, with acne and orange-crusted braces. Supposedly teaching her to shoot pool—when he wasn’t very skilled himself—the boy bragged that he knew how to drive, that he’d smoked marijuana, that he came and went as he pleased, and Becca listened passively, checking the clock on the wall, wanting the day to end. Her shoulders itched; her face flushed from the sunburn. As soon as her parents returned from their sea adventure, Becca ditched the boy supposedly named Tide. What kind of name is that? She sat with her parents and their salty captain, Paddy John. He was a storyteller: “I was out in this squall. The water was up to my knees, and Harry was on deck trying to steer, but there was no use. The best we could hope for was staying afloat. We had no idea where we’d end up, and didn’t much care. At that point, it was all about staying alive.”

  “Where did you end up?” Mary asked.

  “When all was said and done, twenty-three miles off the coast of St. Augustine.”

  Mary was mesmerized. Becca sat with her chin in her palms, sometimes scratching at her shoulders. “What’s a bilge pump?”

  Rowan, suddenly distracted, said, “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

  When he returned to their table, Patricia Heathrow was with him. She was tall and thin with bright blond hair, a pixie cut, and Becca noticed that her arms were too long, as were her legs, which were bronzed. She wore heeled sandals despite her height, and when she shook Mary’s hand and said, “Hi. I’m Patricia Heathrow. I work with Rowan,” Becca knew that this was Patty. She also knew that her mother knew. The Wickle women were remarkably savvy when it came to such matters.

  Patty said, “What a coincidence!”

  Mary said, “It certainly is.”

  “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

  “You as well. Can you sit?” Mary asked. She had a few questions for Patricia.

  “My sister’s at the bar, but it was nice meeting you. Small world.”

  “Same here.” Mary gritted her teeth.

  Paddy John said, “Pretty girl,” and watched her walk away.

  Rowan said, “I’ll be right back,” following Patty to the bar.

  Paddy John said, “She’s not nearly as pretty as you,” reaching out and touching Mary’s hand, which trembled ever so slightly under his.

  Mary sat shoulder to shoulder with Paddy John, thinking, This is the kind of man I was supposed to marry, but I wanted someone better. I wanted something better—the big house, the two point five children, the social clubs, the name. I didn’t want a farm boy or a sailor or a blue-collar nobody.

  Paddy John said, “When I was in Galveston down on the docks, looking for some action, I see this fellow passed out in his undershorts. This little girl says to me, ‘Don’t worry,’ but I worried. These women had taken everything the guy had. Not just his money but his goddamn boots. I knew I didn’t want to drink there, and she says, ‘Come on and have a drink. The first one’s on the house.’”

  “Oh my god,” Mary said. She wondered if Paddy John cheated on his wife. She didn’t even know if he had a wife. She could ask if he was married, but that might sound like a pickup line. No, of course it wouldn’t. She was married.

  “You wouldn’t believe some of them ports. The shit that went on, that probably still goes on.” He thought of Trina’s whorehouse, his ex-wife there. Then of Abigail. He said, “I fell in love in Galveston.”

  “I’ve never been to Galveston.” Mary wondered how Rowan could do this to her, how he could have one of his whores meet them on vacation. Maybe it wasn’t planned. She’d almost believed there wasn’t anyone else. Not right now, anyway. Not for some time. She’d been a laughingstock for so long. Maybe he’s over there right now telling her to leave.

  Paddy John slid the saltshaker toward Mary. “You should go to Galveston.” Drumming his fingers on the table, he asked, “Your husband always work on vacation?”

  “He works a lot.”

  “That’s a shame. If I had a wife looked like you and enough money to buy that seafaring beauty, I’d quit my day job.”

  “Thank you.” She knew that she’d been beautiful at one time in her life. That’s how she’d caught Rowan in the first place, but lately she’d been feeling the difference between thirty-four and Patty’s twenty-something. Feeling plain tired. Why hadn’t her stomach ever lost its pooch after Becca? Why wasn’t she born as tall as Patty Heathrow, as blond, as slim? She was Mary Wickle Burke. Mary the redhead. Rowan’s wife. Former PTA member. Former Garden Club board member. Current cookie baker. She remembered part of a funny poem she wrote in college when she thought she was someone else: I am not a woman. I am not a baby maker, I am not sweet smiles fetching his coffee and paper. Something something. I am not a cookie baker, an ordered homemaker. Something something. She forgot. She was a cookie baker. She was a baby maker. She was a former member of the Historic Preservation Society. She was a laughingstock. A drunk. A former snob. She was Rowan Burke’s wife, and he was never going to stop cheating.

  Mary said, “I need a stronger drink.” Like the topsy-turvy stone in Becca’s gut, Mary had her stone, but it was a much larger, jagged rock, tipped with scotch and Valium to dull the points.

  Becca studied the black-and-white photos lining the wall. Along with the lifesaver pictures, t
here was one of Orville and Wilbur Wright posing in front of their Kitty Hawk barracks. She was desperate for home. The rock in her gut flipped. She ran for the bathrooms in the corner of Barnacle Bob’s, past the pinball machine Bounty Hunter, with its orange and blue lights spelling GAME OVER. The bathroom was marked by a pink and white anchor. She tried the doorknob but it was locked. She knocked. A voice from within said, “Hold your horses.”

  I can’t, thought Becca, running into the men’s room. She vomited with her hands on the rim of the toilet, her right palm in a spot of urine.

  She felt better. Washing up with the powdered soap from the dispenser, reminding herself that everything was going to be okay, a large man with muttonchop sideburns and a hairy gut hanging over his belt pushed open the door. Rather than saying “Excuse me,” and stepping out, he said, “It says ‘Gents’ Head,’ girlie.”

  Girlie? You’ve got to be kidding. “Sorry.” She hadn’t flushed yet.

  He looked at the toilet and back at Becca. “You threw up? You had to throw up in here?”

  “There was someone in the other bathroom.”

  “You didn’t flush.”

  “And now I’m not going to.” Fuck you! She’d had her palm on the rim of a man’s toilet seat. Let him flush her vomit.

  Becca went to the bar, grabbed her father’s soft hand, and said, “Let’s go. I don’t feel good.”

  He pulled his hand free. “I need to talk business with Patty.” He tossed his head back, a raw oyster sliding from its gray marble half shell into his mouth, reminding Becca of her mother when she took bourbon shots.

  Patty smiled at Becca. “Rowe, you should go if Rebecca doesn’t feel well.”

  Rowe?

  “Hi, I’m Virginia.” Patty’s sister was an older, shorter Patty. “Are you having a good vacation?”

  “I got sunburned.” Becca tugged her dad’s hand.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “In a minute. Go tell your mom we’re leaving.”

  Becca went back to their table. Paddy John said, “Your mom’s not feeling so great.”

  “Me either.”

  “I feel fine,” Mary said. “Becca and I have no secrets. I was just telling Paddy John here that I’d make him a wager. I bet your dad and that woman are having sex, and I bet I can get one of them to confess.”

  “Mom, please don’t.”

  “Don’t what? What are you afraid I’ll do? I’m not having sex with anybody.” She tapped her chest with two fingers for emphasis. “Not me.” Mary rose from her stool and headed toward the bar. Becca followed, urging, “Mom, don’t. We’re leaving. Dad said we’re leaving. I got sick in the bathroom. I’m sick. I think it’s the sunburn. Let’s wait for Dad to finish talking and we’ll go.”

  “Is that what they call it? ‘Talking’? I think it’s a little more than that.”

  Mary tapped Rowan on the shoulder but directed her question at Patty. “Are you having sex with my husband?” She tossed back a bourbon shot.

  Patricia looked to her sister first and then to Rowan. She cleared her throat as if she hadn’t understood Mary’s question, as if Mary had made some mistake. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not the first, so please don’t play dumb with me.” The bar was silent except for the splunks and sirens of the Bounty Hunter pinball machine.

  Rowan said, “We’re not doing this here.”

  “Why not? You do it in the garage. You do it in our bed.”

  Tide, approaching Becca from behind, put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want to get out of here?” Becca didn’t answer.

  Mary said, “Own up. Are you having sex with my husband?”

  “Don’t do this.” Rowan grabbed Mary’s wrist. “Stop.”

  “Stop, Mom.”

  “That’s good, Becca. Take your dad’s side.”

  Tide said, “We should get out of here.”

  Mary yanked her wrist loose. “I want another shot.” The bartender was drying glasses, pretending not to listen.

  “I need another Jim Beam.”

  The bartender said, “I’m not serving you.”

  Paddy John shouted from the table where he still sat, “She’s a friend of mine, and she needs that drink.”

  The bartender poured Mary’s shot.

  “We’re leaving,” said Rowan. “I’m sorry, Patty. I’m very sorry.”

  “I’m not going anywhere and neither is my daughter.”

  “We’re leaving, Mary. Get your purse.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Someone in the bar clapped. Another person laughed.

  A restrained look of anger on his face, Rowan extended his hand to Paddy John. “I wish I could say it was a pleasure.”

  “Our score is settled.” Paddy John patted his front shirt pocket, where Rowan’s check was folded. The two men shook hands.

  “We’ll be leaving now.”

  On his way to the door, Rowan took Becca’s hand. He said, “I’m sorry about this, Piddle. Everything’s going to be okay.” She couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her Piddle. She felt sick. Powerless. Mary grabbed on to Becca’s other hand.

  Even after this huge scene, they were leaving together as a family, Becca thought. Then her mother pulled Becca toward the bar. “She’s not going anywhere with you.”

  Patty and Virginia placed a twenty on the bar. “Excuse us.” They left Barnacle Bob’s before the Burkes. Patricia Heathrow did not suffer indignities.

  Rowan held Becca’s left hand, Mary her right. Rowan pulled Becca toward the door. He said, “How can you do this, Mary?”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  Becca was being pulled apart.

  “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

  Mary reached for Becca’s waist. “Come on, honey.”

  Rowan said, “She’s not going anywhere with you. You’re drunk.”

  Grandma Edna and Bo came to see me.

  “You screwed the babysitter!”

  Rowan let go of Becca’s hand. He said, “We’re leaving.”

  I killed Bo. I didn’t mean it.

  Mary let go of Becca’s hand. “Let’s go then.”

  The miracle fish in Becca’s hand was gone. There was no such thing as a miracle fish. Somewhere in the room a stool overturned, a glass shattered, and someone called, “Julianna, I need a stiff drink. I can’t listen to this shit.” Someone else laughed. Becca saw her miracle fish swarming with flies. She imagined the dead fish rotting in her hands.

  Rowan left for Chapel Hill that night. Becca begged him, “Please take me with you.”

  He said no.

  Becca had no idea that her mother wanted to beg the same thing of Rowan. As much as Becca wanted a caretaker, so did Mary. Age is but a number.

  That same night in Chapel Hill, Colin Atwell took Becca’s purple butterfly brooch from his sock drawer and studied each of the shimmering amethysts, snug in their platinum settings. He counted twenty-eight. Colin’s dad called from their den, “Get in here! The game’s on.” Colin switched off his bedroom light. “Coming, Dad.” Colin was always a good boy: the kind of boy Abigail Pitank Whitehouse had hoped Buckley R. Pitank would be.

  In her beach house bedroom, Becca pulled the window shut. Even so, the ocean waves made themselves heard.

  Pivotal events, occurrences that should be embedded, second by second, in your memory, are too immediate for reflection. Even years later, the seconds mix together like batter, the ingredients indistinguishable.

  Mary lights a cigarette at the kitchen table. “He’s moving in with that Patty person. He’s putting his suitcase in the car.”

  There’s the puffing on a green-ringed cigarette, the shuffle of slippered feet beneath the table, the cup at her mother’s lips, the little dribble of coffee running down the side of the cup, the exhalation of smoke, Becca’s hands on her hips, her bare feet, one foot crossing the other to scratch at a mosquito bite on her left calf; her voice, cracked and insistent: “It’s Sun
day,” because she doesn’t know what else to say. “It’s Sunday,” thinking, Sunday is the day Dad and I go to breakfast at Sutton’s. Today’s Sunday. He would’ve said something. He wouldn’t just leave.

  The screen door slams shut behind Becca. She manages, “It’s Sunday,” and he smiles. He shuts the Austin Healey’s trunk. Certainly he couldn’t have packed much in there. Certainly he’s not leaving for good, and he meets her in the middle of the driveway halfway between the side door and his escape. He wipes his hands down the front of his khakis, smiling like everything’s okay. Becca’s hands are clasped together under her chin; unconsciously her fingers curl around one another like when she made the church with all the people and the steeple when she was very little. She feels small, not small how she felt on the beach with the ocean and sky; not small like she was part of something great and beautiful, but small insignificant, like an ant or slug squashed, unnoticed.

  Becca thinks this is like acting, like playing a part in an after-school special where some girl, not her, is abandoned, and if someone were to play Becca right now in a movie, she’d pick young Hayley Mills because she always liked The Parent Trap. Needless to say, Cary Grant would play her dad.

  Her father touches her arm. “Look,” he says. “I need to leave. I can’t stay here right now.”

  “Where are you going? Are you coming back?”

  He shakes his head no.

  “Were you going to say goodbye?”