The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

by Michele Young-Stone

  Leaving his suitcase just inside her front door, Rowan took off his gloves. “It’s freezing in here. Can I have a glass of water?”

  She wondered if he’d notice the once glossy hardwood floors now stripped of lacquer and spotted with dark paint. Becca tossed her knit cap on the kitchen counter, and grabbing a glass from the red cabinet, filled it from the sink. “Why didn’t Patty come?”

  “Do you have bottled water?”

  “The water’s not bad here.”

  “I’d like bottled water.”

  “Is Patty sick?” She handed him the glass of water. “I don’t have bottled water.”

  “We’re getting a divorce.”

  “What! Why?”

  “She’s crazy.” Rowan took the glass from Becca and gulped the water down. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “What happened?

  “She thinks I’m cheating on her.”

  “Are you?”

  “How can you ask that?”

  “You cheated on Mom.”

  He set the glass on the counter. “I can’t believe you’d say that.”

  Becca shrugged. She wasn’t sorry.

  “Your mother was very sick.”

  Becca thought, You’re right. You’re so fucking right—as usual, and she felt a wave of heat spread into her chest, rising up her esophagus. My mother was very sick, and I was the lucky one who stayed home and took care of her while you ran off with Patty.

  She chucked her winter coat, a secondhand army jacket, onto the sofa. “I thought we’d stay in and order Chinese.”

  “I’d rather go out.” Rowan hadn’t taken off his coat. He sat down beside Becca.

  For the past three years, Rowan and Patty visited every Christmas. Every year, it was Patty who did the talking and Patty who decided what they’d do for dinner, what Broadway shows they had to see, what art exhibits and which jazz musicians weren’t to be missed. It was Patty who praised Becca’s art. It was Patty who, despite Becca’s understandable resistance, tried to make friends.

  Becca and Rowan sat, quiet, on the sofa, both of them missing Patty. Becca looked around at the walls, waiting for her father to ask about school or art, waiting for him to comment on the bright sketches strewn about the loft, but he got up and refilled his glass. She’d settle for a comment about the ruined floor he’d eventually have to pay for. He said, “The water tastes like metal.”

  “Don’t drink it.” Becca stood up. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Well, you said you wanted to go out to eat.”

  “Surprise me.”

  Rowan put on his gloves, Becca her army coat. She pulled the bright red hat that Jack had knitted for her—an early Christmas gift—down over her ears.

  As Becca and Rowan walked along MacDougal on their way to Bleecker, an older man, his blue-black skin in creases and folds, played saxophone under the streetlamp. Beside him, a white sheet of loose-leaf paper marked TIPS was safety-pinned to a top hat. Becca stopped. Rowan kept walking. She tossed two dollars into the hat. The saxophonist dipped his head as she passed.

  As she caught up with her father, who was already half a block away, he said, “You’re only encouraging him.”

  “Encouraging what? He’s a musician.”

  “He’s a beggar and a bum.”

  “Okay, Dad.” There was no point arguing. She said, “You’ll like this place. It’s a jazz club, but they do fresh pasta from five to nine.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Club Plenty.”

  Rowan picked up the red candle between them and set it back down. “I talked to your Auntie Jane. She wants us to drive up to Connecticut for Christmas. I was going to rent a car.”

  “Who’s Auntie Jane?”

  “Becca, you know Auntie Jane.”

  “No, Dad, I don’t.”

  “My mother’s sister.”

  “Then she’s your Auntie Jane.”

  “She’s invited us to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Connecticut.”

  “We’re spending it in New York.”

  He shrugged. “I thought it’d be fun. Something different.”

  “I don’t know Auntie Jane.” Becca picked up the red candle. “Do you know what you’re going to get?”

  “What are you having?”

  “I’m not all that hungry. Maybe some pasta marinara.”

  “Me too.”

  Becca and her father ordered their pasta, and Becca ordered a bottle of the house red. After her first glass, she said, “You could’ve told me about Patty. When did it happen?”

  “January. I didn’t see the point.”

  “Last January!?”

  He nodded.

  “And you didn’t see the point?” Becca twirled the long spaghetti noodles around the tines of her fork. “I’m not going to Auntie Jane’s.”

  “Why not?”

  “If I wanted to spend Christmas with family, I would’ve gone to Aunt Claire’s with Mom. We’re supposed to do Rockefeller Center and Macy’s and the Rockettes. Christ, Dad, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me what’s going on with you and Patty and these lawsuits, and now you want me to pack up and ride to Connecticut with you to see some old woman I don’t know.”

  “She’s your Auntie Jane.”

  “She’s your Auntie Jane, not mine.”

  “I don’t need this, Becca.”

  Becca pushed her plate of food to the corner of their table. “I’ve sold three paintings.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’ve sold two photographs this year.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “What? What did I do now?”

  “It’s all about you. Can it ever be about me?” Becca gulped her wine, refilling the short juice glass.

  “I didn’t come here for this. I came here to have a nice time with my daughter. Look, I have to fly to Nevada the day after Christmas.”

  “To testify again? What did you do, exactly, Dad? I mean, let’s be honest here.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I made glues for cigarettes.”

  “I’m not going to Auntie Jane’s with you.” Becca began to cry. “Did you see my paintings in the loft?”

  “Piddle, don’t cry.”

  “Did you see my paintings in the loft?”

  “I saw them.”

  “Then why couldn’t you say anything?”

  “Well, I was going to.”

  “Why couldn’t you say anything now?”

  “I just got here.”

  “Why can’t you see who I am?”

  “You’re being overly dramatic.”

  “Why couldn’t you be there for me?”

  “Calm down.”

  “Am I embarrassing you?” Becca’s breathing quickened. She blew her nose into her dinner napkin.

  “Calm down, Piddle.”

  “Don’t fucking call me Piddle.”

  “We’ll get the check.” Rowan got up from the table to look for their waitress, and when he returned, Becca was gone. She had left the key to her loft, which she kept on a beaded silver chain, on Rowan’s bread plate.

  When Tripp, a no-last-namer like Chris, who lived on Lafayette Street, saw Becca, her freckled cheeks caked with mascara, he said, “I thought you wouldn’t see me again? You gotta wait three weeks to come knockin’? Is that like the don’t-call-somebody-within-forty-eight-hours rule? Your rule is three weeks?”

  “Shut up.” She stepped past Tripp into his apartment and leaned with her back against the exposed brick. “Can I have a beer or a shot or something?”

  “You’re presumptuous.”

  “That’s me.”

  She swigged two shots of tequila, drumming her paint-stained fingers on the bar in Tripp’s small kitchen, wanting to explode. “Can I use your bathroom?”

  She washed her face and blew her nose.

  Back at Tripp’s bar, drumming her fingers again, she said, “My dad’s a dick.”

  “My dad’s a dick and
Merry Christmas. Get in line. Whose dad isn’t?”

  “Will you fuck me?”

  “Of course I’ll fuck you.” He smiled. He was handsome. She could fuck him, his dark eyes, his pink lips, his strong back, his strong hands, and he would love her, and then she would leave …

  Except this time turned out different. This time it was no good. She heard the rubbery squeak of the condom. She envisioned the folded black skin of the saxophone player and remembered her dad taking her to Bobbie’s to buy a new watch. She saw her mother passed out on the kitchen floor and Bob and his cheating whore wife across the street, watching the Burke family. She saw Carrie walking away from her, yellow lockers on both sides of her best friend. “I don’t trust you,” she remembered. She saw her father driving away from her. She tried to feel Tripp inside her. She wanted so badly to feel nothing else. She said, “More! Please! I can’t feel anything.” He pressed her bare back against the exposed brick of his fireplace, her right leg around his thigh, the toes of her left foot on the hardwood floor, and she let go. Her chest sweaty, she slid from beneath him. She had really let go.

  “What are you doing?”

  She crumpled to the floor and cried.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “I have to go.” She fumbled around Tripp’s place, grabbing her jeans and sweater. “My hat. Have you seen my hat?”

  “What hat?”

  “My friend made it.”

  “I didn’t see a hat.”

  “Bye.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Did I do something?”

  “It’s not you, Tripp. It’s me.”

  On the walk back to the Village, Becca remembered the saxophone player’s face. She mixed the paints in her head. She saw Old Man John, his skin blue-black, digging a grave for Bo, and old Bo, blue-black and charred in the pouring rain. The blue-black blood of the dead fish when she split them open. And then she saw herself, who she had been—a firefly charmer dancing with the stars. Minnows darting between her thighs beneath breaking waves. A little girl haloed with fire in her eyes. Becca, all grown up now, remembered the red roses in a crinkly bag of pork rinds. She remembered Grandma Edna laughing at her own funeral, and Becca, all grown up now, mixed the paints in her head. She felt that the Winnie-the-Pooh watch hands had quickened. It was time to slow down.

  Inside Becca’s loft, her father paced the floor. He flipped through her record albums and wondered why life had to be so difficult. He wanted to see Auntie Jane. He thought it would be a nice change. He hadn’t seen her since his own mother’s funeral. He missed his Auntie Jane. With three fingers on his jaw, he walked around the loft, looking at Becca’s paintings and sketches, wondering what he could say about each of them to make things better, to make things less difficult with his only child. He liked the picture of the chrysanthemums because it was bright. He didn’t like the pencil drawing of the fish head. He liked the storefronts. He thought they were well rendered. He thought, I’ll say this one’s my favorite because it looks so much like a real flower, or I’ll lie and say I like the fish head because it’s dark and if I were to be honest, if that’s what she wants, I’ll say the fish head’s disgusting. It’s disturbing. He paced the loft and waited.

  The door was locked. Becca knocked. When her father opened the door, he was smiling. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “I need to paint.”

  “We should talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk any more, Dad.” She set her coat on the kitchen counter and rolled her sleeves up.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “You mean like Mom?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I need to paint.”

  “You can paint. Don’t let me stop you. As a matter of fact, I was looking at your paintings and some of your drawings. You’re quite the artist.”

  Becca ripped a sheet from her sketchbook and, remembering the face of Old Man John, she began with his forehead. She had seen his face in the saxophone player, that same level of dignity. Something she had lost. Something she wanted back.

  Her father said, “I like the flowers in this picture. They’re so bright.”

  Becca stopped her pencil. “Dad, no offense, but I really need to work.”

  “Go ahead, honey.”

  “Look, I’m supposed to have another show in six months.”

  “Did you ever have that other one you were telling me about?” Rowan sat on the sofa, his hands between his knees, his voice as insecure as it had been when he’d telephoned from San Francisco.

  “Over a year ago.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “It went swell.”

  “Tell me about it. Did you sell any of your paintings?”

  “I already told you. You weren’t listening!” My paintings, she thought, have no more to do with you than the men I’ve fucked and forgotten. Becca said, “It’s late. Take my bed, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  By morning, the loft floor was strewn with sketches, and Becca slept, her narrow waist and shoulders beneath an old quilt on the sofa, her father rubbing circles on her back. He whispered, “Bec. Hey, Bec.”

  “Are you leaving?” She stretched out her legs, arching her back.

  “I guess so.”

  “I think you should. Go to Auntie Jane’s.”

  He sat on the edge of the sofa. “Are you sure?”

  Becca squinted up at him before rubbing her eyes. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  “I left your Christmas present over there.”

  There was no reason to look. She knew it was cash since there was no more pretty Patty to buy her things she didn’t need.

  Rising from the sofa, her father squeezed her shoulder. “You know I’m proud of you.”

  She smiled. He could be anybody.

  “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart. I love you.”

  “Bye, Dad.”

  He left with his suitcase and Becca fell back asleep. For the first time in a long time, she slept soundly.

  Excerpt from

  THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS

  “One fellow called me stupid. I ain’t stupid. I was fishing at this pond up near Luray when the rain started. I did what the cows did. I went to the nearest tree for cover. Wouldn’t you know it: Me and the cows and the tree get zapped and I’m off my feet, my left side aching. An hour later, the wife comes to get me. I limp over to the truck. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I asked. She said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Woman,’ I told her. ‘Do you want me to die in a thunderstorm?’

  She said, ‘It weren’t storming where I was.’ Sure enough, just five miles down the road, nothing but blue sky.

  Seeing me in pain, she thought I better go to a hospital, but I felt all right. Just a little sore, and I didn’t have no insurance. That was the first time I got struck. Since then, I’ve been struck four times. I’m not afraid no more. I told my grandson, ‘Your Pa-Pa is Lightning Man. I’m a goddamn superhero.’”

  Account by Jimmy A.

  [39]

  Redemption, 1995

  Winter had a beef stew simmering in the Crock-Pot. She was making biscuits. John Whitehouse came up behind her, putting his hand on her back. “It smells good.” She felt his breath on her neck.

  With a palm full of peanut M&M’s, he said, “A sweet for my sweet.”

  She smiled. “Your sweet? You’re plumb out of your mind.” She loved John Whitehouse, the man her daughter rejected. She was seventy-four years old, and she loved him more than she’d ever loved Joe Pitank. She couldn’t much stand Joe—she could now finally admit.

  After Abigail was born, he’d always favored his daughter over Winter. It’d been his idea to name her Abigail. Winter had thought Summer would be more appropriate—what with her own name being Winter. He hadn’t liked it.

  Joe spoiled Abigail while Winter washed laundry, while Winter worked her fingers red and hard. She ha
dn’t much mourned his passing, she remembered. He died a lifetime ago. Abigail was another matter. For Abigail, she still felt guilt. She could have loved her more. Abigail might not have strayed and had a bastard child if she’d been a more attentive mother, but she saw Joe in Abigail. She could admit that now too. She was old.

  As for Buckley, she wondered about him—what had become of him, if he was alive. She felt that she and John Whitehouse had done right by him. And off he’d gone, disappearing like his mother tried to do.

  Sitting across the table from John in their same cinder-block house, he slid a letter to her. “I’ve already read it,” he said. “Couldn’t resist.”

  The letter was from Buckley. She hesitated before pulling the stationery from the envelope.

  He wrote, I’m living at the ocean with Padraig John—the man my mother loved. He wrote, I’m happy. Life is like a card game. You either play or you fold. I’ll never fold. Winter wondered what in God’s name Buckley was talking about. Playing or folding. He was as nuts as ever. Still, she was glad to know that he was happy. The letter continued: I’m never coming back to Mont Blanc. I plan to avoid the whole state of Arkansas. (Buckley had laughed when he wrote that particular sentence.)

  He needed to say goodbye to the reverend and Winter once and for all. As long as they were ignorant of his feelings, he felt haunted by them; like they could come and get him anytime they wanted. He was a man now. He didn’t want to be afraid. He wrote: I don’t think either of you treated my mom with love or kindness, which is a shame, because I know now that the love she gave me in just fourteen years of life has sustained me.