Weather

by Jenny Offill

  You don’t say.

  * * *

  …

  Catherine wrote Self Care on my brother’s hand in black marker. This is to remind him to go outside more, to eat better food, to step away from the computer.

  The problem is that when he’s left to his own devices, he just watches those scenes of refugees trying to make their way to safety over and over again. They keep showing pictures of this one island that is running out of resources. The people who live there have formed their own rescue teams. The fishermen go out in their boats and pull survivors out of the water. Others bring dry clothes to the beach.

  Ben told me that in Greek culture it has historically been considered both a duty and an honor to take care of strangers. You can see it with the villagers. The way they go out to rescue people in their boats or bring food to the exhausted ones on the beach. In ancient times, the gods used to test mortals by arriving on their doorsteps clothed in rags to see if they would be welcomed or turned away.

  Henry has bookmarked this one photograph of a man carrying his child up a hill. The caption said he had traveled with her for days on a dinghy to Greece. Then he walked with her thirty-four miles to the camp. “I don’t think I could do that. I don’t think I’m strong enough,” Henry says. “You are not going to have to walk thirty-four miles with your child on your back,” I tell him.

  “But if I did,” he says.

  * * *

  …

  Anytime I think I am a semidecent person, I remember this story someone told me once about her ex-husband. He was always late getting home. He never came home when he said he would, and I thought I knew this story before she told it, but I was wrong. It was just that he had a rule that if anyone asked him for help he would pause to see what that person needed. And then he would try to get them that thing if he could. Sometimes it was money, sometimes food; once a man needed a belt and he gave him his. The reason he was always late was that his office was next door to Penn Station. They broke up because he was a mean drunk, but still.

  * * *

  …

  “You don’t really even have a job, do you?” Ben says one day when I come home early. It’s true. I could be one of those people who got fired months ago but still pretends to go to work every day. You see them in the library sometimes.

  “Can you put sheets on his bed?”

  “I fixed the drain.”

  “I made corn.”

  * * *

  …

  I hate weddings because I cry and drink too much, but this time I get lucky. Catherine gets pregnant and they have a shotgun wedding at city hall.

  Maybe I can stop having that dream now. The one where my brother shows up at my apartment and says, Lizzie, can I die here?

  Because suddenly I have a sister-in-law. “Oh, don’t buy that,” Catherine says at the bodega. “It has Blue No. 1 in it.” I look at her, pretend to read the package. “It’s the only dye that is known to cross the blood-brain barrier. That’s what protects the brain from toxins.”

  I put the package back on the shelf to see if that will end the conversation, but she has more terrible knowledge she must impart to me. “Blue No. 1 enters the fluid inside the skull, but scientists don’t know what it does once it’s there,” she tells me. Apparently, they’ve done research, but they still don’t understand it. “Okay,” I say, “but I mean, they don’t even know how aspirin works, right? There is no ‘theory of aspirin.’ ”

  * * *

  …

  A woman in her forties was told by her doctor that she had to improve her health. The doctor suggested that she take up jogging and run two miles every day. He told her to call him in two weeks and tell him how she felt. Two weeks later, the woman checked in. “So how are you doing?” the doctor asked. “I feel pretty good,” the woman said, “but I’m twenty-eight miles from home.”

  * * *

  …

  If I stand far enough back in the crowd, I can hide until the kids are released. I figured this out last year. The white parents tend to come to the front and stand there like some sort of battalion. Most of us have kids in the EAGLE thing. It’s noticeable when those classes come out because they’re such a small part of the school’s population. Ten percent maybe. Almost everyone else in the school is Southeast Asian. Little Bangladesh, people call our neighborhood sometimes. Or Little Pakistan. Not the people who live here though.

  * * *

  …

  Sylvia calls to tell me she’s losing heart. “These people,” she says. At one house in the hills, the kids had piñatas full of candy in their rooms just for the hell of it.

  Later, I look through her old letters. It’s true. She is. In the beginning, she answered questions like this.

  Q: Why do humans like applause?

  A: I suspect it is because we are at a disadvantage compared with much of the animal kingdom. We lack sharp teeth or claws. We are not the biggest or the fastest. And we evolved in an environment where we lived nomadically and were exposed daily to the terrifying forces of nature. Accordingly, we banded together in tight-knit groups to better protect ourselves. We built fires and told stories to make the dark nights pass by. Applause may be a way for us to make our weak hands sound thunderous.

  By the end, it was like this.

  Q: How did we end up here?

  A: We can, if need be, ransack the whole globe, penetrate into the bowels of the earth, descend to the bottom of the deep, travel to the farthest regions of this world, to acquire wealth, to increase our knowledge, or even only to please our eye and fancy.

  (William Derham, 1711)

  * * *

  …

  “How do you sleep at night knowing all this?”

  “I’ve known it for a long, long time,” she says.

  It affects her in other ways, I think. Sylvia always wants to go see things, some nearby, some far away. The requirement is that they are disappearing faster than expected. The going, going, gone trips, I call them. She picks me up early, then we drive and drive until we reach the designated place. Then we walk around and look at things and I try to feel what she does. Once I took Eli. We stood and looked at some kind of meadowland. He waited patiently until we could go back to the car.

  Children cannot abide a vista, Sylvia said.

  * * *

  …

  There are little signs everywhere in the library now that say BREATHE! BREATHE! How did everyone get so good at this breathing thing? I feel like it all happened while I was away.

  Also, why has my mother sent me this box of old papers? She sent some to Henry too. Catherine went through them and promptly sent this to me. It’s from high school, when my brother tried, inexplicably, to join the model UN club.

  During the preparation for this trip, Henry was surely one of the most disappointing students I have dealt with in the field trip situation. When shown his duties, his apparent reaction was incredulity proceeded by levity. Also subject to discussion was his lack of thoughtfulness in letting others do his work.

  Toward the end of the trip, however, he began to show an awareness and sensitivity to this impression and began to do his job seriously and enthusiastically. He was able to overcome his preoccupation with self and to participate in the duties and pleasures of the trip. If he can become more sensitive to other people’s needs, he will be a welcomed addition to any group.

  * * *

  …

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t seem to stop making bad decisions. The weird thing is they don’t sneak up on me. I can see them coming all the way down the pike.

  My main bad decision is spending too much time traveling or being a fake shrink while ignoring the people I live with. Lately, it’s my mother whom I’m on the phone with every evening. Lizzie, she says when she calls. Lizzie, can you spar
e a minute?

  Everything is about the new baby. She is excited to come when she is born, but fears she is not really wanted, that they have asked her to visit only out of politeness. I don’t know if this is true. My mother can be very good at helping out when help is needed. Once she gave away our Thanksgiving turkey in the parking lot because she spied a needier family. “Come,” I tell my mother. “Everyone is looking forward to it.”

  By the time I get off the phone, everybody’s pissed. Eli wanted me to play War with him and has flung the cards all over his bed. Ben was going to show me this new game he made about The Odyssey.

  I’m too tired for any of it. The compromise is that we all eat ice cream and watch videos of goats screaming like women.

  * * *

  …

  Even more mail than usual. I’m really hoping all these people who write to Sylvia are crazy, not depressed.

  Some Jews saw walls being built around the ghetto and thought they still had time. Don’t be fooled by everyone else’s calm. Get out even when nobody is even considering it yet. When you look at 2060, southern Argentina might be a good place for your children since it’s close to the Antarctic peninsula, the place where the survivor colonies will be built.

  * * *

  …

  This morning I was forced to learn about something called “climate departure,” and later, at bedtime, when he was half asleep, I was forced to tell Ben about it. I only believe in math, he mumbled. Show me the math, okay?

  But you don’t want to look at the math again; you’re never going back to that website where you put in the year Eli was born and then watched the numbers go up, up, up. No. Never.

  “What’s new with you guys?”

  “Lizzie’s become a crazy doomer.”

  In 1934, Churchill gave a speech to the Commons, attempting to describe the ruinous effects an air raid would have on the city of London. He was hoping such images of devastation would force even the most optimistic among them to consider what would happen if bombs rained down from the sky. The details were provided to him, he said, by persons who are acquainted with the science.

  * * *

  …

  Someone has put spikes on the fence around the playground. Not here, not here, not there either is the message to the pigeons. Feathered rats, the planners probably called them.

  Catherine and I make small talk about the neighborhood. What’s closing, what’s opening. Are the Pakistani restaurants taking over the Indian ones? Are the Orthodox finally renting to the Tibetans? There’s a new place that is half guitar shop, half bar. “Where did all these hipsters come from?” says my brother in his fleece-lined trucker’s jacket.

  * * *

  …

  There’s a hopped-up guy inside the bodega saying, “I got lots and lots and lots and lots.” Mohan turns to him. “My brother, tell me, what do you need?”

  Last week, we ran into Amira and her mother here. Her name is Na’ila. I invited them over for tea and they came the next day along with her two older sisters. The sisters sat in a row on the couch and politely answered the questions I addressed to them all.

  How is it different from where you used to live?

  We never had milk in a bottle before.

  Amira and Eli played quietly at their feet. The Legos weren’t working, so he went for the plastic ice cream. She seemed delighted by it. Later, when they were leaving, she touched my arm delicately. Until we meet again, she said, in the manner of someone who learned English from television.

  * * *

  …

  Catherine’s birth plan keeps getting longer and longer. There are so many things on it. One of them is Eye pillow (organic lavender). Henry told me last night he needs to get one ASAP.

  I tell him to go to that hippie store on Seventh Avenue. Once as a joke, we went in there together. We held up quartz crystals, jingled tiny bells, flipped through some hemp clothing. The salesperson came over and asked if we were interested in energy healing. I don’t really believe in it, my brother told her. She looked surprised. Why not? she said. You believe in the wind, don’t you?

  I’m not sure why, but all the women who fall for Henry are a weird mix of hard-edged and hippie-minded. The one before Catherine still sends him invoices for their cat’s vet bills. Blessings, blessings, blessings, she signs them.

  I go into the living room and turn the air conditioner on full blast. Ben thinks it’s wasteful to run it so high. What if we overload the grid? But I am hot and overrule this. I kneel down so I can put my face right in front of it. Once sadness was considered one of the deadly sins, but this was later changed to sloth. (Two strikes then.)

  * * *

  …

  Henry and I make plans to meet for coffee at the place on his block. It is hard for him to get even that far away. “I’m on house arrest,” he whispers. “I’m jumping out of my skin.” I wish I could give him something for his nerves, but of course, I can’t. I remind myself (as I often do) never to become so addicted to drugs or alcohol that I’m not allowed to use them.

  So okay, no Klonopin. A walk in the park maybe. But the forecast tomorrow is for rain. Heavy winds too.

  Oh, wait, they’re already here. The dog barks at the window, then at the recycling bin that has moved mysteriously. The news blares in from the living room. He wants to build a wall. It will have a beautiful door, he says.

  Q: What are the best ways to prepare my children for the coming chaos?

  A: You can teach them to sew, to farm, to build. Techniques for calming a fearful mind might be the most useful though.

  My brother arrives at the diner with four shopping bags in hand. There’s one of those things you nurse on, bottled water, energy bars, a humidifier, a gray sweater, and yes, yes, a lavender eye pillow. “Jesus,” he says. “I’ve been out for hours. Are the nurses even going to let us take this all in?”

  I’m torn because no, they are not, but I want to make sure he knows how impressed I am by his diligence. It seems like a good sign that my brother is keeping up with such things. I manage to get some approximation of this across.

  We order coffee, cake, more cake. Henry finishes his and mine too. I ask what she’s been feeding him. He waves away the question. Catherine’s plan is to take a month off then go back to work. Her mother is coming for a week, then our mother, then it is just Henry. There’s a smear of frosting on his chin. I point it out, give him a napkin.

  The waitress comes to clear our plates. She puts down the bill in front of him, and even though he’s richer now he passes it right to me. I give her the card that might have money on it. The waitress brings the slip back and I sign it. Henry leaves the tip.

  I take the car service home. The sky is radiant. “I used to be a paperboy,” Mr. Jimmy says.

  * * *

  …

  My husband is reading the Stoics before breakfast. That can’t be good, can it? Last night, I made him promise not to do that exercise on us. The one where you look down upon the person you love while he or she is sleeping and remind yourself: Tomorrow you will die.

  He said okay. Why would he anyway? Didn’t we already decide he would go first? He’s in one of his cheerful moods. Perhaps because he’s viewing this scene as if from a great height.

  * * *

  …

  There are fewer and fewer birds these days. This is the hole I tumbled down an hour ago. I finally stop clicking when my mother calls. She wants to tell me things are getting worse where she lives. Someone left bags of candy in all the white people’s mailboxes. The note attached said, Are there troubles in your neighborhood?

  * * *

  …

  And Henry’s started sending messages in code. Heavy winds over here, he writes, and it takes me a while to get it. Poor Catherine. The baby is due soon and she is going crazy on bed rest.
>
  When I come over with some groceries, Henry hightails it out of there before I even take off my shoes. You’re just smoking, right? I text from the bathroom. No pills or powders, he says.

  Their apartment is messier than I’ve ever seen it. I heat up some soup for Catherine. Her hair is greasy and she’s been sleeping in her mascara. I feel a surge of fondness for her. “This will be over soon, right?” “Right,” I say. She holds the bowl in her lap without eating any. She is watching a man on YouTube who is dressed like a doctor.

  I remember how it was at the end. The doctor said to make sure the baby kicked at least every four hours. If not, I was to come in. One morning the kicking stopped. It was the second day of a blizzard. Stay off the roads, the radio said. But the taxi driver sped through the icy streets for us. He told us about his wife and his four children back in Ghana. Trust me, he said. We are almost there.

  * * *

  …

  Today, I spotted Nicola outside the drugstore, but before I could react, she slipped inside. Later, it occurred to me. There’s no way I could have kept from running into her all these years by chance alone.

  Oh god, Eli’s mother! The sanctimonious one who wants to make sure you know she went to a state school and her car’s headlight is duct-taped in!

  So she must be dodging me too.

  * * *

  …

  Mostly the people who take this meditation class just want to know if they should be vegetarians or, if they already are, how to convert others. Margot is not interested in this debate. A tomato is just as alive as a cow, isn’t it?