Max Booth III - We Need to Do Something

Our phones won’t stop screaming, each slightly out of sync with the other, making the noises jarring and insane.

We form a line and pile into the bathroom—Mom first, hugging a rolled-up blanket to her chest; followed by Bobby with a stack of board games nearly matching his height; then me, still soaked from the storm outside, walking on autopilot while jabbing my thumbs against the weather alert on my phone; and behind me, whiskey fresh on his breath, my dad. The only thing he’s brought with him being his thermos. Nobody has to guess what’s inside it.

“Oh my god,” I say, turning off another alert. Another one immediately generates in its place. Anxiety’s threat of total annihilation increases with every additional pop-up. “ Why won’t it stop? ”

Dad flinches, clearly annoyed by the pitch of my voice. “Just give it a second, would you?”

Mom motions for us to clear space so she can spread the blanket out along the floor. Pink flowers and butterflies decorate the fabric. The design has always made me nauseated. Grandma—on my dad’s side—had gifted it to the family several Christmases ago. She also had always nauseated me. Yes, the way she looked and smelled didn’t help, but it didn’t end there. Her mannerisms were truly atrocious. The way she laughed could boil water. Once I heard her refer to those tiny black heads people get on their faces and necks as “n-word babies”—only, she’d actually said the word. Of course, Dad had thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Thank god for cancer.

Mom snaps her fingers until I look away from my phone. “Where were you? You should have been home by six.”

Bobby plops down on the blanket and inspects his stack of board games as if, somehow, he’d forgotten one of his favorites.

I set my phone on the sink and attempt to dry my hair off with a nearby hand towel. “I told you guys I was doing homework at Amy’s tonight.”

Mom points at my arm. “What happened there?”

“What?” I follow her gaze and realize I’d forgotten about the band-aid. Amy had slapped it on for me, just below my inner elbow. There had been a moment earlier tonight when I thought it would never stop bleeding.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

I swallow, thinking fast. “Amy’s cat scratched me. It’s no big deal.”

She waits for more. I offer nothing. “Why weren’t you answering my calls?”

“I didn’t hear it ringing.” And, for once, it’s the truth.

“You need to answer your phone when I call. That’s why we pay for it every month.”

I ignore this rerun of a lecture I’ve heard a thousand times before by retrieving my phone from the counter and cancelling the weather alert again, only for another to regenerate almost instantaneously. “I told you, I didn’t hear it ring.”

“Not good enough.”

“That’s why I pay for it,” Dad whispers, standing next to the closed bathroom door.

Mom turns to him. “What?”

The anger arrives in his eyes before it finds his lungs. “THAT’S WHY I PAY FOR IT. THAT’S WHY I PAY FOR THE PHONE.”

We flinch and stare at him, wide-eyed, waiting for the outburst to progress. Mom shakes her head, dismissing the tantrum. “You know what I meant.”

“Wow, Dad,” I say, “what’s—”

“—Mel, goddammit,” Dad says, holding up his thermos to cut me off, “when we call your phone, you answer it. No excuses. Next time, you lose it.”

“Okay,” I say, then add under my breath, “god…”

Outside, thunder spooks all four of us. Bobby clutches a Monopoly box against his chest, shaking. “I think it’s an EF5.”

Mom sighs, no stranger to this game. “It’s not a tornado, baby.”

“It might be an EF5.”

Dad snarls. “What the hell is an EF5?”

Excitement replaces the terror across Bobby’s face. “It’s like when two tornados come together…”—he drops the Monopoly box and claps his hands together—“…and make one giant tornado… it rips everything in its path. ” He points to the left, both arms stretched out, stiff, like he’s directing a plane to land. “If it goes this way, everything would be destroyed.” He gestures the opposite direction. “And everything this way would be destroyed, as well.”

“Oh my god,” I whisper, heart pounding as I visualize our entire town obliterated. “Is that true?”

“It isn’t a tornado,” Mom says. “It’s just a thunderstorm. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dad groans, rubbing the space between his eyes that always seems to be the source of all his pain and frustration. “Bobby, will you stop trying to scare your sister?”

“Or it could be a fire tornado.”

I gasp, suddenly feeling flames heating my flesh. “A fire tornado?”

Mom reaches out for him, but is unsuccessful. “Bobby—”

“—Like, if you get gallons of gasoline, and you…”—he mimics pouring a gasoline canister along the floor—“…pour it, and if you want to be all the way over here, you can just pour it more, and you throw a match and the flame would shoot up into the tornado and that would be a fire tornado and everything would catch on fire.”

“Are you planning on starting a fire?” Dad asks, sipping from his thermos.

Bobby gives his response serious consideration, then says, “No.”

“Then there’s not going to be a fire tornado.”

Another realization strikes. “Someone else might.”

“Someone else like who?”

Bobby shrugs. “I don’t know. Just… you know, people.”

None of this can be real. These alerts are merely exercising caution, something the weather people have to issue or they’ll get fined or fired or something. “Mom,” I say, “is there really a tornado?”

“No, Mel,” she says, voice warm like honey, “there’s not a—”

Thunder booms, drowning out any remaining hope.

“That was loud,” I whisper, voice cracking.

Mom nods. “It was a little loud.”

“A little?”

Dad clears his throat. “Sounded like a gunshot.”

“Maybe it’s an EF6,” Bobby says, then pauses, face all screwed up. “Wait. Is there such a thing as an EF6?”

“I don’t know, Bobby,” Dad says, chuckling with exhaustion.

“Bobby,” Mom says, stern now, “there’s not going to be a tornado.”

He points at her phone. “Then why is it saying there’s going to be one?”

“It’s just in case, okay? We only have to sit here a couple more minutes. It’s almost over.”

Dad smirks into his thermos. “Most things come to an end, don’t they?”

“Oh, will you knock it off?” It’s amazing, how quickly Mom can transform from soothing parent to bitter spouse. Both of them have practiced this trick to perfection.

Bobby interrupts whatever the hell was about to happen between our parents by snapping his fingers, excited again, like a brand-new idea occurred to him. “Oh! Maybe it’s a… water tornado. ”

“Wouldn’t that just be a hurricane?” I ask, wondering if he’d asked a doofus question on purpose—anything to extinguish the argument before it got out of hand.