James Hannah - Sign Languages

Alice Wolff had lied about this afternoon to her classes at Clarion Community College. There they were, ready to begin the final few weeks on their research papers, and she had faltered. Standing in front of them she stared at their faces, most of them adults, and she had let them down. Let herself down. Let Clarion down. Dr. Blocker, the department head.

Alice had sent them to the library with a hurried explanation. The younger ones had brightened up; the adults had looked concerned. “Are you all right, Mrs. Wolff?” Mrs. Vincent, too huge to sit in the small desk any way except sidesaddle, had asked. Alice pitied her but was also appalled at the size of her thighs, the flesh always trembling, quaking as if it were registering the faintest earth tremors.

“It’s my husband,” Alice had said. “Nothing major. Nothing bad. Just unexpected.”

But not unexpected. She had always hated the job. This one only a year old. But all the others, too. By March it was like prison. In the fall, she could bear it until Thanksgiving. When Evan comes home I’ll be fine, she told herself.

The next burst of wind seemed to change the pressure in the room. Her eardrums and skin felt it, registered something outside. Alice sat on the couch in the den and watched the silent TV screen. A man cooked in a wok. He was selling woks. Below the edge of his table, the weather warnings ran in a line of gold letters. Flash floods possible. Severe thunderstorms. High winds. The entire viewing area. Stay tuned.

Alice took most of her comfort from Evan. She always had. Before she knew she could not have children. Even earlier, when she first realized he was somehow crippled inside. She had learned not to think much about it all because she depended on him.

She had always relied on others. She had never found out exactly what she wanted to be. Her brothers, all older, had gone to college or into the Air Force or Navy. One was a pilot for TWA, one a computer programmer, the youngest a forest ranger in Oregon. But Alice, always the sister and baby, had never, it seemed to her, had much of a chance. Her mother had been that way, too. For a few minutes Alice remembered her before her death three years ago. Not senility but somehow worse. Unable to do anything alone. Frightened of people at the door, neighbors across the street.

Alice saw herself when she remembered her mother, though she had thought for the longest time — all through college — that her mother was the example driving her on. I can’t be that way. What way? she asked herself as the man chopped vegetables more deftly than seemed humanly possible.

She had become a teacher by default. Found herself finished with college and with a graduate degree in English. Someone mentioned teaching. The man she had lived with thought she could teach while she became something else if that’s what she wanted. But she had never intended to do anything at all it seemed. And she could organize a class well. She had always been efficient. The brothers had gardened and built fences and despised their father’s harsh command and never come home again after high school. She had taken over the ledgers and loved the cattle dotting the hillside and the sunsets beyond the serrated tops of pines. She still missed the house. Her brothers had left her to sell it and divide the money she mailed to them.

Alice had always wanted strength of will. She had been surrounded by determined women at college. But there was her mother as an example. Always quiet and courteous, listening and nodding, she directed Alice’s whole existence. Alice knew this about herself. And she believed no one she knew, no people in books, so thoroughly understood themselves. It was her triumph over everything else. Certainly Evan had no such understanding. Or Dr. Blocker at Clarion. Her mother or brothers. The fiery women at college.

She accepted herself. Home, alone, she was anxious. Once, given a new course to teach, she was sick to death. But she had planned it perfectly. Dr. Blocker came to evaluate her and nodded and nodded at what she said to the technical writing students. On the form he checked all the boxes marked excellent.

There were no tornadoes with this storm, so she could relax a bit. And, by the end of April, classes would be over. She would have made it through. And this summer they were going to Italy — their first vacation abroad in ten years of marriage.

As she was about to turn on a lamp in the den — outside it was as dull as dusk — she thought she saw a broad sheet of water rushing through the yard, swirling around the trunks of the post oaks just off the porch.

When Evan drove into their subdivision he was terribly worried. Though all the houses in Amarilla Creek Estates were well off the asphalt roads, hidden by yaupons and post oaks, the storm sewers were flooded and the rushing water threatened to reach his car doors. Today had been trash day, and he had to weave his way through tumbling plastic cans, their contents floating ahead of them.

On Creek View, his street, water covered the road and poured down the slope of his gravel drive. His front yard was flooded. Wiping the windshield, he slowed to a stop and tried to locate a reference — a newly planted bed of lantana, a water faucet at the foot of some yaupon — but couldn’t. He realized it had all disappeared under the yellow muddy flow.

Alice had the garage door open. She stood amid the rubble of boxes they hadn’t quite gotten to in over a year. They had laughed about what could possibly be in them since they seemed to have everything they needed. Maybe they’re somebody else’s, he remembered saying.

Evan slammed the door shut and splashed through the water, his head bowed, ready for the towel. But stopping in front of her, he raised his eyes. She had been crying; her face was puffy and seemed old. He hugged her awkwardly, causing them both to totter a little, their legs bumping into boxes. Alice held on; they seemed to dance a bit to gain their balance. She took a deep breath and brought the towel to Evan’s face, patted it dry as if he were asleep and she didn’t wish to wake him. He closed his eyes and tried to shut himself down a little.

“What’ll we do?” Alice asked and, laying the towel on a box, took Evan to the garage door. Looking down, he saw how the water had risen over the lip of the foundation and was slowly gathering itself to menace the nearest box.

“Jesus Christ,” Evan said. And for a while they stood there waiting. He felt caught again. The child playacting the adult. Alice was ready to mind. She was ready to wait and listen. She refused to notice his lips moving or to question whatever it was he had never possessed for himself.

The next day the newspaper would be filled with accounts of the localized flooding. Of how, for some reason unclear to meteorologists, the heavy thunderstorms had stalled directly over the city and dropped nine inches of rain in under four hours. Two young boys had already drowned in separate events — one lodged facedown in a storm sewer; the other swept off a raft he had launched down a street — but no one knew this yet. As Evan and Alice didn’t know that the rain coming down even harder now would produce real threats to them.

Soon they were working frantically. Evan tried moving the mystery boxes because the water began tunneling in from the drive. His mind churned a thousand ragged thoughts as he sloshed around in the cold muddy water. Twigs floated into the garage, pieces of trash from somewhere up the street. It’s not fair. It’s our first house. Goddammit, stop it now . He felt his pulse in his throat. His brain felt as if it were full of clots ready to break loose. I’ll die, he thought. I’m about to fall over with a stroke.

Later Alice phoned the police. 911. “What do we do!” she had asked in tears. “Put your furniture up. Take things to the second floor. Leave if you should. Where you are shouldn’t get too bad. Some people…” Alice slammed down the receiver. She ran upstairs and looked from the study into the backyard. Now it was almost completely dark, but though the lightning had almost died out, the sky was lighted somehow, the low swirling clouds at treetop level. Below she saw the roiling water sweep the porch clear. It took her potted plants, dammed the downstream side with deck furniture.