Karolina Waclawiak - The Invaders

They said they wanted to keep it small. People were still mad at my dad for leaving my mother and Cheryl wanted to move quickly. My father hated being alone, so he didn’t ask any questions. Then, after my mother died, the neighbors got even more pissed. I was pissed, too, but I knew Cheryl was just another victim of my dad’s whims.

Now, here she was, rifling through his things. She picked up videocassettes and held them out.

“What do you think are on these?” she asked. She stared at the black cases. “I can’t make out what the scrawls say. Your father always had horrible handwriting.”

I didn’t want to see anymore. I didn’t think she should be looking, either.

“Come on, Cheryl. Let’s talk about this.” I held my hand out for her. She dropped everything back in the box and followed me out.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“A little,” she said.

I put my arm around her and walked her inside. Her hair looked disheveled and I wasn’t sure when the last time she’d showered had been. I put her to bed in her clothes and she didn’t fight me. I went to call my dad.

I had a few more hours before I could meet Jill. Exhausted, I dialed my father’s number. It rang and rang and he didn’t pick up.

I hung up the phone and tried again. And again.

I turned on the TV, flipping through channels and looking for the storm. It was in the outlying islands around South Carolina. A man in a rain slicker was being battered by rain and wind. I stared at the sky and couldn’t imagine that it was headed our way. Why wasn’t anyone else panicking? The weatherman said it would probably miss us, veer right and head out to sea. There was only a slight chance it would make its way to New England. That was what they were saying.

The only thing I could do was go upstairs, push through the bottles of shampoo in the drawer, and get to my pills.

I went to lie down.

• • •

There was a banging outside the house that startled me awake. I looked out the window and there was Cheryl, hammering nails into the house and trying to put up pieces of wood to cover the windows. It was hard to watch. I felt foggy, like my legs weren’t going to move much further. I needed to get ready. I moved one leg in front of the other and went toward the shower. I didn’t have the energy to stop her and I didn’t want to be late.

CHERYL

“WHAT THE HELL is going on over here?” Jeffrey asked.

My skin began to itch and I had that cold feeling that I felt sometimes when Jeffrey would get loud.

“I’ve been calling for hours,” he said. “I have nine missed calls from Teddy.”

“Why didn’t you call him back, then?”

“I did. I just said I’ve been calling.” He looked at the mess at my feet. “What are you doing in the garage?” he asked. “Why are you going through my boxes?”

I told him I was preparing for the storm, someone had to. No one else seemed to think there was anything to worry about. He told me to come inside and I followed him.

“How was your trip?” I asked flatly.

“Not long enough,” he said.

“There’s a hurricane coming up the coast. I’m surprised you made it,” I said. “I’ve been thinking of options, possibilities.”

“Well, it’s not here yet.”

He made himself a drink in the kitchen. A triple, I think. I was hoping he had reconsidered. I was hoping for some tenderness. Or maybe I should have just changed the locks.

“Do you think it’ll be bad?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

We were silent then.

“I have nowhere to go, Jeffrey.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. But he meant it out of pity.

There were different ways to be humiliated, I thought then.

He asked how Teddy was and I told him I had just seen him, but nothing of the circumstances.

“Did you tell Teddy yet?” Jeffrey asked.

I shook my head. I wanted to walk into the ocean and swim away like those people who could cross channels by sheer willpower. People with that kind of inner strength amazed me. I lacked faith, though.

“I’m afraid,” I said.

“We’ve been through these things before. It’ll be fine.” He walked over and refilled his drink.

I had been through hurricanes before. Great big ones, ones with hail the size of golf balls and all the things that weathermen on TV warn you about. Hurricanes with names that sounded benign — Andrew, Gloria, Belle, and Bob. When we were children, my mother would let us stand out on the porch to watch the lightning storms go by. Sometimes we’d run to the lake, my sisters yelling as we raced through the storm light. I had the longest legs and was the fastest. We’d try to find a hiding place under a tree or next to some brush so that the lightning couldn’t get to us. We would lie and wait for the bright lights to shatter down through the air. Sometimes, we could see bolts jumping from cloud to cloud and would reach our arms up just enough to frighten ourselves. We could hear our mother calling out for us in the distance, calling us back. Telling us to be careful. My sisters would shove me out of their hiding spots and leave me to fend for myself. I’d lie down in the sand, at the edge of the water, and wait to be hit. They’d call out to me, yell for me to move, but I’d lie there, just waiting with my eyes shut tight.

I could hear their voices still. “Cheryl, you’re going to get hit. Cheryl, you’re going to get hit!”

I didn’t care. Didn’t they know that I wanted to get hit?

“I don’t know why people are ignoring this storm. Especially after last year,” I said.

I walked to the window and looked for dark clouds. The sky was blue, unnaturally so. I could feel myself pretending with him, but the possibility of being let out right then, like a squatter, made things too difficult to face at that moment.

“I don’t see any clouds, though,” I said.

“Is this how you’re going to try harder?” he asked.

“How are you going to try harder?” I countered.

“I didn’t say I was.”

He was out the door before I could say anything, taking his drink with him. I picked up the phone and dialed Steven’s number, hoping he would answer. The line rang and then I heard a crackle, a near moan. The feeling of doing something illicit when Jeffrey was close was thrilling. I could get back at him in a small way.

“Hello?”

It was him. I glanced at the windows to see Jeffrey standing and looking at the ocean.

“I’ll be surprised,” I said.

He asked when and, nervous, I checked the windows again.

“Before the storm.”

“Okay,” he said.

I saw Jeffrey urinating on what was left of my flowers. I couldn’t believe it. He had been doing it all along. He zipped up and walked away, down toward the rocks. I hung back and tried to process the cruelty. He knew how much I loved my flowers. Then I heard shouting outside and hung up the phone. It sounded like Jeffrey, so I went back to the windows but couldn’t see anything. I followed the sounds outside.

Jeffrey was standing on the end of the seawall, drink in hand, his hair whipped into a frenzy by the wind, yelling at someone. I watched them, close enough to hear what he was saying. He was pointing at one of the new No Trespassing signs and yelling at Mrs. Humphrey, who spent most of her time in Florida and was rarely seen outside of her yard even when she was in Little Neck Cove. She had the house nearest the rocks, and she had made it her business to make sure no undesirables walked along her wall.

She was screaming at Jeffrey to get off the walkway. She said, “Don’t you see the signs?”

He said, “Fuck you, woman. I live here.”

I didn’t think I heard him correctly. He was talking to a neighbor, not some person on the street. She said she was going to call the police because he was trespassing on association property. He screamed that he belonged here as much as anyone else. And then he started trying to rip the No Trespassing sign out of the ground. Mrs. Humphrey disappeared into her house, but Jeffrey did not stop yelling.