Karolina Waclawiak: The Invaders

“Do you want to do it here?” Steven asked.

I closed my eyes and let him walk around me. I thought about being next to him last night and how that warmth had felt like a cocoon. He put his hand on me and I flinched.

“No,” I said.

He moved his hands under my shirt and tucked them under my bra, leaned in and put his face on my neck. I could feel his breath, hot and wet against my skin as he breathed openmouthed. I whispered what I wanted him to do to me and he nodded like he understood.

There was another crash outside and I jumped, nervous and suddenly self-conscious in his teenage room. He wouldn’t let me go, though.

“I don’t want to,” he said.

I told him what I wanted him to do again and finally I pushed him off me.

I ran past him, down the stairs and out of the house. I stopped to put the key back under the geraniums then took off again. He didn’t stop me. The wet sand covering the concrete parking lot made strange squishing noises as I power-walked through it and up Club Parkway to survey the damage. As I neared the clay courts, I marveled about how they’d be completely destroyed again in the flood and that’s when Bunny Fogherty snapped me out of my reverie.

She slowed down beside me in her Aston Martin — vanity plates marked BUNNY LUV — with her cat mewing in a carrier in the backseat and peeing just enough to dribble on the leather. She had no idea.

“Where are you going, Cheryl?” she asked.

I kept my pace, not turning to look at her. “Home.”

The wind gusts were making Fran’s pink Little Neck Cove Club visor flap up and I had to stop to adjust it.

Bunny pumped her brakes. “Everyone’s evacuating! You should have left already.”

“High tide isn’t until eleven a.m.,” I said. The visor strap was stuck in my hair and I couldn’t untangle it.

“Where’s Jeffrey? You have to leave!” she said with alarm.

I powered up the one-way street knowing she wouldn’t follow me toward the ocean. The closer I got to the house, the thicker the wind. Rain and sand hit my skin and I pulled the visor down farther. The wind tugged at the back of the strap and I was sure it was going to pull my hair out. The waves were already crashing against the seawall and we still had two hours to go. It was time to hunker down.

Inside, the house was quivering and from the front windows I could see the water. We wanted to feel like the waves were close enough to touch and now they were. I wasn’t going to leave this house. I had made my plan. When I went to turn the lights on, the power was already out. I only had scented candles from Christmas tucked away in the attic. We hadn’t ever come up with a “go bag” that was of any use.

I passed a mirror in the hall and stopped to look at myself. The summer had taken its toll on me. The brim of the visor had popped up and the grayish-green light of the storm made my face look drawn. My time in this house had aged me prematurely. I tugged at the visor, but it would not budge off the back of my head.

I ran upstairs to the bathroom and started opening drawers. I could only find the curved scissors that Jeffrey used to cut his fingernails. I took them to the back of my head and started snipping blindly until the strap snapped free. I saw my hair knotted around the elastic and knew I had cut too much off. I felt a throb where I had cut.

The door opened and Teddy walked in, startling me. It felt good to see him, even with his black eyes and cut lip. He had needed stitches last night and I’d offered to drive him to the hospital, but he’d refused. He had been trying to play this one tough and had kept repeating that everything made sense now, kept using phrases like “new phase” and “fresh start.”

“I just woke up,” he said now.

I put the visor behind my back and he asked what I was hiding, but I tried to shoo him away and turned back to the mirror.

“You’re bleeding.”

I raised my hand to the back of my head and realized just then that it was bad.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“Let me help you,” he said. He moved closer, trying to inspect the wound.

“It’s okay, leave me be,” I said, covering it with my hand until he backed away.

Teddy rubbed his eye with the one hand he could still use. I turned away from him and his big black eyes and dropped the visor in the garbage along with my clump of hair. The windows rattled from the gusts outside and Teddy and I looked out onto the ocean. The water was coming closer with each crest.

“You think he’s not going to come back for us?” he asked.

“The house is going to flood,” I said. “You should go.”

“Where are you going to go?”

I was staying with the house because this was my house, too. I could have a say in how things went. I heard a crash in the yard and went to check on it. The water was coming over the seawall, spraying up and hitting the first-floor windows. The rain was worse now and I saw our tree fall into Lori’s yard, just missing her house. The flower bed was ruined, though, and Lori’s azaleas confettied all over the yard.

This is why you stay , I thought, for moments like this . I stared out into the rain and watched another tree fall. It brought a white picket fence and a honeysuckle bush down to the ground. The sound was immense; the force of the storm ripped the tree, roots and all, up out of the ground and blocked the one-way road.

“If you don’t go now, you’ll never make it,” I said to no one in particular.

I told Teddy to go and he said he wouldn’t leave without me, but when I said I wouldn’t go anywhere, he started to pack for himself.

He said, “We have to go. There’s nothing here for us anymore.”

“Not for you,” I said.

He stared at me then.

“No one will miss you,” I said.

I didn’t say it to be cruel. I said it so he would know that it would be okay, he didn’t need to harness himself to this place anymore.

“No one will know you were here,” he said.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you,” I said.

Teddy stood staring at me, blinking, unsure of what I was saying, and then he realized what I meant.

He said, “Say it again.”

And I did. I said it over and over again: “I hurt you.”

He looked at me, wounded and surprised, and opened his mouth to say something. He stopped himself because there was nothing to say. He left me standing there, alone, as the windows trembled. I knew that when he opened the door the wind would be inside, the howl louder. I braced myself but was still startled at the boom of sound. I ran to watch him fumble his way into my car and saw him drive over fallen tree branches and leaves down the one-way road. I knew he would be okay.

I watched the water rising and crashing against the fence. It was already soaking the yards. I stood at the window, mesmerized by the lightning skipping sideways from cloud to cloud. I knew hurricanes could rupture eardrums. That the sound of waves crashing could make ears bleed. I covered my ears at first, but the whoosh of water still made it through the cracks between my fingers. The tide was coming in. The spray seemed to want to shatter our windows. I was awestruck by the force of the water and let my hands drop to experience it at full volume.

The door opened and I stepped back from the window. Steven stood there, breathless. There was another crash of sea spray against the windows and I heard glass shattering, water spilling into another part of the house. I was unmoved.

“You can keep doing what you were doing,” he said.

I timed each crash and meditated on the rhythm, watching the water cascade down the glass. Sea foam filled our yard and the water rushed up and pulled small bushes out of the ground, all the mulch, and mixed it together, slamming it into the white fence. The water took as much life with it as it could. My ears rang from the violence of it.