Matthew Salesses - The Hundred-Year Flood

“The water’s not that high,” he said.

She opened the door, blinking, and stepped down the first few stairs. If it was not that high, they could still walk out. The throbbing was bearable.

“Stop,” he said. Below, the light in the hall reflected back at her.

He stomped down behind her and she imagined the splashes he would kick up as they left. Her eyes adjusted to the dark stairwell. Then she saw what made the reflection. Water. Already up to her knees, at least. Almost to her waist.

No, she thought. She kept descending.

“Whenever my dad left the house,” Tee said, “someone got hurt.”

She lowered her boot into the flood, testing its depth. But after weeks of climbing up to his door, she knew these stairs. His footsteps stopped just behind her. The water rose to her ankle, her shin, a couple centimeters from the lip of her boot, and he coughed behind her until he was choking. Like longing had caught in his throat. Or he had realized at last that they were not safe.

If she wanted out now, he would have to carry her. She knew enough not to let the water in her cut.

“Let’s go up to the roof,” he said. He stepped into the water, barefoot, and put a hand on her shoulder. “The flood will never reach us.”

“You promise,” she said.

“I promise.”

If it was between protection or rescue, she would rather be protected. She was tired of running into danger, climbing up trees with no way down. “Okay,” she said. “The roof.”

He turned and went up. Of course the roof would never flood. She couldn’t let him carry her. She took the steps gingerly. Tee’s black hair dissolved into the stairwell shadows. He was in boxers, as if stepping out to swim. She allowed herself a little hope. He could do that for her. When she was with him, even the history films she liked seemed still undecided.

“Slow down,” she said. Then she thought of something else. “Can we even get up there?”

“I am going slow,” he said.

On the roof they would only get a little wet from the rain. They’d forgotten an umbrella again.

“If worse comes to worst,” he said. “I can swim for both of us.”

“You will keep me safe?”

At the top, he tried the door while she waited below, her hand on the stairs and her leg raised slightly, trying not to gasp. For a moment the knob seemed to move in his hand, a trick of the light. Then he put his shoulder into it. Twice. It wouldn’t give.

At sunset they tried to turn on the lights, but the power had failed. He took down birthday candles from a kitchen cabinet, set them in shot glasses on the dining table, and lit one. He rubbed another over the tablecloth, a wax outline: a woman with a baby in her arms. He had never felt his birth mother hold him. The candlelight flickered on Katka’s face. She pointed outside and said, “My mum used to say the sunset was as red as a broken heart. She used to say each time you were very sad, you got a freckle.”

He had been thinking, he said. Maybe his mother had told him now, after so long, because she had to — something was forcing her hand. Maybe his father had said he would tell, or his aunt had threatened.

“We promised we would not pretend,” Katka said.

“What if she’s not such a fucking Sherlock Holmes, though?” he said. “What if she’s wrong?” But no, he was still pretending. “My dad always said he didn’t know my birth mom, that meeting her in the hospital was a coincidence.”

He lit another candle and it burned out as he talked. In the shadows, he thought he might see the ghost. Outside, the water rose. His hand sweated in Katka’s.

When the sun had set completely, they had nine more candles left from Rockefeller’s thirty-sixth birthday in March. They drank warm Krušovice. The refrigerator had sputtered its last cool breath when they opened it an hour earlier. They were hungry but didn’t eat. Tee imagined Korea, his birth mother in the bed behind his father, the smell of the beach where a hotel was building a spa to his father’s designs. The woman in that bed, touching the swell of her stomach, had been kicked out by her parents. She had put everything on the line for her baby, or for its father. Tee went to light another candle, striking a match that flared up in the dark with a sudden blinding light. A siren rang in the distance, and Katka winced and blew out the flame.

“Save them,” she said.

He felt for her in the dark. He elbowed over a bottle and the little beer left spilled across the table. When she lit another match, to clean up, they saw in the spill the wax shape he’d rubbed into the cloth.

Near midnight she pulled him into the kitchen with their long-neglected hunger, and as they made sandwiches, he asked about her father. For a long time, she said finally, she didn’t know, or at least understand, that her father was hurting her mother.

Once, when she was eight, she had walked home from school with two girls who said they’d seen her father standing around in the square looking at birds. She told them he’d started collecting feathers instead of butterflies, though this was a lie. When she got home, she found her father scrubbing a stain on the bedroom doorframe. He wiped his eyes as she walked up. On the dark wood, the stain looked almost purple.

“Your mum spilled the wine,” her father said, scouring the spots with an old toothbrush. “She’s in a bit of a mood.”

“Can I help?” Katka asked. She was used to helping with chores.

“No, love,” he said. “I’ll have got it done in a second.”

She fetched two towels anyway and wet them with bleach as she’d seen her mother do. Returning, she said, “These will help, Daddy, won’t they?”

He stood. “What are you doing?” he said, fingering his whitening sideburns.

“I can help,” she said.

“You know you’re not to use bleach.” His nose wrinkled, and then the meanness was there.

“What is bleach, Daddy?” she asked. She only knew the word in Czech.

“Bleach,” he said. “In your hand, you stupid girl. Bleach. Bleach.” He pushed her away and began to cough.

“Stay away from here,” he called after her. “Just stay away from here. Please.”

When she looked back, his head was slumped against the wall.

She ran to find her mother but couldn’t, probably upstairs at their neighbor’s. Her father hated the woman upstairs, her gentle questioning.

Outside their neighbor’s apartment, Katka heard the woman tut-tutting and the clink of metal and her mother’s sharp breaths. When Katka knocked, her mother’s voice said, “It is him.”

There were scuffling feet and the neighbor’s voice behind the door. “It’s not him — it’s Katka. Should I send her away?”

“Yes,” her mother said, then: “No, don’t.”

Her neighbor said, “Poor girl.” The door opened, and Katka ran in.

Her mother held a towel to her face. When she spoke, Katka saw a tooth missing, an imperfection in her cold beauty. “What are you doing here?”

“Maminka,” Katka said, “I’m hurt.”

“Me, too,” her mother said. “Can’t you see? Me, too.”

Their neighbor took her arm. “Are you okay, Kateřina?” the woman asked.

“Maminka,” Katka said, “what happened to your face?”

“Your father,” their neighbor said.

Her mother said, “Hush.” She walked over and pinched Katka’s earlobe lightly. “It was an accident. You know he slams the door. I was chasing after him.” The edges of the towel were red. “Come here,” she said, bending down.

Katka reached up to her mother’s chin. “Does it hurt a lot, Maminka?” The towel shifted slightly and she could see a cut running from the bottom of her mother’s eye to the middle of her cheek, before her mother covered it up. “Daddy said you spilled your wine. Are you drunk?”