“Okay.” Blandine stands up, brushing against Jack as she opens the door and exits the apartment. The contact between them lingers in her skin, twinkling through her. She can’t look at him right now, but maybe she’ll work up the nerve to tap on his bedroom door tonight. Maybe having a body can feel good; maybe pleasure can be as easy for her as it seems to be for everyone else; maybe this is an intimation. Maybe it’s just the heat.
“Thanks for the tour,” she says. “Now let’s walk these poor dogs.”
The Flood
Right now, the mother is a mother, biting her nails in La Lapinière Affordable Housing Complex and avoiding the eyes of her baby. But ten months before, she was Hope, a twenty-four-year-old waitress lying beside her husband in a motel bed. The motel was called the Wooden Lady. It was evening. September. Flooding. As the Vacca Vale River invaded their city, the couple pretended that they were on vacation, pretended that they had not been ordered to evacuate the Rabbit Hutch but instead left it by choice.
They’d been married for two years. Before meeting Anthony, Hope didn’t know that she was capable of feeling happy for more than an hour at a time. She believed that she lacked the gene. But by the time they checked into the motel, she had become intimately acquainted with the kind of feelings that she once ogled like jewels on other people’s necks. Security, fulfillment, euphoria. Love. These feelings, she discovered, could last until they became conditions.
Outside, rain pummeled down for the third day straight, working overtime. Everyone called the rain “torrential,” which struck Hope as shorthand for something more permanently devastating. Still, next to Anthony, she felt at peace. Safe. Almost drugged. The room was toasty, cozy, fifty-nine bucks a night. She knew that people got murdered at this motel, but she liked it there anyway. She was at home in places of humble ugliness. It was the only aesthetic that could hold her without making her nervous; she did not have to worry about deserving it.
When they arrived at the Wooden Lady a few hours before to check in, Anthony parked the car in the swampy lot while Hope went inside. Nobody was operating the front desk. A vase of rubber snakes sat in the orange-carpeted lobby, and behind the desk, shelves of rabbit figurines watched Hope, their expressions frantic, as though they were waiting for her to change their lives. To kill or save them. Unnerved, Hope searched the first floor for someone to pay, her hair and clothes soaked in rain. She stumbled into a staff-only room—windowless—where she encountered an empty coffee pot, a bare lightbulb, a chaotic chart on the wall, the odor of mold, and a row of beige lockers. On the metal face of one, someone had pressed Disney stickers. Sparkly cartoons beaming obliviously, grime building at their edges. When she saw the stickers, a violent tenderness surged through her, emerging in a few tears she didn’t understand.
Now freshly showered and fragrant with crappy soaps—soaps they had to pay extra to obtain—Hope felt great. A buzz of curious well-being vibrated through her body as she burrowed under the wolf-emblazoned quilt against Anthony’s warmth, her clean hair wetting the pillowcase, his hand absently massaging her thigh, releasing cascades of bliss through her body. Her legs, freshly shaved and moisturized, felt silken against the sheets. An erotic sense of health and vitality made her hot, made her want to dance, made her smile at Anthony, at everything. She always felt perversely good during a crisis; a crisis justified the panic that rattled the cage of her body at least once a month. Made her feel normal. During a crisis, everyone was plunged into the animal fear that she frequented all year round. The only benefit of her generalized anxiety disorder was that it prepared Hope for the Worst-Case Scenario; she was never surprised when one materialized because the Worst-Case Scenario was where she spent most of her time.
“Okay,” Anthony said, looking at his phone. “It looks like Rizzo’s is still open. But just for pickup, no delivery.”
“How will you get there? You can’t drive.”
They endured the six-mile trip from their apartment to the Wooden Lady with clenched teeth and advanced profanity. Exodus of cars, powerlines and branches scattered, streetlights on the fritz, roads closed, water up to the hubcaps. Rain too thick to see through.
“It’s just down the street,” said Anthony. “I’ll walk.”
“You’re going to risk your life for pizza?”
Anthony rolled his eyes playfully. “Nobody’s ever died from a walk in the rain,” he said. “I’ve got an umbrella.”
“Seriously, Anthony. It’s dangerous.”
“Too late—I already ordered.”
“And you just showered! You’ll get rainy again.”
“God forbid. Listen, I think Hangry Hope is the biggest threat I’m facing right now.”
“Har, har.”
“See? Can’t even take a joke.”
She bit his arm gently. “I might eat you instead.”
“Mm,” he said. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” He kissed her slowly, then got out of bed. “I’m going to Rizzo’s and you can’t stop me.”
“How Pizza Killed My Husband,” Hope said. “A true crime series.”
“Wife,” Anthony replied, collecting his things. “I’m the provider. I will provide for you.” He smiled. She studied his thick hair, the color of black coffee. His eyes a pair of fireplaces. A shadow of beard on his jawline, one crooked tooth, slightly large ears. Black sweatpants, soft shirt, jacket. Years of competitive soccer training were still visible in his body. He had been on track for an athletic scholarship until his injury his senior year. Now, he spent most of his time on construction sites. His skin still tan from the summer and rosy from the heat of the room. He was radiant.
“Can we watch Meet the Neighbors when you get back?” asked Hope. “If you survive?”
“For you? Anything.”
“It calms me down.”
“I know it does.” Anthony smiled. “Promise you won’t worry about me, okay?” He flashed her a peace sign, then headed out the door, closing it behind him.
She knew that he wouldn’t die from a walk in the rain. For the most part, the flood had spared the west side of town, where they found themselves now, and it’s true that Rizzo’s was a block down the street. Hope smiled dreamily, then turned her attention to the motel television, where bleached teeth and stiff hair pronounced numbers. It was called the news. The numbers got lost in the coppice of her thoughts as soon as they entered it, but still she tried to grip them.
Just a week before, Hope asked her cousin Kara to make her look French. Kara chopped off twelve inches of Hope’s dark hair, shortening it to her chin, and gave her thick bangs, mussing the new coif with enough products to stock a drugstore. Anthony loved the haircut, touching it whenever he passed. Of course, despite the dashing haircut, Hope didn’t feel French. She felt like what she was: someone who shopped for pants at Costco and genuinely looked forward to the county fair every year.
In the motel bed, Hope checked the text thread with her mother, which was disproportionately blue. Recently, Hope’s mother had fallen in love with an HVAC technician on a Catholic dating site and moved to Pensacola to live in his immaculately air-conditioned condo. These days, Hope’s mother seemed to be in a glass-bottomed canoe more often than not. She and her new husband adopted a bearded dragon together and often posted about her on Facebook. The reptile’s name was Daisy. Daisy liked to eat crickets and bananas. Daisy did not burden those around her with a surplus of existential terror. Daisy liked to joyride on the Roomba.
Hope was twenty-four years old and jealous of a bearded fucking dragon.
Just wanted to let you know we’re fine over here, Hope had messaged her mother an hour before. I’m at the motel. Anthony just left to get pizza. I think our stuff will be OK once they fix the sewage thing. Kara’s staying with Jenn and Matt. Aunt Cathy’s with them. Everybody’s safe.
No response.
Now the television spoke to Hope as though it had something important to tell her, specifically.
“Torrential rains,” said Terry Hoff, the ageless woman who had worked as the local news anchor for as long as Hope could remember, “have flooded the Vacca Vale River to a record high of thirteen point seven feet. The previous record, which was set in nineteen eighty-two, was eleven point nine feet. Experts say this one-thousand-year flood has already damaged about seven-hundred-and-fifty businesses, along with over two thousand homes. The five-hundred-year flood that struck Vacca Vale less than a year ago is making some people question the timing.”