“Too many numbers,” mumbled Hope. This couldn’t be what numbers were for. It was irresponsible for math teachers to give students numbers without telling them how to conceptualize them. Cut to a room of reporters. Some slapdash press conference. At a podium stood Mayor Douglas Barrington, who looked exactly like every other mayor Hope had ever seen: white, male, tall, overweight, gray-haired, blue-suited, daddish. Fifties. You could tell he ate a lot of red meat. If he were your dad, he’d be around for the milestones, but he’d make himself scarce the rest of the time. He’d teach you to ride a bike, for example, but he wouldn’t be there when you lost a tooth. You would lose twenty teeth, and he’d never be there to take the bloody tissues from your mouth. Not once.
You could just tell, thought Hope.
“Mayor Barrington,” began a reporter, “considering the remarkable timing of these back-to-back floods, would you say climate change is responsible?”
Barrington raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t say that, no. Look, Mother Nature has her ups and downs. Is it bad luck? You bet. Is it because of so-called global warming? Nobody could say for sure. What I do know is that we’re gonna do everything in our power to recover from this crisis and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Hope took a sip of the beer she and Anthony rescued from their now-powerless refrigerator. The can was still cold and wet, like a dog’s nose. It was a drinking game she and Anthony played when they watched the local news. Drink every time Barrington said: you bet.
“What steps will you take to mitigate and prevent future flooding, given their increased likelihood as the planet warms?” asked a reporter in thick glasses. Hope recognized her, but it took a moment to figure out why: they went to high school together. Araceli. She was in Hope’s class, smart and tough. Not nice, but kind.
“Well,” replied Barrington, his posture one of dismissal, “I don’t think floods like these are necessarily more likely to occur in the future, but here’s what we already have underway. We’re in the process of implementing backwater gates and revamping the sewage system. Listen, the city is situated on a river; it was designed to withstand a certain amount of flooding—that’s a normal process, a natural process. And we foresaw it. That’s why the majority of the damage happened to Chastity Valley, not to buildings. We’ve got parks in the floodplains, not commerce, and that’s because Vacca Vale’s got intelligent design. So I think, overall, we should be counting our blessings. Is there a lot of work to be done? You bet. Could it be worse? You bet.”
Two sips.
Terry Hoff returned to the screen, looking severe in her red blazer and year-round tan. “As we heard just now, Tom, there’s a lot of work to be done to repair the damages from this flood. What are experts estimating, in terms of recovery costs?”
Hope wondered who taught all the news anchors of America how to do the American News Anchor Voice—the theatrics of it, the computerized hypnosis of it. Would those deep in the future find the footage and inaccurately conclude that this is how everyone used to talk?
Cut to a man in a plastic poncho and rain-splattered glasses, squinting desperately into a camera, a whole person thwapped by wind. He stood outside a municipal building in their vacant downtown. Why did they make poor Tom stand outside in this storm, under that bad bright spotlight? “That’s right, Terry,” he said after a beat too long. “I’ve been talking to local experts, and it looks like the costs are extreme. It’s looking like Chastity Valley, which is suffering the majority of the damage, will cost over two million dollars to restore. Damages to businesses and homes clock in at five hundred and fourteen thousand dollars. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is estimated to reimburse the city three hundred and forty-four thousand dollars, but as you can see, that aid will only cover a fraction of the total. Mayor Barrington has been critical of national plans to fight the climate crisis, arguing that those measures will harm the economy. But you’ve got to wonder: what’s the cost of doing nothing? We know that—”
Cut to Terry, who laughed awkwardly. She only laughed when something went wrong. Clearly, Tom had gone off-script again. Anthony loved this about Tom, and Hope loved this about Anthony. “Thank you, Tom.” Gathering herself, Terry glided through the remaining news. The Vacca Vale wastewater treatment plant was absorbing three times its normal flow. A state-owned road was destroyed, but Hope couldn’t follow the details. The golf course was fine. She lost focus for a while, sipping her beer and thinking vaguely of the Bible. When her attention returned to the screen, a farmer was being interviewed.
Beyond the city’s confines sprawled industrial farmland, which was gradually mutating into suburbia. How did the river floods stretch all the way to the corn and soybean crops? A shot of the land: buzz-cut, waterlogged fields. “I tried to walk out there to check out the damage,” said a farmer. “But I sunk right into the mud, up to my knees. It’s like the earth was trying to swallow me whole.”
While she waits for Anthony, Hope watched an episode of Meet the Neighbors, a mid-twentieth-century show about a family of misfit city folks who move to a farm town. Most of the action follows the family dog and the youngest child, Susie Evans, played to great effect by Elsie Blitz. Round face, auburn curls, freckles on the nose. She was only six years old when the show began, but she acted with the grace and confidence of an adult. She could sing and tap-dance, convincingly laugh and cry. Whiskey, the miniature schnauzer who played her sidekick, always responded to Elsie Blitz with sincere affection. Hope once read that the week Whiskey died, Elsie was too distraught to work, but they couldn’t pause production, so they changed the plot of the episode at hand, making it gloomy, giving her an excuse to weep. Then they replaced Whiskey with an identical dog, but Hope could tell the bond wasn’t the same.
The show remained on air for several seasons, comforting generations of Americans. For Hope, it was tranquilizing. It reminded her of her mother, and she lost track of how many times she’d seen every season. Hope clicked around her laptop and found the episode she had left off on: “Captain Susie and the Forest of Runaways.” Old-timey credits rolled, indulgent and theatrical, set to celebratory orchestral music. It was one of her favorite episodes: on a family camping trip, after her parents repeatedly tell her to stay close, Susie Evans wanders off the path because she thinks she sees a fairy. After wandering in the woods for a long time, she and Whiskey stumble upon a troupe of children who have run away from various homes. Rapidly, she becomes their charismatic leader. By the end, Susie convinces all the children to return to their parents.
“I’m never alone when I’m with you,” Susie says to Whiskey, who wags his tail in agreement.
Standing in the flickering hallway of the Wooden Lady, Hope checked her phone. In the room, her cellular service kept vanishing, and it had been nearly an hour since Anthony left. Bars returned to her phone, but no messages or missed calls appeared. As she hovered, trying to quell the panic swirling to life in her chest, a moth landed on the green wallpaper beside her door. It was breathtaking. Hope edged closer to study its wings, white and shimmering like snow, hemmed in pale micro-fur, two tufts where they met the body. Beige antenna. Eyes round and dark as tapioca. Iridescent and mesmerizing.
Gradually, Hope became aware of another body in the hallway. Hackles up, she turned to see an elderly woman in a nightgown, watching her.
“This is what God does when He wants to start over,” said the woman, her pale clothing and cloudy hair bearing resemblance to the moth, as if she and the moth had manifested each other. Disoriented, Hope tried to smile at the woman but frowned instead. “Mark my words, there’s a reckoning headed our way,” continued the woman. “And I’m gonna have my ducks in a row when it comes. Tell me, honey—do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”
Hope gritted her teeth. You couldn’t go anywhere in this town without bumping into God. “Yes,” she said, to end the conversation. “You bet.”
“Good,” said the woman. “Say, you don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”
“No,” Hope replied. “Sorry.”
“Ah, good for you. You’ll live forever.”
Hope forced a grin.
“I’ll be down the hall,” the woman said as she limped to her room. “If you happen to find a cigarette, you wouldn’t mind bringing it over to me, would you? I had to leave mine at home, and I’m started to feel funny.” She must’ve been eighty or so. Watching her laborious movements, Hope’s spirit reached toward the woman in sympathy.
“Are you here alone?” Hope asked.
The woman turned to face her. “Yes.”
“Here because of the flood?”
“Of course.”
“Is your home gonna make it?”
The woman shrugged. “Is anybody’s?”
Finally, Anthony returned with a box raincoated in a trash bag. Miraculous fact of him, holy smell of pizza. “Sorry about the wait,” he said, shaking the umbrella. “They had a line like you wouldn’t believe. Apparently everywhere else is closed, so Rizzo’s is feeding the whole town.” He was drenched from head to foot.
“Why didn’t you reply to my texts?” Hope asked. “I was really worried.”
Anthony pointed to his duffel bag, on top of which his phone lay innocently. “I forgot it on my way out. I told you not to worry!”