A Hundred Summers (42 page)

“Kiki!”
I screamed.

Seaview beach lay before me, but there was no beach. It was all water, surging and towering, straining up the gentle rise to Budgie’s house. Water was all I could see; there was no sky, no other houses, no car in the lane. No familiar figures of Nick and Kiki, stuck together as they had all summer.

“Nick! Kiki!”
I screamed. “
Nick! Nick!”

Where had it come from, this sea? This was no storm I’d ever seen. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t breathe.

A hand landed on my shoulder from the porch.
“Come in!”
screamed Aunt Julie.
“Get inside!”

“I can’t!”
I screamed back.

“Come in!”

She crawled over the side of the porch and landed in the water next to me. She wasn’t wearing a raincoat. She grabbed me by the legs and pulled me down.
“Come in! You can’t leave me alone! I need you!”

I was sobbing, screaming Kiki’s name, Nick’s name. Aunt Julie dragged me by the arm around the front of the porch, dragged me up the stairs with the storm beating our backs. We landed on the porch just as its roof ripped off and flew away.

“They’re gone!”
Aunt Julie was sobbing, too.
“Come inside!”

We crawled to the door and tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge against the wind.

I pulled, I yanked. The howl of the storm invaded my ears and my brain, until I felt every waver in my bones. Aunt Julie’s bony hands closed around mine and pulled with me.

Amid the chaos, something changed. Something drew breath and hauled itself up in the jaundiced darkness. I could feel it at my back. I turned back to the beach.

A dark wall was building, as tall as a house.

“Get inside!”
I screamed to Aunt Julie.

Together we pulled at the door, levered it with our fingers, until it stood open a foot or so and poured water into the entrance hall. I wedged myself through and pulled Aunt Julie after me.

I didn’t stop. I scrambled to my feet and ran up the stairs. “Budgie! The surge is coming! Quickly! Up to the attic!”

Budgie looked up from her pillows. “Don’t be silly.”

“Now,
Budgie!”

“Where’s Nick?”

“He’s at my mother’s house. He’s safe. Come on!” I saw she wouldn’t move. I went to the bed and scooped her up and over my shoulder, with the preternatural strength of panic. She shrieked and hit her fist against my back.

Adrenaline.

Adrenaline hauled us both up the stairs to the darkened attic, with Budgie flailing at me and Aunt Julie right behind.

Adrenaline dropped Budgie into an old armchair and sent me flying to the low-lying windows, stuffing blankets in every possible nook, tossing them to Aunt Julie, while the rain thundered and the windowpanes sang.

Adrenaline dragged the doors from their stack on the attic floor, where the workmen had piled them, obeying Budgie’s instructions to tear everything out, open everything up, paint everything white. Adrenaline braced them against the seaward windows, until the dark room was almost black.

I felt the impact an instant later, as the wall of water hit the house, surrounded the house, turned the house into a single wooden island in the great sea. I heard the ocean smash through the windows and doors and walls below us, heard it pour through the rooms where we had been standing a moment ago, where Nick had thrown the blue-and-white vase in helpless rage and then leaned down in his raincoat and kissed me good-bye.

“What’s happening?” screamed Budgie. She fell out of the armchair and started crawling toward me.

I went to her and picked her up and cradled her against me. “It’s the surge, Budgie. The water’s coming up around the house. We’re high up, don’t worry. It won’t reach us.”

Another wave hit. I felt the foundation absorb the impact, the shock move through the timbers. The floor shifted beneath us. Budgie screamed again and hid her head in my chest. Her hair was dry and warm, blotting the dampness of my dress.

“Nick! Where’s Nick?” she demanded.

“He’s fine. He’s safe. Hush.” My body shook. Tears dripped down my face and into my mouth. I clung to Budgie. Aunt Julie crept across the floor and joined us.

We huddled, wet and shivering. Another wave hit, and the house began to tilt.

“Oh, my God!” said Budgie. “Oh, my God! We’ll be killed!”

I thought, perhaps if I sit here, frozen, it won’t be true. Perhaps if I go on sitting here, if I hold on to Budgie, hold on to Aunt Julie, the house will stop shifting on its axis, will stop disintegrating pillar by pillar below our bodies. The water will stop crashing through the floors, and Kiki will come back, and Nick.

Water began to trickle through the blankets, under the doors propped over the windows.

“It’s reached the attic,” Aunt Julie said in wonder, almost calm.

The boards popped open. Water spouted through, at the seam between the floorboards and the walls.

I sprang up. “Grab a door, everyone. Quickly!”

The smell of salt and rain filled the air. Budgie stumbled to her feet, swaying. I hauled down one of the doors from the stack and pulled her on it. “Doors float,” I said. “Hang on. Hang on with all you’ve got, Budgie.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“You can.”

Aunt Julie was already dragging a door for herself. I helped her and took one for myself, just as the water surged again, and the entire house lifted and swayed and broke apart.

The windows smashed. Water poured through.

“Get out from under the roof!” I screamed. “Before it collapses!”

Budgie rose, trying to drag her door with her. I gave mine up and went to her. I helped her pull it across the pouring floor, washed with the sea. The walls were splintering. An enormous gap had opened up on one side, pouring water. I yanked the door through, pushed Budgie with me, and suddenly we were floating, heaving in an endless pitch of salt water.

“Hold on!” I screamed at her. We lay side by side on the door. I had no idea where we were, where the mainland lay. I had no idea if we could float like this, across what remained of Seaview Bay. I tried to feel the direction of the water, to kick with it, to propel us inland.

Something crashed against us: Aunt Julie, clinging to her door. “Kick!” I screamed at her. “Get to the mainland! It’s the only way!”

The water spun her away.

“Kick!” I said to Budgie, and she kicked feebly and stopped.

I kicked with all my might, as the rain poured on my back and the wind battered and numbed me. If I was still alive, Nick and Kiki might be alive. I had to keep going. I had to reach the shore.

I half covered Budgie with my body, settled us more securely on the door, and kicked steadily as the heaving sea carried us in its palm. I’d ridden waves before, had allowed my body to glide along the surface of the water through peak and trough. The trick was not to fight it. The water was boss; the ocean had command. You rode it as you would a runaway horse, just staying aboard and praying it wouldn’t take you too far.

I held Budgie’s body under mine. Her wet hair filled my mouth. I tasted blood, sharp and metallic. I stopped kicking, except to keep our backs turned to the storm. I shut my eyes against the wind and rain, except to try to peer through and see where we were going. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of Aunt Julie, a blur against the driving gray, riding Budgie’s castoff door, motionless. She had to be alive, I thought, or she wouldn’t still be atop it. Nothing could stop Aunt Julie. No storm could take her.

As the mad Atlantic threw me across the bay, and the water filled me up, and the broken remains of the Seaview cottages crashed into my fragile raft, I thought: What the hell am I going to do if I survive?

WHEN WE HIT THE SHORE,
the door flipped over and spilled us both into the water. I took Budgie around the shoulders and dragged her stumbling through the waves, our bare feet slipping on the rough ground, up and up, around trees and through blackberry vines, until we were free of the greedy ocean. I staggered over something, a log thrown up by the surging sea, and with a last heave I pulled us both over it and collapsed in its shelter. Budgie moaned and burrowed into me, shivering. I put my arms around her and held her, face angled to the ground, with just enough room to breathe.

I don’t know how long we lay there. I hovered in some nightmare middle state between consciousness and sleep, clasping the shaking Budgie with my raw and aching hands, absorbing the rain and wind for both of us. Her fingers curled around my arms. Her skin was so wet and cold, her limbs so hollow-boned and fragile. Only her breath was warm, spreading like the brush of a feather into the hollow of my throat.

At one point a branch landed next to us, its twigs slicing my legs and back, but the pain only merged seamlessly with the endless field of bruises and scratches that covered me.

After a while, Budgie stopped shivering and lay still in my arms. I told myself that she was sleeping, that she would wake up when the storm was over. I kept on holding her, because if I held her tight enough, I could pour my strength into her, I could bring her back to life.

AS SUDDENLY AS IT HAD ARRIVED,
the storm departed. The shriek of air began to lower in pitch, to settle and die. A last jolt of rain hit my legs and shrank to a patter. As the volume of sound lessened, I heard a voice carry across the trees. I struggled upward, still clutching Budgie, and screamed, “Hello!”

The voice called out, stronger now. “Lily?”

“Aunt Julie?”

“Here I am! It’s Lily!”

She crashed noisily through the vines somewhere to my left. I searched the murky twilight for her shape.

“Oh, thank God!” she was saying. “You were here all along? I was screaming for you! Oh, darling. Where are you?”

“Here!” I called. “I have Budgie!”

Aunt Julie appeared from behind a tree, her clothes in wet shreds. I was still kneeling, holding the limp Budgie. She fell down and threw her arms around us.

“Oh, darling. There you are.”

Her arms squeezed me, and then dropped away. “Lily . . . Budgie. She’s . . .”

“She’s fainted. She was so tired.”

“Darling, she’s dead.”

I pushed Aunt Julie away with my elbow. “She’s not dead! She’s sleeping, she was so tired. She’s sleeping.”

“Darling, darling.” Aunt Julie put her hands on my arms, but I wouldn’t let Budgie go. She pried at my fingers, one by one, until they loosened. She took hold of Budgie and drew her away from me and laid her on the wet ground. The hair fell away from Budgie’s temple, exposing a gash that ran into her hairline, turning back the skin in a thick white flap. “Poor thing,” Aunt Julie whispered.

“She’s not dead, she’s not dead,” I said, over and over, into Aunt Julie’s shirt.

“Poor thing.” She stroked my back with her long, broken-nailed fingers. “Poor thing.”

WE SPENT THE NIGHT
in the shelter of an old stone barn, huddled against each other in the cold, after hours spent in turns, wandering and calling for Nick and Kiki and my mother. We found Mrs. Hubert, who had ridden the right-front quarter of her attic roof across Seaview Bay and into the same landing place. Mr. Hubert, she said, with stony New England stoicism, had slipped off halfway through and disappeared beneath the waves.