The Stormchasers: A Novel

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First printing, June 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Jenna Blum

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

 

Blum, Jenna.
The stormchasers : a novel / by Jenna Blum.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-42962-4

1. Twins—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Manic-depressive illness—Fiction.
4. Storm chasers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.L863S76 2010
813’.6—dc22
2010012471

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

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—Herman Melville,
Moby-Dick

K
arena Jorge’s birthday starts as a quiet affair, but she doesn’t mind. That’s the way she likes it. She does have a couple of treats planned for later, an onscreen revival of
Gone with the Wind
tonight, dinner tomorrow with her best friend, Tiff. But generally Karena tries to keep this day under the radar, and it has gone mostly undetected for years, which is why on the afternoon of July fourteenth she is truly surprised to be called into her editor William’s office on the pretext of discussing a story and finding most of the Minneapolis
Ledger
staff assembled there, along with a cake on William’s desk so laden with flaming candles that Karena is fairly sure it’s against fire code.

She laughs and sketches a little curtsy as they clap. “Thanks, everybody,” she says. “Though I’m sorry to say someone made a mistake. There are way too many candles on that cake—I’m only twenty-nine.”

“Again?” somebody calls.

“Really?” says Annaliese, the intern, looking anxious.

Karena’s editor, William, a beautiful, haggard lion of a man, wiggles his eyebrows at her over his glasses. He knows very well Karena is thirty-eight.

“The question is, young lady,” he says, “are you going to make a wish so we can eat the damned thing?”

“Most definitely,” says Karena, and gathers her long hair back behind her ears with both hands. Then she pauses. She takes wishes seriously and believes they are not to be made on the fly. Happy birthday, Charles, she thinks. I sure as hell wish I knew where you were. Then she fills her lungs and blows.

All the candles go out except one, which threatens to remain stubbornly alight and then extinguishes itself at the last second—
poof!
Everybody applauds.

“Whew,” says Karena. “Thank goodness I gave up smoking.”

Annaliese starts cutting slices, which the reporters fall on and bear away to their desks, pausing, if they’re not on a tight deadline, to give Karena their good wishes. She chats with them all, smiling, meanwhile mounding her cake—yellow, vanilla frosting—to one side of her plate with her fork.

“Sorry,” says her friend Lisa when the room has mostly cleared. She leans in as much as she is able—Lisa is a week from maternity leave.

“I’ll have you know none of this was my idea,” she murmurs. “It was that intern. You know how overzealous they get.”

Karena smiles. “That’s okay,” she says. “This was really sweet, actually. Plus I’ve been working on that
Hot Dish!
piece all day and could use the break.”

Lisa gets what Karena thinks of as her reluctant-source look, head tipped back, eyes half closed as if to say, Go on, tell me another.

“You miss your brother, don’t you,” she says.

Karena is startled by the prick of tears, though she’s not sure whether it’s the reference itself or the fact that it’s unexpected.

“I do,” she admits. “Always, but today more than most days.”

“Then it’s time for your real present,” Lisa says. “I think the coast is clear.”

They canvass the room. Everyone has filtered out except the intern, who is stuffing paper plates into a garbage bag, and William, who is hunched over his desk devouring an enormous slice of cake seemingly without chewing it, like a dog.

Lisa leads Karena downstairs into the little-used ladies’ bathroom in the
Ledger
basement, where she presents her husband’s plaid fishing thermos. In it Karena finds a very dirty vodka martini, complete with three bobbing olives. She laughs.

“Thank you,” she says. “You always know just what to get me.”

“Cheers, birthday girl,” Lisa says. She rubs her belly, which is at the stage of pregnancy that fascinates Karena, so enormous it seems like an optical illusion. “And don’t forget you’re drinking for me too.”

She watches jealously as Karena takes a swallow. “What’s your brother’s name again?” she asks.

“Charles,” says Karena.

“It must be so weird, being a twin.”

“I don’t know,” says Karena. “I’ve never not been one, so I can’t tell. It is strange not knowing where he is, though.”

Lisa wrinkles her nose sympathetically. “What
is
that like? I’ve always meant to ask. If you don’t mind talking about it, I mean.”

“No, that’s fine,” says Karena. “It’s kind of like . . . tinnitus. You’re always off balance, but you learn to live with it.”

She smiles down at her friend’s stomach. “Can I say hi?” she asks.

“Go ahead,” says Lisa, and Karena bends over Lisa’s belly button.

“Greetings,” she says. “This is your aunt Karena speaking.”

A knob pokes at Lisa’s stretched wine-red shirt, then streaks across it.

“Whoa,” says Karena. She laughs. “I love that. It’s so amazing. Elbow or knee?”

“Heel, I think,” says Lisa. “He loves you. He’s always super-active when you’re around. You’re going to be such a good mom.”

Karena rolls her eyes. “I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do,” says Lisa. She winks and tips a finger at Karena like a politician. “All you need is a good baby daddy. Now drink up.”

Back in the newsroom Karena swims pleasantly through the afternoon’s primary task, which is interviewing a source for her
Hot Dish!
feature on Minnesota’s regional foods. The source is sharing her recipe for lutefisk casserole, which combined with the vodka makes Karena’s stomach churn. She is Norwegian through and through; she and Charles were fed floury rommegrod pudding and lefse bread in their high chairs, but this has only enhanced Karena’s fear of the traditional rubbery cod boiled in lye. She smothers a martini belch with a hand and says, “Hey, here’s something I’ve always wondered. What’s the difference between a hot dish and a casserole?”

The source tells Karena that a casserole is covered and a hot dish is not. Karena thanks her and goes on to the next question on her list, commenting at appropriate times, writing the answers by rote. Meanwhile she keeps checking the Storm Prediction Center website, always open on her laptop, peering at the green computer-generated clouds as if she could see beneath them to where Charles is. And she finds herself thinking of a birthday back when she did eat cake, when she and Charles were—what, three, four? Young enough to still be in booster seats, anyway, bumped up to the table on their red plastic thrones side by side, in the dining area of their New Heidelburg house. Karena very clearly remembers seizing a fistful of cake, examining it, then reaching over to stuff it in her brother’s ear, and Charles turning to boggle at her with comical surprise, then bursting into his deep baby chuckle and doing the same to her. Back and forth they went, mashing cake into each other’s hair and eyes and mouths, laughing and laughing, until the adults quit snapping pictures and their mom, Siri, had to drag them apart, scolding,
You two never know when to stop.
The memory makes Karena smile, but as the afternoon wears on she feels herself descending into melancholy, a sadness at play in her like a wind. It is not like her. She is normally a very cheerful person. She blames it on the date and the alcohol.