The Stormchasers: A Novel (39 page)

She goes to the foot of the master suite steps and hesitates. This is a total invasion of privacy. Ever since Karena has conceded her bedroom to Charles, she hasn’t been up there. But there are certain things Charles would take with him if he’d gone to New Heidelburg. Not clothes, probably not even toiletries, but his herbal supplements and laptop, Karena guesses, although they would be confiscated, and definitely his ledger, which might not. Charles would never go anywhere without his ledger, the one item he asked for in Black Wing. Karena knocks, twice to be safe, then shakes her head at herself and goes up.

The carpeted stairwell smells a little scorched, like burnt sage. Karena will have to open a window in here, she is thinking. As long as she remembers to close it before Charles gets home so he won’t know she’s been up here—

Then she rounds the corner and comes up into the long open room beneath the eaves, and she stops. Stares. Her leg muscles tense for flight. She might as well have walked in to find a snake on the carpet.

Charles has turned the space into his new lair.

It is not an exact replica. There are no lightning lamps this time nor shelves of mysterious electronic equipment. And of course the bones of the room are still Karena’s, the vaulted architecture, the airy space and sun filtering through the skylights. But the walls flutter with paper—if Charles dislikes the AC, he has no such objection to the old-fashioned oscillating fan he’s dragged home from some curb or back alley. It sweeps right to left, left to right, ticking at the end of each journey and stirring the pages and pages and pages Charles has taped up. Lined notebook paper covered with his tiny handwriting, column upon column of numbers. What are these, map coordinates, barometric pressure readings, equations? There are photos tacked here and there, the ubiquitous tornadoes, lightning, the anvil-shaped supercells Karena now sometimes sees in her sleep. Drawings too of spirals, Sioux medicine wheels, cloud structures. Over the bed, next to a head-size dream catcher, is a list—

Tiny checkmarks straggle to the margin of the paper. There is also a note scribbled in Bic pen—big writing, not Charles’s—on a Casey’s place mat:

“Whoa,” Karena says.

She sits heavily on the bed. How could she have overlooked what’s been percolating under her own roof? How can she have been so stupid? Or has she? That’s the tricky thing about Charles’s disorder—Karena just never knows. Certain behaviors might mean something, or they could just be Charles being Charles. Karena begins toting up signs, starting with the basics—like any sick animal, when Charles is hypomanic, the disruptions begin in his sleeping, eating, and hygiene patterns. The music on all night up here—Charles may or may not be falling asleep listening to it. He might have been pacing, but because it’s carpeted, Karena hasn’t heard him. There’s the accumulation of green tea bottles in the recycling bin—when Charles is winding up into mania he drinks and drinks and drinks. Then again it’s August, everyone’s thirsty. Hygiene: the madras shirt Charles was wearing yesterday, was he not wearing it the day before? Possibly the day before that? But he’s a guy, and all his shirts look the same . . .

For every symptom Karena comes up with there’s a convincing counterargument. Even Charles’s wall collage, it’s excessive, yes—but isn’t it a messier variation of Karena’s bulletin board at work, Post-its, printouts, pieces of an information puzzle she needs to keep before her? Even Charles’s threat to turn himself in, could be a product of hypomania or just a Charles theory. Karena thinks of how calm he was while she was yelling at him, his dark and patient eyes. That’s the thing, she would tell Kevin if he were here, it’s true, the djinn is always there, but you never know when it’s going to strike. All the conditions can be right and it remains dormant, then one day it appears out of the blue.

Kevin. Karena should call Kevin. She promised she would if she had the slightest suspicion—but how can she, when she doesn’t even know where Charles is? He could indeed be in New Heidelburg confessing to the sheriff, at which point, Karena feels fairly sure, any involvement Kevin has in her life will become moot. Or Charles could be at the farmers’ market, the Linden Hills co-op. He could be already full blown, reeling around Minneapolis deranged with mania, fending off visions from his own fevered mind. There’s only one way to know for sure. She has to find the ledger.

Karena ravages the room looking for it, tossing aside armfuls of T-shirts and socks, towels, even checking the bathroom. Of course it is the last place she looks, the logical place, under the bed. Karena almost cries when she sees
aug 2009
on the cover and hugs the composition book to her chest. Charles hasn’t gone to the sheriff. Not yet. Feeling physically sick, Karena opens the ledger. She would never do this except in an emergency, and she’s no snoop. She doesn’t read all the entries, only the last one, written this morning.

“What the fuck are you doing?” says Charles from the top of the stairs, and Karena turns. He is carrying a paper bag of produce and he takes a couple of steps toward her, except it is not Charles, Karena sees, looking at her with such open-mouthed suspicion, such dark and righteous indignation. No, Kevin is right, and Karena has been wrong, because Charles has been erased as efficiently as with a sponge. Her brother is not here. But the djinn is.

K
arena sits out on the front steps with her cell phone, calling and calling Kevin. She has to warn him, keep him from coming over if she possibly can. He’s coaching soccer practice, which started last week, and Karena knows he turns off his cell and tosses it in the glove compartment while he does this, often forgetting to retrieve it until later that night. She can only pray this time he makes an exception, calls to see if he can pick up anything last minute, even goes home to shower so he’ll hear the message Karena has left on his landline:
I’m okay, I’ll explain later, but do not come here, Kevin. I repeat, do not.
Karena doubts she’ll catch him, though. Kevin is already a half hour late for supper, which, Charles has reminded her, Charles is scheduled to cook for the three of them.
Why else do you think I went to buy all this fucking food, K,
he snarled,
to give you time to go through my shit?

Karena is right: Kevin comes straight to the house. She jumps up as soon as she sees his Honda round the corner, but Charles is too fast for her. He barrels out of the house, almost knocking her over, freshly showered and holding a big brown bottle. He is wearing a pink button-down shirt and swim trunks with flames on them, and he trails the smell of his organic soap, patchouli with a hint of lime.

“Wieb,” he says, bounding down the front walk, “Wieb, Wieb, Wieb, Wieb, Wieb! Good to see you, man.”

He throws an arm around a somewhat startled Kevin as Kevin comes around the car and plants a smacking kiss on Kevin’s cheek.

“Jesus, Hallingdahl, what the hell,” Kevin says, shrugging Charles off. “I’m not that easy. You have to at least feed me first.”

“Sorry, Wieb, sorry, sorry,” says Charles and hands him the bottle. “Here, here’s a beer, sustenance for the beer baby, he must be parched. It’s so hot tonight, high dews too, I don’t envy you out on that field. So how was it,” he says, guiding Kevin up the walk, “how was school, how was practice, how are kids these days?”

“Brutal,” says Kevin. “I knew I should have gone into hairdressing.”

He looks at Karena and raises his brows:
What’s going on with him?
She gives her head a tiny shake.

“Hold up a minute, Hallingdahl,” Kevin says, “let me say hi to my girl here.”

“Oh, forget her,” says Charles, flapping a hand, “she’s useless, this woman, does no work whatsoever. Would you believe I asked her to set the table an hour ago? An hour, a whole fucking hour, and has she done it yet? That’s a rhetorical question, Wieb, you don’t have to answer. I s’pose I’ll just have to do it, the way I do everything else around here, no rest for the wicked as they say. Also we have to grill, I’ve already got the fire going, so come on, Wieb, let’s go do manly things.”

“Sounds good, Hallingdahl,” says Kevin, “one sec,” and he detours to Karena and hugs her.

“How long has he been like this?” he says in her ear.

“I’m really not sure,” she says, smiling widely, and from on the porch Charles says, “Jesus, Wieb, could you be slower? Move your ass, the grill waits for no man.”

“Coming, Hallingdahl,” says Kevin. He looks at Karena over one shoulder—
Is this all right? Is this what we should do?—
and she nods and shrugs and follows.

Charles drags Kevin through the house and out onto the back patio, where Karena sets the table while the men grill Charles’s vegetable shish kebabs. It is indeed a hot evening, the western sky orange-pink beyond the garage roofs, the bats cross-stitching it with eerie, stuttery speed. The neighbor kids splash in their pool across the alley:
Marco! Polo!
The air fills with the smell of charcoal, and Karena brings out the dishes Charles has prepared. Green salad, caprese salad, a selection of farm cheeses, a baguette, and, Karena sees with a pinch, Siri’s favorite, sliced tomatoes piled high with sugar. Karena adds beer and ice water and lights the citronella candle, and all the while Charles talks—and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks. So what does Kevin think about tomorrow? The forecast looks pretty healthy, huh? Is Kevin going to chase? Oh, sorry, Wieb, forgot you had to coach, but if Kevin wants to play hooky they could chase together, wouldn’t that be sweet? One last summer chase, Hallingdahl & Wiebke, a chase for auld lang syne? Okay, dinner’s ready! and they all sit down. Karena doesn’t dare look at Kevin, but she grips his hand under the table.

They eat. At least Karena and Kevin do, while Charles keeps talking. So what does Kevin think of this season anyway, would he say it was slower than usual? More active? About the same? Good season, interesting, what makes him say so? And what does he attribute that to, El Niño? Doesn’t he think global warming has a lot to do with it? What does Kevin predict will happen if the earth’s temperature keeps rising a couple of degrees a year? What will the effect be on severe weather, particularly tornadoes, particularly significant tornadoes? Doesn’t Kevin think the parameters will totally change? “If this keeps up,” says Charles, “forget Tornado Alley, we’ll all be chasing in New York City, ha ha! That would suck.” He pauses to drain a glass of ice water, pours himself another, drinks that too, then wipes his mouth on his shoulder and keeps going. “I’m telling you, man,” he says to Kevin, “I’m this close to submitting my abstract on rapid cycling, this close, thisclose!” and he holds his thumb and forefinger an inch apart and shakes them in Kevin’s face. Kevin blinks and eats another forkful of mozzarella. “But I might’ve been looking in the wrong direction. I should have been paying more attention to global warming and its effects on severe, that’s the future, Wieb, because that’s where the study of meteorology is going.”

“That’s probably true, Hallingdahl,” says Kevin, and under the table he presses Karena’s hand:
Still okay?
And she squeezes back:
Yes.