Flood Stage -- A Novel

HER FULL NATURE, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who live faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

baptism

MADDY BERTOLLI STUDIES her gnarled foot, a ghostly shape beneath the murky floodwaters obscuring her kitchen floor. Measuring the river’s new rise against it, she says, See, Trouble? Now it’s up to the old scar over my ankle.

Trouble barks politely but doesn’t flinch with Maddy’s grim update. He simply stares at her while rubbing against her twisted leg, his pearly flesh glistening through the irregular lacework of his matted black fur.

Maddy bends over in her wheelchair and reaches for Trouble. She presses her hands against his thick flanks, squeezing out more of the Baptista River from his sopping back. Stroking his head, she tries to steady his quivering. She offers, If you were one of those smart dogs, you’d take the high road out of here now.

But Trouble doesn’t budge or show concern that his intelligence is being questioned. Maddy gazes into his cavernous brown eyes, imagining that she sees straight through them, into his small fist of brain that seems incapable of grasping the current peril. She gently lifts one of his ears to her lips and says, You are my sweet dim bulb. To her chagrin, his unwavering fortitude shines a contrasting light on her own waning courage. Nuzzling his damp neck, she apologizes, Forgive me, pal. I’m the dumb one here. This is all my fault. She draws him close and confesses, I’m just feeling guilty about all this. But I’m not leaving our home, and I don’t know what else I can do with you. I hope you trust that I’m trying my best.

Throughout the last week, prompted by National Weather Service warnings that the usually thin ribbon of the Baptista River had swollen to a fourteen-foot record height, she had deliberated over sending Trouble to safe ground on her Uncle Tony’s ranch in Mendocino. But no matter how variously she had strategized, she could not conceive a plan that would convince her uncle to evacuate Trouble without insisting that she come along, too.

Patting Trouble’s clammy flank, she wearily declares, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, boy. It’s you and me, trapped inside my pathetic story of—

A muffled, faraway voice shatters her hoped-for invisibility. She jolts, and every muscle around her crimped spine clenches. She throws a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream while shockwaves of pain radiate out from a raw disc in her lower back. Glancing through the cracked pane of her kitchen window, she sees Bill Dunleavy in his black wading boots and blunt yellow slicker standing outside her cabin. He is transformed into a colorful mosaic through the irregular ruptures of glass.

Damn! she seethes. Why can’t he just leave us alone? She hoists Trouble onto her shawl-covered lap where he shakes and spritzes her face. Stay still, boy, she whispers. Keep quiet.

She desperately hopes that Bill will retreat after reading the bold note she has tacked to the front door: Nobody home! Go away! That he, convinced she has evacuated her cabin, will feel he has fulfilled his self-imposed obligation to check on her.

Waiting for an indication of Bill’s next move proves to be as excruciating as the angry nerves whipping her back. Trying to distract herself from both, she digs her fingernails into the palm of her clawed left hand. Her muscular right hand clamps Trouble’s jaw shut. Privately, she bemoans the cold, sticky moisture that wicks from his body onto hers. But she remains perfectly still, fervently praying that Bill will bypass her home.

TWO DAYS EARLIER, when electricity last operated in the midcanyon, Bill had telephoned her to ask about her evacuation plans in advance of the impending flood. Although experiencing his call as self-serving and intrusive, she also realized that it presented her with a strategic opportunity to redirect his neurotic focus away from her. So, she concealed her irritation, thanked him for his concern, and labored to reassure him about her safety. Please don’t worry about me, Bill, she had insisted. I’ve got rock solid plans. Uncle Tony is driving down here today to take Trouble and me up to Mendocino with him. Really, she admonished, you must have something better to do than worry needlessly about me.

After ending the call with Bill, she immediately phoned Ella Strather, the Sheriff’s wife, who helped her with household chores twice a week. She told Ella, Now don’t stop by today, because I won’t be here. In fact, my uncle should be arriving any second now to take me with him to Mendocino.

Well, it’s a relief to hear that, Ella had responded. Because the levee is going to break wide open any day now! I just finished packing our valuables in the pickup, and I plan on leaving tomorrow. M.J. will need to stay here a while longer, being the Sheriff. We’ll meet up at his parents’ when he can get away. But can you believe all this, Maddy? Our little Baptista River is bulging at the seams! One of M.J.’s deputies saw it from the rescue helicopter this morning, and he said it looked like a long dark snake that swallowed an elephant. It’s filling the canyon and it looks like . . . well, like the end of the world!

The end of the world? Maddy had teased. Are you using M.J.’s scanners to channel into the divine now?

Maddy had always listened politely but warily to Ella’s embellished views of the world which were often spiced with privileged information culled from her husband’s police scanners. While vacuuming the floors or scrubbing bathroom tiles, Ella spoke in a syncopated working rhythm, reporting news of wayward cattle and sheep roaming the canyon, the Woods’ constant domestic battles, gruesome local accounts about wheat thresher injuries or silo fill accidents . . .

Ella had answered flatly, Maddy, I’m dead serious. And I don’t see anything funny about what’s happening around here. In the not-too-distant past, her feelings would have bruised from Maddy’s sarcasm. But having regularly listened to a celebrity psychologist who frequented Oprah’s TV show, she had come to understand that Maddy’s sardonic humor served as a defense mechanism that enabled her to cope with her dreadful physical disabilities. Enlightened by her cultivated insight into Maddy’s flawed character, she had continued undaunted: "Maddy, this apocalyptic rainstorm is going to wipe us out. By all accounts, it’s biblical. Over 160,000 cubic feet of water are gushing over the Choctaw Dam every second. And huge sections of the Feather River levee were breached just an hour ago! They say muskrats are burrowing through the clay dikes. And all that water? It’s heading straight toward us! Our Baptista’s already 16-feet deep, and M.J. says it’ll reach flood stage at 25 feet any day now. So, my dear friend, if that’s not the end of the world—"

Forgive me, Maddy had interrupted, but speaking of ‘ends,’ I need to get off the phone. She rapped her knuckles against the kitchen table and said, Hear that, Ella? It’s Uncle Tony knocking at the door.

Thank god! Ella exclaimed. Because you and Ed are the only holdouts in midcanyon. M.J. will be so relieved to know that you’ve left. He’s already so stressed out with all the pandemonium here—

Well, I do move slowly, Maddy wryly replied. But you tell M.J. not to waste his time coming over here, okay? She knuckled the table again and said, I need to hang up, Ella. See you after the tides pull back.

Over the ensuing two days, Maddy tried to conceal all evidence of her existence from the outside world. To avoid being spotted inside her cabin, she ducked down whenever wheeling her chair past a window. She refrained from using flashlights or candles, despite the carbon black evenings enveloping her. She kept abreast of local weather reports through earphones attached to a battery-powered radio. And each night, she skillfully evaded detection by the Sheriff who shined helicopter searchlights over her property and bounced bullhorn evacuation warnings off her cabin’s roof.

DEAR GODS IN HEAVEN, Maddy currently prays. Please do not allow Bill Dunleavy to interfere with me now! She shuts her eyes and fiercely summons her will which she hurls toward the heavens like a potent spear, aiming to pierce the mind of any listening god in possession of the authority to grant her wish. When she opens her eyes, she looks cautiously through the fissured window, checking whether her prayers have been answered. When she sees Bill hesitate in his path, a sliver of hope lifts her encumbered spirit. Looking conspiratorially to the gray heavens, she implores all on-duty omnipotent beings: Come on—we all know it is too damn ironic for Divine intervention to visit me in the likes of Bill Dunleavy!

While she waits for a decisive response, her amped up senses coil tightly around an expanding core of her anxiety. Now she is acutely aware of the stench of bloated cow pastures. She tastes acid in the back of her mouth. Her vision is assaulted by the kitchen’s brutal demise. She hears the disturbing shul-wulklulk and thuwaulk of the swollen river cuffing the baseboards . . . the whining spine of a eucalyptus tree bending in the January winds . . . the eerie silence that has replaced her old refrigerator’s usual cacophony.

And then, like a sonic needle, Bill’s powerful voice punctures her tense hypervigilance. Maddy, he yells, you in there? His tone conveys a revolting enthusiasm to save her.

Damn! she curses, her fledgling hope crumbling. Her rage expands in a feverish crescendo that rises incrementally with Bill’s approaching footsteps. When she hears his rubber boots shambling across the porch, she bolts upright in her wheelchair, unwittingly dispatching additional pain throughout her back. The indignity! she complains to Trouble. People think they fucking own you if you’re disabled like me! They think they can just barge into your life and tell you how you—

The kitchen door bursts open and Bill appears—a breathless, ruddy man slumping against the doorjamb, his red elastic cheeks billowing vigorously like dynamic blowfish. Aha! I knew it! You’re here after all! he says with conspicuous self-congratulation.

"And you shouldn’t be," she snaps.

Well, what a lovely welcome, he manages, trying to catch his breath.

Maddy quickly surmises a risk to her master plan if she further antagonizes Bill. But feeling forced to stifle her fury makes her feel like a caged animal at the mercy of his able-bodied authority. She thinks, I need to put him off-guard if I’m going to escape his neurotic need to rescue me. Finally, she says, I’d offer you a fresh lung, but the freezer’s been out.

That’s a good one, he says, scanning her tousled kitchen. And I could really use a spare lung now.

For an overlong moment, they stare at one another, waiting uneasily for the other’s next move. At times, Bill’s bronchitic gasping synchronizes with Trouble’s panting, creating a strange harmony, a steely hew of metal saws.

The stalemate breaks when Bill scolds, "Maddy, you told me two days ago on the phone that you were evacuating this cabin. You reassured me that you were leaving with your uncle."

"Clearly, I did no such thing. Because you wouldn’t be here now if you had been reassured."

"Okay, then—you tried to assure me that you—"

Well, she frostily interrupts, "of all people, you should know how someone’s plans can change sometimes, and without any warning."

Bill cringes while her trenchant comment bores through his beleaguered conscience. On target, it pinpoints his old cowardice that has hibernated for years within their strained past. It lodges at the intersection of their before and after which has located their relationship since her accident. In their before, they had been inseparable friends whose closeness regularly fostered public speculation. They had been steady lunch partners throughout grade school, and summer co-workers in the strawberry fields. In high school, they spent weekends in the Glen Cove library, discovering Sartre, Dickinson, Salinger, Steinem, and Martin Luther King.

But in the after following her accident, they became awkwardly entangled strangers—two people incapable of letting go of a binding trauma, even as it weighted them down and dragged them into great depths of personal misery.

He nods to Maddy now, acknowledging her verbal potshot. If even obliquely delivered, it marks the first time that she has ever addressed his monstrous disloyalty to her. He accepts her rebuke like a soldier, silently bearing the reprimand for his conduct unbecoming. And still, he knows it merely grazes the surface of his deceit. It cannot inflict a sufficient penalty that will allow him to atone for his deeper betrayal—for the secret he has carried for decades that has drawn him toward Maddy as powerfully as it has driven him away.

Under duress of time and the press of the flood, he musters sufficient bravado to assert, Maddy, I’ll drag you out of here if I need to.

The hell you will! she says. This is still my home. And I’m demanding that you leave.

He rolls his eyes upward to the same gray skies that Maddy had searched minutes earlier for on-duty deities. Listen, he pleads, there’s no time to argue. I can carry you to Myrtle Road. Then the Sheriff can take you in his boat or helicopter to the Red Cross shelter at the high school.

Maddy glares at him, studying him as though he were a lethal virus, and wondering how to defend herself against his meddling mission. After an unsteady silence, she calmly states, I’m staying here, come hell or high water—or come even you.

Bill shakes his head in disbelief. You’ve got to be reasonable. The Baptista’s just a foot shy of flood stage. We need to evacuate now.

"No, you need to evacuate my home," she says, wrapping her arms around Trouble like chains around a stanchion.

Stop this nonsense, he says. The canyon’s filling up, inches by the hour. Look around you! Let’s go.

Save yourself, she says. "This time, it’s my call. And I know what I’m doing. I’ve thought about this coming flood all week, and I’m not afraid. I’ve survived a flood every day of my life for thirty-nine years. This is my body, my life—it doesn’t belong to you or any hospital committee now. I’m prepared—no, I’m wanting—to let Nature have its way with me. Pure and simple, no human interference this time around."

Trouble barks uncontrollably and Maddy tries to settle him down, to calm his old heart. Then he leaps from her lap in sudden pursuit of her red slippers that float through the kitchen, into the hallway and toward the living room. He’s got cataracts, she says.

But what’s your excuse for not seeing things clearly? he shoots back, moving toward her. I’m carrying you out.

Entwining her fingers around her chair’s wheel rims, she shouts, Don’t touch me! You’ve got no right.

But he kneels into the floodwaters and tries to pry open her hands.

Maddy thrashes and rails, Leave me alone! The commotion summons Trouble back to the kitchen. He bounds toward Bill in slowed motion, hampered by muddy waters. In mid-bark, he clamps his jaw around a loose wattle of Bill’s raincoat sleeve.

Hell, Bill fumes, you’re both crazy! Tell your dog to let go of me. He tries to yank his arm free, but Trouble’s jaw holds onto it like a metal-toothed hunting trap.

Keep your hands off us, Maddy commands while Trouble’s paws pummel Bill’s chest.

Finally, Bill relents. The hell with this. All right. Just call him off.

Back away first, Maddy orders, her vocal cords straining. Go stand by the door.

With Trouble dangling from his sleeve, Bill backs away, muttering incoherently. When he reaches the doorway, Maddy warns, Stay where you are, Dunleavy. I can sic him back on you as easily as I can—

"Seriously—now!" he thunders.

After gauging the likelihood of Bill’s compliance, she commands, Come here, boy.

Trouble emits a cautionary growl before releasing Bill’s sleeve. After barking once more for good measure, he treads through the floodwaters and stands sentry by Maddy’s chair.

Bill remains near the kitchen door, scowling, occasionally looking outside to assess the rising floodwaters. Maddy scrutinizes him, deciding, He’s imagining himself outside of his own character. And I know he doesn’t have the stamina to sustain that much longer.

During the standoff, Trouble’s agitated jostling generates a watery commotion that liberates a trio of plump Florida oranges from the mouth of a burlap sack lying on the kitchen floor. The oranges ride a gentle current, passing a box of Idaho potatoes, the recently emptied wine rack, the buff-colored Formica table, and, finally, the doorway leading to the hall.

Bill implores again, Please?

But she only stares back, still analyzing their impasse. He does not—and cannot—understand that I’ve had enough of my existence. He is vastly overrating my life.

THROUGHOUT HER ADULTHOOD, Maddy generally considered herself oddly fortunate to have learned from her accident not to expect anything too compelling out of life. Life, she had learned, owed you nothing in return for any reverence or respect for it. And while you might be obliged to tolerate it, life—even one’s own—was never something to die for. Exasperating people like Ella who always claimed to be intoxicated by life only drank the good stuff. They knew nothing about the sober realities of life