The Stormchasers: A Novel (45 page)

She goes across the hall to knock on the door, but it swings open before she can. Charles is already up too. The bruises under his eyes testify that he has spent a similarly sleepless night. But he appears calm, serene even. He seems to float over the motel’s carpet in his sandals, a few inches off the floor.

They drive to the Elmwood Café, where they take a corner table among the regulars—mostly farmers and retirees throwing dice for breakfast. Conversation stops when the Hallingdahl twins walk in. Then Leslee Rotman of the realty company raises a hand from her stool at the counter, though she doesn’t look up from her paper.

Karena orders an omelet, and Charles asks for Egg Beaters scrambled with vegetables, two orders of whole wheat toast, hash browns, a large orange juice. He polishes this off with great appetite while Karena drinks cup after cup of coffee from a vacuum-sealed urn, her food untouched. She wishes she still smoked. The sun clears the tree line across Highway 44 and bursts into the café, and the waitress goes around shutting the blinds. In the wake of the storms, it is going to be a beautiful day.

Charles leaves a 200 percent tip and once outside turns his face to the sky. He closes his eyes, breathing deeply. Then he says, without opening them, “Okay, K, let’s roll.”

“Charles . . . ,” says Karena.

Charles puts an arm around her and pulls her close, kissing her hair.

“It’s go-time, sistah,” he says.

Karena drives into town as slowly as she can, holding up traffic like an old farm wife. If this weren’t Minnesota, somebody might honk. Even so, the trip to the courthouse green takes all of five minutes. Karena pulls into a visitor’s spot next to the sheriff’s prowler and cuts the engine. They sit looking at the grass, the war memorial, the intersecting paths beneath the very old trees.

“Oh,” Karena exclaims. “Charles, your car.”

“Just leave it, K,” says Charles, “like I’ll need it anyway.” He tries to smile, but Karena sees him swallowing, his Adam’s apple hitching in his throat.

She looks away. She is so scared. She has never been so scared. She can feel the impending change bearing down on them, something irrevocable and heartless and powerful, like a train. She looks at the courthouse and remembers a ninth-grade class trip inside, the municipal warren of rooms smelling of funk and man sweat, the boxed caseloads rotting in the corners. The jail behind its old-fashioned bank vault door that Sheriff Cushing opened and closed by cranking a wheel. The
thud
of steel tumblers hitting home.

“Well, sistah,” says Charles, “I guess this is it.”

“Guess so,” Karena says.

They get out. The double slam of the Volvo’s doors—
chunk, chunk
—sounds very loud. They cross the sidewalk to the steps, passing a pair of birds taking a dirt bath, hearing a woman greet another on Main Street:
Well hello there, how are you?
The wind sifts through the trees.

“Oh no, that’s okay, K,” says Charles, when Karena follows him up the steps. “You don’t have to go in with me. In fact it’ll be easier on me if you don’t.”

“Well, that’s too bad, Charles,” says Karena. “Because I’m going with you.”

Charles stops and looks at her.

“I’m going with you,” Karena repeats.

She nods, trying to smile, until he understands. Charles’s face works. He turns away for a minute, composing himself. Then he turns back.

“Thank you, K,” he says.

“You’re welcome, Charles.”

They stand looking at each other in the morning light, the breeze playing in Charles’s hair. Then Charles reaches for Karena’s hand.

“You ready?” he says. “On three. One—two—”

He opens the door for her, and they walk through.

I
t is almost a year to the day later when Charles comes to say good-bye. Karena is sleeping on the living room couch—or as close to sleeping as she can come these days. She is bobbing near the surface but still so tired that she doesn’t let on she can hear them when Kevin lets Charles in and says, “Shhh, quiet, man, she was up most of the night, let’s go out on the patio.” She can feel them tiptoeing over to peer at her, though, and when Charles whispers, “Are you sure she has two more weeks? She’s freaking ginormous,” Karena mutters, “I heard that.” But maybe she doesn’t say it aloud after all, because their footsteps creak away, and the refrigerator opens with a clink of bottles, and then the back door, and then they are outside.

Their conversation comes to her in fragments, less what they’re saying than the dueling tenor of their voices. It reminds Karena of lying in the backseat with Charles, coming home from the Starlite or the Hallingdahl farm and listening to Frank and Siri murmur in the front. Karena knows she should push herself up, join the men on the patio. There is so little time left with her brother. But her blood feels leaded, as though she is sinking into the cushions. She lifts a hand onto her stomach, seeking the baby’s head—there. She drifts.

She is thinking about adaptability, its peculiarities and inconsistencies, the elasticity of time. Why, for instance, should it have taken her such a while to acclimate to being home after chasing, to shake the visceral aftershocks, when she has gotten used to other situations as instantly as flicking a switch? And moreover has come to take them for granted. Her pregnancy—Karena can’t remember when her body wasn’t distended, when she didn’t have heartburn, when she was a skinny little runner who threaded through the world with grace and ease, without thinking about it. It seems like a story about somebody else. In this tale Karena was also a reporter, a woman who went to work in an office, wearing blazers and block-heeled shoes. Who was proud of her work. Who felt important because of it. Who drove there every day, singing behind the wheel.

Now Karena is accustomed to Kevin chauffeuring her around and pretending to complain mightily about it, to go to the market, to visit Frank, to run her outreach support groups. All the conditions of Karena’s probation.
You, Miss Jorge,
the Winneshiek County district court judge had said in Iowa last December, peering at her over his bifocals—a tiny bald eagle of a man.
Since you are fortunate enough not to share your brother’s affliction, you do and did know better. You should have come forward, for his benefit and the community’s. You will work with bipolar support groups in the Minneapolis medical system for three years. For leaving the scene of an accident, your driver’s license will be suspended for the same amount of time.

And you, Mr. Hallingdahl,
he had continued,
you must learn more about your disorder and how to better manage it. You also currently reside in Minneapolis, I see. There is an excellent outpatient program at the Hennepin County Medical Center. You will attend it for one year.
Charles, typically, had protested, had petitioned for a more extreme sentence—at least one as severe as Karena’s. But the judge had told him to stop wasting the court’s time and ordered the records sealed.

Perhaps the easiest thing for Karena to get used to, the condition that has felt most natural, has been having Charles nearby, across the city, in the student neighborhood known, aptly, as The Wedge. So close and yet far away enough. It will take her much, much longer to accept that he’s going again, leaving for Arizona this time, a two-year program at the Southwestern College of Naturopathic Medicine and Health Sciences. It won’t be like before, Karena reminds herself. She’ll know where Charles is. He’ll have a cell phone, e-mail, a fixed address. They’ll be in regular contact. He’ll come for holidays. Yet in the most important respect it will be exactly like before, because Karena will have to go back to waiting for the call, for the phone to ring with the news that something bad has happened to Charles. That he has done something bad to himself. This dread might be familiar, she may have lived with it for the past twenty years, but she will never get used to it. Never.

As if protesting her mother’s sorrow, the way Karena’s heart constricts, the baby rolls—inasmuch as she can in such a cramped space. The movement always makes Karena think of young whales swimming alongside their mothers. She gasps. “Ooouf,” she says, and struggles upright. “Okay, okay.” She bundles her newly shoulder-length hair into an elastic—she is always roasting hot now—and rubs her face. She can’t quite believe the baby will ever come, but she is more than ready to meet this child. She’s had ample time to wonder at the Amazing Levitating Belly, and now she’s done.

She is trying to heave herself off the couch when Kevin and Charles troop back in, and when they see her they come rushing over. “I’m all right,” Karena says crossly as they each seize one arm. She can feel Charles shaking with laughter. But either they have both gone spontaneously deaf or they’re totally ignoring her.

“You got a good grip there, Wieb?” Charles asks.

“Hope so, Hallingdahl. Let’s git ’r done.”

They haul Karena out of the cushions, making a big groaning and grunting production out of it, and set her on her feet. “Thanks a lot,” she says. “I’m not
that
heavy.”

“Yeah, you kinda are, K,” says Charles, wincing. “I think I sprained my back.”

“I’m sure you’ll find some holistic poultice for it,” Karena says as they go out through the front porch. Kevin rubs her tailbone.

“You doing okay, Mama?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes, then kisses him.

It is a quiet overcast day. Every so often raindrops patter from seemingly nowhere. The yellow Volvo is at the curb, a brand-new registration sticker displayed on the windshield. Who would have thought it, Karena marvels, Charles with proof of insurance. The wagon is crammed to the roof with his belongings, everything he’s amassed over the past year in his studio. On its rack on the Volvo’s rear, Charles’s bike spins its tires sporadically in the wind.

“Can you see out the rearview, Hallingdahl?” Kevin asks doubtfully, circling the Volvo to inspect Charles’s packing job.

“Rearview, what rearview,” says Charles, tying his new longer hair back with a leather thong. “We don’t need no stinkin’ rearview, Wieb.”

The two men embrace briefly and slap backs.

“Hallingdahl,” says Kevin.

“Wieb,” says Charles.

Farewells accomplished, Kevin comes up the walk and goes inside, blowing a kiss to Karena as he passes.

“Charles,” says Karena, and Charles says, “Huh?” Then he says,

“Oh, sorry, sorry, K,” and leaps up the front steps to help her down.

“Thanks,” Karena says, as they reach the curb.

“No, thank you, K,” says Charles. “Thanks for the dishes. And the sheets and towels. And for not giving me a hard time. I know this isn’t what you would have wanted for me. But I appreciate your respecting it’s what I want.”

Karena nods and tries to smile. They may yet come up with a drug Charles can tolerate. He may change his mind. She can always hope. They face each other by the passenger door, Karena planting her feet firmly in the grassy median.

“Well, sistah,” says Charles. Then his eyes fill with tears.

“Oh no, you don’t,” says Karena, swatting him. “Don’t you start. If you do, I will, the difference being I can’t stop.”

“I know,” says Charles, sniffling. “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s look at it this way,” says Karena, “it’s only until Thanksgiving.”

Charles blots his eyes on the sleeve of his Cuban shirt. “I just can’t believe I won’t be here when she’s born,” he says.

“You’ll be the first person we tell,” Karena says, inwardly shuddering at the thought of Charles and Kevin in the same delivery room. “I promise.”

“Tell her I wanted to be there but her mean daddy wouldn’t let me,” says Charles. “Tell her Uncle Charles loves her.” He bends over Karena’s belly. “Yes,” he croons, “Uncle Charles loves you, yes, he does. You know that, don’t you, Loafette?”

The baby kicks enthusiastically.

“Ow,” Karena says, gasping. “Do not call her that, Charles. How many times do I have to tell you? You know her name is—”

She repeats the name of the town in which, to the best of their knowledge, she and Kevin think the baby was conceived. Sometime during their New Year trip, anyway, the one they pretended was a reality show called Reconciliation Road.

“That’s a silly name,” says Charles. “She doesn’t like that name, does she? Nooooo, she likes Loafette. Don’t you, Loafette?” and the baby kicks again. “See,” says Charles, nodding. “Uncle Charles knows.”

“Uncle Charles better hit the road,” says Karena, “before he sends me into premature labor.”

Charles heaves an enormous sigh and looks off down the street.

“I guess you’re right,” he says. “C’mere, sistah.”

He holds out his arms, and they hug as best they can over Karena’s belly. This time, when they pull apart, Karena’s eyes are wet while Charles’s are dry.

“Here you go, K,” he says, screwing his Lakota ring off his middle finger and handing it to her. “Early baby present. Good luck.”

“Thank you, Charles,” says Karena, taking the ring, warm from Charles’s hand. She clutches it in her fist as he jogs down to the Volvo.

“Love you, sistah,” he says as he’s getting in.

“Love you, Charles,” she says.

She waves as the yellow Volvo pulls away from the curb and glides to the end of the block. It pauses at the long light there. Its left blinker pulses patiently. Then the signal changes and it cruises away and is gone. Karena stays there anyway, looking at the empty street. She traces Charles’s route in her mind: Fiftieth Street to Lyndale Avenue to 62 East to 35 South to I-90 West—Beyond this, she can’t bear to think. She realizes she is still holding Charles’s ring and starts to slip it on her left thumb. Then she switches it to her right, away from the slim gold wedding band inscribed
KB1 SLM & Laredo, 2009
. Best to keep those two rings separate.

“Hey,” Kevin says from behind the porch’s screen door. “Woman, are you going to stand there all day? We have guests coming.”