About Grace. Anthony Doerr
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the eave: sheets of drops like a procession of wraiths, shifting, tumbling.
Sandy was running water in the bath. Her chest heaved, still out of breath. Grace lay on the carpet beside her, sucking her fingers. “It’s going to flood,” he said.
“What were you doing, David? My God, what were you doing?”
“The ground is frozen. It can’t absorb this water. We can go wherever you like. Florida, Thailand—wherever. Just until this weather is gone. Or longer if you want. Forever if you want.”
Water surged and bubbled in the tub. “At first it was kind of charming, you know,” she said. “Sleepwalking. And you did it so rarely. But now, David. I mean, come on. You’re doing it every night! You had Grace out there!”
She unwrapped the baby and set her in the bath. “There,” she said. “It’s okay.” She swirled the water with an index finger.
“Sandy.” He reached for her but she pulled away.
“You’ve barely slept in, what, five days, David? Get some rest. I’ll sleep in the baby’s room. And Monday you’re going to Dr. O’Brien’s.”
The rain kept up all night. Sandy whispered into the phone downstairs. He did not sleep. The sound of the water on the shingles sounded to him like insects chewing away at the roof. Twice before dawn he wrapped himself in his poncho and went out to the Chrysler and held his keys at the ignition but could not bring himself to start the car. Water ran down the lenses of his glasses. Inside the Chrysler it was damp and cold.
The next day was Sunday and still the rain had not let up. Over an otherwise silent breakfast he begged her twice more to leave. Her eyes glassed over; her lips went thin. There was no water in the streets, nothing on TV about flooding, not even on his own network. None of the neighbors were going anywhere.
“Our house is lowest,” he said. “Closest to the river.”
Sandy only shook her head. “I made an appointment for you. At Dr. O’Brien’s. Tomorrow. One P.M.” To appease him she carried food up from the pantry and arranged it on top of the dresser: three boxes of Apple Jacks, a tub of oatmeal, bread and jam. Grace began to cry around noon and would not let up. He couldn’t bear it and had to go stand in the bathroom, pretending to relieve himself.
Sandy called from the top of the basement stairs, her welding mask braced on her head. “You better go see the doctor, mister! You better go tomorrow! You tell him about sleepwalking. Tell him you think you can see the future.”
He took Grace’s yellow hat and hid it. Not ten minutes later Sandy was calling him: “Have you seen her yellow woolie?”
“No.”
“But you just had it. I saw you with it.”
He withdrew it from the toolbox in the closet and handed it back.
One o’clock the next day he did not go to Dr. O’Brien’s. The dream floated just beneath his consciousness, huge and eager. He had not slept in fifty hours except for two catnaps in the file room at the network office and in all that time the rain had not ceased. By 3 P.M. the river had surpassed its embankments in several valleys and sent thin sheets of water speeding through neighborhoods. At intersections, firemen waved away traffic or ferried sandbags through the mud. Telephone poles along the road shoulders stood rootless, their bases submerged. The river climbed over a bridge on Miles Road and carried it off.
Winkler clambered out of the car on the way home from work and watched the water lick at the banks. A camera crew from a rival network pulled up and splashed out of their van. “Are you getting this?” the producer shouted at the camera operator. “Are you getting it?”
A policeman waved them back. The concrete at the edges where the bridge had been was left clean and dark as if cauterized. A child’s red plastic snow sled came floating down.
At home, water was coming through the foundation. Sandy had removed many of her things from the basement already, her soldering kit, a crate of salvaged metal, sheets of paper with the ink running off in long purple tendrils. But her tree—huge now, as broad at the base as the hood of the Newport—would never fit up the stairs. Winkler doubted three men could lift it. Sandy splashed beside him, pulling her fingers through her hair.
He waded beside the washer and dryer with a five-gallon bucket and brought it up to the porch and upended it over the lawn. Then he descended again. Grace wailed. After a half hour of bailing, he could see how futile it was—water was seeping into the basement in a thousand places. The water he carried out probably rifled through the topsoil, met ice, and flowed right back through the foundation. His feet had gone numb in their boots. The drizzle would turn to sleet later in the night.
“We’ll get a hotel room,” he said, carrying a box of copper piping upstairs. “Across town.”
“You didn’t go to the doctor’s.” Her hands were shaking lightly. “I called.”
“Sandy. The house is flooding.”
“We’ll be okay.” But Sandy looked haggard, her face drawn, her shirttails soaked. She held Grace as if marauders might at any moment storm the kitchen and pry her away. “Channel five says it’ll end tonight. None of the neighbors are leaving.”
“They will.”
“We’ll get a room in the morning. If it hasn’t stopped raining.”
Rain was assaulting the roof. They could hear it pouring over the shingles and through the downspouts. “Sandy. Please.”
She looked toward the basement door. “My tree.”
But she relented. They sat in the car, the three of them, wipers ratcheting back and forth. Moisture fogged the windows. It felt immediately better to him, to be together in the car, hemmed in by the dark, the doors and windows of the Chrysler fogged, the smell of wet clothes close around them. Lightning, or a downed power line, flashed somewhere. Overlapping tides of rain washed over the windshield. The dashboard sent forth its frail orange glow.
They took a motel room on Eaton Road, six miles away.
“Will you be okay tomorrow? If I take the car to work?”
“I guess. We can eat in the diner.”
He looked at her, still clutching Grace. “I’m sorry about your tree, Sandy.”
“Let’s just get through this.”
Around midnight the rain turned to hail and the motel roof sang underneath it, a sound like thousands of buckets of pebbles being emptied onto plastic. Maybe she believed him now. Maybe they would get through this and be stronger; maybe she would ask him someday to tell her everything. The blanket was heavy on his chest. The muscles in his eyes were giving over to sleep.
He woke to sudden pain and brought his fingers to his lip. He was in the parking lot of the motel. The neon sign above him sputtered in the rain. The car was running and the driver’s door hung open—Grace lay asleep on the front seat. Sandy had hit him across the mouth. “Are you crazy?” she shouted. She rushed to Grace and collected her in her arms. Sandy’s hair was getting damp and she was standing in her bra and pajama bottoms, barefoot on the gravel. The rain washed down over them. “What the hell are you doing with her out here?” She backed away, bracing Grace’s head against her shoulder. He looked up and watched the onslaught of rain, half a million drops riding down.
Sandy was already across the lot. “What’s happening to you, David? Why are you doing this?”
He could not answer—he did not know. Sleep was slowly washing from him. Had he been dreaming?
He followed her to the door. She closed it most of the way and spoke through the gap. “Don’t come in, not tonight. Don’t come near us.” The door shut—a red number seven painted above the peephole—and he heard the bolt slide home.
Winkler stood in the rain a long time before