“Bobby, we can’t all fit in the tub. And even if we could, there’s no point.”
“Dad! If a tornado—”
“There’s no fucking tornado, Bobby.”
“Don’t talk to him that way,” Mom says, squeezing the cards in her hand hard enough to bend them.
“Oh fuck off. Try telling me how to raise my son again and see what happens.”
A long silence follows, everybody too afraid to speak. Dad has never struck me or Bobby, and I don’t think he’d ever hit Mom either, but the rate things are spiraling tonight, who knows what’s gonna happen? The moment I got home this evening, it felt like he was begging for a fight, it didn’t matter with who—anybody would do, as long as they could bleed, as long as they could break.
Eventually Mom says, in the calmest tone possible given the circumstances, “If you don’t want to wait in here with us, you know where the door is.”
Dad chuckles. Everything is a joke tonight, until it isn’t. “Oh, now I got a choice?”
“I’m done talking to you.”
“Finally.”
Dad turns toward the door and Bobby freaks out. Like, total panic attack. He springs up and grabs Dad’s leg, hysterical. “Dad no don’t go please don’t go the tornado there’s a tornado—”
“Bobby, c’mon… you’re being ridiculous,” he says, trying to shake him off.
“—the tornado’s gonna get you please Dad stay here please don’t go—”
Dad sighs, then glances over his shoulder at Mom, smug smile across his face. “You still think I should leave?”
Asking it like a double-sided sword. Meaning something that’s a secret, something only the two of them know about. “What’s going on?” I ask, receiving an answer in the form of the loudest thunder boom yet.
The bathroom lights blink away from existence and we are consumed by darkness.
Bobby and I both start screaming, which encourages the clouds to do the same. I fumble around for my phone and trigger its flashlight app. All four of us have gone ghost-pale. Bobby hyperventilates in our mother’s arms. Dad grips his thermos with both hands, no longer attempting to leave.
“Shh… shh,” Mom whispers, stroking Bobby’s head, “it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay…”
I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Things obviously are not okay. Panic eats me up and spits me back out. “Why did the lights go out? What happened?”
“C’mon, you guys,” Dad says, “it’s a thunderstorm. Lightning probably hit a transformer or something. Stop freaking out for no reason.”
Bobby is still shaking in our mom’s arms, feeding into my level of anxiety. “—IT’S A TORNADO IT’S A TORNADO IT’S A TORNADO—”
“Bobby, goddammit—”
A deafening series of thunder cracks ensue.
Followed by a crash loud enough to shatter our bones.
Then our entire house shakes, like we’re aboard some sort of amusement park ride.
Outside the bathroom door, something explodes.
Wind howls like wolves hungry for fresh meat.
At this point, all four of us are screaming our lungs off and holding each other—even Dad, whose previous transgressions have momentarily been forgiven, or at the very least forgotten. A stray limb from one of my family members knocks my phone from my grasp and it flies across the room. Its flashlight lands upon our flailing bodies, granting us a target to direct our aimless focus. I stare into it and pray as if it’s the light of God, but the only response I receive is more rain.
Outside the bathroom door, the storm’s volume intensifies. Rain and wind screech loud enough to drown out the thoughts from our throbbing brains. It is the sound of banshees escaping from hell. When we speak, we are forced to shout and, even then, one cannot be certain of the other’s dialogue.
“What happened?” I scream.
“What the hell was that?” Mom says.
“Jesus Christ,” Dad says, lips trembling. “I don’t know, I don’t know…”
More thunder.
Dad points at my phone on the floor. “Mel, shine that light over here so I can see.”
I hesitate, waiting to see if he’ll forget his request. He steps away from us and moves toward the door.
“No!” Bobby cries. “Don’t go, Daddy!”
He ignores him and nods at me. “Just get the fucking light, okay?”
Whimpering, I part from my mother and brother and retrieve the phone, then direct its light at my father. He presses his ear against the door, listening for an extended period, then attempts to open it. The door swings forward maybe three inches before coming to a dead stop, banging against something solid on the other side.
The sound of wood hitting wood.
“What the fuck?” he says, trying again, and again.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks.
“It won’t fucking open.”
“What do you mean, it won’t open?”
“I. Mean. It. Won’t. Fucking. Open,” he says, punctuating each word by bashing the door against whatever’s blocking it. This progresses into full-on shoulder rams against the frame as he gradually gets more pissed off.
Cold wind and rain blow in through the small opening. Flashes of lightning illuminate the bathroom’s depressing interior. The reality of the situation is already sinking in, even if nobody has the courage to voice it yet.
Dad reaches through the crack, feeling around blindly. “What the fuck?”
Mom steps forward, but only barely. “What is it?”
“What the fuck?”
“What?”
He extends his free arm out toward us and snaps his fingers. “Mel, let me see your phone.”
“What? Why?” My body stiffens. Absolutely not. No way.
“Because I told you to.”
“I… I can hold it.”
“Give me the fucking phone, Mel.”
Mom sidesteps in front of me, acting as a shield against his wrath. “Don’t talk to her that way, you son of a bitch.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he says, and she deflates. Then, to me: “Mel, let me have the goddamn phone.”
At this point I am sobbing and I hate myself for every tear spilled. My father does not deserve a single one of them. Every instinct inside me refuses to relinquish my phone. Things exist on it that nobody else should ever see. Plus, there is the fear that Amy will finally respond while his vision falls upon the screen. The text message conversation we found ourselves in the midst of will not go over well with my father. The context doesn’t matter. He will go mad. Mad like insane. Mad like nuts. However, if I continue disobeying his demands, the threat of escalated rage seems inevitable.
I extend my arm out, but my grip refuses to loosen, forcing him to pry it from my grasp. A bizarre satisfaction is gained from witnessing him briefly struggle against my unexpected strength. He takes the phone without another word and points the flashlight at the small opening in the door, face grimacing in confusion.
“What… the… fuck…?” He sticks the phone through the crack, angling his arm, squinting against the rain. “Oh, goddammit. Oh, motherfucker.”
“What is it?” Mom asks, at last triggering the flashlight app on her own phone and directing its illumination upon the door.
“A tree…”
“A what?”
“I think… goddammit…”
“Oh my god,” I say, no longer able to withstand the suspense. I need my phone back in my possession immediately. “What happened? What happened?”
“A tree… some fucking tree is blocking the door.”
“What tree?” Mom says, incredulous.
“How should I know? It’s blocking the whole goddamn door.”
“You can’t move it?”
“Does it look like I can fucking move it?”
“Wait,” I say, speaking without thinking, “maybe it’s the one in the back yard. Where we buried Spot?”
“What?” Bobby screams, snapped out of whatever fantasyland he’d mentally sought shelter in.
“Goddammit, Mel,” Mom says.
“I’m sorry!” Despite our current predicament, I feel instant regret for mentioning Spot, who had been our faithful Dalmatian up until about two months ago, when he’d escaped out the front door and crossed paths with an Amazon delivery driver.
“Spot ran away!” Bobby says, having apparently forgotten all about the storm outside. “You said Spot ran away!”
“Shh, baby,” our mother says, pulling him against her breast and rubbing his head until he quiets down.
Dad continues pushing at the door, one arm through the crack as he investigates the scene. If a tree has really fallen through the roof, then nothing is in place to prevent rain from entering the house. Everything in my parents’ bedroom will be ruined by the time the storm passes. This particular bathroom connects to their bedroom. We have another bathroom in the front of the house reserved for guests and Bobby and I, but that one is somehow even smaller than my parents’. I can’t imagine being trapped in the guest bathroom with everybody. I doubt we would have lasted an hour.
He curses something unintelligible and retreats from the door, dripping from the rain that’s blown inside our house.
“Where’s my phone?” I ask, noticing the absence within seconds.
“Calm the fuck down,” he says, trying to catch his breath—but from what?
“Where’s my phone?” I lose control of my body and begin shaking. I want to shriek loud enough to shatter the universe. “Where’s my phone?”
“I dropped it, okay?”
The tears run down my face. A mutated croak escapes my lungs.
“I’m sorry. The rain’s crazy out there. The wind, it just… took it…”
His apology means nothing to me. I fall to my knees and moan, feeling a great pain in my stomach. It is urgent that I speak to Amy. We need to regroup and come up with a plan. We need to fix what we’ve done. I need her to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be fine. I need her to assure me we didn’t fuck everything up.
“Oh, would you stop being hysterical?” Dad says, looking down at me with utter repulsion. “It’s not the end of the goddamn world.”
This last sentence of his is punctuated by an insane series of thunder booms. The sound arrives at a much louder volume with the door slightly cracked open.
Mom asks if we are really stuck.
Dad gestures at me and Bobby, both of us still crying like pathetic little babies. “You think I’d be here listening to this shit if we weren’t?”
“Is it…?”
“Is it what?”
“Actually… you know… a tornado?”
“I don’t know. The roof’s gone.”
“Oh my god.”
I take several deep breaths before risking speech again. “What do we do?”
“We have to call someone,” Mom says.
“Who?” Dad asks, amused.
“Ambulance? Fire truck? I don’t know. Someone.”
Dad leans against the sink, at a loss, sipping from his thermos. He digs out his own phone, dials three numbers, and holds it to his ear. He waits several moments before hanging it up and tossing it on the sink. I have to resist the urge to pick it up and throw it outside in the rain, let him get a taste of his own medicine, see how he likes it.
“Busy,” he says.
“Busy?” Mom says.
“That’s what I said.”
“How is it busy?”
He shrugs.
“What are we going to do?”
Another shrug. “I guess we wait.”