When The Levee Breaks

Lisa!

My Dad's voice, sharp and urgent. He doesn't have a sharp and urgent voice. I wake from a normally fitful sleep and blink my eyes in the dark. Dad never comes to my bedroom. Crash! A wave shudders the entire house. This one obviously cleared the second seawall. Ba DOONG! Slamming splash. Spray from this one hits my bedroom window. Kinda puts some much-needed perspective on Ritter’s Algebra quiz tomorrow.

Your mom is making hot cocoa. Get up! We're going downstairs now to have some.

Wow. It's 2 am. This is weird. Is Mom getting high now?

I stumble into the dim hallway upstairs where I meet my sister, Karen, and brother, Mark, looking as bleary-eyed and confused as I am. Dad ushers us toward the asbestos fire door separating the downstairs from the upstairs per OSHA code for inns. The house rattles as another wave smashes into it. Navigating the stairs means traversing the front of the house. Dad nearly pushes us down the hall to the kitchen. I slam open the inner door to the kitchen, primarily in place for privacy in summer and to keep out the freezing cold during the rest of the year. It is January 1972 and the strongest Nor'easter of the season is bearing down on us. Mom smiles benignly at the stove while holding the stirring spoon in a death grip, and asks a bit too cheerily if we'd like cocoa.

Wow. We’re a friggin’ bed and breakfast now! Apparently just renting rooms and apartments wasn't entirely satisfying for her. You just have to eat at 2 am.

This afternoon Mark and I helped Dad board up the front of the house while the building Northeast wind threatened to snatch the plywood boards out of our arms and the snow piled into gigantic banks during the first high tide. Low tide is when you have a chance to batten the house. We always help Dad with this job. Every storm. I love storms. I love the feeling of needing to defend our home from the raging elements. I love adventure and I love being outside and feeling it is us against the world - the world of weather. But, I don't want it to get TOO bad. This storm? This storm seems a little different.

LIZZIE!

Dad's affectionate name for me.

He hollers to Mark as the plywood board I am holding twists in my arms. I think it's going to fly. The wind devours voices.

MARK!!! Help your sister!

Mark leaps off the second seawall where he is staring out at the chaos of whitewater across the street waiting for the next big wave, grabs the other end of the plywood and we wrassle it up against the last pane of exposed glass on our new porch.

Lisa! Mark! C’mon! Back inside!

Dad grabs his tools, and we head out back to the cellar and climb the stairs to our back door. The next high tide - that one will be the test. This storm is building.

MARRRRRKKKK!!!!!!!!!!

Mom sends Karen and me out to get Mark. The storm is really getting going now.

WHAAATTTTTTT??????!!!!!

Drooooppppppppp the door!!! Mom says get inside!!!!!!!

I HAVE TO SAVE THE CAR!

I envision him drowned and martyred against the griffin logo on the grill of our newish SAAB station wagon. Ohmygod, does every Greek male have to have a friggin’ messiah complex?! My brother has lost his mind.

LEAVE the friggin’ car!!!!!!

Mark is standing in three feet of seawater with his soaked navy watch cap hiked down below his eyebrows and shivering like mad while trying to force the garage door back down and onto its track as each new surge of water barrels down the driveway. He's trying to prevent the car from being immersed in seawater. The four-foot, five-foot? snow banks encircling the house make this a fool's errand. The entire marsh is a new sea. Eldridge and Mile Roads are cut off. We are surrounded by water; if we want to get out now, we swim.

Let's grab him, Karen!

We don't have to. A huge wave rolls down the driveway, now a newly dug canal, and sinks Mark to his chest. The garage door is toast.

The rabbits! Good thing we moved our rabbits, Peter and Zonka, out of their hutch and into their storm dwelling way up inside the daylight cellar this afternoon. Their hutch usually sits right next to the garage. I hope it's a good thing. Do rabbits swim?

Mark finally concedes and wades over to the back steps. I love my little brother, and we hang out a lot, but I want to smack him.

WHAT ARE YOU? Friggin’ ELEVEN???!!!!!!

Oh, yeah, you are.

This afternoon seems like years ago. Now it's 2 am and we’re stranded on Wells Beach in a worsening storm and it's still two hours until high tide. In the warm kitchen, we sit rigidly on the mustard-colored cushions of the rock maple couch next to the granny stove crushing our mugs of cocoa in vice grips and listen with dread to the howling wind as each new surge crashes and tests the front of the house. The wind through the wires makes an unnerving high-pitched sound. This storm is relentless.

Mom suggests Karen and I sing, definitely signaling drug use or recent cognitive decline.

SING???!!!!!!!

Yeah, Karen and I have sung in the car on long road trips since, like forever, but I'm not really into belting out CLEMENTINE or THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS right now.

Really, Mom?!

CRACK! Earsplitting crash. SLAM! The sound of splintering wood and the house rocks. The entire porch roof - it's a long porch - buckles and slaps against the front of the house. The lights go out. The next wave slams the front door open and cruises down the hallway like it's normal and splashes icy water through the kitchen. Kind of puts the kibosh on a late-night singalong.

WHERE ARE ALL YOUR FRIENDS???!!!!! WHY AREN'T THEY CALLING US??!!!!!!!

A voice that cannot be mine is screaming insanely.

CALL THEM!!!!!!!!

She cannot call. The phones are down. We have no choice now. We have to ride out this storm. 

Make Me - Copyright © 2021 lisa stathoplos

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