Severe Weather Warning - by Miriam Webster
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PROLOGUE
Severe Storm Prediction
I was walking the dog at the beach when I saw rats throwing themselves into the sea, spilling over the shoreline in a great tumble of nose and tail. All the birds left. The dogs’ hair prickled and stood on end; electrified, we thought, by atmospheric changes ominous and invisible. At dusk they let out one, unified bark. The cats stayed indoors, licking themselves. Those who find meaning in constellations blamed it on the moon in Scorpio, that volatile sign. Those of sound mind blamed it on climate change. People coupled and uncoupled as usual. There was some flooding, and trams through the city were delayed. The tidal surge underwhelmed and then retreated, moon drawn, out to sea.
But nobody died that night. No ships ran aground, as the weather report had predicted. The ocean hurled itself at the beaches and threw up a modest quantity of seafoam. No one went into labour from the stress, and no breast milk came in late. The Premier retracted his state of emergency.
Like everyone in the state, especially the meteorologists, I was disappointed in the morning when I awoke to a clear, cool day.
PART ONE: DISAPPOINTMENT
Enigma
The morning is insultingly bright – blue out the window, dust motes luminous inside. From between the venetians, sunlight stalks across the floor in brilliant lines. I heard rain in the night and one loud clap of thunder, but it vanished as quietly as a phantom, and the morning holds no evidence of its having come at all.
What a cheat.
I Have Some Questions
Where did it go and how did the news reports get it so wrong? Who was at fault? I thought journalism, like science, was supposed to be factual. I prefer novels, palm readers, psychoanalysis, and dalliances with astrology. Like everybody else I have so many doubts. We are living in an age of uncertainty. I want something to hold on to.
End of the World
Everyone has been waiting for something extraordinary to happen. We went to the rally, we demanded action on climate change, we wanted a rupture. An essay I wrote about writing from the edge of environmental catastrophe was accepted for publication. This was significant, and good; but I felt slimy, like I’d just capitalised on something terrible. Sold out. In a spirit of hopefulness Rupert and I make plans to have a baby. Unbelievably, it seems like the only way to invest the future.
Another Level of Intimacy
Since we started talking about pregnancy, Rupert has become fascinated with my nipples. Does the milk come out of one hole or are there many, like a showerhead? His curiosity stumps us and in the end we have to google it.
Fear
There is love and creation and then there is this feeling, though I’d never tell him, that my desire to get pregnant is motivated by fear; some premonition that if I don’t launch myself into something inconceivable, all desire might fade away.
Forecast
I believe in paying attention to the omens.
I have been waiting for a sign.
The storm never came so I guess I didn’t get one.
The Truth
They say that ambivalence is the one true emotion. If you don’t know how to feel about something, you must really care about it. Or it must really bother you. I feel this way about my father, procreation, pedicures, the work of writing, and climate change. Maybe I am weak-willed because I was hoping for an apocalypse to sort out my feelings about the future.
But the storm refused to be my catalyst.
PART TWO: AMBIVALENCE
The Family Life
I don’t know if it’s acceptable to have kids anymore. Procreating at the edge of the abyss sounds arrogant and dangerous, but my generation can only go on so long feeling this disempowered. Sooner or later you have to find something to do.
The Writing Life
It is difficult to know whether you are doing the right thing. I don’t even know how to recycle properly. I don’t know if there is any point in being a writer, in being a woman, in being anything at all. It seems to me like you should always be pleasing someone. But who?
Loss of Life
No living human has ever seen a pair of eels having sex. How do they do it? What can their mysteries tell us about nature, or desire? Eels have always come to me in dreams. Once, in Holland with a man I used to love, I ate one, smoked. It was not to my taste.
All the eels are disappearing, presumably because we’ve done something to make them go away. We’re always doing that. Freud spent months trying to find the eel’s gonads when he was a youngster in Trieste. In the end he found them and only afterward did he begin thinking about psychoanalysis.
An eel is a sliding mysterious thing. Parapraxis, a slip of the tongue.
Story of My Life
I have an uneasy relationship with authenticity. I’m of Irish ancestry and they are a suspicious people; just look at their folklore. Selkies having their sealskins stolen by lustful fishermen. Leprechauns are horrid, devious little creatures. Faeries sneak from the forest to take your children away, leaving one of their own in the baby’s place – a changeling. Someone’s always trying to pull the wool over your eyes. That’s why I can never get behind political causes. I want to be passionate and good but I can’t bear the thought of ideology.
Anyway, you can never tell if something is true just by looking at it.
PART THREE: DESIRE
Occasional
Occasionally I don’t use a keep cup. Occasionally I worry that wanting to have a baby is actually wanting to find something that will occupy my time.
Party
Dinner party scheduled for the night after the missed storm. We want to tell our friends about the baby idea, even though we haven’t started trying yet. We want to them to say: yes! Congratulations. We want them to tell us it’s a good idea and not a stupid one.
The Weather Has Been Absolutely Hysterical Lately
Storms are always named after women, as are boats. Storms, because they are erratic, unreasonable, and damp. Boats, because they hold you. My friend Helen is a force of nature. Hers is the opinion I fear the most.
Affirmations
The dinner party is terrible. Helen is being a real bitch. By the time I serve the meal everyone is obnoxiously drunk, and Bede has brought some ketamine so we all have a little sniff before dinner and then we don’t eat. Me and Rupert have a fight. We tell everyone about the baby idea and they laugh at us a bit until they realise we’re serious, and then they half-heartedly approve. I have more K, too much. Everyone leaves at 4 am feeling a bit weird.
Get to the Punchline!
In the morning I have a hangover. I lie in bed for a while and then wrap myself in a dressing gown and go outside to look at what remains of the dinner. My phone chimes with a text from Helen.
This baby idea, it says.
Fantastic! I can’t wait for you to have a baby!
And then on the phone screen: a drop of rain, a big impertinent blotch. The wind becomes upset. Like a bad joke, or a good one, the storm chooses its moment and finally, resoundingly, arrives.
The Storm
Collapsing on the city with the weight of a promise is the storm. I am caught beneath the purple sky in my unflattering dressing gown, abruptly soaked. Outside on the table, the wine glasses from last night fill with water and in the yard our dog chirps and barks with the thunder and rolls in puddles as they metastasise through the yard. I run inside and slap my wet things to the floor, topple into bed and meet Rupert there, who is warm and wondrous. Afterward we sleep soundly, though the storm swirls and heaves around the house, the river floods its banks, and gale force winds ground every flight out of the city. We do not wake until evening. Something is different, yet we feel no wiser. ▼
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