it began. But it wasn’t organic; Pia created it out of nothing. She saw the world for its potential and made interesting things happen. Life with someone like that is limitless.
“She’s rad,” my sister said later. “Fucking nuts, but rad.” That was Pia’s effect on people.
* * *
We drove along in silence, thinking about that party and the complicated pleasure of doom.
“I saw the birds,” Pia said quietly. The sun had reappeared. “The dead ones. It’s spooky—the hot weather and the sudden hail. Everything is a little wrong.”
I nodded and put a hand on her bare knee. There wasn’t much more to say, so I kept driving silently. It was eighty degrees when we woke up, and now the dashboard said sixty. The hail, the birds, the panicked shoppers. It was spooky, but I was grateful for the simple, shared task before us.
Forty-five minutes later, we were making our way up and down the aisles of Home Depot, joking about the impending apocalypse and thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.
“Of course, the dollar will crash after The Storms come, and we will have to turn to primitive forms of currency,” I said with a wide sweep of my arm as we passed the lawn mowers.
“Like spices and fermented cider and stuff?” Pia played along.
“No, much more primitive than that. Blow jobs primarily. Hand jobs also, though they aren’t worth nearly as much.”
She shrieked with laughter, turning several heads around us. Pia never cared who saw her laugh (or cry). I felt proud to be responsible for delighting this beautiful woman.
We bought a snow shovel and two pairs of work gloves, caulking and sheets of insulation. We didn’t know what we were doing, but it felt proactive. The hurried shoppers around us made small talk about which items were essential in which types of weather events and I studied them closely, eager to pass as an experienced local. We bought what they bought and hoped they were right.
Several hours and hundreds of dollars later, Pia and I were drinking wine on our back porch again, surrounded by bags of items that promised to keep us safe from whatever was coming. The back porch was the best part of that house, looking out on our unkempt backyard that dissolved into dark woods. It was home.
I don’t remember the indoors of my childhood. I grew up in a pretty Victorian house, bigger than most of my classmates’ homes and lovingly cared for, but I didn’t spend much time inside it. My parents were strong believers in the character-building properties of outdoor play, so they hurried us into the woods behind our house as soon as the sun was up each morning. We played until we were shivering, hungry or injured and then slept as if we were dead each night. My siblings eventually resisted this parenting technique, which would undoubtedly classify as some form of neglect today, but I embraced it until high school. The woods were freedom to me: undeveloped; unregulated by grown-ups and infinite in their potential for discovery. There was an order to the woods, but it wasn’t dictated by man. I wanted to understand that order, to have dual citizenship in both the natural and human worlds. Passing freely between them seemed the ultimate power. So I became a voracious consumer of science and nature writing. I wanted to know every species of wildlife and the subtle languages with which they spoke to one another. I wanted to be a part of that organism and welcomed by its inhabitants.
With puberty and the new concerns of young adulthood, my commitment to that mission waned and I eventually left the woods. I went inside. I didn’t think much about that departure at the time, but I’ve come to realize that it came at a cost. The sense of purpose and belonging I’d had in those woods hadn’t been replaced by anything in adulthood.
Pia had her head resting in my lap as we swung back and forth on the bench watching the sun set. It was warm again and there was no evidence of the surprise hailstorm that had barged through earlier that day.
“This isn’t what September is supposed to look like,” I said, shaking my head. I was comfortable with her there in my arms, but unable to relax entirely.
“But this is lovely,” Pia said with her eyes closed. Beauty, she believed, had inherent value. “Remind me what September in Vermont is supposed to look like.”
I swatted a mosquito from her forehead and thought for a moment.
“I don’t know... Colder, quieter... The wind should be louder than the bugs and animals. Do you know that some years on Halloween, we would have to trick-or-treat in the snow? That’s only a few weeks away.”
Pia opened her eyes and touched my face. “I don’t think that’s going to happen ever again, my love. It’s sad, really. Lots of things are going to be different for our kids.”
It was a surprisingly dour observation considering Pia’s recent obsession with having children. But I didn’t know then that her attention had already shifted away from those hopeful plans.
“SURFACE WATERS ARE expected to reach eighty-two degrees—maybe even higher—sometime in November. We will also see warm, moist air traveling up the Gulf Coast and very low wind shear.”
A familiar NPR storm reporter’s voice issued from my desk radio as I stared at the computer screen, attempting to work. It was only a few days since news of The Storms broke and the first day since we moved to Vermont that I deviated from my morning work routine. Normally, I woke up around seven, drank one cup of coffee at the kitchen table with Pia, who was less enthusiastic about mornings, and brought a second cup back upstairs at eight, where I posted up at a large antique desk in our airy bedroom. From my desk chair I could see the backyard over the top of my computer screen and a banged-up thermometer that had been nailed outside the window by a previous owner. If I worked until two—including breaks for more coffee and lunch—I could get more client work done than I ever did in the office. My colleagues back in Manhattan seemed satisfied with the arrangement, so I was careful not to abuse it.
But on that day I couldn’t sit still or will myself to turn off the radio. I was already on my third cup of coffee, which was bad pacing. “It could start with a series of nor’easters this winter, each moving up from the southeast and hitting inbound arctic systems from the northwest,” the deep radio voice continued. “Everyone from Chicago down to DC and as far north as Maine can expect several feet of total accumulations and high, damaging winds at various times. Those storms alone will be costly and dangerous. But there’s another possible scenario that would be worse. The frequency and intensity of this year’s hurricane projection makes it likely that a tropical storm caused by the record-breaking ocean temperatures will be gathering around the same time as these snowstorms. Because the water temperatures are higher than we’ve ever seen, we don’t quite know how large any one of these hurricanes might get, but we know they could be enormous. If the arctic air coming in from Canada and the Midwest collides with this warmer air from the Atlantic and the Gulf, we will face the ‘frankenstorm’ effect that we saw back in 2012. But in this case, that cold air will be moving faster and covering more of the US than we’ve ever seen before. Here, again, we’re in uncharted territory.
“There are so many variables that could determine this winter storm season, but given what we know, it’s wise to assume that the eastern side of the US is looking at several hundred square miles of direct contact with at least one massive hurricane and several blizzards, with accompanying flooding and broad wind damage. I’m not even sure hurricane and blizzard are adequate terms for what could happen here. If any of these storms are as large as the most pessimistic
