“He’s dead,” I tell her. I say the address again into the yellow receiver, and hang up the phone. My bare feet, when I look down, are tangled up in the cord. I’m not skipping out on this. I’m going to take care of it. I’m going to do all the things the son of Dermot Ragazzino should do. But as much as I know this, I know that as soon as I can get away with it, I’m leaving Utica, heading south and due west. And I’m sure as hell not doing it in that Celica.

Woman in a Fan Chair

1975

I

They could only afford one motel room. Roy made that perfectly clear as they climbed the concrete arch of the Hubert Humphrey Bridge, the wind tugging at the station wagon and rain batting the windshield. “I want it understood right now,” he said, “because I don’t want a big production when we get there about how we have to have two rooms.”

The edict was preventive maintenance on Roy’s part; no one had mentioned the room. The children were squeezed into the backseat: Joe and Frankie in the middle, Matt and Karen on either end. Frankie was clutching a fishbowl, its top covered with perforated tinfoil. Karen hugged a large purple purse and was slumped against the door with a transistor radio pressed to her ear.

“There’s one,” Teresa said, turning around and squinting back at Merritt Island over the tops of the children’s heads. An ice chest filled with perishables sat on the front seat between them, and each time she moved, the chest squeaked against its lid. “Tell me you don’t see that.”

Roy could barely see the bridge. “I’m driving, Teresa.”

“It’s a funnel cloud,” she declared for the third time since they’d left the house, and for the third time all three boys writhed in their seats and peered through the back window at the ashen sky. Joe said he was pretty sure this one was coming down over the Catholic church, but Matt said it was the high school that was about to get it, and Frankie, nearly panting with excitement, all but shouted that the twister was aimed right for their house.

Roy felt the muscles in his jaw tighten. He gripped the steering wheel as if it were the collar of a man he was getting ready to punch. “I think we all just need to calm down. The wind isn’t even that strong.”

“This wind is terrible,” Teresa said.

“I’ll bet it’s sixty miles an hour, tops.”

“Ninety-four,” Karen said from the backseat. Her voice was calm, weighted with disinterest. In the rectangle of the rearview mirror, she caught Roy’s gaze and hinged the radio away from her ear. “The guy just said.”

“Okay, ninety-four. That’s still low-end for a hurricane.”