Rushing Waters (7 page)

“We'll see how it goes. We can always come uptown if we get bored,” Peter told her, and Anna wished him luck before they hung up. Half an hour later the three girls were on their way uptown with Anna's mother, who also thought it was a bad idea for the boys to stay downtown.

“They probably think they're cool and macho not evacuating,” Anna said with a disgusted look as the girls chattered in the car on the way to the Upper East Side. Both her roommates were from other cities and were happy to have a place to stay. Their parents had been calling frantically, ever since the first warnings of the hurricane, and had called Anna's mother to thank her for taking care of them. And Ben's mother would have been happy to have Peter stay with them. She loved Peter, and he had become part of the family in the past two years. But the two boys thought it seemed more “adult” and “manly” to stay put, and they were curious to watch the hurricane from their own windows instead of evacuating. Ben had told his parents they'd be fine, had food and water and everything they needed. And his parents reluctantly agreed to the plan and assured Peter's parents the boys would be safe, although they would have preferred that they come uptown.

Peter and Ben went out for a walk that afternoon with Mike, to give him some exercise, and were surprised by how strong the wind was. There were gusts that nearly swept them off their feet. It was exciting, and it was after four o'clock when they went back to the apartment, less than two hours before Hurricane Ophelia was supposed to hit. And even Mike had been happy to get some air. They were tired of being cooped up in the apartment all day. They had finished the first box of doughnuts by then, a can of Pringles, and a bag of chips, washed down with Gatorade.

They made sandwiches in the kitchen before it got dark, and Ben gave Mike his dinner, and then they sat down to eat and talk and wait for the storm to hit. Anna had called them several times that day and told them they were idiots for not evacuating and coming uptown. But at least she knew that in a sixth-floor apartment, they might eventually get hungry when they ran out of food, but they weren't going to drown. She and her friends had watched movies all afternoon, and her parents were glued to the Weather Channel, watching the progression of the storm, which was moving faster than earlier reports had predicted and was gaining speed. Anna and her roommates were tired of watching the same images and interviews repeated again and again on TV. There was nothing to do but wait for the storm to hit, and see how bad it really was.

It was five o'clock when Gina finally returned Charles's calls. He was nearly frantic by then, wondering where they were. He had been in New York for almost two days, and hadn't heard a word from her. And for once, she apologized profusely the minute he picked up her call.

“I'm so sorry. My phone was dead.” She sounded like she was in an airport or a train station, with a huge amount of noise. He could barely make out what she was saying. “Why didn't you tell me you were coming?”

“I didn't know till the last minute. I sent you a text from the airport when I left, and started calling you Friday night as soon as I arrived. Where are you?” He was desperate to see them, and seriously worried about them now, with the hurricane due to hit New York that night.

“We're at a shelter in SoHo. They evacuated our apartment building last night. They just set up a location to charge cell phones, so now I can call you. This place is a madhouse, but the girls are loving it. There are a million kids here, and cats and dogs. They're delighted we have to stay here.” Gina sounded relaxed and in good spirits, which was more than he could say for himself after the last forty-eight hours of trying to reach her, with the hurricane bearing own on New York, and no idea where they were.

“Where's Nigel? Is he with you?” Charles sounded worried, but Gina was calm, despite having to evacuate with the girls.

“No, he went out to Red Hook in Brooklyn yesterday, to try and secure his studio and take his cameras and equipment to a friend's. They were planning to be there all last night moving things, and he was going to try to help some of the other guys today. There are a number of famous artists there. And Red Hook was one of the hardest-hit areas last time. He's afraid it might be again. I haven't heard from him since he left yesterday. He said he'd find us. He'll probably show up at the shelter tonight or tomorrow, after things calm down.”

“He left you alone with the girls?” Charles was shocked, although he usually tried to refrain from making comments about Nigel to her.

“All the equipment he owns is in his studio. He can't afford to just leave it, and stay with us. He'll turn up sooner or later, and we're fine. The girls aren't even scared. They're happy playing with the other kids. They think it's an adventure.” She had packed bags for all three of them, with enough clothes for a few days, toiletries, medicine, and their passports. Hers was important because she had a work visa in it from
Vogue.
And Charles had an idea as he listened to her. He didn't know how she would feel about it, but he would have preferred staying close to the girls.

“Would you mind terribly if I come to the shelter to see them? I don't have to stay if you don't want me to. And if Nigel comes, I'll leave. But I've been waiting to see them all weekend.” She hesitated for only an instant as she thought about it, but she couldn't see any harm in it, and she was sure Nigel would understand. He didn't like Charles, but had no real issue with him, since he was the winner in the contest for her.

“That's fine. He'll probably come tonight, but not till late. He couldn't call me either since my battery was dead, so I don't know his plans. But the girls would love to see you.”

“Thank you,” he said gratefully. “They haven't evacuated my hotel yet, but they might later.” She told him where the shelter was located, in a school not far from where he was, and a few minutes later he was braving the fierce winds, and walking toward the temporary shelter three blocks away. It was pandemonium when he got there, with close to a thousand people in the gym and designated classrooms, on cots and in sleeping bags on the floor. Just as she had said, there were dogs, cats, a woman with two parrots in a cage, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, and a boy with an iguana on his head. There were children of all ages running everywhere, and food was being served in the school cafeteria. Charles spent twenty minutes wending his way through the crowd, and then he saw them in the corner of the gym. Gina was talking to a group of women, and Lydia and Chloe were playing tag with their new friends and squealing with delight. Gina didn't see him until he was standing next to her, relieved to have found them. People looked as though they had dressed hastily, and the room was stifling from the heat of a thousand bodies. The smell of food and people was heavy in the air. Gina glanced up at Charles and smiled cautiously when she saw him.

“I can't believe you found us.”

“Neither can I.” He was wearing jeans, as she was, and a perfectly starched collared blue shirt, with his raincoat over his arm. He looked as respectable as he always did, and she was wearing a T-shirt with no bra with her jeans, and silver sandals. And by then his daughters had spotted him and came running over.

“Daddy!” they screamed happily, and threw their arms around his legs. “How did you know we were here? Did you come to New York just to see us? A hurricane is coming, named Ophelia.”

“There's a girl in my class named Ophelia,” Lydia added. “She's mean and I don't like her.” Charles smiled at what she said.

“I know about the hurricane,” he told them, squatting down with an arm around each of them as he hugged them. “I came on business, and I've been trying to find you since Friday. Mommy just told me you were at the shelter, so here I am.” He looked as ecstatic as they did.

“Can we have ice cream? They have some in the cafeteria.” A nearby supermarket had donated it to use immediately, before it could melt once the power was off. Gina nodded when Charles glanced at her for her permission. He followed the girls to the cafeteria then, and they were back half an hour later, as the girls finished the last of their ice cream, which had run out by the time they left the cafeteria. He wiped their faces, just as they got to Gina, who was staring at the enormous screen that had been set up, so everyone at the shelter could follow the progress of the hurricane. It had just hit the Jersey shore, and was dragging houses, trees, boats, and several buildings in its wake. The room fell silent as people watched, and knew it would reach land in Manhattan within minutes. The reporter on the screen said that high tide had just been reached. The circumstances had become uncomfortably similar to Sandy in the last few hours. There were weather maps in the corner of the screen, showing where it was expected to hit hardest. Red Hook, where Nigel was, in Brooklyn, was foremost among them, and Charles could see that Gina was worried. It hurt to think it had been a long time since she felt that way about him. She was terrified that something would happen to Nigel. And the weather map showed as well that lower Manhattan was likely to be clobbered, just as it had been before. It seemed incredible that another hurricane so similar to Sandy was about to beat the city to a pulp again. Experts had predicted it as a possibility all along, but no one had believed them. And suddenly the safety measures that had been rejected since Sandy seemed like a tragedy yet again. And without question, people in the suburbs and outlying areas, and even some in the city, were about to lose their homes.

In the next few minutes, they could see on the screen the enormous waves that engulfed the southern tip of Manhattan, Battery Park, the Lower East Side, the Village, Tribeca, the West Side Highway, and Staten Island. It looked like a tidal wave hitting New York. Many of them had seen it five years before, and now here it was again. Charles and Gina stood in shocked silence as they watched with hundreds of other adults in the shelter, while their children went back to their games, oblivious to what was happening on the screen. Watching it made Charles grateful that they were at the shelter, instead of Gina being in their apartment on the Lower East Side, right next to the East River. They could see familiar buildings being battered, and one woman burst into tears watching her ground-floor apartment on the West Side Highway disappear under water, as the river overflowed and swept an entire street of cars away like so many toys, while other vehicles simply disappeared.

“Oh my God,” Charles said in a muffled voice, as he instinctively put an arm around Gina's shoulders and pulled her close to him and held her. It was infinitely worse than anyone had expected, and there was no doubt that lives would inevitably be lost as the flood tides rose and swept across the Zone 1 areas that had suffered similar damage before. It was a nightmarish déjà vu for them all. And all Gina could hope, as she watched it with her ex-husband's arm around her shoulders, was that Nigel would survive the waves washing over Red Hook in Brooklyn, and that he had already left his studio. The waves were said to be twelve feet high in some areas, fifteen in others, and the Hudson River had washed over its Manhattan banks again.

The doorman and superintendent came to check on Grace and Ellen again just before the storm was supposed to hit. They were waiting peacefully in the apartment, sitting on the plastic-wrapped couches, with battery-operated lamps around them, and Blanche on Grace's lap. The wind was howling, and one of the trees outside the building had fallen over earlier, but the floods hadn't started. Grace and Ellen heard it distinctly when they did. It was like a roaring and rushing sound, with crashing as equipment fell or was swept along. They looked out the window and saw the entire street of cars disappear beneath the water, and within instants, there was the sound of the doors breaking in the lobby, and they were suddenly standing in several inches of water, which rose to their knees almost immediately, as they escaped up the stairs, while Grace clutched the dog. The water stopped halfway up the stairs for a few minutes, almost as though it were resting, and then continued to climb. All the furniture in the living room was underwater by then, and the flood in her living room was steadily rising. And as Ellen and her mother watched in horror, there was a frantic pounding on the door, and the superintendent of the building and two policemen forced their way in, and pushed open the door. They saw the two women on the stairs, and the men from the rescue unit told them there was a boat outside to get them out, as they waded toward the stairs to reach them.

“You need to come with us,” the rescue team told them, and Ellen looked at her mother fiercely.

“We're going with them, Mom.” Grace nodded and ran up the stairs. She reappeared with their two small go bags, much to Ellen's astonishment, and she had put on a baby harness and slipped Blanche into it so the dog was secure and she had free hands. The water was to the men's waists, and almost to her chest when she and Ellen came down the stairs. The superintendent grabbed their bags from them and held them high to keep them dry. And the policemen in diving suits half-carried the two women out of the apartment and across the lobby, which had filled with water. The water had reached the dog's collar by then, as Grace pushed the baby harness higher to keep Blanche's head out of the water. They moved through it in total darkness, and as they went through the front door, they saw the boat with the searchlights outside, and the two policemen lifted both women up and heaved them into it. More strong hands grabbed them, and set them down in the boat. Grace and Ellen were soaking wet and barefoot from wading through the water, and Blanche looked like a drowned rat in her harness, but all three of them were alive, and hadn't stumbled or slipped beneath the water as capable hands had guided them through the darkness and water in the lobby out to the waiting boat, which was buffeted by the winds and currents like a toy. There were three other people in it who had been rescued, and the policeman operating it turned up the powerful engine and drove the boat several blocks away to higher land, where they were assisted out, wrapped in blankets, and put in an ambulance to dry off and catch their breath. Someone handed Ellen and her mother towels and dry clothes and rubber flip-flops, which they put on, still shocked by what they'd been through, and then Grace dried Blanche off with one of the towels. The poor dog was shaking. They were led out of the ambulance into a van then, as another boatload of rescued flood victims arrived, and those in Grace and Ellen's group were driven to a shelter close by. They still had their go bags with them, although Ellen was sure that everything in them was soaking wet, and they walked into the shelter looking dazed. Grace murmured something to Ellen about how guilty she felt for not evacuating sooner and taking up the rescuers' time when they surely had more important things to do, but she was grateful they had come when they did.