The Measures Between Us (11 page)

“Oh, I was much less curvy back then.”

“That's not what I meant,” Henry said quickly. “I just meant I didn't know you were a serious athlete. You've never mentioned it before.”

But it was what Henry had meant. Samantha's breasts and hips were impossible to ignore. In class she almost always wore worn jeans and a men's white oxford shirt buttoned a little tight across the chest. It wasn't showy and yet it was, in a kind of offhanded way. Cowboy boots too, and gold hoops in her ears. The male
students in class often stared, flirted clumsily with her, and Henry, when he wasn't careful, sometimes gazed too long as well. Her hair was usually a little messy, as if she hadn't had time to brush it, and the only makeup she wore was lipstick.

“I quit running and, bam, I got this shape, almost overnight. It was really weird. It was like my body was just waiting for me to stop.” Samantha glanced up at the ceiling, as if trying to locate a memory. “All of a sudden, the boys started noticing me. It was like I didn't exist before—when I was just a rail—and then they saw me when I stopped training and figured out I was a girl.” She shook her head slightly. “It's funny now, but it was pretty disturbing back then. I didn't really know how to deal with all the attention.”

Henry didn't say anything, hoping the conversation might steer itself away from the subject of her body. He flashed again to an image of his wife, at home, maybe listening to the radio to find out who was winning. They had old snapshots from previous races, Lucinda almost always holding a hand in front of her face because she hated photos of herself. The only time he could take a clear picture was when he took her by surprise. Even at their wedding, when she looked frighteningly beautiful, she kept running away from the photographer.

Maybe she'd ventured out to their modest backyard, where before she was pregnant she liked to have a cigarette and a glass of wine. In the late summer, the grind of the crickets left her speechless. It's too much sound not to be saying anything, she marveled. It must mean something—is there an insect scientist at school you can ask? I want to know why they're chattering so much, what do they know that we don't?

“It's nice to have a day off, isn't it?” Henry said.

Samantha nodded. “I guess. It's only grad school, though.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I just meant it's not like garbage collecting, when having a day off is probably truly great, so you won't smell like crap.” She ate a few stray potato chips left over in her sandwich basket. “I don't mean school is slack or anything, just that the requirements aren't as, say, stringent as other jobs.”

You remind me of my wife, Henry thought; she doesn't believe in school, either.

“Dr. Wheeling, I didn't mean I'm not serious about school. I hope that's not what you thought I was saying.”

Henry waved her quiet. “I know what you meant. It wasn't long ago that I was a grad student myself.” He smiled. “Being in school does have certain advantages over garbage collecting.”

The waiter appeared at the table to clear their plates. He pointed to Henry's empty beer mug and asked if he wanted another. I should go home, he thought, I don't need to be out drinking beer with Samantha Webster. I should go home and tell Lucy about the race, fill in everything she missed; we can take a stab at pronouncing those African names together, we can fail together. I can put an ear to her stomach, listen for a faint heartbeat, a sound like a light pulsing stubbornly in the distance.

“Sure, I'll have another,” he said to the waiter. “Why not.”

Interviewer: Henry Wheeling, PHD

Transcriber: Jack C.

Subject: E. Phillips, 8116 River Road

Damage to property on Davidson/Ortiz scale: 6.3

E. PHILLIPS:     I don't even understand why I'm here, really.

DR. WHEELING:     [
inaudible
]

E. PHILLIPS:     In this office, I mean, sitting here talking to a
stranger … You're a doctor?

DR. WHEELING:     A psychologist.

E. PHILLIPS:     Oh, right. Gordon told me that. He said you study people's minds but that this wasn't an appointment about that—not sure what you'd want with ours, come to think of it.

DR. WHEELING:     Did he mention anything else?

E. PHILLIPS:     He said you wanted to talk about the floods. He said you were gathering stories from all over the county, but that you weren't from FEMA. And that there was some compensation for us participating.

DR. WHEELING:     Yes. We're doing a project on the weather changes over the last decade or so, and how they're affecting
people—people like yourselves who've had direct experience.

E. PHILLIPS:     And you want my perspective on it? Why? I can't imagine I'll be able to tell you something you don't already know, or that other folks can't say better.

DR. WHEELING:     We're assembling all kinds of data, to get as clear a picture as possible.

E. PHILLIPS:     I'll try, but there's nothing clear about it, it's almost like the opposite of clear. The river, too, that goes clear to brown. It used to be I could hear a thunderclap and know exactly how many days it would take for the water to turn colors. Now, who knows. It's a little haywire.

DR. WHEELING:     So …do you remember the first flood?

E. PHILLIPS:     Depends what you mean by first. We had one when I was a kid, too. But if by first you mean the first in this round, then yes, I remember. I remember the original one, too, though I imagine you're not interested in that.

DR. WHEELING:     Right. We're focused on the later ones, for this study.

E. PHILLIPS:     There's not all that much to tell. The weathermen take over the news, they promise it'll rain and rain and rain. They point to their maps and get all serious and crowd out all the other news. Biblical. They don't use that word, of course, but that's what they mean even though they don't say it.

DR. WHEELING:     How so?

E. PHILLIPS:     The proportions they're talking about. The days and nights and days of downpours. They put these charts up, fancy loud colors and computerized screens, and they
tell us the river will rise a certain amount, they try to pin it to specific hours, make it something exact, all numbers.

DR. WHEELING:     Do you believe it's a message?

E. PHILLIPS:     A message?

DR. WHEELING:     A religious message.

E. PHILLIPS:     Oh, no. Not exactly.

DR. WHEELING:     You mentioned the Bible, though.

E. PHILLIPS:     That's the weathermen. They talk and repeat the same things, almost like verses they've memorized and are Sunday preaching. And they don't have an explanation, either. No one has a good explanation, and believe me—I've looked. They put up other years on the screen and that doesn't really tell us anything. I've read all the newspapers and been to the library and checked out books on the subject and no one has a good explanation. Maybe you do?

DR. WHEELING:     I'm afraid I don't.

E. PHILLIPS:     But you're looking for one, right? That's why I'm here, isn't it?

DR. WHEELING:     In a way.

E. PHILLIPS:     What's also strange is that halfway across the country it's dry as a desert and the farmers can't grow anything. Them and us want the exact opposite forecasts, if only we could trade. You might as well just chalk it up to chance, just the way of things.

DR. WHEELING:     Is that what it seems like? Random?

E. PHILLIPS:     Maybe I'm not educated enough to understand—I didn't go to college. But why focus on the why anyway. The sky opens up, the river rises to meet it, there's not much to do other than watch and hope.

DR. WHEELING:     You could leave. You could have sought shelter elsewhere. The county has a lot of emergency management plans.

E. PHILLIPS:     I know, it's on the newscasts, crawling along the bottom, and the sheriff announces it from his loudspeaker too when he comes around in that county truck of his. That's not for me.

DR. WHEELING:     Why?

E. PHILLIPS:     Who wants to be chased from their home? It's weather. There's no intent behind it, even if it feels like sometimes there is. I know you said you wanted to know about the recent floods, but the one in '52—I was just a little girl then—we didn't get all these warnings like we have now. No endless song of “Get batteries and candles and water in bottles. Don't touch the downed power lines. Go to the high school gymnasium.”

It set upon us before we even knew and our father scurried us away but not far, just half a mile or so up to higher ground, to somewhere we could still see the house from. It was the four of us, with our horse, too, Hobart, already too old, clomping along River Road. My father said, “Pray,” and my older brother said, “Why?” and rightly got smacked. Then he started wailing and he said, “I just meant what do you want us to pray for, like life or health or the house or for Hobart, I didn't mean I wouldn't or it was no use.”

DR. WHEELING:     Do you think that's why you stuck it out during these recent floods? Because of that memory?

E. PHILLIPS:     No. No bearing whatsoever.

DR. WHEELING:     Then why? Did you not believe that it was dangerous?

E. PHILLIPS:     You haven't lived on a river, have you?

DR. WHEELING:     No, why?

E. PHILLIPS:     It rises, it falls, that's the cycle of it. Those rains—sometimes, endless as they are, they're almost like a release. As crazy and upside-down as it is, this weather, the storms that feel like they're stuck and they'll never move on, there's some strange truth in them.

DR. WHEELING:     Truth?

E. PHILLIPS:     Right, truth and honesty. The river's like that, too. You can map it, you can measure the levels, say where it begins and ends and how many miles it is and where the mouth is and where it attaches to another river. But those are just numbers and guesses at this thing that always shifts. They don't translate into what it's like to go down there and wade in and have it curl around your feet and ankles.

DR. WHEELING:     It would have just been temporary, though, seeking shelter elsewhere. Once the weather turned—

E. PHILLIPS:     What if they didn't let us back? You never know. Who can you trust now, anyway? They might decide it's too dangerous and then what? They'd give us some money to relocate somewhere we never wanted to be in in the first place? No thanks. It's not for me, I like going to sleep and waking up to the sound of water. That's home to me, and in a way, whether it's coming from the sky or the ground, the distinction isn't all that important.

DR. WHEELING:     But what about the danger?

E. PHILLIPS:     You keep asking about that, like you want me to change my mind. That word: When you say danger, that's things like criminals, chemical spills, war.

DR. WHEELING:     So …man-made things.

E. PHILLIPS:     Right, things of our own undoing. Rain, water, the river—I …I …

DR. WHEELING:     What?

E. PHILLIPS:     I don't know …my sweet memories probably aren't what you want to hear about, but we have eagles on the river. When I was a little girl and I saw my first one, I thought it was like a dinosaur—so huge. Their wingspans, and they fly so high except when they're fishing. It's comforting that we still have animals like that. When they flee, maybe I'll follow too. [
laughs
]

DR. WHEELING:     Did your husband want to leave?

E. PHILLIPS:     Probably more than me. He's more reasonable.

DR. WHEELING:     Did you talk about it?

E. PHILLIPS:     A little, I suppose. He calls me a dreamer. He says, What're you dreaming about? Sometimes I just make up something, not because I want to lie to him but because sometimes it's hard to put into words. My brain doesn't work like his and his doesn't work like mine. We both know it so it's okay. He says: What're you dreaming about, and I say if I told you then it wouldn't be a dream. He'd sulk early on, like I was keeping a secret, then slowly he accepted it.

DR. WHEELING:     Accepted what?

E. PHILLIPS:     Oh, I don't know, accepted that I couldn't explain everything, accepted that each of us gets to keep some things to ourselves. Not big things, nothing that would cut through the other person, just …just ways of seeing.

Is this really helpful?

DR. WHEELING:     And what if it had kept raining? What if it had never let up?

E. PHILLIPS:     I guess we'll see. Maybe that'll happen, judging from the pattern of late …Are you interviewing Mr. Dennis, up in Monroe? You'd probably have to go to him. I don't think he'd come here.

DR. WHEELING:     I don't know who that is.

E. PHILLIPS:     You should talk to him, if he lets you. He catches eel by building this rock thing like a curlicue. It's an Indian technique. When the water gets really low, you can see it, it looks like a punctuation mark on the riverbed. Rock by rock he builds it, every spring. He wades out there by moonlight with a rope around his waist and one end tied around a tree on the shore so he won't float away.

Do you know when spawning season is?

DR. WHEELING:     No.

E. PHILLIPS:     Nor me. As long as you're collecting all these stories, though, he'd give you one. It's called a weir—now I remember—that contraption he builds. I don't imagine it survived the floods, either. Luckily there's no shortage of rocks to rebuild it with. I wouldn't be surprised if he has a theory on all this rain, too.

DR. WHEELING:     Why is that?

E. PHILLIPS:     He has a lot of ideas. [
laughs
] My husband said that once, years ago when we ran into him at the True Value buying a drill: “That man certainly has a lot of theories,” Gordon said. I told him: “If you build something like that, you are entitled to have all the theories you damn well please.”