We Are Unprepared (22 page)

Over our second beer, I learned that Maggie had grown up in Waitsfield, near Camel's Hump. She was the first of three and the only girl. Her brothers both worked in finance in New York and couldn't believe that she had decided to come back to Vermont after Berkeley. She said she “always knew exactly what she wanted her life to look like, so deciding where to live after college was easy.” It was baffling to me that anyone could have so much clarity at that age, but I believed that she did. It was as if she'd skipped over the requisite years of bumbling pretense before getting to the good part, the self-awareness. I was only getting there now.

“That's also my biggest weakness,” she said, “hardheadedness. Once I made my mind up, I refused to consider any other path for myself.”

She said this as an unapologetic matter of fact and it was a relief to hear that she was flawed at all. Normally, I would have found such false modesty irritating, but I was happy to forgive that, too. She was becoming fuller, more real, before me.

“And let me guess,” Maggie said, taking a sip of beer before decoding me. “You're the country-boy-turned-urban-hipster, right? You probably grew heirloom tomatoes from a rooftop in Brooklyn and played in a bluegrass band before you moved here.”

“I
have
always wanted to play the banjo!”

“Of course you have.” She laughed.

“No,” I said. “I was more of a country-boy-barely-passing-as-an-urban-hipster. My heart wasn't in the act. But luckily, the same basic uniform is required for both roles, so it wasn't much of a sartorial challenge.”

Maggie laughed and slid back in her chair. “That
is
convenient.”

The wind blew hard and we looked around lazily, feeling no pressure to fill each space with conversation. It was still sunny and warm outside, but the wind had picked up noticeably, causing some of the festival tents to billow. Maybe it was the cold front coming from the west? This was the way we were conditioned to think by then—that each raindrop and gust of wind was part of a weather event and each weather event was a new threat. Still, I was too happy and relaxed to let weather disrupt our afternoon.

“I thought I might find you here!” I heard a voice from behind me shout.

I turned around to find Salty jogging toward us. He looked as if he had been running around for hours, but he wore a big smile.

“Hi!” I said, stiffening straight up. Was it okay that I was seen having drinks with Maggie? I wasn't supposed to be here. “We're just giving Badger here a little break.”

“Do you want to join us?” Maggie asked.

I wished I had thought of that.

“No, actually, I was hoping to round up a few more adults to help with the potato sack races. You guys interested?”

We looked at each other and shrugged.

“Great,” Salty said. “You can leave Badger here. I'll have Al keep an eye on him.”

Salty spoke with the scruffy guy at the beer taps, who agreed to watch the dog, and we all tromped off toward the section of the green that had been designated for kids' games.

A dodgeball set was just finishing up as we arrived and I saw August run toward me.

“Hey, buddy!” I said.

He wore the same suspicious face I had seen the last time Maggie was around, but he was too engaged in the activities at hand to be distracted for long.

“Ash, I won twice!”

I rumpled his hair with an extra dose of paternal affection and one eye on Maggie. My love for August was genuine, but for some reason I felt the need to play it up around her as evidence of my good-guy status.

Salty pulled us aside to explain our roles. We were to stand at opposite sides of the course, helping kids who fell and working to avoid collisions. (Apparently, local potato sack races had resulted in serious head trauma in the past.) Salty and several other adults with loud voices herded the competitors to the starting line and blew the whistle, which kicked off a melee of thrashing bodies, some laughing and some dead serious. Maggie and I cheered at the top of our lungs. We ran onto the course to help the fallen competitors off to the side and only had to carry one crying girl off to the medic tent for special attention. It was surprisingly fun, not only for the fleeting smiles I stole from Maggie.

I was particularly proud of August's performance on the potato sack field. He wasn't exceptionally athletic, but he had a scrappiness that I hadn't noticed before. It was the first time I'd seen August around his peers, and I was relieved to see that he fit in about as well as any of them. He was quirky and shabbily dressed, but Vermont was uniquely forgiving about such traits. I thought of my own dorky existence in grammar school, which was largely enjoyable. Pia once explained to me that “boys are allowed to be clueless freaks for much longer than girls are in our culture,” which may have explained this experience. I wished the same for August.

Maggie and I performed our duties through two more races and an informal medal ceremony at the gelato tent nearby. By then, I was exhausted and starving.

“C'mon,” Maggie said, tugging on my shirt to follow her before we could be recruited for anything else.

We walked along the edge of the green, where the festivities met the dark woods. To our left was the bustling festival and to our right was a thick patch of forest I had never noticed before. The afternoon sun streaked through tall conifers, dappling a floor cushioned with pine needles.

I had the sudden urge to do something—anything—to draw out the pleasurable moment. I had forgotten entirely about my earlier vow to avoid Maggie and could only think now of how badly I wanted her. She was two steps ahead of me, so I leaped forward and grabbed her hand, startling her slightly. Maggie looked back and, in an instant, I pulled her toward me and kissed her. She was still flush from the races and I could smell her around me as she held the kiss. At first, the effort was all mine, and then she kissed back softly. We both tasted metallic, from old beer and empty stomachs. It was dizzying.

Maggie stopped abruptly and pulled me several steps into the forest, out of the light and away from the crowd. It was all so careless of me, not to consider where we were and who might be watching, but none of that mattered to me then. All I cared about was that she let me kiss her again, there in the dark of the woods. And she did! She did, she did, she did. We pressed into each other for five more seconds before she pulled back and looked down. The freckles on her nose were blurry constellations just inches from my face.

“We can't do this.” I said it first, beating her to it and knowing that I was the one breaking rules.
I
was married.

Maggie nodded in agreement and stepped back.

We both stared at our feet at first, then I put my hand around the top of her arm. I liked the way my entire hand fit neatly around that part of her body.

We walked silently out of the woods, maintaining a few feet between us. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of who may have been looking and what rightful judgment they had for me. I was not a cheater. I didn't cheat, never had and never felt compelled to—not in any real way. There had been times, of course, when I'd gotten too drunk and fantasized about women I knew or looked a few too many times at Pia's hot friends, but that wasn't real. In fact, I always secretly believed that any infidelity in my marriage would be committed by Pia; I believed her moral compass was weaker. But
I
was the one who had committed this infraction, so apparently I had been wrong about that.

I walked behind Maggie toward the beer tent, where I supposed we would pretend to check on Badger or something, but we never made it that far.

“Hey, Ash!” August said as he ran toward us. “Did you hear about The Storm? It's coming, Ash!”

I looked around, unsure of what to make of this news. An older gentleman passing by in a hurry nodded wordlessly, confirming August's report.

Maggie jumped in. “August, where did you hear this?” She sounded like a teacher all of a sudden.

“I heard some people talking about it over there.”

He pointed to an old truck filled with melting snow that had been rented from a nearby ski resort for the grand tradition of sugar-on-snow. There was a camp stove parked beside it, heating dark amber syrup. Huddled around the dashboard in the cab was a group of old men chatting excitedly. Something was indeed happening.

“August, I have a serious job for you,” I said.

His eyes widened.

“I need you to go watch over Badger to make sure he's okay for another minute while I talk to those men.”

August nodded solemnly and walked to his post near the sleeping dog. I was eager to hear the latest news on The Storm, but I knew enough to give August a filtered version of the truth later. As for Maggie, I wasn't sure what to say next. She was still standing beside me and I was still feeling guilty, but also desperate to keep her close. Luckily, she didn't wait for an invitation and followed me to the truck, which floated in an ambrosial maple cloud.

“What's the latest?” I asked, doing my best impression of an old native.

“Storm's back,” one of the men in the group said. True to dialect, he dropped the
r
in storm and dragged the
a
for miles. “It's comin' haaader than they predicted.”

There was little useful information in this report, but I could see enough concern on their normally stoic faces to get the message. Salty was jogging toward us now, too.

“Keep your voice down,” he said before we could speak, the three of us huddled together. “I don't want anyone to panic. Nothing is happening this instant and there's no need to send this crowd running.”

Maggie spoke calmly. “So what
is
happening?”

“Well, it seems...” Salty started, looking around cautiously as if he was the only person in Isole privy to this information. “It seems the hurricane that just made landfall in North Carolina is still gaining in size and speed. It's expected to be a category five by the time it gets to the Jersey shore and the estimated footprint is just mind-boggling. They are predicting this one is already set to break historic records.” Salty was rambling in a voice I didn't recognize. “That's going to be a disaster in itself. But the real problem is that the cold front coming from the west that we thought would dissipate is gaining in force. Thanks to the sheer size of this hurricane, they are going to collide over New England. There's cold air coming down from Canada, too, in an unrelated event. When all this cold air hits the warm, wet air from the south, the pressure is going to crash and...the big storm is coming. And they had it wrong. It's coming and it's going to be like nothing we've ever seen.”

All the wrinkles on Salty's normally pleasant face seemed tensed and exaggerated at that moment. It was unnerving to see him so rattled. We wanted badly for that reprieve from The Storm—that perfect day at the Isole Festival—to be real, but it was just a mirage. We had been given one last, memorable day of brightness to hold on to before everything changed forever.

“When is this happening?” I asked in a low voice.

“Twenty-four, maybe thirty-six hours,” Salty said. “Word is spreading fast and people are going to start clearing out of here soon to get back to wherever they came from. You guys should probably do the same.”

“What about the festival?” I asked.

“The vendors can wrap up quickly and don't worry about the rest. Safety is our top priority for now. Ash, did you ever get that plywood I stacked up for you?”

Salty had ordered giant sheets of plywood weeks earlier for boarding up his own windows and, sensing that I wasn't an expert at such domestic matters, urged me to take a stack. I had been putting off that chore for weeks, which I felt stupid about now. With Pia gone, I had no car and no way of preparing us for this storm. And would Pia come back in light of this forecast? I didn't know now.

“We'll stop by my place, then throw it in the truck before I drop you off,” Salty concluded, reading the panic on my face. “Meet me back here in ten minutes.”

With that, he jogged off to tend to whatever countless other responsibilities he had assigned himself at the event, leaving Maggie and me alone together.

“I should get Badger,” she said quietly.

“Yeah.”

We stood there another moment, looking around. The mood was shifting fast as people checked their phones and gathered their kids. Even the perfect blue sky above us had darkened as clouds moved in and the wind picked up. The festival was over. In case there was any question about that, one of the enormous banners above us—my banner—had come untethered at one end and flapped wildly. I could feel my heart quicken at the realization that I had to part with Maggie indefinitely. That day had been perfect. Even the kiss. Especially the kiss. I felt guilty and angry with myself for the kiss, but incapable of stepping away from her. And it seemed possible that she felt something similar. Why else was she still there?

She looked up at me and shrugged sweetly. “One kiss for the end of the world.”

I nodded. It didn't seem like such a transgression when she put it that way and made me want more. I hadn't had nearly enough of Maggie. I grabbed her hands and squeezed them harder than I probably should have. I think she squeezed back. If anyone had noticed us, it wouldn't have looked quite right for two platonic friends, but it was the most restrained thing I could do while wanting her with my whole body.

The moment didn't last.

As I held Maggie's hands and looked into her eyes, I saw a fuzzy object marching toward us from the distance over her shoulder. It was Pia.

PART TWO

All day had the snow come down,—all day

As it never came down before,

And over the hills, at sunset, lay

Some two or three feet, or more;

The fence was lost and the wall of stone,

The windows blocked and the well-curbs gone,—

The haystack had grown to a mountain lift,

And the wood-pile looked like a monster drift

As it lay by the farmer's door.

The night sets in on a world of snow,

While the air grows sharp and chill,

And the warning roar of a fearful blow

Is heard on the distant hill;

And the Norther, see! on the mountain peak

In his breath how the old trees writhe and shriek!

He shouts on the plain, ho-ho! ho-ho!

He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow,

And growls with a savage will.

—Excerpted from “A Snow-Storm: Scene in a Vermont Winter”
by Charles G. Eastman of Montpelier, Vermont.
First published in 1848.