The Stormchasers: A Novel (2 page)

A
fter work, Karena decides to skip the movie and go for a drive. Being in the car has always soothed her—when she and Charles were fretful as infants, the only way they would sleep was loaded into their bassinet in the back of their parents’ Dodge Dart, and as a teenager Karena liked to sing as she drove, harmonizing with her best friend Tiff, cruising up and down the empty farm roads. Now Karena listens to NPR as she navigates her Volvo out of the city, taking 494 toward the airport and cutting south over the Mendota Bridge. She doesn’t have a plan, and it’s not until she passes the single spire of the Lone Oak Church that she realizes she’s leaving the exurbs behind: the new housing developments; the upscale strip malls with their shops for lattes and sushi and artisan bread.

Karena merges onto Highway 52 South, which would take her first to Tiff’s in Rochester, then home to New Heidelburg if she’d let it. She passes the natural gas refinery with its thousands of twinkling lights—Nintendo City, she and Charles used to call it—and the truck stop whose sign just says FOOD. Finally, across from the House of Coates bar, Karena sees what she has been looking for all along without knowing it. She pulls over, parks with her hazards on, and gets out on the shoulder.

Standing by itself in the middle of a field is a limestone arch. It was the first sign Karena and Charles had as children that they were really nearing the Twin Cities, which they did four or five times a year to visit their Uncle Carroll.
There’s the Arch to Nowhere!
whichever twin spotted it first would sing out, and in the front seat Frank, their dad, would clear his throat in a way that meant he might be laughing, and their mom, Siri, would turn to face them, her long nutmeg-colored hair swinging over the seat like a scarf.
Who can tell me what that arch used to be?
she’d ask, and Charles and Karena would say in unison,
A church!

You bet,
said Siri,
and don’t you ever forget it. They were brave, strong, uncomplaining people, and we need to be just like them,
and then she’d face front again.

Karena tries to summon the awe she used to feel looking at the Arch to Nowhere, the sense of it being one of the few remaining signs of the past, a tangible relic of her family’s history. She and Charles had long, whispered conversations about what might have happened to the church the arch was once attached to. Charles, of course, thought a tornado had taken it, and Karena still thinks this might have been true. Like most souvenirs of childhood, though, the arch no longer holds the magic it once did, and Karena now wonders how long it will be before it is knocked down for a subdivision or new mall. She thinks of the people who constructed it, carrying stones in their wagons and setting one atop the other, and of the disasters that likely befell them: illness, rattlesnake bite, the loss of children.

She sighs and puts her hands up to shield her face from her hair, which the wind from the west is whipping into tassels. The land is open here, and as flat as a game board, and the sunset over it is spectacular, a blaze of fluorescent orange and yellow. Popsicle colors streaked with purple clouds. Her brother is out there in the direction Karena is looking, somewhere in Tornado Alley. That’s all Karena knows for sure. She doesn’t know what Charles is doing for work—probably he’s a prep cook or janitor, a transient job that pays him under the table, money for his expensive summer stormchasing habit. He isn’t married, at least not legally, or Karena would have found those records. But is he alone? Is he lonely? Most importantly, is he hurt, is he curled in a ball in a motel room somewhere, is he all right? “Where are you, Charles?” Karena says. “I hope you’re okay.”

There is the hiss of truck brakes behind her, and when Karena turns she sees a man leaning across the cab of his eighteen-wheeler. “You all right, miss?” he asks.

Karena smiles and waves. “I am, thank you,” she calls.

“Just admiring the sunset?”

“Yup, that’s about the size of it.”

“Well, it is a beauty,” says the trucker. “You want some company to share it with maybe?”

Karena laughs. “No thanks. I was just about to head home, actually.”

“All right,” says the trucker. “Just checking. You have a good night now.”

“You too,” says Karena, and watches him pull off. He gives her a double blast on his air horn as he gets back on the road, and she walks back to her Volvo, feeling a little foolish. Well, what else did she expect to happen, standing on the side of the highway talking to herself. Of course somebody would think she needed help.

Still, it’s nice to know she can stop trucks at thirty-eight. Karena twists the rearview to look at her reflection. Her long pale hair is wind-blown, her cheeks reddened. From the truck cab the guy wouldn’t have seen the lines on her forehead, the circles under her slate-colored eyes. He would have just noticed a blonde—the Hallingdahl women don’t go gray. “Not bad,” says Karena, then crosses her eyes at herself and takes out her cell to call Tiff.

“I have officially become pathetic,” she says when Tiff picks up. “I’m sitting on the shoulder of Highway 52 congratulating myself for being trucker bait.”

“What?” Tiff says. There is a shriek behind her and she says, “Mommy is on the PHONE.” Tiff has five sons, ranging in age from fourteen to seven months.

“What’d you say?” she says. “Why are you on Highway 52? I thought we were going out tomorrow night, in your ’hood.”

“We are,” says Karena. One of Tiff’s boys emits a vibrating scream and Karena holds the phone away from her ear, wincing. “Sorry,” she says. “Bad time?”

“It’s always a bad time at Testosterone House,” says Tiff. “I cannot wait to come see you and drink about a hundred—do not hit him,” she says. “Do NOT. Put your hand down, NOW.”

“Okay,” says Karena, “I’ll let you go. Just checking in.”

“Wait,” says Tiff. “Hold on.” There is a swishing sound as though she’s in a washing machine, which probably means she’s walking, and then she says, “Okay, I’m hiding in the pantry. How are you? Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Thank you,” says Karena. “I’m fine. Missing Charles a little, but—”

“Well, it’s time you got over that bullshit,” Tiff says pertly. There has never been any love lost between Tiff and Charles. Then she says, “No. NO. How many times do I have to tell you? That’s it. Stand in the corner. GET IN THE CORNER—I’ve gotta go,” she says to Karena.

“Good luck,” Karena says and hangs up.

She is in a much better mood driving back to the Cities, and by the time she reaches her little house in Edina, she is humming. She enters through the back door and kicks her work heels into the corner of the kitchen with a flourish. The day has gone as well as can be expected, and now it is almost over. Karena has time for a short run before dinner, which she has decided will be wine and a take-out croque monsieur from Le P’tit Lapin. She changes into her jogging shorts and U of MN T-shirt, then scrubs up in the bathroom off the kitchen. Washing one’s face, Karena believes, is one of the great joys of life, especially after a long day’s work or being in the car. She plunges her face into water as cold as it will go and emerges sputtering like a horse, and it’s then that her phone rings, her landline in the den.

“Crap,” Karena says, dripping. She keeps forgetting to cancel that service. She likes the concept of retaining the landline for emergencies, but in reality it’s a nuisance, since the only people who ever call on it are telemarketers and her dad’s new wife, the Widow. It’s probably the Widow now, in fact, since as soon as the phone stops ringing, it starts up again. Like many of her generation in New Heidelburg, the Widow hasn’t quite caught on to the concept of voice mail, and she’ll be wanting to fulfill her obligation of wishing Karena a happy birthday from her dad Frank, since Frank can no longer speak for himself.

Karena would dearly love to ignore the phone. But when it continues to ring, Karena says, “Oh,
fine
,” and runs into her den to pick it up, whacking her shoulder on the door frame in her hurry.

“Ow,” she mutters, rubbing it. “Hello?”

“Is this Miss Karena Jorge?”

It is a telemarketer. Karena narrows her eyes.

“Yes, this is she,” she says, “but I’m just on my way out, so can you please call back another time?”

“Miss Jorge, my name is Gail Nelson, and I’m calling from the Wichita Medical Center Mental Health Clinic in Wichita, Kansas. Miss Jorge, do you have a brother Charles Hallingdahl?”

Karena’s whole body flushes hot, then cold. She sits on the edge of her desk and looks around the little white room, as if somebody else is there to confirm that yes, this is it. The call. The call she’s been expecting, rehearsing for, dreading for twenty years.

“Yes, I have a brother Charles,” she says. “He’s my twin. Is everything all right?”

Then she curses, because of course everything is not all right. If it were, this woman would not be calling her.

“I mean, what’s wrong with him?” she asks. Suicide attempt, she is thinking. Or psychotic episode? Maybe both, but at least suicide attempt.

“I’m not really qualified to answer that, Miss Jorge,” says the nurse. “I’m really only a patient liaison. It’s best if you speak directly to the doctor about Charles’s condition. I can tell you that he’s here with us and he gave your name as his closest relative.”

“That’s right,” says Karena, “I am.” There’s also their dad, Frank, but he doesn’t count anymore, poor guy. Karena scrabbles on her desk for a steno pad and Sharpie. Her hands are shaking badly and she knocks a stapler to the carpet, but the familiar actions soothe her somewhat.

“Miss—Nelson, is it?” she says, writing. “Can you at least tell me if Charles is physically harmed in any way? And what his condition was when he came in? Was he agitated, manic? Was he hallucinating?”

“Again, I’m just a liaison, ma’am,” says the nurse. “You’d have to talk to Dr. Brewster about specifics. I can page her and have her call you back.”

“Yes, please do,” says Karena, “and I appreciate your position, but please. Please. Any information you can give me would be helpful. Just so I know what I’m dealing with.”

When the nurse speaks again, her voice is less formal. “I really shouldn’t be saying this,” she says, “and it’s just a guess, mind you. But if Charles were physically injured, he’d be in a different part of our hospital. This is the psychiatric ward.”

“All right,” says Karena, “thank you so much. Now, can you please remind me, what’s the doctor’s name?”

She takes down this information, as well as the location of the hospital and the clinic’s direct number, then repeats it back to the nurse along with her own cell number. Karena knows better than to trust herself at this point. Her thoughts have become very clear and cold and slow, as if she has gone into deep freeze, but she knows in this state she is perfectly capable of thinking herself just fine and then running out to the car without packing, finding her keys in the refrigerator. It’s shock. Karena recognizes shock. She has been here before.

“Thank you,” she says to the nurse when they are done. “Please have Dr. Brewster call me as soon as possible, okay? Anytime, day or night. I’ll be waiting to hear from her.”

When she hangs up Karena turns on her computer, then looks wonderingly around her den. She is surprised to find the little white room, which she sometimes likes to imagine as being the inside of a marshmallow, looking as serene as it did when she entered it. It occurs to Karena that she got what she wished for earlier: For the first time in twenty years, she knows where her twin is spending their birthday.

“Jesus, Charles,” Karena says under her breath, in the way she has become accustomed to talking to Charles when she is alone. She opens a travel website. “Just hold on, brothah, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” and she starts scrolling through flights.

B
y eleven the following morning Karena is sitting in the reception area of the Wichita Medical Center Mental Health Clinic, awaiting Charles’s doctor. Much has changed since the last time Karena visited her brother in a psychiatric ward. This one is sleek and beige, with comfortable couches and a pop machine, a far cry from the Black Wing Asylum’s cracked green walls and barred windows. Here there is even a flat-screen TV. What hasn’t changed, at least for Karena, is her feeling of almost painful alertness, as though she is trying to take in everything about this environment, a place about which she knows nothing but that contains all the secrets to helping her brother. She sits up very straight, her nostrils flaring at the scent of rubbing alcohol. Memory is a trapdoor.

Karena is trying to check her e-mail while she waits, but she can’t stop glancing at the door to the ward. Any second now the doctor will come through it and take Karena to Charles, and then—what? What do you say to somebody after twenty years? Karena has tried and tried to envision it, but all she gets is a dark blank spot like the center of an eclipse. What does Charles even look like now? In their adolescence he was gorgeous, golden-haired, with big brown eyes and honey-colored skin—Rum Raisin and Vanilla, their uncle Carroll nicknamed them.
Some Sioux in that one,
Grandmother Hallingdahl always said darkly about Charles.

But twenty years is a long time. Charles’s movie-star waves may have thinned, his waistline thickened. He may no longer have hair at all. He may have a handlebar mustache, tattoos, scars, a limp for all Karena knows. He could weigh three hundred pounds. Every few minutes Karena slides her one photo of Charles out of its plastic wallet sleeve. It is a snapshot taken on their front lawn in New Heidelburg the night of their senior prom, to which Charles brought Marie Hauser, the slowest girl in their class, because he knew nobody else would. The only dance Marie knew was the polka, and Karena retains a clear memory of her brother hopping solemnly around the gym floor with his date to that year’s theme, Peter Cetera’s “Glory of Love.” In the photo Charles is standing next to their dad’s Austin Healey, which he will wreck the following month. He is grinning sideways down at the grass—that big white smile one characteristic the twins do share—and wearing a baby blue tuxedo with ruffled shirtfront. His hair is short on the sides, long in back, teased so high in front that the sun shines through it in rays. At least he won’t still have that mullet—Karena hopes.