Page 5 of Caught in a Storm
If Caleb took even a second to use the most basic powers of observation, it would strike him as odd that the gummy bears are in a Ziploc baggie instead of a regular candy package. They’re shaped wrong, too—pudgy, like they’ve been left in a hot car. He notices neither of these things, though, because he’s eighteen and hungry. He pops three bears into his mouth and spreads an old flannel blanket over his father.
“See you tomorrow, Dad,” he says.
* * *
—
Caleb puts on some pajama pants and a T-shirt and watches the rest of the documentary on The Rocker while his dad sleeps. He flips around after that and checks out the end of a Lakers game on TNT. By the time he settles in at the cluttered little desk in his bedroom, his mouth has gone dry. Caleb blames this on Gustavo’s salty pretzels. The dull buzz at the front of his skull barely registers, because maybe sometimes skulls just do that.
He gets a soda from the fridge and absolutely pounds it. Back in his room, he takes his laptop out of his backpack and opens to the Stanford University website. When he gets to the Campus Life page, he wishes like always that everything didn’t look so perfect. Click after click reveals beautiful, diverse, smart-looking people doing exciting things in breathtaking locations. He did a campus visit last year: Caleb, his dad, his mom, and his stepdad, Aaron. Palo Alto was like traveling to Narnia, with distant mountains, bonkers sunsets, and single-speed bicycles.
Scrolling through images of students, Caleb imagines himself as a character among them. He’d wear a crimson hoodie and hold hands with a hypothetical girl from somewhere cooler than Baltimore. He’d wear his hair differently, maybe a little longer, and people would think it was cool that he’s so unreasonably tall.
Stanford is his “reach school,” so this is all probably a big waste of time. He does, however, allow himself quiet moments like this to fantasize.
But then Caleb looks at the wall above his screen and sees for probably the thousandth time the picture of him and his dad at the 9:30 Club down in Washington, D.C. It was taken at Caleb’s first concert. The band was Wilco, and he was five years old, sitting on his dad’s shoulders. His dad made little earmuffs out of duct tape and cotton balls to protect Caleb’s virginal eardrums.
“Shit,” he whispers now, because even if some academic miracle happens and he does get in, Stanford is thousands of miles away. It might as well be in Europe or on the moon.
His friends always talk about their dads like they’re such distant, mysterious creatures. At no point in Caleb’s life, though, has he for one moment doubted that he is the most important human being in his own dad’s life, and now he’s left wondering what the guy would do without him here in Baltimore.
Then a switch flips in Caleb’s brain. A feeling like bobbing in water, mild vertigo, and, finally, a shocking burst of clarity. He looks up at the ceiling and nearly topples over in his desk chair. “Oh shit,” he whispers, because he’s pretty sure those weren’t regular gummy bears. “Dad, what the fuck?”
He’s never tried pot before, mostly because he knows his parents would kill him if they ever caught him on anything stronger than Vicks VapoRub. This, though, is a free pass—an accidental stoning—and Caleb giggles and then snorts.
Back in the kitchen, he eats more cereal, then he stares at his hand, which is something he’s never really stared at before. It’s a blurry and strange thing, the human hand, like anime. He goes to the couch and stands over his sleeping dad. Caleb has never really stared at his dad before either. Has he always looked this small? Caleb picks up the Burnt Flowers album off the couch cushion. Inside the gatefold, there’s another serious-looking picture of Margot Hammer. Caleb holds it up next to his dad’s face. He imagines them kissing, his dad and Margot Hammer. It’s gross, but also nice. Caleb teased him before about having a thing for this drummer lady. He gets it now, though. She doesn’t look like a rock star. She just looks like some girl in a T-shirt.
Back in his room, he googles Margot Hammer, and 180 million results pop up.
“Holy shit.”
There are Wiki pages, fan blogs, and illegal MP3 sites. He briefly watches a Burnt Flowers tribute band on YouTube. Some lady in Arizona decorated her whole house with Burnt Flowers wallpaper. There’s an essay from Esquire titled “Burnt Flowers and What Might Have Been.” He scrolls by shots of a young Margot Hammer with a young Lawson Daniels. He sees pictures of her holding a baby named Poppy, then pictures of her next to Poppy as a very pretty teenager. “Damn,” he says.
Stage Dive Records’ website has a pull-down menu with a list of bands, and he goes to the page for Burnt Flowers. He finds a set of current pictures of the band members. Margot Hammer is sitting on a bench in Central Park in jeans and scuffed-up boots. Caleb leans in, squints because the screen is starting to blur. She looks even less like a rock star now. She looks like someone Caleb might see down at Charm City Rocks flipping through the new arrivals stack. She looks…normal.
A link catches his attention at the top of the page: Media Contact.
People always talk about how Caleb’s dad is such a happy guy. Like, weirdly happy—happy in a time in which everyone is miserable. As a kid, Caleb just went with it. They’d eat popcorn together at Orioles games and go sneaker shopping downtown. He’d watch his dad sit at the Steinway and play “Tiny Dancer” with the window open for the whole neighborhood to hear, and Caleb would accept his dad’s happiness as a given. Lately, though, Caleb has started to wonder if his dad is actually lonely.
It takes longer than it should to blink, he discovers, like his eyelids have been velcroed to his forehead. He looks at the picture of Margot Hammer again. She isn’t frowning, but she’s not smiling either, the way happy people do. She was a big deal once, apparently. In a band that people loved. Married to a famous actor. Now, though, she’s just a lady on a bench in old boots.
What if she’s lonely, too?
Chapter 3
A few days later, some 195 miles north of Baltimore, in Manhattan, Margot Hammer looks down at West Twenty-eighth Street seven stories below. Chelsea, which has been her neighborhood for her entire adult life, is soaked. People wearing raincoats walk dogs that are also wearing raincoats. Cabs idle at the curbside, waiting. Some tourists who didn’t check the forecast stand beneath a red awning across the street.
Her apartment, which sits atop what was once a fur factory, has vaulted ceilings and exposed brick and far more space than she needs. Years ago, when she and Lawson first moved in, it was featured in some magazines. Metropolis called it a “crash pad,” which Margot never liked, because it made it sound like they wouldn’t be there for long.
As beautiful as the glossy pictures looked in print, the eighteen floor-to-ceiling windows turn the place hopelessly drab when it rains, and it’s been raining all day. Shadows and gray scales, piled-up mail, and some droopy plants.
The rain against the windows sounds like a backbeat. Margot finds the 4/4 time signature on her hipbone with two fingers. A habit since childhood, she hardly realizes she’s doing it, like self-soothing. In her other hand she holds her iPhone, which is open to FaceTime.
“Mum, did your connection freeze, or are you just standing perfectly still?” asks Poppy.
“They called me a recluse?” Margot asks her daughter. “Are you kidding?”
Goddammit, Netflix, she thinks.
