Food for Bad Weather

Food for Bad Weather

There was a series of twisters bearing down on the meadows around my
home, so I made myself a few hamburgers. Really, what else could I do?
The skies to the south were already as dark as night, and for the first
time in a long while I sensed fear in the eyes and voice of the
television meteorologist. 'Stay indoors and away from windows,' she
advised, but her eyes were telling me, 'Head for the hills. Bring
canned goods and a shotgun.' She was wearing a smart-looking pantsuit
that I imagined coated in mud and debris as she attempted to hide
behind the weather truck. I looked out each of the windows, across the
flat meadow landscape. It was almost as though we had this coming.
There were mobile homes, precariously placed on cinder blocks. The
streets were pebbled with loosened gravel. Children's plastic toys of
yellow, red, and blue dotted the nearby yards. I hadn't noticed until
just then how many doghouses there were.

I make burgers the way my mother did: I roll the meat into a giant
ball, and smash it down in a hot iron skillet. Then I douse the smashed
ball with salt and pepper while it spits and sizzles. My sister, who is
now a chef and so has moved on to better meals in St. Louis, once told
my mother that the ball was too thick to cook properly. My mother
looked at Celia, with her new tan and soft clothes, and scoffed. That,
and a great many other things, was why they never spoke, and why Celia
kept a home in the city with a porch and a porch swing that Mother
never knew about. Mother loved porch swings. 'Go on,' Celia told me,
'tell her I have a porch swing. Tell her my kids swing in it all day in
the summertime, with a big, sweaty-cold pitcher of tea alongside. Tell
me what she says to that.' I didn't tell Mother anything like that, but
instead I made smashed-ball burgers.

The last time we had twisters, my house wasn't much affected, but I
found a bunch of dead critters all over my property: opossums,
squirrels, gophers, and raccoons, and a couple of cats. I never found
out why it was that way; I just had the children stay indoors with the
shades drawn while I dug graves. In bed that night, Mitzi said it was
sweet how I dug each of them a separate grave, rather than throw them
all in one big hole. She snuggled up close while I wondered why I
hadn't thought of that. Meanwhile it started raining again, and I was
afraid that the mounds would get washed away and I'd have to start all
over again. And for a few weeks after, we ate canned beans and canned
meat and all the other kinds of things we'd come to call twister food.
It got tiresome. Mitzi even asked why we couldn't go live in the city,
nearer to Celia, because after all, her place isn't all that much
better than ours. It was just an older house that she updated to fit
her lifestyle. When I looked across the meadow at all the things that
would be flying though the air if a twister landed, I didn't have an
answer. Instead I just imagined Celia and her kids on her porch swing,
which I understand was painted yellow.

As the dark skies came closer, I turned the hamburgers and laid out
some paper towels. Mitzi called from her mother's to see if I was doing
all right, since she noticed that the weather had turned. The
meteorologist was on the television again, so turned the sound down low
and told Mitzi I was fine. I think she loves me more when she's gone,
and I know that I love her more when she's gone. When she's home she
wears long, plain housedresses that show her shoulders, arms, and
calves, and she walks barefoot on the wooden floors. Her feet make
sandy slapping noises against the wood. Once I was sitting on the
porch, and the day was just so that the sun would break through the
clouds and shine through her dress, and for a moment I could see the
outline of her body, through the dress. By the time I took the oozing
patties from the pan and put them on the folded paper towels, the
daylight was gone and I had to flip on a few lights. If a twister did
set down, I would go to the windowless laundry room, eat hamburgers,
and listen to the radio.

As the weather got worse, I felt like cooking more, and using more
electricity. I started a pot of coffee and turned up the volume on the
television. I cut up a potato and an onion to fry up in the leftover
grease. I turned on a few more lights. All of the neighbors' lights
were off, and they were nowhere to be seen. All of the pets had been
taken indoors, and with the sizzling hamburgers out of the pan, I could
hear dogs howling and barking inside the houses. The newsman was saying
that twisters had set down in three towns around us, and that the
situation was becoming more serious. If Mitzi and the children were at
home, I would have been more careful; I might not have cooked at all,
and we might all be in the laundry room, listening to the wind. Instead
I tossed more food into the pan and watched television.

The phone rang again; this time it was Celia. She had a new, bossy
voice that was hard to get used to, but which she said came from
running a professional kitchen. With Celia, there was always some topic
that should have been discussed, but wasn't. We could have talked about
the weather all day, just repeating the same sentences, rather than
have it come out. We have had long discussions about our children that
I can't remember. I used to think that I was a poor conversationalist
and a bad brother, but after a while I just thought that Celia was
looking for a chance to let me in on her trouble and anger. It was easy
to get worn out, just talking to her. By the time I assured her that I
was fine, and the girls were all the way up in Ohio, anyway, the rain
started to fall and the wind started whipping around the trees. I still
had all of the lights on, and I was tossing potatoes and onions in the
pan while my hamburgers glistened on the countertop.

Her voice was shrill on the phone. "You should drive up here, but I
guess you'd be driving right through the weather, and I'll bet your car
would get blown right off the road." It was an invitation that was not
actually an invitation. She did that on almost every holiday, although
none of us ever wanted to go to St. Louis, anyway. When we wanted to
drink beer and eat potato chips at my parents' house, Celia would make
strange little dishes, one right after the other, and force us to try
them. While Celia was buzzing around the kitchen, Mother stayed in her
room and fed one of the babies. Mitzi sat next to me, drinking beer and
picking at her toenails. She gave Celia's food to the dogs.

The wind picked up again, and little things started to become airborne.
A tricycle skidded across the neighbor's porch. Loose shingles started
blowing off another neighbor's roof. I watched these things as I
stuffed my mouth with a thick hamburger; warm grease dribbled down my
chin and made tiny splatters on the floor. One by one, I started
turning off the lights, and I scraped the potatoes onto a paper plate.
As I walked toward the television to switch it off, the meteorologist
in the pantsuit came back on. She was wearing a raincoat and was
standing in front of the lake, where all of the boats were bobbing like
corks. By now she looked terrified, and she was pleading for us all to
stay indoors and to be safe. Some people just don't know how to handle
a storm. I turned off the television just as the wind blew the
microphone from her hand, and she appeared to start crying. Myself, I
took my plates of food and headed for the laundry room to wait out the
storm.