Dangerous Weather

Abstract

Dangerous Weather Natalie Teal McAllister (bio) Jim wanted the ceiling fan and you wanted the window unit and Jim won until the baby was born. Jim won everything until the baby was born, and then the baby won everything thereafter. The baby had been born in August. The first night she was home neither the fan nor the window unit could keep up. She screamed and thrashed until Jim had her in just a diaper and you hovered over her and hoped she would cry herself to sleep because to touch her would surely have made the situation worse. Jim had central air installed within the week, but that was his idea, too. Thirty years later with the same unit outside, you should have known you were in trouble when you woke up to the sound of robins in the mulberry tree. In the still-dark morning, you can hear the last handful of crickets in the yard and a car on the main road three streets over. What you can’t hear is that air conditioner. ________ When you wake again the sun is up and even the birds are too hot to sing. It’s near 90 in the bedroom. You shuffle to the thermostat and let it confirm what you suspected. The dial reads closer to 85, but the bedroom is on the sun side of the house and stays warmer in every month of the year. You slide the knob as far to the left as it will go and wait for the machine to kick on. You tell yourself to give it five minutes. Be patient with the old thing. Two minutes later you slide into your flip flops and push open the back door. The unit is tucked into an odd corner of the house. Maybe it has been a few years since you’ve actually looked at it. You nudge the bottom of your flip flop into it. When that doesn’t work, you clap the palm of your hand against the metal grate. Then you do it again. The second time your hand comes up with a coat of rust and you give the unit up for dead. ________ You keep a collection of magnets on the refrigerator. Names of repair men and plumbing companies. People who want to sell you insurance. You peel off one for Randy Mr. Fix It. He picks up on the third ring. “Randy Mr. Fix It,” he says. “You break it, I fix it.” You tell him the situation with the unit. “Alright. I can fix that. Let me get you on the schedule.” You ask him what he means by schedule. “I mean yours isn’t the only one that’s broken.” You pull back the curtain on the back door and look over at your neighbor’s unit. As far as you can tell, it’s working. “The news said there’s an excessive heat warning,” you say. “That’s got to mean something.” You say it but you don’t believe it means anything to people like Randy. What else is this world but [End Page 156] a place where men can promise to care for you, to watch out for you, and never mean a second of it. Still you find the smallest part of your heart wants to believe otherwise. “I’m getting through them as fast as I can. I can try to get you in at 4:30. Last call of the day.” They said on TV it would be 110 by then. “If I get done sooner, I’ll get there sooner. I’ll do what I can.” “I could die in here before then,” you say. “That’s what they said.” He takes what feels like a full minute to answer. You spend that minute wondering—if you did die, when would they find you? Would it be come winter? Or would they notice when your mail piled up? What if you didn’t have much mail to speak of? Then it comes to you: it would be the overgrown lawn. That’s how they would know you were dead. “If I were you,” he says, “I...