the floodmakers: chapter one

8/9/2019 The Floodmakers: Chapter One

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Can’t I just as well say ‘the depths of the sea’?Yes, but it sounds so strange to me when someone else says

‘the depths of the sea.’

—Ibsen, The Wild Duck



Chapter 1

The buffer between New York and Texas is slighter than sand, it’s so easilybreached. I picked up the telephone to hear Mama—I very rarely, that is my sisterand I both very rarely call our second mother by her first name, which is Jean—raisingher voice over the barking dogs and the excited castaneting of crawfish boiling on the

stove. “Now Harold,” she said.Harold was the signal she meant to be serious, that morning.“I can tell you, since we’re all settled in at the Gulf again,” I heard her scrape

and bang something against a pot, “it’s been decided. Your father says he’s not goingto put up with anymore crank medical interference.”

My father, at eighty-one, sometimes confused being a retired playwright withbeing a retired director of Cardiology.

I held my wet forehead in my hand, leaned over the desk and let my bathrobeloosen and my knees give over the sides of the chair, my chin sloppy on the receiver,my ear sinking in close enough to hear the moaning of the surf on the other side.

“You mean,” I said as normally as I could for someone who’s just woken up inhis bathtub, “he’s not going to take any of his pills, anymore?”“No, dear. Well—only the diuretics. He says that’s enough. He says he’s fed

up with all the rest. He says the tests are imprecise, that they exaggerate the, themotives of the disease.”

“Which are—?”“You know, he says it doesn’t want to kill him. It’s just preparing him.”I’d grown up with this sort of thing. A full thirty-six year’s worth. I didn’t



even have to acknowledge the aside. I just squeezed my eyes shut to get somecontrol over the stinging, and then opened them again. “So, no more beta-blockers.”

“That’s right, dear.” I heard her rattle what sounded like a steel lid, thensome muffled turning away to say something short and shooing to their terriers, Willieand Able. “He said,” she came back on, her voice sounding even gruffer and lower

than usual, “those things were making him so fuzzy, he couldn’t think.”And then some smothered rustling; and she let out half a cough, half exhaustedsigh.

Well that’s odd, I thought, still in a drugged fog.Mama, Jean, former East Coast Ladies Champion, never sounded tired.

“Mama—you all right down there?”“Now, dear,” she drawled. “Why wouldn’t I be?” A slight grunting. Some

heaving, as though she were picking up a ten-pound roast, in one hand. “My bonesare coming along just fine, since you want to know. Everything’s under control. A

flea on a leash.”“And how were Daddy’s doctors this time?”“You do remember how the last visit went.”Insults. Charges of incompetence. A blood-pressure cuff he’d ripped from his

arm like rejected rank.“Although that younger one, you remember, Harry, the one I told you about?

He did try putting on his meanest game face. But still, when it came down to actuallytalking to your father, he folded like another duffer in front of the clubhouse. Thenafterwards he had to the nerve to come over and try and lecture me—outside theexamining room, mind you now, the chicken. ‘Ma’am,’”—and here she lowered hervoice to a hoarse whisper—“‘he just better learn to take it easier , because this next

three months is going to be very, very important.’”As if my eighty-one-year-old father were only sweating out a difficultpregnancy. As though all he had to do, for the first time in his life, was keep quiet,and lie on his back, calmly, and he might be able to carry his fisted, congested heartto term.

“Harry, honey? You there? You all right?”“Yes, Mama.” My hair was still dripping.“You sure? No problems, not with a new play, or anything? Nothing wrong at

home?”“Not at the moment.”“Well, then. If that’s the case.” The invitation in her voice was slanted, but

clear.“All right, Mama. What are you thinking.”“Nothing, dear! Just mulling over a nice weekend. I do need to get out of

doors a bit, I don’t know how you’re feeling?”She had been a star in her own right. With my father’s poor health, though,

she’d been cooped up more than she liked.“So you do want me to come down, Mama.”“Oh. Well now.”



“It’s all right. It’s not a problem. I can get on a plane.” I could, I realized.Tomorrow. Today. No one was keeping me, or maybe a better way to put it wouldbe, I was keeping no one. Look at you, a gay man in a plaid robe. Tim would havewrinkled his nose. It’s like a chow wearing a bandanna.

“Of course, Harry, you know how much we hate interrupting you kids’ private

lives.”“Mama.”“I mean it, dear. You know I do.”“I know, Mama.”“It’s not like there’s anything to worry about.”“Mama?”“Well. All right then.”And that had been the second unusual thing. Jean, Mama, didn’t usually throw

her game that quickly.“We’ve got Sarah coming down too,” she added brightly. “With Paul.”“Guess she wants to take a look at Daddy herself?”

“Guess you could put it that way. Not that there’s anything to worry about.Not at all. I want you both to know that.”Of course not. Nothing was ever upsetting in my family. That would mean—

getting upset. “I just hope, Ma, they’re not bringing their camera down with themagain.”

“She did say she was planning to get in a few more shots. You know how thesecineastes are.”

But my sister had only recently become a filmmaker. Before that she’d been,in casual succession, a sculptor, a yoga instructor, an installation artist (working withfoam and cardboard), a tattoo designer, an art gallery partner, and a “specialtyleather consultant.” The last time we’d seen each other, on the Fourth of July, at

the big house, she’d pushed her freckled nose up close to mine and whispered, she’dfinally realized: there was no point in our having our nice tidy little trust funds if weweren’t going to go out and do something really noble with the cash—like makedocumentaries. My poor baby sister. She actually thought she was documentingDaddy, who morphed from a sly fox into a living saint the minute the lens cap poppedoff.

“And I’ll bet,” I wiped my dripping forehead, “Daddy said all right to anotherinterview.”

“He does like to help his little chickadees out.”“I know that,” I managed to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “I just thought

that little project was all finished now.”

“I don’t know about that, dear. I guess, sometimes, it’s hard to know exactlywhen a thing is finished. Anyway,” she went on hurriedly, “you know how you all men

are, when you get older.” And she coughed away from the phone and let out anotherlow, muscular laugh. The sound of it, though, perfectly well behaved. Always,always, in spite of her voice, and what was left of those hulking forearms, carefullyladylike, was Mama. “Do you know, he told me just last week it was high time hepaid more attention to his visual legacy?”

“Probably because of that PBS interview.”



“Anyway.” She interrupted me shortly. “Since you don’t have anything elseon, you will hurry up and get down here?”

And that impatience had been the third odd thing. Because Mama, JeanDugan, former professional, was never jumpy. A long-distance putting champ, aplayer who in the 1950s had driven farther and more accurately than it was thought

proper women could drive—she knew how, when she wanted, to keep her handssteady, her keen gaze pointed.But then, I thought, putting the phone down and wiping the last of the

bathwater and the sleeping pills away from my eyes, why expect anyone—especially acrawfish-boiling, distracted, seventy-one-year-old arthritic—to be able to hit onanything through a hole as small as a phone jack?

Want to read more? The Floodmakers is available in both Kindle and hardbackeditions. ©2004, 2010 Mylène Dressler. All rights reserved.

www.mylenedressler.com

the floodmakers: chapter one

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