Drown Neighbor

This is the yard where the dogs used to lounge beside the half-collapsed shed, panting in the heat. Dad tied them so tightly they could barely turn their heads. Their backs were raw with mange and flea bites, their ribs stark and jutting. Moxie, Skipper, Moonbeam. Remember their howls on hot nights when the ambulances wailed past? Remember the slick brown sheen of their backs, the way their sweat frothed like soap? The year I turned thirteen, I snuck each of them a sliver of my birthday cake—fudge batter, banana frosting. You should have seen their dumb, eager eyes.

This is the driveway, cracked and strewn with gravel, the ground beneath it shifting with time. These are my initials scratched into wet cement, the act that earned me a black eye from my father. His Corvette sat here for years, leaking, refusing to be revived no matter how much effort or grease he poured into it—until one day, the wind simply lifted it away. Remember those brown August afternoons when Mom would spread a towel on the pavement and sunbathe in her underwear, in full view of the neighborhood? Her name was carved into a middle school boys' bathroom stall—another piece of her lost, buried beneath the waves.

Imagine these houses filling with water. The cold flutter of drowning lungs.

This is an electric chain-link fence.

This is a picture window with nothing behind it.

This is my parents' bedroom, where my father locked the door at night. The damp drywall between us never thick enough to muffle the noise. The way he drowned my mother in his shouting. The way she hacked up clots of sickness. Remember the emphysema. Remember how quickly it spread. Remember the nights I woke from nightmares and went to crawl into their bed, only to find the door wouldn't budge, my fingers cold on the metal knob.

Here's my room, the bunk bed I kept long after my feet dangled off the edge. A picture of my first girlfriend, whom I never got to kiss. My stack of videotapes. A butterfly knife. A conch shell. The toenail I lost after kicking the side of the house in anger. A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card—near mint, except for one tiny imperfection.

This is a drawing of me on a mountaintop, waving. Hello, or goodbye.

Imagine my insides filling with water. Imagine endless rain.

This is the chimney, where once a year we'd trap a bird. Its song would echo through the whole house, through the attic, through my dreams. Chirrup chirrup. Dad would fume, brandishing a broom, cursing, stirring up dust. If he couldn't chase the bird free, he'd light a fire. Smoke curling through the fine lines of its beak. Within an hour, the chirping stopped. I suppose the bodies stayed stuck up there, lost in the soot.

Imagine the floodwaters rising, swallowing the house. The chimney tip peeking out like a lone, unblinking eye.

This is the cul-de-sac where I punched my neighbor for saying my parents were doomed. Bobby, with the infected stye over his right eye—swollen, leaking, too big for him to blink. He said he'd read the Bible, that there was still time for absolution.

Remember how his was the first body I saw floating in the flood, bloated, a school of deformed fish nibbling at his back.

Remember how disaster arrives unseen, and then suddenly, it's everywhere.

Imagine them swimming until their arms gave out, their lungs burning.

This is a ruined veranda.

This is where I used to hide.

This is the mouth of the sewer, a vortex swallowing stray balls. Remember how on scorching days, the heat shimmered above the pavement. And then the first day of the storm—after six hours of relentless downpour, the manhole overflowed, spilling its filth into the streets.

This is the makeshift pet cemetery. No one remembers who started it, but there were a hundred little graves: cats, dogs, ferrets, snakes, hamsters, goldfish, lizards. The earth was dark and soft, thick with worms, pulsing with life. In April, the first flowers always bloomed here. Remember when Moxie died—then Moonbeam, then Skipper, all in a single night, as if tethered to each other's fate. My father carried them out, one draped over each shoulder. Made me watch as he dug. The emphysema had him too, by then. My mother started whispering a prayer, and he told her to shut her mouth.

This is blacktop, perfect for scraping knees.

This is a children's playground.

Imagine secondary drowning, the lungs filling with foam.

This is a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath colonial, with a formal dining area, a fireplace, a walkout basement, in-ground sprinklers, and a kidney-shaped pool.

These are the Andertons, the Bankses, the Barretts, the Butlers, the Carlyles, the Canters, the Crumps, the Davidsons, the Dumbletons, the Fultons, the Grants, the Griggses, the Guzmans, the Kranzes, the Lotts, the Peaveys, the Peerys, the Pendletons, the Rays, the Rutledges, the Smiths, the Stutzmans, the Weidingers, the Woodses, the Worths.

Imagine shallow water blackout, cardiac arrest, thermal shock, stroke. The sky a swirling storm of color. No light, no pain, no sound.

This is house number 713, abandoned since I was eight. Murmurs of murder. A ghost of a home. The paint peeling green, the yard overgrown, the trees bare year-round. Some nights, a light flickered in an upstairs window. Remember the summer a boy's cousin dared to go inside after dark. How he didn't come back out for hours. How they found him at the bottom of the stairwell, his spine broken clean. Remember how I used to sit awake, a balding preteen, staring out my window, watching that house with one eye, then the other.

This is the last square of the sidewalk.

This is a telephone wire.

This is mud.

This is a rowboat, abandoned, rotting in stagnant water.

This is the steeple, the last thing left uncovered—the flood's highest watermark. Remember the copper burn of communion, the wafer dissolving on my tongue. Remember trying to fathom how my father could stomach the fire of each night, his throat scorched from all he poured down it. How he saw me come home in my Sunday suit and spat.

Imagine waking up to a leaking ceiling, a spreading puddle on the carpet. The water already creeping up the stairs. My parents' bedroom downstairs. My mother's coughing, swallowed by silence. Remember her hair floating around her face, fine strands fanning like threadbare silk as I swam down to kiss her.

This is a quiet evening.

This—I'm not sure.

Imagine nothing. Imagine nowhere. A world swollen and sleeping.

These are the tops of the tallest trees—the funny firs up to their broken necks, submerged. Look at the new nests, still holding their eggs. The mothers flying for miles, searching over the gleaming, endless sea for something that is no longer there.