ModaTurismo

The December book club pick is The Light Pirate.

#ReadWithMC-Welcome to Marie Claire's virtual book club. It's a pleasure to meet you, and for the month of December we will be reading The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton. It is a stunning novel about climate change, family, and survival. Please read an excerpt below and find out how you can participate. (1]

As Frieda was scooping cold, hardened mashed potatoes into Tupperware, it began to rain. Lucas and Flip were being loud, and when she decided to buy a whole chicken, she had no idea how long the power outage would last. She wondered if she should throw away the mashed potatoes, but figured it would be more work than storing them, so she snapped the lid on and stacked them in the refrigerator with the other Tupperware containers. It was a small box whose contents were muddy and rainbow-colored. They might be beautiful if she didn't know what was inside: soggy fried plantains, pink beans and rice, roasted carrots, overcooked chicken. But she does know it. So all she sees is a constellation of dishes that no one wanted at first. The recipes she knows by heart are hated and the ones she learned for them don't seem to work. She always enjoyed cooking, but Kirby was useless in the kitchen. She no longer liked cooking much. At least in Houston, she knew what she was working toward and only had to think about herself.

Her sons were in bed and Kirby was tending to her tool shed. The quiet sound of the rain hitting the roof usually puts her at ease, but tonight it seems like a threat, soft, insistent, and about to intensify. When Kirby comes in with his hand-cranked radio, he steps over the sandbags on the front porch and splashes water all over the floor. The rain pools at his feet. Frida doesn't want to fight him, but he is so calm that she feels like she has to. But he is so calm that she feels like she has to fight. His words to Lucas are still ringing in my ears. A little rain. A little wind. Damn it, Kirby, she thinks.

"Look," she says, gesturing to the ceiling and the sky above it. On another day, she might have relented. She might have seen his exhausted face and remembered that he was doing his best, too. But today is not another day. Today is today, and she is tired of feeling the panic and loneliness that always seems to swirl just under her skin these days. She says, "The windows aren't boarded up yet. Are you listening?"

"Come on." Kirby hits his hands against the back of his chair, and the entire table pops forward a few inches." Board them headfirst. I told you I'm ready. What makes you think I'm not tracking them? The hurricane will hit farther north. If it doesn't, we'll be fine."

"Yes, you know everything, Curve. You have all the information. I don't know anything."

However, they both know firsthand what hurricane season can be like. For years, Kirby made a living by taking storm duty and traveling to the places where the aftermath was the worst. Throughout their childhood, Frida and Joy were governed by weather patterns. In San Juan, none of that helped. The most important moments in Frida's life are surrounded by the howl of a hurricane, the dark funnel of grief and the pinpoint bright eyes shining above - the brightness that was once Kirby. It is the brightness that was once Kirby, the life that was once this house and the life that was once built in it. Now she does not doubt her husband's expertise in this storm, but rather his expertise in her.

"Fry," he says, trying to soften the anger he sees on her face. I promise you. I've been preparing for hurricanes since I was a kid. I know what to do."

He reaches for her. The baby kicks again, hard, and she suddenly has no energy to point out this commonality. There are not one, but two experts in this house. Eventually, a third. This baby has only known storm after storm.

Tears fall with the rain outside. A prelude to something greater. A torrential downpour. She is held by Kirby, and they stand together in the rainwater seeping from Kirby's boots.

"I'm scared," she whispers.

"Don't be afraid," he says. [The power goes out in the middle of the night. Most people would sleep through it, but Kirby is not most people. He quickly wakes up and notices the various silences where once there was the hum of a refrigerator, the ticking of a wall clock, the whir of a fan, and the quiet groan of a central air vent. A constant buzz of electricity waiting to be dispersed. Kirby hears it as if it were a sonic boom.

He stands up quietly. In the bathroom, he notices the outline of the Philodendron silhouetted against the bathroom window. The philodendron is waving at him, fluttering its huge leaves. The wind is picking up. For a moment, he fears that he may have blocked the window too late. Maybe the storm had come sooner than people thought. Maybe Frida was right. Is it already here?" an unusual doubt shattered the sleep that had clung to him.

He dressed quickly, his kerchiefs piled on the bathroom floor, his T-shirt still damp with sweat, the same stench from the day before. The house was getting warmer without air conditioning. I go outside and take the headlamps out of the truck's glove box. Turning on the headlamps, he was pleased to see that the plywood was already organized and relieved that the hard, uneven wind was not yet dangerous. The rain had lulled and he hurried to make the most of it. Frida thinks he doesn't take weather forecasts seriously, but he is a man who is so good at his job that he doesn't take them seriously. He just doesn't want to spoil her panic. It is not a lie that it will just be a thunderstorm in Ruder. When Poppy's trauma was still fresh in her mind, this kind of reasoning would have soothed her, but she doesn't want to hear him tell her not to worry anymore. So what should he say? Next year will be another bad year, but nothing will change when he speaks of this reality. He learned a long time ago to close his mind to the carnage elsewhere. His job forced him to do so.

On the ladder, plywood under his arm, drill in hand, he shined his headlamp on the window frame. The window frame was exactly the same as the last time he had been here. The plywood fit perfectly, just as he knew it would. The holes are already drilled and the screws are in place. There is comfort in this. The physical work, the tool, and the comfort of the bit fitting precisely into the head of the screw. If only the trouble with Frida had been this simple and familiar. He imagines going to her bedroom with a drill and applying it to the secret compartments in the soles of her feet and the back of her neck, resetting the mysterious switch while she sleeps. He would see her undisturbed smile when she woke up, a smile so pure it was as if just looking at his face made her happy. Is it unfair to wish she had it easier? Less work. He knows that. But he wishes anyway. He wants those days back, standing on this same ladder, paint roller in hand, making his weather-beaten house feel new again.

Flip and Lukas have woken up and come running outside, curious. The smell of fresh paint was off his mind. The rain was coming down again, and the boys were yelling and demanding to know what they were doing in such a dark place. On the other side of the wall, my best friend is curled up with the child born to them. This is what he looks like now. As the warm rain soaks the earth, he reminds himself that this is enough. It is more than enough. He is luckier than most. Today, he will be everything this besieged family needs.

Kirby puts the boys to work, the three of them preparing the house together, closing their glazed eyes against the oncoming storm, closing the plywood lids one by one.

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