One Hundred Days of Rain by Carellin Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

transfigured: swimming fish.
    Rain slides off these hard smooth surfaces of concrete and glass, unable to stop or even slow its passage. The old ways were better, before man. Damp earth to dig into, wet leaves of curling fern to turn glossy in the storm. Rain making its own way. No sounds but the trickle of earth absorbing its utmost and the sudden soft collapse. The slump.
    Rain as a constant condition is unknown to the ancients, or at least invisible in the writing left us. Perhaps before rain was at least partially thwarted by our waterproofs and rubbers, nobody went out in it. Perhaps it was too banal. Perhaps you ignored rain, and this was a rule that everybody knew. A self-evident injunction, not even worth writing down.

41.
    There is some shining there, where rain is, some dancing in the air. Some shimmering swaying streaks too small to follow. Making important things easy to ignore, as she knows to her cost. Cars, pedestrians, even lights blaring sudden yellow.
    Rain dampens her shoes and curls them, and soaks the leather until it is dark with wet; and when the shoes dry, unless the glue is good, sole and upper will part in mutual disgust.
    Rain brings the oil that lies in the million little holes even pavement has to the surface: planing on it, her steed’s rubber slide towards traffic’s red glow, oblivion.
    Rain works its way into the crannies and nooks at the top of the house where she lived once. Rain swells there, in the dark. The smallest of plants find that moisture, like a gift, and fall to feeding. High up, inside, the wall’s corner turned dark, almost ominous. They’ve painted it over but the mildew remains, inside, growing.

42.
    Rain pulls the green from the young shoot and she rejoices to see it. Rain makes them wet & plump. Rain deadens and dances the incessant noise. Rain washes everything: people, the streets, glass. It washes down two alleys at work & home.
    Rain goes down to the river. Rain goes down to the sea. Rain carves a path. Rain a funnel and conduit. Rain finding a way. Rain goes through, goes under, goes around, always ever in the same direction. Rain a constant. Rain fights and hammers. Rain is the loudest of weathers. Rain tells her to go inside. To stay there. Rain reminds her of the weight of even small things. Aide-mémoire, understanding. Rain niggles and invites and at the last mirrors.
    Rain fills up the reservoirs. Rain raises the level. Rain gives her what she can take. And then some. Rain is a creek carving squiggle into the loam. A rivulet. Rain changes things. Nothing is as it was after rain.

43.
    Rain today is a smattering. A muttering, a pattering on high.
    Is it raining again, she says.
    Sort of. Maybe.
    Take the first time M grabbed her. Was it beyond the pale? Was it a sign? Could she, should she, have taken it more seriously? Should she have known that the few drops are precursors of the flood? M had a normal family after all. Normal, that strange word. Two older brothers, an idyllic childhood, so M said, on the islands, raised mostly by the soft-voiced housekeeper. You were in my way, M told her.
    She said nothing. Had they done the same to her, those bigger boys, only M had never mentioned it? She would have sworn she and M had told each other everything, in those months leading up to their union. Her early hopes for the violin and odd uncle. M’s past loves and their sweet, sad, inevitable partings. Nobody’s fault, it seemed. Nobody to blame.
    It’s abuse, M screamed that day, standing in the door when someone wants to leave the room. I called the helpline and that’s abuse, that and withholding the household money: you’re abusing me, you’re the abuser.
    Surely she made some reply, surely bitter words rose in her own throat, surely she gave as good as she got?

44.
    The little ferry to Granville Island moves sideways across the entrance to the creek. All kinds of vessels emerge from this mouth come summer: kayaks, big