The Chairs of Theseus

First the rain, tapping and animating the hazel trees, the bellflowers, the chamomile and chokeberry, the yarrow, the lilac, the raspberry and self-heal. We call them by name so the rain can’t reduce the greenery to common branches, bowed stalks, glossy leaves. Our children, watching the wagtails dart across the lawn, ask whether the birds and the bugs are miserable and bored after so many days of rain. You have no idea, we say.

The rainwater clomps down the gutters, loiters on the lawn, and when the saturated earth turns it away, heads toward the lake at the end of the garden. Then a break—shafts of sunlight turning the wet world gold. We move to the windows. We crack open the door. But the rain returns before there’s time for the sun to paint a rainbow, followed by a fusillade of hail clinking off the trampoline’s frame. We watch the hail peel the carpet of moss from the roof of our garage. The moss skids down in clumps, clogs the gutters, and sends the following torrent of rain spilling over the rim in glassy wind-shaped sheets.

No one wants to walk the dog, and the dog does not wish to be walked.

The decrepit lawn chairs that one of us rescued from Bellumbaum’s mid-summer bonfire last month are brought down to the basement. Our neighbor Bellumbaum had every right to deem the chairs good for nothing but burning. They wobble at the touch, despite the dozens of additional nails Bellumbaum or one of his late wives sank into the old wood. That one of us even considers the chairs to be salvageable reveals hopeless optimism. Still, the nails are pulled, the screws backed out, the chairs disassembled. Each piece takes its turn in the vise to meet the rasp of sandpaper, one armrest crumbling at the touch, char blackening hands. Insects emerge from the rot and the rot is removed and painstakingly replaced with slivers and corners of new wood. The task is so time-consuming that one of us suspects that restoring the chairs is an excuse to avoid having to occupy the children during the endless rain. The children are ordered down to the basement to help, where they are told about the Chairs of Theseus but are more interested in probing the writhing grubs in the rotten wood.

First the rain, now the flood. The lake will rise, comes the warning. There’s already historic flooding up the valley. Prepare. Our house is lined up with all the other old lakeside homes like parishioners of the tidy white church at one end. Our house has faith that it will be spared, but we have our doubts.

Bellumbaum writes from Spain, where he’s vacationing with his third wife. It’s dreadfully hot, he writes. The postcard is damp, its corners fat and soft. We’re not jealous of the heat or of Bellumbaum. What can be changed about the weather? It’s like marriage, like the responsibilities of living. One is teased with a few days of mild, sunlit happiness. The flood and drought must be endured.

All the water that flowed into the lake seemingly reverses course, rising above the shoreline path and lapping over the lawn. The flagpole juts from the floodwater like the mast of a sunken boat. Miniature bays form along the homes’ lakeside lawns and gardens, revealing surprises of high and low ground. The lake teases a high-water mark of reeds and beads of polystyrene, but the floodwater continues to rise.

Our kitchen fills with leafy greens and vegetables pulled from the garden next door that Bellumbaum’s new wife put in. We hope she’ll agree that an early harvest is better than no harvest at all. Soon the flooding submerges the garden completely, a few overlooked tomatoes bobbing like buoys.

The floodwaters reach Bellumbaum’s basement and cascade down the slate-topped concrete steps to his new basement door. Do we do the right thing? After all, Bellumbaum did forget to care for our houseplants three summers ago. They all died, as did the cat, being unfed. Of course we do the right thing. There were reasons Bellumbaum couldn’t be bothered. We didn’t know about the sudden illness of his now-late wife number two, whom we didn’t like as much as his first late-wife—but that’s neither here nor there. We place sandbags against his basement door and build a berm around the top step. Then we surround the steps down to our own basement with more sandbags. It looks like we’re building a bunker. We run out of municipal sand and raid the children’s sandbox. The floodwaters crest our efforts. In the basement, the reassembled lawn chairs are ready for their first coat of paint. We heave them upstairs, away from the creeping water.

We check Bellumbaum’s basement. Dry. His house is as old as ours, but it’s been weather-sealed and restored to its former elegance. The wide-plank flooring upstairs gives off a glow mirrored in the brass door handles and lock plates, in the gold ornaments in the period-accurate wallpaper, in the gleam of the wall sconces. We return home to our disappointment of particle board and chipped veneer, the floors deeply scored and puzzlingly scuffed. The drop cloths under the drying garden chairs are superfluous; the dog has jumped into one of the chairs and made a canvas of the floor, the doorways, and our bed.

We learn that many of the boats in the marina have sunk. Bellumbaum’s boat, we say aloud. Bellumbaum and his first wife used to take us out on his first boat. When his wife passed away and he remarried, he bought the faster boat he has now and on which we were never invited out. With his third wife, Bellumbaum has once more extended the invitation. We’ve gone out on the lake often, our kids and his third wife’s grandson sitting together, feet dangling over the edge to give the bow a bit more weight as the boat speeds across the chop, the children’s hair streaming in the wind, glee and terror filling their faces when they look back at us, their little hands clutching the chrome railing as though their grip is all that keeps them on this side of oblivion.

We venture out and confirm that Bellumbaum’s boat is sunk, tied down too tightly to the fixed dock, his fastidiousness to blame. We admonish ourselves for not having gone out earlier to save it. We don’t have the heart to mention the loss to Bellumbaum, who is still in Spain, where it has only grown hotter. Our thoughts turn to Bellumbaum’s flower shop along the promenade. We take a detour, the shore cordoned off like a crime scene, the flooded roads troubled with rain. Water surrounds Bellumbaum’s shop on all sides, but his employees, acquaintances of ours, have sandbagged the doors and are adding a final row of sandbags when we arrive. We offer to park Bellumbaum’s delivery van at his house, and are given the keys. Water is nearly to the doors. When we pull up at his house, the lake is lapping along the sides of the building. We don’t take chances; we park his van uphill, several blocks away, near our own car.

At home, the children console the dog confined to our bedroom while the lawn chairs receive a second coat of paint. The house reeks and there are thunderous headaches and a blistering argument about the stench and why the painting couldn’t goddamn wait until the rain stops. We apologize to one another and dream of the grace of sunshine, the kids playing badminton, the two of us in these chairs soaking the heavy rays of a long summer day. We imagine bowls of freshly picked red currants and vanilla sauce, wasps dipping around the rim like tiny marionettes. But there is only rain and rising floodwaters.

What we hoped to avoid we no longer can; we lug the contents of our basement to the ground floor. The children enjoy the novelty of the different floors’ furniture meeting and create rafts from the cushions. We check Bellumbaum’s basement again and see that water has begun to pool there, too, despite the quality of his basement door and his weather-sealing. We feel better knowing that water does not differentiate between the prepared and the negligent; we were always powerless. We move as much of Bellumbaum’s things upstairs as we can, being careful with his expensive hi-fi and loudspeakers, his leather listening chair, and his vast and tremendously heavy LP collection. Our efforts leave dirty wet tracks on his floors and rugs, which feels much different than the water we leave on our own floors and rugs. We kneel and wipe everything clean.

The water comes around both sides of our house in an embrace, then stops rising. One of us says how fortunate we are, considering how the river tore entire homes from its banks up the valley, where people died. We try not to think about the water still seeping into the basement, try not to imagine the coming mold’s creep. There are still a few weekends of summer remaining—if the sun returns. Blackberries and cherries to pick, the newly painted lawn chairs to enjoy. One of us is proud of how they turned out and kindly doesn’t mention the other’s negativity about the project.

Bellumbaum and his new wife return from Bilbao the day the sun returns. Bellumbaum thanks us for emptying his basement, but he laments the loss of his boat and the damage to his flower shop. The flood even carried away his van, he says.

No, no, Bellumbaum, we say, and grin at one another. We find the key, and one of us takes off at a run. When the white van pulls into his gravel drive, it gleams like the sun. The two blue garden chairs—restored and set at angles in the sunshine, ready for conversation—are like moons. We can’t keep the chairs, of course. They were never really ours. Maybe we always knew that.

We insist that Bellumbaum’s new wife try out the chairs. We make them lunch, we serve them drinks, and for hours we listen to their vacation stories and pretend that Bellumbaum’s luck, our luck, will never be replaced, will never recede.