But then—ta-da! — after Elliott fizzled in the Windward Islands and then Frederika, right behind him, petered out of the Leewards, there materialized in midocean the tempest that might have been dubbed George if that name hadn't been used already, but since it had been (1998), was dubbed Giorgio instead, in keeping with the Weather Service's storm-naming policies of ethnic diversity and gender alternation. And now, perhaps, this nonstory called "The End" can begin.
"Giorgio?" I imagine George Walsh wondering aloud to his wife, who's at her computer, as is he his, in the adjoining workrooms of their ample Georgian-style house on Shoreside Drive, in Rock-fish Reach. "Is that me in Spanish?"
"In Spanish you'd be J-o-r-g-e," I hear Carol call back through the open door between His and Hers — in which latter she's checking out the websites of various resort accommodations on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where they hope to vacation next February: "Pronounced Hor-hay. Giorgio's Italian. Wherefore ask ye, prithee?"
She talks that way sometimes. Her husband then explains what he's just seen on Weather.com: that a tropical depression near the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa, which he's been monitoring for the past several days, has organized and strengthened into the seventh named storm of the season as it crossed toward the Antilles, and is currently forecast to escalate in the Caribbean from Tropical Storm Giorgio to a Category 1 hurricane.
"O joy," Mrs. W. would likely respond, her tone the auditory equivalent of a patient eye-roll, and go back to her Internet chat room on the pros and cons of those vacation lodgings, as does Mr. to his storm-tracking.
So meet the Walshes, Reader, as I reconstruct them — who, despite prevailingly robust health in their seventh decade of a successful life and fourth of a good marriage, have only eight remaining days of both until The End. Longtime Stratfordians before they shifted the five miles south to Heron Bay Estates, like the majority of their neighbors they're more or less retired at the time of this "story." Carol, sixty-five, is the ex — vice principal of Avon County High School, where for years she'd been a much-loved teacher of what the curriculum called Literature & Language and she called Reading & Writing. Outgoing and athletic (though less trim and more fatigue-prone nowadays, I'd bet, than she's used to being), she still enjoys tennis, swimming, and bicycling, and "to keep her hand in" coaches a number of college-bound ACHS seniors for their SATs as well as presiding over weekly meetings of the Heron Bay Book Club. Her husband, sixty-eight, was born and raised in Stratford, where his father directed a local bank. After graduation from the county high school at which his future wife would later teach and administrate, he crossed the Bay to take a baccalaureate in business at the University of Maryland, where Carol (from the Alleghenies of western Maryland) happened to be working toward her degree in education. By happy chance among so many thousands of College Park undergraduates, in her freshman and his senior year they met, introduced by a fraternity brother of George's who happened to be an old high school friend of Carol's and who, shortly after her graduation three years later, would be best man at their wedding. The bridegroom being by then busily employed at Stratford Savings & Loan, the newlyweds set up housekeeping in his hometown. While George — on his own merits, be it said — rose rapidly in the ranks of his father's firm, Carol completed at Stratford College the requisite postgrad credits for teacher certification. The two then thrived in their chosen fields, moving through the decades to high, though never top, positions in each (George would no doubt have succeeded his father as president of SS&L had he remained there rather than shifting in the early 1980s to a promising position with the Eastern Shore wing of Tidewater Communities, Inc., just breaking ground for it's Heron Bay Estates project). Although less extroverted and community-spirited than Carol, he got along easily with colleagues and business associates, and in his retirement still enjoys attending Rotary Club and TCI board meetings. Husband and wife agree that like their differing genders, their differing temperaments, interests, and even metabolisms enhance rather than detract from their connection (despite his hearty appetite, George's body has shrunk with age, and his posture is becoming bent already, as was his father's). Their one child — a sometimes difficult but much-loved daughter with her mother's smile and her father's frown — went off to college in Ohio and never returned to Tidewaterland except to visit her parents. Now forty, lesbian, childless, and currently companionless as well, Ellen Walsh works in the editorial offices of the Cleveland Plain Dealer to support herself while pursuing, thus far without success, what she believes or anyhow hopes is her true vocation, the writing of serious literary fiction. Her parents content themselves with their hobbies and household routines: the pleasures and activities above-mentioned plus some gardening and small-scale renovation projects. Also, of course, household chores, errands, and dealings with maintenance-and-service people — yard crew, housecleaner, roofer and plumber and painter and electrician — all more frequent as their house gets older by HBE standards. To which must be added visits to the sundry doctors, dentists, and pharmacists who tend to their similarly aging bodies.
In all, a comfortable, fortune-favored life, as they well appreciate: ample pensions, annuity income, and a solid, conservative investment portfolio; not-bad health; no family tragedies; few really close friends (and no house pets), but no enemies. To be sure, they fear the prospect of old age and infirmity; can't help envying neighbors with married children and grandkids near at hand to share lives with and eventually "look after" them. Over their seven decades, separately and together, they've done this and that if not this or that; traveled here and there though not there and there; succeeded at A, B, and C if not at D, E, and F. No extraordinary good luck beyond their finding each other and being thus far spared extraordinary bad luck. Could wish for some things they never had, but feel graced indeed with each other, with their family (siblings and nieces and nephews in addition to their daughter), their neighbors and neighborhood, and the worthy if unremarkable accomplishments of their past and present life. They wish it could go on for a long while more! And have, after all, no reason to expect that it won't, for at least another decade or so.
But it won't.
"Yup," George reports next morning, or maybe the morning after that. "We've got ourselves a Cat. One hurricane. Looks like old Giorgio's going to pass under Puerto Rico and smack southern Haiti."