That Damn Rain

Jane had been looking out of her living room window all morning. She sipped her cold brew and listened to the soft pattering of acid rain hit her rooftop and watched the cloudy green raindrops splash onto the sidewalk. It had been raining for nearly three weeks straight and the options available for passing the time were slim. Jane tried watching TV but the rain had a habit of interfering with the satellite dishes. Her gas stove didn’t work either so she mostly stuck to eating potato chips or marshmallow cereal. Her washing machine did, in fact, work but she didn’t bother doing any laundry. The rain discouraged people from traveling and Jane didn’t have a car anyway so the amount of guests she had to host was at an all-time low. The phones would work for a few hours in the evenings but Jane ignored most calls – the weather left people with little to talk about.

Jane spent that particular morning practicing her newfound hobby – people watching. She watched the young mother across the street race from her front door to her car with her infant child in her arms, struggling to keep the baby’s face shielded from the rain with her hands. She watched the mailman drive his van over the curb and onto the grass so he could stick packages directly into mailboxes from the safety of his vehicle. She watched as a pair of blue jays huddled together underneath a juniper tree in her front yard. 

As morning passed the streets became empty and Jane was left with nothing to look at but the haze of green rain pummeling the streets. There was a newspaper on the coffee table next to her that she had avoided picking up all morning. With a heavy sigh she snatched up the paper and turned to the back page where the job listings were. Her eyes were drawn to the listing at the top of the page that she had circled in red pen the day before.

**Job Fair. 9am to 6pm. County Fairgrounds. On Site Interviews. Rain or Shine.”

Jane took one final swig of her cold brew before getting dressed. She put her jet-black hair into a neat bun and her short sleeve blouse was buttoned properly. She double checked that her mascara lined up neatly and that her heels she chose to wear weren't too tall. She packed twenty copies of her resume snugly into a manila folder. She was as ready as she would ever be.

Jane stepped out onto her front porch under the cover of the roof as the rain continued to pour down in front of her. The air was heavy and left a metallic taste on her tongue. Every raindrop made the sidewalk sizzle like a cold egg on a frying pan and a green haze covered the street making it difficult to see further than a few feet. Jane gripped her folder tightly and began walking towards the street.

She didn’t make it very far. Within a few steps Jane was in complete agony. Every raindrop was an icy sharp stab on her arms. Every breath she took burned lungs and her tongue began to swell. Her vision became cloudy as her eyes welled with tears and her ears began to ring. She looked down to see the rain had burned hundreds of holes in her folder.

Jane had only taken a few steps into her yard but decided she had enough. She turned around and began sprinting back towards her house. She frantically pulled on the handle of the front door as each piercing rain drop lingered on her skin. The door was locked, of course. Jane began to pat down the pockets of her blouse and pants in search of her keys. Her keys…where were her keys?  She searched her memory of the events of that morning. She remembered collecting her resume, her cell phone, and her purse. Surely, she grabbed her keys too? She peaked over from the porch to the living room window and her heart sank as she saw her house keys on the kitchen counter inside.

Jane slammed her fists on the door repeatedly and gave it a kick for good measure. During the rain locksmiths rarely made house visits. And when they did, they charged a premium rate. “Hazard pay”, they always said.

She sat down on her porch with her face in her hands as she began to sob. Her resumes had dissolved into a soggy ball of pulp. Her mascara was smeared across her eyes, her hair lay hanging in frizzy strands over her face. It was her first trip through the rain in weeks and she barely made it out of her front door.

As Jane continued to reflect on her failure, she heard a faint yelling through the rain. Through the green misty rain she could barely see the dark silhouette of a person standing on the porch of the house next door waving their hand broadly, beckoning Jane towards them.

Jane didn’t know her neighbors well. Before the rain she used to give the neighbor three doors down a friendly wave every few weeks on the way to the mailbox, but the truth was she couldn’t pick most of her neighborhood out of a lineup. She saw the moving trucks in the driveway to the house next door the week prior but hadn’t seen the new tenant yet.  Jane hesitated for a moment before standing back on her feet begrudgingly and sprinted through her yard towards the house next door. When she made it to the front porch she was greeted by an elderly woman with silver hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a puffy grey crotchet sweater and fuzzy slippers covered in pictures of cartoon dachshunds of various colors.

“Come inside and dry off dear. I’ll make some tea,” the woman said with a warm smile.

The woman sat Jane next to the roaring fireplace in her living room and covered her in a large blanket. Jane continued to sniffle and cry quietly but the old woman seemed unphased. She turned on the small generator in her kitchen and placed a ceramic kettle on the stove top.

“Now what is a nice young girl such as yourself doing running out into the rain, Ms…” the elderly woman trailed off.

“S-s-sorry. My name is Jane” She said through chattering teeth.

“Nice to meet you. Ethel Bridgers.” The elderly woman smiled. “This rain is no laughing matter, Jane. What were you doing outside?”

“J-j-job hunting. There’s a job fair at the fairgrounds today.”

Ethel tutted quietly. “I don’t see a car in your driveway,” Ethel remarked while pulling some teacups down from the cupboard above her head. “Were you going to walk all the way there? That’s nearly 6 miles dear.”

“I don’t really have much of a choice,” Jane said dejectedly. “I’m broke and in desperate need of a job.”

Ethel went to the kitchen and grabbed the hot kettle from the stovetop and poured both her and Jane a cup of strong English Breakfast tea. “I met Ernie this morning. The nice man that lives caddy corner from you,” she pointed. “He told me he thought you worked at a bank. He said he saw the logo of the old Teacher’s Credit Union on your book bag.”

“Ernie’s info is out of date. He must be losing his touch, the nosy old man. I got fired,” Jane said flatly. Her teeth had stopped chattering and the feeling had returned to her fingers and toes, along with a wariness of Ethel’s line of questioning. Normally she would take exception to people like Ethel or Old Man Ernie prying for information about her, but the events of that morning had left her with little sense of decorum. “Too many missed days, they said.”

“I think its ok to call out every once in a while,” Ethel remarked.

“I called out for a week straight. Employers don’t like that apparently. Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Jane said flippantly while sipping her tea.

Ethel sat in thought for a moment before asking her next question. “What made you stop going?”

Jane shrugged and laughed facetiously to herself but as she looked up from her tea to see that, for the first time since Ethel had brought her into her home, she wasn’t smiling. Her smile was replaced with a look of concern that shot a pang of discomfort directly into Jane’s chest.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking their tea and watching the fire dwindle down to a handful of embers. “I just can’t stand walking through this damn rain,” Jane blurted. “Every second in it is painful and uncomfortable. People are always understanding at first. But eventually the charade ends and people stop caring. You’re just supposed to figure it out and get back to living your life as if this stuff doesn’t even exist at all. And the worst part is that even if I do get a job today – what does that get me? I am back to going out into that rain multiple times a day. I can’t stay and I can’t go and it’s never going to stop.”

Ethel stirred her tea, her soft smile back on her face. “You’re being entirely too hard on yourself, dear. This rain is no laughing matter and its something we all must deal with.”

“You mean most of us,” Jane said under her breath.

Ethel smiled coyly. “You think the rain doesn’t affect all of us?”

“You’re retired, aren’t you? You don’t have to go to work. It’s different for me. I’m sorry but you just don’t know what its like having to deal with this.” Jane said pointedly.

Ethel laughed softly to herself and stood up from her seat. She slowly slid her jacket off her shoulders and Jane let out a quiet gasp. On every surface of Ethel’s arms and shoulders were tiny circular scars. Ethel gently draped the jacket over Jane’s shoulders and gave Jane a soft squeeze with her hands.

“Dear, when I was your age, it rained for an entire year,” Ethel said. “I never thought it would end. I felt just like you do now. I felt paralyzed, frozen. I didn’t feel happy staying or going. Everything choice felt like the wrong one.”

Jane’s face was red with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. A whole year must have been awful,” she said staring down at her shoes. “How did you make it through this?”

Ethel gave Jane a pat of reassurance on the shoulder. “No matter how much we fight and we wish and we plead and we pray, there is always going to be rain. We can’t control the rain, dear. All we can do is try and remember to bring an umbrella.”