The family business was insurance, and my Dad was the agent. Nearly every one of our clients had a claim. Same thing with every agency in southeast Louisiana. It backed us up as well as the companies. Processing claims took at least three months longer than usual. Many fell through cracks until we followed up. We inevitably lost business. Many people wouldn’t be returning to Louisiana at all, and whether it took a month or five years companies would be terminating contracts.

There was no shortage of work. The old lazy days of coming into work, turning on the coffee pot and going out back from a cigarette were long gone. Katrina flooded the first floor of our office, so those of us who came back moved into close quarters on the second floor. We had one surviving copier, half the number of rooms, two toilets, no coffee maker, and all the envelopes had sweated shut.

Making sure clients could get in touch with us to file their claims had been of the utmost importance to Dad. They had to know we were ready and available to do our jobs. He paid for a radio spot so we could get our new phone number out there. He gave his home and cell, my mother’s cell, my uncle’s cell. Just threw them all out there. Calls started immediately. At first there was surprise, “Oh, is this Oxford? You from Oxford? My goodness.”

“I’ll be dog-gone.”

“God bless.”

They asked about the office, about us, our homes. Told us they were in Atlanta, Houston, Birmingham. But attitudes changed quickly. On the phone all day, some calls were missed. Once people got through they were angry or utterly disappointed. “Well, I tried calling y’all at least three times today.”

“I know Mr. Saint-Thomas. I have you on my list,” the CSR searched under To Call to cross him off.

“What number am I on the list?”

“If I numbered them, sir, I would cry.”

Some callers didn’t realize we were local. They had been on the phone with FEMA or SBA all day. Then they called us and said, “Hello, I’m from New Orleans. I’m an evacuee.”

“Me, too.”

“That’s—well that’s—that’s not very funny.”

“Mam, it’s no joke. You realize you dialed area code 504?”

The fact that we are local is what got us business to begin with. We were neighbors. We knew our clients and our town. We knew that when an underwriter in Iowa blew their top over the fact that an insured had never had his chimney swept the underwriter was the dummy. But what little common ground we had was failing us now. We had damaged homes and missing elderly relatives, too, but we were back in town, all employed, and all white. We couldn’t do things fast enough, not nearly as fast as a billion-dollar, multinational company. Actually, the government-run flood program was assessing and paying out claims the most efficiently. Companies, instead, were spending money on brilliant methods to maintain their bottom line.

“Sarah, look at this,” Rachel held up photographs of a small, frame house. The corner of its roof was peeled back. Trees littered the yard. “Lincoln won’t pay. They say it’s all flood damage.”

“But there’s no watermark.”

She clucked. “Now I got to call this poor guy back and tell him he’s screwed.”

***

The sounds of ringing phones and defensive mutterings filled the second floor. It buzzed with passive aggression and low morale. I’m not sure my father ever noticed.

“But I have insurance.”

“Yes, Mrs. Lewis, but not flood insurance.”

“My car flooded and the auto paid.”

“Yes, but homeowner’s insurance doesn’t pay for flooding.”

“Well what does it pay for?”

“If the water damage was wind-driven rain, they would pay. But it was rising water, so that means flooding.” The CSR braced for argument.

“I see what you’re doing. You turn it around and use trick language.”

It turned out most clients didn’t understand the basics. They didn’t know what they were covered for or who was supposed to pay. Some people showed up at our office. We’d hear them holler from the gutted first floor and beckon them upstairs. “I’m here for my check.”

A CSR pulled his file and found nothing. “Your claim hasn’t been paid yet.”

“I know. Cut me a check.”

“We’re your agent, Mr. Pierce. We don’t pay you, the company does.”

“So y’all aren’t a company now?”

“We’re an agent.”

“When do I get paid?”

“I can call the company and check the status, but you only filed it three weeks ago.”

“Well what the fuck good are you then?” spit flew when he shouted. A symphony of shutting doors would follow whenever this happened because everyone was on the phone with clients. These altercations on the second floor landing taught me that if you want to stop of southern man from hostile outbursts in the middle of your office, bring another man into the room. That shut it down immediately.

***

Many employees left the business after a while. A woman I knew since I was a baby, took a job at a bank after 30 years in insurance. I’m not sure what bothered them more, doling out bad news, the slick ways that companies skirted responsibility, or getting called names. We used to roll off business if the client was consistently disgruntled, but that was nearly everyone now.

I was playing receptionist because we were so understaffed. “Good morning, Oxford.”

“Gimme Rachel, dawlin.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Rachel’s no longer here. I’ll send you to Lynn.”

I watched the switchboard praying that Lynn would answer. Sometimes they took a short break to put away files, but I caught flack for it. “Good morning, Oxford.”

“Hey, you sent me to a message machine. I don’t wanna talk to that thing.”

I was 21 years old. I’m sure they could hear it in my voice. Sometimes they bullied me for it. “You don’t know what it’s like to own a home, calling a claims adjuster and never hearing back! You want to tell my kids where we’re going to sleep tonight?”

My problems were markedly different. I was worried about my flooded college, missing professors, and dangling senior year. My older brother Pat was succumbing to the onset of his illness, his mind coming apart. We lived together in an unscathed house. At night I watched his paranoia turned everything around us into a threat. I spent the day in a cluttered nook, essentially a hallway with a desk in it, taking shit from callers. I took mail home with me because there was no time to open it all at work.

One insured said he was disgusted with me. “Sir, should I tell them not to go to lunch? They should just work nine hours with no break?”

He gave a long sigh and apologized to me. “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at the situation.” It was the only apology.

CSRs asked me to stagger phone calls, but it was impossible. The phone rang constantly. I was getting yelled at every time someone was sent to a voice-mailbox, whether it was the insured calling me back to tell me I’m a stupid bitch or customer service complaining to my Dad that I was sending them too many calls. We worked out a system, a list. I would give everyone an equal number of calls by putting tally marks by their names. Some reps would even come in and check it. “I feel like I’ve gotten 20 more calls than Lynn.”

“Well, you haven’t.”

They still weren’t happy with the system, so I started to send them calls whenever I saw they weren’t on the phone. I still had my old renewal clerk duties to tend to as well. This meant calling people who hadn’t paid their renewal bill. It was a relief that many didn’t have working numbers anymore. People who don’t renew often don’t care, or can’t afford to care. Landlords were the worst bunch. They poor-mouth. They don’t take protecting rental property seriously. Then the storm of the century happens and they care furiously.

***

When they weren’t talking to a client, CSRs were trying to track down claims adjusters. Companies hired pretty much anybody to work their claims. Many of them didn’t know their way around town. A displaced client could come a thousand miles to meet an adjuster who would never show up to their home. Some adjusters would lie and say it was the client that didn’t show.

Some folks had no ALE; companies wouldn’t pay their displacement expenses. If they couldn’t find a place to stay they would attempt to sleep in their water-damaged homes. Mold is a killer. Management coached us to encourage them to stay elsewhere. But where?

Dr. Powers was the only person who not only stayed in her semi-gutted Lakeview home, but she always came to see us in good spirits. “I was just checking in on y’all,” she’d slump down in a chair anywhere. “AC is wonderful,” she’d sigh. She was a professor at my school, but I never noticed her before. These days she looked more or less homeless having spent all day working on her house. Salt and pepper hair piled atop her head, raggedly clothes, dusty shoes, and absurdly thick glasses falling down her nose. Her CSR was my uncle Ben. They were well matched. They both somehow managed to make jokes and sleep at night.

“Where’s my Kirk?” Dr. Powers asked in her strange, fat voice that gobbled in her throat.

“Picard!” he called her, file already in his hand. They were Trekkies. Always left the strangest messages for one another in some sort of geek-code.

Dr. Powers was there when I hung up the phone one day, tears in my eyes. She gave me a hug. She smelled of oatmeal and wind. Once her claim was settled she sold her property and moved to St. Louis.

***

We lost five employees, gained three, and then lost those, too. My older brother Pat picked up things quickly so Dad promoted him to customer service. I stayed in my nook. We were in this insurance black hole, but at least we were together. He was still learning his new job when he had his first episode.

He came in from our garage one day with the angriest look on his face. Grass stuck to the sweat on his arms. “Someone just took my picture.”

“What?” I stood in the kitchen.

“Someone drove by the house and took my picture while I was putting up the mower. I saw them,” he sounded almost accusatory.

“I’m sure they were just taking pictures of—storm—damage.” I truly was. It was common at the time, but there was little damage in our neighborhood. Not much you could see from the street anyway. Pat still looked angry and skeptical. “Pat, I’m sure it’s nothing. You’re mistaken.”

He went back into the garage, slamming the door behind him.

I told my parents separately what had happened. Both only seemed to consider what I said for a second then rushed on to other concerns. My friends speculated very little, “Maybe it was something he ate.” Pat slept on the sofa at night so he could hear if anyone came in the front or back doors.

***

Our office was surrounded by little one-floor apartment buildings that were thrown up sometime in the late 70s. They had water and extensive roof damage. Pieces of them were all over the street. We kept finding them in our tires. The building nearest to us was undergoing repairs almost immediately after the storm. Cheap Mexican labor was the norm. They spent all day on roofs in 90 degree heat.

“I can hear them talking about me,” Pat squinted across the street at the workers. He would chew, although there was nothing in his mouth. Like he was biting on his tongue.

“They’re speaking Spanish,” I was baffled.

“I hear them when I come out to smoke. When I park my car in the morning. When I go to lunch. When I go home.”

“You know Spanish well enough to tell what they’re saying?” Besides their voices were distant, barely audible from where we stood.

“Sarah, I just know.” He’d never been more dismissive before. He started to do weird things with his cigarettes, too. Pinching and rolling the last of the burning tobacco from the butt, and rolling the rest of the white paper into a little spiral. They were lined up on the windowsill this way.

“One day I’m going to go over there and say something to them.” He looked out at the workers as if they could hear him, as if they were even paying attention to us. “I saw Dad talking to them this morning. Laughing,” he added the next part cautiously, “about me.” Before I could argue, he disappeared back into the office.

Inside were learned that Lynn quit. Too proud to show we were hurting, Dad asked her to leave immediately rather than finish out the week. She pretended to be okay with it, but I heard her slamming things everywhere she went.

***

“Mam, I don’t know what else to do. I call you, you call them, you tell me to call this guy, he never calls back. We got nowhere to go when the money runs out.”

“Mam, if you’ll just hold, I’m sure Tiffany will be with you in just a moment.”

“I got two babies with me. Mine and my sisters. Spending $70 a night on a hotel. How long it’s going to last?”

Tiffany’s phone went from red to black. “Hold just a moment, I’ll make sure you get her.” I shuffled through the halls lined with filling cabinets. Inside their office, I noticed my brother wasn’t at his desk, “Tiffany, it’s really important you take this call,” my eyebrows pinched.

“Aaaaall right. Which one?”

“Line four.”

“Mkay, dawlin,” she said like a woman always so agreeable. “This is, Tiffany—hi, Ms. Eleanor.”

From the hall my father called me into his office. I was torn between being glad to leave the phone and resentful that he couldn’t see that it was just going to mean endless work for me later. “Pat quit,” he said sitting down.

“What?”

“I just asked him to do something, he refused. Tiffany was right there. I can’t have her see this insubordination. Everyone seeing it. Not now of all times. I cannot tolerate insubordination right now.” He clung to the word, a word I never heard him use before.

“Wait, what did you ask him to do?”

He held out a 5-inch stack of photographs. Abandoned cars, collapsed homes, watermarks. “A friend of mine took those.”

“Are these our clients?”

“No. I just asked Pat to make color copies of those.”

“All of them?” It would have taken all afternoon.

“Well, yeah,” he was getting defensive with me.

“And he said he wouldn’t do it and then quit?” It didn’t sound like Pat.

“I said, ‘You’re gonna do this,’ and he said ‘No, I’d rather quit than do that for you.’” His impression of Pat was melodramatic. Infuriating. I could only recall him ever using that voice to imitate his mother.

“Did he say anything about the Mexican roofers?”

“What?”

***

Pat told me a very different story about the insubordination. Something about having urgent work to take care of, and Dad wanting him to waste his time on a personal project he could have done himself. However there was mention of the roofers and Dad talking, conspiring, undermining his intellect.

At first, he looked for work, but there was little to be had. He decided to go to grad school, political science. But his very first lecture was on the Patriot Act. People listening in on phone calls and riffling through emails came to the forefront of his fears. He dropped out of the graduate program and ghosted around our house all day.

One less CSR caused great complications. I tried to muscle through the exhaustion, be like Dad, keep my mind on the bigger picture, not the present moment. But everyone said something different about everything. The storm, insurance, Pat. My head lurched in every direction until even I began to suspect they were trying to ruin me. I took my cigarette breaks alone. Reveling in the few minutes away from the phone.

Despite the fact that we were receiving mail for two months, something weird happened. All the missing mail was delivered in one giant garbage bag. Many things sent to clients had bounced back. Not just things we sent, but things the companies sent. Some of it wasn’t important anymore, but other envelopes contained checks.

***

Ten months after Katrina many claims still weren’t settled. We automated the phone system, so I was freed up to do other things. I was in charge of inputting information into an automated system, something that we could take anywhere with us next time a storm hit us. No more filing cabinets, no more paper. I still called folks about renewing policies. I had a monthly list of renewals. I used to take great pride in finishing off those lists. Sending invoices, following up, getting the checks. No one gave a shit now. Some people didn’t know if the house I was calling about was even there anymore.

The only people left at the office were family and one woman just too crazy to leave. Dad dropped hints that it would be good to have the extra help. I told Pat and he just started coming in one day. He was quiet. Kept his head down. In fact he seemed exhausted. Little of his bizarre beliefs seemed to be plaguing him anymore. Or at least he didn’t talk about them. Hispanic men were fixing out neighbor’s roof and fence. Pat said little about it, but he refused to speak when he was in our yard or on the porch. All talking had to be done inside.

Relieved of the phone, I could now eat lunch. I could even eat it away from my desk. We used an old empty apartment space next door as our lunchroom. It was musty and dusty, but had a full kitchen. Right after the storm the employees were divided between those who went out to lunch and those who took only 15 minutes in the lunchroom. In the end, the only workers left were those who used the lunchroom.

“I can’t do this anymore. I take the mail home with me, sort it, spend an hour doing homework, go to bed, and then come back to this every day.” This was the same reason everyone was leaving the business.

“Sweetie, it’s all temporary.”

“It’s been almost a year since the storm.”

“Well I’m hiring people, but it takes time. Time to find them and time to train them.”

“Like Nell?” I trained her. She quit after a month.

“Is this about the renewals?”

“It’s not just the renewals.”

“If you can’t tell me what you want, then what can I do?”

“I want to quit. I want you to let me go.”

Dad sat back and stopped eating. Some old, sloppy monster awoke. Feeling rejected his ears turned pink, cheeks red, and angular veins cropped up on his forehead. “So you don’t care about the business. You just say shit on it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

He was silently wiping his chin and refusing to look at me. Clenched and unclenched his jaw.

“Do you even care about what it does to me?”

He didn’t answer me. We were thinking of two different things. He was thinking about the future of the business. I was thinking about the limitations of the human mind.

He turned the argument back over onto me in irrational and deliberate strides until I wasn’t sure what agreement we came to. I only knew I was still employed. When he left me to my lunch, I poked around at it and thought about smoking.

My Uncle Ben passed by the window carrying something in his arms. I usually waited for him to eat lunch. He had a magical way of mixing a variety of unappetizing leftovers together into something delicious. He taught me about the magic unifier: Cheese.

As he came in, several employees followed carrying their lunches. “Tell her what you did Ben,” Tiffany grinned and winked at me.

He began unwrapping a roasted bird. “This is a neighborhood bird,” he said.

Tiffany was still grinning as Marie sat down next to me with a sandwich.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well I was driving down Magnolia Highway with Junior one day and I said to him ‘Son, they got ducks all over here.’ And Junior wondered if anybody in the neighborhood ever ate them.”

Wild duck and geese live in the canals near the lake. Sometimes you had to stop for a family of them to cross the street. I knew a girl in high-school who hydroplaned her SUV into the canal. An old lady from the neighborhood yelled at her because she killed a duckling.

No one was helping me to understand, “So you shot a duck in the suburbs?”

“That can’t be legal,” Marie sniggered.

“The other night I got one of those extension poles you use for paint rolling and Junior got this aluminum bat he had. We went out by Magnolia Highway and just boom, boom.” He made a swinging gesture.

“Boom?” I studied his face. “You beat the duck to death?”

“Oh, Ben!” Marie sounded more annoyed than disgusted. She left her sandwich and got a bottle of water from the fridge.

“I told you, that’s a story,” Tiffany assembled a salad. “You lucky nobody in those houses saw you. They feed them muscovy ducks.”

“You took your thirteen year old son in the dead of night to beat a wild duck to death in the middle of the suburbs.”

“It only took a couple whacks. I had him and then he started to run off. When we caught up to him, we just bam-bam-bam. He was out.” Ben was assembling a duck sandwich. “I took it over to your grandmother’s and she cleaned it up. Plucked it. She’s old school, so she knows how.”

I could see Pat’s calves beneath the window blinds. He was outside smoking. I went to join him without excusing myself.

“Not hungry?” Tiffany chuckled.

Pat didn’t speak when I met him. He nodded, lit my cigarette, and watched the empty roofs across the street.