Weather Girl(4)

Torrance made science, made weather seem like it could be glamorous. I didn’t have to be stuck in a lab, poring over data and writing reports. I could tell stories with the weather. I could help people understand, even help protect them, when Mother Nature grew brutal.

My mother was unreliable, her dark moods sometimes turning her into a stranger, but Torrance never was. She was a source of comfort and calm, always exactly where she was supposed to be: in front of the green screen at four o’clock and then again at twelve-minute intervals. Friday nights, she hosted a half-hour show called Halestorm that focused on in-depth climate trends, and I’m not ashamed of the party invites I turned down so I could watch it live. I even bleached my red hair blond in eighth grade to look more like her, nearly burning off my scalp in the process.

Even when my own moods dimmed in a way that sometimes matched my mom’s, the earliest symptoms of the depression I wouldn’t get diagnosed until college, my love never wavered.

A couple years later, after all my red had blessedly grown back out, I won a high school journalism award for a story about the life cycle of a solar panel, and Torrance herself presented it to me at the banquet. I was sure I’d faint—I kept pinching the inside of my wrist to make sure I stayed conscious. When she whispered in my ear how much she’d loved the story, there was zero doubt in my mind: I was going to become a meteorologist.

The reality is that working for Torrance Hale is a very different kind of Halestorm.

“Have you seen this?” Torrance slaps a piece of paper on my desk, her ivory-painted nails trembling with the indignity of it. “It’s unacceptable, right? I’m not losing my mind?”

After three years at KSEA, I’m still intimidated by Torrance, especially when she’s in full makeup—the kind that looks natural on camera but creepy when you’re two feet away from someone’s over-blushed, over-eyeshadowed face. As always, her mouth is slicked with her signature lipstick, a shade of cherry red that costs $56 per tube. I used to beg my mother for it every year for my birthday, with no luck. When I finally bought it as an adult, I realized it was garbage with my complexion. Such is life as a pale redhead: keep us out of the sun and away from half the color wheel.

I unzip my jacket and hang it on my cubicle hook. Although technically, we’re not supposed to call them cubicles. During orientation, HR stressed to me that this was a “low-partition office,” which is . . . basically cubicles, but the walls aren’t as high. It was a recent redesign; the staff had been unhappy with cubicles, and an expert had come in and made all these changes designed to increase productivity. I’m not sure if it increased productivity, but it definitely increased people talking about how it’s supposed to increase productivity.

It’s eight o’clock, meaning the morning show just ended. All over the newsroom in our Belltown station, people are hunched over their desks beneath too-bright fluorescents and a bank of TVs, the one tuned to KSEA currently airing an ad for a carpet cleaner with a too-catchy jingle. On a typical day, I’d be a few hours from the end of my shift, but Torrance is presenting at some gala tonight. As a minor Seattle celebrity, she’s always getting invitations like this, and while I’ve grown out of my obsession with her, the city hasn’t.

Without looking at the piece of paper and even without the warning from Russell, I’d know who’s behind this unacceptable behavior: Seth Hasegawa Hale, KSEA 6 news director. Torrance’s ex-husband.

I chance a peek at it.


Please finish milk before opening new carton to avoid waste. Two containers are already open and more than half full. The environment thanks you. —SHH



Classic Seth. With our general manager a year from retirement and completely checked out, Seth’s taken it upon himself to run the station as he sees fit, often in the form of passive-aggressive signs like this one. The irony that his initials are SHH isn’t lost on me.

I’m not sure which of Torrance’s questions to answer first. “I hadn’t seen it yet,” I settle on. “Maybe he didn’t know it was yours?”

“He knows perfectly well that I’ve been off dairy for years and soy gives me hives. I’m the only one who drinks the oat milk. This was very clearly directed at me,” she says, sparing me from having to take a side in the Great Milk Debate. She leans her hip against my desk, her form-fitting blue dress wrinkle-free even after having been on the air since four in the morning, her blond hair tumbling past her shoulders. At fifty-five, Torrance is, and I say this with a tremendous amount of respect for her as a scientist, smoking hot.

“He can’t just do this and expect all of us to fall in line the way he wants,” she continues. “If he wants to talk about saving the planet, then he should trade in that SUV he’s driving. Or stop wasting all this paper.”

I’m fairly certain this isn’t about the environment at all, but I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of the Hales’ relationship. From what I’ve heard, they were miserable for a while before they divorced five years ago. I don’t love Seth’s signs, either—really could have done without the one in the bathroom reminding us that the plumbing is too delicate to handle tampons—but I imagine I’d love them a lot less if I used to be married to him.

I do my best to stay optimistic. Upbeat. “He did say ‘please,’ at least? And I drink the oat milk sometimes, too . . . maybe it was more of a general note?” I have never had the oat milk.