The Burning Side(11)

So I sneak to the oven and preheat it, quietly foraging for eggs, cheese, and spinach. This family will need a warm meal and strong coffee when day breaks, and far be it from me to leave them wanting under my roof.

It is five o’clock in the morning when I finally crawl back into bed. Billy has snoozed through everything. This skill amazed me when we were first married. I thought surely he was faking. I could turn on lights or shut drawers, and he wouldn’t so much as twitch. I could read a book or cry or even talk to a child, and on he would slumber. In the mornings, the kids would regale him with stories of nightmares or wet beds or overnight sicknesses. I would yawn with my dark roast, while Billy would stretch like a well-rested bear.

Tonight, his sleep is a gift. He has been forgetting the last interaction we have before bed, so now I will only have to tell him about the fire once.

I roll toward my husband and whisper, “Love you.”

And from wherever he is, his hand rises to meet mine.





DEB


The Day After the Fire

APRIL AND LEO LEFT THE kids with us, and Otto is crawling toward Billy like a windup toy. I’ve always hated the crawling stage. A crawling baby is a rogue angel, an unbearably tiny maverick striking out. Otto cranes his neck upward, then back down toward those itty-bitty hands with their effortful plops on the dark planks of hardwood. His hips waggle toward his patient grandfather, who finally scoops him up to the safety of his lap.

Sadie is gathering edge pieces for the planet puzzle she does every time she comes over. “Guess what.”

Billy looks at his granddaughter. “What?”

She fits two pieces together, eyes fixed downward. “Bear Bear died.”

My heart plummets. Once, when Sadie stayed overnight, Billy drove the hour back to Argyle to retrieve the forgotten bear so she could sleep peacefully.

Billy’s face floods with compassion; he has always been good at taking children seriously. “Well, maybe we could have a funeral.”

Sadie looks up at him, a piece of Saturn in her hand. “What’s that?”

Billy glances nervously at me. He always feels like he’s putting his foot in his mouth. As a dentist, he never tires of joking about the three things he finds in people’s mouths: plaque, cavities, and feet.

I merely raise my eyebrows, signaling him to go on with it, then.

“Uh, it’s when people gather to remember someone who has died.”

Sadie abandons her solar system and drifts toward her grandfather like he’s an oracle. “Why? Do people forget?”

He smiles sadly. “Sometimes. But mostly they need each other in order to get a more complete memory.” He looks toward the unfinished galaxy on the table. “Like a puzzle.”

She plays with his crepey elbow skin. “Oh.”

Otto grins on account of his sister’s face being so near his own.

I swallow at the portrait before me: my husband with a baby on his knee and a little girl beside him like there’s been a glitch in time. It’s Josie and Cameron two decades ago, back when women descended on me with so much motherly advice that I hardly had room for it alongside the hand-me-downs and recipe cards and burp cloths. As I watch Billy boop our granddaughter’s nose, I’m irritated that those women didn’t prepare me for this. Being a grandmother. The way time begins to press.

Several hours later—after wresting a puzzle piece from Otto’s grip just as it touched his plump lips, and scrubbing smoke from the children’s smooth and wriggling bodies, and buying them some starch-new outfits—April and Leo walk through the door with a fistful of magic.

Sadie gasps. “Bear Bear!”

The smell of smoke enters the house like a new member of the family.

Leo looks almost ill, so I rise instinctively. “Here, sit.”

“I’m okay.”

I gently shove him into the chair. “Sit.”

“Should I fire up the grill?” Billy’s question surprises no one. There are four great loves in William Russo’s life: his family, clean teeth, long bike rides, and grilled meat.

April eyes the clock and sinks to the hearth. “Sorry we took so long. We started sorting and making calls, and we lost track of the time.”

Leo’s stomach growls loudly, so Billy takes that as his cue to go retrieve the steaks from their marinade.

As Sadie shows Leo her puzzle and April lifts Otto from the ground, Josie walks in the door singing, tone-deaf to the mood of the room. This is when Billy returns with a seasoning bottle, holds it out to April, and says, “Found it.”

She tentatively accepts the dried thyme, confused.

Billy grins. “You said you lost track of the thyme.”

Everyone groans, trailing him outside, where seasoning puns and eighty-five-degree weather make valiant efforts to lift our spirits. The sun still high in the sky, a squirrel leaps from branch to branch, and we pop caps off Shiners and Topo Chicos as Billy’s slab of meat catches a nice flame.

Then Sadie begins to scream.

By the time anyone realizes why she’s screaming, Billy has a perfectly seared sirloin. He smothers the flame as Leo sprints to his daughter and holds her tightly to himself, his hand running down her back like it’s a volume button. April sandwiches Sadie from behind, offering gentle shushes. But the screams continue to ring out.

Otto whimpers without knowing why, and it takes fifteen minutes of tears and near-hyperventilation, of carrying Sadie inside and back out again, of waving Bear Bear in her face and offering treats that go unaccepted, and of showing her that the grill is cooled and covered before she finally believes she isn’t in danger of burning to death. She proceeds to fall hard asleep right there on the lawn, pitiful double-sniffles punctuating her slumber.