The Burning Side(32)

“Five. How’s your head?”

I pause to check. “Better. What was the medicine?”

“Steroid.”

“How’d you get—”

“I called the doctor when you said your oxygen was ninety-three. She prescribed a steroid and said to go to the emergency room if it hit ninety-two. It never did.” He looks at me, and I can see the fear in his eyes like a tide receding. “I almost took you anyway.”

“But now you might get sick and—”

“Please don’t. You stopped responding to texts. You didn’t get your ice from the hall or answer when I knocked. So I made a decision, and I don’t regret it.”

The words slink around the room. I made a decision, and I don’t regret it.

“I’m not mad.” I drag my hand to his face, pulse ox and all. “I’m thankful.”

There on two pillows—mine flattened and yellowed from sweat—we face each other, eyes flecked with shared evanescence.

“Daddy?” Sadie is at the door.

Leo shoots upright. “Remember to stay at a distance. Do you need more food?”

She looks at me cautiously, with what appears to be a pinprick of ketchup on her chin. “Hi, Mama,” she says.

I want to see my daughter, but I don’t want my daughter to see me like this. My syllables are more catches of breath than sound as I say, “Hi, sweetheart.” I’ve never done anything as hard as not hugging her right now.

Sadie grins from well over six feet away, obedient. “You like Daddy’s mouth brow?” She says it like bwow.

It takes me a beat, and then I laugh for the first time in nine days. It reverberates through the warehouse of my head, and I take a deep breath against the flare of pain.

Leo grooms his mustache dramatically as Sadie adds, “He say you not like.”

“Well, he was wrong. I do like it. He looks like Zorro.”

Leo laughs.

Sadie dons a quizzical expression. “Like sorrow?”

I say to Leo under my breath, “Keep it a while?”

So he does. And he doesn’t get sick. Neither does Sadie.

It takes a month for my headaches to subside, but gradually, finally, they do.

In the shower, I stare down at myself as hot streams of water leave cherry-red dots on my stomach like a rash. The last time I liked my body was high school, before it was given to sickness or men or a baby. I try to reconcile this soft, pale, veiny sight with what it once was, and I feel like the picture of weakness, having spent the last month needing to rebuild basic daily stamina.

But then that thought shifts like a foundation, the whole thing settling just a bit differently. For a few luminous minutes, I get a sense of gratitude. It’s this body—this version of this body—that has shown staying power. I’m strong and able to survive. My insecurities will return, but not before I put on a lacy negligee for the first time in years and let my husband leave the light on. My body is alive, it is loved, it is capable of pleasure. Leo ascends me like a ladder to heaven. The mustache is a new experience, and I like it.

A few weeks later, I emerge from the same bathroom where I so recently sluiced cold water onto my virus-riddled face, my undereyes like black, upside-down umbrellas, and my nose raw from the rub of tissues. It’s the same bathroom where I rinsed my freshly loved self after the negligee and mustache. I emerge from that bathroom and pass through the blue bedroom where Leo and I once had no furniture or clothes, only dots of paint on our skin like marks on maps. The same bedroom that housed our newborn and me through diaper leaks and sprays of milk. The same bedroom that saw my oxygen thin out and return.

I take a deep breath now, because I can. Because sometimes you have to allow for life, even with all the uncertainty. I emerge from that bathroom, through that bedroom, past our sleeping daughter and into the hushed living room with the woven light fixture, under which my husband sits and waits, clasping his hands.

I smile, wide and girlish.

Leo stands and steps toward me.

I touch my belly, nodding.

“It’s positive.”





LEO


Three Days After the Fire

I JOLT AWAKE IN A cold sweat. It is two o’clock in the morning as I sit upright on the Russos’ couch in the dark, orienting myself. The room is cool, there are no flames. I turn, the soles of my feet finding solid ground, and I lean back against the worn couch, running a hand over my face. I’m safe; I am not burning to death.

April speaks. Lo siento. I reach for her. You always say this creek is filthy. She strips away her clothes. I turn aside to give her privacy, but she is there too, holding my book to her chest.

I stand and click on a lamp.

I am, of course, alone in a non-burning room.

The bookshelf is stocked with plenty to occupy me as my heartbeat slows. Then there’s my sad, ripped Target bag on the floor in the corner, with Seventh City peeking out of it. I’m suddenly all too oriented, and annoyed. I don’t want to think about my failed novel or my failed marriage, these amateur endeavors to which I gave myself completely. Yet Seventh City all but lifts itself into my hands, and I open it.

To April. The night I reached forty thousand words, I decided it was garbage, pressed Select All, and hovered over the Delete button. April ran in front of the computer, slid herself between it and me, squeezed my chin between her thumb and forefinger, and said, “Leonardo Torres, don’t you dare.” So dare I didn’t.