The Burning Side(4)
“What do you mean?”
This is when I learn that even a very tall man can look shy. Glancing down before meeting my gaze, Leo asks, “Could I take you to dinner on Friday?”
I bite back my smile. “Sure.”
When we met to the beat of the marching band, there was no spark. There is now.
Later, I sit by the pool with Josie as she rambles about her freshman welcome events at Emerson. There’s a divide between us now. Josie is living childhood’s last gasp while I’ve been thrust into all that comes after. A bit jealous of my pink-shouldered sister for having college still in front of her, I nod along, lulled by her verbosity and the shimmering blues of water and sky.
I say zilch about Leo Torres, but my thoughts float toward him. The passion with which he spoke about history. The dignifying way he talked about his students. And the way that, when we parted, he touched my arm and said, “See you soon.” His eyes were as warm and green and inevitable as springtime.
APRIL
The Morning After the Fire
BEFORE OPENING MY EYES, I can—incredibly—smell Juniper Breeze from my high school summer job at Bath & Body Works. For a minute I’m seventeen years back in time, about to jump out of bed, lather on sunscreen, and drag Josie to the pool. My son’s squeak from the corner of the room reminds me of how time moves.
I peel my eyelids open to check on them: Otto with his sleep-squeaks in the playpen and Sadie beside me in the bed, two appendages who didn’t exist and now do. I turn toward my sleeping daughter and smell smoke. One day I’m a newly driving teen with my Juniper Breeze and Coppertone, and the next I’m a mother in my childhood bedroom, with ashes where I had a home. Where I had a marriage.
“Knock knock.” Mom creaks open the door, sees the children sleeping, and makes a whoops face, though neither Otto nor Sadie stir. I have no idea what time it is.
Mom asks quietly, “Breakfast?”
On cue, my stomach turns over and I nod.
She disappears back downstairs, where I can hear the faint clatter of a pan in the sink, the faucet turning on and off. This is the first time I’ve slept in this room since I got married nine years ago, but Mom’s morning sounds transport me back in time.
I creep down the stairs, relieved to see the French doors to the front room still closed. Leo hasn’t emerged, which means I can have Mom’s cooking and a minute to think.
In the kitchen, I sidle up beside her and slice into a grapefruit. Rays of sun reach between the branches of the old sycamore and in through the picture window over the sink. It’s enough for a cruel mind trick, the early light making me believe for a second that all is well.
Then from behind us, Leo says, “Morning.”
With his voice, the room darkens around me. Morning is all over him: in his uncleared voice, his mussed black hair, the way his dirty feet shuffle to the Breville. I squeeze my eyes closed.
He clears his throat. “What would we do without you?”
I open my eyes to see my five-foot-two spitfire of a mother hugging the gentle giant of my soon-to-be-ex. It was only a matter of time until he uttered the word divorce. We just didn’t know our house would go up in flames on the very same night.
Mom looks up at him. “I’m just so sorry.”
I shut the silverware drawer loudly. She makes apologizing sound so easy.
The sugar bowl is extended in front of me, and I follow the trail from bowl to hand to arm, all the way up to my husband’s cypress-green eyes, which I meet for the first time since we arrived at my parents’ house. I hate how kind those eyes are, and how he will forever know that I take exactly one spoonful of sugar on my grapefruit. I want to shove him or kiss him or wilt into the floor and disappear. Instead, I mutter a weak “thanks” as I take the sugar bowl.
Then a hand is on my shoulder, and I turn to find Josie’s concerned frown. She sweeps me into an embrace, and I melt. I completely forgot that she arrived in Dallas yesterday.
“A house fire? Always the flair for the dramatic,” says my sister, who actually majored in drama. I offer a tired fraction of a laugh because we all know I’m not the sister with a flair for drama. She squeezes me tighter, saying seriously into my smoky hair, “God, I’m glad you’re okay.”
Sadie appears, begging for juice. Right behind her, Dad enters with his babbling grandson in tow. Otto must have cried from the playpen. He’s holding a big plastic tooth in his doughy hand, no doubt surplus from Dad’s dentist treasure box.
We set the table and sit down, passing around Mom’s fresh quiche. We pour glasses of orange juice while the table fills with condolences and offers to help. Out in Argyle, our shoes and lamps and doors are sitting in piles of debris. I’ve already been making a mental list of things to check, like whether our fireproof box worked, and whether our wallets survived. Then there’s Sadie’s bin of artwork. The stroller. My wedding dress.
When Cameron joins us, home for the summer after college graduation, I can tell there’s something he isn’t saying. He and I are the quiet ones: the two slices of plain white bread that sandwich the meat, the flavor, the color that is our middle sibling—who is currently teaching Sadie a hand-motion song like the child didn’t just lose her home.
I observe the scene with a sense of detachment. Sadie giggles in the very spot where I learned, decades ago, how to zest a lemon. It makes me want to believe that Argyle was a dream, that I’ve been here in Dallas on Lexington Avenue this whole time.