The Burning Side(64)
I get the ridiculous urge to argue. I look up at the ceiling I once accidentally painted white and then repainted ceiling white as April stood at the foot of the ladder, bouncing her eyebrows and saying, “I don’t see a difference, but I don’t mind the view.”
I clench my jaw, stupidly upset that this won’t be a fight, and I say, “Just a container, right?”
April once said this about her body, and I responded, “So far from just.”
Our memories are the cells in these bones. For a flash, I want to kiss her inside the skeleton of our home. Just like the day we got the keys, when we were bright with plans and paint swatches.
But we do not kiss, and we do not fight. We only make the necessary call to confirm the decision: our U-shaped house in Argyle is coming down.
Good choice, they tell us. The documents will be prepared.
We spend the rest of the day working through the storage unit like a backward wedding registry, bringing possessions out of the cold-formed steel and into the daylight for division.
What’s that for?
You want this one?
Those side tables should probably stay together.
By sundown, there are Docusign links in our inboxes.
* * *
Two days later, the divorce petition still not signed, April knocks on the door of my trailer with a book in her hand. Her eyes glimmer like flames. “Guess what.” She bites a smile, hugging the book to her chest to hide the cover. A small curl of hair wisps out above her ear.
Confused by her happiness, my own mouth ticks up in a curious smile. “What?”
She reveals the book—a novel, hardcover—but I don’t recognize anything about it. The title is Identity, and the cover has a mask of many colors with a black teardrop beneath one of the eyes. The spine bears the logo of one of the big publishing houses.
April flips it over, where bolded words grab my eye. Modern-day reimagining of The Count of Monte Cristo. I know she loves that book, but I don’t know why it would warrant a trip over here of all places. Today of all days.
She opens it to the back flap. “Look familiar?”
My gaze falls to the author photo. A young man with a familiar face. This is when I notice his name, which I glossed over on the front cover: Jonathan Gutierrez.
I look back to the photo. “No way.”
“Yes way!” April is practically squealing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her like this. She opens the book from the back, flipping some pages. “And that’s not all,” she says.
I angle myself behind her shoulder as she opens to the acknowledgments page. Halfway down, this line of text: Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Torres, without whom this work would not exist.
“No shit.”
“Yes shit!” Her fingers rest on the page. “Jonathan Gutierrez said whom!”
I laugh. We haven’t heard from Jonathan in years.
April turns toward me. “We have to read it.”
And this is the moment the excavator turns onto our driveway: it’s demolition day.
April lets the book fall shut. Her voice can barely be heard over the incoming growl of the excavator. “Do you need to stay here for it?”
I shake my head. “Everything’s set.”
“Want to go to Ellipsis?”
I look at her, the house, her. And I say, “Okay.”
What I want to say is, Okay, let’s go to Ellipsis and Mesero and your parents’ house and South Padre. Let’s make plans and babies and art. Let’s go back to— But no. I can’t cherry-pick chapters. I can’t ignore the broken trust, the breached treaty, the old idiom: those who forget history are bound to repeat it.
Are those who remember history bound to do better? Is memory what binds us?
We walk toward the car, stopping to look at our home one last time.
Men are hopping down from groaning vehicles in hard hats and neon vests. They’re carrying clipboards and walkie-talkies, pointing at the house like it’s a target, nodding their next steps. One of them looks over and waves, and I lift my chin in return.
The bright-vested man turns back toward his crew, toward the task at hand. I squeeze my eyes shut, letting the smell of dust and diesel surround me.
Through the awareness of all that can’t be undone, April’s hand finds mine. I force myself to remember how she hurt me. So recently. So sharply.
I open my eyes and drop her hand.
We get into the car. And we drive away.
Behind us, the excavator arm tears into our house, and crows lift from the trees.
* * *
At Ellipsis, we buy another copy of Identity and find a tucked-away table where we can read aloud.
I start: He was a man before he was a prisoner, and a boy before that. Too many of the others, however, were prisoners before they were men.
An hour zooms by. Jonathan’s book is good, and not just I-know-the-guy-who-wrote-this good. It’s honest and accessible, neither so lowbrow that the eyes droop in boredom nor so highbrow that the eyes dry out.
When April goes to the restroom, I lean back and look around.
Out of nowhere, guilt pelts me. You were gone before you left. This bookstore is one of the places I’d come in order to give April space. Many of those times, Kim would join me here to grade papers. I would take solace in sitting with someone who actually wanted my company, unlike April, who turned from my advances and sighed when I messed up baby stuff and didn’t even look up when I walked in the door. So I tried not to walk in the door more than I had to, and we became a completely different couple than we had been.