Precious and Fragile Things

  With her bowl and spoon washed, Gilly had nothing else to do. Todd had brought her sparkly tights and flannel pajamas, but he hadn’t brought her anything to read. A search of the large armoire in the corner revealed a large selection of board games including Monopoly, Parcheesi and Trouble. Decks of cards, poker chips, a checkerboard with a plastic Baggie of checkers stacked on top. She found a hinged box full of spent shotgun shells and stared at it for a long time as though looking would give her some clue as to why anyone had saved them, but in the end she couldn’t think of any reasons that made sense. On one of the shelves she discovered a stack of Field & Stream and People magazines from the 1980s.

  Princess Diana stared out at her from one cover, Mel Gibson from another. She touched the slick paper and ran her fingers over his piercing blue eyes. Sexiest Man Alive. Would anyone think so now? Probably not after the adultery and anti-Semitic rants.

  “Morning.” Todd startled her out of her reverie. “You been up long?”

  “A little while.”

  He yawned and stretched, showing the pale worm of his scar twisting across his belly. His face had scabbed. He was healing. They both were.

  “Still snowing?” he asked, not waiting for a reply before looking out one of the back windows. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “It’s ugly out.”

  Gilly shrugged. Did it matter? What would be a few more inches on top of what had already fallen?

  Todd yawned again and scrubbed at his hair. “I thought we were supposed to have whatchamacallit. Global warming.”

  Gilly gathered a handful of magazines and closed the armoire door. “That’s what they say.”

  “They.” Todd laughed, shaking his head. “Who’s they, anyway? Bunch of scientists sitting around yanking their cranks, figuring out stuff to scare everyone. That’s what I think. You eat already?”

  She nodded and Todd padded into the kitchen. He ate breakfast while Gilly read about celebrities and fads from thirty years ago. The room grew warmer as he added more wood to the stove. Gilly shed her sweater, at last warm if not exactly cozy.

  Perhaps an hour passed while Gilly read. During that time, she was aware of Todd drifting around the room. She kept her eyes on the pages as he walked aimlessly from window to window. He checked the stove, adding logs and pushing them around with the poker until sparks flew. He went out onto the front porch, letting in a burst of air that ruffled the pages and raised goose bumps on her flesh.

  At last, irritated, Gilly snapped. “Can’t you find something to do?”

  Todd flopped on the sofa across from her and sighed. “There is nothing to do.”

  He looked so much like Arwen when she said the same thing that Gilly bit her lip against a chuckle. Todd drummed out a beat on the arm of the couch, something rhythmic and annoying. Gilly ignored him, concentrating on the magazine, but Todd wouldn’t be ignored. He shifted, muttered, wriggled, thumped. At last she set aside the issue in her hands; Princess Di slithered off the couch and onto the floor.

  “Why don’t you go have a beer,” she said. “Or something.”

  He paused in the incessant motion and raised a brow. “I thought you didn’t drink.”

  “I don’t. Doesn’t mean you can’t.”

  He glanced toward the kitchen, then back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Why, you want me drunk?”

  “Oh, God, Todd. Why on Earth would I want you drunk?”

  “Maybe so I’ll pass out.”

  He didn’t say the rest, that she’d use the chance to escape, but Gilly knew what he meant. It was unreasonable to feel stung that he might be as wary of her as she was of him, but Gilly sniffed anyway. “Actually, no. I don’t like being around drunk people. Does one beer make you drunk?”

  “Not usually.” He grinned and thumped his feet on top of the coffee table, shifting the pile of magazines she’d finished.

  “Could you not do that? You’re making a mess.” She bent to pick up all the magazines and stacked them neatly, then looked up to see him staring at her curiously.

  “Does it make a difference?” Todd said.

  Gilly stood, stretching against the lingering bumps and bruises. “Yes. It does.”

  Todd put his feet down with a thud and a frown. “Sorry.”

  For once he’d been the one to say it, and Gilly looked him over. “It’s just nicer if things are clean, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well, nothing stays…” Todd began and stopped. He scowled. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  Restless, Gilly stretched again. The passage of time struck her. She’d lost track of the days. “What’s today?”

  “Friday. I think. Right? Fuck if I know.”

  Friday. At home she’d be spending the day cleaning and cooking in preparation for Shabbat. By nightfall she’d be exhausted, but seeing the faces of the ones she loved in the light of the Sabbath candles always rejuvenated her. Gilly looked forward to Friday nights for just that reason.

  She baked fresh challah, the Jewish Sabbath bread, every week. Her stomach muttered at the thought. She didn’t remember seeing any yeast in the kitchen, but she might be able to find something. If her ancestors had survived fleeing Egypt with only unleavened bread to take with them, Gilly Soloman could make do.

  The heat from the woodstove didn’t quite reach the pantry. Her breath plumed out in great gusts as she searched the shelves. Todd’s more recent purchases, many of them still in plastic grocery bags, cluttered the front of the shelves, but further back were items that had probably been there as long as the magazines.

  Her fingers were growing numb. “Todd!”

  He appeared in the doorway after a moment. “Yeah?”

  Gilly waved her hand at the chaos. “Get this stuff all put away, will you? You can’t just leave it like this.”

  “Why not?”

  She gave him an exasperated sigh. “Because it’s a mess, that’s why. Who raised you, wolves?”

  She’d meant the question as rhetorical, but by the way his expression slammed shut she knew she’d touched a sore spot. “Sorry.”

  He set his jaw but brushed past her. The pantry wasn’t really big enough for the two of them. As he began taking cans and jars out of the bags, Gilly felt the heat radiating from him. He was his own furnace.

  She stepped away, uncomfortable with the contact. “I’ll go work in the kitchen. Shut the door so the heat doesn’t come out.”

  He grunted in reply but kept unpacking. She gave him a look. Todd made an exasperated sputter.

  “What? You think I’m that much of a douche bag that I don’t even know enough to keep the freaking door shut?”

  She didn’t answer that, just went into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. Gilly opened cupboards, pulling out ingredients she’d need as she found them and organizing the ones she didn’t. Uncle Bill must have used the cabin fairly frequently, for it was well stocked with staples like salt and spices, and lots of nonperishable goods. Todd had also made good choices in his grocery buying. Not just all sugar cereals, cigarettes and booze like she’d thought.

  It chilled her, a little, how methodical he’d been about shopping. Making sure there was enough of everything. She should be grateful for it now, considering the circumstances, but he hadn’t known they’d be snowed in when he’d bought it all, which only further hit home how long he’d intended to be here.

  Todd emerged from the pantry blowing on his hands and shivering. He shut the door behind him. The look he gave her was defiant but proud. “It’s all done.”

  Gilly didn’t shame him by checking, which is what she’d have done for one of the kids. But he wasn’t a child, much less one of hers. “Thanks.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to make challah, if I can find the right ingredients,” she said.

  His puzzled look told her he had no clue what she was talking about.

  “Bread,” she explained. “For the Sabbath.”

  Thankfully he didn’t ask her more, and so she didn?
??t have to explain a whole lot. He did look skeptical, though. “Bread?”

  “We’ll see how it turns out,” Gilly told him. “I don’t suppose you bought any yeast?”

  To her surprise, he had. Not the sort of thing she’d have expected to find in a bachelor’s mountain hideaway, but he went back into the pantry and came out with several packets.

  “Eggs,” Gilly said, looking in the fridge. “Butter. Margarine will do, I guess.”

  She found both and set them on the table. Todd watched as she found a bowl and mixing spoons. Gilly laid out the ingredients carefully, working from inadequate memory and hoping for the best. They’d have to do without poppy seeds, but if everything else turned out okay she supposed that was all right.

  “Do you want to crack the eggs?” She asked him what she always asked Arwen and Gandy. To her surprise, Todd said yes.

  She gave him the eggs, and he first made a well in the flour before he cracked them into the bowl. Then he expertly separated the final egg yolk from its white and plopped the golden glop in with the rest.

  “You’ve done this before,” Gilly said.

  He shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of jobs. Worked in a bakery for a while. At a diner. I guess I can cook okay.”

  Gilly kneaded the dough, then set it aside to let it rise. She remembered seeing something in the pantry, an item she’d thought a strange choice. “We…we could make some chocolate chip cookies. If you want.”

  He gave her a guarded expression. “Why?”

  Why did she want chocolate chip cookies, or why was she being nice? Gilly wiped carefully at the sprinkles of flour on the table. “Because I feel like it.”

  The grin began on the left side of his mouth, where it twitched his lips until it reached the other side. “I make good cookies.”

  “So do I.”

  She hadn’t intended a challenge, but there it was. Todd brushed the hair out of his eyes and looked at her thoughtfully. Gilly lifted her chin, staring back.

  “Mine are better,” Todd said.

  “Why don’t we find out?” Gilly asked.

  Wasting the eggs and butter seemed foolish when both knew there could be no more until the snow thawed. Todd didn’t mention it, so neither did Gilly. Both gathered what they needed with an unspoken agreement not to peek while the other worked.

  Gilly’s recipe had come straight off the back of the store-brand chocolate chips she bought in bulk from the warehouse club. It was only a little different from the one on the package Todd had bought. With the exception of walnuts, which she despised and Todd hadn’t bought anyway, she’d made the same kind of cookies for years with fine results.

  She measured and mixed from memory, handing off the measuring cups and spoons without a word. There weren’t any rubber scrapers and the wooden spoons looked to be of questionable cleanliness, so she mixed the dough with a metal fork that clanked against the edge of the bowl in a steady rhythm. As with cleaning, the mixing and making put her mind on auto-pilot.

  Todd took a half-used jar of ground ginger from the cupboard. She heard him humming under his breath as he mixed and scraped. Ginger?

  “Wanna lick?”

  She turned to see him holding out a fingerful of dough. Gilly shook her head. “No, thanks. I don’t want to get salmonella.”

  Todd shrugged. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Gilly had sneaked spoonfuls of cookie dough and risked food poisoning more times than she could count, but she wouldn’t have taken the sweet, sticky dough off his finger if he’d held his knife to her head again. It might be a matter of stilted, silly pride, but it was her pride. “No, thanks.”

  “Okay.” He put his finger in his mouth and licked the dough. He made a groaning noise of pleasure and dipped again into the bowl for another fingerful.

  Gilly shivered as she watched him. Something about Todd was as raw as the cookie dough he sucked off his finger. What made it worse was that he did these things as innocently and unselfconsciously as a child. He finished with the second glob of dough and held out a third to her.

  “Sure you don’t want any?”

  Her voice shook just a little, probably unnoticeable to him. Gilly concentrated on her own mixing bowl. “I said no.”

  They put the cookies on trays that had seen better times and slid them into the oven. The timer on the oven wasn’t digital and took some figuring, but she managed to set it. Fifteen minutes was a very long time to sit and stare at each other. Todd thumped out a pattern on the table with his fingers, caught her looking and smiled sheepishly. He turned his hands palm up and shrugged.

  “I’m a spaz. Sorry.”

  Gilly herself hadn’t moved, though she’d felt as restless as his dancing hands had proved Todd to be. “My son is like you. Can’t stop moving. It’s like he runs on batteries that never wear down.”

  “Like that rabbit in the commercials,” Todd offered.

  She smiled before she could stop herself. “Yeah, like that.”

  “I used to drive my teachers crazy,” Todd confided. He laughed and tapped out another rhythm on the tabletop, but consciously this time.

  “I’m sure you did.”

  The timer dinged, then, saving her from having to make more conversation. Both sets of cookies came out golden-brown and smelling like heaven. Todd unceremoniously dumped his on a tea towel, cursing when he burned his fingers on the edge of the ancient blackened cookie sheet. Gilly used a spatula to pry hers from the sheet, then set them carefully on a pink ceramic plate.

  “Milk,” Todd said. “Gotta have milk.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  She needed something fresh to breathe, some space. Gilly left the kitchen and went through the pantry to the back door, then the rickety back porch and the lean-to. Ten half-gallons of milk in white plastic jugs were lined up on one of the shelves alongside some packages of bacon, sausages, lunch meat, some cheese. Everything wore a thin silver coating of frost.

  After the stifling warmth of the kitchen, the air out here was cold enough to burn. Her earlobes and the tip of her nose had gone almost instantly numb, and she was losing sensation in her fingers.

  Despite all that, the cold felt good. Cleansing. Gilly didn’t want to admit that she’d enjoyed the past hour, that it had actually been…pleasant. She searched inside her for the hate but, just as she had earlier, came up empty. Like joy and terror, anger was too fierce an emotion to sustain for long.

  Gilly grabbed a half gallon of milk and went back inside. Todd had put two of each type of cookies on two plates and set them on the table. He’d even set out glasses.

  Gilly ran the milk under the water for a few minutes until it was at least no longer frozen solid. It filled the glasses in crystalline white chunks. Todd laughed.

  As it turned out, his cookies were better.

  Later, as night descended, she asked him for some candles. He gave her two, squat and half-burned and ugly. She lit them with the blessings that ushered in the Sabbath. Gilly waited for the calm that always filled her, but all that came was a sense of emptiness and sorrow.

  12

  Gilly marked the passage of time by the aching of her heart. Each day seemed like an eternity. How long had it been since she’d smelled Gandy’s hair or helped Arwen tie her shoes? How long since Seth had kissed her on the way out the door, his mind already on his job and hers on how nice it would be when nap time came? Too long.

  Gilly ducks into the pantry when the kids are mesmerized by relentlessly running cartoons. In the dark and quiet she breathes in deep. Scents of cinnamon and spices. Wooden floor cool under her toes. The door has a lock on it because Gandy will sneak sweets if she doesn’t keep an eye on him. She locks it now and sits on the step stool she keeps there so she can reach the highest shelves.

  She only wants a few minutes’ quiet. Some time to herself. She’s not hungry, not thirsty, but she is bone-achingly tired. She wants to take a nap but when she tried to lie down on the couch, Gandy had made her his per
sonal trampoline. She can’t go upstairs and leave them alone down here while she sleeps. They’ll destroy the house.

  She wants to simply sit and breathe but the patter of small feet happens almost at once. They’re tuned to her, those precious angel-monsters. She might as well put up a red alert when she goes to the bathroom, because they’re instantly there. A phone conversation is a certain beacon, bringing them clinging to her legs as she tries to get in a word with friends. And, oh, she dare not sit down at the computer to check her emails before little voices beg for time on the online pet store or whatever games the cartoon shows are promoting.

  “Mama?” The knock comes. Shadows shift under the door as two small humans pace back and forth. “Mama? Mama? Mama!”

  And for a few seconds she pretends she doesn’t hear them. Doesn’t answer. For one long, eternal moment, she hopes they will simply give up and go away.

  “What do you want for breakfast?” Todd’s words startled her out of her thoughts.

  She left the window and slid into a seat at the kitchen table. “Nothing.”

  He turned from the stove and looked at her critically. “C’mon. You got to eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry.” She wasn’t. Her appetite had ebbed and flowed, changing drastically over the past week. She blamed stress. She went from the edge of starvation to having her stomach want to leap from her throat at the very thought of eating anything at all, much less the skillet of eggs he was frying.

  “You got to have a good breakfast if you want to get through the day.” His words sounded so scholarly, so fourth-grade teacherly, so damned smug.

  She wanted to give him the finger.

  “I’m serious,” Todd said. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  “Who told you that?” she asked cruelly. “Your dear sainted mother?”

  The skillet clattered against the burner rings. Todd switched off the propane with a sharp and angry twist of his wrist. “No. Not from her.”