Nobody would blame her. Probably not even Todd. But as she watched him get up from the table and take her plate with him to the sink, Gilly blamed herself.
“Anyway,” she said. “Thanks.”
Todd shrugged, his back to her, and put on the kettle. He brought down two mugs, two tea bags. He opened the cupboards, searching until he found a package of chocolate sandwich cookies, the chocolate chip ones they’d made long gone. He opened the package, arranged the cookies on a flowered plate and slid it across the table in front of her.
“Here,” he said gruffly.
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.” Her stomach still hovered on the edge of nausea even as her mouth squirted saliva at the sight of the junk food.
A faint smile tugged the corner of his lips. “Why aren’t women ever hungry?”
“I’m really not,” she said, but took a cookie anyway. White frosting edged her fingertip and she licked it off. The sweetness was almost too much, but after a second it settled her stomach.
“Right.” Todd leaned his rear on the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “How about just a salad? You want that instead?”
Gilly frowned. “No. Yuck.”
He laughed at that and turned off the gas just as the kettle began to whistle. He refilled their mugs, then sat. Today he wore a white tank top beneath an unbuttoned, snap-front Western shirt. He’d rolled the sleeves up to his elbows.
For the first time, Gilly noticed the tattoo on the inside of his left arm, halfway between his wrist and his elbow. Black ink, stylized numbers. At first she assumed it was a piece of Japanese calligraphy of the sort that had become so trendy over the past few years, people getting inked with words they didn’t know how to read. Or maybe it was tribal ink, another trend she’d never understood unless it was by someone with Native American heritage. Jews weren’t supposed to get tattoos, anyway, but if she’d ever considered getting something permanently embedded in her skin, it would be something that made sense to her personally, not something everyone got just because it was popular.
She saw it more clearly when he stretched his arm to grab a couple of cookies from the plate. Not calligraphy and not tribal markings, though the numbers had been drawn in a highly stylized form that made them almost indecipherable.
1 of 6
It took her a few seconds to puzzle out what it meant, sort of like trying to read a custom license plate, or that funky cross-stitch piece that said Jesus when you looked at it one way and looked like nonsensical blocks the other. As with those things, once she’d figured it out there was no way to not see it, of course. Gilly snorted lightly, feeling stupid.
“One of six,” she said aloud.
Todd jumped. His hand hit his mug, sending it to the floor where it shattered. Hot tea splattered. Gilly jumped, too, at the sound, and the sudden motion sent a wave of dizziness through her.
Todd stood. “Shit. Look at that.”
He sounded too distressed for a simple accident—even though the mug had broken, the cupboard was stocked with at least a dozen more. It bore the name of a bank and she didn’t see how it could possibly have any sentimental value. Todd kicked at a shard of porcelain, sending it skittering across the floor as he went to the sink for a dish cloth.
“Be careful,” Gilly said automatically when he bent to wipe at the spill. “Use the broom, first.”
He paused, head down, shoulders hunched. “I can clean up a broken mug.”
“I’m not saying you can’t. I just meant…”
“I know what you meant.” He stood and tossed the towel into the sink while Gilly watched, helpless to understand.
Todd went through the pantry, out to the lean-to, and came back with an ancient, straggly straw broom. The handle had been painted with whimsical designs and looked utterly out of place here in this cabin that didn’t look like it had seen a woman’s touch in a long time, if ever. In his other hand he gripped a red metal dustpan that looked as old as the chairs on the front porch. He put it on the floor and held it with his boot as he swept up the mug. The straw broom left dirt marks on the floor she’d scrubbed not so long ago, and Gilly made an inadvertent noise of protest.
Todd looked up at her, brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to complain about the mess he’d made of what had been a relatively clean floor, but stopped herself. He wasn’t hers to scold.
He finished with the mug while she sipped at her tea and nibbled the cookie his scorn had forced her to take. Sitting while someone else cleaned was such a novelty she had to enjoy it, at least a little, even though she didn’t want to. But when he left again to return the broom and dustpan, Gilly couldn’t stay in her seat.
She took the dish towel, dampened it, and swiped at the smudges he’d left behind. She looked up at the sound of his boots and discovered him staring down at her. She got up to rinse out the towel, though the water from the tap was too cold to make it easy to clean it.
“Thanks,” Todd said.
“You’re welcome.”
She wrung out the cloth and let it hang over the edge of the sink. “I can make you another cup, if you want. The water’s probably still pretty hot.”
“Nah.” Todd hovered between her and the table. “I’m good.”
He’d pulled his sleeves down, a fact Gilly noticed but didn’t comment upon. They stared at each other until he straightened up. He was always taller than she thought he was, probably because he slouched a lot. Taller and with broader shoulders. He took up a lot of space but just now Gilly didn’t feel threatened.
“Going out for a smoke,” Todd said, though he’d never bothered to either warn her or ask permission in the past.
She watched him go out the front door. Then she got the broom again and made sure nothing remained on the floor to cut their feet. He’d returned by the time she was rehanging the broom, but if he minded her cleaning up after him, Todd didn’t say.
19
She was down to the last few pills and probably didn’t need them, but took them anyway. Medicine that was supposed to make other people wakeful always knocked her out, so she stayed in bed. Besides, beneath the blankets she was warm, and under their protection she didn’t have to face Todd.
The more she slept, the easier sleep seemed to find her. Gilly, who hadn’t gone one night through without interruption in more than five years, now spent more than half the day in bed, creeping downstairs only to use the toilet and sneak a few slices of stale bread while Todd was outside smoking or chopping wood for the stove. She was back upstairs before he came in, and when he came into the attic to stand over her, staring, Gilly closed her eyes and pretended to be dreaming. She’d always been a vivid dreamer, but now her dreams became more real to her than her life.
Sometimes she dreamed of things that had already happened. Her wedding to Seth, dancing in a high school musical, falling off her bike and cutting her leg badly enough to need stitches. Other things she dreamed of had never happened and likely never would—appearing on Broadway in the role of Annie Oakley, flying, attending Harvard.
She dreamed of her children, the sweet scent of their skin and the softness of their cheeks as she cuddled them. The days of nursing them as infants, when their tiny mouths puckered so sweetly against her breast and their fingers curled around hers. Those dreams left her aching and desperate to sleep again, both to escape and embrace the dreams.
And she dreamed of roses. Always roses, never tulips or daffodils or lilies, all flowers she actually had in her yard. Giant fields of roses and herself in the middle of them, watching them bloom and die over and over while she tried to grab them up and never succeeded. She didn’t know what a dream dictionary would say about the symbolism of roses. She knew what they meant to her.
When night fell and Todd again climbed the stairs, this time to go into his own bed, Gilly waited until she heard the soft rumble of his snores before she went down again to use the toilet. She was back under the blankets in less than ten minutes.
As a child it
had never made sense to her, why her mother complained of being so tired all the time when she barely got out of bed. How her mother could be still for so long without moving. Gilly understood her mother much better now.
Gilly drifted that way, until morning when a glance from her pillow showed nothing but white outside the window. Nothing had changed. Maybe nothing ever would. Her lethargy grew deeper every day. She woke to eat and use the bathroom, but spent as little time as possible at either of those activities before returning to the sanctity of her bed. Beneath the covers, she was protected from the world.
20
“You gonna sleep your whole life away?”
Gilly cracked open one bleary eye and peeled her face from the pillow. Apparently, at some point during the night, she’d drooled. She swiped her gummy tongue across equally sticky lips and teeth.
“…time…?” She mumbled.
“Time for you to get your lazy ass out of bed.” Todd leaned against the dresser and sniffed loudly, then recoiled. “Clean yourself up. You reek.”
Gilly shook her head and rolled over. “Go away.”
“Get out of bed, Gilly.”
“No!”
Gilly pulled the covers over her head, ignoring him. Todd muttered a string of curses under his breath and clomped away. Then he came back.
“I ain’t going to ask you again,” he told her. “Get out of bed.”
Gilly untangled her hand from its citadel of blankets and waved her middle finger at him. “No, and fuck off.”
“Goddamn it, Gilly,” Todd said. “You are one impossible bitch! The fuck is wrong with you?”
“I want you to leave me alone,” Gilly told him, and wriggled farther down beneath the blankets. “Just go away and leave me alone.”
“So you can rot up here? No fucking way.”
She pulled the pillow over her head, knowing it was immature and doing it anyway. “I’m tired. Let me sleep.”
“You been sleeping for three days!”
“Leave me alone!” Shouting hurt her throat and made her cough, though even she couldn’t pretend to still be sick.
“No way.”
Todd grabbed the covers and tore them away from her, ripped the pillow from her hands and threw it on the floor. Gilly flailed at him, grabbing without effect at the sheets as he tugged them away, too. Red-hot rage filled her, and she screamed, a wordless roar of anger like shards of glass in her already wounded throat.
Without hesitation, Todd reached down and grabbed the front of her nightgown. The cloth tore as he pulled her from the bed. Gilly fought him, twisting in his grip. Her feet hit the floor and her ankle turned, sending tingling sparks of pain flaring up her leg. She bit out a curse, her words as harsh as his, and punched him in the stomach.
Todd barely flinched as he backhanded her across the cheek without letting go of the front of her gown. Gilly reeled, hand to her face. Bright blood dripped from the corner of her mouth and stained her fingers. The gown ripped completely from her neck to her waist, exposing the shirt and sweatpants she wore beneath, and she fell back onto the bed.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, incredulous, showing him the crimson stain. “You hit me! Damn you, you hit me!”
“Get up.”
He had struck her before and there’d been a time she’d actually wished for him to hit her, but that felt surreal compared to this. She rubbed the blood on her fingertips. “You’re an asshole.”
His eyes narrowed. “Get up or I’ll crack you again.”
Apparently, she didn’t move fast enough for him. He reached down and grabbed her by the front of her shirt with both hands and hauled her upright. Gilly managed to smack him in the face.
Todd grunted, face turning from the force of her blow. When he looked back at her with glistening eyes, his mouth had gone pinched and thin. His nostrils flared.
“I told you not to do that.”
“You hit me!” she cried, dangling in his grip, noticing even in her distraught state at how his nose wrinkled and he turned his face from the gust of her sour breath. “You! Hit me!”
Todd’s eyes didn’t widen. “And I’ll fucking do it again if you don’t get your shit together.”
Gilly blinked, swallowing a retort. He was so much bigger he’d lifted her onto her tiptoes, and in socks she couldn’t do any damage by stepping on his toes or kicking his shins, either. She couldn’t even get another good strike at his face, if she was going to be so stupid.
“You going to be sensible?” he asked.
She didn’t nod or shake her head, but Todd must’ve seen something in her face because he let go of the front of her shirt. Gilly kept her feet, mostly because he took hold of her upper arm. His fingers could almost encircle her bicep, bunching her sleeve.
“C’mon,” Todd said. “Downstairs.”
She dug in her feet and tried to turn back toward the bed. “I’m tired. I want to stay in bed.”
“No.” He pulled her harder. “You can’t stay up here all the time. You got to take care of yourself.”
“You said you wouldn’t,” Gilly muttered.
Todd didn’t let go of her arm. “Wouldn’t what?”
“Make me do anything I didn’t want to do.”
He grunted. “For chrissake, Gilly, you stink. You haven’t changed your clothes in a week. When’s the last time you brushed your teeth? How can you stand it?”
She couldn’t, actually, now that she was fully awake and aware of it. But she wouldn’t let him know that. She tried to pull her arm away, but his grip was too tight.
“You’re hurting my arm.”
“I know.”
“Just leave me alone,” Gilly begged with a glance at the bed. “Why do you care?”
“You can’t sleep all the time,” Todd told her, punctuating his words with a shake. “If you’re not sick, you can’t stay in bed all day. You can’t just fucking…fade away.”
“I’m not fading away, I’m waiting!” Gilly shouted.
Todd dropped her arm and stepped away from her. He didn’t need to ask her what she was waiting for. “You said you didn’t need me to take care of you anymore. Then you got to take care of yourself.”
“Why do you care?” Gilly repeated.
“You ain’t no good to anybody up here,” Todd said. “Not me, not yourself…not them, either.”
“Don’t. Don’t you talk about them.”
He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “I’ll make you a deal. You promise to come downstairs and act like a human being…”
“And what? You’ll let me go?” Gilly sniffed, rubbing the spot on her arm where the bruise would appear.
He shook his head. “No, I’m not going to let you go, for fuck’s sake, Gilly, that’s getting pretty old. But you want to run out in the snow again? Be a dumbass? Be my guest. See what happens this time, see if I save your sorry ass one more time.”
“What about when the snow melts, Todd? What then?”
His gaze wavered for a second before he shoved her away from him and stalked to the center of the room, head hung low. When he swung around to look at her, his dark eyes were large in his face, his mouth a pensive frown.
“Why can’t you just like me?” he asked her. “I ain’t done anything real bad to you, Gilly. Not real bad.”
“I won’t ever like you. Don’t you see I can’t?”
“Why not?” Todd held out his hands, giving her that kicked-dog look. “Why?”
“Because you’re my enemy.” Gilly pulled the torn pieces of her gown back together with one hand, the fabric a useless shield but one she couldn’t put down. Her mouth stung when she spoke, but the blood had ceased dripping. “Because you are keeping me from the things I love.”
He sighed as if the weight of the world had come to rest on his broad shoulders. “We could get along better than we do.”
“No!” She recoiled, grimacing.
“I didn’t mean like that,” he said quietly.
“I know you didn’t.
The answer’s still no.”
He looked angry again. “We’re stuck here, Gilly. Ain’t no way around it. We’re fucking stuck out here in the middle of no place up to our assholes in snow. That’s the way it is. Don’t keep pushing me into being something you wish I was just so you can feel better about what you did.”
It wasn’t the statement of a stupid man but of an insightful one, and Gilly wondered at what the people in his life had done to him, and for how long, to convince him he was so dumb.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Todd said. “I don’t want to.”
But he would. The words unsaid nevertheless hung between them, loud and clear.
She turned her face away. “When the snow melts, I’m going to try to get away. Are you going to tie me up?”
“I’m not that kinky,” Todd said, “though a girl did ask me once to put on her panties.”
This was serious and she hated he was making a joke of it. “The only thing keeping me here is the snow. You know that.”
“Ah, fuck me. Yes. I know it.” Todd scowled.
“So, what happens when the snow melts?” She asked the question more quietly this time, not pushing so hard. Truly curious. She wanted to know the answer.
“I knew an old hound dog once,” Todd said after a pause. “He wasn’t mine—I never had a dog. He belonged to this guy who lived down the street from one of the places they put me after…one of the places I lived as a kid.”
Despite herself, Gilly lifted her face to meet his unwavering gaze. Todd’s voice was solid, deep, precise even in its uneducated manner. He stood with his feet planted slightly apart, hands at his sides. Telling her.
“This dog was one mean son of a bitch. The guy kept him outside on a chain, and that dog would run so fast to bite your ass he’d choke himself right off his own feet. Every day, I’d walk by that dog on my way to school, every fucking day he’d try to get me. But he never did.”
Todd laughed, low. “The guy that owned him could’ve just kicked that dog when he saw him, but he never did. That guy always made sure that dog had plenty of food and water, and he gave him chew toys and rawhide bones. And every night, when that guy came out to feed the dog, he’d pat him on the head and scratch him behind the ears. And the dog, that ass-biting dog, always growled.