She sighed again. “Take a nap. Sew that hole in your shirt. Better yet, wash the shirt, it’s disgusting.”
Todd looked down at the front of it and ran his fingertips over the mother-of-pearl snap buttons. “I like this shirt.”
“Obviously, since you’ve worn it for the past three days.”
“Aw, Gilly,” Todd said with a grin. “You noticed.”
She sighed. “Just…do something that doesn’t involve you annoying me!”
“Is there anything that wouldn’t annoy you?” Todd got up from the couch. He shifted on his feet, looking for all the world like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse. Everything about him reminded her of some feral creature. He went to the window again. “I’m so fudging bored!”
Gilly fixed him with an impatient stare. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“You like Monopoly?”
Actually, she loved the game, but hadn’t played for years. A house with small children was no place for a game with a myriad of tiny pieces. Todd went to the large armoire in the corner and pulled out the familiar box.
“We could play,” he said.
“I’m busy.”
The idea was tempting. She was more than a bit bored herself, but Gilly forced her attention back to the magazine. She couldn’t allow herself to relax with him or she’d be lost, and yet each passing moment in his company made it harder and harder to hold him at a distance. Not when he asked her to do innocent things like play Monopoly.
“Your head hurting again?”
She shook her head. Her fingers fluttered on the magazine’s slick pages. Todd sat down across from her and pulled the magazine from her hands.
“Hey!”
“Play with me, Gilly.”
“No.”
He sighed. “Shit.”
Gilly snatched back the crumpled pages and turned her face from him. “Leave me alone, Todd.”
“Just one game. C’mon. I’ll let you pick whatever piece you want. Top hat, race car, thimble, whatever. Hell, you can even roll first.”
“I said no!” The words spit from her mouth like bullets from a gun.
He recoiled, his mouth twisting. A spark that didn’t look like anger glimmered in his eyes, but Gilly didn’t flinch. She lifted her chin, daring him to protest.
“Christ, you’re a bitch,” he said.
Gilly put the magazine on the coffee table between them and stood up, hands on her hips. “Why do men always say that when they don’t get what they want?”
Her head spun a little at the speed of her retreat, but she managed to walk away with some semblance of dignity. That he was right didn’t bother her. He’d called her a growling dog, too. If being a bitch meant she could survive this ordeal, then she’d be one.
Todd’s voice stopped her at the foot of the stairs. “Is that what your husband calls you?”
She stiffened. “Seth has never called me a bitch.”
“Not to your face,” Todd muttered.
Gilly bit back a retort. There’d been days when she knew her frustration spilled out in sharp words, her tongue a keener weapon than any knife. She knew she’d send her husband from her with his pride smarting, his love for her the only reason he’d kept his own replies civil. She knew it when it happened and had felt helpless to stop it, and she knew it now.
She did with Todd what she’d so often felt incapable of doing with Seth—she held her tongue. Gilly went up the stairs and changed into her nightclothes: thick socks, heavy sweatpants, the flannel nightgown she hated but wore because it kept her warm. She got into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Daylight still filtered through the window, but through the densely falling snow the light was diffuse enough to ignore. She closed her eyes and waited for him to come and demand she get out of bed, but he didn’t.
Much later, when night had fallen, she woke to the sound of Todd’s boots on the stairs. For once, she’d slept without dreaming. Within minutes the light he’d brought with him went out and they lay in the dark again. Together but separated by more than just the low half-wall. After a time, she heard his soft, slow breathing, and knew he slept.
She desperately had to pee. Gilly blinked against the dark. Since she’d gone to bed so early, she hadn’t brought a light. She pressed her thighs together, but the dull, cramping ache in her bladder meant there was no way she’d be able to make it until morning.
She swung her legs out of bed and shivered instantly. Without constant stoking, the woodstove quickly stopped heating the cabin. The shivering didn’t help her need to pee, and she took a few deep breaths to convince her body she was going to make it to the bathroom without embarrassing herself.
Darkness would make the trip hazardous, and Gilly had a vision of herself tripping over something. Falling and wetting herself at the same time. Once upon a time she’d been able to go without bathroom breaks for hours, but not since having babies. She’d almost embarrassed herself enough times to know better than to tempt fate. Only the dimmest glimmer of light shone in through the windows on either end of the room, not enough to see by. She’d have to make it by memory.
Think about it. Picture the room in your mind. You can find your way to the stairs, no problem. Just take one step at a time.
Gilly walked with her hands held out like a sleepwalker. Instead of lifting her feet high, she slid them along the floor, shuffling to prevent herself from tripping. Her thighs bumped the edge of the dresser and her hands felt empty space in front of her. She shuffled forward.
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, not enough to see anything clearly but enough to let her know approximately where she was going. From the opening in the partition, there was a clear space between the rows of beds all the way to the steep stairwell. If she could make it all the way there without falling down them, she’d do all right.
Once at the stairs, Gilly gripped the railing hard. Step by step. Downstairs a soft red glow from the stove’s vents gave her some meager light, but she used the wall to guide her to the bathroom where she sat with an audible sigh.
On the way back through the living room, she paused. Her house was never this quiet. There was always the ambient hum of appliances, the sound of occasional traffic and the dog, who could never be content to simply sleep but had to yip and pant and scrabble in constant doggie dreams. This cabin was silent, not even any wind outside blowing snow against the walls.
Yet this felt familiar, being awake while everyone else slept. She had spent many nights wandering the house in the dark, unable to sleep. Sometimes because she was simply waiting to be woken, sometimes because of an overwhelming need to check on everything one last time. Sometimes because no matter how exhausted she was, she couldn’t go to bed until toys that would simply be dumped again in the morning had been put away, or that last load of laundry tossed in the washer. The dishes soaking in the sink scrubbed and dried and put away so she didn’t have to face them in the morning.
Gilly always felt like the only member of her household who cared if any of those tasks were completed. It didn’t stop her, though. Those were things she could control, make happen. Now she tipped her face to the ceiling. This nighttime wandering felt familiar, but she couldn’t let herself forget that it wasn’t.
She climbed the steps, the journey up in darkness somehow easier than it had been going down. Todd’s breathing grew louder as she got closer. She picked out his form in the darkness, a huddled lump in the middle bed on the right-hand side. The moon had risen and by chance or luck a pale shaft of moonlight managing to trickle through the window highlighted the curved metal headboard. Gilly glimpsed a tuft of dark hair on the white pillow.
He shifted as she drew near and flung one long arm above his head. Now the soft light seemed to almost caress the curve of his jaw, the line of his lips. He muttered something, softly, and Gilly froze.
She drew closer to the bed, watching the way his mouth pursed with his breath. In sleep, with the covers shielding most of his body from her, he l
ooked far less threatening. He didn’t look like a man, really. More like an overgrown boy.
“Mama.” He spoke with a child’s voice, timid, small and broken of heart.
What was this? The man who’d held her at knifepoint and threatened to kill her was asking for his mother? It might have been comical if not for the utter desolation in his voice, if not for the way the word caused her nipples to peak and her heart to ache with remembrance of baby voices crying out her name in the night just that way.
Three short steps on whispering feet took her to the side of his bed, and she took them without thinking twice. Automatic, the way she did at home when the murmur of a child caught her ear. Todd spoke the word again, this time with a sigh. Tears glittered like fallen diamonds on his cheeks as he shifted again in the bed.
Gilly reached out a hand to brush the hair from his forehead, to wipe away the tears shining on his face. She stopped herself just before she touched his skin, before she could condemn herself to pity and kindheartedness. Todd took in a hitching breath and whispered one last time, “Mama.” Then he began to snore softly, and Gilly finished her journey in the dark without hearing him speak again.
24
Todd was quiet in the morning, shadows beneath his dark eyes. He toyed with his lighter, snapping it again and again as it sparked, until the sharp, gassy smell of the fluid tickled a sneeze from Gilly’s nose. He didn’t offer a “God bless you.”
“The funniest thing I ever seen was a fat lady in a bikini trying to do the limbo,” Todd said suddenly.
At the sheer incongruity of his statement, Gilly turned from the sink where she was washing her breakfast plate. “Where did you see that?”
“At the beach. I only went one time.” Todd leaned back in his chair, rocking. “Laughed so hard I pissed my pants and…the people I was with got mad and took me home.”
She watched him tilt the chair, waiting for him to tumble backward. By luck or skill he kept the chair hovering in place while he balanced. He was graceful that way. Comfortable and competent with his body in a way he wasn’t with his intellect.
Todd looked at her. “What’s the funniest thing you ever seen?”
Gilly shrugged. It didn’t seem that conversation should be so easy, no matter how much he made it so. “I don’t know.”
Todd sighed dramatically. “You’re never any fun.”
His comment stung. “Young Frankenstein. That’s a funny movie.”
Todd rolled his eyes. “Not a movie. What’s the funniest thing you ever seen in your real life? Bet it ain’t as funny as a fat lady in a bikini trying to do the limbo.”
He was challenging her again, and Gilly rose to the bait. “When I was just out of college, I bought a new mattress from this factory outlet store. When I went to pick it up, the guy from the store helped me put it in the back of this van I’d borrowed. He tried carrying it on his back, but he got stuck, and then the mattress fell on him and only his legs were sticking out….”
Todd raised both eyebrows. Gilly frowned. “What? It was funny. I guess you had to be there.”
“I made you smile.” Todd thumped his chair down onto all four legs. “See?”
Gilly pushed her mouth back into the frown, but it was too late. “I wasn’t smiling at you.”
“You got a nice smile.” Todd winked.
Oh, how she wanted and needed him to be loathsome to her! Gilly thought of the way his hand had felt when he hit her mouth, drawing blood. The memory was still vivid enough to make her put a hand to her lips. It was also enough to wipe the smile from her face.
“I wasn’t smiling.” Her denial was transparent, but Gilly didn’t care.
“Are you this much fun at home, too?” Todd pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his T-shirt pocket and scowled to find it empty. He tossed it onto the kitchen table and stood. His gaze swept her up and down. “Maybe they don’t miss you as much as you think they do.”
He stomped into the pantry while Gilly, stunned, stared after him. In the months before he’d taken her, Gilly had felt more often like screaming than laughing. She thought hard, tears springing to her eyes, about the last time she had laughed with her children. Really laughed. It had been a long time. There had been too many days when her palms hurt from clenching her fists too hard to keep from striking out, too many nights when the last words she uttered were not “I love you,” but “for God’s sake, go to sleep!”
People always vowed to change, if given a second chance. Gilly was no different, no better. She sat rigid, her back as straight as a poker, and vowed that if she was allowed to return to them, she would cherish her family as something more precious than diamonds. Later, when most of her time with Todd had begun to fade into a series of hazy memories, this moment at the kitchen table would forever stand out as clear as crystal. She wouldn’t spend the rest of her life without yelling at her kids or arguing with her husband; such a thing would be impossible and impractical. But when those moments came, the times of anger and grief, it was the moment at Todd’s kitchen table she always recalled, and that was usually enough to make her put out her hands and forgive.
“I know you want to hate me,” Todd said from the doorway, a fresh pack of cigarettes in one fist. “I know you want to, real bad. But admit it. You just can’t.”
“You’re wrong.” Her voice stuttered, giving away her emotions.
“You just ain’t that hard.” Todd dismissed her protest like it meant nothing. “And if you do hate me, it isn’t because of what I done, really. It’s because of what you done. So you’re mad at yourself.”
His observation was the truth, but Gilly wasn’t about to admit it to him. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me. You’re not smart enough to get inside my head.”
He smoothed a hand through his hair. “Shit, Gilly, you seem like a sad, uptight bitch to me. Why the hell would I want to get inside your head?”
She exploded. “Just shut up!”
“Ooh.” Todd raised his hands in mock fear. “That’s a smart comeback. Wish I could think of something that smart.”
Gilly left the table and stalked to the living room, but there was no place to escape him. She paced the wooden planks, wishing suddenly she smoked so she could have the comfort of a cigarette to occupy herself.
She was hard enough to hate, she thought spitefully, watching him as he set out a game of solitaire on the dining table. And she had every reason to hate him. But she also had every reason to hate herself.
Thinking of the evil he’d committed against her, holding her at knifepoint, slapping her face, should have been enough to keep the fires of her hatred burning. Gilly, however, feared that Todd was right about her. She wasn’t hard enough to keep hating, not in the face of kindness and good humor. Not even when she should.
Relationships were like machines. Gears fit together, turning to make the machine work. Boss, roommate, parent, child, spouse. The cogs moved, the gears turned or stuck and needed to be oiled. Todd was none of these to her and yet there was no denying they had a relationship, and that it was as much a machine as any other. If they couldn’t find some way to make it work, it would break down. A day before, Gilly would’ve said without question she didn’t want to make it work. Now she wasn’t sure she could stop herself.
“I don’t like to tell anyone,” Gilly said, “but I like to watch videos of people falling down.”
Todd sat back in the chair, cigarette dangling. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She nodded.
“Well…” Todd paused as though considering this. “That is funny, sometimes. When someone falls. Even if they get hurt, you know, it’s funny to see it happen.”
“It’s wrong to laugh at someone who’s hurt, but I can’t help it.”
Both of Todd’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s messed up.”
“I know,” Gilly said, but with a sense of relief, as if she’d confessed to some sort of crime. “It’s awful. I’m a terrible person.”
“Nah. Or if you are, you??
?re not the only one,” Todd pointed out. He shuffled the cards back and forth so fast they became a blur and then again in an intricate pattern. Seeing her look, he paused. “I worked in a casino for a while, too…before.”
She wasn’t surprised. She took the chair across from him. “So deal something out.”
She hated the wary way he looked at her, as though waiting for her to change her mind. Todd shuffled the cards, then caught them all in one hand to take his cigarette from his lips with the other. He tapped the cards into a tidy pile on the table.
“What do you want to play?”
“I don’t care. I’m not good at anything,” Gilly said.
“I bet you’re great at fifty-two pickup.”
She made a face. “Yeah, I’m also not that stupid.”
“No,” Todd said quietly. “I know you’re not.”
They passed the day that way, hours of cards. He taught her games she’d never known and even a trick or two. By the end of the day, they were not friends but no longer enemies.
25
“What’s in that file you keep peeking at?” Gilly turned from where she’d been poking the woodstove to catch Todd sifting through his papers again.
“Nothing.” He wasn’t in a friendly mood today, which perversely had made Gilly bright and chipper.
“Something you need to throw in the fire?” she asked suspiciously, because he seemed to keep dancing around that decision. “We could use something in there.”
“No!”
Gilly blew out a gust of air. “Sorry.”
Todd stuffed the papers back in the file and put them on top of the armoire, a gesture she could in no way misinterpret since the only way she could have reached up there was to stand on a chair. Gilly poked the logs one last time and watched them crumble into glowing ruby embers. She sat back on her heels, holding her hands out to the warmth.
“Want to play some cards again?” she asked, to make him turn away from the window where he stared out into the darkness.