Precious and Fragile Things

  She didn’t read as much as she used to. Not enough time. She missed it, though. “Yeah? Like what?”

  Todd shrugged. “I like horror. And science fiction.”

  “Me, too.” Gilly perched on the edge of the chair. “Like what?”

  Todd gave her another look. “You want me to tell you about what books I read?”

  “Yes. Maybe I’ve read them, too. We could talk about them.”

  “The fuck you think this is, The Oprah Show?” Todd laughed again and shook his head. “Right.”

  “Never mind. Don’t tell me.” Gilly sighed and started pacing again.

  To the window. To the door. To the kitchen, where she filled a glass with water and drank only half before dumping it down the drain.

  Todd gave her another look but settled back onto the couch. Again, she envied him the ability to sit for long periods of time doing nothing. Now, however, she did not cruelly assume the skill came from his lack of intelligence. Now she imagined the trait had grown within him out of necessity.

  “I liked this book called Swan Song,” Todd offered. “You ever read that one?”

  “No.” Gilly turned from the sink and looked at him from under the hanging cabinets dividing the living room from the kitchen, then came around to lean in the doorway. “What’s it about?”

  “Nuclear war. Bunch of bombs go off and then the people have to survive nuclear winter. It scared the shit out of me as a kid,” Todd said with a grin. “I read it about four times. Took me for-fucking-ever, though. It’s really long.”

  “I wish I had a book now,” Gilly said.

  Todd looked around, frowning. “Yeah. Sorry. Uncle Bill wasn’t much of a reader, and I didn’t think about it when…well. You know.”

  She did know and didn’t really want to go over all that ground again. She left the doorway to look out the front windows. Snow and more snow. She sighed.

  Her stomach growled, but the thought of actually eating made her want to gag. A twinge of headache ran behind her eyes, telling her to sit down and close them or suffer the consequences. Gilly made a place for herself on one of the couches, plumped the sagging cushions, rescued a crocheted afghan from one of the drawers in the armoire. She laid her head back, letting her body sink into the barely comfortable couch.

  “What’s your favorite book?” Todd asked.

  “I have so many, I’m not sure I could pick one.”

  “If you had to,” Todd said.

  She turned her head to look at him on the couch’s other end. “Oh. Maybe the collected works of Ray Bradbury. Something like that. I could read all those stories over and over again.”

  “Ray Bradbury!” Todd’s eyes lit. “Electric Grandmother.”

  “You know it?”

  “Yeah, sure. I used to wish for one.” Todd was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his tone wasn’t sad or wistful, just resigned. “Of course I never had one, I mean, even if they were real I’d never have been able to get one. But I always thought it would be great to have.”

  “Yeah,” Gilly said.

  They fell into companionable silence.

  Did she sleep, or only dream? In the silence, and with only the flickering red-gold light from the woodstove to illuminate the room, Gilly didn’t know for sure. This was different from earlier, when she’d sought the realm of sleep to escape reality. Now she embraced the reality of being here, the snow outside, the man slouched at the other end of the couch. Cigarette smoke tickled her nose, and the glowing ember of the tip of Todd’s Marlboro winked at her.

  Only a few weeks ago she’d never have sat this way with him. Things were different now. After what he’d told her, how could they not? Gilly rescued stray kittens, donated her time and money to the local soup kitchen, was always the first to weep at the tragedies she saw on the evening news. She couldn’t have hardened her heart against Todd any more than she could’ve refused to go to her children when they wept for her in the night.

  She knew the date only because she could see it on the dial of her watch. February, the coldest and dankest month. The one with Valentine’s Day right in the middle, a made-up holiday people needed just to get through—and someone had made it shorter, too, knowing that February just couldn’t be borne for thirty days. It was only February.

  But March would come soon, and with it, warmer days. Days when the snow would melt and she could…she could…

  Gilly opened her eyes to the yellow glow of the propane lantern and the sight of Todd banking the fire for the night. She would not think of March now, not when she could do nothing to hasten its arrival.

  “Ready for bed?” Todd asked her.

  She rose lazily from her self-made nest and nodded, surprised to find herself tired after the hours of inactivity. “Yes.”

  He climbed the stairs in front of her, leading the way with the light so she would not trip. He gave her the lantern to put on her dresser, then turned away without being asked to give her privacy while she dressed for bed.

  “Good night,” she called across the partition as she turned out the light. It was the first time she’d ever said the words to him.

  Later, his moans woke her from dreamless sleep. Gilly blinked in the darkness, confused for a moment before remembering where she was. She heard the shuffling of sheets, the whisper of bare feet on the wooden floor.

  She didn’t need the light to know he was there. Todd hesitated in the opening of the partition. Gilly had been woken countless times by just such an apparition, albeit one usually much smaller, but with the same intent.

  She flipped back the covers and slid over, whispering: “It’s all right. You can come in.”

  Anxiety filled her for one moment, for despite all he’d shared with her, Todd was not a child. He slid in beside her, his own heat radiating like an oven even though he’d been standing in the frigid air.

  “I have bad dreams, sometimes,” he whispered.

  “It’s okay.” Gilly pushed him onto his side so she could curl against his back. She pressed her cheek to the softness of his T-shirt, took the warmth he provided and prepared to offer comfort of her own. “So do I.”

  35

  Todd laid the yellow three on top of the blue three, and crowed, “Uno!”

  Gilly sighed dramatically. “I don’t have any threes…or any yellows…”

  He hooted and rapped the table with his hands, managing to do a victory dance while still seated. Gilly pretended to reach for the draw pile, but then drew back.

  “Oh, wait,” she said. “I do have this wild card…the one that says Draw Four.”

  She put the multicolored card on the pile and smirked. “Uno. The color is red.”

  Todd narrowed his eyes at her. “You suck.”

  Gilly rolled her eyes. “And you’re a poor loser.”

  “No, I ain’t.” Todd grinned, and Gilly had to look away so as not to let herself be taken breathless with how the smile swept his face into beauty. “I can still win.”

  He proved it by picking up four cards and slapping down a red skip card, followed by a yellow skip card. Gilly, who could no longer use her remaining red card, had to draw from the pile.

  “Me and Uncle Bill had some pretty good Uno tournaments,” Todd said as he gathered up the scattered cards to reshuffle. “Don’t feel bad.”

  “I don’t.”

  He shot her a glance. “What would you be doing if you was home, now?”

  The question startled her. “What?”

  Todd dealt another hand of cards. “What would you be doing?”

  Gilly crossed her hands on the table and stared down at them. “I wouldn’t be playing Uno.”

  He waited for her to speak. She heard the soft rise and fall of his breathing and became intensely aware of his gaze upon her. Hot, like a flame held too close to her skin.

  “It’s ten-thirty on a Sunday morning,” Gilly said. “I would probably be at the synagogue, watching the door during Hebrew School.”

  His puzzled lo
ok showed her he didn’t understand.

  “The synagogue is always locked,” Gilly explained. “During Hebrew School hours, a parent volunteers to sit in the office to push the button to open the door for anyone who needs to get in.”

  “Why’s it locked? I thought churches were always open.”

  “Unfortunately, some people don’t have the same open minds as others about religion,” Gilly said lightly, and raised her head to see Todd looking confused. “There were some threats to the synagogue. The congregation decided it was better to lock the doors for safety.”

  “That’s fucked-up.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a fucked-up world.”

  Todd rearranged his cards. “And after that? What would you do then?”

  She thought, her throat tightening but glad to talk of it. “I’d take Arwen, and we’d go to the grocery store for some things. Come home. Fix lunch. Clean the house. Do laundry. Maybe we’d go to the movies, if there was something good for the kids. Maybe we’d go out to dinner, or order a pizza. Sunday’s family day.”

  Todd put down his cards, got up from the table and went to the window. From the tense line of his shoulders, Gilly could tell something had upset him. She carefully gathered the cards and put them back into their box.

  “It sounds real nice,” Todd said finally.

  “It is.”

  He turned to her. “Your kids are lucky. You’re a good mom.”

  A good mother wouldn’t be here. Gilly rested her head in her hands for a moment, plagued by a sudden onset of weariness that made her want to cry. The moment passed, leaving behind only a vague nausea that unsettled her stomach.

  She hadn’t disagreed aloud, but now Todd argued with her silence. “You are. You give your kids stuff…love and stuff.”

  She didn’t say, Of course. For Todd, there could be no Of course about it. What was natural and expected from a mother hadn’t existed for him.

  She motioned for him to sit back at the table. She took his hand, held his arm out flat against the wood. She pushed his sleeve up, gently, and touched the inked pattern. She knew what it meant now.

  “One of six,” she murmured.

  This time, Todd didn’t jump away from her. Below her fingertips, his pulse jumped. Gilly touched the tattoo again before withdrawing.

  “I used to be one of six,” Todd said, voice hoarse, eyes bright. “But then I was the only one.”

  “What happened to you, after?” Gilly asked quietly.

  He hunched his broad shoulders. “They took me to the hospital. But there was nothing wrong with me. The blood… it wasn’t mine. They made me sleep there.”

  “Alone?”

  “There was a big room, with a bunch of kids….” He stopped. “But they were all there because they were sick. Some of them were crying because it hurt them. I didn’t cry.”

  Gilly bit the inside of her cheek, the spot tender with old scars from many bites. “What about your Grandma? Uncle Bill?”

  Todd shuddered, then seemed to catch himself. “They called my Grandma to tell her what happened. Grandma…had a bad heart, Gilly.”

  The story grew worse. Gilly put her hand over his. “Oh, Todd.”

  His sigh was like the bitter wind outside. “I didn’t know she died until they came to take me away. They took me to a foster home. It smelled like cat piss and baby puke. They didn’t let me take my nonnie…” He looked embarrassed. “My blanket. You know, like babies have? But I was five. They didn’t let me have it.”

  Her heart broke a little more at the picture of Todd as a child. “And then what?”

  She didn’t prompt him out of her own need to listen to the story. They were past that, anyway. Todd needed to tell her these things. She would never have thought she’d want to understand him. But that was before.

  “They sent me to another place, after a while. They brought me some of my stuff, but they didn’t know they gave me some of Freddy’s stuff, too. His shirts. One shirt he had, it had the Dallas Cowboys on it. I always wanted it, but he’d never let me wear it. They brought me that shirt, and I put it on, and it still smelled like Freddy. I wouldn’t let the foster mom wash it. She got real mad at me. Finally, when I was at school, she took it and threw it away. Because it stank so bad, she said. She didn’t know it was all I had of my brother.”

  Her throat closed. She remembered cleaning Arwen’s room of its collection of broken toys, discarded playthings, clothes that had become too small. Junk her daughter had loved and wept to discover gone.

  “How many homes?” Gilly asked.

  Todd ran a hand through his hair and looked at her sideways. “A lot. I started being bad. I don’t know why, except being bad made me feel better. I didn’t want to be bad. I just was.”

  Just as he didn’t want to keep her. He just was. Gilly didn’t point that out, though she was pretty sure he was thinking it, too.

  “The Social zombies started making me go to a shrink. I had four different homes in two years before they put me in the group home. I lived there until I was twelve.”

  Gilly waited for the rest of the story. She sat patiently, without moving. Watching him. The weak February sun cast lines on his cheeks, highlighting the dark scruff with hints of gold.

  “I almost burned it down.” Todd waited for her response, which Gilly purposefully masked. “They sent me to the hospital for that.”

  “For attempted arson?”

  He shook his head. “For attempted suicide. I poured gasoline on myself and tried to light a match.” He laughed. “Damn wind kept blowing the fucking thing out. They said it was a suicide attempt. I don’t know. It probably was.”

  “How many times did you try?” Gilly asked, horrified yet fascinated.

  “On purpose?” He thought a moment. “Three on purpose. Fire. Pills, twice. How many times just by doing stupid shit, hoping it would be the last time I had the chance? A lot more.”

  Todd stood and lifted his shirt over his head. It was the first time she’d seen him completely bare, and her heart thudded in her throat at the intimacy of the sight. His chest was smooth, dark nipples surrounded by a smattering of sleek black hairs. Muscles corded in his biceps and shoulders as he moved, though his stomach was soft. The white scar rippled across his belly; Gilly flinched at the sight though she’d seen it before. A smaller, deeper scar dimpled the flesh next to his navel.

  Todd pointed to both of them. “I crashed my car doing eighty around a curve when I was seventeen. This is where they took out my spleen. This is where they stuck a tube in me to drain out all the bad shit.”

  Gilly made a sad noise.

  “But I always fucked it up,” Todd said with forced lightness. “Couldn’t even kill myself right. Stupid fucking loser. Always fucked it up, let someone find me….”

  “Maybe…maybe you didn’t really want to die,” Gilly said. “Maybe…”

  “Don’t give me that cry for help shit, Gilly.” Todd shook his head and pulled his shirt back on. “I wanted to die. I’m just too fucking stupid to pull it off.”

  “What changed your mind? What made you decide living would be better?”

  He looked at her with his sideways glance. “What makes you think I did?”

  “You’re here,” she pointed out. “Not in the ground.”

  Todd lifted the edge of his shirt. His hand went to his waist, and he unsnapped the leather holster. He pulled out the knife. The blade glinted in the sunlight as he turned it from side to side so she could see every inch of the long blade.

  “Once you asked me what I came up here planning to do.” Todd let the blade rest lightly on the skin of his forearm. When he took it away, a thin line of blood remained.

  “You told me ‘nothing.’”

  “I lied,” Todd told her. “Did you ever feel so bad you wanted to die?”

  She had not. Even during the worst times in her youth, she’d clung to the idea of life with desperation. If she lived, she knew she would grow up and eventually get away from the h
orror of living with her mother. If she died then, she’d die with grief in her heart.

  But it wasn’t hard for her to understand the pain that must’ve driven Todd to thoughts of suicide. Gilly, who could perhaps imagine better than some people how a mother’s betrayal affected a child, could only begin to imagine how deeply Todd’s mother’s death had messed him up. She’d never wanted to die, but she knew too well the craving for oblivion.

  “I ain’t never been good at anything,” Todd said. “Not in school. Not even shop. I can’t make things. I ain’t good with my hands. Can’t hold a job for shit. Can’t even rob a damn liquor store without getting caught.”

  His litany urged her to murmur “It can’t be that bad,” even as she knew it must be.

  “Girls don’t like me,” Todd continued. “No chick wants to hang out with a dumbass like me with no job, no money, a jail record. Least, not any girl I’d like to hang with. Not nice girls…not like you.”

  Gilly put the cards back in the box, guessing their game was over. She didn’t remind him of the girl he’d said wanted to marry him. In her palm, the box of cards felt slick and cool. Heavier than it looked.

  “You know that’s not true, Todd.”

  “You’re not nice?”

  She looked up at him, their eyes meeting with neither flinching away. Gilly shook her head a little. The inside of her cheek felt torn and raw; she chewed it anyway in lieu of an answer.

  Todd studied her. He reached in his pocket, stroking the crinkly wrapping of his pack of cigarettes, but didn’t pull one out. “You’re good, Gilly. I’m not.”

  “Oh, Todd.”

  How many times had she said this, now? How many more would his name come from her lips that way? Gilly’s chair rocked, but she didn’t get up. She clenched the cards tight, tighter. “You have this idea about me, but you don’t really know me at all.”

  He reached across the table and flicked the ends of her hair, unsecured in its usual ponytail. Then her sleeve, her shirt the one she’d been wearing the day he got into the passenger seat beside her. “Look at you.”

  “It has nothing to do with what I look like.”