Precious and Fragile Things

  He did. Gilly found a smaller pan and set it on the floor in front of him. She added enough cold water to make the temperature bearable and got up. “Take off your boots.”

  Todd bent, but she could clearly see that his fingers were too numb to work the laces. Gilly knelt and did it for him. He groaned as she pulled off the battered hiking boots, and then the socks beneath. His toes were ice cubes.

  “I’ll make some more tea.”

  He caught her hand as she turned and tugged her close to him. “Now you’re being nice to me again. I don’t get it.”

  At first, Gilly couldn’t form her answer into words. She held his icy feet between her hands to warm them a bit before she slipped them into the hot water. He hissed and clenched his fists, but didn’t protest.

  “Todd,” Gilly said finally with a sigh. “Being nice doesn’t have to mean…”

  She stopped, mouth working as she tried to put her thoughts into speech. “I can take care of you without caring for you.”

  She raised her gaze to his face and instantly wished she hadn’t. Beneath the ruddy color from the cold, he’d gone pale. His mouth set in a thin line.

  “I guess you can,” he said.

  “I have a home,” Gilly said. “I have a family. And I will get back to them someday. Whether you want to believe it or not. I believe it. I have to.”

  He nodded twice, sharply. “You still want to get away from me.”

  “How can you ask me that?” Gilly reached for a towel, lifted his feet from the water, dried them. “Todd, can you expect anything else from me?”

  He leaned forward, grasped her upper arms. His eyes searched hers. “Yeah. I think I can.”

  Gilly shook her head. “No. You can’t. It’s too much to expect. Even for you.”

  “What’s that mean? Even for me? Even for a dumbass like me, you mean?”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you should know that,” Gilly said. “I meant that no matter what I know…”

  His fingers tightened. She restrained a wince. “You pity me.”

  “I empathize with you, Todd. There’s a difference.”

  His grip softened, but not by much. His gaze did, too. “I ain’t asking for so much. Am I, really?”

  “It’s too much.”

  He shook her a little, and the role of power had shifted. Now kneeling at his feet felt subservient instead of caretaking. Gilly started to get to her feet, but Todd’s grasp stopped her.

  “What can you give?”

  She looked at him, then waved her hand at his feet. “This. It’s all I have for you, Todd.”

  He gave a low, growling laugh. “You want to be my fucking mother?”

  “Interesting choice of words,” Gilly murmured.

  “You shut…you shut your mouth.” He pushed away from her, got up, took long, limping strides to the edge of the room before turning back to her. “Is that what you think of me?”

  Gilly shook her head, her knees hurting on the bare floor. She got up. “No, of course not.”

  He drew a cigarette from the crumpled pack and threw the empty paper to the floor. The smoke seeped from his nostrils in slow, twin tendrils, Fog. He picked a bit of tobacco off his tongue with one finger, turned and spit onto the floor. When he looked at her, Gilly wanted to turn away from the bluntness in his eyes.

  “What, then?” he shouted. “The fuck am I to you, then, Gilly? Because I know I’m something to you.”

  Todd’s voice dipped low and soft. Hopeful. “I am, right?”

  She couldn’t answer and he seemed to take her silence as assent.

  “I never met anyone like you, Gilly.” Todd’s smile was lopsided. “You…you’re clean. When I’m around you, I feel clean, too.”

  “Then let me stay that way,” Gilly said. “Please.”

  Todd shook his head and bent his head to stare up at her through the sheaf of his dark hair. “I don’t think I can.”

  “You have to.”

  He shook his head. “I ain’t that good a person, Gilly.”

  A drop of cold sweat trickled down her spine, but she refused to shiver. “You can be. If you try.”

  Todd drew deep on his cigarette, watching her. Thinking. When she saw he wasn’t going to say anything else, Gilly took the basin into the kitchen and emptied it. They did not continue the conversation.

  44

  What did he mean to her? The answer wasn’t “nothing.” Gilly knew it, even if she wasn’t going to tell him. She thought about what it might be through the night as she fought sleep so she wouldn’t have to face her dreams. She’d sought refuge in them before, but now they only made everything hurt worse.

  For the first time ever, Gilly waited for the sound of her mother’s voice to ring in her head, and it didn’t come. She could hear her mother’s words, but it wasn’t like she was there, speaking them, and they were only memory, time-faded and inexact.

  Roses, she thought, prompting with no response. What had her mother said about roses? What had she said about…love?

  No. Not that. It was impossible.

  Love had many shapes, but this was not and could not be one of them. She couldn’t love Todd. It was wrong. It was a perversion of the very word. Whatever she felt for him—and she could admit it was something, yes, she could do that, it was most emphatically not love.

  She felt as responsible for him as she did for her children, yet she didn’t feel maternal toward him. She believed he knew her as well as her husband did, but she didn’t feel romantic toward him, either. Everything about Todd was chaos and conflict.

  She heard his step on the stairs, the shuffle of his feet along the floor to his bed. The creak of the springs. She waited for the soft sigh of his snore, which she’d missed while he was avoiding her by sleeping on the couch. Instead, she heard him murmur her name.

  “Yes, Todd.”

  His reply came with the shuffle of feet on the floorboards and a shadow standing, hesitating, in the space between the partition. There was no moon, or it hadn’t yet risen, and all she could see was the black, hunched shape of his shoulders. She heard his breathing.

  She tensed.

  He came closer and sat, close enough to touch her if he wanted but not touching her. He was always so warm, tonight no exception. She could feel him even through the blankets.

  “I told you about Kendra,” Todd said.

  “Yes. Your girlfriend. She wanted to get married and you didn’t.” Gilly shifted in the covers, turning onto her side to face him though she couldn’t see anything more than the shape of him.

  “Yeah. See, the thing about Kendra, was that she wasn’t like the other girls I’d ever been with. I mean, I never really had a lot of girlfriends. Just some girls I got with every once in a while when I could. But when I met her, it was different. She was nice. She lived in a nice house. She had a job.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She taught kindergarten.” Todd laughed harshly. “Can you believe that, Gilly? Me with a fucking kindy teacher. She spent all day with little kids. And she went out with me at night. I bet if those parents had known what she was up to, they wouldn’t have been so happy.”

  Gilly was a parent. If she’d found out her daughter’s teacher was dating a convict, she’d have had trouble with it, no doubt. “It was her social life, not any of their business.”

  “Yeah, well. You know how people are.”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  Todd shifted and the bed dipped a little as he half turned toward her. “She had the prettiest laugh. And she laughed a lot when she was with me. I laughed, too. When I was with Kendra, I felt…”

  Gilly waited.

  “Luminescent,” Todd said finally. “You know that word?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “It’s a good one.”

  She smiled in the dark. “A very good one.”

  “One of Uncle Bill’s favorites,” Todd said off handedly. “But that’s how I felt when I was with Kendra.”

  ??
?So what happened?”

  “She wanted to get married. And I just couldn’t do it. She said it would all work out and everything would be okay, but I couldn’t do it.”

  Gilly put out her hand. Her fingertips grazed his back. She kept them there, barely touching.

  “She didn’t really know me,” Todd said. “She loved me, though. But I didn’t lose her. I pushed her away.”

  Gilly put her hand flat on his back, but it fell away when Todd stood. She missed his heat right away and shivered. He moved, and the floorboards creaked.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you for more,” Todd said.

  Then he went back to his bed.

  45

  Todd slid a hand through his hair in irritation. “Damn it.”

  Gilly looked up from the list she was writing. “What?”

  “My hair.” Todd blew upward, causing the strands to lift off his forehead. “It’s too long.”

  She looked at him critically. It hung past the edges of his shoulders and obscured the crows’ wings of his eyebrows. “It sure is.”

  He snorted. “I hate dirty hair.”

  She put a hand up to her own hair, pulled back into a ponytail for the same reason. Neither of them had been much concerned about washing their hair. It was hard enough taking a bath.

  He tugged at a handful. “It’s driving me crazy.”

  “I could cut it for you.” She meant the offer casually, not thinking he would take it.

  Todd’s eyes lit. “Yeah?”

  Gilly shrugged. “Sure. I can’t promise you how pretty it will turn out, but I can do it. I cut my kids’ hair all the time.”

  “Cool!” Todd went to the kitchen and began rummaging around in one of the drawers. He came back with his trophy held high: a large pair of scissors. “Here.”

  She took the dull and ancient tool and looked at it skeptically. “I don’t know about this.”

  “Just try. I can’t stand it.”

  “Okay, so long as you’re not planning on entering any beauty pageants.” She motioned to him. “Sit down.”

  He sat so she could stand behind him, and his head still came up to her chin. Gilly snapped the scissors open and shut a few times and touched Todd’s hair. It was dirty, but still smooth. She ran it through her fingers, catching the snags.

  “Ouch!”

  “Sorry.” She tried again, with the same response. “It’s too tangled.”

  “Cut the knots out.”

  “No,” Gilly said sternly. “You’d look horrible. I have to comb it first. And I think I should wash it.”

  He protested, but only feebly. Gilly led him to the bathroom and bent him over the bathtub. He yelped as the lukewarm water hit his scalp, but didn’t fight to get away.

  Gilly worked quickly, mindful of how quickly the hot water ran out. She soaped Todd’s head and rinsed it, then used a palmful of conditioner. It was the last in the bottle.

  She finished, and he wrapped his head in a towel. They returned to the living room, moving the chair closer to the fire. She combed his hair until it lay smooth and shining against his scalp and hung straight to the middle of his back.

  “It seems a shame to cut it. You have such nice hair, Todd.”

  “Sissy hair,” he said. “I have girl’s hair.”

  “No,” Gilly admonished. “Just because it’s long doesn’t make it girl’s hair.”

  “It’s too pretty,” Todd said in a mocking tone. “Faggot hair.”

  Gilly shook her head, thinking of one of her best friends from college. Mark would’ve said the very same thing, only with envy in his tone. Mark’s partner wore his hair long and straight, like Todd’s, but Mark kept his short in a buzz cut to disguise a receding hairline.

  Todd twisted to look at her. “You think that’s funny?”

  His vehemence took her aback. “No.”

  “My uncle Bill was a fag,” Todd said, his face stony. “And he was the best man who ever was. If you got a problem with that you’d better keep it to yourself.”

  “Todd.” Gilly cut him off. She laid her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t.”

  He wet his lips. “Some people do.”

  “I’m not some people.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Right.”

  She pushed his head until he looked forward again, and brandished the scissors. “If you want me to cut it, I’ll cut it.”

  “Do it.”

  In a few minutes, the deed was done. Todd’s hair lay in loose curls all over the towel draped across his shoulders and the floor. He ran a finger through the short, cropped strands.

  “Feels nice,” he commented.

  The short hairstyle emphasized the line of his cheekbones and curve of his jaw. He’d grown thinner, Gilly noted. His scalp showed white in places, and a few tiny silver hairs glittered in places she hadn’t noticed before.

  “All done.” Before she could stop herself, Gilly reached out and stroked his cheek. Then, not wanting to make a scene, she pretended she was merely brushing some stray hairs from his face.

  He pressed his face against her hand and closed his eyes for a minute. Gilly took her hand away. She busied herself with tidying up.

  When he wasn’t looking, she gathered a hank of his hair and twisted it together before slipping it into her pocket. She couldn’t have said what compulsion had made her do it; she didn’t want to dwell on it. Later, she took it out and put it in her dresser drawer. She didn’t look at it again, but she always knew it was there.

  46

  “What are you doing?”

  Gilly looked down at the piece of paper now mostly filled with lines of her sloping handwriting. “Writing a list.”

  Todd bent to look over her shoulder. “A list of what?”

  Gilly moved her hand to show him. “Things I want to do. Or that I’ve never done.”

  “Shit, it would take a lot more than one piece of paper for me to do that.”

  Gilly looked at what she’d written. “This is just a start.”

  “What do you got on it?”

  For a moment, she didn’t want to tell him. Her list, like her laugh, was private. A piece of herself. But then, unlike her laughter, Gilly shared what she’d written.

  “‘Take my kids to the beach,’” she read. “They’ve never seen the ocean. I’d like to see Gandy get out of diapers. See Arwen start first grade.”

  “Are they all about your kids?” Todd’s voice was carefully neutral.

  Gilly looked over the list and read some more aloud. “‘Learn to play the piano. Go scuba diving. Research my family tree.’”

  She continued. “‘Buy Seth the golf clubs he’s been wanting. Finish painting Arwen’s bedroom.’”

  “You have a lot of stuff on your list.”

  She ran her fingers over the ink. “Yes. I do.”

  He didn’t offer her false comfort. Gilly knew he wouldn’t say she’d do those things someday. He didn’t believe she ever would. All at once, the thought she’d never hold her children in her arms again made her start to cry.

  The sobs tore from her throat with a force and vehemence that left her gasping. A hot fist clutched her heart, squeezed it, made her moan. She no longer had the strength to grasp the paper, and it floated from her fingers. Gilly buried her face in her hands, breathless with sobs, agonized in her grief.

  “Hey,” Todd said, and then again. “Hey. Shh. Shh, Gilly, it’s okay.”

  She felt his arm curl around her shoulders, and he drew her close to him. The flannel of his shirt was soft against her cheek. The scent of tobacco permeated him, underlying the scent of fresh air he always seemed to carry with him.

  Gilly pushed away from him but was too weakened by grief to move far. His arms held her, loosely but firmly, in his comforting grasp.

  “I love them!” she sobbed, spitting the words against his chest. “Ah, God, I miss them!”

  He rocked her, slowly, as she had once rocked him. He smoothed her hair. She felt the touch of his lips on her forehead.
Gilly sagged into Todd’s embrace, not welcoming it but helpless to fight it.

  “I miss them,” she whispered raggedly, her throat raw from tears. Her fingers clutched a handful of flannel shirt. “My family.”

  “Don’t cry, Gilly.”

  The tears were tapering off into sniffles. He let her pull away from him. Her eyes ached, swollen and hot.

  “I want to see my children again.”

  He shook his head slowly, back and forth, once. “If you go back, they’ll make you tell them what happened. They’ll make you tell them where I am. Who I am. They’ll send me back to jail. And I won’t go.”

  The truth of his statement was undeniable, but Gilly didn’t care. She railed at him, flailing her arms. “You son of a bitch! Didn’t you hear me? I want to see my children! Don’t you understand? I miss my kids!”

  “I understand,” Todd growled, catching her hand in mid-strike and holding it. His voice softened. “I know, Gilly. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Tell me you’ll let me go home.”

  Todd shook his head. “Can’t.”

  “Just tell me,” she said. “Even if you don’t mean it!”

  He shook his head again.

  “Then do what you came up here to do,” she said through gritted teeth and yanked her hand from his grasp.

  His eyes flickered. “I can’t. I could’ve before. But now I can’t.”

  “You,” she said with deliberate cruelty, “are afraid.”

  He frowned. “Shut up!”

  “You’re chickenshit!” Gilly cried. “You’re a pussy!”

  “Shut up, Gilly, or so help me…”

  “Or what?” she asked and held out her hands. “What? You’ll hit me? You’ll kill me?”

  “Shut up,” he said for a third time, his voice low. He turned from her. “Just shut your mouth.”

  “If I knew that I would never see my kids or Seth again, I would kill myself,” Gilly said with a faint contemptuous sneer. “And I wouldn’t be afraid, either.”

  “Oh, no?” Todd’s hand went to the leather sheath on his belt. He unbuckled the huge knife and drew it out. “Then do it. Here you go. Take it.”