Precious and Fragile Things

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t have to. Stay here with me. Let me take care of you.”

  “What?” Gilly forced herself up from the chair. She couldn’t make sense of what he’d just said. “What exactly do you want?”

  “Have your baby with me,” Todd said, a note of growing desperation in his voice. “Just…just say you’ll stay here with me. We can raise it together.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Gilly shrieked. She backed away from him, toward the stairs. The horror of his suggestion raced through her. “Are you crazy?”

  “Don’t you call me that!” Todd was across to her in two strides. His fingers closed around her upper arms, holding her. “Just don’t!”

  Gilly didn’t fight him. She didn’t strike back. The child swimming in her belly made that impossible. She had more than herself to care for now. Protective instinct surged forth, overwhelming her. She’d thought she’d do anything to get back to her children, but now, to protect the life growing inside her, she knew she would. Whatever it took.

  Lie. Cheat. Steal.

  Kill.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered and let him pull her closer again.

  “I just wanted to tell you something.” He didn’t wait for her to reply before continuing. “I want you to know…I didn’t mean it. About the ranger, or you. I would never…I’d never hurt you, Gilly. Not ever.”

  “I know you wouldn’t.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course, Todd.” Cheek pressed to the soft flannel of his shirt, she nodded. “I know you.”

  “And you’ll stay with me, right?”

  “All right,” Gilly said in a voice as cold as the icicles hanging from the roof outside. “Okay, Todd. I’ll stay with you.”

  She did know him, she thought as he let her go with one last squeeze. Todd was a rose. He’d be beautiful if tended properly, but would always have thorns.

  49

  “I’m pregnant, not disabled,” Gilly told Todd, who’d just insisted on bringing her lunch to the couch. “Really, it’s better for me to be active.”

  “You sure?” His worried expression was so sincere, it scraped at Gilly’s heart.

  She touched his cheek. “I’m sure.”

  He set the tray he’d prepared on the table. “Don’t you got to have good food, though? Milk and eggs and shit? Vitamins?”

  “Well, yes. I should.” Gilly eyed the plate of boxed macaroni and cheese made with water instead of butter and milk. He’d sprinkled some peanuts on top. “But we don’t have those things.”

  “Won’t it hurt the baby?”

  She’d had no doctor’s appointments, no checkups. She’d been battered and stressed. She’d suffered trauma. But she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on those things. Not when she had no way of changing them.

  “I’ll be fine. Women have been having babies for thousands of years.”

  “And lots of them died,” Todd said.

  Gilly’s hands fisted at the bluntness of his words. “Todd!”

  He shrugged, then sat down beside her. “I don’t know anything about pregnant ladies. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said tightly, though images of blood-soaked sheets filled her mind. Her womb twinged in memory, and a sharp pain stabbed between her legs. Cold sweat trickled down her spine.

  Todd put his arm around her. “Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook herself mentally, though the image had been so vivid she could practically smell the copper tang of blood.

  “If it’s a boy,” Todd said slowly. “Do you think we could name him Bill?”

  The very thought of naming her child after Todd’s dead uncle turned her stomach. Gilly smiled. “Of course.”

  His answering smile was like the sun parting rain clouds. “Cool!”

  He got up and took the tray to the kitchen. Gilly poked a fork at the urine-colored pasta, but didn’t eat it. She touched the small bulge of her tummy, knowing it was too early to feel anything but imagining the flutter of movement anyway. She had to care for this child. She ate the macaroni, every last bite of it.

  Later, when the afternoon had passed into evening, Todd brought out a pair of white candles and set them on the counter. “I thought you might want these.”

  Gilly looked at him in surprise. She’d allowed the past few Sabbath evenings to pass without lighting candles to commemorate them. She’d been unable to perform the rituals that usually so calmed her. Lighting the candles had made her ache for her family too much.

  “Thank you.” Gilly took the pack of matches and lit one, touching it to the first wick and then the other. She closed her eyes and waved her hands toward her face, then said the blessing aloud.

  “Why do you do that thing with your hands?” Todd asked when she’d finished.

  For a moment she didn’t know what he meant. The habit of candle-lighting was so ingrained she didn’t have to really think about any one part of it. Then she understood.

  “You mean this?” She repeated the gesture.

  “Yeah.”

  “When I do that,” Gilly said with a sigh that came from her toes, “I’m gathering up all the bits of wonder I’ve found since last Shabbat and offering them up to Adonai. To God. All the blessings and things to be thankful for.”

  “What did you send up this week?” Todd asked her as innocently as any child.

  Gilly touched her stomach. “This.” She thought, then touched his shoulder. “And you, I guess.”

  She hadn’t thought she would say such a thing until it popped out of her mouth. The awful and hilarious thing was, she meant it. Hate and love were two pages back to back in the same story. What she felt for him now was no different than what she’d felt in the beginning, and yet it was vastly, immensely dissimilar. As was everything inside her. Nothing could ever be the same.

  Todd looked pleased. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Gilly said. “Sure, Todd.”

  Even she couldn’t be certain if she was lying.

  50

  Drip. Drip. Drip. The icicles on the porch grew longer every day. First the sun melted them enough to allow the water to drip from the ends, and when night came they froze. Now they looked like great, jagged teeth in the mouth of an enormous beast.

  Was it better to be on the inside looking out, already consumed by the giant? Or to be outside, looking at the teeth ready to snap down on tender flesh? Gilly leaned her forehead against the window, pondering.

  “Want to play a game?” Todd asked.

  “No.” Gilly’s hands caressed her belly absently. Her thoughts were on the baby. Boy or girl, this time?

  “There’s another puzzle in the cabinet. I’ll help you put it together. It’s got trains on it.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Todd let out a frustrated sigh. “C’mon, Gilly. Let’s do something!”

  She blinked, focusing on him. “I don’t feel like doing anything.”

  He groaned. “Damn it!”

  In the light of her hormonal glow, his childishness was endearing rather than annoying. Gilly smiled and rolled her eyes. “What game would you like to play?”

  Todd crossed to the large armoire and opened the doors. “Monopoly. Life. Checkers. Battleship…ah, shit, half the pieces are missing out of that one. Shit. We’ve played all these a million times.”

  It certainly felt as though they had. “What’s up on that shelf, up there?”

  Gilly pointed. Despite his height, Todd stood too close to the shelves to see to the back of the ones above his head. From her vantage point across the room, though, Gilly saw some boxes tucked back in the shadows. Perhaps more games, or another puzzle. Something fresh to them, anyway, and something to relieve the tedium.

  Todd reached up and stuck his hand back along the shelf. He still wasn’t quite tall enough to grab it. “Grab me a chair, will you?”

  Her attention now was piqued. Gilly
took him one of the tottery dining chairs and held the back of it while he stood on top. Todd peered back into the shelf and grabbed one of the boxes, handed it down to her and stepped from the chair.

  “What is it?” Todd asked.

  Gilly brushed at the thick coating of dust. The wooden box was fairly large, big enough to need two hands to hold it properly. She sniffed. Cedar. Gilly smiled. Seth always said no tourist trap would be complete without a display of cedar boxes and moccasins.

  “I’m not sure.” Gilly cracked open the lid, which squealed on its hinges. “Pictures?”

  “Let me see.” Todd took the box from her and flipped through the sheaf of yellowed photographs and pieces of paper. He stopped, the color draining from his face. “Oh.”

  “What is it?”

  He held up one. “My mother.”

  Gilly took his elbow and led him to one of the couches. “Here. Sit down. Let’s look at them.”

  Todd shoved the box away from him. Paper scattered across the battered coffee table. “No! I don’t want to look at her!”

  Gilly gathered them up gently and tucked them back into the box. “They’re only pictures, Todd. They can’t hurt you.”

  He shook his head, fingers going to the cigarettes that weren’t there and then running through the length of hair that was no longer long. His feet jittered on the nasty shag carpet. Gilly put a hand on his arm to soothe him, and he quieted suddenly.

  “We can look at them together. It’ll be okay.” Gilly pulled out the one on top and held it so he could stare down at it if he chose.

  At first he shook his head, but then he nodded his assent. He took the photo from her. “That’s my mom.”

  The young woman in the picture looked vastly different from the haggard zombie in the newspaper clippings. Her smile was genuine here, her eyes bright.

  “She’s pretty,” Gilly said.

  “Yeah.” Todd touched the smiling face.

  “You look like her.”

  He looked surprised. “You think so?”

  Gilly studied the dark-eyed woman whose hair fell in sheaves to her waist. “Yes. I do.”

  He put the picture aside and picked up the next. “Uncle Bill with Mom.”

  The siblings faced the camera, smiling, heads together and arms around each other’s waists. They wore bathing suits, the colors of their vintage style still noxiously vivid even though time had faded their intensity. Todd’s mother’s belly peeked out from the opening of her bikini, perhaps in pregnancy?

  Todd confirmed the thought. “My brother Stevie, probably.”

  He sifted through more of the pictures. He lifted one and let out a sigh that was half moan. “There we all are.”

  The picture, taken a few years earlier than the one featured in the paper, clearly showed the decline of Todd’s mother. Her face had gone from smiling and pretty to glassy-eyed and rigid. Her arms encircled a blue wrapped bundle. Her hair, once dark and shining, had been cropped short and lay flat against her head. Tiny red sores clustered in one corner of her mouth.

  “The baby…that’s me.” Todd showed her another photo, of only the children grouped around the blue bundle. He touched the faces of each of his brothers and sisters, naming them. “Stevie. Freddie. Mary. Joey. Katie.”

  One hand went to his face to cover his eyes. His shoulders heaved. He wept.

  Gilly, uncertain, put a hand on his arm. Todd bent and buried his face in her neck. His face was hot on the skin of her throat. His tears splashed her, burning.

  She held him tightly, not knowing what to say and so comforting him as best she could with her silence. She put one hand to the back of his head, stroking the shorn strands. His hands clutched her.

  “We were just kids!” he sobbed against her, his words nearly unintelligible.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  He still wept. “We were only little kids! Why? What did we do that was so bad that she wanted to kill us?”

  “It wasn’t you,” Gilly repeated more firmly. “Todd, your mother was mentally unstable. She was in pain. She couldn’t decide what was right and wrong, or she would have never—”

  “I should’ve died there, too,” he whispered. “Along with Stevie and the others. I wasn’t no better then them! I ain’t never been better!”

  “Todd!” She shook him until he sat up. “Listen to me!”

  She used her “Mommy means business” voice, the one guaranteed to stop a rampaging toddler in his tracks seconds before grocery store disaster. It worked on Todd, too. He knuckled his eyes, but stopped protesting.

  “There is nothing you could have done to stop your mother,” Gilly said. “She was sick. You were only five years old. You and your brothers and sisters didn’t do anything to make her do what she did. You didn’t deserve it. She was wrong.”

  “She didn’t love us….” He sighed, scrubbing at his face. “Why didn’t my mom love me?”

  Without thinking, Gilly put her hand on her stomach. “She must have loved you, Todd. There’s no way she couldn’t have. But what she did…as sick as it was…she probably did it out of that love. She must have thought you would be better off…”

  Her explanation trailed off, insufficient.

  “That ain’t love,” Todd said fiercely. “You love your kids. You told me you’d do anything to stop them from getting hurt. You’d never do what she did!”

  “No. I wouldn’t.”

  He lifted another photograph, another of his mother while still young and pretty. “Look at her there, Gilly. See how she looked before she had us?”

  “Mothers love their babies—”

  “Some mothers love their babies,” Todd interrupted. “Some don’t know how to.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” she conceded. “But that’s not your fault. Stop blaming yourself. You were only a kid! You’re still…”

  He would always be a child where this was concerned. Always a wounded, damaged boy who’d been left for dead by the person who was supposed to love him more than anything in the world. Gilly swallowed hard.

  “It’s not your fault,” she repeated. “None of it.”

  “This must’ve been Uncle Bill’s box,” Todd said. “He never showed it to me.”

  “Maybe he thought it would upset you too much.”

  Todd stared off into the distance. “Nobody ever talked about them, you know? Nobody ever said their names. It was like they didn’t just die, they never even were born. I didn’t have anything even to remember them by. If I’d had this box maybe things would’ve been at least a little different. If I’d had this instead of a file full of newspaper clippings and a note.”

  He shrugged, hand going absently to his pocket and falling away again when it found no cigarette package there. “Maybe it would’ve been a little easier.”

  She doubted it. “Maybe.”

  He took out a faded piece of ruled notebook paper. “Uncle Bill wrote this. I recognize the writing.”

  It was a poem, and not a very good one. What it lacked in creative imagery it made up for in emotion. Todd read the first few lines aloud.

  “‘She’s pretty like the red rose, with skin as soft as butterfly wings. Hair as dark as the night that has to shield our love.’”

  He frowned, turning the paper over. “I didn’t know Uncle Bill wrote poems.”

  And to women, no less, Gilly thought, remembering that Todd had claimed his uncle to be homosexual. “People usually manage to surprise us.”

  He read to the bottom of the page. “For Sharon. That’s my mother.”

  “Are you sure Uncle Bill wrote this?”

  Todd put the paper back into the box. “Hell if I know. But this is his box and it sure looks like his writing. Why would he have somebody else’s poem in it?”

  He opened a creased envelope, looked over the lined paper, and handed it to Gilly without a word. Todd got up from the couch, spilling the box’s contents. Gilly read the letter, written in a looping, uneducated hand, the same from the note h
e’d shown her weeks before.

  Bill,

  The test shows positive. Im knocked up again & this time we know for shore who the dad is, huh? We said it wuldn’t happen again but God knows more than us and so we are caught again. Stevie is ok but what if this one ain’t right?

  The letter continued, mostly into ramblings about God and Jesus and whether or not the child she carried would be normal or deformed. Gilly’s hands shook as she set the paper down, and her stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with morning sickness. If she’d read the letter correctly, Bill Lutz and Sharon Blauch had created two children, Stevie and Todd. Sharon didn’t name the father of her other four children, but Gilly assumed from the woman’s disjointed words that they hadn’t been Bill.

  “I…I thought you said he was gay,” she finally said, wishing after she spoke to take the words away.

  Todd hadn’t gone far, just to the window. Now he turned to look at her. “He was.”

  “But…” She stopped, unable to say anything more.

  “He fucked men and he knocked up his sister,” Todd said. “And I guess he was my father. Shit.”

  He pulled up his sleeve and looked at the tattoo. “I thought I was one of six. I guess I was just one of two, huh? One of fucking two.”

  His voice broke on that, and Gilly’s heart broke a little listening to it. He crossed to her and gathered the pile of pictures and letters. He took the one of himself as an infant, surrounded by his smiling siblings, and put it in the pocket that used to hold his smokes. He stuffed the rest into the box and returned it to the armoire, where he slid it back onto the highest shelf.

  “Some things,” Todd said, “just aren’t right to know.”

  51

  Gilly eyed the empty basket by the woodstove and debated getting some more logs from the pile outside the back door. The longer it took her to decide, the less she felt like heaving herself up from the couch and going outside. And really, she comforted herself, it was downright balmy in here. With the warmth outside now, they didn’t even need a fire at all.