Chapter 7
DEB
The Day After the Fire
APRIL AND LEO LEFT THE kids with us, and Otto is crawling toward Billy like a windup toy.
I’ve always hated the crawling stage. A crawling baby is a rogue angel, an unbearably tiny maverick striking out.
Otto cranes his neck upward, then back down toward those itty-bitty hands with their effortful plops on the dark planks of hardwood.
His hips waggle toward his patient grandfather, who finally scoops him up to the safety of his lap.
Sadie is gathering edge pieces for the planet puzzle she does every time she comes over. “Guess what.”
Billy looks at his granddaughter. “What?”
She fits two pieces together, eyes fixed downward. “Bear Bear died.”
My heart plummets. Once, when Sadie stayed overnight, Billy drove the hour back to Argyle to retrieve the forgotten bear so she could sleep peacefully.
Billy’s face floods with compassion; he has always been good at taking children seriously. “Well, maybe we could have a funeral.”
Sadie looks up at him, a piece of Saturn in her hand. “What’s that?”
Billy glances nervously at me. He always feels like he’s putting his foot in his mouth. As a dentist, he never tires of joking about the three things he finds in people’s mouths: plaque, cavities, and feet.
I merely raise my eyebrows, signaling him to go on with it, then.
“Uh, it’s when people gather to remember someone who has died.”
Sadie abandons her solar system and drifts toward her grandfather like he’s an oracle. “Why? Do people forget?”
He smiles sadly. “Sometimes. But mostly they need each other in order to get a more complete memory.” He looks toward the unfinished galaxy on the table. “Like a puzzle.”
She plays with his crepey elbow skin. “Oh.”
Otto grins on account of his sister’s face being so near his own.
I swallow at the portrait before me: my husband with a baby on his knee and a little girl beside him like there’s been a glitch in time.
It’s Josie and Cameron two decades ago, back when women descended on me with so much motherly advice that I hardly had room for it alongside the hand-me-downs and recipe cards and burp cloths.
As I watch Billy boop our granddaughter’s nose, I’m irritated that those women didn’t prepare me for this.
Being a grandmother. The way time begins to press.
Several hours later—after wresting a puzzle piece from Otto’s grip just as it touched his plump lips, and scrubbing smoke from the children’s smooth and wriggling bodies, and buying them some starch-new outfits—April and Leo walk through the door with a fistful of magic.
Sadie gasps. “Bear Bear!”
The smell of smoke enters the house like a new member of the family.
Leo looks almost ill, so I rise instinctively. “Here, sit.”
“I’m okay.”
I gently shove him into the chair. “Sit.”
“Should I fire up the grill?” Billy’s question surprises no one. There are four great loves in William Russo’s life: his family, clean teeth, long bike rides, and grilled meat.
April eyes the clock and sinks to the hearth. “Sorry we took so long. We started sorting and making calls, and we lost track of the time.”
Leo’s stomach growls loudly, so Billy takes that as his cue to go retrieve the steaks from their marinade.
As Sadie shows Leo her puzzle and April lifts Otto from the ground, Josie walks in the door singing, tone-deaf to the mood of the room. This is when Billy returns with a seasoning bottle, holds it out to April, and says, “Found it.”
She tentatively accepts the dried thyme, confused.
Billy grins. “You said you lost track of the thyme.”
Everyone groans, trailing him outside, where seasoning puns and eighty-five-degree weather make valiant efforts to lift our spirits. The sun still high in the sky, a squirrel leaps from branch to branch, and we pop caps off Shiners and Topo Chicos as Billy’s slab of meat catches a nice flame.
Then Sadie begins to scream.
By the time anyone realizes why she’s screaming, Billy has a perfectly seared sirloin.
He smothers the flame as Leo sprints to his daughter and holds her tightly to himself, his hand running down her back like it’s a volume button.
April sandwiches Sadie from behind, offering gentle shushes. But the screams continue to ring out.
Otto whimpers without knowing why, and it takes fifteen minutes of tears and near-hyperventilation, of carrying Sadie inside and back out again, of waving Bear Bear in her face and offering treats that go unaccepted, and of showing her that the grill is cooled and covered before she finally believes she isn’t in danger of burning to death.
She proceeds to fall hard asleep right there on the lawn, pitiful double-sniffles punctuating her slumber.
A loud quiet fills the backyard. Leo waits to be sure Sadie will stay asleep, then he paces past us into the house. April watches him but does not follow.
We sink into patio chairs, where Billy whispers repeated apologies.
April shrugs in tired defeat. “We have to be able to cook.”
“But I should have thought about that big flame.”
I put my hand to his forearm. “Don’t beat yourself up. None of us thought about it.”
This is when Cameron’s voice interrupts from behind. “Uh, everyone?”
It’s only now that I remember what I told my son this morning: sure, he could still bring his girlfriend over for dinner as planned. House fires don’t erase the need to eat! I had said this cheerily, full of morning-time optimism. Or denial—sometimes they feel similar.
How could I forget he was planning to introduce us to Rachel?
He doesn’t bring girls home often. I’m struck with a sudden fear for my own memory, for things falling out of it into some synaptic gorge.
I shake my head as if to check, and I decide my memory is fine.
I simply didn’t know babysitting would wear me out so much, or that Sadie would scream her trauma into the clear blue sky, all of us helpless to extinguish it.
I didn’t know the tension between April and Leo would be palpable, or that this would be what Cameron would bring his girlfriend into.
I square my shoulders and turn around with my most welcoming smile.
Cameron is standing with his arm looped around a young woman with wavy red hair and a Mason jar full of sunflowers.
I’ve been a mother for a long time, so my awareness can tentacle out in many directions at once.
In an instant, I see that my son is in love.
I see that Leo is in the house behind a windowpane, scowling.
I see that Josie is preventing Otto from putting a pebble in his mouth.
I see that Sadie is rising groggily from the ground, a blade of grass sticking to her cheek.
And I see that April is somewhere else entirely, eyes trained on the house and fingers twisting her wedding ring. Twisting and twisting and twisting.
“Rachel!” I rise, extending my arms. “So good to meet you.”