Chapter 8
LEO
The Day After the Fire
MY VEINS ARE RIVERS OF ice, and my breath evaporates. I too wanted to scream at the sky and pass out on the lawn like Sadie. But I simply walked into the house.
I’ve been getting chills since the fire, icicles pricking me from the inside as though I’m still under threat of flame. In this way, fear is the opposite of shame. Shame floods you with heat, but fear is the cold awareness of forces over which we have no control.
“You okay?”
I startle, turning to face my wife.
Her question avalanches down on me. She asked me the same thing right after I escaped our burning house, and I didn’t know how to say, Of course I’m not.
A crack in the ice now, my confession escapes. “I really thought we might die last night.”
April moves to my side, and we gaze out the window, here on the other side of our close call.
Below us, the backyard’s palette of color is painfully vibrant.
Sadie is awake now, chattering as Josie braids her hair.
Billy and Deb are in their Adirondacks, fingers intertwined.
And Cameron is listening to Rachel talk, enraptured.
Once upon a time, April and I would have reveled in this opportunity for private commentary.
I would have narrated what everyone was saying until I won her laugh.
But as much as I might want to keep the only real family I’ve ever had, I cannot.
Coming within arm’s reach of death doesn’t change anything that happened before, it only makes me that much more eager to figure out what’s next.
And suddenly, although last night I could have clung to April, impatience fills me as I stare down at the Russo family in the backyard.
“This isn’t going to work,” I say.
April shifts her weight. “What isn’t?”
“My staying here like everything’s normal. Like we aren’t moving toward divorce. We’re basically lying to everyone. And unlike you, I’m not okay with that.”
She stiffens. “Are we certain enough to tell everyone, then? The kids?”
Outside, Sadie is building a house of twigs, and Otto is playing with his toes.
I run a hand down my face and sigh. “No.”
“Well.”
We fall back into silence, standing at the window as if trapped inside an old film, no color and no sound.
Dinner is lively, all of us managing to squeeze around one table the way Deb and Billy prefer. As plates empty, Deb palms her forehead. “Shoot, I forgot to put the pie in the oven.”
Sadie whines that Bear Bear needs pie, which reminds us to go get him out of the dryer.
Billy says Bear Bear can have ice cream instead, bada-bing, bada-boom.
Rachel takes a bite of scalloped potatoes, watching with wide eyes. Unlike most Dallas women, she’s hardly wearing any makeup. She smiles brightly and asks Sadie what Bear Bear’s favorite ice cream flavor is.
I vividly remember my first visits to the Russo home, the fun and loudness and love.
Seeing Deb and Billy made me wonder if I had ever seen real love before.
I decided I had not—not like this, not up close.
And it didn’t feel like violins or evergreens or fireworks.
It felt like something better: it felt like safety.
Even when Deb snapped at Billy or he put his foot in his mouth, at the end of the day they would dry dishes together and then click off the lights—one of them asking, Is the door locked?
and the other saying, I’ll get it—before they would go into their bedroom, his hand brushing her shoulder.
Maybe it was boring, but it was everything I wanted.
I wonder whether Rachel, fellow outsider, sees any of that now.
Whether her family is similar to the Russos or more like mine.
But before long, she references a family vacation to Florida, a surprise party her dad threw for her mom, and a sister who gets under her skin but is of course her best friend. So she’s one of them, then.
Cameron twirls a strand of Rachel’s long hair as he listens to her.
Deb squints affectionate disapproval at Billy as he stretches to grab a cheesy potato slice straight from the Pyrex.
April sits to my left, piling empty plates and chuckling at something Josie is whispering on her other side.
And I no longer belong here, family eluding me again.
It doesn’t get easier. Harder, actually, because this time I really thought I had it.