by T. Greenwood
“Think so,” Billy says.
Billy stayed for two weeks. He relinquished his motel room to Elsbeth and the kids, and he stayed with Kurt at the house, doing what he could to help. Thankfully, he was able to clear Trevor of all charges; there was simply no connection between him and the disaster except for a series of unfortunate coincidences. Trevor showed the police to the place in the river where he’d dumped the stolen equipment, explained that that was why he’d been carrying a duffel bag out of the school that day. He explained that he’d only been trying to set up a darkroom in the old caboose. Billy also somehow convinced Mrs. Cross not to pursue any charges of burglary or vandalism against him for stealing the equipment. And luckily, it didn’t take long before the fire marshal came back with the report, which confirmed there was no way the bombs could have been set off remotely. Someone was in the building that morning. Someone else set the bombs off and ran. The surveillance cameras had caught video of a young man in coveralls fleeing the building moments before the blast. Dark hair, dark eyes, short in stature. The opposite of Trevor. The police received an anonymous tip with a name, an address, and after searching the man’s apartment, an arrest was made. He was a former employee of the school district who had grievances after being let go. He’d been calling in bomb threats from a pay phone for over a year. He’d written a manifesto and posted it on the Internet. He was someone troubled. Someone truly capable of harm. He was no one they knew.
Billy suggested they press charges against the school for all the damage they’d done with their accusations. For defamation. For leaking Trevor’s name to the press. Kurt had nodded as Billy explained the logistics of this abstract justice. But he knew that nothing Mrs. Cross or the school had done could compare to the wounds he himself had inflicted on his only son.
Billy had slept in the kids’ empty room those two weeks; he and Kurt ate breakfast together each morning and then reconvened for dinner each night.
“They’ll never forgive me,” he said to Billy as he pushed his food around his plate. “And even if they do, I’m not sure I can forgive myself.”
What he didn’t say was that he worried he’d done exactly what Pop had done all those years ago. Worse. That he wasn’t sure he even deserved forgiveness. But Billy knew; Billy had always known what Kurt was thinking. “The difference between you and Pop is that you’re sorry,” he said. “And that has to count for something.”
Elsbeth didn’t speak to him for those two weeks after she found him in the pasture with Trevor. She couldn’t even stand to look at him. She refused his calls. She wouldn’t let him see the kids. She said that when Billy left, she’d check out of the motel and go stay with Twig.
“Give her time,” Billy said. “That’s about all you have left to offer.”
Kurt knew she was on the verge of flight, and Billy was right. There was nothing that Kurt could do except wait. To set her free and hope that she would come back. To prepare for what would happen if she didn’t.
As for Trevor, he wasn’t sure where to begin in making those kinds of amends. How do you fix a hole that big, the one that lived between them now? A chasm with no bottom. A terrible abyss. There were no words that could undo what he had done. What he needed to do was to earn his trust, to earn his forgiveness. But how to do that was a mystery to Kurt.
During those terrible lonely weeks, he spoke with the school, got the names and numbers of the agencies Mrs. Cross had recommended that fall. He arranged his work schedule so that he would be able to drive Trevor to Burlington every week to see a therapist. He spoke to the therapist himself, and she assured him that Trevor was not damaged beyond repair, that unlike glass, children cannot shatter. They are resilient, and over time these terrible fissures could be mended. He accepted the blame he knew everyone would place on him, and he vowed to fix the broken places, to do everything he could to repair the damage he had done. It was all he could do.
And Billy helped. On the days when Kurt began to wish he had simply turned the gun on himself that night, that he’d simply ended everything in that field of snow, Billy was there. He also became the bridge between him and Trevor, visiting Trevor first at the motel and then later at Twig’s. Billy told Kurt that he and Trevor were able to talk, that maybe Trevor just needed an ear. An ear that wasn’t attached to anybody he knew, but also to someone who knew exactly what he was going through.
“He’s going to be okay,” Billy promised.
And Kurt just has to trust that this is true.
“I got everything in order with Pop too,” Billy says, reaching into the cab of the truck to shake Kurt’s hand. “Make sure you check in at the court on Monday. There shouldn’t be any issue with the conservatorship now. Not after the fire. Then you can put Pop’s house on the market. Get on with your life.”
“Thanks, Billy,” he says.
“I don’t understand why you feel compelled to help him still, but I respect it.” Billy has Pop’s habit of nodding his head emphatically whenever he is trying to convince himself of something.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Kurt says, leaning in to hug his brother.
He waits until Billy has disappeared through the terminal doors before he turns off the hazards and pulls away from the curb. As he drives away, he realizes how much he will miss having Billy there at the table each morning and each night. How much he’s missed having him in his life all these years. It makes him angry at Pop. All this time, he’s blamed Billy for stealing the life he’d once wanted, but the truth is it was Pop who was the thief. The one who stole his brother from him, stole his future.
Kurt pulls onto the interstate, flipping the sun shade down to shield his eyes from that blinding light. Tucked behind the visor is the school picture of Gracy, the one they’d given to the police that awful night when she disappeared. He studies her face, her two missing teeth, the slow sparkle in her big dark eyes.
Thank God for Grace: the constant reminder of everything they almost lost. The miracle of a second chance. Grace is what had held them together; and he has to believe that Grace is what will save them now.
As winter slowly turned to spring, Elsbeth, like the bitter cold, began to feel her icy grip loosening, her rage softening. As the snow that had clung to the ground began to melt, leaving the earth soft and yielding beneath it, she felt her resolve melting. The frozen wall she’d built around her and the kids started to crack like ice on the surface of a frozen lake.
“Please come home,” he said into the telephone when she finally answered his call. His voice sounded like something broken. Like shattered glass. It cut her; she could feel his words like icy splinters. And then, finally, she went to him.
“Turn out the light,” she said. She couldn’t look at him. Not yet. And so in the dark, they talked. He asked her questions, and she answered. She spoke, and he listened.
She explained the shoe box. She told him that she’d been stealing things for most of her life, that she was so full of wants she didn’t know what to do with all that need. That taking things made her feel whole, that the trinkets helped close up the empty spaces. She told him about the man, the one who had come from Florida. She confessed her longing for him too, as if he were just something else that might be pilfered. She told him that he had been nothing but a dream, though, that he had never touched her, and she knew Kurt had to believe her because he had no other choice. They talked about her lost childhood. About everything he’d lost when Billy left. They talked about how they had failed Trevor, and how they had failed each other.
And all the while, Kurt waited. She was pretty sure he would wait forever, and so in late March, when the snow was just a memory, though the chill lingered in the air, she and the kids came home.
Now Elsbeth walks through the Walgreens, noticing that they are already putting out the sunscreen, the seasonal aisle already filling up with picnic items. The promises of summer. She puts a can of sunscreen in the cart. Their trip is only a couple of weeks away now, and it cripples her with gu
ilt. She had suggested to Kurt that they turn in their tickets, but they were non-refundable. Kurt said it didn’t matter. They should go anyway, try to enjoy themselves.
Gracy is too big for the cart now, nearly seven, so she walks by Elsbeth’s side.
They wander down the toy aisle, and Gracy finds a Tinker Bell coloring book. “Can I have this, Mumma?” she asks.
“Not today. You have a thousand coloring books at home.”
Grace juts her lower lip out in a shameless attempt to convince her. Elsbeth ruffles her hair. “We’re here for your brother,” she says. “If you stop begging, I might take you for ice cream later.”
“Okay,” Gracy grumbles.
They walk to the photo department, and Elsbeth braces herself.
Crystal is there; she is always there now. They have never spoken about what happened that night, but there is an understanding between them.
“Would you like the Fuji again?” she asks. Elsbeth is in at least once a week for film.
“Yes, please,” she says.
She finds the film behind the counter and hands it to her.
“How is your sister?” Elsbeth asks.
Crystal nods. “Okay. She’s making progress.”
“That’s great,” she says.
Word travels fast. The story about Angie McDonald will become the stuff of local legend, she suspects. She was the girl who was in the bathroom when the bomb detonated. She had left art class to use the restroom, and the next thing she knew she woke up in the hospital with third-degree burns over 75 percent of her body.
“She’s lucky to have you,” Elsbeth says, and she means it.
An article about the bombing in the local paper talked about how Crystal delayed her acceptance to college to stay home and care for her sister. That she’d organized a run-a-thon to raise money for the other children injured by the fire. There had been a picture of her and Angie, before the burns destroyed her face, on the front page.
She still isn’t sure what was going through Crystal’s mind that day she took Gracy. She only knows that Gracy came home safe. That while she was with her, she wasn’t harmed. She tried to explain to Kurt and Billy how it was that she could forgive her. They wanted her to go to the police. To press charges. But from the start Elsbeth refused. She knew they were more similar than different, she and this girl.
And then a week ago as she was sweeping up a pile of Mrs. Van Buren’s gray curls from the linoleum floor at the salon, the door jingled and Crystal walked in with her sister.
Crystal looked startled to see Elsbeth, but she only nodded and asked softly, “Can you help us?”
Elsbeth spent over an hour trimming and styling Crystal’s sister’s hair. She was gentle as she combed through the fine tangles. Careful of her damaged skin. And with each snip of the scissors, she felt a tremendous sense of having done something right. Something good. For the first time since she started working at the salon, she felt like she had the ability to change the way someone saw themselves, to change the way they felt inside their own skin. It was overwhelming, this amazing sense of purpose.
“Come see?” she said at last to Crystal, who had been perched on a chair near her station. And they’d looked together at Angie in the mirror. She was smiling, and Crystal’s eyes were filled with tears.
“Your hair is coming in so nice and thick, Ang,” she said softly. “You look so pretty.”
When Crystal opened her wallet to pay, Elsbeth shook her head.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s on me.”
Elsbeth knew then for sure that to take Crystal away from her sister was a cruelty she couldn’t even begin to consider.
“Anything else today?” Crystal asks, and Elsbeth shakes her head. “Howard can ring you up,” she says.
“Thank you,” Elsbeth says. She goes to the register with the film and the sunscreen. She reaches into her pocketbook and pulls out her wallet. “How much do I owe you?” she asks.
Crystal dreams of Grace sometimes, her Grace. She would be a year old now, is a year old now, but in her dreams she is still that tiny bundle she’d held only for a moment. Crystal cries in her sleep; she knows this because she wakes up and her pillow is wet.
Every morning, she helps her mother change the dressings on Angie’s burns. It’s a delicate job and requires a delicate touch. She is as gentle as she can be as she unwraps her, applies the ointment, and then swaddles her again. She brushes her hair, careful not to pull at her sensitive scalp. She makes her breakfast, her favorite things, and never gives her a hard time about how gross they are.
Her mother can’t stand the smell of Angie’s skin, the wreckage that is Angie’s body. But Crystal doesn’t find it disgusting at all. She is single-minded in her care for her. She feels, for the first time, like she truly has a purpose. She thinks that maybe one day she’d like to be a nurse.
She wrote to Lucia, to let her know what happened to Angie. Lucia wrote back right away, and Ty e-mailed a few days later. They write to each other now, e-mails filed with so many careful words. The friendship they used to have is gone now, abandoned or lost, she’s not sure which, but they have forged something new, a quiet forgiveness maybe. A bit of peace. Lucia sends her things in the mail. Books of poetry, homemade cookies, hand-knit hats that look silly on her head. Crystal gives them to Angie, who wears them to cover the few places where her hair still hasn’t grown back in.
“You look pretty,” she says today as Angie affixes one of Lucia’s hats over her hair. They look at each other in the reflection of the mirror and Angie grimaces as she smiles. “No, really, look at the way the light is hitting your eyes,” she says. Because despite all the damage, her eyes were, thankfully, unharmed.
She reads to Angie in the afternoons, biographies mostly. They are just finishing the one about Frida Kahlo. Angie is obsessed with Frida Kahlo. They are similar: both victims of tragic accidents, their damaged bodies like prisons. Nothing but art to save them.
After she is able to sit upright, she asks Crystal if she can get her an easel for her bed, some paintbrushes and paint. The pictures she paints bring tears to Crystal’s eyes. They, like most important things in life, are both terrifying and beautiful.
“Ready?” his dad asks.
Trevor is taking pictures of what remains of Pop’s house. The long shadows it makes across the burnt grass of the lawn. The cracked windows. For a moment, he imagines Pop’s face peering out.
“I guess.” He shrugs and climbs into the back of the truck.
As they drive away, he aims his camera at the house and watches it become smaller and smaller in his viewfinder, until it is nothing but a speck. Nothing but a memory.
Pop’s house is empty now, every last piece of trash, every broken thing removed. For the second time. For the last time. They’d filled his father’s truck ten times more with debris they hauled off to the dump, most of it stinking of the fire. Without Pop there to refill it, it slowly emptied out until finally, it was just the hollow shell of a place he once lived. As if Pop had never been there. Erased. Gone. It was like those photos from the first roll Trevor took. All those images that were washed away by the light, like dreams rubbed out. Just that afternoon Mrs. McDonald in her bright red skirt came and pounded a sign into the ground by the driveway. FOR SALE. His dad says that whoever buys it would do well to just knock the whole thing down and start over.
He and his dad go visit Pop every weekend, take him cigarettes and the chocolate-covered pretzels he likes. At first he wouldn’t speak to them, he was so angry. But his resolve is weakening. He has to know he is safer here, that he is taken care of. He likes the food they serve. The nurses are kind, and he gets better reception on his TV here than at his old house.
Trevor talked Pop into letting him keep his model airplanes. At the house, Trevor had stood on a stool and used his fingernails to pry the thumbtacks and fishing lines from the ceiling. They were all covered with dust, and when he tried to blow them off, he realized that the d
ust was probably trapped in the paint. Pop had probably hung them up when they were still wet, and the dust and grime had become a part of them. He wondered about that, about filth attaching itself to you. About being stained, tainted. He told his therapist that he worries about this, that this might be what he’s most afraid of. She told him that you can’t be ruined by things that others do to you but only by what you do to others. He liked that idea, and he made a quiet promise to himself to remember this whenever he began to feel undone.
He also has his mom. Surprisingly, after that night in the field, she wanted nothing more than to listen as Trevor told her everything that was going on inside his head. Maybe working with the chatty ladies at the salon for all those years had made her a good listener. At first, he was reluctant. It seemed strange to spill those secrets. To let them out. But every night after Gracy fell asleep, first in the motel and then in the room they all shared at Twig’s, he was able to tell her almost everything that had happened. And she listened. She really listened. She held him and stroked his hair like she used to, to calm him down when he was little, and she told him that whenever he was ready, she would make sure something was done so that Mike and Ethan never ever bothered him or anyone else again. Uncle Billy would help them. He only needed to say the word.
He hasn’t talked to his father about what happened that day behind the Walgreens. He doesn’t have the words yet to explain. They also haven’t really spoken about what happened out in the field. But he knows that his dad is sorry; all of the anger in his face has turned to regret. Everything he does is an apology.
The night after they all moved back into the house, he heard noise outside his window and watched as his father went to the shed. The porch light shone eerily, casting a strange orange glow over the entire backyard. It was beautiful. The swing set looked skeletal, like the rusted bones of some large creature. And his father’s silhouette was like a shadow, a strange choreography. In and out he moved, purposeful, and certain. By morning, there was a new roof and the windows were filled in to block out the light.
