A Tragic Kind of Wonderful(38)

He doesn’t know about Ms. Arguello. There’s so much he doesn’t know. Thinking about all the things to explain, about this place and the residents, about me, while dancing around everything I can’t explain … it’s exhausting. Maybe he went home. Probably for the best all around— “It’s dark in here,” David says.

I’m too lethargic to be startled. How did I not hear him come in?

“Looks like you’re melting into the couch.”

I smile. It probably looks feeble. Rather than try to fix it, I say, “Feels that way, too.”

I want to apologize but the words won’t come. I don’t want to open a door to a chain of explanations I don’t have the juice to deliver.

But I have to.

“Sorry about before.”

“No, it’s fine. I get it now. Piers—” He wrinkles his nose. “Ugh, no, I mean Dr. Jordan, he told me she can’t make new long-term memories, plus a lot of medical reasons why.”

“I have to introduce myself to her every day.”

David walks around to the front of the sofa. “It’s sad that she can’t get to know you. Or anyone else she doesn’t already know.”

“It’s only sad to us. When her grandson asked for a scarf, it made her so happy, and she’s been living in that glow every day for five years. Happily Ever After is a myth because the real world doesn’t work that way, but it will for her. She’s really going to live Happily Ever After.”

David looks out the window a moment, then back at me. “And her grandson has hundreds of scarves. Or a side business selling them on eBay.”

“He died in a fire his third day on the rig. Judith gives them away to shelters around the Bay. If you see a homeless person wearing a long heavy scarf, it’s probably one of hers.”

David sits. I want to analyze the distance he chose—at least a foot away—but then he pivots to face me. He was leaving room for his leg and now his knee is an inch from my thigh.

“Does everyone here have stories like that?”

“Doesn’t everyone everywhere?”

“What about Mr. Knight?”

“Mr. Terrance Knight was a Baptist minister who got fired for marrying two men. To each other, I mean.”

David shakes his head. “Terrible. Why do you always say his whole name?”

“Judith introduced him as ‘the Reverend Terrance Knight’ and he said to me, ‘Oh, no, it’s Mister Terrance Knight now and forevermore!’ And so it is.”

We sit quietly, just looking at each other. If anyone came in right now it would look weird, yet with the two of us alone, it’s not weird at all. Even with how conflicted I am about everything, it feels comfortable. Warm.

“What about your boss, Judith? She seems as old as the residents in here except she’s the warden. What’s her story?”

“I can’t give you all the answers. You need to figure some things out on your own.”

“Uh-huh. So you don’t know.”

I smile. “Damn, you caught me.”

He cocks his head. “Have I?”

His meaning is clear. I don’t know what the answer is. I just know what it should be.

There’s so much he can’t know. I need to somehow become friends with him like I am with Holly and Declan, in small, light bursts … except keeping things from David feels like I’ve swallowed river stones that lie heavy in my stomach. It would feel too rotten all the time, being sort of close but not really. And I think I like him too much to burden him with a girlfriend like me.

“Is that hard to answer honestly?” he says.

I swallow. “You hardly know me.”

“Everything I know so far, I like.”

“Not my singing.”

“I like it.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Makes perfect sense to me. I might only know one percent about you, but I like that whole first percent. Most people I meet don’t come close.”

I don’t know what to say. I’m still trying to figure out how he could like my singing.

“When we met,” he says, “I yelled and told you to leave. Remember what you did?”

“I left.”

“Okay, do you remember what you didn’t do?”

“Um …”

“You didn’t tell me to go to hell. You didn’t try to explain. You didn’t even frown. I thought back later, remembering the look on your face … You weren’t bothered at all. I was pissed at you for helping my grandmother, and your face was still saying, I’m sorry this is happening to you.”

“I was.”

He laughs. “I remember, that first moment, you reached out your hand toward us.”

I smile.

“What?” he asks.

“I thought your hair looked like a Halloween cat.”

“You …” He peers at me. “You were going to pet me?”

“No! I mean … that was in my head, I guess, but I wasn’t really going to.”

He thinks a moment. Then he combs his fingers through his hair to make it stick up. He leans toward me and tips his head down.

I reach out slowly and pass my hand across the tops of the spikes. He closes his eyes.