Don't You Cry(45)

It’s as she wraps those spindly arms around her body, and shudders from the cold, that I say to her, “Too bad we can’t start a fire in there,” as my finger points to the dilapidated fireplace, now little more than a grubby hole in the wall.

As I step forward to the fireplace, I feel the floors beneath my feet start to give, and I move quickly, as if I hover long enough I might just disappear into quicksand, a black hole. Thankfully, I don’t. As I pause for a moment to gather my bearings—seeing the way the carpeted floors just sank a good inch beneath my feet—I feel grateful that I’m still here. Not Approved for Occupancy, the sign says, and now I know why. When I get to the fireplace, I eyeball the inside, absolutely certain the chimney itself must be filled with bird nests, squirrel nests and other soot and debris. I’m no chimney sweep, but I’d bet my life the bricks of the chimney are missing and the mortar desperately needs to be fixed. And that’s all on the outside; the inside alone, the cast-iron insert, is covered with so much grime and smut it’d probably be the first thing to combust if I were to start a fire, that or the inside of the house would fill with carbon monoxide, and before either of us knew it, we’d drift off to sleep and die, joining Genevieve in the afterlife.

“You sure?” she asks me as she eyes the fireplace herself, and I consider this—fire, carbon monoxide, death—and say quite simply, “It’d be a bad idea.”

But I have something else in mind.

I lower the zipper on my sweatshirt and remove it, handing it to the girl. “Here,” I say, “put this on,” but she doesn’t take it right away. Instead, she stares at the sweatshirt in my shaking hands, and I start to feel like a fool, as if I’ve crossed some sort of malapropos line. I think about pulling it back, about putting it back on and pretending this never happened. I feel her eyes watching me, looking at the sweatshirt in my hand.

But then she takes the sweatshirt into her own grasp and says to me, “That’s sweet of you. Really it is. But won’t you be cold?” And I shrug my shoulders and mutter, “Naw,” but of course it’s not true. I’m already cold. But soon I’ll head home for the night, into a soft bed with blankets and a house whose thermostat is set to sixty-eight degrees. Soon I won’t be cold. But she will. She’ll be here in this cold, dilapidated home all night.

As she slides my sweatshirt over her own hoodie, her long, rippled hair falling over the bulgy hood, her hands getting stuffed into the soft, worn cotton of the already-warmed pockets, I realize I kind of like the idea of my sweatshirt keeping her warm for the night.

I don’t stay long. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.

But even more importantly is the fact that I haven’t done a thing yet to humiliate myself, and I’m hoping to keep it that way. But for a few minutes I do stay. I stay and watch as she sets herself down on the floor, covering her body with the moth-eaten blanket. I stay while she folds her legs up in what we used to call Indian-style and hums quietly beneath her breath. I cross my own arms across myself—warmed now by only a thin T-shirt—and think to myself that Pops and my garage would be warmer than this. So, too, would our wooden shed. But this girl doesn’t know me from Adam. I find it impossible to believe she’d spend the night in my garage.

Heck, with Pops likely out cold, I could bring her right on into my room and there, in my bed, she could sleep, snug and cozy and warm—with me on the floor, of course. I let that image dwell in my brain for just a little while.

But she doesn’t look that naive, and so I don’t bother to ask.

She’d just say no, and then I’d feel like some degenerate for even thinking that was a good idea. She’d think I was a creep. Open mouth, insert foot.

“You from around here?” I ask, and she replies rather aloofly, “Sort of. Not really,” and I smile self-consciously and ask what that means.

She shrugs. “I guess you could say that I am,” and still, even with this I’m left wondering.

“Closer to Battle Creek?” I ask, knowing it’s a stupid thing to ask. There could be a thousand towns and cities in all of Michigan, maybe two thousand. Why Battle Creek? But I ask it, anyway, because when I open my mouth, it’s all that comes out. To my surprise she nods her head impassively and I know it was either a lucky guess on my part, or she wishes I’d just shut up.

“You like to swim?” I ask as an alternative, thinking of that day at the lake, but instead of saying yes or no, she asks of me, “Do you?” It’s a technique, spinning my queries so she doesn’t mistakenly share a single thing about herself. She doesn’t want me to know a thing.

“I like it enough,” I say, “though the water gets pretty cold this time of year.”

“You think?” she asks, but still I can’t tell whether or not she agrees, and I envision her back floating along the surface of a frigid Lake Michigan as raindrops plummeted from the sunless sky. I’m not sure if it’s a question or a statement or something in between, but I nod, anyway, and say, “Yes, I do. It’s cold.”

“Are you from around here?” she asks.

“Born and bred,” I say, watching as she plucks at that strained bracelet that hugs her wrist, that habitual pluck, pluck, pluck that earned her the nickname of Pearl. I have no idea how long I watch.

When she lays her head on the blue country plaid pillow, I say my goodbyes and go. But by then her eyes are already half-closed, and if she does say goodbye, I don’t hear it. I go, anyway, watching for one last minute as she drifts off to sleep.