Matchmaking for Beginners(96)

“That sounds about right.”

“Then she started in with this campaign to make me believe in love again. She claimed to have magic, and she kept saying there was love coming for me.” He wiggles his floury fingers in the air and rolls his eyes. “She and Lola were these old ladies, always trying to drag the topic over to love. Like we were in a sitcom or a happily-ever-after Disney movie. Like Beauty and the Beast! One day we had an actual serious conversation about whether or not Belle—was that her name?—yeah, whether Belle really loved the beast from the beginning or if it was just pity.” He eases the piecrust into the pie pan, turning it just so, tilting his head while he works it perfectly. “Read the text, people! It’s fear and pity. Fear and pity—how’s that as a cocktail for a doomed relationship?”

I can’t speak. I’ve put down the knife I’m scraping the carrots with, because my hands seem to be shaking.

“Anyway,” he says. “Here are the facts I’ve accepted: Anneliese will always be dead. I always will have tried to get to her in time and failed. When it really counted, I was powerless to change the outcome.” He swallows and goes silent for a moment. Then he says, “You know, I used to dream that she made the coffee and the explosion didn’t happen. Then I’d dream that the explosion happened, but that she and I weren’t there; we came back to a studio that was gone but we were safe. Then other times, I’d dream that she lived through the burns and the pain and didn’t love me anymore. So that’s my life now. I endure. I’m not waiting to die anymore, but I’ll never be the way I was before.”

My voice feels clotted over when I speak. “Do you ever go anywhere? At all?”

He swings his eyes over to me, like he’s just remembered I’m there. “Ah, goodie, another caseworker! Yes. For your information, I do. I walk sometimes at night, or I go to the twenty-four-hour gym and work out with weights in the back room in the middle of the night where no one has to see me.”

“What is this feeling about people having to see you? You’re you! You’re a person in the world, and okay, so you have scars. Does that mean people can’t look at you? Why can’t we just go somewhere you and me? In the daytime? We could take the dog for a walk maybe. We don’t have to care what people think.”

“Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? I don’t need anything that’s out there in the world. I don’t want to go fucking out. And you will find in your life that a man who lives alone with a cat doesn’t usually want to be walking a dog. What’s next is that I’m going to Wyoming, where my sister has a house in the middle of nowhere with a spare wing for me. She’s good at Scrabble and she reads books. And I get along with her fine.”

“God, Patrick, I have to say that sounds like giving up.”

“Yeah, well, I get to do that if I want to. I have the right to give up after what I went through.” He leans down and scratches Bedford’s ears. “Don’t I, boy? You want to give up, too? Is this the good boy who’d like to give up? Oh, yes you would! Oh, yes you would!”

“But isn’t there some kind of art you want to do? Maybe, okay, not sculpture, but something else? Painting? Drawing? Photography? You’re a creative guy, and you’ve convinced yourself to just shut off that whole part of your personality.”

“Wow, look at the time!” he says sarcastically.

“I know. I shouldn’t be offering any advice to anybody. Look at what a mess I’ve made of things. Also, may I just say that I think you have potential as a dog person. Just saying.”

“No. It’s cats for me. They need so little. I’m only trying to humor this mutt, with his neediness. Dogs are shameless self-promoters.”

He stretches. His shirt rides up, exposing his belly—which I can’t resist looking at. It’s all smooth, regular, unburned skin. His burns are all located on the parts of him that show.

“What I feel worst about just now is that Noah’s parents are going to have Blix’s journal,” he says, “and then they’re going to try to take her house, and that’s just what she didn’t want to happen. Just another example of powerlessness in the face of fate.”

“You know something? I don’t care if they take her house. You’re leaving, and I’m leaving.”

“You don’t mean that,” he tells me quietly. “They can’t have Blix’s house, because even if we’re not here, it has to house her spirit. It’s not meant for them.”

“No. I think her spirit is somewhere else altogether. I think it’s in the relationships she had with the people. If I have to give up on this house, then I will. I’m not going to do a whole court battle for a building I can’t even take care of.”

He looks stunned. And then I make things so much worse, because I can’t help myself—I go over to him and stand on tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek, right below his eye, where there’s the smoothest, pinkest skin. I just want to touch him.

It feels like silk. But he jerks away from my touch. He says, “No! Do not do that!”

“Does it hurt?”

“I can’t stand being pitied.”

“But I don’t pity you. Why do you have to read affection as pity? Maybe that’s what Blix was trying to tell you.” I feel myself start to cry, which is even worse than trying to touch him.