Rooms(57)

You almost killed Amy.

Well, I didn’t, did I? I got her out.

She’d slapped him then. Hard. But it didn’t help the tightness, everywhere, like she would explode. Maybe this is what a spark felt like, just before it became fire: like it could destroy the whole universe.)

“Poor guy,” Danny said. “He must be lonely up here.”

“We’re all lonely up here,” Minna said quickly, without intending to.

“Hard to believe you’re ever lonely, Min,” Danny said. He touched her hand quickly. “You were always the most popular girl in town.”

Minna turned away from him. She felt nauseated, looking at the ruins of the attic and the sky and all the cottonseed floating down. She was always lonely. That was the problem. It was like a hunger.

She’d thought having Amy would help and it did, for a while; but Amy was growing up now.

Danny squatted and began sifting through the mess. His jeans were a little too short, and she could see his socks—athletic socks, a little yellowed—but she pretended not to notice. He looked older than he should have; he was only twenty-nine. But she felt older than she was—she felt so tired.

“Look at this.” From the ashes, he extracted something colorful. It was a pink sweatshirt with black skulls all over it. One of the sleeves was burned away. “It isn’t yours, is it?”

“No.” She thought about what Trenton said, about being with a friend. But where could he have met anyone? He had barely left the house. “It’s probably been there for years,” she said. “Trash it.” But the sweatshirt had reminded her. “Any luck on the girl—Vivian? The one from Boston?”

“Ongoing.” He shuffled over, still squatting, and began sorting and bagging, sorting and bagging. It was nice to watch his fingers work. He’d always had nice hands, and long thin fingers that seemed to belong to someone different. “Her parents are back from Africa, so we should have more luck soon.” Minna could tell he enjoyed talking as if he belonged to the investigation, as if it were his. All men liked to feel important. Her father had demanded it, insisted on it, squeezed it out of every interaction and conversation like someone wringing water from a towel. “It’s no accident she came up here. Her parents spent two summers in this area when she was a little girl. Who knows. Maybe she kept in touch with some people. Maybe a boy.”

“How long has it been now? Two weeks?” Minna didn’t know why, but she suddenly had a vicious urge for him to say it: she was dead, she was obviously dead. “You don’t really think she’s still alive, do you?”

He didn’t answer, and he didn’t look at her, either. There was a long moment of silence. “I remember your dad, you know,” he said abruptly. “What’d he do again? Paper, right?”

“Cardboard, mostly,” she said. “Cardstock, cereal boxes, things like that. But he sold the company ages ago.”

“He was a nice guy,” Danny said.

“He was an *,” Minna said.

He acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “I remember sophomore year we were all hanging out in the living room. Your parents were upstairs. And we were being so careful to hide our beers . . . O’Malley was putting the empties in the trunk of his car. Then your dad came down and we freaked. We thought he was going to be mad. But he poured out some scotch and gave us all a try.” He laughed again. “He just wanted to be part of the fun.”

“He wanted to show off his scotch,” Minna said. Everything she saw, everything she was turning over was trash. They would need more bags. Danny was moving too slowly.

“I thought it was nice. He let us sleep over. Like, fifteen kids in the living room. I remember the Miller twins didn’t want to crash, so he drove them home. It was probably two in the morning and freezing cold. Remember that?”

“No,” Minna answered honestly. She tried to picture her dad starting up the car, breath condensing, wearing his old down jacket over his striped pajamas, maybe an old pair of waders he’d grabbed before starting out the door. Breaking off ice from the windshield in the middle of the night, hands chapped, the wind blowing hard pellets of snow over the yard. So he could drive her friends home. She didn’t like to think about it; it made her feel she had missed something critical, something elemental, about him.

“I remember how he showed up at my mom’s house every day for, like, two weeks after your parents split and you were crashing with us most of the time. You wouldn’t talk to him. But he kept showing up.”

She wished she could tell him to shut up. Her hands were shaking.

“And how proud he was at graduation. He must have taken a million pictures. Look for the most beautiful girl in the room, and that’s my daughter.”

She didn’t remember any of it. She felt a sudden wrench of grief. She realized, horrifyingly, she was on the verge of tears.

“Do you think—” Her voice broke a little and she swallowed. “Do you think some people aren’t meant to be happy?” She didn’t even know what she was going to ask before the words were spoken.

Danny shuffled a little closer. They were still squatting, both of them, among the drift of ashes. It would have been funny if it didn’t feel so awful.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey. Look at me.” She managed to. His eyes were nice and brown and unremarkable, like the rest of him—one hundred percent normal. He might be the only normal person she knew.