Things You Save in a Fire(9)

“It’s terrible. It’s worse than not having insurance at all.”

“Don’t you have friends?” I asked.

“Of course I have friends!” She sounded insulted. “But they have their own families to look after.”

“But I live in Texas!” I said, feeling my argument weaken.

“It’s just a two-day drive,” she said, like, Easy. “You can stay with me. For free! I have a spare room in the attic with white curtains with pom-pom trim and a window that overlooks the harbor.”

She waited, like pom-pom curtains might do the trick.

Then she added, “Think of all the money you could save on rent! Just for a year. Maybe less.”

I shook my head. “I have a life here. Friends.”

“A boyfriend?” she asked.

“No boyfriend.”

“Someone you’re sleeping with, then?” Then, like she was making air quotes, she added, “A sex buddy?”

“Mom!” I shrieked, forgetting I didn’t call her that anymore. “That is not the term.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m too busy for that, anyway,” I added.

“Too busy for what?”

“Too busy for dating. I don’t have time.”

There was a pause, and then she said, “I don’t understand.”

“Look, I just don’t do love,” I said. How had we landed on this subject?

I could hear the frown in her voice. “You don’t do love?”

No way out but through. “It’s not my thing.”

“You don’t do any kind of love? At all?”

“I don’t do romantic love,” I specified. “The dumb kind.”

She paused a second, and I could tell she was deciding whether to take that topic on. “Great, then, I guess,” she said at last, letting it go. “One less thing to hold you back.”

This was the most substance we’d worked into a conversation in years.

“I do love my job, though,” I said, to get us back on track. This might have been a good moment to tell her that I had just received an award for valor. But I didn’t.

“We’ve got firemen up here, you know,” she said, as if that made any sense.

“Firefighters,” I corrected.

“And we’ve got plenty of fires,” she said, sounding almost proud. “Tons of them. This whole part of the country’s a smoldering tinderbox just waiting to go up in flames.”

What was her point?

“There are fire stations on just about every corner,” she went on. “Maybe you could do some kind of exchange.”

“That’s not how it works, Diana. I’d have to give up my job.”

“Just for a year.”

“I’m not a foreign exchange student,” I said. “They don’t hold your place.”

She let that one pass. Then, with new determination, she said, “When have I ever asked you for anything?”

I sighed.

“Never,” she answered for me. “I have never asked you for anything.”

True enough. She had once asked me to forgive her, in a letter—one I hadn’t even replied to. But that wasn’t something we talked about.

“Just this once,” she said. “I promise I will never, ever ask you for help again.”

It was too much. My head was spinning. I just needed to shut this day down. I thought about tonight, and the guys, and the way they chanted my name at the banquet. Then I thought about what it would feel like to leave them, and I said something so true it was mean.

“I’d really like to help you, Diana,” I said. “But I just can’t leave my family.”



* * *



NOT TEN MINUTES after I hung up, as I finished rinsing off my plaque in the sink, my phone rang again. I thought it would be my mom, trying again, and I planned to ignore her … but it was my dad.

I never ignored my dad.

“Your mother just called me and told me you said no,” he said when I answered.

What were they—in cahoots? “You knew?”

“When she couldn’t get you last week, she called me.”

“Why would she do that? You two are divorced.”

“This matter concerns the whole family.”

“Not really.”

“How could you say no to her?” he demanded. “She needs you.”

“Can we talk about this later?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter when we talk about it,” my dad said, rolling out his most authoritative voice. “You’re going.”

“I already said no.”

“Change your mind.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” I said, like he was completely nuts.

“She’s your mother, and she needs you, and you’re going.”

“You’re telling me to leave my job, my apartment, my life—everything?”

“You’re young. You’ll make it work.”

“Ted,” I said. “I don’t want to make it work.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“I barely know her. She’s practically a stranger.”