I'd Give Anything(39)

I won’t though. I’ll stay here and put on Gray’s sweatshirt, and go to a football game like I promised.

Go, Owls! I guess . . .





November 29, 1997




11:30 P.M.



I can’t write it. I can’t. If I don’t write it, maybe it never happened.

I will never stop smelling smoke.

I will never stop seeing the school on fire, as if it were being eaten from the inside out, orange light staining the sky.

Everyone, the players in their pads and jerseys, the parents and students, kids from all the schools in town, holding on to one another, every face turned up.

And then, later, Gray. My Gray.

I can’t write it.

But I will never stop seeing him, big Gray somehow shrunken to childlike smallness inside his firefighter’s jacket, his arms dangling, ash in his hair, soot striping his face, his eyes dark and wild with shock and fear and disbelief.

And his father stretched before him, strapped to a board. Motionless. Slack-faced. Looking—no matter what we all hope or pray is true—like a person broken beyond repair.





Chapter Ten





Ginny


I was trying to capture Walt’s right ear, the one that folds over instead of standing up like a sailboat sail as it’s supposed to, when Harris told me that he was moving out. Or that he had been moving out, little by little, for weeks, slowly shifting his belongings—the bare essentials anyway, since it could be argued (although it seemed Harris had no intention of arguing) that almost every item in our house at least half belonged to him—from our house to the room above the garage to his rented furnished apartment not five miles away, an ebbing away so subtle and slow that I hadn’t even realized it was happening.

Still, I should not have been as surprised as I was, rendered temporarily speechless, my sketching hand frozen midstroke, when he came into the sunroom, a cardboard box in his arms, and said, “This is the last of it, Ginny.”

I sat cross-legged on the rug at eye level with Walt, who had, at that very moment, revealed a previously undiscovered talent for modeling, sitting regal as a New York Public Library lion, paws evenly spaced, head nobly lifted. When Harris and his box made their entrance, Walt didn’t jump up or change position, just opened his bright root beer–brown eyes wider and smiled his incomparable gap-toothed, guileless smile.

“You mean you’re leaving?” I finally managed to say.

“You didn’t know?” he said.

“I— I—” I shook my head. “No.”

Should I have known? We’d been sleeping apart for weeks—no, months—addressing each other cordially whenever one of us slipped into the other’s orbit, which wasn’t even daily. Christmas had been an almost jolly holiday, with Harris coming into the house for gift opening followed by breakfast: Avery’s homemade cinnamon buns—warm, redolent, yeasty, golden, palm-size galaxies—and French press coffee lashed with cream. Harris and I never touched once, not even by accident, but Christmas performed its sleight of hand, nonetheless, magicking us into a happy family and Avery into a dancing-eyed, carol-humming, carefree child.

Mostly, Avery kept her guard up around Harris, and their relationship seemed reduced to homework talk and wooden hugs. I’d watch her face, though, whenever he left, her eyes following him, her gaze staying on the kitchen door, even after he’d shut it behind him.

“You want to set that box down and stay for a minute?” I said.

Harris tensed and then said, “Sure.”

He sat in the blue armchair; I stood up and sat down on the sofa, grateful when Walt settled into my lap, curling himself up like the warm cinnamon bun he was.

“You have an apartment, I guess,” I said.

“I rented it six weeks ago,” said Harris. “I bring boxes over every so often, spend the night there now and then.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I knew you went somewhere, but I didn’t know where.”

“I didn’t want to tell you and Avery until I was sure. As you know”—he smiled ruefully—“I’m not really a guy who makes bold moves or quick decisions. More of a go-slow, test-the-waters type. Cautious.”

“Mostly cautious,” I said, but I smiled back at him.

“And look where that got me,” said Harris.

“Here we two are,” I said. “Joking about what happened. It’s about time.”

Harris said, “I’m so sorry, Ginny. I’d give anything to change what I did.”

“I believe you,” I said.

“Thank you for finding my therapist. He’s helping me see.”

“See what?”

“Myself,” said Harris. “I never did that before, stepped back and really saw myself.”

“What do you see?”

Harris sighed and said, “I am a man who things happen to. School, my job, even you.”

I was tempted to disagree. Maybe it would’ve been kinder. But I said, “Yes.”

“I met you and you were young and gorgeous and interested in me, for reasons that I could not fathom. And I should have tried to fathom them. But instead, I went with it, with you, without stopping to ask questions about where we were going or whether or not you were actually in love with me.”