Left Drowning(47)

Chris takes my clenched hands into his, and I dig my fingers into his skin.

Now another confession. Or, rather, a series of them. “I spend too much time looking at this quilt because it’s so normal while everything else is not normal. But I toss it into the window to cover the glass. I don’t do a good job. I don’t pay attention. James is so heavy, and I don’t know how, but I manage to kneel down next to the bed, and I pull him onto my back. I get us to the window, and I have to push my brother through. That’s when he really wakes up, and he wakes up … he wakes up screaming. I’m hurting him so much. Too much. He’s stuck and I can’t f*cking get him out. I have to because the fire is almost on us. I don’t look behind me because then I’ll really know just how close it is. James is hanging out of the window, and so I just … push him as hard as I can.

“And the sound he makes … the sound …” I am sobbing hard again now. It’s as though James is right here, and I am hurting him all over. “Chris, it’s too hot. I’m too hot. Make it stop.”

I am escalating again, faster than I can manage. My legs are quivering, my whole body starting to shake. Chris reaches up and slams the faucet so that the water is as cold as he can get it. He moves his hands to my legs, trying to hold me steady, and I do my best to focus on the feel of him against my skin. The cold water is pouring over us, but it’s not enough to put out the fire.

“His leg is stuck in the window. On a big shard of glass. I push James’s body out, and I can feel the rip. Oh, I can feel that I’m … that … I am tearing him apart, but I don’t know what else to do, and there is no one to help me. I have never been this alone. Finally, he is through. Outside, I hear him screaming and coughing. The noise is more than I can stand, and I almost don’t go out the window myself because I don’t want to get closer to that sound. But then I see the fire. Without even turning my head, I can see the fire that is going to engulf me. So I get out. Somehow I get out, and I fall … I fall into his blood. My brother’s blood … is … everywhere.”

“Jesus, Blythe.” Chris runs his hands up and down my legs, then up to my arms, reminding me that I am here with him. That I am not in that house, that I am not drenched in blood.

“I crawl to him and drag him away from the burning house. The screaming does not stop. I take him as far as I can, and I have to stop and wipe my hands on my shirt because … because I can’t hold on to him. My hands are covered in blood. I don’t know if the blood is his or mine, but it is all over us, and my hands are too slippery to hold him.” I shiver against Chris now.

“Do you want the water warmer?” he whispers.

I nod over and over.

“I keep wiping my hands, but I can’t get the blood off, and it’s impossible to get us away from the house fast enough. Far enough. I’m not going to be able to move James.” My voice is broken with terror. “You have to get the blood off me. Then I can help him. You have to get the blood off.” I lunge for my bottle of soap, but I’m shaking so much that it’s impossible for me to open it.

Chris takes the bottle from my hand and pours soap into his.

“Get it off me! Get it off me!” I am panicked and out of my mind. I know that. “Please, Chris.”

He washes my palms and fingers first—so that I can save James—and doesn’t stop until my shaking begins to lessen. His hands go everywhere, covering my body with soap, and I watch while he washes invisible blood from my skin. As I lean to the side and dry heave, Chris’s hands don’t leave my shoulders. I reach for the walls and, with his help, weakly push myself to a stand. “My hair. There is blood in my hair,” I tell him. My throat is sore and my stomach still rolling.

“I get James down the dirt road to the car and turn around. I see the house. It’s just … kindling that is going to be gone in seconds. I can’t believe how fast it’s burning.” Now my memories yield perhaps the worst confession. “And it is only now that the sirens start. And it is only now that I think about my parents.”

My knees give out, and Chris catches me for the second time today. He turns me to him, and for the first time since this started, I look at him. I am back in the here and now. I am not there anymore. I don’t know which is worse.

“Why, Chris? Why didn’t I think about them until then? I forgot them? I f*cking forgot them!” The absolute atrocity of this consumes me. My eyes ache, and the tears are stinging and painful, but they don’t stop. “What the f*ck is wrong with me? How did I forget them?” I am pounding my hands into his chest.

He wraps his hands around my wrists and holds me still so that I’ll hear him. “You didn’t forget them. You didn’t forget them, Blythe.”

He’s right.

I didn’t forget them.

I can’t say it, but he does. “You knew they were dead. When you went for James, you knew they were already dead. The fire was that bad.”

“Yes.” Later, when I can talk again, when I am buried into the wet T-shirt that covers his chest and the crying has subsided, I tell him the end. Drained and exhausted, I can now finish this story more rationally and calmly. “I went back to the house anyway. I left James bleeding in the dirt by the car, and I went back. I remembered that there was a ladder by the side of the house. I found it and stood it up.”