by Jessica Park
Gently, I move Sabin off my lap and ease my body between his and the Zach/Eric lump. I take my robe, a towel, a change of clothes, and my bath basket. I motion to Chris and, although he looks questionably at me, he eases out from under Estelle, setting her head on a pillow.
Wordlessly, he follows me down the hall and around the corner to the bathroom. I leave the lights off and hang my towel on the hook outside of the shower stalls and set the basket on the floor of the shower. I turn the water on and then step into him.
It doesn’t matter that we both are covered in the stench of last night’s war. He holds me, his hands cradling my waist while I tuck my arms against his chest and rest my head against him.
“If anything had happened to you last night …” Chris does not move; he just keeps me in his arms, protected.
“Nothing was going to happen. You were there.”
We stand together in the mist that emanates from the shower. The wine is out of my system, my thoughts are clear, and I am hit with the enormity of the impact this family is having in my life. They, and mostly Chris, are saving me. Or teaching me to save myself. He is my port in the storm, and that’s why I feel comfortable with what I’m going to do. Chris is going to have to be strong, but I have hope that the story I’m about to tell him will help me, free me even. He is the one person with whom I will remember what I have forgotten.
I pull from his arms just a bit. “I want to tell you about the fire. About how my parents died. And I need to … to wash it away while I tell it.”
He rests his head on top of mine. “Blythe. This is what you want?”
“I have to get this out. If I can tell someone, maybe …”
“I understand,” he says.
“You’re the only person I can do this with.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am. Are you? You have to be sure, too. I’m going to have a meltdown; I know that much. So I need to know that you can … that you can tolerate this. I’m asking a lot.”
“Anything you need.”
The clearest memories of the fire that I’ve ever had happened while I was with Chris, the day I met him at the lake. Before that, I’d only had flashes of images, but images without a sequence. I hope that telling my story to him, with him, will help me put together the pieces. Remember a more complete version. If I can get this, maybe I can heal.
I start to slip my shirt over my head, but Chris takes over before it’s off. Because of this, I know that he is really going to be with me and not just act as a witness. Together we push down my sweatpants, and I step out of them. I may be standing in front of him in only my bra and underwear, but I’m not self-conscious at all. This isn’t about sex or lust. It’s about closeness, and safety, and purging myself of the night when my life fell to shit.
I push the shower curtain aside and start to step in. I can’t look at him now.
“You’ll stay?”
“Always,” he says.
“You don’t have to say anything. Just stay.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
He leans one hand against the tile outside of the shower as I move under the water with my back to him. I hear the sound of the shower rings as they slide back, closing me in. I feel myself shutting down, something that I need to do if I’m going to start this story.
I put my face under the showerhead and loosen my hair from my ponytail. I wait until I am drenched, until the little clothing I’m wearing is clinging to my skin.
I turn around so my back is to the water and, speaking very slowly, start.
“It’s a really simple story. I don’t know why I’ve never told it. Maybe there was no one to tell. I don’t even remember all of it. Is that normal? The days right before and after are gone. And what I do have from that night is patchy and messy.” I place one hand on the wall next to me because I can feel that I am already getting unsteady. “It was summer, and we were all at a vacation house on the ocean for a couple of weeks. My parents and my brother and I. Mom and Dad had just bought a house about an hour away, where we were going to spend summers. The owners were still in that house, though, so we had to rent this other place for a little while. Pretty cool that my parents could take summers off work, right? We went boating, and swimming, and fishing. We played all those stupid board games that you find in summerhouses. Sorry, and Scrabble, and that shit. I hate those games, but they’re fun with the right people, and my family was the ‘right people.’ James and I would swing in the hammock on the porch and read thrillers out loud to each other, seeing who could give the most dramatic delivery.” I sigh. “Sometimes we’d all go clamming at low tide.
“The reason we were at that house is my fault.” This is the first of my confessions. “I chose it. You know how lots of vacation houses have silly names, like … Oh, I don’t know. The Captain’s Lodge, or Rising Tide, or whatever. I liked the name of the house. For the life of me, I can’t fucking remember what it was. I’ve tried and tried because I feel like that’s important to know, but the name won’t come back to me. I’m sure I could find out easily enough, but I don’t want to be told. I should know it.
“I do know that I chose the house from a list my parents printed out. It was an old house. Wood everywhere. Gorgeous, knotty wood on the floors and the walls. Beams that ran across the ceilings. A fireplace downstairs. James and I had really nice small rooms on the first floor right across the hall from each other. The beds had awesome carved headboards and big quilts. The master bedroom was upstairs on the backside of the house, and it had a view of the trees and the water. I’m sure it was …” My arms are trembling now, and I lean my head against the tile for more support. “The house had a special feel to it. Everything felt perfect that summer. Too perfect.
“I can see now that the house was probably not very well maintained, and it apparently wasn’t up to any kinds of safety codes. The irony is that because of that neglect the house had character. I guess that’s what I found romantic—that it was this classic-looking beach house off in the woods, near the water, and pretty much isolated. It wasn’t easy to get to. To get there, you had to drive down a skinny dirt road that wound over bumpy terrain and was hardly the width of one car. Our house was the last one on this poor excuse for a road, but that was good because it was really private and quiet. Anyway, we were there because of the choice that I made and because it was more affordable than the new house James wanted to rent. He didn’t hold that against me, though. Even when we got there and found out the hot water heater was crappy and there was no dishwasher or washing machine. The freezer barely worked, so we kept a cooler out on the deck, and every day we’d add another bag of ice to it.
“None of us cared about living like that, though. We all thought it was fun. But we should have stayed at the house James had picked out.
Next confession. “One afternoon—the afternoon—James and I went out together to get seafood because we wanted to make our parents dinner. You know, lobsters, steamers, mussels, the works. I don’t remember the first part of that day, for some reason. It’s like it didn’t happen, just like pieces of the other days around the fire are also missing. It bothers me that I don’t have the memories. They seem meaningful in some way; I feel it, even though that makes no sense. But … Anyway, I know that I went out with my brother. I remember that James wanted to drive. He didn’t have his license or even his permit, but he was such a charmer that I caved and let him drive. It’s fun to teach someone how to drive, but he was the worst driver ever. He kept grinding the gears and really fucked up my parents’ car, because after we’d bought out our favorite seafood shack, the car died on the dirt road before we got to the house. It made a totally shittastic noise and just stopped. I’m sure there was probably something else wrong with it already, but James’s driving really finished it off. I should have driven because then the car would not have been blocking the road. That might have helped things in the end.”
I rub my hands over my arms and shoulders, feeling a chill
despite the warmth of the shower.
“So we left the car where it was and came home and had a spectacular dinner with my parents. The smell of everything boiling in the pots was so good. That salty, sweet ocean smell that fills the house. I love that. And we said good night normally. Just, you know, ‘Good night. Love you.’ Very casual and ordinary, done without any real thought.” I am trembling as my voice rises. “Because who the fucking hell says good night to her parents thinking she should say something meaningful because they might be burned to all shit later that night? I didn’t know! I didn’t know!”
I hit my fist against the wall and start to cry.
“I’m right here, Blythe.” Chris says. His voice is steady, gentle. “Do you want to stop?”
He pulls me back enough that I am stabilized again. “No.” I want to keep going. I can talk through tears. I know how to do that well.
“That night, it was cold, I remember, and my parents lit a fire in the woodstove in their room upstairs. The pipe was no good. The metal …” I am breathing hard, starting to gasp for air. “There was a crack in the metal pipe. I don’t know what it’s called. That black metal tube that is supposed to make woodstoves safe. But it was cracked, and the heat from the fire wasn’t contained.
“Know what most of the house was insulated with? What was inside the walls? Newspaper. Fucking newspaper. Who in God’s name does that?
“When I woke up, my room was filled with smoke. It was so dark, and I could hardly see, so I didn’t get what was happening at first. The smell. Oh, the smell. It filled my mouth … and swamped my lungs in seconds.” I turn my body so that my face is in the water, and I grab the shower handle. I hold my breath because I am remembering that I couldn’t breathe then, so I feel like I shouldn’t breathe now. I wait until I am light-headed before my instincts win and I take in air. “I turned on my cell so that I could see … and it … threw blue light into the smoke, and I could see through the haze to the door. Nothing looked right. The hall had even more smoke than my room, and I could feel the heat.”
It’s as if I am back there in the hall, with the crackling sounds, and the atrocious smell, and the belief that death is closing in.
“I couldn’t think logically, but I could feel terror. I could … smell it. I couldn’t have gone into the living room if I’d wanted to because … because the smoke was too thick that way. It was happening too fast, and I couldn’t make it slow down so that I could think. No smoke alarms were going off, so I couldn’t understand how there could be a fire. It seems stupid, but I wondered if it was something else. Like a bomb. I couldn’t make sense of it. Honestly, I don’t remember deciding what to do. I just moved. I didn’t even scream. I don’t think … I don’t think that I made any sound at all.” I’m choking now as the words tumble out. “I had my hand over my mouth. So dumb. That wasn’t going to help. But I left my room because I had to get to James. That was the only clear thought I had. It wasn’t even really a thought. It was a … a drive. I kicked my foot out and got his door open. He was still in bed, nearly unconscious. I couldn’t get him to move. I may have … I think that I yelled at him, but I’m not sure. James wouldn’t get up. He just wouldn’t get up. He was so heavy, and I wasn’t strong enough. But I tried. God, I tried with everything I had in me, and then somehow I had him half off the bed, and then I saw the fire.”
I can feel my pulse starting to pound and my anxiety escalate as the trauma sears through me again in a fresh, torturous way. Part of me understands that I am in a shower, in a full-blown panic. That I’m having some sort of quickly escalating anxiety episode. But I cannot stop it, and I don’t want to. I want to be telling this nightmare and getting it out of me. I barely recognize my own voice as I sputter and cough out the garbled words.
“The color is bouncing off the wall in the hall … and I know, I know … I know it is coming for us.”
Chris rips open the shower curtain and catches me with one arm as I drop. There is so much steam in the shower now that I can barely see as he turns the shower handle. “Too hot, baby,” he says with more control and calm than the situation warrants.
It takes me a minute to understand that we are now sitting on the floor of the shower. He is behind me. I know the feel of his chest against my back, and part of me is comforted, even while most of me is spinning out of control. He reaches up and lowers the water temperature more. I look down and see that my stomach, my thighs, my arms are scarlet. I have nearly scalded my whole body with hot water.
“Fuck, Blythe,” Chris murmurs. I hear fear in his voice, but he doesn’t let me go. He pulls my head back from the stream of water and pushes the hair from my eyes. I am sobbing now, and he lets me cry.
“I’m here, and I’ve got you.” Then a few minutes later, when my crying has not lessened, “I think you should stop. You’ve told me enough for now.”
Even though I am drowning in water and fire right now, I let out a loud protest and shake my head back and forth so hard that he agrees to let me finish.
“You have to promise me you’ll breathe.”
“I … can’t.” I can’t breathe, I can’t even see properly. The only thing that I can see is the blood that I know is coming. And the screaming.
“Yes, you can. And you will.” This is not a suggestion. It’s a deal breaker. “Breathe with me.”
I am struggling terrifically for air. Because there is none. All I can taste is smoke.
“Feel me.” He inhales, and his chest presses into me. “Breathe,” he tells me. “Breathe with me.”
I feel the rise and fall of his chest, and I breathe as he does. His arms are around me, but he’s gentle, careful not to add to my suffocation. It is only now that I notice he is still in his clothes, his jeans now waterlogged and nearly black.
I keep breathing.
“There you go. Good girl.”
Slowly, my body cools down. But my mind is still there in the heat and the smoke. I am going to get through this, because even in the state I am in, I can feel how important this is for me.
“I see the fire, and I know I’m not strong enough to move James very far by myself when he’s unconscious. But I have to. I can’t even open the window. It’s jammed. Everything in the house is broken, and suddenly that matters. It’s not fun anymore. Because I can’t get the fucking window open … Oh God, Chris, I can’t open the window. There’s a lamp on the table next to the bed, and I take it and smash the shit out of the window. And I’m bleeding. My arm is pouring out blood, and for this one second I think that is good because it means I am alive. I am still real.”
“It’s not happening now. Blythe, you’re here with me.”
I see that I have started telling this story in the present tense, but I cannot stop.
“I can feel the cold air hit me and it means freedom, but there’s no time because it’s coming for us. It’s coming for us.” I hear Chris inhale and exhale loudly in my ear, reminding me to breathe. To live through this.
So I do.
“I take the quilt from his bed. It’s one of those patchwork quilts, and I’m seeing all the colors and patterns. And there are pictures. These stupid pictures that make me so angry. How can I be looking at fabric animals, and trees, and flowers when I am bleeding and James can’t fucking move and we are going to die because I’m not strong enough?”
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 fucking 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.