Finally Jesse’s parents came in. His mother looked like she was in a coma, just walking around by reflex. Father Weatherford went up and talked to them and stayed with them while they sat in those green plastic chairs and stared at the floor, holding hands. We waited two hours while they worked on him. Doctors came out a couple of times, but all they could say was they were trying to stabilize him, whatever that means. I asked Ben and he said it means heart and blood pressure and breathing, just generally the body trying to keep going. I thought about the doctors and nurses trying to keep a live person from slipping over the edge into a dead one, and what that must be like.
When the doctor came out the last time and told Jesse’s parents that he was dead, I thought his mother was going to faint. But she didn’t. She said, “Go tell his friends, please. I can’t,” and sent the doctor over to us. How do emergency room doctors bear this?
Afterward, while Father Weatherford was still talking to Jesse’s parents, a nurse came out and took Noah back with her to get his hands cleaned and bandaged. They needed somebody to give them permission to treat him, so he had to call his mom. I could hear through his cell phone, she was so upset. She made it down to the hospital before he came back out of the treatment room.
“He tried to pull Jesse out from the fire,” I told her.
“Oh, my God.” She put her face in her hands. And then she went over to Jesse’s mom and put her arms around her.
I’ve never seen Noah look the way he looked. Like the world had all of a sudden gotten serious and he was trying to figure it out. He could have been killed, too. As it was, his hands looked like mittens when they brought him back out—gauze bandages up to the elbows.
Jesse’s dad came up to Noah and thanked him, and I thought Noah was going to cry. His mom took him home, and the nurses made Felix go back and get checked out too. They looked at me, but I told them I was fine. Felix’s robe was half burned up and when he came back out, he wasn’t wearing it. I think they must have taken it away from him and thrown it out. He had some gauze around one wrist but otherwise he was okay.
Father Weatherford drove Ben and me and Felix back. The seats of his car were covered with ash where we’d sat coming out, and I realized my pajamas were covered with it. No wonder the nurses looked at me.
They dropped Ben and me off at home. Ben got on the phone to Mom and I took a shower. Now I’m in bed again, like Mom, even though it’s the middle of the day. I am not going to get up.
21
Mom came over later. She put her arms around me and we both cried. Her face was all red and scrunched up.
“I’m so sorry, Angie.” She wiped her eyes and got a tissue from the nightstand and wiped mine. “Do you want me to go to the funeral with you? We’ll all go.”
“I’m not going to any more funerals.”
Mom sniffled. “Don’t you think it would make his parents feel better if you went?”
What could possibly make his mother feel better? I propped myself up in bed. “My stomach hurts.”
“It won’t be for a few days, honey.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not even out of this bed.”
Mom sat back and looked at me. “I don’t model very rational behavior, do I?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I lay back down and pulled the sheet up. I keep seeing Char Man in my head. He’s all burned and he’s out there waiting for everybody I love. I’m afraid to move because someone else will die. Jesse died because he was trying to prove he loved me, but I knew he did. If I lie absolutely still, maybe I won’t hurt anyone else.
On Monday, I was still in bed. Helen came to see me. I think Mom or Ben must have called her. She didn’t bring Lily—she came by herself and sat down in the chair by my desk while the Todal stuck his head in her lap and drooled on her. She didn’t say anything, just waited for me to talk. That kind of thing drives me nuts, so finally I said, “I’m scared.”
“I’m not surprised.”
That wasn’t what I was expecting. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me not to be afraid?”
“After everything that’s happened lately?” Helen scooted her chair closer to the bed. “Mental health isn’t about not being afraid. Anyone who isn’t afraid of anything is crazy. Mental health is about dealing with being afraid.”
“Oh.” I thought about that. “Helen, was Jesse crazy?”
“I never talked to him, sweetie. I don’t know.”
“Noah told him to get away from the fire, and so did one of the firefighters. So did I, but he didn’t pay any attention to any of us.”
“What do you think would make him do that?” Helen the counselor.
“I think he wanted to save my church for me,” I whispered. “I think it’s my fault.”
“It isn’t your fault when someone else is irrational.” Helen was still patting the Todal. “Jesse had post-traumatic stress disorder. I think that much was clear. And probably a latent brain injury. It’s possible he’d lost his ability to evaluate a situation. He’d been following orders for so long, poor boy. He may have simply heard an order in his head and followed it.”
“I still don’t think he would have if it weren’t for me,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Helen said gently. “Probably not, even.” She didn’t ask me any more about it, but I expect she can figure it out. “But that was his doing, not yours. You can’t wear everyone else’s irrationality on your shoulders. You have to let people be who they are, even when they’re damaged.”
“Easy for you to say.” I sat up some, and the Todal came over and drooled on me instead. I put my arms around his neck like he was a giant stuffed animal. “I can’t quit thinking about him. Can’t you give me a prescription for something that will make me quit thinking about him?”
“No, darling, I’m not a psychiatrist. But I’m going to give you a prescription to go back to school tomorrow. And another one to let yourself mourn for Jesse. Quit trying to decide whose fault it is, and let the sadness come, and sit with it. It won’t go away until you do.”
“What do I do about being afraid?”
Helen stood up. “Accept that the universe is an apparently random dance. There may be a pattern to it—I think there probably is—but we can’t see it from where we are. You have to let the dance happen. You’ll love some of it and hate some of it.”
“What if I just say I’m not going to dance?”
“Then the dance will come to you. All that happens if you try to sit it out is you get bored and lonely.” She bent down and kissed the top of my head. “Lily says she’ll pick you up for school tomorrow.”
“To make sure I go?”
She smiled. “Mmm hmm.”
“Okay, Arnaz, rise and shine.”
I opened one eye and Lily was standing at the foot of my bed, hands on her hips. She had a barbecue skewer stuck through her hair this time. Sometimes I think she looks for weird stuff to put it up with.
“I don’t think I can.”
“Sure you can,” Lily said. “For one thing, if you don’t, everyone in school will talk about you.”
“I don’t care.”
“Good for you. Okay, you should go because your grades still matter.”
“It’s the beginning of the semester.”
Lily sat down on the bed. “You should go because if you don’t, all you’ll do is lie here and think about everything being your fault, and how the whole world is going to hell in a chicken basket, and how you might as well eat worms.”
I sat up then, but I said, “Maybe I want to feel that way.”
She pulled the covers off me. “That’s why I’m not going to let you. Besides, I have orders from Wellness Woman.”
I got out of bed. When she put it that way, it just seemed more depressing to stay in bed and keep thinking. I feel so sad, but Helen said to dance, so I guess I’ll dance.
“I miss him too,” Lily said. “But you can do this.”
School was weird, and nearly as awful as I was afraid
of. All anyone can talk about is Jesse, and they keep asking me what he was really like. I’m now some kind of expert on Jesse. I hate it. Noah was nice. His hands are all bandaged, but he came anyway. And when some senior boy asked me if Jesse was crazy, Noah told him to sod off and he’d pound him if he didn’t, and the senior actually backed off. Lily stuck with me all day and drove me over to St. Thomas’s afterward to help clean up.
The church is a mess. Everything is scorched and smells like smoke. The fire didn’t burn through the adobe walls, but the whole inside of the basement is burned out, and so is the choir office and the parish offices upstairs in the back. Even the sanctuary up front where the fire didn’t get to is black with soot. Everyone is grateful that it didn’t burn, but it’s going to take forever to clean all the paint and gilding on the altarpiece. Father Weatherford says it needed cleaning anyway, and there was never enough money, but now people are sending in donations and it will be really beautiful. Father Weatherford is such an optimist—he reminds me of the old joke about the kid who gets a pile of horse manure for his birthday and is happy because he thinks there must be a pony somewhere.
Mom came over a bit later, and Ben and Grandpa Joe came too. I guess Felix must have been there all day.
“Ah, man, this breaks my heart,” Ben said, looking around.
Mom kind of cocked her head at him, like she was thinking. Then she just said, “Come help me with the vestments. I want to see what we can save.” He followed her into the back room.
If I wasn’t depressed already, I would get depressed just looking at the church. The fire started in the basement, as much as anyone can tell, and all the junk down there burned, and then the fire melted a piece of plastic water pipe (which should not have been installed in plastic pipe, according to everybody, but nobody knows who did it), and that flooded the whole basement. So everything that isn’t burned is wet and rotting, and a lot of it is both.
But I don’t care if Father Weatherford is a goof who is always looking for a pony, because he did something that made me want to kiss him. Everybody—meaning the Parish Council and the Altar Society—was telling each other how they’d told him so, and “that man,” meaning Felix, “should never have been allowed to stay in the basement, and we said over and over that he was dangerous.” This right where Felix could hear them while he carried load after load of wet horrible stuff out of the basement, stuff they weren’t going to touch. And he wasn’t staying there the night of the fire, but they were going to blame him anyway.
And Father Weatherford called everybody together and said, “We don’t have the fire department’s report yet, but I am afraid that I’m responsible.”
“Now, Father, you always have such faith in people, you mustn’t blame yourself when it’s misplaced.” That was Mrs. Beale, the Altar Society nut with the flashlight who found me in the basement with Felix.
“No, Mrs. Beale, I mean that I am directly responsible for the fire.” Father Weatherford looked so tired and miserable, all covered with soot. “The fire department thinks it could have been a short in the wiring, and I fear that I caused it. The fuses in the basement have been blowing nearly every time we turn the lights on, and there didn’t seem to be any reason for it. I was getting very tired of stumbling down in the dark to change them and I remembered my grandfather telling me about a trick of putting a penny in the fuse. So I tried that.”
And that’s apparently a very bad idea. The way Ben explained it to me, the penny keeps the fuse from blowing and that lets the wire heat up so much it can make sparks shoot out of an outlet, so even if it’s inside an adobe wall, it can spit sparks out at the stack of hay bales you just happen to have left near the outlet.
“I’m afraid that the heater in the basement was still switched on,” Father said, “and I never thought to check it. I can’t blame anyone but myself for that. I should have seen that the fuses were a sign something wasn’t right. So I must ask you to lay the blame for this tragedy at my door. All I can do, in turn, is offer my penitence to God.”
Everybody got very quiet after that, and nobody said anything else about Felix.
22
Jesse’s funeral was Wednesday at the Presbyterian church, and I did go after all. I had to say goodbye to him. Mom came with me, and so did Ben. They both looked like they were about to cry and they actually sat together. Felix came, in the good clothes he’d worn to Wuffie’s for Christmas. Lily and her parents were there, and Noah and his mom, and lots and lots of people from school. I wish Jesse could have seen how many people came. Noah sat down beside me and whispered, “You okay?”
I nodded. He was trying to turn the pages in the hymn-
book with bandages on his hands. I turned them for him. “Do they still hurt?” I asked. They looked like they did.
“Not so bad. Built-in excuse for not doing homework.”
“You don’t do your homework anyway,” I whispered back, and he smiled at me. Then the smile faded out when Jesse’s mom and dad went past us down the aisle with his little brother and sister. “Dude, I tried to get him out of there,” Noah said to me.
“I know you did.”
The minister talked about how brave Jesse was, and dedicated to serving others, and I hope it made his mom feel better. But I still don’t know what could.
We didn’t have to go to the cemetery afterward because Jesse’s parents had him cremated, and now he’s in a little niche in the church wall. I want to go and talk to him through the bricks, but I don’t know what to say.
Thursday we were back at school again, and then after school I went back to St. Thomas’s. There weren’t so many people as on the first couple of days, but Mom and Ben and Grandpa Joe are all still showing up. Mrs. Beale, who really is a total idiot, thanked Ben and Grandpa Joe over and over again and kept saying how nice it was of them to come, since they’re Jewish.
Grandpa Joe finally got fed up with her, I think, because he said, “No problem. You’re probably all Marranos anyway.”
She looked like she wasn’t sure what he’d just called her, and he said, “You don’t know about the Marranos?”
Mrs. Beale said she didn’t, so he explained. I didn’t know either, but it turns out that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain (yeah, the same ones who funded Christopher Columbus) told all the Spanish Jews that they had to either convert or leave the country. So lots of them pretended to convert because if they left they couldn’t take any money or property with them. But the Spanish Inquisition was always looking for conversos who had backslid, to torture them and burn them at the stake. So the Spanish Jews would eat pork to prove they were really converted. That’s what “marrano” means. It’s really kind of a rude term—it means “pork-eater” or just “pig.” After a while, the descendants of the conversos kind of forgot they were Jews. They had funny little family habits like lighting candles on Friday nights, but they didn’t know why.
“Lots of conversos in the New World,” Grandpa Joe said. “It was a fine chance to duck the Inquisition and get the hell out of Spain. Then you forget who you are. You intermarry with some Catholics, some Indians; maybe even the odd little traditions disappear.”
Mrs. Beale said, “I’m quite certain that’s not the case in my family. But how interesting.” She looked like she was sucking a prune.
“Oh, lots of them took new names,” Grandpa Joe said. He sounded like he was having way too good a time with this. “I’ve read that if your surname is the name of a Spanish city, you’re probably a Marrano. Like Burgos, or Zaragoza.”
Mrs. Beale, whose daughter married Bill Zaragoza and is raising lots of little Zaragozas, looked really ticked now. Wuffie must have heard them because she came swooping over and said, “Joe, help me with this ladder, please,” and practically dragged him off by the hair.
But I’m hanging on to that idea. Wuffie’s descended from one of the Spanish colonial families, and I hope we are Marranos. Those people held on to who they really were through all those generatio
ns, lighting candles on Friday night and saying prayers they couldn’t understand. Even if they didn’t know what it was all about anymore, they still had it. I only have Mom’s side of my family, because I don’t know anything about my real father besides his name. Grandpa Joe’s family are Ashkenazi, Jews from Europe. But Ben’s family are Sephardic Jews, like from Spain and the Middle East, so if we really are Marranos, then I feel like I have a connection to Ben, too.
I like the idea of everybody being connected like that, in all these mysterious, hidden ways, like traveling through secret tunnels. And maybe Gil Arnaz was one. Could be.
We went on cleaning up, washing the soot off the walls and shoveling out the disgusting crud in the basement. When stuff gets wet, it just rots. Sometimes you can’t even tell what it used to be. It’s like glop. But back under all the glop, I found the statue. I think.
It’s hard to tell, because all I found is a chunk of wood and it’s really burned, and then it was sitting in water for days (there was about a foot of revolting water on the floor, and they had to pump it out before we could even start to clean up). Not to mention we had to shut off all the electricity to the basement. They set up some spotlights that shone down the stairs until someone could check the wiring. But in the far back storeroom, I found this thing that’s the right size. I think I can sort of see his face, or where it used to be.
I also swear it was not in that room before. So I went looking for Felix to show it to him, and he wasn’t there.
For some reason that gave me the creeps, so I went to the park to look for him. His tent is still set up, but there’s no one in it. I went back to the church and asked Father Weatherford, and Mom, and anyone else I saw, and none of them know where he’s gone, either. Everybody kept saying, “Well, I just saw him,” but nobody can find him.
Now I can’t get the idea out of my head that Felix and the statue really are connected some way, and something has happened to him.
What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay Page 17