Was Father giving in to everybody? “My schedule is as open as it needs to be,” said Ryan. “Which guy? What trade?”
“Wallboard and spackling,” said Dad. “Starting you on the stuff that, when you screw up, it’ll be easiest to redo.”
“I’ll try not to screw up.”
“Except, of course, when the job is to screw things to other things,” said Dad.
Dianne had not actually returned to doing homework. “Dad, when do the walls come down? Between the halves of the house?”
“Tonight,” said Dad. “It takes a few more people than just me to walk the walls down so we don’t damage the floor.”
“You mean me and Dianne,” said Ryan.
“If you’re willing.”
“And when is this event planned for?” asked Ryan.
“Now would be convenient,” said Dad.
Ryan stood up, and Dianne did, too. “What do you mean, ‘walk the walls down’?” asked Dianne.
“I’ll cut through the wallboard on this side, and then I’ll call to Ryan to push from the other side. You and I, Dianne, we’ll keep the wall from just crashing to the floor. We’ll walk backward, letting our hands walk up the wall as it sinks toward the floor, and when it’s close, I’ll tell you to drop it, and you’ll jump backward so it doesn’t take off your shins when it falls the last couple of feet.”
“That sounds way more complicated than just dynamiting it,” said Ryan.
“It’ll take a lot of force to get it started. You have to overcome a lot of friction. And try to press only on the studs, not on the wallboard in between.”
“You’re saying you don’t want me to punch holes in the wallboard, you want me to push the whole wall down? That’s not at all what I thought we were doing. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to frame in this wall, and we’re just going to undo all that work, in one push?”
Father didn’t rise to Ryan’s bait, but he also wouldn’t wait forever for Ryan to stop pointing out how unnecessary Father’s instructions had been. “It won’t take me long to cut this, Ryan, so get on over to the other side and listen for me to tell you to push.”
Father started cutting with a keyhole saw, and Ryan asked, “Are you leaving both staircases in place?”
“I’m not taking down the walls upstairs,” said Father, “so we’ll need both sets of stairs.”
Ryan took that in and made no answer. The house was not being reunited, not really. And Ryan instantly guessed that Dad would move into a room on one side, and Mom would be in a room on the other. Separated at night, separate sleeping.
But maybe this also meant Ryan could have a bedroom again. No more sleeping on the couch. A reason to be thankful at Thanksgiving.
When he got to the Horvats’ side, Ryan realized that Father really had been hard at work. The walls were completely repainted, and there wasn’t a stick of furniture. He did think he caught a food smell from the kitchen, but Dad wouldn’t have repainted there. It wasn’t the Horvats’ house anymore. There was no trace of Bizzy here now. It cut him to the heart. It was also a great relief. He wasn’t sure if those emotions should go together. They didn’t really fit well.
Dad’s sawing went on. The wall that was coming down no longer had wallboard on this side. Father had pulled up the nails that had held the stud wall to the floor. Pretty soon Dad called out, “Push!” and Ryan started pushing. Nothing happened. “Pretend you’re playing football!” Dad called.
Ryan had about six smart answers to that, but the main thing was to get the wall down. He knew what Dad meant—he had seen the football players pushing those padded frames along the practice field. But he also knew his shoulders weren’t padded. So he pushed only with his hands, but got his whole bodyweight behind them and dug in his shoes on the floor, and the top of the wall moved out just a little. Just a jot. And then he pushed again, and this time, maybe an inch. On the next push, five or six inches.
“Almost there, Ryan,” said Father.
Ryan pushed again and it gave much more easily. Too easily. He was afraid the whole thing was going to collapse on the floor. But that’s when Dad and Dianne caught it. It kept sinking toward the floor, but it was controlled now.
“I hope it’s okay that I stopped pushing it,” said Ryan.
“Excellent plan,” said Dad. “Gravity is doing the job, and we’re slowing it down.”
Then the wall got even lower, and Father yelled, “Jump back, Dianne!” Then, with a loud fwump, the wall crashed onto the floor.
Dianne was against the far wall. She apparently took “jump back” like an Olympian.
As Ryan stepped between the studs on the wall section lying on the floor, Dianne said, “I bet you’re wondering . . .”
Ryan laughed at the old family joke. Maybe he laughed a little harder than usual, because reuniting the house was pretty emotional, even if it wasn’t a complete restoration of unity. Dianne’s laugh also had a kind of crazy excessiveness. They stopped laughing and grinned at each other. They were, for once, apparently thinking and feeling the same thing.
“Good job, kids,” said Dad. “I’ll take this apart the rest of the way tonight. But now it’s time for dinner.”
“Mom’s not here,” said Dianne. “You calling out for pizza?”
“Mom’s here,” said Dad. “She and I discussed it, and she decided she liked the new kitchen better.” Father led Dianne in walking over the fallen wall and into what used to be the Horvats’ side. Only now did Ryan register that the cooking smells on that side of the house were fresh. How could he not have noticed that?
Mom was in the Horvats’ kitchen. “Our table is still on the other side, so we’ll load up our plates and carry them over, okay?”
Mom wasn’t actually singing, but to Ryan it sounded like that. The world had changed. Dad was still going to keep a wall between them at night, maybe, but the house wasn’t a duplex anymore, and Ryan could extrapolate that the whole divorce thing was off the table. For now, anyway. And Mom was happier than she had been in eight months.
It was shepherd’s pie, which was basically hamburger in brown gravy and vegetables, with mashed potatoes on top. A family favorite.
Dinner was good. And since it would be Thanksgiving the day after tomorrow, this probably meant that Mom and Dad would do their Thanksgiving Ballet, as Dianne had named it years ago, where Dad cooks turkey and dressing, and Mom makes gravy and cooks vegetables and rice, moving around each other in the kitchen and never getting in each other’s way. Dianne and Ryan always tried to help, setting the table and folding napkins and such, just so they could watch how Mom and Dad fit together perfectly. Surely they would do it that way again this Thanksgiving.
And at Christmas, they would all be there. Ryan had been dreading Christmas without Dad in the house, without Christmas in the house. That’s what it would have felt like. And now . . . not.
“This is delicious, Mom,” said Dianne when they were back in their side of the house, sitting at the table.
“Best ever,” said Ryan.
“Why thank you, delightful children, your voices are music to my heart,” said Mom.
Dad said nothing. Just silently ate his shepherd’s pie and looked up now and then, not at anyone in particular, just taking in the three people sitting with him at the table.
* * *
By Thanksgiving, Dad and Ryan had taken time for a bit of a chat going to and from work, when Dad picked Ryan up after school. Ryan had been afraid Dad would make him take the bus, which would cut out an hour of work, depending on where the job was. Having Dad drive him meant a much shorter travel time. And they could talk.
“There’s still a lot of pain between your mother and me,” Dad said when Ryan asked him directly. “It can’t go back to how it was, not yet. Maybe not ever. For now, she’s moving into the Horvats’ old master bedroom.” Which Ryan knew had been D
ad’s and Mom’s room back in the day, only it had shrunk to accommodate an extra bedroom on that side, and another full bathroom.
So Dad would get the room Mom had been sleeping in during the duplex days, which had once been Ryan’s room, and Ryan would be sleeping in . . .
“Dad, I don’t know which bedroom used to be Bizzy’s room.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Dad. “Your mother and I decided that you’re getting the room Dianne has been sleeping in, next to my room, and Dianne will pick one of the rooms the Horvat kids were using. I don’t know which one was Bizzy’s, either, and it doesn’t matter.”
With Dianne sleeping on that side, Dad was right. It didn’t matter. It would only have mattered if Ryan might have ended up sleeping there. He didn’t know if he wanted to sleep in Bizzy’s old room, or stay as far from it as possible. Now that he knew he wouldn’t get a vote about it, he felt a stab of regret that he couldn’t share even that pathetic level of vicarious closeness with Bizzy. But he also knew that sleeping on the other side of a wall from where she used to sleep was an excellent plan. The best possible plan.
All the sleeping arrangements, including some new beds, were completely settled and set up by Thanksgiving morning, with Ryan and Dianne making their own beds and loading up their own dressers while Mom and Dad got the dinner started. Mom was making her rolls this Thanksgiving, which meant she was doubly busy and would start baking them as soon as Dad got the turkey out of the oven and started carving it. Then she’d produce batch after batch as dinner went on and they would run out of room in their stomachs for more bread but they’d keep on eating it until they almost wept with fullness because those rolls were too good to stop eating them, either slathered with melting butter or swashed across the gravy on the plate.
And tonight, after everything was cleaned up, after they played some games and some Christmas music, they would all go to bed in their new rooms, in a house that was still sort of divided but was nevertheless all one again.
* * *
It was well into December when Dad picked up Ryan after school to take him to the job but instead took him home. “Go inside and get cleaned up,” said Dad. “And I mean shower, and wash your hair, I don’t care if you did it already this morning, you don’t look like you did, and put on clean clothes. Not jeans. Am I clear?”
“You want me in basketball shorts with wet hair,” said Ryan.
“I’m taking you somewhere and I want you to look nice. As nice as you can look, given your slovenly personal habits.”
“What about Dianne and Mom?” asked Ryan.
“They will have to beg in the streets until somebody feeds them,” Dad said.
“Meaning they’re going somewhere, too,” said Ryan.
“Somewhere much nicer than where we’re going, because Dianne cleans up better than you do.”
Where they ended up going was Outback Steakhouse, and because they got there about five-thirty, it wasn’t too crowded yet. Plus it was Wednesday, which wasn’t the biggest restaurant day of the week. Ryan winced as Father told the hostess, “One adult and one child, but no high chair. Probably won’t need a booster seat, either.” The hostess smiled—she had never heard a joke like that before, Ryan was sure—and led them to a booth. Which was already occupied.
Father stood at the end of the bench and beckoned Ryan to slide on in. Then Father walked away. If he was eating there tonight, apparently it would be at another table.
Ryan was sitting opposite a girl. Blonde hair, blonde eyebrows even. It was a very good dye job. Not a wig. And she wasn’t wearing any face Ryan had seen before. She had gotten very good at changing her face, but it didn’t even slow Ryan down. He knew who she was. He knew it from her posture, her size, and above all the smile in her eyes when she saw him.
She reached a hand across the table. He took it.
“All I wanted to do,” she said softly, “was kiss you.”
“Thanks for not saying anything to make me crazy,” said Ryan.
“I still love you, Ryan Burke.”
“I still can hardly walk and talk for thinking about you,” said Ryan. “And missing you.”
“Your father said the house isn’t a duplex anymore,” said Bizzy.
“Close enough,” said Ryan.
“This is our last meeting, Ryan,” said Bizzy. “For a long, long time.”
Ryan took that news in silence. He had already known it. In fact, he hadn’t imagined he would get this meeting with her.
“Mom and Dad won’t tell me,” said Bizzy, “but they got me an updated passport with a picture that actually looks like—well, not me, but the face I’m wearing right now.”
“It’s a nice face,” said Ryan. “But I’ve seen better.”
She smiled. The smile made her face look just a little more like glamor-face. But it also made it look a little more like Bizzy’s natural face, which Ryan liked best.
“How’s Defense?” she asked.
“He’s made printouts of his Christmas wish list and he’s giving it to everybody in school, including the teachers and the counselors. I don’t think he actually wants anything on the list, he just wants to amuse people with the ridiculous variety. And some of the things are just not obtainable, so . . .”
“Still Defense,” said Bizzy.
“I don’t have a Christmas wish list,” said Ryan, “because the only thing on it is already sitting across the table from me at Outback.”
“I’m having the prime rib,” she said, “because they do it pretty well here.”
“I hope you’re having it with horseradish,” said Ryan, “because if you don’t like horseradish on prime rib I’ll be disappointed in your degree of acculturation.”
“I’ll try it,” said Bizzy.
The waitress came by and got their drink orders—water for Bizzy, ginger ale for Ryan, because that’s what Dad always got when Ryan was little. And pretty soon the mini-loaf of black bread showed up, along with a couple of knives that weren’t quite sharp enough to slice the bread without crushing it and were way too serrated to be good for spreading butter. They sliced the bread, crushing it, and then spread butter on their own pieces.
They had never eaten out together at a place where waiters brought the food. Ryan felt like he was catching a glimpse of a whole life that might have been, a life in which he was able to court her, to drive her to the movies and someday to the hospital to give birth to their child, and strap car seats into the back of the car until the kids were old enough to sit up safely on their own, four of them in the back of a six-passenger SUV, while Ryan drove the Prius to work during the day, whatever kind of job it was he did to support the family.
And every couple of years, a bunch of guys would show up to hurt the family and Ryan would kill every last one of them. Every time. Because nobody hurt the people that he loved, not while he was around.
“Ryan,” she said, “I had a long talk with my parents before they called your dad. And they had a long talk with him before he would agree to this meeting.”
“And I was last to know.”
“You understand why,” said Bizzy.
“I understand that everyone is deciding what’s best for me, while I don’t get a vote, because I could never cast a vote that didn’t include you in my life.”
“That’s exactly why you don’t get a vote,” said Bizzy. “Because I saw your face when you killed that fake FBI guy in the doorway of Hardesty’s room. I saw your face after you shot the guy coming in the front door. I saw devastation in your face, Ryan. I saw despair.”
“You did not,” said Ryan, “because Defense had tipped the couch over and you and your mother were hustling through the panel to the other side of the house.”
“I saw your face,” said Bizzy, “and I knew that I would never again be the cause of your having to kill somebody.”
And there
it was.
“I can learn to control it, so I stop people without killing them.”
“He came in the door with a gun,” said Bizzy. “He was too far for you to reach him in time with anything slower than a bullet.”
“What if I hadn’t had a gun?” asked Ryan. He thought she would realize that he would have found a way.
She did. “You would have stepped between the bullet and me,” said Bizzy. “You would have died to save me.”
She was right.
“I love you at least as much as you love me,” she told him. “That’s what I came here to say. I love you so much that I can’t bear knowing that your love for me made you kill two men. I knew it would tear you up inside—it’s still tearing you up and I think it always will because you’re not a man who kills people.”
He could feel the tears spilling out onto his cheeks, but he didn’t try to wipe them. He didn’t have to pretend to her that he wasn’t crying.
“I love that man, the one who doesn’t kill people. I love him so much that until and unless the danger to me and my family goes away, I’m going to stay far enough away that he never again has to kill someone in order to save my life.”
Ryan started to open his mouth, though he really didn’t know what he was going to say.
“Don’t argue with me,” said Bizzy. “You know that I’m right. You might have spent a lot of time thinking about me and missing me. I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t. But you also spent a lot of time brooding about those dead guys. Thinking about how there was a lot of danger that day, but the only person who killed anybody was you.”
He had lost it that day, talking to Dianne, but he wasn’t going to lose it here, with Bizzy, in the Outback. He only nodded.
“Here’s how much I love you,” she said. “I will not see you again until I know it’s safe. For me, for you. And if it’s never safe, then you will remain my most treasured memory. My first love. My true love. The man who saved my life, at any cost.”
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