Singe

by Ruby McNally

  She rifles through the glove box, pulling out a stack of Dunkin Donut napkins and a handful of crumpled receipts before remembering she left the print outs with Eli. It’s the picture she’s after, Eli’s school photo, a sweet, chubby boy with hair that hadn’t yet darkened to the color it is now. When Addie first looked at the article, she’d thought the editor had mixed up the captions for him and Will. He was eight, just finished second grade.

  Paulina will be eight in the fall. She was learning how to add three digit numbers when the school year ended.

  Addie reaches for her phone again, dialing before she can think about it. It rings straight to Eli’s voicemail. The same thing happens when she tries again two minutes later, and a third time a few minutes after that. Addie rests her head on the steering wheel, squeezes her eyes shut.

  His scars, she realizes suddenly, startling upright. The burns all over his arms and chest, the ones she’s been tracing with her fingers and mouth all summer, the ones he’s never really explained.

  Oh, Jesus. Okay. Okay.

  For a long time, Addie just sits. She thinks about the photo. She looks at her parents’ front porch. There are jam jars lined up along the railing. Addie knows they’ll be full of monarch butterfly cocoons, waiting to hatch in the sun. When she and Phillip were kids, her dad used to drive them out to the milkweed plants by the side of the highway to collect caterpillars. Now he drives the grandchildren.

  Eli’s dad—

  It’s past six by the time Addie finally throws Gertie into reverse and backs out of her parents’ driveway, the hum of the AC and the sound of her own pulse thudding like a drumbeat inside her brain. She’s back at Eli’s complex thirty minutes later, catching the exterior door as one of his anonymous-bro neighbors keys himself in downstairs. The guy shoots her an odd look, and for good reason, probably—she seems nuts, most likely, red-faced and her hair all disheveled.

  She takes the stairs up two at a time, almost tripping on her stupid maxi skirt, hiking the fabric up inside her clammy fists like Cinderella in reverse. Now that she’s made the decision to come back she’s in a huge, stupid rush, like hurrying will make up for leaving in the first place. Like if she runs fast enough, she can turn back time.

  There are dumb little brass knockers on all the apartment doors in this building, more for show than anything else, and when she gets to Eli’s she raps hard with her knuckles, the way she would if she was on duty and responding to a call. “Eli,” she calls, trying to sound calm and collected, like a grownup and not a panicky kid. “It’s me.”

  It feels like a long time before he comes to the door. When he does, his free hand is around Hester’s collar, holding her back as she scrambles to escape. “Hey,” he says, slurring a little. “What’s up?”

  “Oh.” Addie looks at Hester’s lolling tongue, thrown. “I’m, um. Hi?” She feels pulled up short, a dog on a lead. She doesn’t know what she expected to find back here, but it wasn’t Eli’s bloodshot eyes and his smiling, wagging dog. “Hi.”

  He barely opened the door a quarter of the way, like maybe Addie is an insurance salesmen and he’s three seconds from telling her he’s not interested. Now he nudges Hester behind him and closes the gap even more, small enough that he can block it with his body. “Hi,” he parrots, not nicely. Hester peers out around his legs, panting. Addie smells booze. “What do you want?”

  Right. Okay. Addie inhales and reminds herself that she was the asshole in this relationship yet again. It’s a squirmy, unfamiliar feeling, like having an egg cracked down the back of her spine. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s all. I came back to say how hugely sorry I am.” Eli has his arm up on the doorframe, the scars just barely visible in the dingy hallway light. Addie makes herself look away.

  Eli blinks slowly. “Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.”

  Crap. “No, for like—no, sorry for me. It wasn’t my business, and—shit.” Hester has wiggled her way through Eli’s legs and bolted out into the hallway, jumping up to lick Addie’s face. “Why is she here?” Addie asks, trying to shove the dog off. This isn’t going how she planned.

  “Uh.” Eli hesitates. “Listen, I’m not sure if—” He doesn’t get to finish the thought though, because as soon as all four of Hester’s paws hit the floor again she’s headed back into the apartment like she’s too excited to pick just one destination, knocking the door open in the process with her strong, furry body. And sitting on Eli’s couch—the couch Addie’s spent all summer on, watching Food Network and napping and letting him fuck her six ways from Sunday, oh God—is Eli’s ex-wife.

  Eli’s small, blonde, perfect, professor ex-wife.

  Holding a wine glass.

  So.

  For a second Addie remembers Jenn getting kicked out of their grandma’s, how it took her a minute to comprehend what Jenn was saying that terrible night when she was fifteen. How she’d understood her family one way before it happened and afterward as something else entirely. How she’d had no idea what she’d had until it was gone.

  Addie gapes at them from the doorway, this couple and their goddamn golden retriever. Eli looks pale and stricken under the alcohol flush. “Addie,” he starts.

  “Sorry,” Addie tells them. “I… Sorry.” She has no idea why she’s apologizing. Suddenly it’s a year ago, barbeques and fundraising dinners, all the run-ins Addie had with Eli’s wife when she was still Eli’s wife. They once had a conversation about the merits of Bud Light Lime, Addie and Chelsea. Addie doesn’t know how she forgot that. “I’m gonna go,” she hears herself say.

  “Addie.” Eli steps out in the hallway. “Wait.”

  Addie shakes her head. “Don’t,” she tells him, and Eli doesn’t. She is acutely, painfully aware of Chelsea just around the corner, her clever listening face.

  There’s no dignified getaway to be had. Addie’s flip-flops slap loudly as she turns and walks back toward the stairwell, face hot. She feels like a kid now, Jesus, sent away from the adult’s table to play. Less than a summer, she and Eli have been dating. A handful of dinners, a lot of good sex, and somehow Addie forgot how long it had been. Somehow she thought because this was her most serious relationship, it was Eli’s too, that maybe everything was new for him like it was new and special for her. She conveniently forgot about his marriage that lasted half a freaking decade.

  There’s a man carrying groceries who stands aside to let Addie pass him on the landing. She turns away so he doesn’t see her face.

  God. Of course Eli didn’t open up and tell her about his dead brother after a few months of going out. This isn’t high school.

  “Addie.” That’s Eli, catching up with her down in the front vestibule of his building, by the rows of anonymous mailboxes that all look the same. It smells like floor cleaner. The sky opened up sometime in the last five minutes, sheets and sheets of rain pouring down and spraying right back up again off the blacktop, flashes of lightning like something out of the Old Testament. “Addie,” Eli says again, grabbing her arm as she’s pushing the glass door open, preparing to dash. “Hey. This isn’t like that woman at the Perfect Pint, okay?”

  Addie whirls on him, the door clanging shut again, the muffled sound of the storm outside. “I know it’s not, Eli,” she says. “It’s your wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” he reminds her.

  Addie shakes her head. “Look, it’s fine. I get it, of course you’d want to talk to her. She already knows everything, right?”

  Eli shrugs helplessly. “I mean,” he says. “We were married.”

  God, Addie feels so stupid, she feels like the stupidest person in the world. “I know,” she says stubbornly. “I just, I came here to tell you that I’m sorry I lost my temper and I was awful and of course I want to know that stuff, but if you’ve already got somebody you can talk about it with then—”

  “Look, I want to tell you that stuff, okay?” Eli interrupts. “I mean, I don’t, I don’t want to tell anyone that fucking stuff, but if I have to tell it
to anyone else then I want—” He breaks off. His words still aren’t lining up straight. “I was a dick, okay?”

  Addie glances back over her shoulder at the haze of rain. The rivulets of water on the other side look cool and inviting. “Okay,” she says dully. She wants to rest her forehead against the glass, maybe bang it a couple times. She wants to magically be somewhere not here, to not have shared all her secrets too early and too fast. It feels like her skin is inside out for all the world to see.

  “Okay,” Eli agrees. Neither of them say anything for a long second. The lightning flashes and Addie starts counting automatically, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, crash.

  “Half a mile.” At first Addie thinks she said it out loud by accident but it’s Eli’s voice. He was counting too.

  Just then Addie’s phone starts ringing deep in the pocket of her maxi skirt, like it was cued up to the storm. She’s expecting Jenn, but when she fishes it out the screen says PHILLIP CALLING in bright, jarring letters. Addie’s so surprised she picks up. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Ads, thank God.” He’s in his car, Addie can tell from the tinny speakerphone connection. “Listen, Danielle broke her ankle at the soccer game, it’s kind of a scramble. Would you mind swinging by the field and picking up Kristine? Aunt Marianne went with the ambulance.”

  Addie opens her mouth. Only her brother would say kind of a scramble and ambulance in the same breath. “God, Phillip. Is she okay?”

  Eli’s eyebrows pop up in concern, listening. Addie shakes her head at him impatiently.

  “She’s fine,” Phillip says, at the same Marina cuts in with, “You could see bone, Addie.”

  Perfect. That is all today needs. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Addie tells them, hanging up with a beep and scrubbing a hand over her face. It’s still a freaking deluge outside the double doors. “I gotta go,” she says, once she’s filled Eli in as quickly as humanly possible. The field is all the way across town. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to bail, I just—”

  “Yeah, yeah, no, of course,” Eli says, reaching out and brushing her fingertips with his callused ones, just gently. She feels physically awkward all of a sudden, like she doesn’t know how to hold her body, what she usually does with it when he’s around. “Look, just—don’t give up on me, princess, okay? Not yet.”

  “Eli.” Just like that Addie feels like she’s going to cry all over again, his good sad face and his family and how huge and deep and terrible everything feels, how she cares about this person more than she ever, ever thought. She pops up on her toes so she can reach him, presses a lame dry kiss against his mouth. “I’ll see you at work, okay?”

  “Okay. Addie.” Eli gets both hands on her face then, crowds her. Pushes his whole self up against hers. She thinks he’s going to kiss her but in the end he just doesn’t, knocks his forehead lightly against hers. “See you at work.”

  Back in the car she calls Jenn to let her know about Danielle’s ankle. She’s the first one to think to do it, which makes her sad and angry in equal amounts.

  “Oh, trust me, she thought of it,” Jenn says, meaning Aunt Marianne. Whenever Jenn talks about her mother now her tone is spiky and foreign, like someone snuck a capful of vinegar under her tongue. “She was just hoping someone else would bite the bullet first.” Then, “God. You know, I haven’t seen the twins in almost a year?”

  Addie didn’t. After that, it doesn’t feel like the right time to mention Eli. Jenn doesn’t ask.

  Kristine is waiting under an overhang at the edge of the parking lot with a handful of her and Danielle’s friends hovering around her like a coven, their church-supplied pinnies all tied and tucked to bare midriff. Addie counts three belly button rings and two boyfriends. Not for the first time, she wonders whether it was divine irony or cruelty that made Jenn’s little sisters turn out so aggressively straight.

  “Hey,” Kristine gasps when she climbs into the front seat. She’s white underneath her streaky makeup, wide, scared eyes. The rain slicked all her hair against her skull in a way that makes Addie think of Chicken Cat after a bath. “Have you talked to my mom? Did she say anything?”

  “Dani’s gonna be fine,” Addie promises. “She’ll limp for a bit is all.”

  “I heard the crack,” Kristine supplies, turning on the radio. “It was nasty. Mom screamed.”

  Well, that was helpful, Addie thinks unkindly. “Sit tight,” she tells her cousin, flicking Gertie’s windshield wipers up another bump.

  The rain’s letting up by the time they get to the hospital, a steady trickle—they’re headed through the sliding glass emergency room doors when Jenn calls out their names from across the parking lot.

  “Jennie!” Kristine cries excitedly, all her teenage apathy dissolving like a communion host as she throws herself at her big sister, squeezing tight. “Hi!”

  “Hi, goose,” Jenn says, lifting Kristine off her feet a little even though Kristine’s just as tall as she is. “Oh my gosh, you’re a grownup. Look at you.”

  Addie’s chest aches just watching them—it feels like way too much for one day, all these things she hasn’t been able to fix. “Hey,” she says, slinging an arm around Jenn’s back. She’s still wearing Liz’s Cornell T-shirt, which strikes Addie as odd and time warp-y. It feels like a lifetime ago that she was in Jenn’s apartment Googling Eli’s family, not just a few short hours. “I’m glad you came.”

  “Me too,” Kristine chimes in, snuggling in to Jenn’s other side. They walk through the front doors together, all three of them in a row.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sharpie and Parker are watching Kathie Lee and Hoda in the rec room when Eli gets in the next morning, tossing a box of donuts on the table—he got mostly chocolate glazed because he knows they’re Addie’s favorite, but he doesn’t see her hanging out anywhere downstairs. He lingers by the lockers, hoping to catch her coming out of the closet she and Buono share. Finally he checks the daily chore sheet. Her name isn’t on it.

  “Family thing,” Brooks tells him when he asks. “Someone in surgery. Why?”

  Eli shrugs. “Wanted to switch with her for Friday.”

  “Switch with Gaarder,” Brooks instructs, shuffling his file folders. The arsons have generated a lot of paperwork, a lot of community buzz about safety. A lot of headlines. Eli can’t help the creeping feeling of déjà vu. “Kid has a dentist appointment.”

  Which is how Eli ends up working an opposite shift from Addie right through the weekend. He texts her a couple times, hey and how are you, getting one-word answers back. He thinks he probably scared the crap out of her. He told Chelsea as much when he went back upstairs that day, Hester jumping up and down like a pogo stick to greet him. Chelsea told him it wasn’t his fault. She told him that all through their marriage too, every anniversary of Will’s death. Eli never quite believed her. But he let her tell him again for another two hours after Addie left, the familiarity of it washing over him like an old drug. Finally, when the rain let up and the streets were mirror-slick under the moon, he walked his ex-wife and ex-dog back down to the parking lot. He thinks she and Dave made up over the weekend. It doesn’t sting the way he thought it would.

  He and Addie line up again on Tuesday morning, Addie coming in through the garage as he’s checking the equipment, her wild hair damp and braided down her back. “Gentlemen,” she calls, addressing him and Sharpie and Jill all as a unit, heading inside toward her locker with her giant canvas bag swung over one shoulder and her sunglasses obscuring the top half of her face. It’s the middle of August, still stifling. Addie looks cool as a whiskey on ice.

  “Manzella,” he calls after her, following her inside like he’s got something work-related to discuss, then taking her by the wrist and steering her into a storage alcove off the hallway. “Addie,” he says then. “Hey.” She smells like herself, that gardenia smell from back at the beginning of the summer. Eli wants put his face in her neck and breathe. “How’s your cousin?” he asks her, feeling awkward and
dumb in a way he hardly ever does with a woman—the way he only ever has with her, pretty much.

  Addie shrugs. “She’s okay,” she reports, taking her sunglasses off and perching them on top of her head. She looks tired. “I mean, she’s done with soccer for the foreseeable future, but it’s not a ‘one-leg-shorter-than-the-other-for-all-eternity’ kind of situation or anything.”

  Eli nods. “Look, princess,” he starts. He’s been waiting for days to talk to her, but now that he’s got a chance he’s not entirely sure what he wants to say. “Can we just—”

  “I think you drink too much,” Addie interrupts him.

  That’s when the siren goes off.

  “Now wait a second,” Eli starts, but she’s already turned and out the door, jogging in the direction of the lockers. Eli swears and follows, banging a hand against the wall as he goes.

  Pulling on his turnout gear feels like getting dressed underwater, no AC in this part of the building and Eli’s head still foggy from last night’s beers. Four or five, he thinks, stepping into his boots. No, definitely four. Four is fine. The steel toes seem heavier this morning, footfalls like King Kong. He’s still working both arms into his jacket when Sharpie starts heading for the truck.

  “You’re on the wheel, Grant,” he yells. Eli swears again.

  It’s not far from the other arsons, he sees when he gets up there, the truck’s GPS plunking down a triumphant flag. The radio has Fifteen already on route, a three-alarm with multiple EMTs requested. Eli swallows. Every residential call makes him nervous lately, even the ones they know ahead of time are just barbecue flare-ups, someone getting tipsy and being too free with the propane. Already he’s pretty sure this isn’t that.