Precious and Fragile Things (17 page)

She climbed the steps, the journey up in darkness somehow easier than it had been going down. Todd's breathing grew
louder as she got closer. She picked out his form in the darkness, a huddled lump in the middle bed on the right-hand side. The moon had risen and by chance or luck a pale shaft of moonlight managing to trickle through the window highlighted the curved metal headboard. Gilly glimpsed a tuft of dark hair on the white pillow.

He shifted as she drew near and flung one long arm above his head. Now the soft light seemed to almost caress the curve of his jaw, the line of his lips. He muttered something, softly, and Gilly froze.

She drew closer to the bed, watching the way his mouth pursed with his breath. In sleep, with the covers shielding most of his body from her, he looked far less threatening. He didn't look like a man, really. More like an overgrown boy.

“Mama.” He spoke with a child's voice, timid, small and broken of heart.

What was this? The man who'd held her at knifepoint and threatened to kill her was asking for his mother? It might have been comical if not for the utter desolation in his voice, if not for the way the word caused her nipples to peak and her heart to ache with remembrance of baby voices crying out her name in the night just that way.

Three short steps on whispering feet took her to the side of his bed, and she took them without thinking twice. Automatic, the way she did at home when the murmur of a child caught her ear. Todd spoke the word again, this time with a sigh. Tears glittered like fallen diamonds on his cheeks as he shifted again in the bed.

Gilly reached out a hand to brush the hair from his forehead, to wipe away the tears shining on his face. She stopped herself just before she touched his skin, before she could condemn herself to pity and kindheartedness. Todd took in a hitching
breath and whispered one last time, “Mama.” Then he began to snore softly, and Gilly finished her journey in the dark without hearing him speak again.

T
odd was quiet in the morning, shadows beneath his dark eyes. He toyed with his lighter, snapping it again and again as it sparked, until the sharp, gassy smell of the fluid tickled a sneeze from Gilly's nose. He didn't offer a “God bless you.”

“The funniest thing I ever seen was a fat lady in a bikini trying to do the limbo,” Todd said suddenly.

At the sheer incongruity of his statement, Gilly turned from the sink where she was washing her breakfast plate. “Where did you see that?”

“At the beach. I only went one time.” Todd leaned back in his chair, rocking. “Laughed so hard I pissed my pants and…the people I was with got mad and took me home.”

She watched him tilt the chair, waiting for him to tumble backward. By luck or skill he kept the chair hovering in place while he balanced. He was graceful that way. Comfortable and competent with his body in a way he wasn't with his intellect.

Todd looked at her. “What's the funniest thing you ever seen?”

Gilly shrugged. It didn't seem that conversation should be so easy, no matter how much he made it so. “I don't know.”

Todd sighed dramatically. “You're never any fun.”

His comment stung. “
Young Frankenstein.
That's a funny movie.”

Todd rolled his eyes. “Not a movie. What's the funniest thing you ever seen in your real life? Bet it ain't as funny as a fat lady in a bikini trying to do the limbo.”

He was challenging her again, and Gilly rose to the bait. “When I was just out of college, I bought a new mattress from this factory outlet store. When I went to pick it up, the guy from the store helped me put it in the back of this van I'd borrowed. He tried carrying it on his back, but he got stuck, and then the mattress fell on him and only his legs were sticking out….”

Todd raised both eyebrows. Gilly frowned. “What? It was funny. I guess you had to be there.”

“I made you smile.” Todd thumped his chair down onto all four legs. “See?”

Gilly pushed her mouth back into the frown, but it was too late. “I wasn't smiling at you.”

“You got a nice smile.” Todd winked.

Oh, how she wanted and needed him to be loathsome to her! Gilly thought of the way his hand had felt when he hit her mouth, drawing blood. The memory was still vivid enough to make her put a hand to her lips. It was also enough to wipe the smile from her face.

“I wasn't smiling.” Her denial was transparent, but Gilly didn't care.

“Are you this much fun at home, too?” Todd pulled a
crumpled pack of cigarettes from his T-shirt pocket and scowled to find it empty. He tossed it onto the kitchen table and stood. His gaze swept her up and down. “Maybe they don't miss you as much as you think they do.”

He stomped into the pantry while Gilly, stunned, stared after him. In the months before he'd taken her, Gilly had felt more often like screaming than laughing. She thought hard, tears springing to her eyes, about the last time she had laughed with her children. Really laughed. It had been a long time. There had been too many days when her palms hurt from clenching her fists too hard to keep from striking out, too many nights when the last words she uttered were not “I love you,” but “for God's sake, go to sleep!”

People always vowed to change, if given a second chance. Gilly was no different, no better. She sat rigid, her back as straight as a poker, and vowed that if she was allowed to return to them, she would cherish her family as something more precious than diamonds. Later, when most of her time with Todd had begun to fade into a series of hazy memories, this moment at the kitchen table would forever stand out as clear as crystal. She wouldn't spend the rest of her life without yelling at her kids or arguing with her husband; such a thing would be impossible and impractical. But when those moments came, the times of anger and grief, it was the moment at Todd's kitchen table she always recalled, and that was usually enough to make her put out her hands and forgive.

“I know you want to hate me,” Todd said from the doorway, a fresh pack of cigarettes in one fist. “I know you want to, real bad. But admit it. You just can't.”

“You're wrong.” Her voice stuttered, giving away her emotions.

“You just ain't that hard.” Todd dismissed her protest like
it meant nothing. “And if you do hate me, it isn't because of what I done, really. It's because of what you done. So you're mad at yourself.”

His observation was the truth, but Gilly wasn't about to admit it to him. “Don't try to psychoanalyze me. You're not smart enough to get inside my head.”

He smoothed a hand through his hair. “Shit, Gilly, you seem like a sad, uptight bitch to me. Why the hell would I want to get inside your head?”

She exploded. “Just shut up!”

“Ooh.” Todd raised his hands in mock fear. “That's a smart comeback. Wish I could think of something that smart.”

Gilly left the table and stalked to the living room, but there was no place to escape him. She paced the wooden planks, wishing suddenly she smoked so she could have the comfort of a cigarette to occupy herself.

She was hard enough to hate, she thought spitefully, watching him as he set out a game of solitaire on the dining table. And she had every reason to hate him. But she also had every reason to hate herself.

Thinking of the evil he'd committed against her, holding her at knifepoint, slapping her face, should have been enough to keep the fires of her hatred burning. Gilly, however, feared that Todd was right about her. She wasn't hard enough to keep hating, not in the face of kindness and good humor. Not even when she should.

Relationships were like machines. Gears fit together, turning to make the machine work. Boss, roommate, parent, child, spouse. The cogs moved, the gears turned or stuck and needed to be oiled. Todd was none of these to her and yet there was no denying they had a relationship, and that it was as much a machine as any other. If they couldn't find some way to make
it work, it would break down. A day before, Gilly would've said without question she didn't want to make it work. Now she wasn't sure she could stop herself.

“I don't like to tell anyone,” Gilly said, “but I like to watch videos of people falling down.”

Todd sat back in the chair, cigarette dangling. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nodded.

“Well…” Todd paused as though considering this. “That
is
funny, sometimes. When someone falls. Even if they get hurt, you know, it's funny to see it happen.”

“It's wrong to laugh at someone who's hurt, but I can't help it.”

Both of Todd's eyebrows lifted. “That's messed up.”

“I know,” Gilly said, but with a sense of relief, as if she'd confessed to some sort of crime. “It's awful. I'm a terrible person.”

“Nah. Or if you are, you're not the only one,” Todd pointed out. He shuffled the cards back and forth so fast they became a blur and then again in an intricate pattern. Seeing her look, he paused. “I worked in a casino for a while, too…before.”

She wasn't surprised. She took the chair across from him. “So deal something out.”

She hated the wary way he looked at her, as though waiting for her to change her mind. Todd shuffled the cards, then caught them all in one hand to take his cigarette from his lips with the other. He tapped the cards into a tidy pile on the table.

“What do you want to play?”

“I don't care. I'm not good at anything,” Gilly said.

“I bet you're great at fifty-two pickup.”

She made a face. “Yeah, I'm also not that stupid.”

“No,” Todd said quietly. “I know you're not.”

They passed the day that way, hours of cards. He taught her games she'd never known and even a trick or two. By the end of the day, they were not friends but no longer enemies.

“W
hat's in that file you keep peeking at?” Gilly turned from where she'd been poking the woodstove to catch Todd sifting through his papers again.

“Nothing.” He wasn't in a friendly mood today, which perversely had made Gilly bright and chipper.

“Something you need to throw in the fire?” she asked suspiciously, because he seemed to keep dancing around that decision. “We could use something in there.”

“No!”

Gilly blew out a gust of air. “Sorry.”

Todd stuffed the papers back in the file and put them on top of the armoire, a gesture she could in no way misinterpret since the only way she could have reached up there was to stand on a chair. Gilly poked the logs one last time and watched them crumble into glowing ruby embers. She sat back on her heels, holding her hands out to the warmth.

“Want to play some cards again?” she asked, to make him
turn away from the window where he stared out into the darkness.

“No.”

“Best out of three…?” she began, her tone lightly teasing, in a better mood than she'd been in the weeks since he'd brought her here.

“Just shut the fuck up, okay?” Todd snapped.

Gilly wilted like a flower without water, then set her jaw. “Fine.”

Todd was agitated, rocking on the balls of his feet, lighting cigarettes from the ends of others. He shrugged into his ratty sweatshirt and pulled a large plaid hunting jacket over top. “I'm going out.”

“Out where?” Gilly got to her feet, alarmed. “It's freezing out there.”

“I've got to get out of here!” His eyes looked through her without seeing her. He took one last drag on his smoke before dropping it to the floor and stubbing it out with the toe of his boot.

Gilly recognized the edge of panic in his voice, but could not imagine what had caused it. “Todd…”

He slapped himself in the face. Gilly stopped, stunned. A runner of blood appeared at the corner of Todd's mouth, and he didn't even bother to wipe it away. He slapped the other side. His bent his head, his dark hair hanging to obscure his face.

“What's wrong with you?” This new behavior frightened Gilly more than any other had. She stepped toward him, not thinking, and grabbed his arm.

Todd flung off her touch and fled out the door. He disappeared into the night, leaving only footprints in the snow to show where he had gone. Gilly stood in the doorway, mindless
of the frigid night air against her skin for a full few minutes as she searched the darkness for him. He was gone.

Gilly shivered and went inside, closing the door behind her. The sight of Todd's blood had left her with a chill that even sitting by the fire could not chase away. What had made him do that?

Something in that ragged file of papers had upset him. She had to know what it was. Without a second thought, Gilly grabbed one of the dining table chairs and dragged it over to the huge armoire in the corner.

Someone, a long time ago, had lovingly carved the armoire to fit the cabin's corner space. The massive piece rose nearly to the ceiling, its heavy doors shielding four deep drawers and eight roomy shelves. Todd, easily taller than six-two, had no problem tucking the file away on top of the armoire, but Gilly at almost a foot shorter wasn't nearly tall enough to reach. Even with the chair, and standing on her tiptoes, she couldn't quite grab the file. She strained, fingers scrabbling, but all that happened was the chair wobbled and she nearly fell.

The door banged open, and cold air swirled in. Startled and guilty, Gilly jumped from the chair. Todd slammed the door behind him and shrugged out of his coat. He stamped the snow from his boots.

There was no hiding what she'd been doing. Gilly waited for his reaction. Todd stared at her for a long time, so long that the silence became uncomfortable and Gilly had to break it.

“You came back.”

His slanting grin lacked its usual luster. “You think I wouldn't?”

“I didn't know.” Gilly took the chair back to the table and
hung his snow-covered coat over the back of it. “Are you okay?”

“Nope,” Todd said with a trace of his former cheeriness. “But I'm used to it.”

“I can make some tea,” Gilly said, surprising herself with the offer.

She must have surprised him, as well, because he cocked his head to stare at her thoughtfully. “Thanks.”

She nodded, uncertain exactly what had passed between them but knowing something had begun to change. As she headed for the kitchen to boil water, he called after her.

“Don't look in that file,” Todd said. “There's some pretty awful shit in there. Especially for someone like you.”

Someone like her? But Gilly was afraid to ask, and so he didn't tell.