“Did . . . Blix think that was okay? You not going out?”
“Well, yes and no. She gave me the space to live my life, and I loved her for it, and when she was sick, I didn’t say ‘Go to the hospital, get your tumor looked at, let them cut you up,’ because I knew that wasn’t what she wanted to do, and why should she? And she didn’t say to me, ‘Why aren’t you trying to find art again? Why aren’t you out there working on being a social guy?’ We didn’t do that to each other. I knew why she didn’t want to turn herself over to surgeons, and she knew why I needed to mend in the quiet.”
I am having a traitorous thought. I am thinking that maybe it would have worked out better for him if, say, she had pushed him just a little, nudged him back into life. Not right away, of course—I’m sure it took everything to dislodge him from his grief and get him to move to Brooklyn. But at some point.
As if he’s reading my thoughts, he says, “Things changed after a while, though. She would come down and put on music and say it was time that we danced together. Or she’d insist that I come upstairs to her dinner parties and mingle with nice people who weren’t going to stare. People she’d probably prepared in advance. She said once—she said it was time I realized that most people are way too self-absorbed to be looking at somebody like me and thinking pitying thoughts. She said—ha! I still can’t get over this—she said that it would be such a more wonderful world if people did care enough to stare. But they don’t, she said. They’re thinking of their own lives.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Then she started in with this campaign to make me believe in love again. She claimed to have magic, and she kept saying there was love coming for me.” He wiggles his floury fingers in the air and rolls his eyes. “She and Lola were these old ladies, always trying to drag the topic over to love. Like we were in a sitcom or a happily-ever-after Disney movie. Like Beauty and the Beast! One day we had an actual serious conversation about whether or not Belle—was that her name?—yeah, whether Belle really loved the beast from the beginning or if it was just pity.” He eases the piecrust into the pie pan, turning it just so, tilting his head while he works it perfectly. “Read the text, people! It’s fear and pity. Fear and pity—how’s that as a cocktail for a doomed relationship?”
I can’t speak. I’ve put down the knife I’m scraping the carrots with, because my hands seem to be shaking.
“Anyway,” he says. “Here are the facts I’ve accepted: Anneliese will always be dead. I always will have tried to get to her in time and failed. When it really counted, I was powerless to change the outcome.” He swallows and goes silent for a moment. Then he says, “You know, I used to dream that she made the coffee and the explosion didn’t happen. Then I’d dream that the explosion happened, but that she and I weren’t there; we came back to a studio that was gone but we were safe. Then other times, I’d dream that she lived through the burns and the pain and didn’t love me anymore. So that’s my life now. I endure. I’m not waiting to die anymore, but I’ll never be the way I was before.”
My voice feels clotted over when I speak. “Do you ever go anywhere? At all?”
He swings his eyes over to me, like he’s just remembered I’m there. “Ah, goodie, another caseworker! Yes. For your information, I do. I walk sometimes at night, or I go to the twenty-four-hour gym and work out with weights in the back room in the middle of the night where no one has to see me.”
“What is this feeling about people having to see you? You’re you! You’re a person in the world, and okay, so you have scars. Does that mean people can’t look at you? Why can’t we just go somewhere you and me? In the daytime? We could take the dog for a walk maybe. We don’t have to care what people think.”
“Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? I don’t need anything that’s out there in the world. I don’t want to go fucking out. And you will find in your life that a man who lives alone with a cat doesn’t usually want to be walking a dog. What’s next is that I’m going to Wyoming, where my sister has a house in the middle of nowhere with a spare wing for me. She’s good at Scrabble and she reads books. And I get along with her fine.”
“God, Patrick, I have to say that sounds like giving up.”
“Yeah, well, I get to do that if I want to. I have the right to give up after what I went through.” He leans down and scratches Bedford’s ears. “Don’t I, boy? You want to give up, too? Is this the good boy who’d like to give up? Oh, yes you would! Oh, yes you would!”
“But isn’t there some kind of art you want to do? Maybe, okay, not sculpture, but something else? Painting? Drawing? Photography? You’re a creative guy, and you’ve convinced yourself to just shut off that whole part of your personality.”
“Wow, look at the time!” he says sarcastically.
“I know. I shouldn’t be offering any advice to anybody. Look at what a mess I’ve made of things. Also, may I just say that I think you have potential as a dog person. Just saying.”
“No. It’s cats for me. They need so little. I’m only trying to humor this mutt, with his neediness. Dogs are shameless self-promoters.”
He stretches. His shirt rides up, exposing his belly—which I can’t resist looking at. It’s all smooth, regular, unburned skin. His burns are all located on the parts of him that show.
“What I feel worst about just now is that Noah’s parents are going to have Blix’s journal,” he says, “and then they’re going to try to take her house, and that’s just what she didn’t want to happen. Just another example of powerlessness in the face of fate.”
“You know something? I don’t care if they take her house. You’re leaving, and I’m leaving.”
“You don’t mean that,” he tells me quietly. “They can’t have Blix’s house, because even if we’re not here, it has to house her spirit. It’s not meant for them.”
“No. I think her spirit is somewhere else altogether. I think it’s in the relationships she had with the people. If I have to give up on this house, then I will. I’m not going to do a whole court battle for a building I can’t even take care of.”
He looks stunned. And then I make things so much worse, because I can’t help myself—I go over to him and stand on tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek, right below his eye, where there’s the smoothest, pinkest skin. I just want to touch him.
It feels like silk. But he jerks away from my touch. He says, “No! Do not do that!”
“Does it hurt?”
“I can’t stand being pitied.”
“But I don’t pity you. Why do you have to read affection as pity? Maybe that’s what Blix was trying to tell you.” I feel myself start to cry, which is even worse than trying to touch him.
Everything’s weird after that. I’ve made the worst mess of things. He’s rattled and angry. And I’m apologetic, but nothing helps. Nothing feels right.
After he’s gone, I go in the living room, and stop beside the sculpture on the mantel. At least this is something Noah didn’t take, maybe because it’s so big. I touch its strong, deep lines, feel the taut seams underneath the welding, underneath the smoothness. Patrick made this back when he was healthy and whole. But he says he will never be that way again.
I close my eyes. Do I pity him? Am I drawn to him because of how fragile he seems?
Is it that I feel sorry for him because he’s burned and damaged?
You are okay, says a voice.
You are so meant to be where you are.
And you can love him. He is meant to be loved.
THIRTY-NINE
MARNIE