CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Breathing under Water
The sun has barely started rising when I wake up. I must have been exhausted to be able to fall asleep sitting up. At least my futon is in the couch position, and except for the fact that my legs are aching from the weight of Sabin’s head in my lap, I’m comfortable enough with my back against the mattress. I had the good sense to change out of my holiday dress clothes and into sweats and a T-shirt, so that helps. Sabe is still lightly snoring, and I gently smooth his hair away from his face as he takes a deep breath and snuggles into me, tucking his arms under my legs. Eric and Zach are unmoving, entwined next to us under the blanket that I’d tossed over them.
I rub Sabin’s back. His T-shirt is drenched in sweat, but I touch him without caring. I want him to feel, even in sleep, that I am crazy about him. I am unfailingly devoted to him.
Maybe someone else would be too disgusted with everything that he did last night to be near him, but I’m not. I know that he should never have touched me the way that he did. I hate that he forced that unwanted kiss on me and that he violated the safe friendship we have, but I forgive him. Easily. The way that he lashed out, the way he did what he could to push me—push all of us—away was a test. He was trying to prove that we would leave him.
None of us will do that. That’s why we are all here together—because you don’t run after devastation. You stay and hold one another close. At least, that’s what you’re supposed to do, I’m learning.
I kiss my fingertips and touch them to his forehead before wiping the clammy sweat from his brow. My phone vibrates next to me. Funny how I keep it close to me at all times as though I am always waiting for … I don’t know what. Something. I take it from the bed and read the text.
Good morning, sunshine.
I look to Estelle’s bed. Chris is sitting up as I am, with Estelle sleeping across his lap. He is caring for her the way that I’m caring for Sabin. He looks as wiped out as I surely do, but he also looks peaceful. I give him a small wave. He gets that adorable half smile that I love so much and sends me another text.
Sorry about last night. Probably not the way to finish a holiday.
I write back. Ending the day with a giant fight? It’s a classic. Well done to all of us.
He shakes his head as he types. I’m sorry. For so many things.
It takes me a minute to respond to this. You only have one thing to be sorry for, I write back. I pause before I finish my thought, and I know he is watching me. Don’t ever say that I’m too good for you. Say, “Not now.” Say, “Maybe never.” But don’t ever say that shit again.
I meet his eyes and wait until the smile reappears and he mouths okay to me.
Despite the nature of last night’s mess, one thing has become crystal clear to me overnight: I have never felt as close to anyone as I do to Chris. It is not from the amount of time we have spent together, but from the strength of the unquestionable bond we share.
Gently, I move Sabin off my lap and ease my body between his and the Zach/Eric lump. I take my robe, a towel, a change of clothes, and my bath basket. I motion to Chris and, although he looks questionably at me, he eases out from under Estelle, setting her head on a pillow.
Wordlessly, he follows me down the hall and around the corner to the bathroom. I leave the lights off and hang my towel on the hook outside of the shower stalls and set the basket on the floor of the shower. I turn the water on and then step into him.
It doesn’t matter that we both are covered in the stench of last night’s war. He holds me, his hands cradling my waist while I tuck my arms against his chest and rest my head against him.
“If anything had happened to you last night …” Chris does not move; he just keeps me in his arms, protected.
“Nothing was going to happen. You were there.”
We stand together in the mist that emanates from the shower. The wine is out of my system, my thoughts are clear, and I am hit with the enormity of the impact this family is having in my life. They, and mostly Chris, are saving me. Or teaching me to save myself. He is my port in the storm, and that’s why I feel comfortable with what I’m going to do. Chris is going to have to be strong, but I have hope that the story I’m about to tell him will help me, free me even. He is the one person with whom I will remember what I have forgotten.
I pull from his arms just a bit. “I want to tell you about the fire. About how my parents died. And I need to … to wash it away while I tell it.”
He rests his head on top of mine. “Blythe. This is what you want?”
“I have to get this out. If I can tell someone, maybe …”
“I understand,” he says.
“You’re the only person I can do this with.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am. Are you? You have to be sure, too. I’m going to have a meltdown; I know that much. So I need to know that you can … that you can tolerate this. I’m asking a lot.”
“Anything you need.”
The clearest memories of the fire that I’ve ever had happened while I was with Chris, the day I met him at the lake. Before that, I’d only had flashes of images, but images without a sequence. I hope that telling my story to him, with him, will help me put together the pieces. Remember a more complete version. If I can get this, maybe I can heal.
I start to slip my shirt over my head, but Chris takes over before it’s off. Because of this, I know that he is really going to be with me and not just act as a witness. Together we push down my sweatpants, and I step out of them. I may be standing in front of him in only my bra and underwear, but I’m not self-conscious at all. This isn’t about sex or lust. It’s about closeness, and safety, and purging myself of the night when my life fell to shit.
I push the shower curtain aside and start to step in. I can’t look at him now.
“You’ll stay?”
“Always,” he says.
“You don’t have to say anything. Just stay.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
He leans one hand against the tile outside of the shower as I move under the water with my back to him. I hear the sound of the shower rings as they slide back, closing me in. I feel myself shutting down, something that I need to do if I’m going to start this story.
I put my face under the showerhead and loosen my hair from my ponytail. I wait until I am drenched, until the little clothing I’m wearing is clinging to my skin.
I turn around so my back is to the water and, speaking very slowly, start.
“It’s a really simple story. I don’t know why I’ve never told it. Maybe there was no one to tell. I don’t even remember all of it. Is that normal? The days right before and after are gone. And what I do have from that night is patchy and messy.” I place one hand on the wall next to me because I can feel that I am already getting unsteady. “It was summer, and we were all at a vacation house on the ocean for a couple of weeks. My parents and my brother and I. Mom and Dad had just bought a house about an hour away, where we were going to spend summers. The owners were still in that house, though, so we had to rent this other place for a little while. Pretty cool that my parents could take summers off work, right? We went boating, and swimming, and fishing. We played all those stupid board games that you find in summerhouses. Sorry, and Scrabble, and that shit. I hate those games, but they’re fun with the right people, and my family was the ‘right people.’ James and I would swing in the hammock on the porch and read thrillers out loud to each other, seeing who could give the most dramatic delivery.” I sigh. “Sometimes we’d all go clamming at low tide.
“The reason we were at that house is my fault.” This is the first of my confessions. “I chose it. You know how lots of vacation houses have silly names, like … Oh, I don’t know. The Captain’s Lodge, or Rising Tide, or whatever. I liked the name of the house. For the life of me, I can’t f*cking remember what it was. I’ve tried and tried because I feel like that’s important to know, but the name won’t come back to me. I’m sure I could find out easily enough, but I don’t want to be told. I should know it.
“I do know that I chose the house from a list my parents printed out. It was an old house. Wood everywhere. Gorgeous, knotty wood on the floors and the walls. Beams that ran across the ceilings. A fireplace downstairs. James and I had really nice small rooms on the first floor right across the hall from each other. The beds had awesome carved headboards and big quilts. The master bedroom was upstairs on the backside of the house, and it had a view of the trees and the water. I’m sure it was …” My arms are trembling now, and I lean my head against the tile for more support. “The house had a special feel to it. Everything felt perfect that summer. Too perfect.
“I can see now that the house was probably not very well maintained, and it apparently wasn’t up to any kinds of safety codes. The irony is that because of that neglect the house had character. I guess that’s what I found romantic—that it was this classic-looking beach house off in the woods, near the water, and pretty much isolated. It wasn’t easy to get to. To get there, you had to drive down a skinny dirt road that wound over bumpy terrain and was hardly the width of one car. Our house was the last one on this poor excuse for a road, but that was good because it was really private and quiet. Anyway, we were there because of the choice that I made and because it was more affordable than the new house James wanted to rent. He didn’t hold that against me, though. Even when we got there and found out the hot water heater was crappy and there was no dishwasher or washing machine. The freezer barely worked, so we kept a cooler out on the deck, and every day we’d add another bag of ice to it.
“None of us cared about living like that, though. We all thought it was fun. But we should have stayed at the house James had picked out.
Next confession. “One afternoon—the afternoon—James and I went out together to get seafood because we wanted to make our parents dinner. You know, lobsters, steamers, mussels, the works. I don’t remember the first part of that day, for some reason. It’s like it didn’t happen, just like pieces of the other days around the fire are also missing. It bothers me that I don’t have the memories. They seem meaningful in some way; I feel it, even though that makes no sense. But … Anyway, I know that I went out with my brother. I remember that James wanted to drive. He didn’t have his license or even his permit, but he was such a charmer that I caved and let him drive. It’s fun to teach someone how to drive, but he was the worst driver ever. He kept grinding the gears and really f*cked up my parents’ car, because after we’d bought out our favorite seafood shack, the car died on the dirt road before we got to the house. It made a totally shittastic noise and just stopped. I’m sure there was probably something else wrong with it already, but James’s driving really finished it off. I should have driven because then the car would not have been blocking the road. That might have helped things in the end.”
I rub my hands over my arms and shoulders, feeling a chill despite the warmth of the shower.
“So we left the car where it was and came home and had a spectacular dinner with my parents. The smell of everything boiling in the pots was so good. That salty, sweet ocean smell that fills the house. I love that. And we said good night normally. Just, you know, ‘Good night. Love you.’ Very casual and ordinary, done without any real thought.” I am trembling as my voice rises. “Because who the f*cking hell says good night to her parents thinking she should say something meaningful because they might be burned to all shit later that night? I didn’t know! I didn’t know!”
I hit my fist against the wall and start to cry.
“I’m right here, Blythe.” Chris says. His voice is steady, gentle. “Do you want to stop?”
He pulls me back enough that I am stabilized again. “No.” I want to keep going. I can talk through tears. I know how to do that well.
“That night, it was cold, I remember, and my parents lit a fire in the woodstove in their room upstairs. The pipe was no good. The metal …” I am breathing hard, starting to gasp for air. “There was a crack in the metal pipe. I don’t know what it’s called. That black metal tube that is supposed to make woodstoves safe. But it was cracked, and the heat from the fire wasn’t contained.
“Know what most of the house was insulated with? What was inside the walls? Newspaper. F*cking newspaper. Who in God’s name does that?
“When I woke up, my room was filled with smoke. It was so dark, and I could hardly see, so I didn’t get what was happening at first. The smell. Oh, the smell. It filled my mouth … and swamped my lungs in seconds.” I turn my body so that my face is in the water, and I grab the shower handle. I hold my breath because I am remembering that I couldn’t breathe then, so I feel like I shouldn’t breathe now. I wait until I am light-headed before my instincts win and I take in air. “I turned on my cell so that I could see … and it … threw blue light into the smoke, and I could see through the haze to the door. Nothing looked right. The hall had even more smoke than my room, and I could feel the heat.”
It’s as if I am back there in the hall, with the crackling sounds, and the atrocious smell, and the belief that death is closing in.
“I couldn’t think logically, but I could feel terror. I could … smell it. I couldn’t have gone into the living room if I’d wanted to because … because the smoke was too thick that way. It was happening too fast, and I couldn’t make it slow down so that I could think. No smoke alarms were going off, so I couldn’t understand how there could be a fire. It seems stupid, but I wondered if it was something else. Like a bomb. I couldn’t make sense of it. Honestly, I don’t remember deciding what to do. I just moved. I didn’t even scream. I don’t think … I don’t think that I made any sound at all.” I’m choking now as the words tumble out. “I had my hand over my mouth. So dumb. That wasn’t going to help. But I left my room because I had to get to James. That was the only clear thought I had. It wasn’t even really a thought. It was a … a drive. I kicked my foot out and got his door open. He was still in bed, nearly unconscious. I couldn’t get him to move. I may have … I think that I yelled at him, but I’m not sure. James wouldn’t get up. He just wouldn’t get up. He was so heavy, and I wasn’t strong enough. But I tried. God, I tried with everything I had in me, and then somehow I had him half off the bed, and then I saw the fire.”
I can feel my pulse starting to pound and my anxiety escalate as the trauma sears through me again in a fresh, torturous way. Part of me understands that I am in a shower, in a full-blown panic. That I’m having some sort of quickly escalating anxiety episode. But I cannot stop it, and I don’t want to. I want to be telling this nightmare and getting it out of me. I barely recognize my own voice as I sputter and cough out the garbled words.
“The color is bouncing off the wall in the hall … and I know, I know … I know it is coming for us.”
Chris rips open the shower curtain and catches me with one arm as I drop. There is so much steam in the shower now that I can barely see as he turns the shower handle. “Too hot, baby,” he says with more control and calm than the situation warrants.
It takes me a minute to understand that we are now sitting on the floor of the shower. He is behind me. I know the feel of his chest against my back, and part of me is comforted, even while most of me is spinning out of control. He reaches up and lowers the water temperature more. I look down and see that my stomach, my thighs, my arms are scarlet. I have nearly scalded my whole body with hot water.
“F*ck, Blythe,” Chris murmurs. I hear fear in his voice, but he doesn’t let me go. He pulls my head back from the stream of water and pushes the hair from my eyes. I am sobbing now, and he lets me cry.
“I’m here, and I’ve got you.” Then a few minutes later, when my crying has not lessened, “I think you should stop. You’ve told me enough for now.”
Even though I am drowning in water and fire right now, I let out a loud protest and shake my head back and forth so hard that he agrees to let me finish.
“You have to promise me you’ll breathe.”
“I … can’t.” I can’t breathe, I can’t even see properly. The only thing that I can see is the blood that I know is coming. And the screaming.
“Yes, you can. And you will.” This is not a suggestion. It’s a deal breaker. “Breathe with me.”
I am struggling terrifically for air. Because there is none. All I can taste is smoke.
“Feel me.” He inhales, and his chest presses into me. “Breathe,” he tells me. “Breathe with me.”
I feel the rise and fall of his chest, and I breathe as he does. His arms are around me, but he’s gentle, careful not to add to my suffocation. It is only now that I notice he is still in his clothes, his jeans now waterlogged and nearly black.
I keep breathing.
“There you go. Good girl.”
Slowly, my body cools down. But my mind is still there in the heat and the smoke. I am going to get through this, because even in the state I am in, I can feel how important this is for me.
“I see the fire, and I know I’m not strong enough to move James very far by myself when he’s unconscious. But I have to. I can’t even open the window. It’s jammed. Everything in the house is broken, and suddenly that matters. It’s not fun anymore. Because I can’t get the f*cking window open … Oh God, Chris, I can’t open the window. There’s a lamp on the table next to the bed, and I take it and smash the shit out of the window. And I’m bleeding. My arm is pouring out blood, and for this one second I think that is good because it means I am alive. I am still real.”
“It’s not happening now. Blythe, you’re here with me.”
I see that I have started telling this story in the present tense, but I cannot stop.
“I can feel the cold air hit me and it means freedom, but there’s no time because it’s coming for us. It’s coming for us.” I hear Chris inhale and exhale loudly in my ear, reminding me to breathe. To live through this.
So I do.
“I take the quilt from his bed. It’s one of those patchwork quilts, and I’m seeing all the colors and patterns. And there are pictures. These stupid pictures that make me so angry. How can I be looking at fabric animals, and trees, and flowers when I am bleeding and James can’t f*cking move and we are going to die because I’m not strong enough?”
Chris takes my clenched hands into his, and I dig my fingers into his skin.
Now another confession. Or, rather, a series of them. “I spend too much time looking at this quilt because it’s so normal while everything else is not normal. But I toss it into the window to cover the glass. I don’t do a good job. I don’t pay attention. James is so heavy, and I don’t know how, but I manage to kneel down next to the bed, and I pull him onto my back. I get us to the window, and I have to push my brother through. That’s when he really wakes up, and he wakes up … he wakes up screaming. I’m hurting him so much. Too much. He’s stuck and I can’t f*cking get him out. I have to because the fire is almost on us. I don’t look behind me because then I’ll really know just how close it is. James is hanging out of the window, and so I just … push him as hard as I can.
“And the sound he makes … the sound …” I am sobbing hard again now. It’s as though James is right here, and I am hurting him all over. “Chris, it’s too hot. I’m too hot. Make it stop.”
I am escalating again, faster than I can manage. My legs are quivering, my whole body starting to shake. Chris reaches up and slams the faucet so that the water is as cold as he can get it. He moves his hands to my legs, trying to hold me steady, and I do my best to focus on the feel of him against my skin. The cold water is pouring over us, but it’s not enough to put out the fire.
“His leg is stuck in the window. On a big shard of glass. I push James’s body out, and I can feel the rip. Oh, I can feel that I’m … that … I am tearing him apart, but I don’t know what else to do, and there is no one to help me. I have never been this alone. Finally, he is through. Outside, I hear him screaming and coughing. The noise is more than I can stand, and I almost don’t go out the window myself because I don’t want to get closer to that sound. But then I see the fire. Without even turning my head, I can see the fire that is going to engulf me. So I get out. Somehow I get out, and I fall … I fall into his blood. My brother’s blood … is … everywhere.”
“Jesus, Blythe.” Chris runs his hands up and down my legs, then up to my arms, reminding me that I am here with him. That I am not in that house, that I am not drenched in blood.
“I crawl to him and drag him away from the burning house. The screaming does not stop. I take him as far as I can, and I have to stop and wipe my hands on my shirt because … because I can’t hold on to him. My hands are covered in blood. I don’t know if the blood is his or mine, but it is all over us, and my hands are too slippery to hold him.” I shiver against Chris now.
“Do you want the water warmer?” he whispers.
I nod over and over.
“I keep wiping my hands, but I can’t get the blood off, and it’s impossible to get us away from the house fast enough. Far enough. I’m not going to be able to move James.” My voice is broken with terror. “You have to get the blood off me. Then I can help him. You have to get the blood off.” I lunge for my bottle of soap, but I’m shaking so much that it’s impossible for me to open it.
Chris takes the bottle from my hand and pours soap into his.
“Get it off me! Get it off me!” I am panicked and out of my mind. I know that. “Please, Chris.”
He washes my palms and fingers first—so that I can save James—and doesn’t stop until my shaking begins to lessen. His hands go everywhere, covering my body with soap, and I watch while he washes invisible blood from my skin. As I lean to the side and dry heave, Chris’s hands don’t leave my shoulders. I reach for the walls and, with his help, weakly push myself to a stand. “My hair. There is blood in my hair,” I tell him. My throat is sore and my stomach still rolling.
“I get James down the dirt road to the car and turn around. I see the house. It’s just … kindling that is going to be gone in seconds. I can’t believe how fast it’s burning.” Now my memories yield perhaps the worst confession. “And it is only now that the sirens start. And it is only now that I think about my parents.”
My knees give out, and Chris catches me for the second time today. He turns me to him, and for the first time since this started, I look at him. I am back in the here and now. I am not there anymore. I don’t know which is worse.
“Why, Chris? Why didn’t I think about them until then? I forgot them? I f*cking forgot them!” The absolute atrocity of this consumes me. My eyes ache, and the tears are stinging and painful, but they don’t stop. “What the f*ck is wrong with me? How did I forget them?” I am pounding my hands into his chest.
He wraps his hands around my wrists and holds me still so that I’ll hear him. “You didn’t forget them. You didn’t forget them, Blythe.”
He’s right.
I didn’t forget them.
I can’t say it, but he does. “You knew they were dead. When you went for James, you knew they were already dead. The fire was that bad.”
“Yes.” Later, when I can talk again, when I am buried into the wet T-shirt that covers his chest and the crying has subsided, I tell him the end. Drained and exhausted, I can now finish this story more rationally and calmly. “I went back to the house anyway. I left James bleeding in the dirt by the car, and I went back. I remembered that there was a ladder by the side of the house. I found it and stood it up.”
I feel his hands against my head as he starts to wash my hair. He is gentle, but he makes sure to get out the imaginary blood because he knows that I need it gone.
“Because my left arm was so f*cked up, I couldn’t get the ladder to extend at first. Then finally I made it work, and I walked up to the house. It was just … it was all flames. But I had it in my head that I’d just … what? Climb up and tell my parents to jump out to safety? I wasn’t thinking. I just kept moving. So I found a section of the house on the first floor, under one of the windows to their bedroom, where there weren’t any flames, and the house still looked like a house. I leaned the ladder against it. I started climbing up, and the metal was heating up under my hands, so that just made me climb faster. I don’t remember where I was looking. If I was looking up to their room, or at my feet that were somehow moving, or at the ground. My vision was messed up. Probably from the smoke. I think that I only got up a few rungs of the ladder. Couldn’t have been more than eight steps up. I found out later that I had stopped moving. I was just standing on the ladder while the fire was working its way down to me.”
I can see again. I feel like me again.
I almost manage a smile. “And then he saved my life.”
“A firefighter showed up,” Chris says. He tips my head back and rinses the shampoo.
“No,” I say. “He wasn’t a firefighter. From what I understand, because we were in the middle of nowhere, and the roads there were such a nightmare, it took forever for the trucks to get to us. They had to park at the top of the dirt road and send a water truck of some sort down to the house. And James and I had left the car blocking the road, and the EMTs had to get James out of the way before they could move the car. I remember hearing a huge crash. I didn’t know it at the time, but they drove the water truck into the car and pushed it the rest of the way down the road. It would have saved time if I hadn’t let James drive that day. The car wouldn’t have blocked their way. Maybe something would have been different.”
“No,” Chris tells me. “The fire was moving too fast, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Yes, you are. Think, Blythe. You said it yourself. The house was basically a pre-made bonfire waiting for a spark. The house was virtually gone when you woke up.”
I nod cautiously.
“There was nothing you could have done that would have made them get to you faster.”
I nod again.
“Do you believe that?” he asks.
I’m not sure, so I tell the one part of this story that I cling to and that I have always remembered well. “I was on the ladder when I felt this huge arm fly around my waist. He lifted me so effortlessly … and then threw us both onto the ground. I landed hard on top of him, and I saw the ladder fall forward into the fire as the side of the house collapsed.” I can breathe freely now as I recount the only moment of salvation in the otherwise unrelenting tragedy. “He’s the only reason that I’m alive. He wasn’t a firefighter. Just some guy in regular clothes. Probably renting one of the houses near ours.”
I don’t tell Chris about how that man’s face is embedded in my memory. The small scar above his eyebrow, the gray around his hairline, and the sharp jawline that added to his overwhelming aura of fortitude. Nor how this man scooped me up from the ground and ran with me in his powerful arms, taking me away from hell. About how I didn’t take my eyes off him while I continued to cough and reach for air as he got me to the ambulance. And how he stopped me from kicking and fighting the medics when I became wild to know if James was dead or alive and helped me to calm down and breathe into the oxygen mask after telling me that James was on his way to the hospital. That I’d see James there.
These are details that I keep to myself.
“Someone came to help me,” I say. “I wasn’t alone. Even in the chaos of the sirens and shouting, I could easily hear my savior as he told me that I was safe. He said to me, You are safe, sweet girl. Over and over he said that. You are safe, you are safe, you are safe, sweet girl. Twenty times he told me that. I counted. Finally, I wasn’t alone anymore. Ironic, though, because after that night, I became lonelier than I could have imagined. Everybody left me. All my friends, my parents’ friends, nobody knew what to do or how to act around me, and so they left. But I never wanted to die. Not that night, not even after. That one man, that heroic man, saved me.”
Chris smoothes his hands over my shoulders and down my arms. Then puts a finger under my chin and lifts my face to his. “And so he saved me, too.”
For just a moment, he brushes his lips against mine. I stand on my tiptoes and throw my arms around his neck, surprised that I have the strength left to hold him this tightly. I don’t know how to thank him for what he just did for me, for what he let me unleash, so I just hold him.
I think he knows what this means to me.
“You were very brave,” Chris says. “That day and today. And you are safe, sweet girl.”