BIG E FLIPS THE PAGES OF AN ARTICLE WITH VIVID, glossy pictures of forest fires, and also of the people who fight them. They’re determined looking and ash covered.
“Tell me,” he says, pointing to a photo of a man posing next to a helicopter. “Do you think he cheats on his taxes?”
I lean over for a closer look. “He does seem angry.”
“Hmmm,” says Big E. “Maybe that’s what I’m picking up. This is what a law career will do to you. You never trust anyone.”
“Does it matter? If your mountain’s in flames, he’s there. Honest or not.”
Big E nods. “I’ve known enough FDNY guys in my time. They have it where it counts.”
He gets a faraway look that’s not directed at the TV, so he must be thinking. Maybe about the “time” he mentioned, or about the firefighters he’s met. There must be a lot of characters in his past. My own grandparents were all gone by the time I was eight, so I never got a chance to mine their memories for interesting stories and people. I know Max would tell me not to waste my efforts on this one, but I can’t help it.
“Have you ever been in a fire?” I ask. It’s the first Thought Worm to squiggle loose.
“No. Can’t say that I have. My mother survived the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, though. When I was a kid, I heard about it so much that it felt like it had happened to me, too.”
I look at Big E’s legs under the blanket, his feet in socks, looking so useless they might as well be flippers.
“What would you do if there were a fire in this apartment?” I blurt out. “If nobody could help you, would you try to escape?”
Big E looks at me. Confused or amused, I can’t tell.
“Or would you just be all, Okay, I’m old and this is a good way to go. Then you’d, like, inhale lots of smoke on purpose or drop out the window.”
He stares at me for a few more moments, and I’m not sure if I should have kept my mouth shut for once, but he throws his head back and laughs.
“You’re priceless!” he says.
“Just very, very curious. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. And don’t stop being curious, even when it pisses people off.”
“Okay.”
“So tell me more about you. What’s your situation? You still have time left at school?”
Time left, like a prison sentence. “Yes. Officially.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I have one last semester. I’m hoping to find a way to do it without actually going back.” Suddenly, it’s all spilling out. “I spent the last few months in a study abroad program and it was amazing and I kind of want to keep that up somehow and also live here in the city with my brother. Independent study and the GED, that kind of thing.”
I gulp a breath. All that sharing was unexpected, but it’s happened before. I realize that I hadn’t yet spoken my plan aloud. Now it has depth and dimension. It’s not just a Thought Worm any longer.
Big E gets a faraway expression on his face.
“You march to your own drummer,” he says.
“Sometimes down a dark alley, but yeah.”
He laughs. “Still priceless! You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.”
My turn to laugh. “It’s not as much fun as it sounds.”
“Maybe not now. But in retrospect, it will be.”
I start to reply If you say so then remember the new Big E rules.
“You’re probably full of it, but thanks.”
Big E nods as if this was a completely acceptable response, then turns his head toward the blank TV. At that moment, it makes a robotic I’m awake! noise and the lights come back on. Now there’s a talking CNN anchor on the screen. She instantly sucks up Big E’s attention.
I go to the kitchen, where Max is looking at me with big round eyes.
“Did you hear our conversation?” I ask.
He nods. “I’ve never been able to talk to him like that. About that kind of stuff.”
“Well, maybe now you can.”
“Maybe. But you . . .”
Max pauses, and the expression on his face is a little bit wonder and a little bit gratitude. He looks straight into me. I’m not sure I like it (but I let him keep looking).
Finally I say, “I should head back to Emerson’s.”
Max pauses, and we listen to the refrigerator hum. I’m getting the feeling he doesn’t want me to go. I’m getting the feeling I don’t want me to go. And what will we tell Jamie about me sleeping over? This is all bad.
Then Max says, “We have some snow stuff you can borrow. I’ll walk you back.”
It’s not a question or even a suggestion. Which means I don’t have to think/overthink it, it’s just pure, unfiltered information I’m supposed to accept.
Max delivers Big E’s breakfast to him, then comes back and motions for me to follow, leading us to a closed door at the very end of the long hall. His hand hovers over the doorknob for a moment, curled into the right shape but not touching it yet. Then he grabs and turns quickly. We step inside the room, where there’s a huge bed with a carved headboard, flowery sheets, and about seventeen pillows. It looks like the kind of bed you’d find in a fairy tale, untouched and waiting for a lost princess to return.
“My grandparents’ room,” says Max. “Check this out.”
He opens another door to the biggest closet I’ve ever seen. This closet I could sleep in, and maybe even host a party.
The walls are lined with racks of shoes and purses. Sensible pumps and crocodile bags. Coordinated dress suits hang from the rods. Max scans one wall, then another, then finds what he’s looking for on a bottom shelf. He grabs and holds them out triumphantly toward me.
Snow boots with a faux fur lining. At least, I hope it’s faux.
“This was all your grandmother’s?” I ask, taking the boots.
“She had it going on,” he says simply, his eyes traveling along the rods of hanging clothes. Finally, he reaches into one spot and pulls out a snowsuit. Like the kind a little kid would wear, but obviously bigger (although not by much). It’s hot pink with white stripes down the sleeves.
“Um . . . ,” is what I say.
“This should fit you,” says Max, pushing it toward me.
“Um . . . ,” I repeat.
“What’s the problem? Nanny wore this to ski. In Europe! It’s like, couture snow gear.”
“I’d feel really weird wearing your late grandmother’s stuff.” Weird is only the tip of the iceberg.
“Weird is better than freezing and wet. There’s two feet of snow out there. I’m going to find something, too.”
I take the snowsuit in my other hand and follow Max back into the room. As he rummages in another, similarly cavernous closet on the opposite wall, I look around. Every flat surface is covered with framed family photos.
“When was the last time your grandfather slept in here?” I ask.
“Not sure,” says Max from the closet. “Way before my grandmother died. When his back and hips got bad, it hurt him to sleep lying down.”
“Like the Elephant Man,” I say, then totally regret it, but I hear him chuckle.
When Max emerges, he’s holding a navy blue snowsuit. With white stripes down the sleeves. It matches the one I have.
“I’ve only seen these outfits in photos. They’re so much more awesome in person.”
“Awesome is not the word I’d choose,” I say. Max just smiles.
We leave the room and Max carefully closes the door, hermetically resealing the room into its timeless bubble. I go into Aunt Suze’s room to change. Half of me still can’t believe I’m putting this stuff on, but the other half likes the game of it. It feels like part of Erica’s dare.
“Check the dresser for socks,” Max calls from somewhere.
Sure enough, there are huge striped knee-high socks in the dresser. The snowsuit and boots are a little small, but nothing I can’t deal with.
I step into the hallway and there’s Max. It’s really something.
“You look like a cross between a superhero and the world’s tallest two-year-old boy,” I say.
“And you look like Aspen Barbie.”
“Then we’re set.”
We go downstairs and outside. The first big snow of the season always reminds me of things I’ve forgotten: that when it dumps nearly two feet in twelve hours, cars are not cars anymore but big ivory shapes in the landscape that look like they’ve been there since Stonehenge. The trees are dipped in white cake icing. Max takes in the altered city around us and I wonder if he thinks what I think: that it doesn’t seem quite real, all quiet and monochromatic like this.
Max steps over the mountain ridge of snow to the street. It’s been plowed, but there’s still enough snow on the pavement to make driving hazardous, and walking only slightly less so. But the sidewalk, or at least the area where I know the sidewalk should be, is completely impassable. Max offers his hand to help me over the ridge and I take it. As I go, I catch my foot. He steadies me. Then I’m on the other side and upright and really happy I’m wearing these boots and don’t even care if it is real fur.
We walk one, two, then three and four steps holding hands. Who’s supposed to let go first?
On the fifth step, Max lets go of my hand and we begin to trudge up Park. The MetLife Building glows in the distance behind us, lit up even though it’s not even eight in the morning. The Christmas trees lining the strip down the center of the avenue are dark, though. So are the traffic lights.
“Power must be out in this whole area,” says Max.
A single, brave (or stupid) cab makes its way slowly downtown. At the same time, a snowplow truck is lumbering toward Park from Eighty-Third Street. Max looks at one, then the other, then walks farther into the intersection.
“Watch out!” I yell.
He steps hesitantly at first, then more confidently. When he gets to a spot in the middle of Park, he holds up both hands: one to the cab, one to the plow. Both vehicles slowly come to a halt. Max looks at me.
“The plow first!” I shout. He nods, then motions for the plow to move forward, stepping out of the way to let it pass. The driver actually tips his hat to Max as he goes by. Now the cab continues on its way, but the driver doesn’t look at either of us.
We’re so busy feeling proud of this traffic control that neither of us sees the other cab.