CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Saving Graces
Zach and I don’t talk for most of the ride home. I haven’t told him about Chris’s father. I just can’t. The devastation and confusion are too great. For now, this knowledge is solely mine, and I’m not ready to change that yet. One of the things that I love about Zach is that he respects boundaries the way that I do, so he does not press me despite the obvious fact that I am in shock. I do, however, say firmly, “I can fix this. I can get them back. I just need to think.” He doesn’t question me, but just nods, continuing to hide behind his sunglasses as we drive. We stop at a convenience store for gas and something to eat. Both of us are sick to our stomachs, but we agree that some food might help. I scan the drink cases, unable to decide—nothing could possibly sit well. Then I smile and reach for an orange soda.
At the house, I walk through the living room past James, Estelle, and Chris, who have returned from the hospital, and go up to my bedroom. I need quiet. I sit on the side of the bed, the bed that I share with Chris, and stare at my reflection in the dresser-top mirror. I can’t decide if I still look like a kid or if I look like a woman. I’m at a funny in-between stage. Perhaps I should see myself as younger simply due to my age, but what I’ve been through makes me feel older. It’s not an uncomfortable thought being totally grown up. I like who I am, who I’ve grown into. Had I not lived through the fire and through the aftermath, I might like myself less. I am affected by my past, just as everyone is, and being able to embrace that centers me. That strength and stability is going to help me today.
What am I going to say to Chris? I’ve had a long drive to process things, but I’m still missing a piece of our story. I know it. The quilt is cool against my skin when I lie down on the bed, and I tuck my knees up into my chest while I try to digest all that has happened over the past twenty-four hours. Too much. A massive storm of information has engulfed me, as I knew it would. That’s how a storm with such power happens; you sense the build and darkness, you prepare as much as possible, you do what you can to get through it even as it devastates your entire world. Whatever you do, however much you brace yourself, you will still be caught up in forces that you cannot control. So the question is how to navigate through the chaos. It takes thought and trust and serenity.
Later I get up and pace. I’m close. I have the answer right here, if I could just … I sit up slowly and look to my dresser. The sea urchin that Chris gave me so long ago sits in the center. I pick it up gently and rub my fingers over it. He said this belonged to me, and I felt that to be true also. Neither of us had a reason, but it simply felt so right that questioning it was not a priority. That’s how it has always been with him. The natural, instinctual flow between us has always felt so right. Now I am sensing that our connection is even deeper than I have previously imagined. I start to roll the sea urchin back and forth from one hand to the other. Think. Think.
As it turns upside down in my palm, I stop. I’d never noticed that there is a small circular disc on the bottom of the sea urchin. After some gentle prodding, I get it off. The porcelain figure is hollow, and something is stuffed inside, presumably to protect the fragile piece from breaking. I remove a wad of faded red fabric. I put down the sea urchin and hold up the scrap of cotton. I have flashes of memory, sensory input from this small bit of old fabric that triggers emotion and, minutes later, images. Then I know what it is. I know the color and texture very well.
My heart nearly stops.
I squeeze my hand around it as I walk from my room into Chris’s. Ignoring my general high regard for privacy, especially Christopher’s, I begin frantically rooting through his dresser and his closet. It’s got to be here. He must have it.
It is an hour later that Chris appears in the doorway to my room. “Blythe?”
I am sitting on the floor while tears cascade down my cheeks. I am not sad; I am just overwhelmed. I don’t know how to explain this to him because I cannot explain it to myself. I look up at the person whom I love more than anything in the world.
“Blythe, what are you doing?” He kneels down in front of me.
I can’t speak. There is no way to begin.
“Sabin is all right,” he says. “He’s going to rehab. The hospital staff is very nice here, and they’re helping us find a good place. He’d like for you to call him later.”
I nod. “Of course. I’m relieved he’s okay.”
Chris fiddles with his watch so that he doesn’t have to look at me. “We’re going to pack up today. Probably leave tomorrow.”
“No,” I say clearly. “No you’re not. You are not ending things between us. You are not ending us.”
“I need to. I can’t do this with you. It’s too much.” He stands.
“You’ve said that before, but I’m not going to accept it this time. You don’t know what you’re saying, and you’re not being fair to me.”
“Look, the things you think you love about me? You shouldn’t. Not really. My … past. It’s part of me; it affects everything that I do in the most fucked up way. You think that I’m strong; you love that I take care of you. But I’m only like that because of what happened. I was forced to become bulletproof and competent because I faced complete insanity. That competence and diligence that you get off on is tainted. Jesus, even in bed. You like how I am with you. I’m … controlling. I’m in charge a lot. You even said it to me, that I don’t like to be out of control. See? How am I supposed to be who you want when you know why I am the way I am? It’s not real strength.” His voice shakes. “Every part of me is affected. It’s why I left you in the first place, why I ran to someone safe. Because you can’t possibly deal with what a fucking disaster I’m bound to be. You know all that. So you should know that I’m not good for you or for anyone. I have done everything wrong so far. Everything. I’ll end up destroying you the way I’ve destroyed everything and everyone. The only smart thing that I can do now is to leave.”
“Stop it. Just stop it!” I’m angry now. “Don’t you ever talk about yourself like that, and you don’t you dare presume to tell me why I love you. Give me more fucking credit than that. You got yourself, and your brothers and sister through the unimaginable. And you got me through my own nightmare. I love you for so many reasons, but I don’t love you because of those reasons. I love you simply because I do. And that’s it. That’s the only goddamn thing that matters. I love every single part of you. So, no, Christopher, no. We are not over. And I can prove to you why.” I stand up, using the bed for support. I am shaky, but I am also clearheaded. “I want to show you something. I need you to trust me. Can you do that? Just for a minute.”
Chris looks so tremendously sad, but he nods.
“I’m going to fix this. I’m going to make this okay.” I don’t know if I’m talking more to him or to myself, but I am trying hard to believe in what I am going to show him and tell him.
I stand him with his back to my dresser. “Just stay there. Don’t move.” I take the lightweight full-length mirror from the other side of the room and lean it against the bed so that it reflects into the mirror across from it. I stand in front of him and take his face in my hands. I lift up and kiss him softly. He doesn’t kiss me back because, I’m guessing, he feels broken and unworthy of anything even close to love. I can’t stand that. As I lift the bottom hem of his shirt up, he tries to stop me, but I brush him away. “Trust me.” Chris lets me raise his shirt. I move my left arm under his right and set my forearm on his back, angled up to meet the other hand that goes over his shoulder. “Look in the mirror.” I hold him tightly, close my eyes and wait. “It’s okay.”
In a few seconds, I feel him tense. His panic sets in. I know how this feels from him because of the many nights that he has awoken me with his nightmares. It was disconcerting for me when I saw this, but for him it is terrifying because it defies how he makes sense of the world. There is no logic or explanation to this and I know that he’s scared.
“Breathe with me, Chris. Breathe.” I inhale and exhale. It’s simple. This is how you do it. In and out. Breathe.
“Blythe, how can … No. This can’t be real.”
“But it is. This is real. We are real.”
There is disbelief in his words that I know all too well. “We’re like … puzzle pieces that fit together.”
“Yes. Exactly. I first saw this when we were at the hotel. I didn’t want to tell you then because I didn’t understand it. But I do now.” I step out of the way as Chris reaches for his shirt and pulls it quickly over his head.
“How could you possibly understand this? It’s just some weird … coincidence. It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.”
“It does. It means everything.” I reach behind him and take something from the dresser. I hold up the torn remnants of my red shirt up and rest it again my chest.
“Why do you have that?” He is momentarily angry. “I don’t want you touching that.”
I step out of his reach. “I know. Because this shirt means something to you, doesn’t it?”
He pauses. “Yes. It does. Put it down.”
“You don’t see it yet. Think, Chris. Remember. Do you remember me?”
His face drains of color, and he starts to shake his head.
“This is my shirt. This is my Matthews shirt.”
“No, Blythe. It’s not. It belonged to … someone else.”
“No. I remember that day now,” I say gently. “You were the boy on the beach. With the buckets. And I was the girl on the dock. I gave you this.”
“No. No, there’s some kind of mistake.”
I drop the shirt. There is fear in his eyes that I have to get rid of somehow. “I know that this is a lot, but you have to listen to me. Just listen. I saw you, I talked to you. I am the girl who gave you the shirt and water.”
He is near tears. “What?”
“You know this. Some part of you remembers. It’s why you gave me a piece of my shirt back with my Christmas present. I didn’t find it until today. Until it was time.”
He sits on the bed. I give him a few minutes to let the memories take over. I’ve had the entire drive home and time in my room, and I still can’t process this. He’s in the thick of it.
He looks to my dresser, at the sea urchin. “I must have known. It’s why I gave you that. That day on the shore, when my father made me stay out and fill bucket after bucket with water and I thought I would collapse. The day you were there, with me, I found a sea urchin in one of the buckets—”
“And you stopped what he was making you do, and you gently set it back into the water.”
“Yes. I did.”
“There’s more, Chris.”
He looks at me and waits.
“That night? Later that night was the fire. And also later that night, your father tried to drown you.”
“The same night?”
“Yes. The same night. Our worlds exploded on the same night. Your father almost killed you, but he didn’t. Tell me why again.”
“What? Because … because his fucking pager went off.” Chris puts his hands in his hair. Then he freezes. “No way, Blythe. Don’t say it. That is not possible.” He is starting to piece it together.
“It is possible. Your father was a volunteer firefighter, wasn’t he? His pager went off because of the fire at my house. He is the man who saved my life.”
“Oh Jesus, no.” Chris walks to the window and keeps his back to me. “Stop this, Blythe. Stop it. This cannot be right.”
“There are reasons that we have never talked about certain parts of our life. Neither of us mentioned Maine, and you never told me what your father’s volunteer work was … Some part of us sensed this. But we weren’t ready. We’re ready now. We’re strong enough.”
“It’s too much.”
“I saw him today. Your father. Zach and I went to see him. Don’t worry, he didn’t see us. When I saw him, it took me back to the night of the fire. I know your father, Christopher. He is the person who pulled me off the ladder.”
I let silence take over for a while. Chris has to figure out how to accept this. If he can.
“My father tried to kill me. And then he saved you.”
“Yes.”
“There is no way that this happened.” He can’t stop shaking his head. “This means that your fire saved my life. That your parents’ death saved my life. That your depression, your guilt, those years you lost? Everything you suffered through gave me life.”
I stand behind Chris,but don’t touch him yet. “We can’t begin to piece this all together in any kind of logical way, but no, that’s not what it means. It means that there was a fire that was going to happen no matter what, and my parents were going to die no matter what. But don’t you see what else? That night had a purpose. A very good one. To keep us both alive. Maybe it’s our connection that protected us. We both could have died that night, but we didn’t because of each other. Your father was close to the house, and he got there in time so that I didn’t die, and that saved you. I know the irony is incomprehensible. I do. But it’s what happened. God, my parents would never have wanted children to go through what you all did. If the fire ended it for you? I know them. I know them so well, and they would be grateful to know that something good came from the fire. Our lives and the love we share are the saving graces of that night.”
He drops his head, crying now. “That shirt? That really was you. You were on the dock.”
“Yes.”
“You stayed with me. For hours. You stayed all day.”
“Of course.”
“I was so amazed that you didn’t leave.”
“I would never leave you, Chris. Even then, when I didn’t know you.”
“You kept me from falling apart. Not just on the shore. But that night. When I thought … when I thought that I was going to drown, I thought about you. How I would never get to meet the girl who stayed with me. The girl who gave me strength. Who helped me plan a future and who got me to Matthews. I think that I must have gone to school there to … to find you. I didn’t think about it like that until now, but I was looking for you. Focusing on you that night made me hold on longer than I might have. When I couldn’t breathe, and I was choking, and dying in the fucking toilet … I fought to stay alive because of you. His pager went off, and I felt so guilty being grateful for that because it meant that someone else was in trouble. I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt, but … I also didn’t want to die. When I woke up in glass and covered in my own blood, I thought about you. You were all I had. I’ve kept your shirt with me since that day because it was all that I had of you. Or so I thought.”
Now I press my body to his and wrap my arms around his waist. I lean my head against his back and wipe my eyes on his shirt. “Don’t you see, Chris? You and I are supposed to be together. Not because we have to be together. There is always a choice. This is not an obligation or a duty. But our lives are entwined, they have been, for good reasons. I’ve known that from the moment I set eyes on you. It never made sense to me before. How I felt so deeply connected to you before we’d even spoken. But I did, and I do. I have loved you since that day on the dock. Probably even before that. I feel as though I have loved you my entire life. Please, Chris, I’m right here. I will give you everything I have if you’ll just let me. I am strong now, and I can handle anything. More than that, I want to go through your life with you. I am begging you, Christopher. Begging you with all of my heart. Let me take care of you the way that you have taken care of me.”
Chris turns around, wraps me up in his arms, and rests his chin on top of my head.
I hold him tightly. This is terrifying because I don’t know if he will take the risk to stay with me. I know he’s not one for reaching out for help or love even in better circumstances. I shut my eyes. “You think that I couldn’t possibly fall in love with the vulnerable side of you. And you’re wrong. I love that part of you, too. Chris, I don’t know what I believe in anymore… . I know that you don’t believe in God, or fate, or anything. If you can just push aside that rational, logical, fucking solidly cognitive piece of your thinking and just feel. Listen to your heart. The other shit? It doesn’t matter. The past? The horrible nightmare you’ve been through? We can handle that. We can. We already have, don’t you see that? For you, telling me the details of your life seems like something new between us, but I’ve always known in some ways. Maybe not the specifics, but I’ve known, and it’s never made my total love for you falter one bit. Never.”
I’m afraid to stop talking for fear that he will walk away for good, but at some point I have to turn the cards over to him. This could be the end. I may lose the only love of my life. But I have fought for him as hard as I can. It’s all that I can do.
“Just feel me, Chris, then nothing else matters. Belief in anything is hard, I know. But I am asking you to believe in me and to believe in us the way that I do. Can you do that? Please, Chris, please believe in us.”
He steps back and looks at me. His cheeks are damp as he lifts our hands between us so that we are palm to palm. Chris nods and drops his fingers next to mine.