Precious and Fragile Things (3 page)

“You care if I smoke?”

She did mind; the stench of cigarettes would make her gag and choke. “No.”

He punched the lighter and held its glowing tip to the cigarette's end. The smoke stung her eyes and throat, or maybe it was her tears. Gilly turned her face to the window.

He pulled out of the lot and back onto the highway, letting the darkness fall around them with the softness and comfort of a quilt.

“R
oses don't like to get their feet wet.” Gilly's mother wears a broad-brimmed straw hat. She holds up her trowel, her hands unprotected by gloves, her fingernails dark with dirt. Her knuckles, too, grimed deep with black earth. “Look, Gillian. Pay attention.”

Gilly will never be good at growing roses. She loves the way they look and smell, but roses take too much time and attention. Roses have rules. Her mother has time to spend on pruning, fertilizing. Tending. Nurturing. But Gilly doesn't. Gilly never has enough time.

She's dreaming. She knows it by the way her mother smiles and strokes the velvety petals of the red rose in her hand. Her mother hasn't smiled like that in a long time, and if she has maybe it was only ever in Gilly's dreams. The roses all around them are real enough, or at least the memory of them is. They'd grown in wild abundance against the side of her parents' house and along gravel paths laid out in the backyard. Red, yellow, blushing pink, tinged with peach. The only ones she sees now, though, are the red ones. Roses with names like
After Midnight, Black Ice, even one called Cherry Cola. They're all in bloom.

“Pay attention,” Gilly's mother repeats and holds out the rose. “Roses are precious and fragile things. They take a lot of work, but it's all worth it.”

The only flowers that grow at Gilly's house are daffodils and dandelions, perennials the deer and squirrels leave alone. Her garden is empty. “I've tried, Mom. My roses die.”

Gilly's mother closes her fist around the rose's stem. Bright blood appears. This rose has thorns.

“Because you neglected them, Gillian. Your roses died because you don't pay attention.”

“Mom. Your hand.”

Her mother's smile doesn't fade. Doesn't wilt. She moves forward to press the rose into Gilly's hand. Gilly doesn't want to take it. Her mother is passing the responsibility to her, and she doesn't want it. She tries to keep her fingers closed, refusing the flower. Her mother grips her wrist.

“Take it, Gillian.”

This is the woman Gilly remembers better. Wild eyes, mouth thin and grim. Hair lank and in her face, the hat gone now in the way dreams have of changing. Her mother's fingers bite into Gilly's skin, sharp as thorns and bringing blood.

“You love them,” Gilly's mother says. “Don't you love them?”

“I do love them!” Gilly cries.

“You have to take care of what you love,” her mother says. “Even if it makes you bleed.”

Gilly woke, startled and disoriented. She didn't know how long she'd slept, how far they'd gone. Didn't know where they were. She rolled her stiff neck on shoulders gone just as sore and stared out to dark roads and encroaching trees. Steep mountains hung with frozen miniwaterfalls rose on both sides.
A train track ran parallel to the road, separated by a metal fence.

Had she seen these roads before? Gilly didn't think so. Nothing looked familiar. The man took an unmarked exit. They rode for another hour on forested roads rough enough to make her glad for four-wheel drive, then turned down another narrow, rutted road. Ice gleamed in the ruts, and the light layer of snow that had been worn away on the main road still remained here. A rusted metal gate with a medieval-looking padlock blocked the way.

He pulled a jangling ring of keys from the pocket of his sweatshirt and held them out to her. “Unlock it.”

Gilly didn't take the keys at first. It made no sense for her to defy him. In the faint light from the dashboard his narrowed eyes should have been menacing enough to have her leaping to obey his command even if the threat of the knife wasn't. Yet she sat, staring at him dumbly, unable to move.

“Get out and unlock the gate,” he repeated, shaking the key ring at her. “I'm going to drive through. You close it behind me and lock it again.”

She didn't move for another long moment, frozen in place the way she'd been so often tonight.

“You deaf?”

She shook her head.

“Just fucking stupid, then. I told you to move. Now move your ass,” he said in a low, menacing voice, “or I will move it for you.”

This morning she'd stood in her closet, picking out clothes without holes or too many stains, jeans with a button and zipper instead of soft lounge pants with an elastic waist. She'd dressed to go out in public, not like the stay-home mom she
was. She'd wanted to look nice for once, not dumpy and covered in sticky fingerprints.

She should've worn warm boots, not the useless chunk-heeled ones that hurt her feet if she stood too long. No help for it now. She'd chosen fashion over function and now had to face the consequences. Gilly got out of the car. Immediately she slipped on some ice and almost went down, but managed to keep upright by flailing her arms. She wrenched her back, the pain enough to distract her from the tingling in her drive-numbed legs.

Frigid air burned her eyes, forcing her to slit them. Her nose went numb almost at once, her bare fingers too. The padlock had rusted shut, and the key wouldn't turn. Her fingers fumbled, slipped, and blood oozed from a gash along her thumb. It looked like ketchup in the headlights. Gilly clasped her hands and tried to warm them, tried to bend her fingers back into place, but they crooked like talons.

At last the key turned with a squeal, and the hasp popped open. She slipped the lock off and pushed the gate forward. Ice clinked and jingled as it fell off the metal. The gate stuck halfway open, grinding, and she pushed hard, her feet slipping in the icy ruts. Her palms stung against the cold metal; she had a brief vision of the movie
A Christmas Story
and the boy who stuck his tongue to the pole, but fortunately her hands didn't stick. She grunted as she shoved once more. More pain in her back, her hands, her freezing face, her cramped toes. The gate groaned open the rest of the way, and the truck pulled through.

It didn't stop right away and for one panicked moment Gilly thought he was going to leave her behind. Then the red glare of the taillights came on, bathing everything in a horror-show haze. Once open, the gate wouldn't close. Gilly pulled the
sleeves of her jacket down over her palms to get a better grip and protect her hands, but that only made them slip worse. She tugged, hard, and fell on her ass.

The truck revved. Gilly got to her feet, slipping and sliding. He hadn't stabbed her. He wasn't going to drive away and leave her here to freeze, either. She ran anyway as best she could on frozen toes. Her fingers slipped again on the door handle. Gilly climbed back into the truck and slammed the door.

He drove for another thirty minutes along a road so twisted and potholed Gilly had to grip the door handle just to keep herself upright every time the truck bounced. Trees pressed in on them. Some branches even snaked out to scrape along the truck's side. At one point, the battered driveway took a steep pitch upward. The tires spun on loose gravel. They were climbing.

At last, the man stopped the truck in front of a battered two-story house, bathing it in the twin beams of the bright headlights.
House
was too flattering a term. It was more like a shack. A sagging front porch with three rickety steps lined the front. Green rocking chairs, the sort with legs made from a single piece of bended metal, lined the porch. Gilly had seen chairs like that in 1950s pictures of her grandparents vacationing in the Catskills.

He turned off the ignition. Darkness clapped its hand over her eyes. Gilly blinked, momentarily blind.

“Get out,” the man said without preamble.

He opened the door and stepped into the glacial night air, then shoved the keys into the pocket of his ratty sweatshirt, slammed the door shut and headed toward the house without hesitation. He quickly blended into the dark.

Without the light of the headlamps to guide her, the distance from the truck to the front porch became instantly
unnavigable. She already knew the ground here was frozen and hard. At best she'd fall on her ass again. At worst, she'd end up with a broken leg.

Gilly put her hand on the door. Tremors tickled her, and her fingers twitched on the handle. Her feet jittered on the duffel bag. Only her eyes felt wide and staring, motionless while the rest of her body went into some strange sort of Saint Vitus' dance.

She was dreaming. Was she dreaming? Was this real? In the dark, the silent dark, Gilly had to press her twitching fingers to her eyelids to convince herself they were open. Like a blind woman she felt the contours of her face, trying to convince herself that it was her own and uncertain, in the end, if it was.

The slanting shack began to glow from the four windows along its front. The light was strange, yellow and dim, but it gave her the courage to open the door. The meager glow was just enough to allow Gilly to make her stumbling way to the front porch steps, and then through the door he'd left open.

She entered a small, square room with a sooty woodstove on a raised brick platform between the two windows along the back wall. Now she could see why the light coming from the windows seemed so odd. Propane, not electric, lights illuminated the room. She wrinkled her nose against the smell, which reminded her of summer camp.

Despite the stains and dirt on the carpet she could see it was indisputably green. Not emerald, not hunter, but mossy and dull. The color of mold. The furniture grouped around the woodstove was faded brown plaid with rough-hewn wooden arms and feet. The two long sofas facing each other across a battered coffee table looked in decent enough condition, but the two chairs beside them had seen better days. Time or
rodents had put holes in the plaid fabric, and stuffing peeked out here and there. The scarred dining table had four matching chairs and a fifth and sixth that didn't match the set or each other. Someone long ago had tried to make it pretty with an arrangement of silk flowers, now dusty and only sad. A larger camping lantern, newer than the wall sconces but unlit, also sat upon the table.

To her right Gilly saw the kitchen, separated from the living room by a countertop and row of hanging cabinets. Through the narrow gap between them she saw another table and chairs. Off the kitchen she thought there might be a mudroom or pantry. She glimpsed the man standing at the refrigerator, mumbling curses. Maybe at the emptiness, maybe at the stench of mildew and age that she could smell even from here.

Gilly closed the door behind her with a solid, remorseless thud.

“Smells like a damn rat died in the fridge.”

Gilly wasn't positive he spoke to her or just at her. She swallowed her disgust at the thought and looked around the room again. Through the door immediately to her left she spied a linoleum floor and the glint of metal fixtures. A bathroom. The doorway farther back along the wall hinted at a set of steep, narrow stairs. That was it. Upstairs must be bedrooms.

“I need to take a piss,” he told her matter-of-factly. Carrying a large battery-powered lantern, he brushed past her and into the bathroom. Next came the sound of water gushing, then a toilet flushing. At least the facilities worked.

Her own bladder cramped, muscles that had never been the same since her pregnancies protesting. When he came out, she went in. He'd left her the lantern. She peed for what felt like hours. At the sink, washing her hands, a stranger peered out at her from the cloudy mirror. A woman with lank hair,
dark to match the circles under her eyes, and skin the color of moonlight. She looked like her mother.

She'd run away just like her mother.

She tried for dismay and felt only resignation. Her eyes itched and burned, and not even splashing cold water helped. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, her stomach lurching. She didn't puke. Eyes closed, Gilly gripped the sink for one dizzy moment thinking she would open them and find herself at home in front of her own mirror, all of this some insane fantasy she'd concocted out of frustration. Wishful thinking. Maybe crazy would be better than this.

When Gilly came out of the bathroom, she found the man sitting at the dining room table. He'd lit the lamp there and spread out a bunch of wrinkled papers. He held his head in his hands like the act of reading them all had given him a headache.

Gilly cleared her throat, then realized she hadn't used her voice since they'd stopped for gas. Four, five hours ago? Less than that or longer, she had no idea. She waited for him to look up, but he didn't.

He ran his fingers again and again through the dark lengths of his hair, until it crackled with static in the cold air. Gilly waited, shifting from foot to foot. Awkward, uncertain. Even if she did speak, what could she possibly say?

He looked up. Under the thin scruff of black beard, his face had fine, clean lines. Thick black lashes fringed his deep brown eyes, narrowed now beneath equally dark brows. He wasn't ugly, and she couldn't force herself to find him so. With a shock, Gilly realized he wasn't much younger than she was, maybe three or four years.

“My uncle,” he said suddenly, looking up at her.

Gilly waited for more, and when it didn't come she slipped
into one of the battered chairs. She folded her hands on the cold wood. It felt rough beneath her fingers.

He touched the pile of papers, shoving a couple of them toward her. “This was my Uncle Bill's place.”

Gilly made no move to take the papers. She found her voice, as rusty as the gate had been. “It's…quaint.”

His brow furrowed. “You making fun of me?”

She expected anger. More knife waving. Perhaps even threats. Anger she could handle. Fight. She could be angry in response. Instead she felt hollow shame. He'd spoken in the resigned fashion of a man used to people mocking him, and she
had
been making fun.

“Was it a hunting cabin?”

“Yeah.” He looked around. “But he lived here, too. Fixed it up a little at a time. I used to come here with him, sometimes. Uncle Bill died a couple months ago.”