What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay (23 page)

“Jesse!” I screamed at him. He just shook his head at me and went back to running back and forth, throwing water at the window.

I’d never been so scared before. The fire looked just like a medieval picture of hell, and the air was so thick with ash and smoke that my throat burned. The fire guys were pushing through the front doors with their hoses, and they all had respirators on. The church is made out of adobe and the roof is tile, but whatever was on fire in the basement had obviously burned up through the floorboards or the wooden stairs. It would have had plenty to work on in the basement, with all the junk that’s stored down there, including the hay bales left over from the Posadas parade.

Outside, Felix was still wetting down the shed. He looked just like the statue, in that awful old bathrobe all covered with soot. As I watched him, the bathrobe went away and the young guy from my dream was there, in army fatigues and combat boots, and the tree line behind him was boiling with fire. The air smelled like diesel fuel and burned meat. I blinked and it changed back again, and so did he.

This fire smelled awful anyhow, like burning wool and electrical cords and wet ashes, and my eyes stung like anything. It was getting really hard to breathe in the smoke, and people were starting to back away. Noah was still wetting the pergola down, but the fire had charred nearly through the end by the basement window. I know that when fire gets inside of wood, water on the outside doesn’t put it out.

When Noah saw Jesse under that end again, he dropped his hose and ran through the smoke after him. “Get
out
of there! That’s gonna come down!”

Jesse pushed Noah away, hard. Jesse’s hands were all burned and his jeans were covered with ash.

Someone on the fire crew saw Jesse now and grabbed him by the arm. “Stand back, please!” It was a woman’s voice, and even though I was so scared, my head stopped watching the fire long enough to think how weird it is that you can never tell who’s inside those suits. And then as soon as she turned her back, Jesse picked up the buckets again.

Ben had let go of me, and I ran close enough to the pergola to yell, “Jesse, come away from there!” For an instant I thought I saw the Virgin, crying, with her hands filled with roses, and then I thought I saw Char Man. I remembered Jesse’s sergeant in the Humvee, and I knew Jesse was afraid of the fire and also that it was why he wouldn’t leave it. “
Jesse
!”

He stopped for a moment and looked at me again through the smoke. Then he ran back to the window, and the whole pergola came down on top of him.

I just got back from the hospital. Jesse’s dead. I don’t know what else I can say but that. When I think about it, it all whirls around in my head like a horror movie until I throw up.

And I can’t not think about it. All the fire crew and EMT guys were at the church. They got him out from under the beams as fast as they could, but a beam had come down right on his head, and another on his chest. Ben and Felix and Noah and I all followed the ambulance to the hospital, with Father Weatherford in his car, and waited for Jesse’s mother and father to come. Father Weatherford didn’t know the Francises, but I gave him their phone number and he called them.

When something really bad is going on, the hospital puts you in a separate room to wait, and all I could think about was how many other people had sat in that room waiting to find out something awful. I couldn’t stand to think about Jesse except to keep praying he was okay, over and over.
Let him be okay, let him be alive, let him be okay, please let him be okay.
Let two and two not be four.

Noah’s hands were burned, too, from when he tried to haul Jesse out before the fire guys did. Ben and Felix were half waiting for Jesse’s parents and half kind of hovering around both of us, making sure the kids were okay, I guess. When my stomach started to growl, Felix went and got us muffins from the hospital cafeteria, and Ben got Noah ice for his hands and some ibuprofen. The doctors were too busy with Jesse to even look at Noah. My muffin tasted like wood shavings. I couldn’t eat it. I feel like I’ll never want to eat anything again. I think this is why people take drugs.

Finally Jesse’s parents came in. His mother looked like she was in a coma, just walking around by reflex. Father Weatherford went up and talked to them and stayed with them while they sat in those green plastic chairs and stared at the floor, holding hands. We waited two hours while they worked on him. Doctors came out a couple of times, but all they could say was they were trying to stabilize him, whatever that means. I asked Ben and he said it means heart and blood pressure and breathing, just generally the body trying to keep going. I thought about the doctors and nurses trying to keep a live person from slipping over the edge into a dead one, and what that must be like.

When the doctor came out the last time and told Jesse’s parents that he was dead, I thought his mother was going to faint. But she didn’t. She said, “Go tell his friends, please. I can’t,” and sent the doctor over to us. How do emergency room doctors bear this?

Afterward, while Father Weatherford was still talking to Jesse’s parents, a nurse came out and took Noah back with her to get his hands cleaned and bandaged. They needed somebody to give them permission to treat him, so he had to call his mom. I could hear through his cell phone, she was so upset. She made it down to the hospital before he came back out of the treatment room.

“He tried to pull Jesse out from the fire,” I told her.

“Oh, my God.” She put her face in her hands. And then she went over to Jesse’s mom and put her arms around her.

I’ve never seen Noah look the way he looked. Like the world had all of a sudden gotten serious and he was trying to figure it out. He could have been killed, too. As it was, his hands looked like mittens when they brought him back out—gauze bandages up to the elbows.

Jesse’s dad came up to Noah and thanked him, and I thought Noah was going to cry. His mom took him home, and the nurses made Felix go back and get checked out too. They looked at me, but I told them I was fine. Felix’s robe was half burned up and when he came back out, he wasn’t wearing it. I think they must have taken it away from him and thrown it out. He had some gauze around one wrist but otherwise he was okay.

Father Weatherford drove Ben and me and Felix back. The seats of his car were covered with ash where we’d sat coming out, and I realized my pajamas were covered with it. No wonder the nurses looked at me.

They dropped Ben and me off at home. Ben got on the phone to Mom and I took a shower. Now I’m in bed again, like Mom, even though it’s the middle of the day. I am not going to get up.

21

Mom came over later. She put her arms around me and we both cried. Her face was all red and scrunched up.

“I’m so sorry, Angie.” She wiped her eyes and got a tissue from the nightstand and wiped mine. “Do you want me to go to the funeral with you? We’ll all go.”

“I’m not going to any more funerals.”

Mom sniffled. “Don’t you think it would make his parents feel better if you went?”

What could possibly make his mother feel better? I propped myself up in bed. “My stomach hurts.”

“It won’t be for a few days, honey.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not even out of this bed.”

Mom sat back and looked at me. “I don’t model very rational behavior, do I?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I lay back down and pulled the sheet up. I keep seeing Char Man in my head. He’s all burned and he’s out there waiting for everybody I love. I’m afraid to move because someone else will die. Jesse died because he was trying to prove he loved me, but I knew he did. If I lie absolutely still, maybe I won’t hurt anyone else.

On Monday, I was still in bed. Helen came to see me. I think Mom or Ben must have called her. She didn’t bring Lily—she came by herself and sat down in the chair by my desk while the Todal stuck his head in her lap and drooled on her. She didn’t say anything, just waited for me to talk. That kind of thing drives me nuts, so finally I said, “I’m scared.”

“I’m not surprised.”

That wasn’t what I was expecting. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me not to be afraid?”

“After everything that’s happened lately?” Helen scooted her chair closer to the bed. “Mental health isn’t about not being afraid. Anyone who isn’t afraid of anything is crazy. Mental health is about dealing with being afraid.”

“Oh.” I thought about that. “Helen, was Jesse crazy?”

“I never talked to him, sweetie. I don’t know.”

“Noah told him to get away from the fire, and so did one of the firefighters. So did I, but he didn’t pay any attention to any of us.”

“What do you think would make him do that?” Helen the counselor.

“I think he wanted to save my church for me,” I whispered. “I think it’s my fault.”

“It isn’t your fault when someone else is irrational.” Helen was still patting the Todal. “Jesse had post-traumatic stress disorder. I think that much was clear. And probably a latent brain injury. It’s possible he’d lost his ability to evaluate a situation. He’d been following orders for so long, poor boy. He may have simply heard an order in his head and followed it.”

“I still don’t think he would have if it weren’t for me,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Helen said gently. “Probably not, even.” She didn’t ask me any more about it, but I expect she can figure it out. “But that was his doing, not yours. You can’t wear everyone else’s irrationality on your shoulders. You have to let people be who they are, even when they’re damaged.”

“Easy for you to say.” I sat up some, and the Todal came over and drooled on me instead. I put my arms around his neck like he was a giant stuffed animal. “I can’t quit thinking about him. Can’t you give me a prescription for something that will make me quit thinking about him?”

“No, darling, I’m not a psychiatrist. But I’m going to give you a prescription to go back to school tomorrow. And another one to let yourself mourn for Jesse. Quit trying to decide whose fault it is, and let the sadness come, and sit with it. It won’t go away until you do.”

“What do I do about being afraid?”

Helen stood up. “Accept that the universe is an apparently random dance. There may be a pattern to it—I think there probably is—but we can’t see it from where we are. You have to let the dance happen. You’ll love some of it and hate some of it.”

“What if I just say I’m not going to dance?”

“Then the dance will come to you. All that happens if you try to sit it out is you get bored and lonely.” She bent down and kissed the top of my head. “Lily says she’ll pick you up for school tomorrow.”

“To make sure I go?”

She smiled. “Mmm hmm.”

“Okay, Arnaz, rise and shine.”

I opened one eye and Lily was standing at the foot of my bed, hands on her hips. She had a barbecue skewer stuck through her hair this time. Sometimes I think she looks for weird stuff to put it up with.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Sure you can,” Lily said. “For one thing, if you don’t, everyone in school will talk about you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Good for you. Okay, you should go because your grades still matter.”

“It’s the beginning of the semester.”

Lily sat down on the bed. “You should go because if you don’t, all you’ll do is lie here and think about everything being your fault, and how the whole world is going to hell in a chicken basket, and how you might as well eat worms.”

I sat up then, but I said, “Maybe I want to feel that way.”

She pulled the covers off me. “That’s why I’m not going to let you. Besides, I have orders from Wellness Woman.”

I got out of bed. When she put it that way, it just seemed more depressing to stay in bed and keep thinking. I feel so sad, but Helen said to dance, so I guess I’ll dance.

“I miss him too,” Lily said. “But you can do this.”

School was weird, and nearly as awful as I was afraid of. All anyone can talk about is Jesse, and they keep asking me what he was really like. I’m now some kind of expert on Jesse. I hate it. Noah was nice. His hands are all bandaged, but he came anyway. And when some senior boy asked me if Jesse was crazy, Noah told him to sod off and he’d pound him if he didn’t, and the senior actually backed off. Lily stuck with me all day and drove me over to St. Thomas’s afterward to help clean up.

The church is a mess. Everything is scorched and smells like smoke. The fire didn’t burn through the adobe walls, but the whole inside of the basement is burned out, and so is the choir office and the parish offices upstairs in the back. Even the sanctuary up front where the fire didn’t get to is black with soot. Everyone is grateful that it didn’t burn, but it’s going to take forever to clean all the paint and gilding on the altarpiece. Father Weatherford says it needed cleaning anyway, and there was never enough money, but now people are sending in donations and it will be really beautiful. Father Weatherford is such an optimist—he reminds me of the old joke about the kid who gets a pile of horse manure for his birthday and is happy because he thinks there must be a pony somewhere.

Mom came over a bit later, and Ben and Grandpa Joe came too. I guess Felix must have been there all day.