She is such an odd bird, Simon. You know I wasn’t exactly delighted with your initial coupling, but then it all began to make
sense. I, too, eventually fell for Izzy. I believe it was the day in Coney
Island when you were too frightened to ride the roller coaster. She pressed her
brown thigh against my rather white chicken of a leg, and I thought of how
angry you used to get when your mother let me ride shotgun. Remember when your
mother drove us to Little Rock to see the Harlem Globetrotters? Despite the
fact that you were shooting spitballs in my hair the whole drive there, it was
probably one of the best nights of my life.
“What do you mean pears?” Isabel asked.
Oh, I saw how it was. The snow was settling on the windows, and we were not to
mention pears or the holes in the wall or how you and I used to lay in bed
together. Beautiful. This is what you were always telling me about family
secrets. I was on to you.
“No pears,” I said, and you coughed.
“Well, come to think of it,” I went on. “There was the time when Simon and I were in grade school, and his father decided
he could win his mother back by planting a pear tree in the front yard and
special ordering partridges from Cambodia. Remember that, Simon?”
“No,” you said.
“Okay, well maybe it wasn’t Cambodia, but it was definitely someplace far away.”
Simon, you were awful that night. I know you said you were haunted by vowels,
but you off of my “y”? I don’t even think it’s allowed.
“Charlie,” Isabel said, “You can’t act like this isn’t going to happen.”
“What?”
“It’s hard enough as it is,” she said, and then she was saying more, but loud bells were ringing, and her
voice was drowned out. Bells, Simon. Did you not understand what the bells
meant?
“Fire,” you said.
“Huh?”
“Fire.”
What did we grab?
I got my coat and my Camels.
“Are you taking anything with you?” I yelled.
“Just come on,” you said, and we were making our way down the stairs. It smelled exactly the
way I’d always imagined a fire would smell, and the fire escape was filled with
strangers, people who lived above you or below you or beside you, people you
had never seen before.
Was Isabel crying?
No. It was the Mother, actually. The one I had seen through the hole. Was she
now wearing the Father’s scarf? Blue and white stripes, the kind of scarves people wear only when you
dream of them flying tiny airplanes over the sea. She was crying hard. I
wondered what she had forgotten.
And you, Simon, I figured you’d grab something, but nothing? You always surprised me.
I had a red fish under my arm and saw the numbers flying by as we turned each
corner of the staircase. 25-24-23. I thought of your wedding day, how we gave
you shots of Patrón; Isabel’s tulips were wilting and her dress strap kept falling off her shoulder. I
kissed her that night, Simon, or maybe I didn’t, but I’m sorry if I did. 16-15-14. The Globetrotters were losing; I remember thinking
it was a scam, that the Globetrotters always won, that in the last two minutes
they would shoot and shoot and shoot, and the crowd would go hog wild. You went
to get us hot dogs. I sucked hard on my slurpee. “Charlie,” your mom said, running her fingers through my hair. “You’re going to be a wonderful man some day.”
10-9-8.
“How the hell did you come up with you?” I asked, but Simon, when I turned around to listen to you tell me about the
vowels and how pronouns are perfectly acceptable in Scrabble, you were gone. It
was just Isabel and her blue fish and tens of strangers streaming through the
stairwell.
“Where is he?” I yelled at Isabel.
“Just go,” she said.
We were finally standing outside; the wind blew through us; the building burned
like a Roman candle. Popped and burned. I thought of how you and Isabel didn’t even go to the Coliseum on your honeymoon because you couldn’t afford it. Man, you’re a cheap bastard.
“He forgot something,” Isabel yelled.
“What?”
“He forgot something.”
“No, I know. What did he forget?”
Simon, you would have loved the fanfare, the sirens and firedogs, the blizzard
blowing smoke and snow all around us. I can tell you now that I held her tight,
and we watched as the flames licked the building. The firemen had us out in the
street, and when I think about it now, I believe we were standing in the place
where your body had been, where you lay down and flapped your arms and yelled.
The flames turned into smoke, and I thought of the fall when you and I put Ole
Man Kellar’s iguana in the microwave, how the old man kicked and screamed and said we’d both burn in hell and then clung on to one of his ostriches and cried like a
little girl.
In my mind, I am convinced that you went back to switch your letters, that you
were reaching your hand into the maroon velveteen bag searching for z’s and k’s, trying to find the word that would re-crown you. Maybe, though, there was
something else. Bigger and better, something I had no idea about.
Yes, Simon, we waited for you. I even imagined I was you, that I’d come through the door at any minute, and when I didn’t, I thought I’d fly out the window, wings spread like some bird on fire, and when I didn’t, I simply held my wife—held her the way you can only hold a woman who has just lost a love she no
longer wanted—held her and thought of all the times I had thought about holding her. I felt
the length of her body, as you must have, for years, lying in bed, the early
morning light making its way through the window.
“Charlie,” she said just as the night ended.
“Yes?”
She did not tell me she loved me.
“Yes?” I said again.
She did not tell me that she had thought of me since Coney Island or that she
had known in some way that this was the day you would die. She did not mention
the children we were willed to have or that the fish was actually cadmium, but
no one really understands reds.
“Anything,” I said.
And she left me, Simon. Is that what you want to hear?
I kept believing you would walk out of the ash, just to laugh at me one last
time, but I guess that’s the whole hoopla with dying: you don’t get to laugh anymore.
Now, I lay here. The fish are gone; the woman is gone; I have only the place
where your body was. The blizzard, it seems, will not fail me: snow falls heavy
as blossoms, petal upon petal, and Simon, I think you were wrong about the end,
because here in the crook of your wing, it’s not nearly as lonely as I thought it would be.
