And then there is a cry and a thump from upstairs, and I know why I am not asleep.
I am up all thirteen steps faster than most people get up one stair. I am at her door, and shaking it hard, and it�s locked.
She locked it from the inside.
And I�m rattling the door and I�m jamming the knob so hard to the right that my fingers feel like they�re breaking, but I can�t get in.
Like a dream I feel my lungs fill with smoke, just like the last time, and the floor by the stairs is beginning to crumble, and I�m screaming, �Honey you got to let me in! Open the door, sweetie, please let me in we have to get you out of here� just like last time.
Last time the girl died.
She jumped out of the window, terrified of the fire but more afraid of me. She�d seen me coming up the stairs in my suit and locked the door. She was only eight years old, but the smoke had been crawling around her ankles and the closet had burst into flames and she was afraid, so very afraid.
So she lifted the sash, carefully, carefully, listening to me trying my hardest to break down the door with every blow of the axe, but it was sturdy oak. They make doors of pine or maple now. Oak�s too hard.
And she�d grabbed the stick from the floor to prop up the window, and she�d balanced on the sill like a bird learning to fly, and she�d jumped. And two minutes later I got the hinges out and slammed the door down with my numb fists and the room was empty and consumed with flame. They say that I fell through the ceiling, then. The floor had given out and there was no way that I should�ve stayed up there as long as I did. They told me, �We need firefighters. We don�t need corpses.� and I had marveled at the power of their hand-me-down wisdom and said nothing.
Her little body lay on the cement below, and mine had the good fortune to land on the flaming remains of the family room sofa. I survived, and I fought more fires but she didn�t. Survive.
Here are three facts, three unalterables of that night:
Her name was Natalie.
She was eight years old.
It was my fault.
But this time it�s a woman in there, the woman I loved. Love. And the door isn�t oak, and it cracks and it bends under my pressure and the hinges split and it falls in. It falls in, and she is there half on her bed, tiny bits of glass all over her. I see them under her fingernails, twined in her hair like needles, on her lips like dewdrops, and I am reminded of Snow White.
And she sees me and her eyes are the only things that can move, because of the glass, and she smiles with her eyes like the saddest thing I can think of. I think I see the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but it might be more glass, caught there on the eyeball, so fragile. She looks like a girl made of ice.
And it takes me an hour but I brush each bit of glass, pulling them down from her clothes and her hair. I marvel at how still she sits, contorted the same way she was when the mirror broke, but I have to concentrate on getting each fragment of mirror from her skin.
Some of the cuts are quite deep. She doesn�t scream, and I don�t ask what happened. I know what happened. She helps me pick out the glass as soon as she is able, and we work in silence like Shiva. She is my second pair of arms and eyes.
Then she�s freed and she stretches like a lioness with eyes like Winona Ryder and they punch me in the stomach with the thank you she gives me. She says, �Thank you,� and it is almost dawn and she goes back to bed like a vampire and I stumble around my room blearily and think about my book. It seems to be the only thing I can do, like this. I examine plot points and reevaluate strategies for furthering my characters. I try to condense the book into 50 words, because that�s what my high school Writing teacher told me to do. You get the bones of your story, so you can see where it has gone and where you want it to go.
I try deep breathing. Eventually, I fall asleep.
I wake up at ten, disoriented, and sleep some more. I wake up at two, draw my curtains and sleep some more.
I wake up at five and I am profoundly hungry. I remedy this situation and look in on Nina, who is playing with the computer. She doesn�t say anything about this morning, and neither do I. It seems a lifetime away.
The grocery store is still open, so I pick up bread, and milk and processed cheese and all those necessities. It comes to $42. 50. I get out my wallet and pay; I walk through the automatic doors; I lift the grocery bags into the car and walk the cart back to its corral. It begins, unnoticed by me, to rain.