Before the Storm (17 page)

bedroom of The Sea Tender, telling him everything I thought

and felt. I even told him two of my biggest secrets.

The first was that I threw the most important swim meet of

the season when I was fourteen because I felt sorry for my

competitor. That girl was so gangly, dorky and uncoordinated

that her teammates groaned when it was her turn to swim. I

couldn’t make myself beat her. I pretended to get a cramp on

my third lap.

Ben said I was sweet, but insane.

Second, I told him about feeling Daddy’s spirit on the deck

of The Sea Tender. That’s when I found out I’d been wrong

about one thing: Ben was religious after all. First, he just teased

me about it, saying he hoped Daddy didn’t show up when we

were in bed together. When he realized I was serious, though,

he got serious himself. He said the devil was playing tricks on

me and I should be careful. I was disappointed that he believed

in the devil. I wanted him to be my mirror image, with my

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thoughts and beliefs. I wanted him to be everything I needed—

my confidant and best friend and lover. I realized then that no

one person could be all those things to another. I was a little

more careful about what I told him after that.

I would never even consider telling him my third secret.

After we made love, Ben got the marijuana from the kitchen

while I crawled naked under the covers, breathing in jasmine

and fabric softener. Ben got back in bed and I snuggled close

to him while he lit a joint.

He took a hit, then passed it to me.

“God, this feels good, being here with you,” he said. “It’s

been such a shitty week.”

“I know.”

“I have these…not nightmares, exactly. But when I go to

bed, I start picturing Serena at a lock-in when she’s a few

years older. She gets scared a lot. Thunderstorms. Strangers.

Dogs. You name it. She might have panicked if she’d been

there. She could’ve been one of the kids who didn’t make it.”

“Don’t think about that, Ben.”
I
didn’t want to think about

it. I slipped the joint between his lips. “Think about that girl

you saved. Uncle Marcus said she’d be dead if it hadn’t been

for you.”

“I do think about her, believe me,” he said.“She’s still at New

Hanover and I’ve visited her a couple times. She’s going to be

okay. Then I think about how close I came to leaving her there

because my air was getting low and I was…” He shuddered.

“I’ll tell you, Maggie, I was sweatin’ bullets.”

“It must have been awful.” I knew all about his claustrophobia, how he’d start to panic the moment he’d put the face

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piece on. I hated the rude things the other firefighters said

about him right to his face, like he had no feelings. Once, I

overheard one of them say to Uncle Marcus,“I don’t know why

you even bother to give him a pager. He’s useless.” It made me

furious.
He told me he was even thinking of leaving, going back

to Charlotte, because he couldn’t take it anymore. I freaked

out when he said that. What would I do without him?

“How did you stand wearing the face piece?” I asked.

“I turned the emergency bypass valve on, just for a second,”

he said. “It gave me a little rush of air. A beautiful sound. It

wasn’t the air so much as just reminding myself that I had the

bypass valve if I needed it.”

“But when you got that low-air warning,you must’ve freaked.”

“Yes, ma’am, I was as freaked as you can get. But I could

also see that girl in the camera. I had to get her.”

“I’m really proud of you. Have the other guys stopped

giving you a hard time?”

He nodded. “I think they’ve finally accepted me,” he said,

letting the smoke pour from his lungs. “Even got a couple of

apologies from some of the worst offenders. So that’s my

silver lining. The cost was too high, though.”

Those big photographs from the memorial service popped

into my mind, past the wall I’d built inside my head to try to

keep them out. At the service, I felt sick to my stomach as

Reverend Bill talked about each of them. I’d wanted to run out

of the Assembly Building but was afraid of making a scene.

“Do you see why I have to believe there’s an afterlife?” I

asked Ben now. “Why I’m so sure Daddy visits me out here? I

have to believe those three people—Jordy and Henderson

and Mr. Eggles—that they’re someplace better.”

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“I believe that,” Ben said. “I just don’t believe dead people

can contact us.”

He hadn’t experienced what I had with Daddy, so he didn’t

understand.

We’d reached the end of the joint and Ben stubbed it out

in a clamshell we kept on the floor next to the bed. I remembered that night in the E.R., how scared I was to see him there

and how invisible I felt when Dawn practically knocked me

over to get to him. People always thought he and Dawn were

an item and although he never came right out and agreed

with them, he also never bothered to set them straight. She

was our cover, he said, which only bothered me when I saw

her staring at him the way she did Saturday at the swim meet.

I could see how much she loved him. It was all over her face.

I felt sorry for her the way I’d felt sorry for the gangly

fourteen-year-old girl I let beat me years ago. But I wasn’t

letting her have Ben.

“Dawn loves you so much,” I said.“When she saw you at the

E.R., she looked so relieved to see you were all right. It was

like when I saw that Andy was okay. I feel like I’m hurting her

by being with you.”

“I haven’t misled her.You know that.”

“But she thinks you’re unattached. That gives her hope.”

“What can I do about it, Maggie?” He sounded a little pissed

off. “I can’t very well tell her about us.”

“I know,” I said quickly. I had never heard him sound annoyed

with me before and it shook me up. “I feel sorry for her, that’s

all.” What
did
I want him to do? I didn’t know.

A breeze suddenly blew into the room from the living

room, putting out all but two of the candles. I stood up and

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walked to the corner to relight them. When I turned to come

back to bed, the candlelight must have landed on my hip.

Ben rose up on his elbows. “What’s that on your hip?” he

asked.

“A tattoo,” I said.

“You’re kidding.” He sat up. “Is it new?”

“No.You just never noticed it before.” I’d had it for over a

year, placed low enough that my mother would never see it.

“I can’t tell what it is from here,” Ben said.

“Just a word.” I stepped close enough for him to read it.

“Empathy.”
He ran his fingers over the small calligraphied

print. “Why?”

“To remind me to walk in other people’s shoes,” I said.

Ben laughed, pulling me down on the bed so that I straddled him. “You don’t need any reminders of that, angel,” he

said, his superheated hands on my hips. “You wrote the book.”

THEY PUT US ON A LITTLE COUCH THING. There were big

cameras on stands and lots of men and ladies all over. One lady

sat in a chair looking at us. I looked at the camera and smiled

like you’re supposed to do when you get your picture taken.

The lady in the chair said,“Andy, when we start talking, just

look at me. Don’t look at the camera. We’ll pretend we’re

having a normal conversation, okay?”

“Okay.” She was nice to look at. Pretty, with shiny hair like

Mom’s only blacker, and Chinesey eyes. Her voice was soft and

reminded me of how Maggie talked sometimes.

Mom smiled at me and squeezed my hand like she always

did. Her hand was cold as a Popsicle.

A man attached a teeny black microphone to my shirt and

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said not to worry about it. A lady wearing a headset held up

three fingers, then two fingers, then one finger.

Then the lady started talking to us, and I looked right at her,

like she said to do. I told myself,
don’t look anywhere else except

at the lady.
I didn’t want to screw up.

“Tell us about the fire, Andy,” she said to me. Her eyes had

sparkles in them.

“I was at the lock-in with my friend Emily and all of a

sudden there was fire everywhere,” I said. “Some boys got on

fire and I told them to stop, drop and roll!”

“You did?” the lady asked. “Where did you learn that?”

I couldn’t remember exactly where. I wanted to look at

Mom to ask her, but remembered I was only supposed to look

at the lady. “I think school, but I’m not sure,” I said.

“That’s right,” Mom said.

My knee was bouncing like it does sometimes and I thought

Mom would put her hand on it to make it stop, but she didn’t.

“And what happened then, Andy? People were trying to get

out of the church, right? But they couldn’t?”

“Because of the fire.”

“I understand the front doors were blocked by the flames.”

“And the back door, too.”

“That must have been very scary.”

“Emily was scared. She had her shirt on inside out.”

The lady looked confused and turned to Mom.

“His friend Emily is a special-needs child who doesn’t like

to have the seam of her clothing touch her skin,” Mom said.

“Ah, I see,” the lady said. “So how
did
you get out of the

fire, Andy?”

“I went to the boys’ room and outside the window was the

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metal…the air-conditioner box thing and I climbed out onto

it and helped Emily out. Then I went back in and got people

to follow me out.”

“Amazing,” the lady said. When she turned her head a little,

the sparkles in her eyes moved. “You saved a lot of lives.”

I nodded. “I was a…” I remembered I wasn’t supposed to

talk about being a hero.

“He was a hero,” Mom said, “but I’ve told him not to brag

about it.”

I accidentally looked at Mom for a minute. She had the

sparkles in her eyes, too! Freaky.

“How do you feel about what you did, Andy?” the lady

asked.

“Good,” I said. “But some people died. I guess they didn’t

all hear me call to them.Your eyes are really pretty. They have

sparkles in them.”

The lady and Mom both laughed. “It’s from the lights,” the

lady said. “But thank you for that compliment, Andy.” She

turned to Mom again. “Laurel, can you tell us a little about

Andy and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder?”

“I can tell you about it,” I said.

Mom did put her hand on my knee then, which meant
shut

up.

“Let’s give your mother a chance to talk, Andy.”

“Okay,” I said, even though I’ve heard Mom talk about FASD

so many times I could say it all myself. She talked about how

she had a drinking problem when she was pregnant with me

and that made me different than other kids. She went into

rehab and hasn’t had a drink since then. I was in a foster home

and she got me back when I was one year old. She threw

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herself into making sure I got the best care and education

possible. See? I could say it all myself.

“I’m on a swim team,” I said. “And I always win.”

Mom and the lady laughed again. Mom said I’m an excellent competitioner because of my startling reflex. And that I

have an average IQ, which I know means I’m intelligent and

can do things a lot better than I actually do if I’d just try harder.

“I’m as smart as most people,” I said. “But my brain works

different.”

Mom said about the lighter and how we missed the plane,

which I still don’t really understand ’cause if you have a lighter

in your sock you’re not actually carrying it.

“There’s a fund that’s been created for the medical expenses

of the children injured in the fire,” the lady said to the camera.

“If you’d like to help, the Internet site is on your screen.”

“Many of the children who were hurt at the lock-in are from

families with limited funds,” Mom said.

“She means they’re poor,” I said, proud that I understood.

“You have another child, too,” the lady said to Mom. “Does

she also have FASD?”

“Does she mean Maggie?” I asked Mom, though I kept my

eyes on the lady.

“Yes, Maggie is my older daughter. I wasn’t drinking when

I was pregnant with her and she’s fine.”

“Maggie’s the best sister,” I said.

“She is?” the lady asked.

“She’d put my oxygen mask on first, too,” I said.

1989

“LOOK AT HER HAIR!” MISS EMMA SAID as Jamie settled the

baby in her arms. “Your hair was exactly like this when you

were born,” she said to her son.“A thick head of beautiful black

curls.”

“Isn’t she something?” Jamie sat down next to his mother

on our sofa. He hadn’t stopped grinning in the three days since

we’d come home with the baby. “You have to see when she

opens her eyes,” he said. “She looks right at you.”