We're in Trouble (20 page)

He can barely believe he's heard her right. His eyes burn, his throat narrows. His breath is coming faster and faster.

She says, It would be quicker.

I can't fucking believe you.

Brad staggers to his feet and grabs the board by its unburned end. He runs with it to the door, then outside into the cold and the dark, into the deep powdery snow on the porch. He jams the fiery end of the board down into the snow, and watches it sputter, watches the surface of the snow shift and hiss in the wind.

He stumbles back inside—his feet in their boots feel like pieces of concrete—waving smoke away from his face. The flashlight is still on, and in its small circle of light Brad sees Mel lying on her side on the mattress, sobbing, her fists curled beneath her chin. Brad crosses the floor to her on his knees, down where the air is still clear. He picks up the flashlight and aims it at the ceiling, seeing a thick layer of smoke, here and there forming whirlpools where holes in the roof or walls let in the wind.

Get under the blanket, he tells her, his teeth chattering.

She moans.

He can't help himself: he kicks the mattress until Mel looks up at him. He coughs and rubs his eyes and tries to keep the flashlight pointed at her.

I said cover yourself. I have to get the smoke out.

Mel throws the wool blanket over her head. Brad opens
the door again, and then flaps the quilt to wave the smoke toward the doorway. It begins to dissipate, a little; he keeps waving until his hands grow too numb. Then he builds the tent again, over Mel. He climbs inside and points the flashlight at her.

I'm sorry, she says, and turns her face away.

What the fuck was that about?

If we're going to die, she says, I don't want you mad at me.

Mel, we're not—

He wants to tell her
We're not going to die.
Wants to shake her and tell her not to give up, that they'll never survive if she can't even make herself try. But then it sinks in: the fire was his last idea. They're out of heat. Mel's right; they probably don't have long.

Brad? I just thought—

I know, he says. He holds out his hand. I'm—I'm just not ready.

Saying this tightens his raw throat. Mel grips his fingers—hers are so cold it's all he can do not to jerk his hand away.

I just don't want to give up, he says.

She sits and puts her arms around him.

There's nothing more to do, she says.

Brad thinks—at the same time—that she's right, and that he hates the way she can sound so reasonable. Like this is an argument she's won. But all the same he puts his face into her hair. And though all of their skin is cold, he can feel, after a while, a little bit of heat between them, a tiny pocket somewhere near their bellies. How long could it last?

Just hold on, she says.

It's my fault, he says.

No. She whispers this, runs her hands over his hair. No. You couldn't know.

He's sobbing now, like he can't ever remember crying—not when his mother told him she was done with him, not after the times he took a beating in jail. He can't stop whatever it is that's coming out of his throat, a sound so big and jagged that it hurts him to let it out. He keeps saying, No, over and over again.

It's not fair
, is what he thinks.

Mel's crying, too—but softer, gentler. It's okay, she tells him. At least we're together.

He's just begun to calm down when the flashlight's beam starts flickering, dulling.

Mel has been crooning to him, whispering his name into his ear, and when he says, The light's going out, she actually laughs.

Figures, she says, and the beam gutters and dies.

He wonders if he's seen her for the last time. In the dark he tries to call up a picture of her face, and wonders if he'll be able to work his lighter with his frozen hands, at least long enough to take a look.

He thinks about how once when he was in high school he burned a blister onto his thumb, lighting candles with his mother's lighter after a power outage, and how angry he'd been at himself, when she told him he could use one candle to light another—

Holy shit, he says to Mel.

He clambers to his numb feet and crosses the room, feeling his way to the basin with his hands, his breath coming in quick gasps. Because he remembers, sees them almost like
they're giving off light: underneath the basin, in a mold-covered shoe box, are two candles, and a book of matches.

Brad had known plenty of women before Mel. Ever since he'd wanted them to, he'd had no trouble getting girls to notice him—especially during the years he'd had extra weed falling out of his pockets. They came, they went, and that had always been fine. He tried, as much as he could, to be mellow, to avoid all the same stupid dramas he saw his friends falling into, over and over. He'd never dated anyone longer than a couple of months—he never understood the guys who
knew
, who all of a sudden went crazy for a girl, who one minute were ordinary guys and the next minute were acting like neutered dogs.

But after a few weeks with Mel, Brad couldn't decide who he was more like: some junior-high kid with a crush, drawing hearts on his notebook; or a junkie.

Ordinarily Brad hated using the phone—he'd go weeks without picking one up. Now he sneaked calls to Mel from the storeroom phone at the deli where he worked. It's me, he'd murmur, watching for his boss. Oops, gotta run. Mel would call him late on the nights they didn't spend together. Talk to me while I fall asleep, she'd say. And he would.

Mel was taking summer classes and working, in a university records office. On his free days Brad would catch the train to DePaul and hang out in the union, until Mel's class or her shift was over. He'd sit there in the middle of all those well-dressed students feeling like a fucking imposter, like everyone
in the room knew he had no business there—and still that waiting was all right, because it meant more time with Mel. When she walked into the union and saw him—when her face lit up—it was worth it.

Finally Mel told him they couldn't touch until her homework was done; her grades were slipping. So they made a game of it. They'd sit at a coffee shop, at separate tables. Brad would read or listen to his little CD player while she did her homework, and if he caught her looking at him he'd shake a finger. When she was finally done she'd slip into the booth next to him and kiss him. Half the time they'd run to her place. The other half they'd sit late into the night and talk and talk.

She'd tell him about wanting to be a teacher someday, about how much she loved being around little kids. Back in Michigan she had what sounded like two dozen baby cousins and nieces and nephews. She missed babysitting them, reading to them. I think I'd be a good teacher, Mel said. Don't you?

Absolutely, he told her. She'd changed
him
, just in a matter of weeks; if she could open up his eyes, he figured she could open anyone's.

She was a genius, after all, at getting him to talk; if he so much as grunted she'd be all over it, asking him what he meant, and what did he think of this, or that, and here's what
she
thought of this, or that . . . keeping up with her, sometimes, felt kind of like being on speed.

One day, early on, Mel got him talking about the music he wanted to make, about how maybe someday he'd like to start a club, or produce records. He'd be happy as a DJ. Think about it, he'd say.
We
met at a club. That would be nice, you
know? Running a place where everyone could dance and get happy and hook up.

Then he told her—and he was surprised by how quickly, nervously, the words came out—how he'd been thinking of getting out of Chicago. How when he was off probation he'd maybe go to Miami, where the club scene was so good.

Mel listened and smiled without parting her lips, but for once she didn't ask him any other questions.

T
HEN ONE NIGHT
, two months in, Mel called him, saying, Brad, Brad, come over right now. He'd run to the L, thinking she was having some kind of emergency. But when he finally knocked on her door, she answered wearing only a bathrobe, holding a bottle of wine. They're all gone, she said, looking up at the ceiling. We're alone!

And so they ate dinner at the kitchen table upstairs, and drank right from the bottle, and rolled around on the living-room floor, and afterward they lounged naked and watched Letterman on the ancient black-and-white TV down in Mel's room.

It was then that she asked him, So do you ever think about what you're going to
do
?

What do you mean?

About Lou. About a place.

Lou had been rumbling, lately, about Brad moving out. Brad swallowed, wishing he didn't have to think about something so petty—not now.

I don't know, he said. Lou's all talk—it's not like he's going to do anything.

So can I ask you something?

Yeah.

I've been thinking, she said, and took his hand and held it up in front of her face, kneading his palm until his fingers were splayed. It's nice, being alone like this. Right?

You said it.

Yeah. So . . . maybe we should get a place.

Now he knew why she'd been so eager to get him drunk.

Don't say no, she said.

Mel, I've never lived with anybody. I mean, a girl.

I can see it on your face, she said. You don't want to.

That made him angry. She wasn't right. But . . . she wasn't wrong either. The thought had never entered his mind.

Brad lay very still, aware, as he hadn't been a minute ago, of Mel's warm flank pressed against him. If any other woman he'd ever been with had asked him, he would have said no. No way. He had to have his privacy, his own mess. That was bedrock, that was principle. Especially now . . . the moment probation was over he was going to be nothing but a little comic-strip cloud of dust. He'd be in Miami. And Mel still had a year of school, at least.

But then he realized: he hadn't been thinking, seriously thinking, about Miami for weeks. He'd been saying the words, but not seeing the pictures. Since going to bed with Mel he'd been thinking mostly of
Mel
, and not about beaches and clubs and the crowds of drunk college kids who arrived every spring, like geese.

So what the fuck was he afraid of?

She said, A little place. Just us.

We've only known each other a few weeks, he said.

Two months, actually. Her voice was edging already into sadness—he hated to hear it quiver, hated to think that was his fault.

Mel . . .

It's just—you make me
happy.
Nobody's ever made me feel happy. Not like this. You've made my whole life different.

And what she was saying now—that was it,
that
was what scared the shit out of him: her happiness. He could almost feel her hope, a little pulsing white spot between them on the bed. Waiting to glow brighter or die. And she wanted to put it right into his hands, to say: Hang on to this for me.

He wanted to tell her: Mel, I'm so going to fuck this up.

She sat up and sighed. I was kind of hoping for a response? You know, like,
I've been happy, too, Mel?

Of course I've been happy. This is just—

A surprise?

Yeah, he said.

This isn't how I saw this going.

I know, I know—

Brad, she said, I love you.

He closed his eyes. She'd never said that to him before. But he'd imagined her saying it—late at night, sometimes, when he was too keyed up to sleep. And now, hearing it . . . if Mel so much as touched his shoulder right now he'd break down, he'd hold her all night and bawl into her hair.

He said, I just need to think.

Mel's voice was neutral. All right.

Can I still stay?

You asshole. Yes, I want you to stay.

They lay quiet for a long time. Mel turned away from him. Brad watched the tip of her ear.

Finally she said, We can think about it, and talk about it, and I'll even leave you alone for a while, if you want. But if you're going to stay in my bed, I kind of have to put you on the clock.

Mel—

You know I'm right. I'm done chasing the wrong people.

Then she turned, quickly, and kissed him on the forehead. Good night, she said.

But later that morning, while Mel slept, her back still turned to him, Brad saw it:

A little apartment, somewhere up in Lincoln Park, a few floors above the street. The balcony door was propped open—it was summertime. Down on the street he could see students walking back and forth, bags slung across their shoulders. Mel was at work, and he sat in front of a fan and listened to records on his headphones, or noodled with a keyboard. Their bed was in the corner, right under a window. He knew its frame rattled—but he also knew they never had to worry about being quiet, not here. They kept an ashtray in the window and would sit and smoke in the dark and watch the streets. They'd sleep with a breeze blowing over them, the sounds of traffic. And when it was time to get Mel up, he'd nuzzle the soft spot on her neck that vibrated when she moaned, or laughed.

He closed his eyes and wished—for maybe the first time since he was a kid—for everything to be different when the sun rose, for the room around them to be revealed as it should be.

Mel was better than anything that had ever happened to him. So why was he treating all of this like some big fucking tragedy?

It was, he told himself, time to grow the fuck up.

Mel, he said.
Mel.

She turned to him. When her eyes opened she smiled, and he could tell: she already knew what he would say. Like all
night she'd been waiting for him to catch up, to see what she'd already seen.

He said, Okay, and then described it to her anyway.

The third night never seems to end.

Brad lights one of the candles, jamming it between slats on the grill's rack. He and Mel pull the quilt down from the top of the table and drape it over their heads, and sit with the candle between them. Brad rubs and rubs Mel's feet, but she says she can't feel them anymore.

That's all she says to him, and all he can think to ask her about.

He keeps the candle burning until the space between them fills with heat. Then he pinches it out and huddles with Mel, rubbing every part of her he can, until he can't stand the cold, and lights it again. The candle burns slowly, but still it's getting shorter and shorter.

They're down, he knows, to only one more option. He's been trying to think of a way to tell Mel, a way that won't panic her, but he can't. He has no choice.

Mel.

When she says, What? it's the first word he's heard from her in hours.

Listen, he says. When the sun comes up I'm going to go for help.

He can hear her intake of breath. Her feet twist, a little, in his hands.

No, she says.

We don't have a choice.

You
can't.

I have to. I should have gone yesterday. But I know—we aren't going to make it another day.

I'll go, too, she says.

He wants to cry. Mel, he says, you wouldn't make it.

They look at her feet, bundled in his lap.

You could carry me, she says. Piggyback.

He's thought about this. He says, I wish I could. But it's too far. I'm not strong enough. And you'll be warmer here with the candles.

Brad, she whispers. Please. Don't leave me alone.

It'll only be a few hours. A day at most.

That's too
long.
She pulls close to him.
Please.
I'd rather die with you here.

He can't tell her that this is exactly what he's afraid of.

Listen to me, she says. Her cold hands move, panicked, around his chest and neck. Let's say you make it. We'll be
arrested.
You'll go back to jail.

Of course she's thought of it, too.

As has he. But he's also been thinking, this last hour, of the apartment in Chicago—their place, the one they'll live in someday. The warm summer afternoons. And he's been thinking that if Mel is there—waiting for him, in a place like that—he can do the time.

He imagines the first day he's out, the two of them eating hot Chinese food, making love like they've never made it.

Yeah, he says. I know. But I can do it.

She starts to wail, pushing her face against his chest.

Mel, he says, stroking her hair. I got us into this. It was my idea. If I don't try to fix it—

He's about to say:
I'll never be able to live with myself.
But he doesn't.

She won't answer him.

You know it's the only way, he says. I'll go in the morning.

L
ATER BRAD
brings one of the chairs under the blanket and sets up the lit candle underneath it. He's gone too long without sleep; the candle flame leaves yellow streaks across his vision. He nods off with Mel still clinging to him.

Later, he realizes she's crying again. The wind is still howling outside. Mel's cold hands are on his chin. His own feet are numb.

Brad, Mel whispers. I don't think we're going to make it until morning.

Sure we will, he says.

She puts her mouth against his ear. I want you to promise me something, she says.

What?

If I don't make it? And you do? Just leave. Leave me here.

Mel—

I mean it, she says. I don't want you to go to jail. Not over this. And I don't want you to feel bad. This wasn't your fault. Okay?

Her eyes are black holes, right in front of him.

Promise, she says. If you want to make me feel better, promise.

I promise, he says.

She kisses him. Her body is shaking, and cold, cold everywhere.

I love you, she says. Make me warm.

It's hard to do, but they manage. The blanket around them
fills up with heat. Brad's mouth is dry and cracked, but between them he imagines—it's so real he can almost see it—a glow, like from an electric stove's warm red coil.

Mel says, Tell me you love me.

And he does, over and over.

In the end he tries to pull out, but she says, No, it's okay. He feels, at once, dread, and joy, and a fluttering in his stomach—not just as he comes, but something else—like the feeling he's had, swimming, when he's stepped out over his head: the fear of sinking, and then the peace that comes after, when he's made himself relax, and float.

Mel rubs her hands across his lower back, and sighs. You're so warm.

Afterward she takes the candle and goes to visit the bucket. He can't keep his eyes open. She's gone for long time, and he's just about ready to shout for her when he hears her thumping quickly back. She's shivering wildly, and when she's under the quilt he rubs her, his own body cold and heavy.

Hold me tight, she says.

Later he thinks she's having a dream. Her hands are waving in the air above the blanket, and she gasps.

Shh, he says, grabbing a hand.

She mutters something that might be his name, and shudders, and curls to him.

Shh, he says. It's okay.

T
HE NEXT TIME
he wakes, the cabin is still. The wind groans, but not as strongly as before. Brad looks for a long time at the quilt a few inches above his face, at the candlelight pulsing across the fabric, trying to remember where he is. He lifts the quilt—the cabin is still dark; it's still the same night. But
there's an awful stink in the air, something other than the quilt's stinging mold.

He wonders when Mel will come back from the bathroom, because he's freezing, and then he knows she never left, that she is in his arms, and that she's gone cold.

His hand scrabbles for the candle and holds it next to her. Mel's turned away from him. He says her name, grabs her shoulder, shakes her. He turns her to face him. Her face is gray, her eyes only white slits. Bile streams out of her mouth.

H
E LOSES TIME
, for a while.

At first he talks to her, like maybe she's hanging on in there, somehow.

He tells her he loves her. He tells her he wants to die.

He asks, What the fuck did you
do
?

He asks this when he's trying to wipe her face clean, when he lifts her onto his lap and he finds the empty prescription bottle that's rolled underneath her. When he knows it wasn't just the cold that took her.

He tells her she's crazy, that he hates her. That he can't believe he ever loved such a crazy stupid selfish bitch.

He tells her he knows what she wants him to do, and he's not going to do it. He tells her he's going to fucking die anyway.

Not long after that the candle burns down to a tiny spark, and from there into nothing.

I won't light the other one, he tells her. But after a while the dark is too much, the cold is too much, and he does.

He huddles around the little flame, puts his hands over it until they fill with pain.

At one point he's sure that Mel's snuggled closer to him, and that her skin is warm. He rubs her feet and kisses her and
tells her he's sorry, that he wants to marry her and live in a house on stilts next to the ocean.

L
ATER HE
shudders awake. The candle's burnt down by a third. He can just see the part in Mel's hair, the white curve of her forehead. He touches her hair, pulls his hand back.

He can
see
her. There's more than candlelight around him.

Slowly, stiffly, he wraps the blanket around his shoulders and lifts up the quilt. The room's so bright it hurts his eyes—outside the windows, when he squints, he can see blue skies. And the air is different—it's warmer, he's sure of it. He's not so good on his feet, but all the same he walks and opens the door, to look at the thermometer. And there it is: twenty-five degrees. The sun glints off the flat field of snow that was once the lake.

He watches a sunbeam move slowly across the floorboards. He drags the mattress over to it, sits in the heat next to Mel. When he feels the warming on his neck, he moans.

I told you, he says to her. You gave the fuck up!

He should go, he knows that. But the sun is so warm he can't think, can barely even make himself move.

L
ATER
—just a couple of hours, he thinks, but he can't be sure—Brad hears a sound, one he can barely believe: a motor, a big one. He crosses the room to the back windows and peers out.

Out on the road a red pickup with a plow attachment rumbles by, throwing up a plume. He wonders if he's hallucinating it.

You see, he says to Mel. You
see
that?

You fucking coward, he says. He's not sure who he says this to.

Brad puts on every bit of clothing he can. He digs in Mel's purse and adds her cash to his own: he counts out seventy-eight dollars. He takes her cigarettes.

He opens the last can of tuna with his pocketknife and eats it with his fingers, even though the chunks are held together by a web of frost, and swallowing it stings his throat.

Just before leaving he turns to look at Mel from the doorway. And he can't bear the sight of her pale face—it's like she's awake, like he's leaving someone alive.

So he wraps her in the quilt. It's harder than he'd imagined. She's gone stiff, and she's heavy—he thinks, with a shameful surge of relief, that he really
couldn't
have carried her out. When he's done he sets her as gently as he can down on the mattress, and then sits with his hand on her, until the cold from her body begins to pulse up through the scratchy wool. Like she's pushing him away.

He thinks about leaving her ID, next to her on the mattress—but he can't make himself do that.

Fuck her, fuck all her stupid plans. He's going to get gas, and then he's coming back for her.

He tucks his chin into his sweater and walks outside.