Precious And Fragile Things

Remembering his comments the night before, Gilly hesitated to open the refrigerator. She expected to recoil from the smell of dead rodents and had one hand already up to her nose in preparation. The interior of the appliance was not sparkling; age would prevent that from ever being true again. But it was clean. The caustic but somehow pleasant scent of cleanser drifted to her nostrils. Food filled every shelf, crammed into every corner. Jugs of milk and juice, loaves of bread, packages of bologna and turkey and deli bags of cheese. The freezer was the same, bulging with packages of ground beef and chicken breasts. No vegetables that she could see, but plenty of junk food in brightly colored boxes, full of chemicals and fat. The sort of food she bought but felt guilty for serving.

“You went shopping.”

“Even bastards gotta eat,” Todd said.

Gilly pulled out the jumbo-size containers of jelly and margarine, not real butter, and set them on the table. She shifted on her feet, uncertain what to do next. She wasn’t used to not being the one at the stove. The bare table beckoned, and she opened cupboards in search of plates and cups, pulled out a drawer to look for silverware. The tiny kitchen meant they needed complicated choreography to get around each other, but she managed to set the table while Todd shifted back and forth at the stove to give her room to maneuver.

When at last she’d finished and stood uncertainly at the table, Todd turned with a steaming skillet in one hand. “Sit down.”

Gilly sat. Todd set the skillet on the table without putting a hot pad underneath it, but Gilly supposed it wouldn’t matter. One more scorch mark on the silver-dappled white veneer would hardly make much of a difference.

Todd scooped a steaming pile of eggs, yellow interspersed with suspicious pink bits, onto her plate. Gilly just stared at it. She smelled bacon, which of course she wouldn’t eat, and which of course he couldn’t know.

Instead she spread her browned toast with a layer of margarine and jelly and bit into it. The flavor of it burst on her tongue, igniting her hunger. She gobbled the rest of the bread and left only crumbs.

A teakettle she hadn’t noticed began to whistle. Todd left the table to switch off the burner and pull two chipped mugs from one of the cupboards. Into each he dropped a tea bag and filled the mugs with the boiling water, then pushed one across the table at her.

He took his chair again and settled into the act of eating as naturally as if he’d known her all their lives. He ate with gusto, great gulps and lip smacking. His fork went from the plate to his mouth and back again, with little pause. Watching him, Gilly was reminded of the way their dog crouched over his bowl to keep the cat from stealing the food. Her stomach shriveled in envy. One piece of toast wasn’t going to be enough.

He paused in his consumption long enough to look up at her. “You not eating? There’s plenty. I made extra.”

The sudden loud gurgle of her stomach would make her a liar if she said no. “Maybe some more toast.”

The smooth skin of his brow furrowed. “You don’t like eggs?”

Gilly pointed to the skillet. “Ah…they’ve got bacon mixed in with them.”

Todd licked his lips. The gesture was feral and wary, as though she was trying to trick him and he knew it, but wasn’t sure how to stop her. “Yeah?”

“I don’t eat bacon,” Gilly explained. Her stomach gurgled louder. She’d no more eat the breakfast he’d cooked than she would kick a puppy, but the smell was making her mouth water.

“Why not?”

“I’m Jewish,” she said simply. “I don’t eat pork.”

Todd swiped his sweatshirt sleeve across his lips. “What?”

Gilly was used to having to explain herself. “I don’t eat bacon. I’m Jewish.”

Todd looked down at his plate and shoved the last few bites of pig-tainted eggs around with his fork. When he looked up at her, she noticed his eyes were the same shade as milk chocolate. “You don’t look Jewish.”

The comment, so ripe with anti-Semitism, was one she’d heard often and which never ceased to rankle. “Well, you don’t look crazy.”

He cocked his head at her, again lining the rim of his lips with his tongue. From any other young man the gesture might have been sensual or even aggressively, overtly sexual. On Todd, it merely made him look warily contemplative. Like a dog that’s been kicked too many times but keeps coming to the back door, anyway. Mistrustful, waiting for the blow, but unable to stop returning.

“Uncle Bill always made the eggs that way up here,” he said finally. “He called them camp eggs. But I can make you some without bacon, if you want.”

She wanted to deny him that kindness, to keep him as the villain. Her stomach gurgled some more, and she couldn’t. “I’ll make them.”

She pushed away from the table, heat stinging in her cheeks. Why should she feel guilty? He was the bad guy. He’d held a knife on her, kidnapped her, stolen her vehicle. Put her kids in danger.

“Can you use this skillet, or…” His voice trailed off uncertainly from behind her. “Or do you need one that didn’t have pig in it?”

Again she thought of a kicked dog, slinking around the back door hoping for a moment of kindness, and the heat burned harder in her face. That she doubted there was any utensil in this cabin that hadn’t at some point touched something non-kosher didn’t really matter. He was trying to be considerate. This, like his concern when she’d tripped, was scarier than if he’d shouted and threatened. This made him…normal.

And if he was normal, what did that make her?

“No, I can just wash it out. That one will be fine.”

He scraped the remains of the skillet onto his plate and handed it to her. She washed it, then opened the fridge and pulled out the cardboard carton of eggs. She opened two cupboards before she found a bowl and rinsed it free of any dust that might have gathered. She cracked the first egg into it, checking automatically for blood spots that would make it inedible.

The skin on the back of her neck prickled. He was watching her, and of course. What else would he look at but this woman in his kitchen, a stranger he’d stolen? Gilly broke another egg with crushing fingers, bits of shell falling into yellow yolk.

“How long have you been Jewish?”

It wasn’t the question she’d expected. “My whole life.”

Todd laughed. “I guess that’s about how long I’ve been crazy.”

Crazy.

She’d thrown out the term offhandedly, the way most people did, not meaning it. The way Todd had, himself. His tone had told her he didn’t think he was crazy. Not really. Gilly didn’t think he was crazy, either. Gilly knew crazy.

Crazy was having a chance to escape and ignoring it, not just once, but many times. Crazy was wanting to escape in the first place.

Her stomach lurched into her throat, bile bitter on the back of her tongue. She swallowed convulsively. She wasn’t hungry anymore. She beat the eggs anyway and poured them into the skillet along with some margarine. The smooth yellow mess curdled and cooked. Gilly knew she wouldn’t be able to eat it now no matter how hollow her stomach. She removed the eggs from the stove and turned off the flame.

She sipped in a breath, forming her words with care, keeping her tone light and easy. Casual as coffee. “Where are we, by the way?”

“My uncle’s cabin. I told you last night.”

Keeping her back to him, Gilly gripped the edge of the counter. “No. I mean…where are we? We drove a long time. I fell asleep. I don’t know where we are.”

A beat of silence. Then, “I’m not telling you. Jesus, you think I’m stupid enough to do that?”

Last night he’d held a knife to her and she’d been angry; this morning, faced with the kindness of breakfast and his sullen but nonaggressive tone, Gilly had to dig deeper than her fear to find even a thread of fury. She drew in a breath and then another. She gripped the counter so hard her knuckles turned white and one nail bent and cracked.

She turned to face him. “Todd. That’s your name, right? Todd, you have to take me back. Or take me someplace. Let me go.”

He wasn’t looking at her. He shook his shaggy head and got up from the table to stalk to the living room with a handful of paper napkins he used to build up the fire in the sooty woodstove. He went to the table and picked up a bulging folder, then took it to the woodstove where he crouched in front of its warmth, sifting through the papers. Every so often he threw one of them into the blaze.

“Please,” Gilly said from the kitchen.

Todd ignored her, bent to his task with a single-minded self-absorption. He muttered as he worked, but she couldn’t make out the words. Gilly moved to the living room, wanting to draw closer to the fire’s warmth but feeling as though it was up to her to keep a proper distance between them. There had to be something for her to say or do to make him listen.

If she ran away now, would he chase her? Gilly’s head felt fuzzy, her thoughts mangled, but everything in the cabin seemed too sharp, too clear. Looking at things straight on hurt her eyes. She couldn’t blame exhaustion since she’d had the longest night’s sleep she’d had since before being pregnant with Arwen.

She’d felt this way before, when the pain of childbirth had made time stretch on into an unfathomable and interminable length. When the drugs she’d been taking for a sinus infection had made her feel as though she were constantly floating. Now it was the same, every minute lasting an hour, her head a balloon tethered to her shoulders by a gossamer thread that could snap at any minute.