When my cell phone rang I tried to slide away from Sandy, but when I did she held tight to my arm. I listened to the ringing, four, five, six times, then a little half ring, cut down by the voice mail feature. A minute or so later, I heard the familiar chime that told me I had a message. I stirred a bit, moved my arm just so-it was starting to fall asleep-and then brushed the hair from the side of Sandy’s face. Her breathing was rhythmic, slow, like she was asleep, though she was not. Thirty seconds later, the phone rang again.
“I should probably get that,” I said. “Could be something happening.”
Sandy untangled herself, sat up and then leaned forward, her forearms resting on her thighs. She turned her head and looked back over her shoulder at me. “Could be something happening here, Jonesy.” A little edge in her voice.
I stood, looked toward the kitchen where my cell phone lay, and then back at Sandy. I took a step toward the other room, but when the ringing stopped, so did I. Something was happening. But Sandy was right. It was here. I sat down on the bed next to her. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“I’m not talking about the sex, you know,” she said.
“Hey, give a guy a little credit, will you?” I took a deep breath in through my nose and puffed my cheeks as I let it out. Then I said the only thing I knew how to say on the heels of the most complex discovery I have ever made. “I’m sorry.”
We sat there for a few minutes with that, and when Sandy raised her head and looked at me, I opened my mouth to say something else but instead I ended up repeating myself. “I’m sorry, Sandy. I’m so very sorry”
“You don’t have to apologize, Jonesy. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No. It wasn’t. You were a victim of something that happened a long time ago, just like I was. In a different way, but a victim just the same. I accept your apology, but know this: I don’t ever want to hear you say those words again with regard to the fire. I can’t build the rest of my life on an apology.”
“What did you just say?”
“Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me we don’t belong together. Tell me you have some logical, even mystical explanation as to how we came together thirty years later as friends, co-workers, and now as lovers.” She reached out and took my hands in her own. “What I’m asking you, Virgil, is to tell me it means something. Tell me I’ve found what I’ve been looking for since I was five years old. Tell me you haven’t been searching for something all these years without really knowing what it is, either. Tell me that what we did last night, what we just had isn’t the reason I lost my childhood, it’s the reward. Tell me that the part of me I thought I lost didn’t die in that fire with my father, but has been waiting for this one single moment where it’s safe to say that this is who I am, that this is where I’m supposed to be, that this is my life, right here, right now, with you. Tell me that my father not only gave you the gift of saving your life, but in some mysterious way that gift belongs to me too. Tell me I’m wrong, Virgil.”
“I can’t.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
Sandy leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Tell me.”
When I looked at her face I felt something inside myself let go in a way I had never experienced in all my years. It was then I said the words that for the first time in my life I knew to be true. “I love you.”
When Sandy crawled into my lap and wrapped her arms around me she sounded childlike, but her words were those of a woman and a lover undivided, freed from something by a gift I knew no one could give her, save me. “Tell me.”
“I love you.”
“Tell me…”
“I was there you know,” I said, the ringing of my phone forgotten. We were back on the couch, her feet on my lap. “At your dad’s funeral. Me and my mom. My dad didn’t go. He said he was sick, but I don’t think he was. It wasn’t a happy time for us. It feels sort of ridiculous to say that now-it was just a fucking house-but I’ll tell you, we lost something that day-as a family-and we never got it back.
“But I remember the funeral. The sea of red trucks that stretched for block after block from the cemetery. All the firemen in their dress uniforms. The flag over your dad’s coffin. The way they folded the damn thing and handed it to your mom like, like-”
“Like it was some sort of substitute,” Sandy said. “Like that flag would somehow put food on the table, or keep my mom safe, or tuck me in bed at night. I wasn’t very old, but I remember thinking it was a joke. I remember thinking it might make everyone else feel good, except for the ones who really mattered.”
“We don’t have to talk about this right now, you know. It’s sort of a lot to process.”
“It’ll always be with us. It’s part of who we are.”
I took her feet in my hands, my thumbs kneading the area just below her toes. “I want to say I remember seeing you there, and I think maybe I do, but it might just be wishful thinking, you know, like when you want to remember something so bad you end up making part of it up and then that becomes the reality. I remember the line of trucks, I remember your mom, and I remember the sadness. I remember thinking for the longest time how I wished it had been me that died that day. I remember thinking about how there wouldn’t be all those fire trucks there at the cemetery, how there wouldn’t be as many people, how there wouldn’t be a flag over my coffin.
“I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t want to go. But my mom made me. She didn’t say it, but she made it clear that your dad had died trying to save me, and it was our duty to go.”
“Oh, Virgil, that’s terrible.”
“You know, it wasn’t really,” I said. “She didn’t put the weight on me. She didn’t have to. She just helped me see that it was the right thing to do. Boy, I can remember her and my dad fighting about it. They fought for weeks after that. Not about me going, but the fact that he didn’t.”
“Why do you think he didn’t go?”
“He never told me. He was drinking pretty bad back then, but I think the real reason was that he felt responsible for your father’s death.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You have to understand, I might not know what I’m talking about here. It’s not something my dad and I talk about very often, but I think he feels like if he could have gotten me out, then your dad would still be alive.”
“But you know that’s not true. It took two men to get you out.”
“Yeah, try telling that to him.”
“I will.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that. He’s not exactly the easiest guy in the world to talk to sometimes.”
“So says the son.” I looked at her, a reply forming, when the phone rang again. Sandy dug her feet into my lap for a second, then swung them off and went to the kitchen. She answered my phone like it was the most natural thing in the world, spoke into the receiver for a moment, then handed it to me, a hint of a smile sneaking across the corner of her mouth. “It’s your dad.”
“How do you know that?”
“Caller I.D.,” she said. Then with a playfulness in her voice I was grateful to hear, she added, “ Detective.”
I laughed at myself and took the phone. “Morning, Pops. What’s up?”
“Hey Virg. Your boss is looking for you. She tried here out of desperation. Said she couldn’t get a hold of you. Anyway, sounds like something big might be happening with your case. She wants you to call her right away. Say, who’s that just answered your phone?”