Serotiny

Carlos glanced at the emaciated left leg socketed to his hip and struggled to accept that it belonged to him. It felt cold and thirsty, like a log of seasoned kindling primed to burn away.

He rolled onto his side and conformed his shape to that of the warm, naked body lying uncovered beside him.

Grace shifted in response, pressing her backside against his pelvis with a groan. He brushed aside the blonde hair that withheld her shoulder from him, then circled an exposed mahogany mole with his fingertip. He remembered when the blemish had first appeared, emerging from behind the strap of a rainbow two-piece still wet from the backyard sprinkler in the last days of their first summer together. Grace had loved it at once, calling it a piece of him that she could take with her wherever she went. Where she went was back to her father in Connecticut for another year.

He let his finger drift beyond the dot of mahogany, exploring the surrounding skin. Fair, they called the color—white as virgin holly wood. Even in dusk, his dark hand looked out of place against it.

Not that Grace would ever admit it.

As he withdrew his hand, she grabbed it and wrapped it around herself.

"Don't go away," she said, kissing the blanched burn scars that stippled his forearm. "I want you close."

Carlos settled in against her, his nose pressed to her scalp. She smelled of brine and heat.

"Tell me about your mom," she said.

"Which one? Jan or Vera?"

"Your real mom. Your birth mother."

"She was young when she had me," he said, patrolling the ledge of Grace's collarbone with his thumb. "Fifteen, I think. Brown eyes. Black hair. At least that's what the picture showed. I was only three when the children's home took me in and shipped me out."

"I know all that. Tell me something new about her. Tell me something you've never told anyone else."

He wet his lips, sifting through the fragmented past. "I don't really remember Spanish anymore, let alone El Salvador. But I do know she used to call me Cojo. I think. Or maybe I just remember the story. She'd call me Cojo and tickle my feet until I giggled." He let his hand slip down to Grace's heart, reassured by its rhythm. "They didn't like the name at the orphanage, but I wouldn't answer to anything else, so it stuck. Jan and Vera called me that for my first couple years in California. Then somebody told them what it meant."

"And what does it mean?"

His upper lip twitched toward a sneer. "It means cripple," he said, forcing his facial muscles slack. "That's all I remember from her. Insults and cigarette burns. And my foot, of course. If she'd done something about it, they could've fixed it easy. But she didn't. And now I'm like this."

Without a moment's hesitation, Grace peeled her sticky skin from his and crawled toward the bottom of the bed. She stopped at the atrophied muscle of his thin left calf and kissed it. Then his shin. His ankle. And finally the grotesque, twisted shape of his upturned clubfoot.

"I love every part of you," she said. "Even your foot." Then, with a squeeze of his knee, she added, "But mostly your tongue."

He smiled despite himself. "Don't let Naomi hear you say that."

"Why not? We're not brother and sister. Not really."

His thoughts lurched to Vera. To the scattered ruins of once-lustrous hair shattering at his touch like so many filaments of fiberglass. To cold, bloodless hands and skin that refused to spring back. To a mother replaced by a pale, vacant facsimile. Then replaced again a few years later by tall and effusive Naomi, brimming with the heat of life after leaving behind a daughter and a husband and the bigotry of small-town Connecticut. Carlos had hated her from the start.

But through her, Grace, who came out that summer and every summer thereafter until she started college and stuck for good. They stayed in touch between visits growing up, Grace filling Carlos in on her latest boyfriends and Carlos filling Grace in on his latest bullies. But once summer came, they only had each other. Despite Jan and Naomi's blended family ambitions, he and Grace never came to feel like brother and sister. More like co-conspirators. Later, something far more intimate.

He didn't deserve her love. Possessing it made him feel guilty, like he'd tricked her.

"Why's it so hot in here?" she asked, slipping free of him and striding naked to the window.

Carlos felt an urge to follow, experiencing the inches between them as if oceans, but he didn't budge. In bed, his deformity didn't matter. That's why he built beds for a living. In a bed, he could just be. Most importantly, he could just be with Grace.

She cracked open the window. "I smell smoke," she said, turning back to him, her nose wrinkled. "Must be a brush fire."

Carlos thumbed through his phone, banishing the deepening darkness for a moment. "A big one. Better close the window."

She did so, then hit the lights. They didn't turn on.

"Great," she said. "Power's out. Think it's the fire?"

He set his phone down. "Probably just more brownouts. Everybody wants to run the A/C, so nobody gets to."

She sighed and flopped onto the mattress beside him. After a moment and despite his body heat, she laced her fingers between his. "At least we're dressed for it," she said. "Makes me hungry for kielbasa on the grill, though."

He let his gaze caress the contours of her muscular body in the twilit room, not stopping until he'd reached the long toes of a narrow, perfect foot. Beside it slumped his own, a burlap sack stuffed full of knuckles and calcified keratin. Almost kielbasa, but not quite.

A peek at Grace's face betrayed nothing but love and tranquility. He wondered what was wrong with her, how she could feel anything for him but revulsion at his deformity. Was it pity? Guilt? All these years and she'd never let on.

"It doesn't feel right in here," he said, pulling his hand from hers. "We shouldn't be in their bed."

She twisted toward him on an elbow. "They said I could use it while they were gone."

"You. Not us."

"Well, you made it. You deserve to sleep in it as much as anyone. And it's not my fault you made it so big and comfortable."

His eyes drifted to the ceiling. "If you'd finally settle on the type of wood, you could have one just like it. Better even."

"But I like this room," she said, sliding against him and squeezing his arm. "Remember how we used to play house in here whenever we were alone? You'd make us breakfast in bed, even though you only knew how to do toast, and we'd just cuddle and talk for hours. That was always so nice, even with the crumbs."

"Is that what we're doing here now? Playing house? Or are we just lying in the crumbs?"

After a few seconds of silence, she let go of him and dug into the nightstand drawer. She returned with a flashlight, then wrestled the top sheet over them both, creating a bubble of space with her feet. When she snapped the flashlight on, their little nest grew walls, separating them from the dark outer world.

"Remind you of anything?" she asked, running her short fingernails along the cotton roof.

"Not really."

"Come on. You can do better than that."

"Camping?"

"Totally," she said, her eyes sparkling in the warm light. "Reminds me of Convict Lake."

He wet his lips. "Which time?"

"The second time. The honeymoon trip. When you finally made your move."

A laugh snuck free of his throat. "What were we? Fifteen?"

"Sixteen. We'd just had our birthdays, but the wedding kind of overshadowed them that year."

"How could I forget?" he said, rubbing his good foot against hers. "Parents in the camper. Us in the tent. You unzipped your sleeping bag for me—"

"Not for you. I was hot."

"Damn straight. Hot as hell. Still are."

She kicked him under the sheets. "Shut up. You know what I mean. There I was, innocent little sixteen-year-old Grace, trapped in a tent in the middle of the wilderness with a horny teenage boy. I unzip my sleeping bag for one second so I don't get heatstroke, and the next thing I know you've got my boxers off and your face between my legs."

"Heatstroke, my ass. We were at eight thousand feet. It was like forty degrees out."

Grace suppressed a smile. "Well, what was I supposed to do? Without a little nudge, you never would've gotten the ball rolling."

"Whatever. I remember you being satisfied with the service."

She wrapped her legs around his, allowing him to feel the warmth between them. "Twice, if memory serves. But you wouldn't let me return the favor. I had to corner you in that boat and blow you in front of the whole damn lake two days later."

He remembered. They'd headed out at dawn to fish, and Grace had dragged him to the bottom of their rental boat. He had allowed himself that moment, pressing his head into the cool hull in ecstasy as the sun burned against his face.

"Here's what I don't get," she said, back in their nest beneath the sheets. "Everybody I ever went out with couldn't wait to get in my pants and get off. But not you. Sure, you got in my pants, but only to make me feel good. You still do it sometimes, like your mental dictionary got scrambled and flipped fellatio with phallectomy or something. What's that all about?"

His attention shifted to his cuticles. "I just like to make you feel good. Always have."

"And I like to make you feel good too. Only sometimes you won't let me. Why?"

He sat up, escaping the sheets, and felt for the cane that leaned against the bedpost.

"Where you going?"

"You look like a lobster," he said, limping toward the bedroom door. "I'll find something to cool you off."

When he returned, she lay atop the sheets in darkness, staring out the window.

"You can see flames on the ridge," she said.

He rejoined her in the bed, ditching his cane and settling an ice pack on her overheated belly.

She moved it to her chest, then frowned. "You opened the freezer? But the power's out. Everything's going to thaw now."

"Least you'll be more comfortable," he said, following her gaze out the window.

Billowing lilac smoke blurred the sky from ridge to rusty moon, illuminated from below by the wildfire. For a moment, he imagined Jan and Naomi trapped on the other side of the inferno for good, leaving him and Grace on their own. So what if their parents were married? They weren't related by blood. But Grace could still isolate them both in a bubble of peace and protection. She didn't mind his foot, or at least wouldn't admit it, because she loved him. He couldn't understand why, but it felt real enough.

Flames blazed to life amid the smoke. Carlos shook his head. "Such a waste."

"What do you mean?"

"All those dead trees and animals."

Grace tipped her head against his shoulder. "Fire is just a part of the cycle of life around here."

"Nothing says life like scorched earth."

"Morel mushrooms would agree with you. They grow really well in the spring after a burn. Some trees rely on fire to reproduce as well."

"Really?"

"I learned about it in Fire Ecology. There's a name for it. Serotiny. Certain pinecones are coated in resin. The fire melts it all off, then the seeds fall into an empty niche. The trees start fresh."

"If only things were that easy for people," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"You know. If a little fire was all it took for us to start things over and do it right."

She smiled at him, her face aglow. "You seem to be doing all right to me," she said. "You turn raw wood into heirlooms. I think you're amazing."

"You have to say that."

"No I don't."

"Sure you do. Because you, well, you know."

She pulled her head from his shoulder and glared at him. "I what?"

"You know.”

"Because I love you?"

Carlos flushed. "Yeah, that."

"Why is that so hard for you to say?" she asked.

"It's not," he replied, snatching up her dainty left hand and kissing all of her knuckles in turn. "I love you."

She pulled her hand away. "You can say it to me all day long and mean it, but what you can't do is admit that I love you back. Do you think I'm lying to you about my feelings? Has somebody else been having sex with you all these years? Because I'm pretty sure it was me."

"No, it's not that."

"Come on, Los. You can't give all your love and take none in return. It's unhealthy." She rubbed his cheek with the back of her hand. "I love you. I can barely remember a time when I didn't."

He closed his eyes. "Me either. And if I could, I wouldn't want to."

She wriggled against him, their hot, moist skin binding them to each other. "You say such nice things to me. Let me say some to you. And let them in. See, I'm sweet on you, kid, and there's nothing I can do about it. I love your heart and I love your brain and I love your hands and I love your—"

"Foot?"

"You and that damn foot. Of course I love your foot. It's part of you, dummy."

"But it's disgusting. I'm disgusting."

Grace threw herself onto her back and groaned. "It's just a goddamn foot," she said. "So what if it's smaller than the other one? So what if it bends funny?"

"Easy for you to say. You're going to be a park ranger. You can hike in the woods all day long without a thought. I can't. You protect trees. I turn their corpses into furniture. There's always going to be a distance between us. I'll never be able to catch up."

"Is that all?" She grinned. "I'll go slow for you."

"Don't smile at me. It's not a joke. I don't want you to go slow for me. I want to go slow for you."

She stifled a laugh. "That's just pride talking. You need to get over yourself."

"It's hard when I'm limping along next to perfection."

"I'm not perfect."

"Oh yeah? Name one thing wrong with you."

“My eyebrows don't match my hair color. My thumbs are too short and my ass is too flat and grapes make me sick in the stomach. Should I continue?"

"It's not the same," he said.

She stood up and walked to the window. "You're impossible, you know that?"

"Then you should just leave me. Move into a dorm or something."

Grace turned to him with tears in her eyes. She wiped them off and her face hardened. "Fuck you," she whispered. Then she stormed out of the room.

A few seconds later, he heard her bedroom door slam shut.

Gagging on tears of his own, he sat up and buried his face in his hands. His body shuddered.

Why had he just done that? Why couldn't he just accept her love? All he knew was that his guts hurt and he didn't want her mad, so he grabbed his cane and headed after her.

At the doorway, he stopped. Grace waited outside her bedroom door at the end of the hall.

"Tell me that I love you," she said, her voice pinched.

"What?"

"Tell me that I love you. That you're my favorite. That I can't live without you."

He fingered the pink scars on his forearms. "But you can. You're strong. You're smart. You don't need anyone. Especially somebody like me."

"Say it."

He hesitated. Licked his lips. Took in a breath to speak. But nothing came out. "This is stupid," he said at last.

She sighed, her entire body seeming to deflate with her lungs. "Good night, Los," she said, then slipped into her bedroom and eased the door shut.

He lingered in the master bedroom doorway and cursed at himself. They were just words. Why couldn't he say them and save her the heartache? He didn't have to mean them.

But he did. With her, he did. What's more, he wanted to mean them. He wanted to know that he deserved her. He dropped his cane and turned to the bed that beckoned a body-length away. Anyone worth anything could hobble such a short distance unaided. So he put his worst foot forward, stepping onto his deformity.

Pain. Weakness. The memory of failed surgeries. Unable to hold up his own weight, Carlos collapsed to an oak strip floor in desperate need of refinishing. As he lay there, nursing an elbow, he listened for Grace's footsteps in the hall, but heard nothing. Good. She didn't need to see him like this.

When he finally made it into the bed, flushed and spent, his eyes drifted to the distant brushfire. His foot blocked most of the view. In the darkness, it almost looked like a pine cone. If only it would burn like one.

He imagined the ribbon of flame crawling down from the ridge, unquenchable, jumping the freeway, annihilating everything in its path. He imagined it swirling in the backyard, sucking up all the oxygen and replacing it with a whirlwind of ash.

When he finally caught on fire, his malformed foot would melt away like resin. After the smoke had thinned and the danger had passed, he would be reborn pink and whole. Then he could accept Grace's love, could finally deserve it.

Perhaps his real mom had known the secret all along. Perhaps the blanched scars on his forearms were the legacy of her attempts at burning him clean.

A noise drew his attention to the doorway. Grace stood there, the hint of a grimace crossing her face.

"Do I love you?" she asked.

Carlos wet his lips, stalling for time. She looked so sad, hunched against the jamb, her eyes shimmering in whatever light they could find. He'd done that. He'd brought those tears to life.

"Please tell me," she whispered, nearly inaudible.

He took a breath. "You love me," he said. "You love me as much as I love you. Now come here."

With his words, she seemed to grow six inches. She moved from the doorway and threw herself into the bed beside him.

"Tell me again," she said.

He looked into her glistening eyes, then squeezed her side. "You love me."

The lie burned hot on his tongue.