Ellen Block: The Language of Sand

She awoke in the hospital to the faces of her parents, her brother, and two policemen. Her father described her injuries, gave her the prognosis. Her windpipe was damaged, but in time she would be able to speak again. Her mother begged her not to try to talk. Her brother urged her to listen to the officers, who explained that the neighbor who called 911 had seen her husband, Paul, carry her out of the house, unconscious, her body limp. He’d laid her gently on the grass, then run back inside to get their son.

Abigail understood why Paul had saved her first. He was a mathematician and had been true to form. Justin weighed about thirty pounds. Abigail was four times as heavy. It was an easy equation. He’d decided to use what strength he had to bring her to safety first, then would go back for their son. He couldn’t have calculated that the house would cave in.

The fire department made every attempt to rescue them; the officers assured Abigail of that. The inferno was too ferocious. It took fire trucks from three towns to quell it.

There was only one question Abigail had for the policemen, though the medication the doctors had her on made it slippery, almost too slick to get a grip on. The mix of anguish and potent sedatives was mentally obliterating. Laboring to stay conscious, she motioned for a notepad.

She wrote the word: How?

The officers traded glances with her father. Abigail felt her family bracing for her reaction. The source of the fire was a gas leak from the new oven that had recently been installed. A poorly fitted pipe allowed a stream of gas to bleed in between the walls, filling the shell of the house. Then something sparked the gas. The fire department couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause. A power surge. A defective wire. Even the flipping of a faulty light switch would have been enough to ignite the gas that had leached into the structure. Despite the drugs, Abigail could comprehend what the officers were telling her, and instantly she knew.

She and Paul had purchased the oven a week earlier. They’d spent hours looking at a multitude of ranges, comparing features and prices. The oven Abigail was leaning toward was expensive, so she’d been open to other models. Paul wouldn’t hear of it.

“Get the oven you want,” he had said, taking her hand. “You deserve it” were his exact words. “Forget about the money. Think about that first batch of cinnamon sugar cookies. I can practically smell them.”

Cinnamon sugar cookies were her son’s favorite, so the morning the oven was delivered, Abigail went and bought the ingredients. She’d planned on baking them the following day. She wouldn’t get the chance.

For a month, Abigail remained in the hospital. Her family and friends visited daily. Their company did little to console her. The drugs kept her too drowsy to do much other than nod if someone addressed her. Her injuries were slower to heal than the doctors had predicted. During the fire, Abigail had breathed in a combination of burning hot gas and smoke, scalding her lungs and scorching her throat. The mundane matter of breathing became a torture; swallowing, a misery. Abigail could feel the weight of air passing through her nostrils, making its journey through her chest. Although the medication made her thoughts gluey, she was grateful not to have to endure the brunt of the pain. Her grief, however, was an agony unto itself. It had degrees no thermometer could measure. The irony was that she had been burned on the inside of her body. The flames had spared her skin and burrowed deep inside her, leaving scorch marks that wouldn’t heal.

The fire charred everything Abigail cherished, branding both her past and her future. The lawsuit her brother, an attorney, filed for her against the company that installed the stove would take months to settle, maybe years. Meanwhile, the money from Paul’s life insurance policy was cold comfort. Though it meant she wouldn’t have to work for some time, Abigail didn’t care, because she loved her job. She was the lead lexicographical consultant for a company that produced electronic dictionaries for foreign markets, a plum position. But she no longer had the drive to work nor the strength to concentrate for very long. Whenever she tried to read, the words would scramble on the page. Snippets of old conversations with Paul would flare in her mind or, out of nowhere, she would have the sensation of running her hand through Justin’s hair. He’d had cherubic curls that sagged into his eyes if allowed to grow too long. For an instant, she would sense the hair between her fingers, then the feeling would vanish. That was what was left of her family—memories that would blacken around the edges like burning paper and turn to ash.

Darkness masked the view of the ocean from the cottage’s windows. Abigail blew on her hands to warm them, then brushed a stray hair from her cheek, only to discover she’d been crying. She hadn’t noticed.

Her watch claimed it was eight o’clock. It seemed much later. Abigail hadn’t eaten in hours. An apple left over from the car trip was all she had in the way of food.

“It’s that or the crumbs from the kitchen drawers.”

Dinner in one hand and a duffel bag in the other, Abigail trundled up the staircase, carrying her luggage to the bedroom. Two steps from the top, the bag’s handle caught on the railing, wedging her in the stairwell. She tugged and tugged, to no avail.

“Locked doors, stuck drawers, a scary fireplace, and now you want to give me a hard time?”

Abigail clenched the apple in her teeth to free up her other hand and gave the duffel a decisive yank. The strap ripped away from the railing, but the force of the bag coming back at her sent the piece of fruit popping from her mouth. She watched helplessly as it bounced down the filthy stairs. The apple spun to a stop at the front door.

“So much for supper.”

Too tired to care, Abigail tossed the duffel bag onto the bed, sending a disheartening cloud of dust into the air.

“Ditto for a good night’s sleep.”

After stripping the bed, she replaced the unwashed quilt and sheets with the set of towels she’d brought, laying them in a patchwork pattern while saving some to use for blankets. She was changing into her pajamas when it became readily apparent the towels wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm. The house was frigid. Abigail piled on another shirt and a sweater as well as a pair of sweatpants.

“I don’t see how you’re going to brush your teeth. You can’t even move your arms with this many clothes on.”

The same sludge that had run from the taps earlier that afternoon coughed from the faucet, spewing bilge into the basin. Abigail left the water running until she coaxed a clean flow from the pipes. Her reflection was framed in the lopsided mirror over the sink. She barely recognized herself. The extra clothing doubled her size, and her hair was wild from the wind, her eyes bloodshot, and her face puffy from crying.

Was this Abby ?

If her full name stood for the person she’d been before the fire, what remained to be defined was who she would be now.

She shuffled to the bedroom, pining for sleep and rubbing her eyes, then remembered she had to remove her contact lenses. When she went back to the bathroom, the light was off. Abigail didn’t recollect flipping the switch. Anxiously, she tested it, waiting for the smell of smoke or the whoosh of flames. The bulb dimmed and lit, the switch clicking. Convinced nothing was going to happen, Abigail shut off the light.

“You forgot your contacts. Again.”

She turned around. The bathroom light was on.

“It’s a short. A short in the wiring. This is an old house. It’s just a short.”