Chapter 10: Bellaire Road

"Not here," he said. "Come to the house."

I dressed him back into his shirt myself, and he let me.

His aunt's house was on Bellaire Road, ten minutes from the library.

It was a narrow brick house with a green door, a porch swing, and a front window full of hanging plants.

He had lived in the upstairs flat for five years and never changed the downstairs.

He led me in through the kitchen at two in the afternoon on Sunday.

The light came in yellow over a long scrubbed table.

There was an iron stove, copper pots hanging in a row, and a set of tea tins with her handwriting on the labels.

"She taught me everything at this table," he said. "I came here every summer."

He put the kettle on the stove.

He stood a long time with his hand on the handle.

"I'll tell you," he said. "Please sit."

I sat.

He didn't.

He walked to the window and talked to the glass.

"I was nineteen. I had a roommate, a friend. We shared a kitchen in a house near campus."

"It was two in the morning and he was sick. He'd made soup and fallen asleep over it."

"The soup had gone cold. I thought, I'll heat it."

"I was showing off, you understand. I was the one who could cast. I'd been top of every class since I was fourteen."

His voice was very even.

"I put my hand on the pot and I pushed the heat in. I pushed too much. The pot split down the side."

I felt my own hands go cold in my lap.

"He had reached for the lid to take it off for me. He was being kind."

"His whole right hand was under it."

"Oh, Anselm."

"Third-degree burns. Two surgeries. Skin grafts."

He finally turned around.

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