Free Charlie Johnson in the Flames by Michael Ignatieff Page B

nice taper down to the ankle.
    â€˜You can’t get away with not talking,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘You did that before and you can’t do it this time.’ She was right, of course. He did have a habit of shutting everything down when he didn’t know what to think or feel. He would just go mute and there had been times in their marriage when it went on for days, for example at the end of that thing with whatever her name was. Re-entry was always hell. He felt like a diver, having to come up slowly, fifteen feet at a time, with the wobbly blue sky so far away above him and never getting any closer. The best way was just to take it easy, letting the surroundings go to work on you. He sat by the table and looked about him, remembering when the wall had stopped there and they had knocked it through to make the kitchen bigger. The history of the room, and the house in which it stood, was reeling him in, and so were the cooking smells on the stove. She was doing that thing with chicken and vegetables that started on the burners and ended up in the oven and came out tasting of paprika and pepper.
    He should stay: his father had, his mother had. Look where it got them. No really, look where it got them, faithful to the end, Mika holding Frank’s head in her arms on the garage floor, saying Russian prayers over him. Or so she said. He hadn’t been there. He had been here. In this house when his dad died, an ocean away, in theirs. He drank, cupping the glass with two bandaged hands and looked at her and knew he had to say something.
    â€˜If the office hadn’t phoned,’ she said.
    â€˜I just couldn’t.’
    â€˜Don’t do this to us.’
    â€˜I’m not doing anything.’
    She let that pass. ‘What happened?’ It wasn’t that she didn’t know. She must have made ten calls to Jacek and Magda. She would have had the gist from them and from the office. But she wanted to hear it from him. He owed it to her.
    â€˜We got caught in an ambush and a girl got killed.’
    â€˜I saw the footage, Charlie. She was burning.’ She had her back to the stove and she was vehement and angry, because it made her sick to think he was fobbing her off. But it was all that he could get out of his throat. He was trying to understand why it was that when you told a story, once, for good – in this case to Etta – it all dried up inside you when you were ordered to tell it again.
    â€˜Come on, Charlie. Tell me.’ She never begged.
    â€˜I got burned. I was trying to put her out.’
    â€˜Oh Charlie, Jesus Christ, if only you’d rung us,’ she said, in a voice full of pain for him, and for them. He could tell she was doing the best she could. She was trying. He could tell from the catch in her voice.
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜You need to see a doctor.’ She stayed with her back to the kitchen surfaces, but her hands made a gesture towards him.
    â€˜My hands are fine. Really. Want to see?’
    â€˜I don’t mean your hands.’
    It cut him to hear her say that. She was the one he had the history with, and whatever else was wrong, she knew him well.
    â€˜I don’t need a doctor.’
    She shook her head and bent so that her hair came down over her face, as if she wanted to hide from the sight of him for a moment. Then she straightened, turned her back and steadied a lemon on the chopping board to slice it.
    â€˜They got burned. But they’re fine.’
    She began stirring something in a cup. She was making salad dressing. He could smell the lemon. ‘Why Jacek rather than me?’ Her back stayed turned.
    â€˜Don’t know.’
    He really didn’t, now that he was here. He could say Jacek had been through it all with him and she hadn’t. He could say, though she would have thrown the salad dressing at him, that it was a guy thing, needing the comfort of a man, although that was actually part of the