Your Tragedy Is Important to Us

Nine months after the accident the fire department rented out the school gymnasium and put on display the artifacts recovered from the wreckage. For weeks they had been mailing items to the families of the victims. So many items had gone unclaimed the fire chief decided to sponsor an event to regain public trust.

We had mistakenly received a sweater in the mail. It came in a plastic bag. It was red with two oblong holes. It could have belonged to a boy or a girl. I stretched it on the floor and tried to imagine the body that would fit inside. I had difficulty picturing the child’s smile. I could imagine the face, only there was never a mouth, like it had been swept away by the flames after the school bus tumbled down the ravine.

We mailed the sweater back to the fire department but three days later it was redelivered. The mailman said he was just doing his job and I should lodge a formal complaint with the city. I told him I didn’t mind. Sometimes the best way to deal with tragedy is to press right up against it.

My husband watched me fold the sweater with the rest of the laundry. He reread the invitation letter to the event signed by the fire chief.

YOUR TRAGEDY IS IMPORTANT TO US, it said.

“We don’t have any children,” my husband said with a calm disbelief.

He tried to put his arms around me, trembling like he did when he got upset.

Several parents arrived unprepared. Two fathers wrestled on the floor over a lunchbox and had to be removed. Mostly, people were quiet and paced the aisles as if they were in a museum.

At the door they handed out raffle tickets. It was possible, the fire chief told us, that some parents wouldn’t recover anything, so unclaimed items would be raffled.

“That’s sick,” said my husband.

“It’s better than nothing,” I told him.

I rummaged through blankets and teddy bears, sneakers and backpacks and half-melted crayons. I looked for something familiar. I found the sweater. I folded it neatly, then stuffed it under a heap of clothes.

When the time came we did not win the red sweater in the raffle.

In the parking lot my husband sat on the hood of the car and pretended to burn his hand with a cigarette while some children watched, believing it was the coolest magic trick they had ever seen.

I followed the couple who had claimed the sweater. I awkwardly confessed what had happened: watching the story develop on the news, the sleepless nights, how we had been sent the sweater by mistake. I apologized for washing off the smell of burnt asphalt and smoke.

“It’s a nice sweater,” I said.

I asked if I could see a picture of their child. It would help me find some closure.

“There must be a mistake. We’re not parents,” the husband said. His wife clutched the sweater against her chest.

“Someday,” she said, “we want a child of our own.”

The couple got in their car. I pressed my hand against the window—maybe I wanted to stop them, maybe I just wanted to feel something, I don’t know—but then my husband pulled me away. He said to keep walking. He said not to turn around.

His hands were warm. I could feel where the cigarette had pretended to burn his palm. Days later, if I concentrated enough, I could still feel that burn, and for once it felt so good.