An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [129]
"There you are," she said. She offered me a sip of her beer and I took it, took more than a sip, then gave the can back to her. The wind shifted and the smoke blew toward us, and the crowd bent over, as one, until the wind shifted back and we all resumed our upright fire-watching position. There were firefighters everywhere now, looking puny and laughable with their axes and their floppy hoses. Even their helmets looked like a joke version of red next to the real red of the fire. The house was looking bigger and bigger, as though the flames were its fourth and fifth stories.
"Here I am," I told my mother. We were surrounded by people, at least ten people within earshot, but their hearing and all their other senses were fully devoted to the fire. Something exploded in the house ― the furnace, maybe ― and there was a terrible shriek of something metal becoming something not. The people in the crowd shrieked in response to the house, and the house shrieked back at them, the heat stoking the noise. I wasn't worried about anyone listening to us when they could be listening to the house. "Where's Dad?"
"It was so easy," my mother said. She was talking calmly, evenly, and I would have found this creepy and awful if I hadn't been listening calmly, evenly, myself. And how could I have been so calm? you might want to know. I don't have a good answer, not even now, seven years after the fact. Was it because of what had just happened to Deirdre? Was I thinking that nothing could be worse than Deirdre's setting herself on fire? Was I thinking that no matter what happened to my father, it couldn't have been as bad as what happened to Deirdre? When the worst thing happens, does it then make us calm in expectation of better things, or does it just prepare us for the next worst thing? "I dumped gasoline on the couch and lit it," my mother said. "That's all I needed to do."
"Mom," I said, "where is Dad?"
"I lit some of the curtains, too, in the dining room, just in case. But I didn't need to. It was so easy. I didn't expect it to be so easy."
"Mom," I said, "where is my dad?"
"Why wasn't it more difficult?" my mother asked, still calm. "Shouldn't some things be difficult?"
This was the scariest thing my mother had said thus far. She'd set our house on fire; I knew that. That wasn't so scary. But it came so easily to her, as easily as reading a book or busing a table or drinking a beer or pretending she had a happy family-that was the scary part. My mother is the most capable person I have ever met, even more capable than Anne Marie. She could do anything she wanted, which was why she'd always scared me and still does.
"Mom," I said, very, very slowly so that she'd understand me, so that there would be no confusion. "Dad left Deirdre to be with us. To be with you. He loves Deirdre, but he's chosen you and me."
"I know," my mother said, turning away from the fire and toward me. The fire lit up the left side of her face, making it glow, while the right side looked so cold, so white in comparison. "He told me the very same thing. He said he wanted me to come home. He said he really meant it this time. He said I could believe him." Then she turned back to the fire, her whole face glowing with the heat and the light, and I was glad, because she looked beautiful. I wanted her to look beautiful, and maybe this is what all children want: for their parents to look beautiful. And in order for them to look beautiful, you have to find ways to ignore their ugliness. It is easier to be ugly yourself than to admit to the ugliness of the people who made you; it is easier to love the people who made you if you are