An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [14]
"Do you recognize my name now?" he asked. "Do you recognize my parents' names?"
"Sort of," I said, even though I didn't, not really, and even at the trial I tried hard not to know their names, as my future seemed a lot more likely a prospect if I forgot the details of my past. "I don't really remember the whole thing all that well," I told him, which as I've mentioned is a talent of mine and was true besides. Even now, with Thomas in front of me, the fire and the smoke and his parents' burning bodies were so far away they seemed like someone else's problem, which is awfully mean to say and in that way perfectly consistent with most true things.
"Sort of?" he repeated. A little more color crept into Thomas's face when he said this, and I could already see I was doing his health some good, and if this kept up I might even get him to eat something. "Sort of? Don't you feel even a little bit bad about killing my parents?"
"It was an accident," I said. Thomas drew himself up at this and made a face, and in his defense I could see how he didn't believe me: because if you said over and over again about the fire you'd set and the people you'd killed, "It was an accident," it sounded as though you were whining, and if it sounded as though you were whining, it also sounded as though it wasn't an accident, and then it didn't matter whether it really was an accident or not. If you said about something terrible you'd done, "It was an accident," you sounded like a coward and a liar, both. I sympathized with Thomas completely. But still, the truth is the truth is the truth. "It was an accident," I said again, again.
"There's no such thing as an accident," Thomas said.
"Wow, it's funny you say that," I told him. Anne Marie had said the same thing many a time: in our life together I'd ruined more than one surprise party and leaned over backward and broken more than a few of our neighbors' cherished heirloom chairs and told far too many ethnic jokes in the company of someone of that same ethnicity, and after each of these unconscious, unpremeditated bumblings, Anne Marie accused me of doing it intentionally. "This wasn't an accident," she'd say. "You did it on purpose." And I always told her, "I didn't! I don't!" And she'd say, "There is no such thing as an accident." And I'd say, "There is, there is!" But maybe there wasn't. I could see what she was talking about, and Thomas, too.
"I miss my parents so much," Thomas said. "It's been twenty years since you killed them, and I still miss them so fucking much."
"Oh, I know you do," I told him. I was feeling empathy for him deep down in my gut, and his missing his parents made me miss mine, too, and in a way we were both orphans and in the same boat. "Hey, listen," I said, "are you sure you don't want a drink or something?" Because I was still thirsty from the lawn mowing, and besides, I was really starting to feel close to him and in his debt for doing what I'd done to his parents and his life, and would have gotten him anything he wanted.
"No," he said. And then: "Do you know what they did to me in school?"
"Wait a minute," I said. "Who? When did this happen? What school?" Because I need to know the specifics of a story if I'm going to care, I mean really care, about it. As a child I could never feel much for the three little pigs and their houses