An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [33]
"Huh," I said, then acted as if I were thinking about the question, which I should have been; instead I turned and looked at my mother, who was sitting behind me in the courtroom. There might as well have been a neon sign on her forehead that flashed the words DEFIANCE, OUTRAGE, REGRET, much like our driveway would flash the words MURDERER and FASCIST in the years to come.
"Huh," I said again.
"You'll have plenty of time to think about the question in prison, Mr. Pulsifer," the judge said to me. "Make sure you do."
"I will," I said. Because it was an interesting question, to the judge.
But I hadn't thought about the question, and I wasn't really thinking about it in the morning, either, when I woke up in my old bedroom for the first time in ten years. I wasn't thinking about any of the things I should have: my wife, my kids, Thomas Coleman, or his dead parents. No, I was thinking about those letters, couldn't stop thinking about them ― maybe because I'd stopped myself from thinking about them for so long. Or maybe I was thinking about the letters because it's easier and safer to think about the things we shouldn't than the things we should. The voice asking, What else? What else? knew that truth, too. There I was, lying in my childhood bed, and when the voice asked me, What else? it didn't mean, What about your wife, your kids? What about going home and telling them the truth? It meant, What about the letters? Where are the letters? Yes, that voice was a coward, just like me.
I put on my pants and shirt from the day before, then crept down the stairs and into my father's room. The lights were off in the room, the bed was made, my father wasn't anywhere to be seen or heard. I opened the end table drawer, and there it was, the shoe box, and inside it were the letters, just as I remembered. It wasn't so much a dramatic moment as it was comfortable, reassuring: the house and my father had changed, but at least the letters were in the same place. They were more tattered, smudged, and used than I remembered, and I could picture my father, sitting in his chair, reading the letters and reading them again and again and thinking of me, somewhere out in the world. It was a touching father-son moment in my head. Then I heard a noise ― a sputter of a cough ― coming from the living room, and I took it as a warning of sorts. So I put the letters back in the box, put the box back in the drawer, closed the drawer, and followed the noise.
The living room was a good deal more together than when I'd seen it the day before. There were no booze bottles to be seen, no rings on the tables where they had been, no trace of them at all, as if they'd been called home by the mother ship. There was only one ashtray, a glass one, on the living room coffee table, with no ashes in it. The exercise bike was still in the living room, but off to the side and not smack in front of the TV the way it had been. As for the TV, it wasn't on, but my father was sitting in front of it on the couch.
"Dad," I said. "Good morning."
My father turned to face me. He had twelve extra hours of gray, patchy beard grown on him since I'd seen him last, and his eyes were filmy and half-closed, or half-open, depending on how you wanted to look at it. Dad had one leg crossed over the other, which I thought was quite an accomplishment for someone as stroked out as he was. And he was drinking a forty-ounce