An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [73]
"I love you so much," I said.
"Good for you," she said, arms crossed over her chest now. She looked like a Mediterranean General MacArthur with hair extensions and without the corncob pipe. She had a military bearing, is what I'm saying. "What else?"
"Thomas," I said, feeling strangely breathless, and nearly panting the word out of my mouth. "He isn't telling you the truth."
"He told me," she said, "that you didn't sleep with his wife after all. He also told me that he doesn't even have a wife. Is that the truth, Sam?"
"Jesus," I said. "It is." I suddenly felt so tired I had to sit down, right on the front slab. The truth makes you tired, not free; that's another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide ― wherever it's relevant to burning down writers' homes in New England, that is.
"OK, then," she said, and then turned to go back inside.
"Wait," I said, scrambling to my feet. "Can I come home now?"
"No," Anne Marie said, her back to me. Her hand was on the open door, preparing to put it between her and me once again.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because you lied to me," she said, turning around to face me. "I don't know why you lied to me, but you did, and I don't trust you anymore." Fatigue had replaced ferocity in Anne Marie's voice; maybe the truth made her feel tired, too.
"Do you think you can trust him?" I asked, not needing to specify who "him" was.
"I don't know what I think about him," Anne Marie admitted, which was her way of saying that she knew me all too well, but that Thomas was still mysterious and that mystery is sometimes closer to love than familiarity is ― depending, of course, on whom you're so familiar with.
"Please, let me explain," I said, but she held up her hand to block my explanation.
"Thomas hurt himself," she said. "I'm taking care of him."
"So why don't you ask him how he hurt himself!" I said, my voice getting high pitched and hysterical. "Why don't you ask him right now!"
Anne Marie looked at me curiously, her eyebrows and nose moving toward each other, making the face's own unique question mark. "OK, I'll do that," she said, and then closed and locked the door behind her.
I took this to mean, I'll ask him and then come back out and tell you what he said. So I waited there on the slab, for a long time. Night arrived and the streetlights came on. Neighbors came home from work, and since this was Camelot, they did their very best to ignore Thomas's car parked curbside and me sitting on the front slab. Finally I got tired of waiting. I rose from my slab and knocked on the door, and then I knocked and knocked and knocked and knocked. I was making such a racket that I wondered if even my fellow Camelotians could ignore me for much longer. But I didn't care. Let them look at me from their bay windows; let them watch me knock. I felt strong; I could have knocked all night.
I could have knocked all night, that is, if I hadn't heard a car pull into the driveway behind me. I stopped knocking, turned, and saw a dark green Lincoln Continental back in behind Anne Marie's minivan. It was my father-in-law's car; I recognized it right off because he'd always driven Lincoln Continentals and also because my father-in-law was a man of principle, and one of his most cherished principles was that you should always back into a parking space.
But it wasn't my father-in-law who first emerged from the car: it was Katherine, my daughter. She was strapped into a backpack so large that it rose almost to the top of her head. She walked up the driveway very carefully, maybe so the backpack wouldn't capsize her. It was like watching a young, overburdened female gringo Sherpa walking toward you, a Sherpa you loved and missed so much. "I love you," I told her when she was close enough to hear. "I've missed you so much." I gave Katherine and her backpack a hug, and they returned it, with feeling, for which I was grateful.
"Are you coming inside, Daddy?" Katherine asked. She was already adult enough to ask questions to which she already knew