An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [81]
"Now, this," my father was saying, "this is one of my favorites. It's from a man in Leominster who wanted my son to burn down the Ralph Waldo Emerson House because he had been named Waldo, after Emerson, and no one had ever let him forget what a stupid name he had." I, too, remembered the letter: the letter writer had said that he probably should have wanted me to burn down his parents' house, too, for naming him Waldo in the first place, except they were dead and he was now living in their house and the mortgage was paid, free and clear, and if I burned it down, he'd have to pay rent somewhere else. My father handed the letter to the man across the table, and the man looked at it blankly, as if it were a picture of people he didn't know; then he put it on the table. "And this letter," my father went on, "is from a woman who wanted my son to burn down Herman Melville's house in Pittsfield..." And so on. What matters here was not only what my father said, but how he said it. He slurred slightly when he spoke, but there was nothing halting or stroke damaged about his speech. I heard and saw and understood this clearly now. I was seeing my father, not by himself or with my mother, but in his element, and this is another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: seeing your father in his element will make you feel sad. I had been sad when I thought my father had had a stroke and was partially paralyzed, but at least then he could be considered heroic. This was a different kind of sadness, a deeper one, a sadness you feel when you discover that the person you love is not the person you thought you were loving. Would I wake up the next morning and find my father sad in a totally different way? How many different kinds of sadness were there in the world, anyway?
"But this is odd," my father was saying, although the man across the table from him wasn't exactly listening anymore: his hand was curled around the beer can, but his eyes were closed and his neck was fighting a losing battle to keep his head from crashing to the table. "There seem to be some letters missing." My father gathered all the letters, stacked them, and then began flipping through them, his lips moving as he took inventory. He finished the inventory, then took another one. The man's head fell to the table with a dull thunk, but my father didn't notice. Perhaps not wanting to be further ignored, the man got up from the table, a lump already formed on his forehead, and left the room and then the house: I could hear the front door open and then shut. My father didn't notice any of that, either. "I just don't understand," he said.
"Which letters are missing?" .1 asked him gently, because as far as I could tell, he wasn't aware of me standing there, and I didn't want to scare him. Except he didn't seem surprised at all to hear my voice. Maybe he'd known I was there the whole time, or maybe he didn't care.
"The Edward Bellamy House letter, of course," he said. "But there are six other letters missing, too."
"What are they?" I asked. I knew full well that the Mark Twain House letter was missing, since it was in my pocket. Sure enough, my father named it, and then added, "But then there are five others that are missing, too. I just can't figure out which ones."
"How do you know that many are missing, then?"
He looked at me with pity. "You were sent one hundred and thirty-seven letters. There are only one hundred and thirty letters here." He knocked himself on the head, as though to dislodge the forgotten names.
"Did you know that someone tried to burn down the Mark Twain House last night?" I asked.
"Yes," my father said. He turned to look at me for the first time, although his face was