An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes In New England Part 15

"Get away from what?" I asked, because I wasn't going to let it go. Because like Socrates and his method, I wasn't going to let my mother get out of this conversation without her giving me the answer I wanted.

"From life," she said.

"So what was our house for?"

"A place to come back to," she said. "For you, too." She got up, tucked her tray under her arm, and said, "Time to get back to work."

"I know about Deirdre," I told her, because I wanted everything out in the open, where we could see it, where we couldn't ignore it anymore, and as I'll say in my arsonist's guide, once you get everything out in the open, you wonder why, oh, why would you ever want that that.

"How do you know about her?" My mother was trying to remain calm, but it was a losing battle. She went fierce and far away in the eyes, as though she'd just spotted her enemy from a great distance. She raised her tray and held it in front of her chest like a shield. "How do you even know her name?"

"I met her at our house," I said.

"Our house," she repeated, trancelike. "When?"

"This morning," I said. "I know you think it was me who burned down those houses. But it wasn't. I think it was Deirdre." I'm not sure my mother even heard this last part, though, because this is the way the human mind works, or doesn't: when it understands that the worst thing has happened, it can't think about the second- or third- or fourth-worst thing until it takes care of the first-worst thing, either by making it better or by making it even worse.

"You weren't ever supposed to know about her," my mother said. "He promised."

"That's why you sent me off to college, isn't it?" I asked. "You knew Dad would go back to her, and you didn't want me to find out."

"He promised," my mother said.

"I don't understand why you didn't just divorce him," I told her. "Why didn't you just end it and move on?"

"Why didn't you just tell Anne Marie about the fire you set?" my mother wanted to know. "Why didn't you tell her about the Colemans, about me, and about your father?"

I didn't answer her; I didn't need to. Because we both knew that sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them. My mother was too scared to get a divorce, and I was too scared to tell Anne Marie the truth. It was that simple. Sometimes there is is a simple answer. Sometimes things aren't complicated at all. a simple answer. Sometimes things aren't complicated at all.

After a moment she placed the tray on the empty barstool, took off her ap.r.o.n, and put it on the tray. "Last week you asked me why I got rid of my books," she said, looking me in the eyes. She was Elizabeth again, the mother she used to be, except there was a look of wild desperation in her eyes, and that scared me more than ever. "Do you really want to know why?"

"Yes."

"Because," she said, "they were always full of people like me, and her, and him and you and it."

"It?" I asked.

"The house," she said. "Our f.u.c.king house." She said it the way Ahab might say to Ishmael, " f.u.c.king house." She said it the way Ahab might say to Ishmael, "Our f.u.c.king whale," and now I understood, for the first time, why Melville had him talk about the whale so many times, over so many pages, and why my mother had made me read the book, so many times, over so many years. To my mother, f.u.c.king whale," and now I understood, for the first time, why Melville had him talk about the whale so many times, over so many pages, and why my mother had made me read the book, so many times, over so many years. To my mother, our our house was more than just its roof and walls and the furniture inside them, just as Moby d.i.c.k was more than just its blubber to Ahab. house was more than just its roof and walls and the furniture inside them, just as Moby d.i.c.k was more than just its blubber to Ahab.

"Beth," the bartender said, "would you bring these drinks over to table twelve?"

"No," she said, and then she walked away from both of us, toward the door. There was a blue peacoat draped over an empty chair, and she grabbed it and put it on, even though I was pretty sure it wasn't hers. She opened the door and the wind whipped her hair around.

"Where are you going?" I yelled.

"To see your father," she yelled back, without turning around, before closing the door behind her.

"What did you do to Beth?" the bartender asked when she was gone, and then, before I could think of a concise answer, he said, "You've had enough," and he s.n.a.t.c.hed my last, half-consumed beer away from me. He was right. I'd had enough; everyone had had enough, that was clear. Maybe that's why Deirdre wanted to meet me at the Emily d.i.c.kinson House: maybe she'd had enough, too.

25

It was twenty minutes before midnight when I got to where the Emily d.i.c.kinson House used to be. The place looked much different at night than it had in the daytime just a few days earlier. There was easily a half foot of snow on the ground, but it had stopped falling sometime earlier, and the sky had cleared, so that you could name the stars above, a.s.suming you'd learned their names in the first place. It was windier than before, though, and the scattered clouds were racing across the sky, and the spindly birches were waving in the wind and sometimes knocking into their neighboring white pines and maples. One of the nearby streetlights sent its flickering glow through the trees, and I kept expecting to hear an organ and see Vincent Price emerge from the shadows. Plus, there was a bone-chilling hoo, hoo hoo, hoo sound coming from somewhere nearby, the cla.s.sic sound of a haunting, although it could just have been the sound fraternity brothers make while ritually beating their pledges. The sound was spooky, whoever was making it. sound coming from somewhere nearby, the cla.s.sic sound of a haunting, although it could just have been the sound fraternity brothers make while ritually beating their pledges. The sound was spooky, whoever was making it.

I made my way through the trees until I found Deirdre standing next to a wooden bench, a bench no doubt meant to commemorate the Emily d.i.c.kinson House. Deirdre was early, too. She was wearing a red jacket and a red scarf and red gloves and a red ski hat, all obviously part of a matching set. And this will also go in my arsonist's guide: if you want to appear menacing, then don't wear a matching set. Deirdre was the least spooky thing about the place.

"Sam," she said, "how does it feel to be back here?"

"It feels excellent," I said. "Terrific. Why am I here?"

Deirdre looked confused. Her face puckered, an expression you might find attractive if you were looking to be attracted. I could imagine my father finding it attractive. Her hair was long and blond, as my mother remembered it, almost down to her shoulders, and Deirdre stroked it nervously with one of her gloved hands. "You're here because I asked you to meet me here."

"I know that," I said, "but why why did you ask me to meet you here in the first place?" did you ask me to meet you here in the first place?"

Right then the birch trees started creaking and swaying, double time, in an uptick of wind, making such a racket that Deirdre and I momentarily forgot what we were saying and looked at them. They were silvery white and so different from the trees around them. The pines and maples were all clumped together and st.u.r.dy, but the birches were thin and lonely, each of them far apart and like an only child among larger, happier broods. I knew from Mr. Frost that the birch was supposed to be the most New England of trees, and if that was so, then I couldn't help thinking that New England was a very bad idea.

Then the wind died down and the birches stopped making their noises and we returned to our conversation, which was, basically, why was I there?

"Because this was where the Emily d.i.c.kinson House was, Sam," Deirdre said very slowly, as if I were having trouble keeping up. "You burned her house down. It's ironic. ironic."

"You're right, it is ironic," I said, except I wasn't talking about the house: I was talking about Deirdre herself. She was clearly my double, my doppelganger in b.u.mbling. She and I were our own matching set. I wondered if my father had fallen in love with her because she was like me, and fallen out of love with my mother because she wasn't, and if love itself wasn't something we, the products of love, then make impossible for our parents because we can truly be like only one of them. Maybe this is why people have more than one child: so that neither of the parents will feel jealous and lonely.

"Does my father know you've asked me to meet you here?"

"He doesn't know anything about anything," Deirdre said. "He doesn't want to see me anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because of you," Deirdre said. Her voice shifted when she said that, and I could tell Deirdre's hatred for me was the only thing preventing her from crying. "Because after what happened at the house, he felt ashamed. He said he couldn't do it anymore. He told me he couldn't ever see me again, and no matter how much we loved each other, it was over."

"Maybe you're not really in love."

"We were in love," Deirdre said. "Things were good."

"They weren't so good for my mother."

"Things were good," she insisted, "until you came home and messed everything up."

"Deirdre," I said, "did you try to burn down the Edward Bellamy House?"

As I said earlier, I've now become something of a reader and have read my fair share of detective novels and even a few essays on how to write detective novels, and so I now know that this shouldn't have worked: you can never ask a suspect if she's guilty, and you can never expect her to confess if she is; you must catch your suspect in the act, red handed. I know this now, and next time, if there is a next time, I'll do things differently and by the book. But remember, I was a b.u.mbler and didn't know that I couldn't ask this sort of question, and Deirdre was a b.u.mbler and didn't know that she couldn't answer it.

"I tried to," she said, dropping her face into her red-gloved hands.

"How about the Mark Twain House?"

"I tried to," she repeated, her voice m.u.f.fled in her gloves. "I just can't do anything right."

"Why did you do it?"

"Because I knew this would happen," she said, lifting her head out of her hands and looking straight at me. "I knew when you came home, Bradley would feel guilty and get rid of me and go back to your mother. I had to do something."

"So you tried to set fire to those houses, thinking I'd get blamed for it," I guessed.

"I can't do anything right," she said, weeping. Deirdre was wrong here, of course; Detective Wilson was running around trying to blame me for the fires and prove exactly how wrong Deirdre was. I hated Deirdre right then for doing what she'd done to me and my mother and father and even those homes, too. But I also empathized, because she'd tried to do these things out of love, and because she had b.u.mbled the attempt, and I suppose this the ability to empathize with the people we hate is exactly the quality that makes us human beings, which makes you wonder why anybody would want to be one.

"Sam," Deirdre said, and I could already hear the desperate pleading in the way she said my name, could hear the way her voice was sandwiched between too much hope and too much grief. I knew what Deirdre was going to ask, and I was glad, because I knew how I would respond, knew I would answer with that mean little hammer of a word, that word that gives its speaker a feeling of the purest satisfaction, always followed soon enough by a feeling of the purest regret.

"No," I said, for my mother.

"Your father is home right now."

"No," I said, for myself.

"I want you to go home and tell your father to take me back. You know he loves me. You can save us. He wouldn't have done this for all these years if he didn't love me so much, if I weren't the one he really loved."

"No," I said, for my father, even though or because I knew Deirdre was right.

"You can have the three thousand dollars, the money in the envelope," she said. I could hear the last gasp in her voice, the sad whine of it. "Please, Sam."

"No, no, no," I told her, by which I also meant, Revenge, revenge, revenge Revenge, revenge, revenge.

When I said my last no, Deirdre seemed to get tired, very tired. Her arms dropped to her sides and her shoulders slumped. "No," she repeated dully, then reached behind the bench, picked up a red plastic gasoline can, and held it up in front of her, neck high, as though it were some sort of offering. I immediately wanted to take back everything I'd just said, wanted to take back each and every no, wanted to turn each no into a yes, the way Jesus supposedly turned water into wine, a loaf of bread into fcod for a crowd. And why did he do that? Was it because he was worried about his people, or about himself? Was it because he didn't know if his people could live on only bread and water, or because he didn't know if he could live with himself if he let them?

"Deirdre," I said, trying to be very calm, "I didn't really mean all that."

"Maybe you did."

"Maybe I didn't," I said. "Please put down the gas can."

"I don't want to live without your father, Sam," Deirdre said. "I feel so dead without him."

"Maybe you'll meet someone else," I said.

"Maybe I don't want to meet someone else," she said, and then she raised the gas can over her head and tipped it, dumping the contents on her head, letting it run in streams down her back and front. This happened so suddenly that I didn't have time to do or say anything. Or at least this is what I tell myself. Because after all, I'd seen the gas can, and what did I think she was going to do with it? Was what happened next because of what Deirdre did, or because of what I didn't do? Are we defined by what we do, or by what we don't? Wouldn't it be better not to be defined at all?

"Good-bye, Sam," she said. "Please forgive your father. That poor man loves you so much." Then she pulled out a lighter, flicked it, and grabbed a clump of her hair. Deirdre was setting herself on fire, not starting at the feet the way the people at Salem did to their supposed witches, but starting with her hair. With her hair. Even now, seven years later, it's the memory of Deirdre clutching her hair and setting it on fire the dry snick snick of the lighter; the way Deirdre tugged on her hair, as though she were a child whose hair was being pulled by an especially mean teacher or cla.s.smate; the way burning hair makes the smell of gasoline almost welcome, like perfume; the terrible, sad, patient look on Deirdre's face as she waited for the fire to creep up her hair toward her head, her face; the way her face screamed and then disappeared in the fire; the way I stood there, watching her do it it's that memory that wakes me up from a deep sleep shouting and crying, or prevents me from falling into one in the first place. If I could pick one moment, one detail I wish I couldn't remember, it's this one, and that is another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: detail exists not only to make us remember the things we don't want to, but to remind us that there are some things we don't deserve to forget. of the lighter; the way Deirdre tugged on her hair, as though she were a child whose hair was being pulled by an especially mean teacher or cla.s.smate; the way burning hair makes the smell of gasoline almost welcome, like perfume; the terrible, sad, patient look on Deirdre's face as she waited for the fire to creep up her hair toward her head, her face; the way her face screamed and then disappeared in the fire; the way I stood there, watching her do it it's that memory that wakes me up from a deep sleep shouting and crying, or prevents me from falling into one in the first place. If I could pick one moment, one detail I wish I couldn't remember, it's this one, and that is another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: detail exists not only to make us remember the things we don't want to, but to remind us that there are some things we don't deserve to forget.

"Deirdre, don't!" I yelled, but who knows if she actually heard me. By then the flames had already crawled up the wick of her hair, and her hat burst into flames. And then her head was on fire, her head was was fire, a ball of fire, and for a moment it was the only part of Deirdre on fire. The rest of her body was standing still, and her head, on fire, was c.o.c.ked to the side as if she were listening to her own inner voice, except that her inner voice wasn't asking, fire, a ball of fire, and for a moment it was the only part of Deirdre on fire. The rest of her body was standing still, and her head, on fire, was c.o.c.ked to the side as if she were listening to her own inner voice, except that her inner voice wasn't asking, What else? What else? What else? What else? but instead was telling her, but instead was telling her, Nothing, nothing Nothing, nothing.

"Sam, do something!" I heard a voice say, but it wasn't my voice, it wasn't that voice inside me, it was Detective Wilson's, who was all of a sudden right next to me. He, as I found out later, had read the note in the envelope after all and knew to show up at midnight. And he had. But I had shown up early, and so had Deirdre, and she was on fire because of it. Together, Detective Wilson and I ran toward her. Detective Wilson tackled her, and she landed with a hiss in the snow. "Give me your coat!" he yelled (he was only wearing his hooded sweatshirt). I did, and he started patting Deirdre down with it, saying soft, comforting things to her under his breath as he patted.

"This is your f.u.c.king fault, Sam," he said to me over his shoulder. I caught a glimpse of Deirdre lying there: her red jacket had turned black, and her face had turned black, too. The only thing of hers not black and scorched were her eyes: they were white and blank and staring skyward, at the birches, at the stars, or at nothing. I looked away and then at the gas can lying next to her body. I could tell, even in the darkness, that it was one I'd helped design back when I was still a person who designed things. And then I looked away from the gas can, too, and closed my eyes. They immediately started to tear up, tears being your eyes' way of forbidding you to look away, of forcing you to look at the world you've made or unmade.

"It wasn't me," I said., and started backing away, the way we do when we're not brave enough to do anything else. "She set herself on fire."

"f.u.c.k you anyway," Detective Wilson said, still furiously patting her through my coat. "I saw saw her do it. So what? You didn't f.u.c.king stop her." her do it. So what? You didn't f.u.c.king stop her."

"She asked me to meet her here," I said. "She wanted me to save her and my father."

"You could have saved her," he said, and I realized that he had started crying, crying being that thing you do when you've done everything else, and then I I started crying, crying also being that thing you do when you haven't done enough and you're afraid it's too late to start. started crying, crying also being that thing you do when you haven't done enough and you're afraid it's too late to start.

"Is she dead?" I asked.

"You could have saved her," Detective Wilson said, "and you didn't."

At that, I turned and broke into a sprint. Deirdre had wanted me to save her and I showed up too early and didn't. But Deirdre had also wanted me to save my father. My mother was only a few blocks away, at our house, with him. I ran as fast as I could, but even so, when I got there I was too late.

26

You wouldn't expect a burning house to look like a burning woman, and you'd be right: it doesn't. There is nothing beautiful about a woman on fire, but there is plenty that is beautiful about a house burning hot and high in the dark, cold night: the way flames shoot out of the chimney like a Roman candle; the way the asphalt roof shingles sizzle and pop; the way the smoke pours and pours and pours heavenward like a message to the house's great beyond. There is something celebratory about a house fire, which is why so many people always gather to watch it, just as there were so many people gathered to watch my parents' house burn that night. The crowd was three or four deep, and I had to push my way through, jostling and shoving until I got to the front row, next to my mother, who was standing there, holding a forty-ounce Knickerbocker, regarding the fire thoughtfully, as though it were an especially difficult question that she was this this close to solving. close to solving.

"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 ugly and they are not. And it is easier to live on this earth if you love the people who made you, even if that means risking the love of the people you yourself have made. Even if.

"Sam," said a familiar voice behind me. I didn't have to turn around to see who it was or to know what I had to tell him. Because I could also hear another voice, not my inner voice, not the voice that said, What else? What else? and not Deirdre's voice, the one that told her, and not Deirdre's voice, the one that told her, Nothing Nothing, but Anne Marie's voice, telling me that it was time to take responsibility for something, for everything.