How to Start a Fire (42 page)

Anna stopped collecting the milk-carton ghosts when she was seventeen, but she never quite shook her quiet obsession with the vanished. She read every article in the newspaper about a missing person or a found body; she carefully read the signs on telephone poles with
MISSING
in a giant font. And she followed the stories until they faded like newspaper print left in the sun and she wondered where on earth all those people could be.

BODY OF FEMALE HIKER FOUND IN WILDER RANCH STATE PARK

The body of a female hiker was found a few miles off a trail in Wilder Ranch State Park on Friday. Jane Doe, approximately 5'11", blond hair, blue eyes, slim build, died of exposure sometime between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, according to the coroner’s report. Police found a tent and camping equipment three miles away that they believe belonged to the hiker. Record-low temperatures hit Northern California last week and the authorities surmise that the woman was attempting to find shelter when she succumbed to the elements. No identification was found on the woman or at her campsite. If you have any information, please contact the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s Office.

Anna cut out the article, staining her fingers with newspaper ink, and stuffed it into her purse. She attended class, her focus on the lecture as fleeting as that of a teenager in love. She left class in a haze and drove off campus to the Ocean Street address of the sheriff’s office. She waited patiently at the administration desk and showed the article to the staff.

“I think I might know her,” Anna said.

Without any paperwork or other evidence of official business, the officers took Anna to the hospital and into the bowels of the morgue.

The body of Jane Doe was on what looked like a rolling metal cot. Some kind of administrator in scrubs pulled the sheet back to reveal Sarah Lake’s face. Anna had been to her grandfather’s and great-aunt’s funerals. She knew that dead people didn’t resemble the living, but in someone so young, death was particularly startling.

“Do you know her?” the administrator asked.

“Not really. But her name is Sarah Lake. She used to work at Pete’s Emerald. The owner might be able to tell you more.”

“Is there any other information you can provide?”

“No,” Anna said. Which was the truth and a lie. Kate might know something, but Anna wasn’t sure she was going to tell her what she’d discovered.

Anna returned to Pete’s Emerald to have a private wake for the woman she’d kicked out of her house.

Anna sat down at the bar and ordered a whiskey with a beer back. Within the hour, she was draining her second round.

A lanky male wearing a flannel shirt, beaten denims, and work boots on their deathbed took a seat next to Anna. He tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the bar.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“No.”

“What kind of woman turns down a free drink?”

“The kind who knows that nothing is free.”

Kate had cooked trout the night before, and the carcass sat rotting in the overflowing trash bin.

“It stinks in here,” George said.

“Take out the trash,” Kate said. She hadn’t been able to smell anything since the pollen count had risen two months ago.

“It’s Anna’s night. She never does her chores. You have to take a stand. The smell is nauseating.”

“Remember, most wars begin when someone takes a stand. Taking stands isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Kate said. Then she hoisted the garbage out of the bin and tied the plastic bag into a knot.

“I’ll do it,” George said.

“Why? So you can pick a fight later?”

“I feel like getting some air.”

“In the alley, with the rest of the trash?” Kate asked, relinquishing the bag.

George needed leverage in the showdown she was eager for. Anna never abided by the household rules. One week she’d do nothing at all. Then, when she could sense George’s fuming tension or Kate’s passive-aggressive reproach (sometimes she’d put the trash bin outside Anna’s bedroom door), she’d compensate by knocking back a pot of coffee and some NoDoz or something stronger and then scrubbing the house from top to bottom.

George took out the trash, returned to the kitchen, and grabbed the recycling bin. The telephone rang. Kate picked up.

“Your dad’s on the phone,” Kate said.

George put the recycling bin down by the back door and took the phone. Bruno called every week without fail. The first few weeks after his confession about the other woman, George wouldn’t take his calls, but George was an unrepentant Daddy’s girl and he was the only man who offered her the unconditional affection she craved. It didn’t take long for father and daughter to fall back into old habits. An hour on the phone with Bruno was nothing out of the ordinary for George.

“What do you talk about for an hour?” Anna would ask. Her phone calls with Donald Fury could be as brief as a handshake:

You’re well?

Yes.

Good. Stay that way.

George often described her basketball practice in such detail that sometimes it seemed to Kate that the account lasted longer than the practice. On this particular phone call, George grumbled about Anna’s irresponsibility. Bruno had learned to not play adviser with his daughter. Long ago, he’d decided that women didn’t want answers even if they seemed to be posing questions. “What am I supposed to do?” George asked. Bruno said, “That’s a tough one.” The phone call ended exactly fifty-seven minutes and thirty seconds after it had begun. Kate had gone to bed. George took a bath. The recycling bin sat by the unlocked back door.

Roger Hicks bought Anna a drink anyway. She was drinking well whiskey, so he opted for a middle-shelf blend to show he had taste.

“For the lady,” he said to the bartender, who slid the drink six inches in Anna’s direction.

Anna glanced at the drink but didn’t touch it, knowing that making contact with the glass would somehow be taking ownership.

“The lady can pay for her own drinks, and the lady really hates the word
lady
,” Anna said.

“The lady is kind of a bitch,” Roger said.

“Do we have a problem here?” the bartender said.

“I don’t,” said Anna. She shifted a few stools down and sat next to one of those pickled regulars who move into the bar on the first of the month and move out when their disability checks are spent. Anna bought the guy a drink. His name was Herb. Herb, she thought, might have dementia, or maybe he was just drunk. Herb struck up a conversation about the universe expanding. He’d read it somewhere, he told her.

“Does that mean just the universe is expanding, or is everything inside the universe also expanding? Maybe that’s why we’re fatter than we used to be,” Herb said, looking down at his gut.

“Maybe,” Anna said. She liked talking to the older barflies. They wanted nothing from her except maybe another drink, but they were fine with just the company and the peripatetic conversations.

Roger Hicks had had his share of rejection, but usually when a pretty woman turned him down, it was for a prettier man. Herb had a gut that hung low over his belt and a greasy mop of brown-gray hair, and his face had the veiny marks of a career alcoholic’s. Plus everyone knew that Herb was as mad as a cut snake. And that bitch was chatting away with him, laughing at his nonsensical patter. Hell, maybe she was just playing hard to get.

The girl could hold her liquor, he’d give her that. She’d drained five whiskeys and two beers since he’d arrived. But now she was on the move. She set a few more bills on the bar and made her way, weaving ever so slightly, down the galley to the door. She was drunk. Maybe drunk enough.

Roger Hicks closed out his tab, waited a minute or two, and left. He saw her at the end of the block making a right turn, and he followed her home. He almost quit after the second mile, but then he saw her reach for her keys as she turned onto High Street. He watched her unlock the front door. He sat by a tree, waited for the lights in the house to be extinguished, and then checked the front door. Even these days, some people forgot or still thought they were living in a different world. The door was locked. Hicks checked the windows. Closed. There was one that might work in a pinch, but he’d need to find a milk crate or something. He walked around to the back door, gripped the doorknob, and it turned, just like that.

Some people
, he thought,
still trust their neighbors.

Boston, Massachusetts

Lena Fury died in her car on her way to lunch. She had a stroke at a stoplight, slumped over the wheel, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Colin was the emergency contact; Kate answered the call. She phoned Colin and spent the rest of the day being the messenger of death.

Anna got the news at work. Matthew saw tears streaming down her face as she spoke to Kate. Later, when she thought about it, Anna knew those tears were not for herself but for her mother, for the ugly truth that an entire life could be wasted on appearances.

She stepped into Matthew’s office and asked for a week off. He said yes, of course. Then he approached her cautiously. He had been cautious with her ever since that night they’d kissed.

She’d gone home. They never spoke of it again.

“I’m going to hug you now,” said Matthew. “Take it up with HR if you have a problem with it.”

He put his arms around her. Anna didn’t tense up, like he’d expected. She just fell into the embrace and let someone comfort her. He hugged like Max Blackman, she thought.

At their boozy office Christmas party, Max had tried to encourage the relationship.

“Matthew is a good man,” he said.

“He’s my boss,” said Anna.

“I’ve seen you two together,” Max said. “You’re the boss.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“You have become so boring, Anna.”

“True. But nothing bad has happened.”

“Is that going to be the litmus test for your life?” Max said. “My stepson is never coming back. Besides, what are the odds that you and he would have made it anyway? You probably would have forgotten about him by now. You were always too—”

Max let a handwave finish his sentence.

Although Anna thought it made more sense incomplete. She was too something, but even she didn’t know what. Years of therapy, rehab escapes, and meeting after meeting, and all she could tell you was that she was too something. And Max was right about Malcolm. When Anna was being honest with herself, she knew exactly how that relationship would have played out. She would have worn him down, gotten him, and then fucked it up.

It had been more than five years since she’d last lost control. Five years of every morning and evening exactly the same. She imagined her life as the readout of a healthy EKG, her heart beating slow and steady.

Lena’s death threatened Anna’s equilibrium. Whenever serious emotions fought to surface, Anna watched herself like a prison guard. She reminded herself again and again of what she was capable of.

Anna and Colin wrote the eulogy in one coffee-fueled night, agonizing over every word, trying to find the balance between respectful and honest and still manage to fill five minutes, which they’d decided was the absolute shortest acceptable length of time. Colin was saddled with the job of delivering it, so he expected Anna to pull her weight in words.

“Lena Fury was a principled, disciplined woman who dedicated her life to charitable endeavors,” Anna said. “She was a devoted wife and mother who . . . something, something.”

“I need the something, something,” Colin said.

“What did Mom like?”

“She liked shopping.”

“You can’t say that in a eulogy.”

“Frame it differently. She had a love of fashion—no, she was a champion of artistic expression,” Colin suggested.

“You got that from ‘She liked shopping’?” Anna said. “Remember, her friends are going to be there.”

“What did Mom love?”

“Order,” Anna said. And as she said it, she realized that she too had come to love that condition. Here she was, finally on the same side of the fence as her mom—unless you considered the line between life and death a fence. Which it kind of was.

Colin delivered the eulogy in four minutes and forty-nine seconds. He rushed it when he was at the podium. He spoke of Lena and Donald’s fairy-tale romance, of how she’d stood by his bedside until the very end. He talked about her love of animals and her endless charitable work. He mentioned her humor without using the word
biting
at any point. He spoke of her warm embrace, from the memory of one hug thirty-two years ago when he’d lost a soccer match. He mentioned bedtime stories and never revealed that they were delivered by Agnes, their nanny.

A single anecdote was the centerpiece of the brief tribute. Colin told the story of when he was in high school and one day decided to ditch class and go to the movies
.
Midnight Run
was playing. He sat in the third row and ate an entire box of licorice and drank a Coke. When the movie ended, after the credits rolled, he walked up the aisle and right into his mother, who had been sitting just a few rows back.

They regarded each other for a long, awkward moment until Lena finally said, “I won’t tell if you won’t.” Then she bought him an ice cream cone and wrote him an absence note for the day. The anecdote was the only really true thing in the eulogy, but it had happened to Anna.

George had flown out with her three boys for the funeral. Edgar had business but sent the most obscenely enormous flower arrangement. Everyone stayed at the old Fury mansion. On the last night, the sky was clear, and George suggested they pitch tents and sleep outside.

Kate dug another fire pit.

Zooey sang.

God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”

Abe say, “Man, you must be putting me on.”

God say, “No.”