Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single (10 page)

We both stare at each other.

I can think of about a thousand things wrong with what I just said, including but not limited to the fact I never had a pet duck. Eventually Andy picks up his wineglass and says, “A duck?”

“Yes. We used to have a pet duck.”

He frowns. “A duck,” he repeats.

This is not good, because as any seasoned liar will tell you, when people repeat your lie, nothing is going to make them believe it. I try to remember which way people look when they're lying. I think it's to the left. So I look deliberately to the right and say again, “Yes. A pet duck.”

Andy raises an eyebrow. Another bad sign. “What was his name?”

Now, I realize here I have an out. A chance to right the wrong, to stop and say, “I'm kidding! Who would have a pet duck?” and we would both laugh and go on about our superfun dinner, but I don't do that. Instead I choose to go deeper into the lie and say, “His name was Quackers.”

“Quackers,” Andy repeats.

I only have one option now. Elaborate. It's the only way out of a lie. Make it so detailed it has to be true. I begin to describe Quackers. I talk about his cute black feet and his bright orange bill. I say he slept in the house and he'd follow me from room to room. Cute Quackers! I say we had one neighbor who liked him and one neighbor who complained. Andy listens to me dig myself deeper and deeper, answering questions no one is asking. “No, he wasn't really housetrained,” I say, “but we did get him to crap on cardboard.”

Andy blinks.

“Yeah, when I think back on all the animals I've loved,” I say, “I mean, you know, not biblically! Just as pets—I think Quackers was my favorite.”

Andy sips his wine.

“It was so tragic when he died. He got caught in the swinging door. Tore his beak right off. We buried him in the backyard.”

Andy looks at his watch.

Then the waiter comes and sets down my plate of duck. We both stare at it. I have been describing a beloved pet duck and now I am about to eat a duck.

Brilliant.

I try to redirect the conversation but it's already over. I can see it in Andy's body language. He's listing to the left, he's looking at the door, and he's fidgeting. I pick at my pet duck dinner.
He eats quickly, he hails the waiter over to take his plate, he hardly talks, which makes me chatter like a macaque.

Andy is true to his word. We eat dinner and he pays for it, all seventy-two dollars, even though I put up a really good fight for the bill. He does not want coffee or dessert, which I also offer to buy. Really, I'd buy him anything at this point, including a helper monkey or a set of radial tires, if only they would set things straight. But of course, they will not.

At the door of the restaurant he shakes my hand good-bye, which we all know is just as good as spitting on it. Despite wanting to yell at him for making me feel so awkward, I also want to give him his seventy-two dollars back. I don't even deserve a decent boyfriend.

On the way home I start crying in the car. Not bawling, just a steady weep. I call Christopher and leave a message. “It's not
them
,” I say, voice wavering. “It's
me
. I'm the problem. I've been saying guys are jerks and dicks and insensitive and stupid when actually I'm the jerk! I'm the dick! I never act like myself and then I can't keep up the act, or worse, I do act like myself and they get the hell away from me! I am going to be single forever. That's it! No more dates, no more online stalker chats, no more anything! A girl can be happy with just a cat! She can!”

I'm so sick of the wanting and waiting and wondering. Of harboring old wounds and guarding deep secrets and nursing along emotional injury after emotional injury. When does it stop? What did I do to deserve this? I storm into my apartment and hunt down everything that reminds me of David, every photograph of us together, every matchbook from our favorite restaurant, every piece of clothing he bought me: two sweaters, a white nightie, and an unworn string bikini. His tatty old black jean jacket, which I told him I didn't have but did. And I even
unearth the dog-eared journal I filled up writing about our painful demise. Then I stack it all in the bathtub.

I should have done this a long time ago. Dr. Gupta recommends creating signifier icons for past relationships, too, and then burning those up, so I get a piece of paper out and draw two pieces of a broken heart on it, along with a guitar that looks like Mr. Peanut and then, because I don't think the pictograms are really doing it for me, I just write
DAVID
in big block letters and then
SUCKS
.

I go down to the backyard and dig out the frozen can of lighter fluid from under the ice-encrusted barbecue and carry it back inside, tossing it from hand to hand as my fingers freeze. In the bathroom I set the can down, ceremoniously draw the shower curtain back, and roll up the squidgy bath mat, the backside of which looks like a potato field. Then I stand over my mound of misery memories and squirt every inch down with lighter fluid.

Now for a match.

You'd think I'd have a match, wouldn't you? Possibly plenty of matches? But I look everywhere and I don't. I have to dig out a sodden matchbook from inside the heap. Fine. I think I can make that symbolic somehow. One of our matches is destroying our memories. I think that works. I take my piece of
DAVID SUCKS
paper and set it on top of the pile and say, “With this fire I release you,” and strike the match.

When I light the match, however, I also accidentally light the entire book of matches. My auto-response is to do a little shriek and kick and throw it at the tub. Hard. I miss the memory heap completely and the flaming matchbook lands on the edge of the tub, where it licks at the canvas shower curtain. I use my foot to try and knock the matches down into the tub, but that just shoves them up against the shower curtain, which now catches on fire.

It's not a big fire, it's small, like if you lit the edge of a piece of paper and watched the flame eat its way up, but the very sight of flame sends me into a prewired panic and I run to the kitchen trying to remember everything my parents ever told me about surviving a fire. The first rule,
Stay calm
, is already out.

The second rule,
Get an adult
, is also out.

The last thing I think of,
Get the fire extinguisher
, sends my brain into an epileptic stutter as I try to remember where I put the fire extinguisher my mother gave me. I remember I said to her, “You're such an alarmist,” when she handed me the heavy little red tank and she said, “You won't need it until you need it. Just keep it under the sink.”

The sink!
I clatter through all the cleaning supplies under the sink, rifle through the sticky cleaning products and dirty plungers and mystery aerosol cans until my hand strikes the extinguisher and rips it out, scattering highly flammable aerosol spray cans across the kitchen floor. I sprint back to the bathroom, where the memory pile is ablaze, and I pull every lever, shake the canister hard, squeeze the handle, and nothing. No water or chemical foam or anything comes out. I just throw the fire extinguisher at the fire and run around the house looking for Mrs. Biggles, who I almost catch, but she darts under the bed.

I find my cell phone and dial 9-1-1, hands shaking, unsure if I should be inside or outside making this call. When the operator asks me what my emergency is, I tell her my bathtub is on fire and with the briefest of pauses she says, “Get out of the house, responders are on the way.”

I drop the phone and run barefoot down the stairs and outside into the snow, where it takes me two seconds to realize that my feet are in a great amount of pain and I don't have the cat. I charge back upstairs, hoping my bravery is noted
in tomorrow's papers, which will chronicle the tragedy.
She wouldn't leave without Mrs. Biggles. That's just the way she was. Selfless to the end.
“Please!” I yell at Mrs. Biggles, who's still hiding under the bed. My voice is trembling. “Please come out!”

I can see my mother's face now when she hears I died trying to save the cat. It's an expression of grim acceptance as she calls the Scandinavian funeral home and requests an all-you-can-eat ham sandwich buffet.

I decide now is not the time for manners and start chucking shoes under the bed until she scrambles out the other side and I chase her to the kitchen and out the back door. Now I only have moments to live and I must decide what I should save of all my earthly belongings. Do I grab my vinyl records? My plaster replica of Princess Diana's wedding cake? My illustrated medical anomalies book? I'd love to get sentimental, but the choice is ultimately easy. I grab my laptop and my prescription bottle of Lunesta. With these items, a new world can be forged.

In the stairwell I remember I also have
neighbors
downstairs. “There might be trouble!” I say/shout loudly while knocking urgently on their back door. Urgently but not too urgently, because, I don't know, it seems rude. There's no answer, which could mean they're not home or sound asleep, about to be consumed in the fire. That I do not want to read about. I can hear the sirens coming, but I know every second counts. I pick up a brick from the loose edging around the dead flower bed and am just about to hurl it through their window when the loud cherry-lit fire trucks of Minneapolis Station 109 scream into our driveway.

The whole backyard lights up with churning red lights, and firefighters charge toward the house. I think it would be beyond
sexy to be married to a firefighter. Imagine him storming out into the night to save women and children from disasters and rescue kitty cats from trees. Then there's a stern-faced fireman staring at me, wearing a big black and yellow helmet and clenching his square jaw with a perfect action-adventure amount of five-o'clock shadow.

I smile sheepishly.

“Are there people in there?” he asks.

I shrug and he kicks the neighbor's door down. I'm serious. He just hauls back and with one stomp beneath the brass doorknob he wrenches the door open, splintering bits of the doorjamb and smacking into the refrigerator.

“Get to the truck,” he says with a heady blend of concern, protection, and leadership. Then he storms the apartment.

God, I love firemen.

Which is why I really wish I hadn't started the fire.

After two hours of firemen stomping up and down stairs, and me calling my mother to tell her I had a fire, but I was fine, Lt. Herbach comes back to the truck where I wait with a blanket around me, next to Mrs. Biggles in her cat carrier. I am clutching my sassy working-girl figurine. I don't remember when I grabbed her.

“What were you doing up there?” he asks me, all the concern and protection gone and replaced by a single suspiciously arched eyebrow. “Were you burning something?”

I stare at his stubbly jaw. What do I say? Do I tell him that even though I'm a grown woman I have an irrational attachment to emotionally bankrupt men? That I felt burning a jean jacket might alleviate the crushing sense of loneliness and pain in my heart? He's not going to understand that, he's a guy—and what's worse, he's a guy that saves lives for a living. How do you say you think your dharma is out of alignment to someone holding an axe?

You don't.

You shrug and look at your feet, which is what I did.

“Jennifer!” my mother shouts as she rounds the corner in her pink snowflake pajamas and full-length maroon down feather coat. My father trundles along behind her and behind him is Hailey. Good Christ.

“I'm all right,” I say, which will do absolutely nothing.

“What happened?” she asks, holding a hand to her forehead. “Were you attacked? Was there a peeper? On the news they said there was a winter peeper, and they usually only peep in summer.”

“No, Mom, a fire. See?” I point to the red engine in the driveway. “Fire truck. The peeper truck is mirrored.”

“Don't start,” she says.

The lieutenant tells my mother they don't know what started the fire, but whatever it was, it was in the bathtub. “The bathtub?” my mother says. “What on earth were you doing in the bathtub?”

“Leave her alone, Mom,” Hailey says. “All that matters is she's all right.” She looks at me. “Are you all right?”

I nod and feel like throwing my arms around her neck. Sometimes I hate hating my sister, which makes me realize I don't really hate her at all. I just can't stand her sometimes.

Finally the last fireman empties out of the house and walks up to the lieutenant and hands him a plastic doohickey. “Okay”—the lieutenant nods—“we have a positive identification for arson. Suspicion of arson.”

“Arson?” my mother says, releasing her coat and taking an aggressive step toward the lieutenant.

“Well, how can you tell that?” my father says, peering at the doohickey.

“This tested positive for lighter fluid,” the lieutenant says.

My father grumbles something.

“Who would set the house on fire?” my mother says protectively. “You don't think my daughter would set a house on fire, do you?”

“Unless Miss Johnson has something else to say,” he says, showing me the plastic doohickey, as though I knew what it was and could read it as conclusive evidence of my treachery, “we're going to have to call the police.”

My mother clutches her coat closed. “The police? Well, you go right ahead, mister. I know my rights. You can't walk in here with your big hoses and point fingers.”

“Arlene…” my dad says, “please.”

“Attempted arson,” the lieutenant says and lets the word hang there as though the thought of being convicted of arson would make me feel worse than I already do.

Wrong.

“Were you getting high?” my mother asks me. “Did you do some crack things?”

My father tells her to settle down.