Masters of Illusions (20 page)

Margie felt her stomach turn over. Henry’s eyes changed a little bit as he saw the reflection of her distress in her face.
Charlie said to him, “Why did you set the tent on fire?”

Henry said, like a person scornfully addressing someone he considered a dumbbell, “Because the people inside were happy.”

The psychiatrist’s turn, in his same calm voice: “What it comes down to is that he wants us to believe that he was trying
to kill his father. That’s what the social workers keep telling him. Now he’s beginning to think that if he goes along with
that, he’ll get out of here. Get out of here so he can get his hands on some matches.

“He’s killed at least fifty people by my count. A few animals. Four dogs, as a matter of fact, and cats. Lots of cats. He
burned all of them alive. When he got the fire going, he’d masturbate to the sight and sound of their suffering. He became
so adept at… it, that he’d hold his ejaculation to what he calculated to be the final scream.”

Margie was still looking into Henry’s eyes, he into hers. Then his ravaged lips turned up. He was smiling at her. Charlie’s
head turned slightly back, and though he didn’t take his own eyes off Henry, he spoke carefully to Margie. “Leave the room.”
The others were confused. Margie wasn’t. Henry wasn’t. She got up and went to the door, Henry’s eyes touching her back like
a hand, leaving his thumbprint.

Two guards were just outside. Margie asked to be taken to a bathroom. Another guard had to come to take her with him and by
the time she got to a bathroom she had willed away throwing up. She said to the guard, “I want to go back. Can I listen to
them without going into the room?”

He said, “Sure.”

When they got back Margie sat down by a narrow slit in the wall. She could see Henry’s profile. She sat down just in time
to hear Henry say, “Because I seen someone set it.”

She thought, damn! She’d missed something big. Henry was reneging. Maybe what Henry was trying to do now was simple—if he
testified that someone else had set the fire, he’d still have a chance of convincing them to let him out, get his hands on
some matches. Margie waited for Charlie to speak. Finally, Charlie asked, “Who set it?”

Henry said, “A kid.”

“What kid?”

“A little kid. He sat down right behind the tent… over here.” His profile turned downward. He was looking at the Map, pointing,
kind of, with his chin. “Behind Grandstand A. Nobody back there. Just me. I didn’t have nothing to do till it was time for
intermission. Then I’m supposed to help at the food stands. When the animal act gets finished up, the animals need a lot of
attention, so the roustabouts, they were all on the other side of the chute over by the wagons, along the side of the wagons
in case some animal got stubborn and wouldn’t move. Or got stuck between ’em. Sometimes that happened.

“The kid didn’t see me. He twisted up a bunch of newspapers, lit ’em, and held ’em up against the canvas. A wind came up and
blew some of the paper out a his hands. The pieces hit the tent and it caught. About eight feet up. Then the kid ran away.
I watched the tent burn. Then I ran away, too. I knew they’d blame me for it. I got blamed for everything, especially shit
I didn’t do.”

No one said anything, so Henry said to Charlie, “That your wife was in here before?”

Charlie stood up and took the Map off Henry’s lap. He headed for the door but he wasn’t fast enough. Henry said, “I would
burn her cunt first.”

Margie knew he’d say something like that. The guy who wrote
The Silence of the Lambs
knew what this business was all about. She was beginning to wonder if maybe the author had interviewed Henry. Even though
Charlie tried to get out before Henry spoke, the others weren’t expecting he’d say what he said, and they were still sitting,
stricken. Henry saw to it that they’d hear, once he realized that he was not going to get out. Henry planned it. Margie knew
he was planning it. The words themselves meant nothing to Henry; but Margie suspected he got the reaction he was looking for.

Nobody could look at Margie when they left the room. Except the psychiatrist. He said to Margie, “He was a terribly abused
child.”

Margie said, “I know. That’s why this isn’t really bothering me.”

That night at SkyDome, Margie realized what a pretty song the Canadian national anthem was. Even though it took “Oh Canada”
to make her feel she was back in the real world again, she couldn’t get into the game and neither could anyone else. They’d
glance up when a roar rose from the crowd, glance up whenever the new guy stepped up to the plate—the big black rookie from
Connecticut—glance up at each of Clemens’s pitches, all the while talking and cracking peanuts. They shelled bag after bag
of peanuts, eating them the way chain-smokers devour cigarettes. They took turns going for beer. As soon as the beer person
came back, he’d say, “What’d I miss?” just like at a normal ball game. But he wasn’t talking about the game. He was referring
to the Henry Maxson debate. It took them six innings to stop discussing Henry Maxson and his version of the story; the kid
he saw set the fire. It was Hightower who couldn’t take any more, who just got tired of trying to convince them what he believed
about Henry Maxson. So he changed tack. He became philosophical instead as he tried to get across what he felt one last time.

He sat back into his seat, looked out at the game, and said, “I do my job. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Just my job.
When there’s a fire in Hartford, some black family or some ’Rican family—sometimes even some white family—they don’t have
a place to live anymore. That’s why I know where you’re comin’ from, Charlie. I want to catch the firebugs so they don’t set
more fires. So two old people won’t be out on the street without even a photograph to remember their lives before they get
shuffled off to somewhere they don’t want to go. But here, you and me split off. This guy Maxson set that fire. I know it.
You know it. He was describing himself, telling us how he did it. And he’s caught. He’s not going to get out of there because
this isn’t a book where the bad guy escapes by eating the face off a dumb guard and then ends up in Rio. No more fires from
Henry Maxson. So what’s your point, Charlie? Why is it that I’m satisfied and you’re not?”

Charlie said nothing. That’s because he didn’t think that Henry Maxson did it. He believed that what Henry Maxson said was
true. Hightower had no idea that Charlie didn’t believe that Henry Maxson had been describing himself. Chick knew and Margie
knew, and her pain at having to face the fact that Charlie’s search was about something else—something she couldn’t grasp—was
almost as difficult as coming to terms with the fact that Chick must have known what that something else was. If not, why
didn’t Palma tell
him
to get Charlie to stop? He was supposed to be Charlie’s protector.

The fire marshal was oblivious to all the family machinations he knew nothing about, and he just went on philosophizing. “You’re
right, Charlie. You’ve been right all along. Barnum and Bailey was arson. Some psychotic tried to kill six thousand people,
and we just got to meet him, lucky us. Henry Maxson tried to kill them because his brand of arson wasn’t about impressing
anyone. It was about raping his father, I guess. Or his mother, who stood by. Destroying people’s happiness the way his had
been destroyed. I guess.

“But shit, so what? The thing is, he’s been found, and he can’t kill anybody else. The point isn’t even that; the point is
that we’ve got laws on the books now that weren’t there before. So does the circus. Circus tents today couldn’t burn if you
held a blowtorch to them. It’s not going to happen anymore. Isn’t that justice, Charlie? Isn’t what we just witnessed what
you’ve been looking for?”

Margie’s instinct was to jump in and make an excuse for Charlie. But she had to stop doing that. She knew she had to stop
if she really wanted to figure out just what it was that made Charlie the brand of angry that he was. She had to decide to
love him or not love him, for better or worse. She wasn’t his mother; she had a choice here, so she just sat back and gripped
the arms of her seat to hide the tension she felt. She just set herself like concrete and listened to Charlie say, “I don’t
know it.”

“You don’t know what?”

“That Maxson did it. I’m going to find the kid he saw do it. The same kid Dixie saw.”

First, there was just the noise of the game. A lot of noise. Someone must have made a great play. Then the detective said,
“Who the hell is Dixie?” Margie looked at Hightower staring at Charlie, but Hightower wasn’t really surprised like the detective
was. He recognized a brick wall when he saw one. So he stayed philosophical, though his philosophy grew an edge.

“White people are fools. They strive. And they keep striving even after there’s nothing left to strive for. They watch ‘Lifestyles
of the Rich and Famous’ on TV, and figure there’s more. There ain’t. They could have all the money in the world and they’ll
keep trying to get more. Never fucking satisfied. Sorry, ma’am.

“Strive for something else, O’Neill, if you don’t know how to stop. For something worthwhile. Worth your while and everyone
else’s, too. Keep fighting fires. More of them. Perfect job for a white boy because the fires ain’t never going to go out.”

Charlie said, “That’s right. That’s what I’m going to keep doing. But meantime, I’m not going to quit on this fire. Soon as
I finish striving for this, maybe I’ll just be able to concentrate on tomorrow’s fire. Maybe I’ll strive for not finding any
more little girls at the bottom of their closets hugging their teddy bears, burned and dead. But all I know is somebody’s
going to pay for all the little girls burned in that circus.”

Margie held on to her seat. Charlie was Charlie. He’d never find who set the circus fire because searching for him was part
of his character, just like the fire was part of the city’s character. This was Charlie’s reason for being, just the way her
father claimed his wife was his only reason for being. Charlie would be as dead as her father had been in that room in the
veterans’ home if he stopped trying to find the person who set the fire, even though he’d just found him. That was it. Period.
Charlie would never believe Henry did it, not because of what the animal trainer’s assistant had said almost twenty years
ago, but because he plain didn’t want to, and why he didn’t want to was what would keep him striving. And why he didn’t want
to was why Margie was going to leave him.

She really did love him, she knew, but there was no changing Charlie. She’d
have
to leave him. Her role as a crutch was over. He didn’t need a crutch to do what he was doing. Not anymore. That’s what his
mother saw. Get him to stop, she told Margie. Margie wondered if Palma’s words were advice—that she should threaten to leave
him so that he’d stop. If that’s what she meant, she was wrong. Nothing would stop him. But Margie would have to leave him
to get the resentment that was overwhelming her to desist.

People told Margie her father used to wear immaculate white spats when he courted her mother. Ever since she could remember,
her father hadn’t cared what he was wearing.

Margie looked over at Charlie. He had a nice profile. Henry Maxson’s profile was lumpy and unnatural. Charlie’s had those
soft eyelashes. Henry had no eyelashes left. Margie wanted to shake Charlie and scream at him: Henry did it, Henry did it—Henry
killed my mother! Henry’s threat to burn me hurt you because he already did burn me. And now you can’t get your revenge.

But she didn’t scream anything. It would do no good. She would leave him instead. She could do it, but she’d have to call
Martha first for help.

M
argie and Martha met in New York at a sushi bar halfway between Grand Central and Penn stations. Martha had taken the Metroliner
from Washington, where she was a law student at Georgetown. She had a bag of work with her that she’d gotten done on the train.
Margie had read a book on the train from Hartford. They had a nice cozy booth and started with Kirin beer on empty stomachs.
With all the catching up that went on, they had another beer before the sushi came. And a third with the sushi, which was
when they got down to business.

Martha hiccoughed when she said, “Mom, I love Dad.”

“I know you do.”

“So it’s difficult to be objective.”

“I know that, too.”

“And Dad loves me. He loves us. He would never hurt us. He would never hurt you.”

“I know.”

“I’m telling you all these things you already know to get warmed up. So stop saying ‘I know.’”

“Okay.”

“I’m saying all these things so that I can say what you haven’t thought about, even though you probably know it.”

“Know what?”

“Listen, Mom. Because of those two things—because he really does love you and because he’d die before he’d hurt you—because
of that, you can feel free to leave him.”

Martha meant to know the law, the unwritten as well as the written, and she also had decided to cut right to the charge and
give her mother the truth. She said, “Even when the truth is a relief, it still hurts.” Margie wondered how her daughter’s
generation figured these things out before they grew up. Where did they find them out? Who told them?

Margie said, “You’d have never made it in L’Aquila.”

“Where?”

“Where honor is better than coping.”

“Honor is a way of coping.”

“What are we talking about?”

“Dad. We’re talking about Dad. You’re worried about his coping with what you have to do. Naturally, he’ll feel bad.”

“He’ll feel real bad, sweetie.”

“But not nearly as bad as you’re feeling right now.”

Yeah. Margie dipped a piece of raw fish into soy sauce and ate it. Her Uncle Pete used to scoop oysters out of the creek at
Chalker Beach with a crab net. He’d open them with a jackknife, then they’d look for pearls, and then he, Little Pete, and
Margie would eat them. They’d had to promise not to tell Aunt Jane. “Martha, why would a woman leave a man who loves her?”