What Burns Away (11 page)

In the kitchen, my own candles reached the end of their wicks, dimming the room to near darkness. I opened my laptop, my escape from the separateness between Miles and me, knowing Dean was only a few miles away, eager to meet.

Claire,

Any chance you could slip out tonight for a drink? Or maybe lunch tomorrow is easier? You could bring your little guy. I'd love to meet him. I'm at the Concourse on the lake, but could go anyplace. And you're welcome here anytime. Room 1014. What works best for you? I've come a long way, and all I want is a little time with you.

Yours,

Dean

I fantasized about grabbing the keys, driving downtown to his hotel, and knocking on the door, Dean delighted to find me there. Instead, I walked to the fireplace and opened the flue. The cold rushed in. I told myself I would let Miles work for an hour, and then I would try to tempt him with dessert by the hearth. I tossed the junk mail and an unopened letter from my mother addressed to
Mr. Jonah Bancroft and Mrs. Claire Spruce
into the fire, and in its soft light, I read a newspaper article from the Sunday
New
York
Times
describing a geomagnetic storm whose radioactive particles, traveling about 1,400 miles a second, were predicted to reach the Earth's surface by Monday morning.

Watching the mail carbonize, I wondered how we might keep Jonah unscathed as he made his way into a world shrouded by a deeply wounded atmosphere. Checking the video monitor, I watched my vulnerable boy curled there under his night-light, while the white noise machine played the sound of waves crashing on some far-off automated beach. I filled my champagne flute and set one aside for Miles while I waited.

At midnight, I woke up alone next to the hearth, shivering beside the fire, which had smoldered black to ash. I checked the monitor in my hand and then tiptoed down the hall and peeked into the office. Miles looked frozen blue in the light cast from his computer screen.

“Come to bed,” I said.

“Yes.” He nodded without looking up. “Twenty minutes.”

Upstairs I washed my face and dried it on a beach towel monogrammed with our initials. As I did so, I sensed a panicky sort of defeat.

Turning down the bed, I wondered if this was how my mother felt with my father. She wanted him to want her, right up until the end, and even in the letter I'd swiped all those years ago, her only real complaint was that she was forlorn.

Just as I dozed off, Miles came upstairs and crawled in beside me.

I strained for his attention one last time, rolling over to kiss the back of his neck. I pulled his naked body against my warmth, a final attempt to reach him despite his exhaustion, a silent plea for him to rise to the occasion of me needing him.

He rolled toward me. On my back he drew tiny circles with his thumbs. He whispered in my ear, “You left the oven on again.”

“Oh, God—sorry,” I whispered, rubbing his shoulder.

He moved a pillow under my head and let out a long breath.

We had moved toward each other, holding one another for warmth, our bodies awakening—remembering—our legs entwined, when his pager went off, the sound of it like an alarm.

Miles jumped out from the covers, picked his white coat off the floor, and searched the pockets for the number.

In the corner of our bedroom by the window he stood naked, his silhouette protuberant at the middle, and arched his back into his hands. The phone pinched between his shoulder and ear, he advised a resident. He whispered something about an echocardiogram, then pulled on a pair of scrubs, confirming, “It's a tough call. I better head in to see the guy.”

I wanted to wait for Miles, to hold my body in that place where we were interrupted, but he'd be gone much of the night, I imagined. The job had become more than either of us thought we were taking on. And it wasn't just the hours that Miles was away that were daunting, but how much he was missing even when he was home. As I retreated, I wondered if maybe my mother needed to leave my father for her own survival.

• • •

Near dawn, when Miles returned from the call, he crawled into bed without undressing and squeezed my hand.

“I'm lonely,” I said out loud.

Barricaded under a pile of pillows, my doubt grown impermeable, I wanted Miles to say something back—“Me too” or even “Shut up!”—but within minutes, he was snoring.

I considered shaking him awake to explain step by step how I needed him to touch me, to comfort me, to help me find some reminder of who we were, the way Dean returned that feeling of familiarity to me with the simple tip of his thumb under my chin. Instead, I shut my eyes and lay sleepless, seething with hopelessness, and when I did finally doze off, I was back home, dreaming about comets and their luminous tails.

The spring following my mother's departure, Halley's comet began its approach toward the sun, what would be its first potentially visible pass by Earth in a seventy-six-year voyage around our nearest star. One evening that April, in anticipation, my father woke Kara and me to watch the comet with him, after Channel 3 Evening News anchor Gayle King announced that the comet might soon be visible in the night sky.

Dad weaved in between our twin beds with a drink in his hand. “Wake up, ladies,” he said, ice cubes rattling in his glass.

Kara and I sleepily trudged downstairs, following our father out onto the back deck with windbreakers over our jammies. Together we stood huddled against the chill, looking up into the western skies.

The peepers were early that year. Their chorus sang as they waited with us for a glimpse of those five-billion-year-old dust grains shedding behind the comet and creating what we'd hoped to see, a lustrous tail.

However, I knew even before he woke us up, according to the information Mr. Barnet had given our science class, that it was two days and three hours too early to see the comet from any northeastern vantage point. I did not share this with my father in my half sleep because he already felt like he was wrong about so much. “Thanks for thinking of us, Daddy,” I said instead, squeezing his hand and hoping he felt appreciated, at least by his daughters.

My father mussed my hair and pulled Kara in tight for a hug. “Sure wish we had a telescope,” he said as he covered us all in blankets.

My father loved Kara and me, and his love was never anything I doubted. In fact, his affection for us was so big that I knew to keep my blooming romance with Dean top secret. I somehow understood, even then, that my father could not handle his daughter loving an actual man, someone whom he would deem too old for me, especially after Mom had been lost to him already. Dad saw all teenage boys as a threat to his control, so the only man who was permitted at the center of our lives would be him, for a long, long time.

Although Kara was still too young for this to matter, Dad sensed I was distracted by something and he was wise enough to know what. “You better not have a boyfriend,” he warned, when he found me with the phone cord stretched across the kitchen into the pantry, as I talked to Dean in a whisper before bed.

“Gross,” I reassured him, my hand over the receiver.

“Good.” Dad smiled. He ripped the cord from the wall. “You can talk to your girlfriends at school in the morning.”

After Mom left, my father counted on me to do all the things she was responsible for: the laundry, the lunches, the shoveling, and in spring the prep for the vegetable garden. To lose any part of my allegiance threatened the makeshift stability we'd cobbled together in my mother's absence.

Looking back now, I understand the double role I took on that summer. I was not only a girl in her first relationship, but also the collector of my father's broken love—gathering all the frayed pieces of it, trying to help him make something out of those tattered threads.

And that April night Dad wove those threads tight as he summoned the comet for us with a song. In his best a cappella, he warbled, “Lucy in the sky with diamonds, Lucy in the sky with diamonds, Lucy in the sky with diamonds, ah, ah.”

While he and I repeated the chorus over and over again, Kara played jacks on the deck under the porch light.

“All right, already,” she finally told us. “I think that's enough.”

We then sat with just the peepers for what felt like an eternity, until Dad asked with a sigh, “So, have you girls heard from your mother?”

My sister did not respond to the question and kept her eyes on the jacks. I watched her hands catching and releasing that small ball. Neither of us knew if he really wanted an answer, and if he did, we both guessed it was better to lie. Kara shook her head, and I shook mine.

But we had heard from her, yes.

After working an overnight shift as a floor nurse at Hartford Hospital, she came to us in her white nurse's uniform. She had visited me first at the high school athletic fields where I ran the track after school. She stayed only long enough to tell me, “You look good out there, Claire. So graceful,” shouting the words over the fence during the baton relay.

When our coach blew the whistle for the timekeeper, I leaped across the finish line to greet her. Mom handed me a snack in a Tupperware container, like she always had, and headed down the block to Kara's middle school basketball practice to do the same—after which, I presumed, she would head off to visit her boyfriend in the mansion at the end of the Quayside, although the details of her whereabouts were always left unclear.

After she left that first morning, Kara had asked our father, “Is Mom staying with Grammy?”

He answered abruptly, “No. She's with a friend from work.”

And although I was fairly certain where she was and what she was up to, I continued to keep that knowledge a secret, understanding that Mom's betrayal could have horrible consequences for my father.

But that April night without her, under a cool breeze, with our faces turned toward the western part of the sky, I pretended that Mom was searching for the comet with us. I imagined her closing one eye to peer through the end of the giant telescope from the bedroom window in that house overlooking the sea. And I felt better believing we remained connected by the occasion of the comet, all of us searching the stratosphere in unison, like a family.

I missed my mother—the smell of her perfume in the morning as she readied for work, the way she tapped her spoon on the rim of her coffee cup three times before her first sip, her tattered pink slippers at the foot of the bed. I often went into her bathroom and touched the bottles of makeup and nail clippers she had left behind. She wasn't there, but the reminders of her were everywhere.

The comet never came that April night, though our father poured himself two more drinks and kept us up until dawn, promising it would appear.

“Another few minutes,” he told Kara, shaking her shoulders to keep her awake as she leaned against him, her head bobbing as she fought off sleep.

“Girls!” he encouraged us. “We can't miss this opportunity.”

But Kara and I snuggled up under sleeping bags and blankets on the lawn furniture and fell asleep.

The next morning, while we munched on muffins in the breakfast nook, Dad announced, “Girls, I need your help with something. You're both staying home from school today.”

He poured his coffee into a plastic mug and drove us past the bus stop where Dean had made a habit of meeting me. I knew he would wonder where I was, but there was no way to sneak off to call him and explain.

With the radio low, we drove beyond the marsh, through the town's center and out by the freeway to the parking lot of the Stop & Shop, where we napped in the car with our father until the doors opened.

Groggy from the late night, we followed him inside, snaking up and down the aisles until we reached the rows of feminine hygiene products and shampoo bottles.

Dad scanned the shelves.

“What are we getting?” I asked.

“Hair dye,” he said, annoyed that he couldn't find it.

“This?” Kara said, pointing to a box featuring a beaming Carol Alt with a dark, shiny mane of hair.

“That's it,” Dad said. He chose Miss Clairol, chestnut brown, semi-permanent #700. “Will this work?” He pointed to his hair, looking to me for confirmation.

I laughed, but his stare told me he wasn't kidding.

I picked up a few other boxes and examined the colors, opting for dark chestnut amber #800.

“Dark chestnut amber is a better match,” I said.

“Daddy, can I get a candy?” Kara whined as we walked toward the checkout.

I kicked her in the shin to shut her up.

Taking a wad of crinkled singles and a five-dollar bill from his pants pocket, Dad handed his money and the hair dye to me.

“Meet me at the car after you pay,” he said. “Kara can have whatever she wants.”

In line, my sister and I scanned the Fun Dip candy, Big League Chew bubble gum, and Laffy Taffy. Next to the sweets was a
Time
Magazine
showing a picture of Chernobyl's nuclear power plant disaster and the ash-covered crops of the Soviet Union. I imagined the kids in Russia under a red flag, waiting in lines at empty supermarkets with only one kind of bread and no candy at all, as guards rationed their food supplies. I reminded myself that we were lucky, even if our mother was gone and our father was losing his mind.

A cashier with electric-blue eye shadow and a doughy face smiled at Kara, who piled a mound of candy in front of her.

Dad sat in the parking lot with the windows down on his loaner car—he was driving the old Toyota that had belonged to Uncle G, who had kept it as backup for when his plumbing van broke down. Tinny sounds from the radio caught my attention as we approached, the broadcaster letting out a howl, recapping how the New York Mets hit the ball right out of the park the night before. The voice, excited and loud, predicted the blue and orange to take the championship for the 1986 World Series.

“Anyone but New York,” Dad said when we climbed in. “Buckner's got to save our Red Sox.”

The three of us sat there sharing Laffy Taffy and listening while the station excerpted the hollers of the crowd, followed by the smack of the ball on the bat, a world of baseball for us to disappear inside for a while.

“We should go to Fenway,” said Dad. He turned the key. “I'll take you girls someday. No place like it. The bleachers, hot dogs. That old Citgo sign. I took your mother when I came home from the service. It was our first trip after I got back to the States, before you guys were born. We stayed in Kenmore Square. I should have taken her more often. She loved it, even in the cheap seats.”

I didn't know how to respond, so I said, “What's with the hair dye?”

“Mom wanted me to take better care of myself. She kept telling me I let myself go.” My father slapped his belly. “But I'm gonna start exercising again and get rid of the gray. See if I can get her attention.” He nodded to himself. “Everything is gonna be okay, girls. I'll win her back.”

Kara and I exchanged glances. We said nothing.

Dad went on. “She's coming by the house later today to collect a few of her things. When I see her, I need to look my best, see if we can talk. But we can't dye it there. I don't want to leave a mess. She hates that.”

From the backseat Kara blurted out, “So Mom left us because you got fat and old?”

“Kara!” I yelled.

“Just asking,” she said.

Dad flipped on his blinker and turned into Ferry Landing State Park.

“Basically,” he explained to Kara, “marriage is like your betta fish. You've got to take good care of it, or it will die. We haven't always taken such good care of ours.”

Out before us along the Connecticut River were picnic tables and camping spaces next to public showers and a giant sink to wash camp dishes. “Let's do it here,” Dad said, pointing to the facilities. “We just need water and some time.”

Because it was an unseasonably warm morning, the park was mobbed with men reading newspapers and stay-at-home moms playing tetherball with small children. We parked in the grass beside a couple drinking from a thermos and holding hands.

“Lovebirds,” Dad said under his breath, showing little regard for them as he tromped almost directly across their blanket and waved us on.

“If I remember right, there oughta be a bench and a public bathroom down here, out of the way a bit. Your mom and I camped here once, after drinking and fishing all day. Years ago. Right after we graduated high school.”

Dad led us along the river path, beyond the main parking lot to where the grass was high and the fields were full of daffodils.

And while we hiked behind our father, I was guilty of longing to be alone with Dean, to feel his hands under my bra and inside my panties. I felt ashamed for thinking that way in the presence of my father, but I couldn't push the thoughts from my mind.

We reached a clearing with picnic tables scattered along the river's edge. Beside them were beer cans strewn over charred logs from a late-night fire pit.

Out of breath, Dad parked himself on the bench. In his hands he held his Miss Clairol Dark Chestnut Amber #800, thrusting it into the air like a trophy. “Let's get this done,” he said.

We tore the box open and I pulled on the clear plastic gloves provided, while Dad shook up the color.

“Take your shirt off, Daddy,” I said. “It will stain.”

I stood behind my father while Kara held the instructions and snapped her gum. She read to us. “Step 1: Gently massage nutrient-rich color shampoo into hair. Keep off skin.”

As instructed, I applied dye the consistency of Hershey's syrup to my father's thinning hair. Overhead the sun cast a golden glow across the meadow while a breeze carried toward us the shrill screams of children playing on the swings, and from the river's edge came the grumbles of small engines turning over as men launched fishing boats from the public landing.

Dad set his digital watch for the required fifteen minutes needed to fix the color. As he waited, he walked the park shirtless, his belly distended and white, and picked dandelions with clear plastic wrap over his head.

Watching him walking through the field with his head down reminded me of a fight my parents had a few months prior. Mom had been angry about bills that had gone unpaid and my father's unemployment. And while she went on yelling and screaming at him, Dad never stopped her. He simply listened, his head hung low, rubbing her back while she pounded the table and shook her head and cried into her hands.

When she finally stood in disgust, tossing the bills across the kitchen and shouting, “I'm taking a shower,” Dad went outside and pulled a fistful of dandelions from our lawn. He tied them with twine into a bouquet that he left next to a cardboard heart he cut from an empty cereal box, upon which he wrote:
We'll figure it out. I love you
.