What Burns Away (14 page)

• • •

Miles accepted the idea of a visit back home so easily that it almost hurt to think he could let us leave his side with such little fuss.

“I think I want to go home for a little while,” I told him. “I've got a voucher, so it won't cost us anything. I just want to see the ocean, smell the air, and catch up with some friends. I thought I'd take Jonah with me. Maybe even see my mom while we're out there. It's been a really long time.”

“If it will make you feel better, honey, you should go. I'm tied up with this whole mess at the lab anyway, and there are deadlines looming. Plus, I've got patients booking six months out. Maybe it'll be a good time for you to get away.” He paused to consider. “It makes sense really. And the fire chief still believes the arsonist may have targeted me personally. He's not convinced Dalton had anything to do with it. Who knows?” He shook his head. “Anyway, I'd sleep better knowing you two were far from all the unknowns.”

• • •

Later that week, in between packing and cooking meals to leave behind for my husband, I received a text from Miles at midday, asking if he could spend some time with us before we went.

C—I signed my pager over to one of the fellows. I'd like to arrange to get off early to be with you and Jonah this evening.—M

But when he finally walked in, dinner had long been served, the dishes were done, and Jonah was in his pajamas. Straddling the large suitcase I'd wrestled to the floor, packed with wool socks and sweaters, our mittens and hats, and my best-fitting pair of jeans, I forced the zipper over a bursting seam.

Miles tossed his keys on the counter, saying, “I'm later than I thought I'd be.”
So
what
else
is
new
, I wanted to say. He examined my face for the complaint I didn't make, then glanced down at the gigantic suitcase.

“Thought it was a short trip,” he said, gently moving my hands away from the zipper. After rearranging our bulky shoes and rolling Jonah's clothes into tubes, he tossed out a few stuffed bunnies. “Those guys,” he announced, “can keep me company.” Then he zipped the bag shut with ease.

“Thanks,” I said.

Miles nodded. “I know you're mad. I'm sorry, honey. I tried to be here sooner.”

Hearing his daddy's voice, Jonah raced stiff-legged, a tiny Frankenstein, and crashed into Miles, wrapping his arms tight around his father's knees.

“My dada!” he screamed.

I left the last of the packing for later and headed into the kitchen, lifting the lid of the Crock-Pot to stir the stew.

“Smells amazing,” Miles said, coming up behind me with Jonah in his arms.

I set a spoon down on the counter. “Figured I'd make something you could live off a while,” I told him, filling him a giant, steaming bowl.

Patting my back, Miles said, “I really am sorry. I got caught up with a patient. A case came as I was leaving, and it wasn't something I felt the new resident could handle. But I'm here now. Should we open a bottle of wine to have with dinner?”

“You should,” I said, still annoyed. “We ate.” I poured Miles a glass from the bottle I was already into. “But please, stop telling me you're on your way home only to show up two or three hours later. I'd rather assume you can't make it in time for supper than end up disappointed.”

Slurping broth from his bowl, Miles followed Jonah into the playroom.

We sat on opposite ends of the couch while our toddler dumped wooden blocks from a plastic bin onto the hardwood floor, and the distinct quiet between my husband and me—that reserve like a wall between us—reminded me of my parents' silence before their split.

“Let's build a tower!” Miles cheered in an attempt to redeem the night and my mood. He placed his dinner aside and kneeled on the ground to stack the blocks three feet high.

Jonah, wild with laughter, knocked the tower to the ground.

“Mommy, we need you,” Miles said. “Come help us.”

“You don't need me,” I hissed.

He paused. “You're right to be frustrated, Claire. I understand. Take the next few days to go home and relax. When you come back, I promise I'll try harder to keep my schedule a bit lighter.” He searched my face. “And maybe I can do a better job about setting expectations. Okay?”

Tugging me beyond the rubble to his Matchbox cars, Jonah called, “Come, Mama! Come!”

For my son, I softened and knelt beside my husband, while Jonah, the link holding us together, rested one hand on Miles and the other on me. Together, we sat close driving imaginary race cars and rocket ships, sending bunny and owl to the moon, until the clock chimed eight and Miles carried Jonah up to bed.

In the kitchen, I puttered until my husband returned, rubbing up behind me while I rinsed suds out of the baby bottles. Slipping his hands into the front pockets of my jeans, he asked, “Come watch a movie with me?”

“Early flight tomorrow. I'll never survive an entire movie.”

He moved my hair off my shoulder. “One sitcom? You pick. I'm done making decisions for today. I just want to be close to you.”

Curled up on the couch, I chose the first episode of a mini-series we had both already seen, and before we even got past the opening credits, Miles fell sound asleep, the plush pugs under his head for a pillow.

Once his snoring started, I eased out from under the throw and tucked him in tight. Turning the television off, I set the baby monitor beside him, and, anxious about the trip and what might happen when I arrived home, I headed outside for a walk.

• • •

Four blocks downhill from our Madison address, I passed snowbanks the size of hedges. I breathed in the cold, longing for the mucky smell of the coast, the winter rows of sailboats cocooned tightly under shrink wrap, and the salt marshes back east whose waters freeze slick enough to skate between the reeds, just once or twice before the snow comes.

Out in front of the Heiden Haus, the neighborhood warming hut for the pond was fenced with Plexiglas and cast under lights. Big Wisconsin boys looped the rink and their blades hissed by, while they shouted to one another for the puck, the defenders approaching the forwards to obstruct a drop pass.

I loved that blunt sound of hockey, the noise of skates over ice and bodies colliding up against the glass, so I ducked inside the warming hut to watch the players, remembering my father's love for the game, the Hartford Whalers on our TV all winter and into spring, Dad's fist pounding the table through the Adams Division games, always disappointed by the lack of a Stanley Cup.

Sitting there in Madison, I recollected my hometown hockey pond in Connecticut at the far end of Marsh Cove, where Kara and I learned to skate. With my teeth chattering and Dean's winter coat spread across my lap, I followed the tilt of his body—LIUT, the name of the Whalers' superstar goalkeeper, lettered across his back—as he shifted his weight from knee to knee, tending the net.

Watching the players in scarlet University of Wisconsin hockey jerseys over their pads, I was the only spectator in the hut, and their voices grew rowdier when a mammoth forward broke up the center. He and the goalie shuffled, a sort of dance, then the giant slapped the puck into the corner pocket for score.

His teammates erupted into song and roared with delight: “Whoomp, there it is! Whoomp, there it is!”

And as they sang, the titan hurled his stick into the night to lead a celebratory lap around the rink. His minions circled behind him, chanting the remainder of the chorus: “Whoomp chak a laka chak a laka chak a laka chak a!”

I chuckled at the boys from where I remained invisible in the dark, some part of myself stirring as I coveted their youth and wondered what kind of teenager Jonah would grow up to be.

The opposing goalie, racing counterclockwise, greeted the massive offender and his parade to present them with a gleaming silver flask. The opponents skated together to form a circle around which they passed the vessel for a clandestine drink. After each boy had taken his swig, they moved back to the center of the rink, finding their positions. Subdued laughter rose from the ice and the boys faced off.

Standing outside of it all, looking toward home, I stepped out from the hut and stumbled over an enormous pair of snow boots in the footpath.

Inside the right shoe, I recognized the blue packaging on a box of American Spirit cigarettes, paired with a yellow lighter. Next to it, the left mate housed a can of aerosol foot spray and a pair of wool socks. I stepped two paces past the suggestion, then turned back, some old danger blooming in me as I seized the cigarette lighter and aerosol can, dropping each into a deep pocket of my peacoat.

I held my breath quiet, welling with rebellion, and veered in the direction opposite home, jogging past the snow-covered basketball courts, hurrying beyond the buried baseball field, and reaching the local elementary school, where I followed the footpath alongside the building. Attempting to dampen the unruliness that surged through me, I slipped between two rusted Dumpsters, whispering, “Don't.”

But hidden and bent low between the bins, I did. Taking the spray can in my left hand, I pressed my index finger to the trigger. The aerosol's silver mist cast into the dark, and the mischief I undertook bubbled up into an irrepressible giggle. I spun the wheel of the lighter under my right thumb, but I got only a spark.

I looked around and flicked it again to no avail.

Peering past the field to the pond beyond it, I saw that the boys continued to skate.

Determined, I shook the lighter, striking it once more, and the flint ignited into a single, glorious flame.

I considered the fire and brought it closer to the spray.

Mist touched flare. A flash threw heat, a luminous cloud of oranges and blues.

Happiness stirred inside me, a breed of delight. I admit that I couldn't stop. I threw a second burst of fire from my handmade torch. It gusted between the Dumpsters, where recyclables and cardboard boxes were stacked high.

Whoomp, there it is
, I thought, that instantaneous rush of a blaze.

The conflagration warbled; heat carried on the breeze like a weather front.

I tossed the can back at the rush of flames and ran, flashes of heat and light lapping after me like tongues. Sprinting, the yellow lighter still clenched in my fist, I raced away from the school, around the building, back along the paved footpath, and into the darkness. At the edge of the schoolyard, breathless, I slowed to a stroll, returning to myself as I ambled past the frosted baseball fields, beyond the basketball courts, and back toward the now-empty ice rink.

Behind me something burst.

Nearing the warming hut, I heard laughter from the boys resonating off the Plexiglas, and, like an echo's callback, sirens sounded.

Whirling lights, red and blue, intersected my course.

My heart leaped.

You're just a forty-year-old mom out for a walk
, I reminded myself. I kept my steps steady and deliberate.

Two officers stepped from a cruiser, flashlights in hand. The first cop, virtually a child himself, called to the boys with a blare horn.

“Gentleman, I'll need everyone's identification.”

I slowed my pace and glanced at the blaze beyond the rink. It flayed forward and shrank back.

A second squad car whipped into the elementary school parking lot, and its headlights searched out over the snowfields. I kept moving, my hands in my pockets, where the lighter was clenched in my fist.

With the blare horn clipped to his waist belt, the young officer led a boy in handcuffs to his police car. Behind me were the squeaks of footsteps on the frozen snow. Then an elongated double of my frame was cast into a shadow by a penlight.

“Excuse me, ma'am?” the second officer called out.

I turned, my heart fluttering like a hummingbird. The cop dropped the light from my eyes.

“Officer Murphy,” he said, jogging closer. “You live in the neighborhood?”

I shrank my shoulders up to my neck to pinch out the cold. My pulse was a noise I was certain he could hear.

“Yes. Moved in a few months ago, up over the sledding hill. Near the golf course on Topping Road.”

I gestured with my chin, released the hidden yellow lighter from my pocketed grip, and offered him my hand.

“Claire Spruce,” I said.

He pulled a notepad from his breast pocket and jotted a note.

“Won't keep you long, Ms. Spruce. Just a few questions.”

Behind us a boy shouted. “That's
bullshit
. Search whatever the hell you want.”

Officer Murphy thumbed his hand back toward the noise.

“Got some underage drinking and pyromania. Was wondering if you witnessed any hoopla by the rink or near the elementary school.”

I tugged my hat over my ears and made it a question. “Playing hockey?” It sounded like a guess. I shrugged and added, “Maybe forty or so minutes ago, when I headed by on a walk, they were just skating and singing. A quiet night, otherwise.”

“Hockey,” he confirmed, nodding at my inanity, tucking his notepad back into his jacket pocket. His walkie-talkie squawked. “Thank you, ma'am. That's all I need for tonight.”

I nodded and moved unhurriedly along the path he illuminated ahead of me.

Up the hill and back into the dark near home, I considered the teenaged boy in the backseat of the cruiser, the envelope from Dean hidden in my closet, Jonah asleep in his crib, the trip we were about to take, and Miles, never stirring as I slipped out, still snoring now on the couch.

I pulled the lighter from my pocket and fingered its trigger with my thumb. As a forty-year-old, stay-at-home mom, I couldn't be further off anyone's radar. Any of that old danger beating inside me was invisible to nearly everyone.

“Somewhere out in the back of your mind

Comes your real life and the life that you know.”

— Stevie Nicks, “Rooms on Fire”