|
 Prologue
They’re just decoration, these candles. You don’t need anything to pray. Truly, it is best to come with nothing—only yourself.
Just one of the things I’ve learned.
But this sweet night of jubilation in my mountain retreat, in my small cell, made of stone—okay, cinder block—calls for a bit of ceremony. When I think of the woman I was when I came here, all I feared and all I prayed for—and all I’ve been given. Silk and velvet wouldn’t be out of place. Frankincense and Myrrh would fit right in. But I have made my vow, and candles seem best.
I start with just one candle, then add another, and another till I have five. I line them up in a row on the floor. I sprinkle crushed rose petals about, and breathe their fragrance, and the sweet smell of cinnamon rolls. I fetch the pomegranate I plucked from the tree down the road, and run my fingers over its aged flesh. I split it open and squeeze the juice into a cup, to serve as my communion wine. I set the cup beside the candles.
I slip my shoes off, kneel, and close my eyes.
Prayer can be such sweetness. I begin alone, or so it often seems, and that’s frightening at first, but I follow the path and wear it clean, and it grows familiar. And then I find myself in the best of company.
No words this time. I don’t always need them. Tonight, there’s only love, which is joy, which is thanksgiving.
I open my eyes, and begin my communion supper. I pull the plate before me, and lift the cinnamon roll in two hands.
“This is my body broken for you,” I recite.
When I pull the roll apart, it unwinds, dripping sweet molten butter and spice, dropping raisins and walnuts. I place a bite inside my mouth, and chew. Savor.
I lift the cup. “This is my blood which was poured out for you. The blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” I hold it to my lips, and drink.
It’s been a year now, since I came. I gaze at the candles and think how lovely they are, flickering in a fiery tarantella, like the dance I witnessed at the oceans edge, when my friends kicked stars back into the sky. It was the same night I danced my own sort of reel behind closed eyes, when the saints of ages took me in at last, as one of their own.
Chapter 1
Fire is a lovely thing, I’ve always thought. Always loved the chrysanthemum orange of it, the way it reaches.
Even that April day when it flared through my house as though the framework were made of wax. I watched from Suzanne’s lawn, still in my funeral black. I didn’t wear a veil; no one does, anymore, though I do see wisdom in them. A funeral is such a public affair for such private pain. Of all times when a woman shouldn’t worry how she looks . . .
But the fire wafted black smoke, and it seemed the house I’d shared with Larry wore its own veil while it burned inside.
The sun had begun to set so I moved closer to the fire for warmth, but Suzanne pulled me back.
“There’s nothing you can do, Bertie,” she said, not understanding. She pulled my head to her shoulder, and for a moment, it felt good to leave it there.
But I pulled away. I knew I had to stand full on my own two feet. I also knew that once I told Suzanne what I intended to do, she’d try to stop me. And I was so easily stopped in those days.
But didn’t the fire seem like an omen, a divine nod of approval? There’d be no house to set in order, no hospital bed or wheelchair to return to the Parkinson’s Center. No hesitation, and no turning back. I could actually go through with it.
No matter what Suzanne thought.
And the woman does think. On overdrive. She’d spent the entire ride to the funeral drilling me yet again about Garrett, my son who had dropped off the face of the earth sometime in the past four months. Had I called his ex-girlfriend? Had I tried his cell phone? Had I spoken personally to the head of human resources where he works—or used to work?
Could Suzanne really think I hadn’t done everything possible to reach my son? It was me, sitting day by day beside his father’s wheelchair, as he curled into himself like a wilted rosebud and wept that mewling cry his disease had left him. When the nurse came by for her daily rounds, it was me using my free time to drive to Garrett’s apartment, knock on his door, slip notes in his mailbox, make calls that rolled into voicemail. The day Larry entered the hospital, again, with pneumonia—was it only a week ago?—I tried one last, desperate time to bring Garrett to his father’s deathbed.
Both his land line and cell phone had been disconnected. I had learned that he quit showing up for work without warning, and he’d abandoned his apartment with three months rent left unpaid. His girlfriend had broken up with him a year ago, and the reason, she told me: his outbursts and anger.
What was a fire compared with my missing son? My mind halted at the thought of all I’d lost. This house was the least of it. I could let it go.
The fire truck hunkered across the street near our gingko tree. Voices sputtered from the radio—to no one, I guess, as no one seemed to listen. The occasional whiff of smoke caught in my breath, but most of it ascended skyward. A gush of water arced from where two firemen squatted in yellow suits, to the top of the pyre that was my home.
I slipped a hand into my shoulder bag and roamed my fingers over the contents: The torn spine of a paperback book. The snapped closure of a small Bible, and the embossed leather of a journal.
All shall be well, and all shall be well . . . I whispered the words beneath my breath.
A fireman with his gloves off carried a clipboard across the street and glanced over the scattered watchers till his eyes found mine. “Roberta Denys?”
“Yes?” I shook his hand.
“I’m Fire Marshall Matthew Huong with the Saratoga Fire Department. Do you remember me?”
Should I? I tried to place him.
“I used to attend your church. You watched my daughter in the nursery. I’m very sorry about your husband.”
Suzanne stepped forward. “I remember you, Matthew. I’m Suzanne Keyes. We were both in the Christmas play one year.”
“Of course.” He shook her hand, then turned to me. “May we speak privately?”
To my relief and distress, Suzanne stepped back. I followed him a distance away.
“It’s been quite a day for you, Roberta. I’m sorry. It’s good there’s no wind. A fire like this can endanger the homes around it, but we’re going to keep it contained.”
I nodded.
“Now there was just you and your husband living in the house, is that correct? No children or other family members?”
“No, just the two of us. Our son lives, um, on his own.”
“Do you know what caused the fire?”
I had no idea. “I turned off the heater before I left—or at least that’s what I generally—”
“—can’t very well attend the funeral if he doesn’t know his father’s dead.” It was Suzanne’s whisper, back behind my right shoulder.
I turned and caught the eye of the woman beside her, a new neighbor I’d barely met once. I scowled at Suzanne and she stopped.
Matthew cleared his throat, and I gave him my last shred of attention.
“I’m speaking a little out of school here, but I don’t want you to be in danger. We’d normally wait to tell you this till after the investigation, but we’ve already found clear evidence of arson. I can’t specify what kind of evidence, but one of your neighbors, uh, Carroll . . .” He glanced at his clipboard.
“Graham.”
“Yes, Carroll Graham said she saw someone running from your backyard, a man, she thinks, but he wore a hood and she couldn’t describe him. Because it happened during the funeral, it’s possible the arsonist could have known that you were away.”
Arson.
The word floated between us, opaque and undefined. I did try to focus, but my mind offered all the wrong pictures: Larry’s withered body in a coffin. A flurry of rose petals . . .
“Do you have any idea who might have set the fire? Was anyone missing from the funeral?”
I pushed my glasses up my nose. My hands were trembling, so I folded my arms to keep them still.
Arson.
“I’m sorry,” said Matthew. “I’m sure you’re overwhelmed, with a funeral and a fire in the same day.”
I motioned over my shoulder. “Would you mind if Suzanne—”
“Go ahead.”
I reached a hand and she was back beside me, clutching my arm with her acrylic nails.
“Roberta, was anybody angry with you or your husband, maybe a disgruntled employee . . .”
Suzanne frowned. “Larry resigned his position six years ago.”
He wrote a note on his clipboard. “Six years… And Mr. Denys was CEO at…”
“ConjuTech,” I said.
“You’d be surprised how long some folks remember. Perhaps neighbors, relatives—”
“Nope.” Suzanne pinched the word off with her lips.
He looked at me. “Even an angry driver on the road, someone who displayed road rage.”
“No,” I said. “Nobody I can think of.”
“Did you disable your security? The alarm did not go off.”
Suzanne gave a firm shake of the head. “Not possible.”
“The system was only used for the main house,” I explained. “And I’ve hardly been in there in . . . months.”
“Years,” Suzanne corrected.
I caught the familiar tension in her voice, and cringed. But she was right. “Years. We moved into the guest apartment after Larry’s diagnosis.” I pointed to the small extension opposite the garage. Flames curled outward from several windows along the outer wall.
All shall be well . . .
Matthew pulled a card from his clipboard and handed it to me. “Thanks Roberta. I think we’re done for now. Please call if you think of anything that might help the investigation.”
“I will.”
“Do you have someplace to stay tonight?”
“She’ll stay with me,” Suzanne said.
I looked at her.
“In Amber’s room. She’s been married two years.”
“I know that, Suzanne. I went to the wedding.”
“And wasn’t it nice of you to come?”
Matthew looked from me to her, and back again. “Do you have a cell phone where we can reach you?”
I gave the number to him, and he walked away.
Half of the people milling about were strangers: teenagers in soccer uniforms, a woman in a business suit. A young man in an Oakland Raiders cap like Garrett used to wear. For just an instant I thought it was him.
But it wasn’t.
I’d never liked Suzanne’s way of fixing her gaze on me, like there was some message that I should decipher. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Suzanne, what?”
“I just think you’d better find your son.”
What could I say?
A fireman walked through my front door with an ax in his hands. The left front corner of my bedroom collapsed.
I slipped my fingers back into my purse, clutched the spines of my books like they were the hand of God, and whispered the words of Julian of Norwich to my soul:
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
# # #
And for a short while I almost had myself convinced.
I went home with Suzanne, made my calls to the insurance people—well, Suzanne called them, and I answered questions. But we got through it.
Then, before she could bring up Garrett or any of the ways I’d failed her as a friend, I shut myself up in Amber’s room.
I lay in the dark for three hours, retching wide mouthed like some tragic actress in a silent film. One sniffle, I knew, and she’d be back at my side, clucking, commiserating, taking charge of everything. Even my tears.
So much for Julian of Norwich.
You think you’re all right when these things happen. At first, there’s this silent fog that softens the edges of things, makes them beautiful, really. Mysterious.
Anyway, wasn’t it better this way? Larry out of his wheelchair at last, out of that withered body of his?
Oh, but God! I did ache for him! Grief thrashed inside me with such violence, I curled into myself, and held a pillow to my open mouth.
Desperate, I wiped the palms of my hands across my eyes, kicked the covers off, and stood. The floor was thickly carpeted over concrete, but I walked softly, all the same. I eased open the door and peered into the living room.
The television was on. Suzanne sat cross legged before the coffee table, working on her laptop. I’d forgotten. The woman hardly sleeps. And she’d lost half a day’s work following me around.
I pulled the door shut and released the knob. As soon as I turned around, I realized my solution: the window, large and low to the floor.
I slipped into the bathrobe Suzanne had lent me and pulled back the sheers. I squeezed the latch till I felt it release, then drew the window to the side.
Once it was open, I leaned out and drew a deep breath of cool air. Just beneath the ledge there grew a juniper bush. I took care, stepping out, to fit first one bare foot, and then the other into the narrow space between the shrub and the wall. But my nightgown caught on the branches, and when I stepped away I tore a slit in the fabric as long as my hand.
Suzanne’s lawn was wet and cold under my bare feet. I crept to her gazebo and sat on the glider, pulling my feet up and tucking the bathrobe around them. The night sky hovered low, pink from the street lamps and hazy from the smoke that drifted from my gutted home across the street.
In the morning, I’d pay Suzanne for the torn nightgown. I doubted it would merit a footnote, once I started telling her my plans. Not that they were big plans; they weren’t. But to Suzanne, for whom living large was a life’s vocation . . .
Well, you see, I meant to live small.
|