Crazy Love You (38 page)

Megan? Are you down here?
I hated it when Priss mocked my voice. It really made me angry.

“Where is she?”

Where is she?

She moved out of the darkness. But she wasn't the little girl or the woman I knew. She was an old woman, bent over and gray. She wore that same cotton shift, but her limbs were as spindly and thin as knotted old wood, and her hair was straw. She was as ancient as the trees and mountains, as the hills around The Hollows. Those eyes, though, those blue, blue eyes, were as bright and hypnotic as ever.

I was not afraid of her; I never had been. What I
have
feared is my life without her, whatever she is. Without her, I would just be myself in this cold and wicked world. And I have always been so desperately afraid that I could never be enough.

“What do you want, Priscilla? If you let them go, I'll give it to you.”

If you let them go, I'll give it to you.

She moved in close to me, and I let her. She smelled of centuries—mold and dust and decay. There was something oddly comforting about the scent. It was familiar like the smell of wet ground, or rain, or fallen leaves in a pile on the lawn. I put my hands on her dry and withered shoulders, and she whispered in my ear. But, of course, I already knew the answer, had known it all along.

“Yes,” I said.

She drew back from me, and smiled. Then she laid herself down on the ground by the stairs and I watched as she became the woman I have desired and loved. Then she was the little girl who saved me one desperate night in the woods. And finally she turned to a pile of ash on the floor at my feet. I knelt beside her and wept for her. Boys do cry. We cry all the time.

I lifted my head and called for Megan. And my voice sounded like the wail of an animal.

“Where is she, Priss? What have you done to her?”

When I looked back, I saw that in her place before me lay Megan. She was ghostly pale and frighteningly still, with one leg terribly bent, a pool of blood beneath her head.

I burst into action, stumbled and nearly fell over myself trying to get to her. I knelt beside her and whispered her name. Her eyes fluttered, and she looked at me.

“I saw her,” she whispered. “I did.”

“You saw Priss?”

“I saw her,” she said. “You were right. She's real.”

“I have to get us out of here,” I told her. I had no idea if I could. Above us I could hear a riot of sound, crashing and the roar of flames. I lifted her, and she cried out in pain.

“No, Ian,” she said. There was panic and pain in her voice. “You can't.”

But there was no choice. Carry her out and possibly hurt her worse than she was already hurt or allow both of us to die in the basement of my childhood home. There was no way I was going to die here, or let Megan and our child die here.

I lifted her as carefully as I could. She lost consciousness again as I carried her up the stairs. The smoke was moving toward us like a noxious beast. I was weak, and I started to feel overcome again as soon as I made it up the stairs.

But still I moved, one foot in front of the other as the flames raged and the house groaned around me. A beam from the ceiling fell in front of me, blocking my way to the back door. It wanted us to stay, to die here with Priss. But I turned and headed into the flames that seemed to block our way to the front. If we died here, it wouldn't be because I had given up.

Then I saw her everywhere, all around me in the flames, her shape, the color of her hair. Wherever I saw her, that was where I headed. And so, following the shade of Priss, I managed to move us through the fire. Finally, I stumbled out the front door and onto the porch. I turned back and watched the flames become a wall and heard the roof collapse. I turned with Megan still in my arms and ran. A crowd of policemen with guns drawn surrounded me.

Put the girl down, and put your hands in the air.

The firefighters raced past me, and I heard a woman screaming. Julia. Someone took Megan from my arms. And I fell to my knees, put my hands on my head. But the world around me was just a field of stars. I turned back to the burning house and looked for Priss, but she wasn't there.

Weeping, Fatboy stumbles through the night and finds his way to the garage of his childhood home. Just as he remembers, there is a can of gasoline that the maintenance guy uses to fill the lawn mower. He picks it up and carries it inside.

In the drawer next to the stove there is the box of matches. It has always been there, to light the old oven. He takes it out and stuffs it in the pocket of his baggy jeans. Then he starts to walk around the house, leaving a careful trail of gas from the kitchen to the small living room, up the small stairway into the three bedrooms, then back down again.

He starts with the curtains in the front of the house and lights them on fire, watching as the flame starts out as a tiny lick of light and quickly grows. The flames twist and turn like dancers. He is transfixed by their heat and light. Then he walks, scattering lit matches along the trail of gasoline. The flames travel quickly.

He knows what to do. He has done it before. He has set fire to a bully's house, to the classroom of a teacher who betrayed him. He is the fire starter, not Priss, though he has always had her whispering in his ear, telling him what to do. He knows that now. All the memories, the blank spaces, are frighteningly clear. Since he found her in the woods so long ago, they have always been together. They have twisted around each other, a helix of anger and fear, creating nothing but damage.

He wished, always wished, that he was a better person, but he wasn't. Every bad thing for which he blamed her, he has done himself. He pushed his partner in front of that car. There was a rage inside him, a beast that made Priss look like a kitten. It was the rage that was his enemy, his addiction.

Fatboy watches his house burn to the ground. He sits against the tall oak on the other side of the driveway and takes in the show. He is happy to watch the place burn, glad that his past is about to be turned into a pile of ash. His future is suddenly clear.

He cannot go back to Molly. He knows that. He never deserved that kind of life—a happy normal life with a wife and child. He could not leave The Hollows, or Priss. They are all one entity, indivisible from each other. He understands what she wants, what she needs. She needs him. He needs her. She needs him to stay here with her forever.

Priss walks out from the trees and he rises to greet her. She moves into him and wraps her arms around him. He puts his mouth to hers, and she tastes and feels like fire. She is all heat, fuel for the rage that burns inside him. They were made for each other, many lifetimes ago, and so they will remain.

She moves away and leads him by the hand. He follows without a fight as they both walk into the fire and are consumed.

•  •  •

Zack was a guy who liked a happy ending. But, you know, things didn't always work out that way. And it
was
a happy ending of sorts. Fatboy and Priss did belong together. He could never live without her, not after he'd faced his own guilt. In a way, it was like the ultimate love story. They couldn't survive without each other and they wouldn't have to. Didn't we all want a love that lasted into eternity?

“That depends on how you look at it,” I said. “Did Fatboy die?”

“He walked into a burning house and never came out,” said Zack. “There aren't too many ways to interpret that.”

“Are you familiar with the first law of the conservation of energy?”

“Uh, no, I guess not.”

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change form.”

A baffled silence. “Okay.”

“It's the right ending, Zack. Trust me.”

“I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a
great
ending—exciting, explosive. But
emotionally
, I think your readers are going to want more than this.”

He seemed really young to me suddenly. And I felt old and battle-worn, trying to explain the world I knew to a child.
We don't always get a happy ending, son
, I wanted to say. Life is about compromise. Sometimes you get good enough.

“What do you think they want?” I asked. “The readers, I mean.”

“I think they want to see Fatboy break free from Priss. They want him to do penance for his sins. But ultimately, I think they want him to end up happy with Molly. Free.”

“And what about Priss? What happens to her? Seems like she's always getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, doesn't it?”

“No,” he said. “They let each other go. She gets peace, release. She moves on to whatever is next.”

It made me think of something Eloise had said:
Love lets go.

But does it? Does it let go? I'm not sure it does.

I looked at the sketch pad on my desk. There were the preliminary panels for my next book. I was eager to start a new chapter.

“Isn't that what
you
want for him?” he asked. He was so earnest and imploring, I thought about giving in. I really loved Zack. He was the only person who was into my story world as much as I was. They say every writer has one reader, the one they write for again and again. I guess Zack was as close to being that reader as anyone.

“Just think about it, okay? We have a little time.”

“He's happy, Zack. You get that, right? It's what he always wanted.”

I could hear him tapping his pen on his desk, considering.

“I guess I'll think about it, too,” he said.

•  •  •

I ended the conversation with a promise to check in later, and turned toward the window, where a bright light washed in from the noonday sun. Outside, the crisp autumn day was gold and orange, still clinging to green. The sky was a cloudless cerulean blue. I wasn't rewriting the end of the book. It was precisely as it needed to be. I could feel that; I had a feeling Zack was going to come around to seeing this, too.

Fatboy and I had parted company. After I wrote him walking into the fire, I felt him leave me for good. I released that part of myself that was afraid and filled with rage. I let him burn.

I was alone in the art room, as I often was. It wasn't exactly an artsy crowd, though there were a few people who seemed to take comfort in painting. Occasionally, I shared the space with a haunted-looking woman in her forties trying to kick an Adderal addiction. She had an affinity for a Georgia O'Keeffe–style of flowers in bright oils. There was an eighteen-year-old meth head who painted the same stand of black, dead trees over and over. But neither of them had been around for a while.

I sketched for a bit, mostly Megan as she looked the last time I'd seen her, flushed and pretty, her belly round and smooth, breasts swelling against the pink of her dress. She
was
fecundity, beauty, expectancy. I was trying to get that, that blush of hormones and health. Like so many beautiful, natural things, it defied capture. Made things—cityscapes, machines, weapons—all of that was easy. Negative emotions—anger, hatred, rage, jealousy—were all hard lines and dark shadows. Light, wellness, happiness, the natural world—all of that was harder. So much of it was not about what the eye saw, but about what it couldn't see.

I had phone and e-mail privileges now, which I hadn't for a while. For a long time I couldn't have cared less. I couldn't think of anything but my own ruin. And then there was the sickness, the writhing agony of drugs leaving my system. It's a river of pain—mental, physical, and emotional. Unless there's something waiting for you on the other side, I'm not sure there's any way to cross it alive. There wouldn't have been for me, I know that. The only thing I ever wanted more than to get high was to build a life with Megan and our child. And that's the only thing that got me sober.

I had been clean for sixteen weeks. And let me tell you frankly: sobriety sucks. I don't know how people do it. There you are in the world, just yourself, with nothing to take the edge off all your fear and pain and self-loathing. There's nothing to bury your demons, no way to cast off your inhibitions and let loose. All the things that bother you, hurt you—you have to face them, talk about them with your therapist. You have to deal with your life. Why would anyone want that?

But people did want that. And people wanted that for me. Mainly, Megan.

Have you considered that we might build a life where you wouldn't have so much to bury? That if you deal with the things that are causing you such devastating psychic pain, you might not need to “take the edge off.”

At sixteen weeks sober, living at a rehab facility, working, communicating somewhat with the outside world, I was a long way from that place. But I was on the far shore; I'd made it through the mire. Now I just had to get to my feet.

Hi, my name is Ian Paine. And I'm an addict. I have been addicted to many things  . . . booze, pot, pills, my own desire to self-destruct. But I have been sober for sixteen weeks—and counting. One day at a time and all that.

My phone dinged in my pocket. There was an e-mail from my dad's old partner.

Hey, bud
, he wrote.
Thought you'd like to know that the main house, and the other structure on the property, came down completely today. The fire did most of the hard work. We dug up the foundations and filled in the holes. It's a fresh start for you and your family. Consider the demo my wedding gift.

I looked at the clock on the wall and realized I was running late for my session. I packed up my stuff—my sketches, my pencils, the new blank pad—and headed to therapy.

•  •  •

My therapist—well, there's no other way to put this. She was hot. She beamed a lush-lipped, white-toothed smile at me as I entered her office and took a seat.