How to Start a Fire (24 page)

Six days after the accident, Anna was resting uncomfortably in her childhood bedroom. Her mother had threatened to hire a nurse’s aide; Anna had threatened to jump out the window if she did. Anna could change her dressings on her own and give herself a sponge bath, although she couldn’t manage to wash her hair, which was matted down like an oil slick.

Colin had phoned Kate and George and delivered the news. Kate called Anna and offered to come and help, but Lena was so agitated that Anna was afraid Kate’s presence would send her over the edge. Another time, Anna wouldn’t have cared, but she couldn’t stomach any more glares of disapproval.

“It’s better if you don’t come,” Anna said to Kate.

“Don’t you need help?” Kate asked.

“It’s better if you don’t come,” Anna said again, not sure how to explain it all.

“Lena, right?” Kate said. Lena had never tried to hide her opinion of Kate.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” said Anna.

“I talked to George. She’ll be on the next flight,” said Kate.

In some ways, George was better than Kate under the circumstances. She could express sympathy in a more conventional manner, and it was easier for Anna to cry in front of George, since she’d seen George do it herself so many times. Although George was usually crying about a boy, Anna thought. Then Anna realized she was doing the same. George fetched food from the kitchen, and the women spent most of their time in Anna’s childhood bedroom. Lena hardly had to see them at all, which was for the best because ever since Anna had come home from the hospital, Lena couldn’t bear the sight of her.

For that, Anna forgave her mother. A wedding lasts only one day; it exists mostly as a memory. And Anna had destroyed the memory of her brother’s wedding. Anna figured everyone had the right to hate her.

George arrived one day before Malcolm’s funeral. That first night, she slept on the floor of Anna’s bedroom. When Anna woke in the middle of the night crying, out of pain or a sudden reminder of what had happened, George climbed into bed with Anna and put her arms around her. She performed reconnaissance missions for Anna. Lurking about, eavesdropping on family conversations, George managed to catch Colin and Lena in a heated debate about whether Anna should attend the funeral. Lena was inexorably against it. When Colin asked Anna what she wanted to do, Anna told him not to fight Lena.

She hadn’t seen her brother cry yet. His face had a grayish hue; his voice was monotone and quiet, as if he were on the same sedatives as Anna. She didn’t try to talk to Colin or ask his forgiveness. Anna made herself as small as possible in his presence.

The next day, as soon as the Furys left for the funeral parlor, Anna and George plotted as if they were about to pull a bank heist.

“I’m going,” Anna said.

“Good,” said George. “You should.”

“I’ll get the keys to my mother’s car and you can drive.”

The keys weren’t in their usual spot. Anna could only surmise that her mother had anticipated this move.

“Maybe we can borrow a neighbor’s car?”

“Which neighbor?” said George.

Anna knew of two neighbors: an elderly widow named Mrs. Penwright who owned a 1986 Cadillac, and Leonard Marks, a recently divorced stockbroker in his forties. Anna rightly suggested George would have more luck with the stockbroker. She was surprised only by the short amount of time it took: within five minutes of her departure, George returned with the keys to his BMW in her hand.

“What did you do?” Anna asked.

“I smiled,” said George. “You need to get ready. We have an hour.”

“What do you need for a funeral?” Anna asked.

“A black dress.”

George took a simple black dress from Anna’s closet, something she’d probably worn on a job interview once. She also found a boot that would cover up the bruises on the leg that wasn’t sporting a cast.

“What else do I need to do?” Anna asked.

“You need to wash your hair,” George said authoritatively.

“I can’t lift my arms over my head.”

Anna crouched over the bathtub with her head under the faucet as George scrubbed her scalp.

“This is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever had to do,” George said, feeling a layer of oil covering her hands despite the soapy lather. She had to wash Anna’s hair three times before it felt clean.

George wrung Anna’s hair out with a towel and combed out clumps of hair along with a week’s worth of tangles.

“What are you going to wear?” Anna asked.

“I didn’t think to bring funeral clothes.”

There was only one thing in Anna’s closet that would fit George, a strappy black dress made of a stretchy material. On Anna, it hit well below the knee and hung like a slip. On George, it looked like something a high-end prostitute might wear.

“You got a raincoat or something?” George asked.

She borrowed a tan trench coat that her arms flooded out of by three inches. She could barely belt it enough to cover the dress.

Anna didn’t bother with looking nice, only respectful. She was still adjusting to the crutches. She put her arm around George and leaned on her as she hopped down the stairs one step at a time.

Thirty minutes later, George had parked the car and helped Anna traverse a pebbly walkway with a steep incline to the door of the funeral parlor. A somber man in a black suit that he wore like a uniform handed her a pamphlet. She folded it over the hand rest on the crutch and went inside.

Anna could feel eyes boring into her as she entered the chapel. An open coffin sat ten yards away. She was already spent from the journey from the car. Mourners lined up to pay their respects or gawk. Women clutched tissues in their hands; men patted each other on the shoulder. In her peripheral vision, Anna caught a glimpse of her mother staring at her, but she refused to return her gaze. Her brother was standing by the casket, his face ruddy and wet with tears. His wife, at his side, glared at Anna.

“Take a breath,” George said, putting her hand on Anna’s shoulder.

“I’m okay,” Anna said, swallowing hard. The sedatives helped.

Anna tramped down the alley between the warrens of folding chairs. People parted like a backward wake. A woman Anna didn’t recognize was leaning over the coffin and whispering her goodbye to Malcolm. She cleared off when Anna arrived. The woman seemed to know exactly who Anna was. It was possible Anna was misreading her expression, but it didn’t seem sympathetic at all.

Anna had been to funerals before. Mourners often commented on the handiwork of the mortician:
He looks so alive. They did a good job. You’d never know he fell off a building.
Maybe people had even said it here. They had hidden all evidence of the fact that Malcolm had died in a violent car crash. But Malcolm didn’t look anything like Malcolm. Malcolm looked dead. Anna realized that she had come unprepared for that simple fact. She thought she had understood in the hospital when Colin told her. But it wasn’t until she was there, looking at him, that she realized she would never have him to herself again.

People were still staring. She turned around in a three-part motion and plodded on her crutches, head down, a few steps toward the door; George followed after her. Max Blackman, Malcolm’s stepfather, blocked Anna’s path.

“You weren’t going to say hello?” he asked.

Anna had met Max Blackman on a few occasions. All weddings. She’d even danced with him once. Max knew how Malcolm had felt about her, even if Malcolm himself hadn’t.

“I thought I should leave,” she whispered, taking a deep breath to calm herself. She had discovered just a day ago that the combination of crying and walking on crutches was impossible. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re all sorry, Anna.”

“He wouldn’t have been out if it weren’t for me.”

“So logic follows that he should never have gone anywhere,” Blackman said, a lawyer to the core.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Max admonished her.

“I can’t help it.”

Max looked over Anna’s shoulder and saw Lena wending a determined path toward them.

“Your mother’s at twelve o’clock, closing in. What do you want me to do?”

“Stall her while I make a run for it.”

Anna kissed Mr. Blackman on the cheek and lurched her way out of the funeral home. George ran ahead, started the car, and pulled it up right at the bottom of the walkway. Colin chased after his sister and helped her into the car.

Before he shut the door, Anna said, “I’m sorry.”

Colin didn’t say
It’s not your fault
or
Don’t blame yourself.

He said, “I know.”

Santa Cruz, California

“I blame the whiskey,” Anna said.

Kate had been dry heaving since midnight. Now the amber shades of dawn were creeping through the window. There was nothing left to expel from her digestive tract, but her body remained committed. In between bouts of convulsions, Kate curled up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, where she was attended by a committee of hangover experts.

“I blame the punch,” said Arthur, who’d made the punch. “You should never mix your drinks.”

“I blame
you
,” George said, pointing at Anna.

“How is it my fault?”

“You practically poured the drinks down her throat.”

“There was no pouring.”

“You told her it was a rite of passage.”

“Well, it is,” Anna said. “You turn twenty-one and you get drunk. Everybody knows that.”

“This drunk?”

“Everybody’s different. If you think about it, she didn’t even drink that much.”

“Compared to you, nobody drinks that much,” George said.

“Shhhh,” Kate said from the floor. “Shhh.”

They obliged.

A few hours later, when Kate could swallow clear fluids and quiet her pounding head if everyone remained completely still, she returned to bed. She had her own room now, in a rented single-family home on High Street. There were better, cheaper apartments in Santa Cruz, but when Anna realized she could live on a street called High Street, there was no turning back. The deal was done in Anna’s mind before the three women had even looked at the place. No one really cared. It was such a massive step up from sharing a dorm room that the first few months were sheer bliss. Just walking up the stairs or down the stairs, going into the basement or crawling into the attic, felt like minor adventures. Anna had called dibs on the attic bedroom before anyone had started calling dibs.

It surprised all of them that their friendship had survived sophomore year, when they had tripled up in a dorm room by choice. Three women, none of whom had ever shared a bedroom before college, in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot space. While neither Kate nor George had siblings, it was Kate who found the constant proximity the most unnerving. George avoided solitude and never quite got the hang of the comfortable silences Kate liked since her head was always in a book. Anna saw dorm rooms as places to sleep and throw parties that spilled into the hall. Otherwise, the tiny room made her feel like a caged animal; she was constantly leaving for someplace else. George always asked where she was going, and Anna, prone to the vague excuses she’d honed in her childhood, remained enigmatic.

“You know. Out,” Anna would say, mostly because she never decided where she was going until she was out the door. On school nights, if she wasn’t at the library, she’d go to a movie, but she always kept the title of the film a secret, as if her viewing habits exposed something dark and twisted in her soul. More often than not, Anna watched big-budget American action films or mediocre comedies. George couldn’t understand why anyone would go to a movie alone, and Anna had never quite grasped why movies were communal activities. She liked silence even before the film started, and when it was over, she wasn’t much interested in what anyone else thought. It was about escaping, that’s all. If the film occupied her mind for two hours, it had done its job.

Kate’s absences were equally common, but she always left a note saying where she was going, as her
deda
had taught her, in case she didn’t return. Sometimes Kate went to the library or the student lounge. Sometimes she stayed late after her shift at the diner and studied at a booth, drinking a shake or eating French fries. Although she did that less often, since her
deda
frequently distracted her from her studies.

Ivan found his customers’ refusal to take leftovers home offensive to his frugal Eastern Bloc upbringing. Kate would cringe with embarrassment as she heard him arguing with patrons about the wasted food.

“Are you sure you don’ vant to take home? Dat is at least breakvast. Maybe breakvast and lunch. You have a neighbor might vant? Dog? Do you haf dog? That vould be a lucky dog. No? Okay.”

He’d then drop by Kate’s table and show her the wasted food.

“Americans tink hamburgers grow on trees.”

Kate didn’t mention to her grandfather that many people don’t like soggy hamburgers the next morning. Instead, she offered to take the food.

“I can give it to a homeless person, if you like,” Kate said.

Her
deda
nodded his approval and wrapped up the leftovers. As he left them on Kate’s table he said, “Give to real homeless person. Not vun of those hippie kids, okay?”

Kate often found trails and hiked, sometimes well into the night, with a flashlight in hand and flares and water in her backpack. It was the most reckless thing she was known to do, but at least she was prepared.

That was how she’d met Arthur. He’d started his hike in the afternoon and was unprepared for the sudden sunset, which left him deep in the pitch-black forest and unable to find his way out.

When he saw the flashlight, he shouted for help. The noise pierced the peaceful hum of nature and gave Kate an adrenaline rush. She spun around and started running. The woods were supposed to be empty at night. Anyone hiding there was someone to be feared. As she ran, she heard the voice behind her pleading for help.

“Wait up. I’m lost,” he shouted.

Those were harmless words, Kate thought in midrun. Probably not the words of a serial killer haunting the woods, but who, besides a serial killer, knew what words would be used? As she slowed down to rethink her escape, her foot caught under a fallen branch, and she twisted her ankle on the way to the ground. The flashlight slipped from her hand and landed a few feet away. She freed her foot and crawled toward the flashlight, feeling a heavy ache in the ankle dragging behind her. She could hear leaves crunching in the distance and then someone closing in. She turned off the flashlight to remain hidden.