The From-Aways (34 page)

T
his is the news:

Late this past Sunday evening Miss Rosalind Salem and a local boy (not named due to his status as a legal minor) assisted Mr. Jethro Newkirk in setting fire to the Dorian estate, formerly known as the properties of Penobscot Road. They used gasoline or possibly, further investigation suggests, boat diesel, to soak the perimeter and infrastructure of the house. The structure was midconstruction and largely composed of exposed timber and insulation, which burned quickly, soon spreading to the surrounding wooded area. The fire spread through the tree line to the local power substation, where a minor explosion shorted out power on the east side of town, which has remained in blackout for the past twenty-four hours. Miss Rosalind Salem of Menamon sustained fatal injuries after being struck by a piece of collapsing wreckage subsequent to the explosion at the substation. According to the male accomplice, who at this time is not being charged, Mr. Newkirk convinced the children to assist him in the arson. Their plans were related to but not sanctioned by a small group of residents intending to stage a protest of the construction of the Dorian property the next day, Mr. Carter Marks being the most vocal member of said group. The boy has stated that Marks had no knowledge of the arsonists’ actions and indeed had instructed him and Miss Salem not to participate in a demonstration slated for Monday afternoon. Mr. Newkirk is awaiting trial and is expected to receive the maximum ten years for felony arson.

42

Quinn

A
ll over town the lights are out. I wander around Carter’s house, room to room, flicking the little plastic switches up and down, each one clicking uselessly in its tracks. No matter how many times I do it, nothing happens. But that can’t last forever. Soon I’ll flick a switch and Rosie will walk into the room, yawning. She’ll give me a hard time for staying up all night, worrying about nothing.

It’s four. Carter is sleeping.

I knock around in Carter’s drawers and find the butts of several candles. I stick them on the kitchen table and I light them up. I’m going to wait this out. I’m not a patient person but what else can I do but sit here and wait for it to be over. I find a book on one of Carter’s shelves, one with pictures in it. I put it down on the table. I flip the pages, fast fast fast.

I need a drink. I get a glass, and then I open the freezer drawer and a cool breeze puffs out at me. The ice tray is full of puddles. Right, of course: the electricity is the refrigerator too.

The unstable ones are always the ones I like, but to black out the whole town? Let me tell you, Rosie, you win. We get it. You are the bravest girl, the biggest girl. We believe you. You can play with the big kids. Just come on out now. Please.

Soon the lights will come back on.

But when we left the hospital this morning at two, they didn’t say to come back. They didn’t tell us about visiting hours. They just kept saying,
We’re so sorry, is there family you’d like to call?

I said,
Carter Marks,
and they said,
What’s his number?,
and I said,
J42
.

I think they mean Rosie’s family, Quinn,
Joseph said.
Someone else will take care of that. We’ll take you home.

No,
I said. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t think of a single place I wanted to go. A person I could call. But then I knew. I didn’t like it, but there was no one else.

Where is Carter?
I said.

We’ll take you over there,
Leah said.

I get up, flick the lights again. Incredible, that she did this.

I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.

They dropped me off and I went inside. I sat on the sofa with a camping lantern while Carter talked to Joseph. I heard him close the door and I looked up. He was half slumped in the frame, leaning on the door like a felled tree, not quite fallen yet.

The lights are off,
I said.

He didn’t move.

So I got up and I went over to him, tapped him on the shoulder that was hunched up half covering his face.
Hey, Carter,
I said.
It’s dark in here. You got any more candles?

Carter unhunched himself, but his face was all wrong. It was crying, his face.

Quinn,
he said, and I said,
I wish everyone would stop calling my name.
Because that’s not a normal thing, you know? To call a person by their name, directly, all the time? The only person who ever does that is Rosie.

I’m very tired,
I told Carter. I leaned up against him.

I have a room for you,
Carter said. He stood up and started walking and I tried to do the same but there was something about that wall. The door. The idea of before that was outside it. I didn’t move.

I can just sleep here,
I said.
I don’t want to put you out
.

Carter watched me from across the room and then he came back.
Would you stop talking that way to me?
he said.
I can’t take it if you’re going to keep on talking to me that way. Something terrible has happened and I’m your goddamn father and you’re going to sleep in a bed and you’re never putting me out
.
Got it?

I shrugged, and slumped a little. I was crying then too. Because once Carter said it, I knew it was true: Something terrible had happened. Something that couldn’t be fixed. I felt that too-familiar black nothingness pluming inside me. Everything seemed very far away. It was different, but it was the same, and I couldn’t do it. Not again. I kept thinking, I have just crawled out of here. I have just clawed my way halfway out of this pit, you can’t possibly think I can do it again. So soon.

Carter reached down then and picked me up, like I was nothing. He carried me into a little room down the hall.

There was a single bed and paintings of colors on the walls. Just shapes and colors. There were books on the shelves about all sorts of things. Georgia O’Keeffe. Amelia Earhart. A child’s guide to camping and woodland survival. There was a jar of moon shells on the bookcase and a plastic horse figurine. There was a small replica ship, and what looked like a taxidermied turtle.
What the hell are you doing with a little room like this?
I said to him.

He put me down in the bed and pulled the covers over me. He got on his knees by the bed and he put his big hand on my head, pressing it gently against the pillow.
I am so sorry,
he said.
I am so goddamn sorry
.
If I hadn’t told them to do flyers. Or if I had—

You’re so stupid, Carter,
I said, and I closed my eyes, which is actually a lousy way to stop yourself from crying.
You didn’t do anything. The only thing you have to be sorry for is being so stupid you think any of this is your fault
.

Because I didn’t have any time to spend worrying about him. It was Jethro’s fault, maybe. Or I could blame Billy for helping or Leah for not wanting to go look for Rosie, but really, when you get down to it, no one ever made Rosie Salem do a single thing she didn’t want to do. I can see her pouring gasoline, that girl. I see the red plastic drum with the skuzzy spout, and I see how the drum started off too heavy for her to hold right, her pouring erratically trying to manage the weight, and then, once it got half empty, her adjusting it in her arms. I can see her moving around with it, pouring the gasoline out in circles and figure eights, tracing the fucking infinity symbol in gasoline on the floor of what should have been the Dorians’ living room. I can see her doing all of this, very pleased with herself. Panting a little but humming. I can see her putting down the drum and wiping her gasoline-smelling hands off on her shirt. On my fucking T-shirt.

It would be easier if I could blame someone.

Carter shook his head and squeezed my arm.
Try to sleep,
he said, and then he left.

I thought Rosie was safe to love. She and I were going to be the cozy kind of normal family I always wanted. But now she’s gone and done it. She’s as bad as blood, breaking my heart like this. Bad as any Winters. Any Marks. It doesn’t matter if they’re blood or not—if you let a person in, make them family, they’ll wind up breaking your heart one way or another. Good ways and bad ways both.

I should have stayed in the bed. But I couldn’t. So here I am.

I close the book of pictures. I put my head down on the kitchen table and stare at the dark part in the middle of the candle flame. The dark part of the candle makes me see spots, so I close my eyes. I still see spots. I keep them closed.

When I wake up, the candles are hard puddles and there are still no lights on. There’s blue-gray light coming in the windows and it’s morning.

I can hear Carter strumming his guitar quietly in the next room. He’s playing the song. The one about how I’m mighty.

43

Leah

I
find Henry in his boyhood room upstairs. He is lying in bed, a T-shirt wrapped around his eyes.

“Henry?” I say.

“The moon is too bright,” he says.

“The house,” I say. “Did someone—”

“The soil is water repellent,” Henry says. It is strange to see his mouth move while his eyes are covered by the shirt. “The fire will have made the soil water repellent. And now that everything’s burned, there are no roots to hold it together, so it’s unstable. It will erode. Just blow away.” He lifts his hands as he says this, to show how the soil will leave. The one thing that is supposed to stay put.

“So you can’t grow anything there?” I ask. I ask him this because it is easier than asking him if he knows about Rosie because of course he does not know about Rosie. If he did he would not be talking about the soil. And then I realize that maybe no one knows and so many people will have to be told. Who is going to tell all those people?

Henry sighs and takes the T-shirt from his eyes. “Nothing will be able to grow there for at least a year.” His face bunches up, then releases. “Maybe longer, depending on the building materials that burned. Not that they would want to live there now anyway.” He’s looking at me. It’s dark except for the moonlight. Henry squints. He says, “Are you dirty?”

“Henry,” I say.

He says, “Do you smell like gasoline?”

I kneel on the floor next to the bed and I tell him the news.

Henry sits up. “No,” he says.

“It’s true,” I say. I am dirty, from carrying her.

Henry shakes his head. He looks at me again. He draws his knees to his chest. He sits there like that, squeezing his own strong legs.

“I wish I didn’t always hear the news from you,” Henry says.

I
SHOWER MYSELF
scalded pink. I am congested from crying and I am breathing through my mouth. I was the one who told Quinn to let Rosie do her thing. I cannot unsay it now.

I tie my hair back tight. It is slicked against my head like a seal’s. I put on a dark blue sweatshirt inside out, the fuzz showing. I don’t bother to flip it around.

In the little room, Henry is still lying there on the bed, not sleeping. He is watching the mobile circle around. I lie down with him. We stay there for what feels like hours. Eventually, Henry extricates himself from our tangle. He stands up and goes to the window. I kneel on the bed so I can see what’s out there too. The moon is big and the sky weird, from the smoke maybe.

“Once,” Henry says, “when I was a kid, I woke up in the middle of the night and looked out there. The snow in the yard had frozen over and the way the moon was shining, it cast this long reflection across the ice, just like it does on the ocean when it comes up. And I thought it
was
the ocean. That the tide had come all the way up and that was just how it was going to be from then on. Ocean everywhere. That’s how it felt most of the time anyway, with my dad.”

I get up and go to him, because I think that this is the truest story Henry has ever told me. I clutch at his T-shirt and I kiss him. “I love you,” I tell him. Because I do.