Brock Clarke - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

“Out of my way,” I said, then charged past Thomas and into my house, through the empty living room and into the dining room. The table there was much lower than normal and was balanced on four of Christian’s building blocks, its legs removed and stashed in the corner of the room, like kindling ready for the fire. The normal tablecloth — white, lace — had been replaced with a tablecloth with some complicated pattern meant to seem Middle Eastern. There were covered serving dishes filled with something I guessed would be almost edible (the Mirabellis weren’t known for their skill around the kitchen). Mrs. Mirabelli was the only person in the room besides me; she was, despite her arthritis, sitting crossed-legged on the floor and was wearing a white homemade burka, which was clearly just a bedsheet with a hole cut in it in such a way that it covered her hair and ears and then extended southward. She had unstitched and then restitched a lace napkin or handkerchief for a veil; when she heard me come in, she lifted her homemade veil, looked at me in the way you might expect a mother-in-law to look at her wayward son-in-law — a look that was somewhere between pity and poison — and then dropped the veil again.

“Well, look who’s here,” my father-in-law said as he walked into the room. Mr. Mirabelli was dressed like the underground leader of a radical Islamic faction: he was wearing a green army jacket, a long white gown he might have stolen from a hospital, and a red-and-white-checked scarf wrapped around his head and flowing down his back. All he lacked was the Russian-made machine gun, for which, considering the circumstances, I was grateful. My father-in-law had his left hand on Christian’s shoulder. Christian was dressed like Thomas — sweatpants and no shirt — except that the towel was in his left hand and not on his head, as though he refused to commit fully to the costume. Or maybe it was just that he’d spilled something, as he was inclined to do, and had used the towel to wipe it up.

“Hey, bud,” I said to him. Christian smiled at me uncertainly; he raised his hand to his hip, gave me a shy, surreptitious wave, then took his seat next to his grandmother.

“Hello, Mr. Mirabelli,” I said to my father-in-law, as though I were introducing myself for the first time. And as far as my father-in-law was concerned, I was.

“Coleslaw!” Mr. Mirabelli said, then sat next to Christian. Christian gave me a sudden look of blank panic, the way children do when they don’t know whether something is supposed to be funny or frightening.

“Who?” I said. “What?”

“Please join us, Coleslaw,” my father-in-law said. “It’s dinnertime.”

“Boola, boola, boola,” Thomas said as he entered the room and sat at the end of the table, where I normally sat. It was hard to miss the symbolism, and I didn’t; but I couldn’t focus my full attention or outrage on it just then, either.

“Did you just call me Coleslaw?” I asked my father-in-law. If this was my nickname, I’d never heard it before. The Mirabellis had never been much for nicknames, not even shortened versions of their own names, maybe because Anne sounded all wrong without the Marie, and because Mrs. Mirabelli’s name — Louisa — would be a man’s if you shortened it, and because Mr. Mirabelli’s name was Christian, and if you shortened that, it might be seen as disrespectful to his Savior.

“What else would I call you besides Coleslaw, Coleslaw?” Mr. Mirabelli said. He gave me a big, mirthless smile and then gestured toward a place at the table, opposite them, complete with plate and fork and napkin. I guessed the place setting had been intended for Anne Marie and not for me.

“Where’s Anne Marie?” I asked, dropping to the floor with a creak of knees and a crash of ass. As I did, the gas fireplace in the room suddenly flared to life, as though my sitting down were Moses and it was the bush. Mr. Mirabelli held up the remote control that worked the fireplace, tucked it inside his green army jacket as though it were his sidearm, and then said, “Pass the couscous, please, Coleslaw.” The couscous — which was actually rice, Uncle Ben’s, the five-minute kind — was closer to Thomas than to me, but I did what I was told: I got on my knees, put my left hand on the table for balance, and then reached across with my right. But my weight was too much for the quadruple amputee the table had become: before I’d reached the couscous, my corner of the table slipped off its supporting building block and onto the wood floor, causing the plates, serving dishes, glasses, everything except the couscous, to come rushing at me as though I were the castle and the table settings the siege.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, fumbling around until I found the building block, stuck it under that corner of the table, and then pushed the dishes, glasses, et al. back from where they’d been displaced.

“No problem,” Mr. Mirabelli said. “That’s life in the Casbah!”

At this, Thomas said a few more “boola, boola’s” and Mrs. Mirabelli rang her finger cymbals and then fondly recalled the time in Morocco when Mr. Mirabelli had paid too much money for each family member, one by one, to ride on what had been advertised as a camel but apparently wasn’t.

“I’m so sorry for everything” I said, once the hilarity had died down a little. I said this to Mr. Mirabelli, but loud enough for everyone to hear, in case Mr. Mirabelli had told them what he’d seen me do in New Hampshire. And in apologizing for everything, I was also apologizing to everyone except Thomas, who was sitting at his end of the table, spooning the rice into his mouth, a pleased look on his face. I was wishing now that I’d asked him a few questions — about what he’d told the Mirabellis, about what they knew and didn’t know about my past and present — before I’d rushed into the house.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Coleslaw,” Mr. Mirabelli said pleasantly.

“About what happened in New Hampshire,” I said. Because I figured that this was part of his plan: he’d get me to admit to the bad things I’d done rather than have him say them for me. This was a parental tactic: whenever Katherine or Christian did something wrong, we always made them identify their crime themselves, which then served as the appetizer to the main course of their punishment.

“New Hampshire,” Mr. Mirabelli said. “It’s funny you should say that, Coleslaw. I once followed a guy to New Hampshire.”

“Thomas told you where I was going,” I said, then shot what I hoped was an angry look at Thomas. Thomas didn’t seem to care what was going on around him, though. He maintained a look of perfect contentment, obviously so happy to be allowed just to sit there at the head of the table and say, “Boola, boola, boola,” at the appropriate moment and to act as though he belonged.

“I don’t need anyone to tell me how to follow a guy,” Mr. Mirabelli said. I remembered now that my father-in-law had been a claims investigator for thirty-plus years and had followed people for a living. No, Mr. Mirabelli wouldn’t have needed Thomas’s help to follow me up to New Hampshire, but I bet Detective Wilson would have needed the help. And I bet Thomas had given it to him.

“It was cold in New Hampshire,” Mr. Mirabelli said. “I didn’t like it much.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know?” he said. “How do you know, Coleslaw?”

“I know that’s where you saw me kiss that woman.”

“You kissed a woman, Coleslaw?”

“I don’t even know her name,” I admitted.

“Doesn’t matter to me who you kiss, Coleslaw.” Mr. Mirabelli said this in a way that sounded so nonchalant that it couldn’t possibly have been nonchalant, as though Mr. Mirabelli had practiced saying it in the mirror before I’d arrived. “Does it matter to anyone else who Coleslaw kisses?”