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

As part of my arsonist’s guide to writers’ homes in New England, I might include a chapter on how it feels to see your mother standing in the street outside her apartment and talking with your wife, your wife who up until now and for years and years has believed your mother to be dead, dead and in the ground, in the ground and so unable to tell your wife all the things about you, her husband, that you didn’t ever, ever want her to know.

It feels bad. Not very good at all. The sight of them together took my breath away, and so I had to stop the van a block away from where they were standing, just to get it back (my breath, that is). My mother and Anne Marie were standing next to my mother’s car and saying good-bye, that was clear: they hugged several times in the minute I sat there, watching them. Anne Marie grabbed my mother’s hand with both of hers, held it, and said something and then something else; then they both doubled over, laughing. When they were done laughing, they hugged again and held it. I counted to ten, and still they hugged. It was snowing heavily now, and the air was so thick with the stuff that the streetlights had kicked on, even though it was barely three o’clock. The street hadn’t yet been plowed, and the snow was perfect in the way of unplowed snow. It was the kind of snow that made you wish you had a sled, an old one with metal runners, and it was also the kind of snow that made you forget that you were the kind of person who wouldn’t ever take care of the runners and they would rust and soon the sled would be useless, which is another way of saying that it was the sort of snow that tricked you into thinking things were better than they actually were. Because just then, my mother and Anne Marie broke their clinch, and my mother noticed my van, idling just down the block. I waved to her through the windshield. She shook her head, said something to Anne Marie, and then hopped into her car and drove off in the other direction. Anne Marie turned around, saw my van, and walked toward me. I got out of my van and walked toward her. I was still wearing the clothes Peter Le Clair had given me a day earlier; Anne Marie was wearing one of those fleece vests that are really soft but somehow also water resistant, the sort of vest that’s so comfortable it makes your torso sleepy and your arms jealous of your torso, and wide awake and angry because of it, which is by way of explaining that once Anne Marie was in range, she hit me, the way I’d hit Thomas a few hours earlier. She had gloves on, plus she had zero experience as a fighter, so the punch didn’t have much force behind it and barely hurt, but still I fell to the ground, because that’s surely where I belonged.

“It is better to be wounded than to wound,” I told her.

“The hell it is,” she said. “Get up.”

I did as I was told. I had been in Peter’s clothes for almost a day now, and in my own clothes for even longer: I smelled of woodsmoke and bar smoke and beer and human sweat and fear and the several layers of wet clothes that kept the smells close by.

“My father said you kissed a woman in New Hampshire,” Anne Marie said, her voice even. Maybe she’d been practicing in the mirror, too. “Is that true?”

I admitted that it was and then told her the whole story. I didn’t leave anything out, not one significant detail, not even the groping. And then I went further back and told her everything else I hadn’t told her about my past, all the things she knew by now, although not from me. I’d left too many things out for too long. Anne Marie’s facial expression didn’t change once during the telling. She didn’t frown, twitch, or grimace, even when I said that I loved her and that my kissing that woman was the first time it had ever happened and that it would never happen again. At the end of my story, I said, “That’s it,” and she nodded. That was all. It was the greatest feat of strength and control I’d ever witnessed, to listen to the story — the story of how I’d lied to her for ten years — and then do nothing but nod in response. If listening stoically to the story of how you’d been betrayed by your husband had been an Olympic event, Anne Marie would have gotten the gold. It occurred to me then that I wasn’t worthy of her — I’m sure this thought had occurred to her as well — and that Thomas wasn’t, either.

“Thomas said he spent the night at our house,” I said. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” Anne Marie said. “He’s spent more than one night.”

“On the couch?” I asked.

Anne Marie didn’t answer. She reached inside her vest, pulled out her pack of cigarettes, took a cigarette and a lighter out of her pack, and lit the cigarette, all without taking her gloves off. I realized right then that Anne Marie was a capable woman. I’d never thought of her that way before. There were so many other questions I wanted to ask her — what had she and my mother talked about? for instance — but I didn’t, because I now knew she was a capable woman, and capable women don’t answer questions from people who have no right to ask them. This will go in my arsonist’s guide, too.

“Where did my mother go just now?” I finally asked, picking what I hoped was an innocuous question that Anne Marie would be willing to answer. She did.

“She went to work.”

“Work?” I said. “Where’s that?”

Here something odd happened: the smoke poured out of Anne Marie’s mouth and she smiled at me, like a softhearted dragon. “You’ll never guess where she works,” Anne Marie said.

“I probably won’t,” I admitted.

“She works at the Student Prince,” Anne Marie said. The Student Prince was the German restaurant in Springfield that Anne Marie and I had lived above when we were first married. I knew now why she was smiling at me: she was remembering that happy time, our first child, our first home, the early, best stages of our love. This is not to say that love endures, but that the memory of it does, even — or especially — if we don’t want it to.

“What a coincidence,” I said.

“It’s not a coincidence,” Anne Marie said, and then before I could ask her what she meant, she threw her spent cigarette in the snow and said, “You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“OK.”

“Your mother’s a good woman, Sam,” she told me. “She deserves better than your father.”

“I know.”

“She deserves better than you, too.”

“I know that,” I said. For the first time, I was thinking of what I’d done to my mother and not what I thought she’d done to me. She deserved a better son than me, a better person than me. This is another way you know you’ve become a grown-ass man, when you realize — too late, too late — that you’re not worthy of the woman who made you one. Of the women who made you one.

“Your mother is afraid that you set fire to those writers’ houses,” Anne Marie said, and then she named them: the Bellamy and Twain houses. She didn’t mention the Robert Frost Place. This probably meant my mother had stopped following me after she’d seen me kissing the woman in the bar, which was too bad: if she’d followed me to the Robert Frost Place, then she’d have known I didn’t torch it, and she’d also have seen who did. “She’s worried about you.”

“I didn’t set fire to any writer’s house,” I said.

“Except for the one,” Anne Marie said.

“And that was an accident,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said.

“A woman set fire to the Bellamy and Twain houses,” I went on.

“What woman?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure Thomas has an idea.”

“Sam …,” Anne Marie said. I could hear the exasperation in her voice, so beautiful and familiar, but sad, too, like hearing church bells right before your funeral. I should have stopped talking right then, but I didn’t, and my words were like the snow, which kept falling and falling even though too much of it had fallen already.