A. Homes - Music for Torching

"Pat called. And Paul called. And your father called looking for your mother-he says she escaped, he's afraid she's run away. He last saw her folding laundry, and then she was gone. He says it's no joke."

The phone rings. Sound turned inside out; a gentle trill comes from the garden. Mrs. Hansen hurries around back. Elaine and Daniel follow her.

"Hello," she says, picking up the blue Princess phone that used to be in the hall and is now resting in the dirt near the flower beds. A long line of telephone cord trails out the kitchen window. "Hello," Mrs. Hansen says. "Hello, hello."

"It's your father," she whispers to Elaine.

Elaine shakes her head.

"I'm sorry, she's not back yet. Can I take a message?"

"Oh, that's good," Mrs. Hansen says. "That's wonderful. I'll give her the news." She hangs up. "He found your mother. She was there all the time, but she was hiding. So nothing happened, nothing is wrong. Isn't that nice?" She smiles.

Elaine imagines that her parents have been playing a constant and peculiar game of hide-and-go-seek for the last forty-seven years.

"She was hiding," Mrs. Hansen says.

"Where's Sammy?"

"He's inside," Mrs. Hansen says. "And the insurance man is somewhere around here-that's his car down by the curb-he's been lurking for about an hour, canvassing the neighborhood. He caught me as I was crossing the street. I went back for the long phone cord-I was sure we had one-and he stopped me. He asked me, 'How long have you been friends?' I told him, 'We really weren't friends at all, until the fire.'" She gets down on her hands and knees. "I've got my planting to do," she says, digging in the dirt. "He'll be back."

Mrs. Hansen, the nanny they never had. Who could ask for more? An older woman with experience, mature and a little tipsy. You couldn't get a better one from an agency.

Elaine goes into the house.

Surrounded by soot and ash, Sammy sits on the floor in front of the TV, playing a video game, ignoring the fact that the TV screen has been dimmed by smoke.

"How come you're in here all by yourself?" Elaine asks.

"I don't stand a chance at Nate's," he says, manically flicking his thumbs on the controls.

Elaine looks past him at the hole in the dining room wall-bandaged but still looking like the entrance to a cave.

The zim-zam careening sounds of the video game blast. Elaine goes over to the TV.

"You're blocking me," Sammy says.

"This might help," she says, pressing her palm to the TV and moving her hand in an arc like a wiper blade across the screen. The picture brightens-her hand is covered in black soot.

"Don't stay in here," she says to Sammy. "It's too cruddy, and it's a beautiful day outside."

Sammy jiggles the controls, and two buildings blow up and fall into an animated heap of rubble. "Yes," he screams at the TV set. And then the pieces miraculously grow legs, scramble together, and run away. "Go," he screams. "Go."

Elaine goes upstairs. She looks at herself in the bathroom mirror. The face is familiar, not contorted-not twisted into an anxious knot. One eye twitches, but that's it. The dense fog of anxiety, the cloud cover of guilt is invisible.

Daniel stands at the bathroom door.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says.

"Do we have a waterproof marker?" he asks.

"In the drawer in the kitchen," she says.

He stands in the door.

She turns toward him, wanting to reach him, to find a point of contact. He's wearing a suit. Elaine has never seen him in a suit before. He doesn't even own a suit. Her confusion is obvious.

"Mrs. Meaders gave it to me," he says. "It was in their basement, in the GoodWill pile. I like it." He holds the lapels and turns as if modeling the outfit.

There's a huge stain on the back of the jacket-Elaine debates whether to tell him or not.

"Take off your jacket," she says.

"Why?"

"It's got a stain."

"No, it doesn't."

"Yes, it does."

"This is like a joke," Daniel says. "You're making fun of me because I'm wearing a suit and you think it's funny."

"Daniel," Elaine says, "mothers don't make fun of their chil- dren-or at least not to their faces. That's why mothers and fathers sleep in a double bed, so they can make fun of the kids all night."

"Not true," Daniel says, taking off the jacket, checking the spot. "They sleep in the same bed so they can fuck."

"Watch it, mister," Elaine says.

"Like I'm telling you something you don't already know."

What does he know? Elaine is uncomfortable, somehow threatened.

Daniel pulls a notebook from his pocket, a long narrow notebook like a reporter's steno pad, only it's a grocery list. Instead of lines, it has categories: fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish.

"How old were you when you married Dad?" he asks.

"Twenty-six."

"How old were you when you got pregnant with me?"

"Thirty-one."

"And how old are you now?" he asks, doing the math.

She has the feeling that he is trying to stump her. "Is this a test?"

"Just answer the questions."

"Forty-three," she says.

There is a sound from downstairs-Sammy laughing, Sammy entertaining himself. She is heartened. She smiles. She looks at Daniel, who is still fixed on her with an impassive stare. The noise continues-what she thought was laughing becomes more frenzied, more like barking, and Elaine realizes that Sammy is wheezing. She races down the stairs, grabs him by the arm, ripping him away from the television set. Moving through the house, as though she's flying, she grabs the spare inhaler from the drawer in the kitchen along with the pills for severe occasions and rushes Sammy out of the house. He is breathing as though he's choking, as though there is no air. She shakes the inhaler and holds it to his mouth. "Breathe," she shouts, squirting a puff into his mouth.

"Hold it," she says. "Exhale." She shakes the inhaler again. "And breathe," she says, shooting another puff into his lungs. She hands him a pill and goes back in for water.

They sit on the kitchen steps waiting for the drugs to take effect. She rubs his back and encourages him to breathe slowly, deeply. The wheezing subsides.

"Are you okay?"

Sammy nods.

"As soon as that starts to happen, you have to use the inhaler. Don't wait. Ask someone to help you. Do you know how to use the inhaler?"

He nods.

Her heart is racing. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have let you be in there. The house is too dirty for you. You have to stay outside until we get it all cleaned up. Okay?"

He nods again.

The house is like a ruin; you can only dip into it. Sammy's attack proves to Elaine that the house can't be trusted, that she can't be trusted. She should have known better, she should have pulled him out as soon as she saw him there on the floor. Around her children, she feels the most helpless kind of love, achingly inadequate. What if she hadn't been home? What if it had just been Daniel and Mrs. Hansen-what would have happened then?

Daniel is walking around the front yard, scribbling pages of notes.