Jane Mendelsohn - Burning Down the House

By 4:40 he had told her everything. A long rambling confession and then a series of questions and answers. She got up and refilled her mug. A weak navy light out the windows. What are you thinking? he said. She didn’t reply. She finished her tea and left the cup on the counter. She went into the bathroom and turned on the water. Steam began to mist up the mirror. She closed the door and took off her clothes and stepped into the hot water, as hot as she could bear it. He was knocking on the door, saying, What is happening? What are you doing?

I’m taking a shower, she called out.

Why? he said.

Because after what you’ve told me I need to take a very long, very hot shower.

—

While he sat on the couch he remembered Poppy sitting on his couch. So fragile and so alive.

—

They talked as the day rose. He tried to remember every detail of his relationship with Poppy, his motivations, his feelings, what she’d said, what they’d seen. He was back to telling Alix about his adventures, only this wasn’t any adventure; it was some compressed version of a lifetime, a journey, an ascent, a descent, a horror, a moral awakening. Sometimes she asked him questions about his relationship with Poppy that were impossible to answer. I didn’t know myself then, he explained. But I love her differently now, this he could say truthfully. Alix had her own opinions. How he must have known, subconsciously, who Poppy was. Alix was hurt. Ian tried to keep the conversation calm but his heart was not calm. Neither was hers.

—

No past. No present. The future the only thing that mattered. Poppy’s future. There was no future for him except hers. Love is not romantic. It is savage, dramatic, mundane, unfair. The purest love he’d felt was this love. He was in pain but it was not suffering. It was the grief of real love. He listened to Alix talking but in his heart he spoke to Poppy: I love you. I’m so sorry. I will do everything I can for you. I will find a way to take care of you.

—

He thought about the picture Poppy had slashed and put in the plastic Baggie and thought that he should have kept the shreds and tried to keep her, keep in contact with her, but he didn’t know how. He voiced her name out loud in his mind.

—

When Alix was finished talking he said, I’m sorry.

It’s okay, Alix said. You didn’t know.

Should I leave?

Where will you go?

To the theater. I have a tech rehearsal. We open next week.

I wish this were a rehearsal and we could change the story, Alix said. I wish I could change all of it: no me, no Diana. That you’d never met Diana but that there was a Poppy for you — at least a decade older, of course — and it was all okay.

He didn’t say anything. He looked at her tensed face, the softest lines around her mouth, her dry hair, her familiar eyes.

You mean you wish that you never existed? This never existed? Our friendship?

Then you wouldn’t have met Diana.

I might have.

But I introduced you, she was my aunt, I got you into her class. And you became close to her by hanging around with me.

He leaned his head back.

Alix, that’s called life. This could have happened a million ways. It’s not your fault. You’re the last person whose fault this is.

That’s all true. But I still feel guilty.

Don’t. Hate me but don’t hate yourself.

That would be a change.

Please, try.

I don’t think I can manage it. I actually hate myself more now than ever. And you, I hate you too, she said looking up quickly from downcast eyes. I hate both of us. I hate us both so much that I want to die, she whispered.

He was quiet for a while.

Don’t say that, he said.

I can’t change.

We have to.

How do we change? she said.

I don’t know, he said.

I think you do, she said. I think maybe you already have.

—

After he left she stood for a long time in the kitchen. Boiling water, watching the flame, pouring the tea, breathing the steam. A ceremony. Fire and water. The elements. She was like a creature emerging from hibernation, hungry for the simple things. It was a blue spring day, sun piercing the window, reaching out to her. Why was she even drinking hot tea? Because she was cold, always cold. Even on this summer morning of shocking yet everyday beauty — the trees on the roof terrace of the building across the street swaying, touching the cerulean like paintbrushes making loveliness come alive — she wanted fire, steam, heat. Would she always, always feel cold? Ian’s love for Poppy, illicit, unnatural, hit her as a betrayal. A chill in her bones like a wind rattling the frame of her being. An unlit candle behind her eyes. She turned on the oven thinking that she might cook something but knowing perfectly well that she would not.

A minor vibration. An invitation. A valve. The oven waiting. Her watching. Watching herself, mortified.

PATRIZIA RECEIVED the call from Poppy while at the reproductive endocrinologist’s office. She was having some blood work done. Checking hormones. She answered the phone with one hand while the other stuck out to the side, arm straight on the armrest, tourniquet tightened, bright red filling the tube like fresh paint being poured. She listened only half attentively, part of her watching the nature program playing on the far wall across the room, baby penguins, baby elephants, baby lions, a part of her focusing on her breath to take her mind off of the puncture, part of her noticing the slight bump in the abdomen of the nurse and wondering if the nurse was pregnant and then part of her managing her jealousy, her sinking hopes, her calculation of how old the nurse must be — probably thirty tops — and then silently wishing her luck while not knowing, really, if the nurse was actually pregnant. All this transpired while she listened to Poppy haltingly explain that she would be spending the night, and probably the weekend, at her friend’s house and that’s where she’d been yesterday and she was so sorry she hadn’t called but only e-mailed earlier to explain.

Which friend? Patrizia asked, with vigor. She was trying to assume a more disciplinarian demeanor after having completely overlooked last night’s indiscretion.

Jas…Jasmine, Poppy said. Jasmine Carpenter.

Carpenter? Who’s that?

She’s new this year. She’s been over to the house but I don’t think you’ve met her.

Where does she live?

In Brooklyn. Far.

What neighborhood? Patrizia asked, rolling her sleeve back down.

Yeah, she’s new, Poppy said. She’s brilliant. A math genius. I’ve got to go. I have a class.

Poppy, I asked you what neighborhood.

Patrizia was ushered into a dimly lit examination room. As the door closed and she prepared to undress from the waist down and put her feet in the stirrups for a sonogram, she said: Text me later with Jasmine’s number. Steve will want to know where you are. Poppy, will you please remember to do that?

—

They’d already made Poppy end the call and taken back her phone.

—

She forgets how she got here. Already the elevated subway ride, the burning fires on the plains, are less than a memory, have receded into irretrievable negative space. She forgets how she got from the station to this corpse of a house, its innards in ruins, wires falling, swinging from the ceiling, boards loose, a black mold metastasizing along the wall. That the world goes on in a place like this is incomprehensible. Then it isn’t. It is more than possible. Now she knows a new pain, can’t tell if it is a return of many old pains or something actually new, but it seems new, a never-before-experienced desire to die purely as a way out.

—

If Steve were here he would see his empire — so crafted, so controlled — attacked at its most damaging and personally hurtful point. A sleek animal shot in its soft eye.