Jesse Ball: How to Set a Fire and Why

Here I go.

I am standing opposite the house where I lived with my aunt. I came here when I had nothing for the first time. Now I have even less.

As I stand here, I have a change of heart. Now I just want to burn the garage. Maybe it’s just nerves. But it is against the rules. No changing the plan for dumb reasons. I check to see no one is watching and cross the street. I duck into the garden. The windows of the back wall of the house are looking down at me, but they’re blind.

The garden is overwhelming. I didn’t figure I would be affected by it, but I feel my aunt’s presence there. I am not a ghost person, but I am saying, when I see the garden I remember her clearly, unerringly. She is standing there touching the plants with her papery hands. But, I don’t stop. I go to the basement window and wrench at it. It opens.

The sun is setting, and there are long shadows that run back and forth across the yard. I can see the garage, but it is dark inside. That whole part of my life is growing darker, and I know that it will never get more light. That’s what the world is—we pass beyond things, and they grow dark to us, and one day we can no longer see them, not even the outlines.

I climb through the window. I pull myself down into the basement and then come back up for the gas can. I have to stand on a chair to reach it. To me it seems like I am making too much noise, so I try to be quiet for a minute, but then the sound of my own heart and my breathing is tremendous, and I start sweating.

Keep going. The basement is mostly blacked out now that the sun is low, and I stumble across it to the stairs. The floor feels wet, but I am wearing sneakers. I can’t possibly feel the floor.

I make it up the stairs. Time is passing. I feel intensely sick, but not sick anywhere, not sick in my stomach, not a headache, just sick. I am shaking all over. I stand there trembling and I realize I haven’t been breathing. I take a breath and as I do, I hear a phone ringing on the floor above.

The phone rings and rings. It rings and rings. It rings and it stops ringing. I freeze. I am there on the stairs, breathing and trying to hold my breath listening.

The phone starts up again. It rings and it rings. I hear footsteps. Someone answers it.

Hello.

I can’t make out exactly what’s said, but I hear more footsteps. I hear a noise, maybe the phone being set down. Then footsteps toward the front door. I hear locks, and the front door opens and closes.

Lana. You lovely drunk.

I rush up the stairs and open the door and am practically blinded by the daylight that’s left there. I look to the front door, which is still closed, and cut around the corner into the hall. There’s an open door—some kind of den. I see the wedding dress slung over an ottoman. The suit’s underneath it. I lay the dress out on the floor. Next to it I lay out the suit. The framed photo’s there, so I put it in between. My aunt’s face stares up at me. She’s holding his hand and looking at me, here, in this blighted little room. I wonder what she thinks.

The old man’s house strikes me differently now than when I first saw it. I can see that he must have lived here forever. But, seeing my aunt’s dress piled like some kind of prize stiffens me up. This is just a beginning. I have nothing against this guy, even if he will call the police on anyone, on every last person in town. It makes me sad to think of. There are so many like him. Each fire is a small thing. I am just beginning a long process. I am coming into a kind of inheritance. I can’t be the only one. There must be thousands like me.

This is it, this is it, I tell my aunt. I undo the nozzle on the gas can and start pouring it liberally back and forth all over the room. There is plenty of gas, and the room stinks. My hands are shaking and I almost drop the can, but I keep on. I step back. I am breathing through a bandanna. I guess this is what a funeral looks like.

Come on now, come on. I peel off my right glove and take my dad’s zippo out of the pocket of my hoodie. My hand is shaking even more, but I flick the zippo open. I step to the door. I take another uneasy step back out of the room.

I raise myself up as if to ask a question. I say goodbye to things like aunts, fathers.

I will leave this place. I will set out running, and maybe Lana will go with me. We will head for some corner of the earth where we can survive what we are, what we’ve done, what’s been done to us. It will probably be a place a lot like this one. I don’t know. I am not pessimistic. I just look at my future and I’m snow-blind.

Here’s a prediction. This is what I think will happen, and it kills me.

I will leave here, like it’s nothing. I will leave it behind, really leave it behind. I won’t come back, and no one will know where I went. It will have to be that way. I will leave and I will be gone.

A week will pass, another week, a month, a year—who knows how long, and then:

My mom will still be alive. She will be sitting in her fucking chair at the Home. She’ll be down by the fish pond, god knows she loves it there, and it will be a day like any other, but on this day, something will change. The sun will burn into her eyes one way or another. Some clouds will pass over with a deformed shape. An unexpected noise will reach her ears. Somehow, who knows how: she will wake up. She will shake herself. She will look around and suddenly she will know who she is. She will remember everything and she will look for me. She will say my name with her bedraggled little mouth, Lucia, Lucia , but I will be so far away then, I won’t be able to hear her. She’ll call, Lucia, Lucia .

She’ll call to me with a voice I know, but such a thing I will never hear.

My thanks to:

GGG, and some who read the manuscript when it appeared: Sasha Beilinson, Irene Beilinson, Jesse Stiles, John Francis, Jim McManus.

Jenny Jackson and all at Pantheon.

Becky Sweren and all at Kuhn Projects.

Everyone at Ch’ava in Chicago where the book was written.