Marie-Helene Bertino: Safe as Houses

When I was a little girl, on birthdays or any holiday on which I received a gift, I would become overwhelmed with gratitude. “Thank you” seemed too puny a phrase. So instead I would flush and stammer to the gift giver, “Happy birthday.” During the nine years I worked on these stories, so many people, schools, and organizations pitched in to help and, in doing so, kept me in love with the world. Again, I am overwhelmed with gratitude. Again, “thank you” seems puny. So to the following people, schools, and organizations, I say a heartfelt HAPPY BIRTHDAY:

Renee Zuckerbrot, who protected and clothed me; my inspiring friends in the Brooklyn Blackout Writers’ Group and the Imitative Fallacies — Amelia Kahaney, Elliott Holt, Adam Brown, Elizabeth Logan Harris, Mohan Sikka, and Helen Phillips, who set me up in Brooklyn’s cutest digs; and Mary Russell Curran and Judy Sternlight, who took such care with my work even when it was weird and raw.

Josh Henkin, Lou Asekoff, Ellen Tremper, and Michael Cunningham and Brooklyn College’s unparalleled MFA program; Noreen Tomassi and Kristin Henley at the Center for Fiction and my fellow fellows — Ted Bajek, Mitchell Jackson, Caleb Leisure, Genevieve Mathis, Elizabeth Shah-Hosseini, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, and James Yeh; Mary Austin Speaker, who made a lovely cover; Hedgebrook Writer’s Residency, Jim McCoy, Charlotte M. Wright, and Allison T. Means at the University of Iowa, and Jim Shepard, who chose this book and gained a lifelong fan in me.

The editors of Mississippi Review , the very first literary magazine to give me a chance.

The beautiful tulips I had the honor of working with at One Story , with special thanks to Rebecca Barry, Karen Friedman, Adina Talve-Goodman, Chris Gregory, Pei-Ling Lue, Michael Pollock, Hailey Reissman, and Hannah Tinti and Maribeth Batcha, under whose wise tutelage I received my real-world MFA.

R.E.M., with thanks for thirty-one years, and Bob Dylan.

My literary soulmates Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Jesse Hassenger, Tanya Rey, and Scott Lindenbaum; my wife, Cristina Moracho; Tom Grattan, David Ellis, and Anne Ray, the family my adult heart chose; the Fantastic Mr. Fox, Sophie, and Scat, who put their little paws on every submission except this one, funny enough, which was charmed by the paw of poet Ted Dodson, who has an important laugh.

The Glenside Posse, for whom I would take a bullet: Cindy Augustine, Tim Carr, Jessica Bender, Nicole Cavaliere, Jim Fry, Brendan Gaul, Charles Hagerty, Craig Johnson, PJ and Jenna Franceski Linke, Chris Pistorino, Sadie Nickelson Ray, Diana Waters, and Scott Wein, with special love to Ben Cohen and my sisters from another mister — Laura Halasa, Denise Sandole, Shawn-Aileen Clark, Ginger McHugh, Beth Vasil, and Dana Bertotti, who kept saying it was her turn to buy dinner when we both knew it wasn’t.

My brothers, who showed me how to write, with special thanks to Chip Bertino.

This book and anything I ever do is indebted to my mother, Helene Theresa Bertino, who has been called an angel walking around in a human’s body and who taught me to have grace, always.

Safe as Houses

Growing up, I have dreams that my father sets our house on fire. When our house actually does catch on fire, my first thought is, Get the dog out .

Then, because this is the first time our house has burned down and we don’t know what to do, my mother and I enlist the help of a firefighter to perform a Laurel and Hardy routine on the front lawn.

The firefighter begins. “Who was inside the house?”

We answer as a family. “We were.”

“Are you still inside the house?”

“No,” we say. “We’re here now.”

“Who did you think was inside the house?”

“The dog.”

The firefighter makes like he is going to run back in. “The dog is inside the house?”

“No!” We look down at Strudel, who looks back at us.

The firefighter is losing his patience. “Why did you think the dog was inside the house?”

“Sir,” my mother steps forward, her eyes as small as stars. “What is the right answer to this question?”

People drive by, their mouths in angel o ’s, trying to make sense of the house with the fire in it. It is as absurd as a dinosaur, hurling its arms and legs through the eaves and gutters.

Two of the angels are a man and his daughter who float by in a car with a shiny hood ornament. He is hunched forward in a gentleman’s suit, and she is in a cotton candy coat. His hand reaches behind him to say, in one smooth gesture, Do not worry. When we get home, our house will not have a fire in it . I pick up a lemon-sized stone from the lawn and wonder whether to aim at the windshield or his face when a firefighter’s voice interrupts me.

“Why are you holding that alarm clock?”

Only then do I notice the small white box in my hand, its cord lost somewhere in the dark grass.

I shake it at him. “It’s mine.”

“You have to throw it out.”

“No, it’s fine.” I turn it over in my hands. It is gleaming.

He shakes his head. “You have no idea how deep that smell goes. Even something that small. You’ll wake up and your room will smell like fire. You’ll think it is happening again.”

I am the kind of person who worries about the feelings of a pudgy firefighter so I say, “I’ll throw it out,” even though I have no intention of doing so. “What can I expect in the upcoming weeks?” I say.

“Vivid dreams,” he says. “Absolute exhaustion.”

I say, “That doesn’t worry me.”

He and I watch the fire. It is so certain. Now and then it pauses to lick at something unseen or to shoot up a clot of red — a glowing, temporary heart.

“I can’t remember a thing,” I say. “Not one thing I had in there.”

“That’s typical,” he says.

…

We are allowed back in to the house at midnight to drag flashlight beams over the charred humps of our possessions. The firefighters assure us we lost everything. But explain the ceramic cat doorstop, arranged in an uncomfortable position yards away from any door and bizarrely intact. “Thank god,” I say. “The doorstop made it.”

My mother swallows something that won’t stay down. Her mouth twitches. Is she laughing or crying? I think laughing. “I don’t have any doors for it to stop,” she says.

Yes, laughing.

…

Great-Aunt Sonya won’t accept rent, but every weekend my mother chauffeurs her to supermarkets all over the city. Sonya gets to use her coupons and ask the salespeople extensive questions about warranties and expiration dates. My mother gets bored waiting, so she fills out entry forms for various contests, only she uses my name.

I am half-sleeping as I hear the woman from Holiday Grocers on Great-Aunt Sonya’s answering machine. The woman trills through a list of acceptable photo IDs I can present when I claim my free ham: driver’s license, social security card, student ID.

I fall into a hard sleep.

…

It is my aunt’s kitchen, or the kitchen of the house we rented one summer. The counters are wide and smooth. On the one near the refrigerator, a chorus line of hams. Flanks flashing! Limbs to the rafters! Decapitated pink!

“Get ’em up there, ladies!” I have a cigar and a stopwatch. I am a coach?

I wake up hysterical, laughing.

…

Because I am in a family, I go to see my father.