Bentley Little: The Burning

"We're here!" she announced cheerfully to Skylar, feigning an optimism she did not feel. She kept an eye on the ripped screen door, waiting for it to open and her mother to appear, but the door remained closed, the inside of the house dark. "Unbuckle. Let's stretch our legs."

They both unfastened their seat belts and got out of the car. The air was cooler here than in Arizona, but more humid and filled with that wonderful sawmill smell. She felt more comfortable in the mountains than in the desert, more at home. It was as though this was where she belonged, and she wondered if the feelings Skylar was experiencing were along the same lines-or if he simply felt lost and uprooted. Probably the latter, and Jolene realized that it was her responsibility to make the transition easier for him.

The transition?

Yes. They were going to stay here.

She had no intention of going back to Arizona.

The two of them walked across the crunchy gravel to the porch, where the peeling wood creaked and groaned beneath their weight. She'd called her mother yesterday from San Diego and told her they were on their way up, though she'd declined to elaborate on the reasons. Unless her mom was in the bathroom, she had to have seen the Blazer pull into the driveway and even if she was in the bathroom, she had to have heard their footsteps on the creaking porch. The fact that she had not come out to greet them did not bode well. Jolene rapped on the warped frame of the screen door. "It's me, Mom!" she called.

As always, the door was unlocked, and she pulled it open and walked in. Skylar took her hand, a sign of nervousness. He'd been here three years ago for a short visit, but Jolene was not sure how well he remembered it. Glancing around at the darkened room with its drab and well-worn furniture, she couldn't help comparing it with the bright sunniness of their place in Yuma, and she tried to see the house through Skylar's eyes. He probably thought the house was sad and depressing.

It was.

"We're here, Mom!" she announced.

Her mother emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "About time. I expected you hours ago."

No hello for her, no hug for Skylar, no smile for either of them. She'd been in the kitchen, so she had seen the Blazer pull in.

"Frank called," her mother said accusingly.

Skylar looked up at her nervously, and Jolene squeezed his hand, held it tight. "I've decided to-" Leave him, was what she wanted to say, but that was a little harsh to announce in front of Skylar, and it would initiate a conversation with her mother that she didn't want to have right now. "-take a little time nil," she said.

"That's not the way Frank put it."

"Mom, can we talk about this later?"

Her mother threw the dish towel over her shoulder, turned, headed back into the kitchen. "Whatever."

This was starting off badly, and for a brief moment, Jolene thought about walking straight out to the car and driving as fast as she could as far away from here as possible. But the truth was that she had nowhere else to go. She couldn't afford to stay in hotels for more than a week or two, didn't have enough for the rent and security deposit that an apartment would require, and didn't have any friends or relatives in far-fllung locales who would put her up indefinitely. It was either Yuma or her mom.

"I don't think Grandma likes me anymore," Skylar whispered, looking at the empty kitchen doorway. His hand was hot and sweaty in hers.

Damn her, Jolene thought, but she smiled for her son's sake. "Of course she does. She's just busy, is all. Come on, let's go help her out."

Jolene strode confidently forward into the kitchen, where her mother was washing dishes in the sink. "Anything Skylar can help you with?" she asked.

Thankfully, her mother turned around, smiling, and motioned the boy over. "I'll wash. You dry. How does that sound?"

Skylar gave his grandmother a brief, hesitant smile, then accepted the dish towel from her hands.

Maybe it will be all right after all, Jolene thought. Maybe this will work out.

"It was hell," Jolene whispered fiercely. "It wasn't good for me and it wasn't good for Skylar." She glanced instinctively toward the closed door of the guest bedroom-her old room-hoping that the boy really was asleep and not just pretending so he could listen in on the conversation.

"Frank said-"

"Frank lied, Mom! How many times do I have to tell you? Jesus!"

"He just seems like a good man to me."

"He is. In a way. But we're like oil and water-we don't mix. And it was only a matter of time before someone ended up in the hospital." She glanced again toward the door, lowered her voice even more. "And I had to make sure it wasn't Skylar!"

Her mother sighed. "I just hope you know what you're doing."

"Trust me, Mom." / can't fuck things up any more than you did, she wanted to add, but she kept that thought to herself.

"So what are your plans? Are you going to look for a job around here?"

"I don't know. I just got here. Give me a day at least to settle in and figure things out."

"You were on the road for a day and a half. That didn't give you time to think? You didn't-"

"Jesus, Mom. Can't you just try to be supportive for once in your life?"

They were silent after that, the two of them seated on opposite sides of the living room, glaring at each other, and Jolene felt like a kid again, as though she were back in high school and her mom was clamping down on her for one of those unfathomable and unexplained reasons.

Finally she stood, pretending to yawn and stretch. "I guess I'll go to bed. It's been a long day."

"Okay."

"See you in the morning, Mom."

"Good night." "Good night."

"I'm glad you're back," her mother said without feeling.

"Yeah," Jolene lied. "Me, too."

Four

Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

Dennis Chen finished loading the car and looked up at the roof rack. For the umpteenth time, he checked the ropes, pulling on them to make sure he'd tied everything down tight enough. From the porch, his mother watched silently, and he sensed her disapproval even though he couldn't see her from this angle. Inside the front seat of the Tempo, his sister, Cathy, was rearranging his glove compartment in order to fit in the traveler's first aid kit she'd given him.

Dennis was twenty-three years old, and he'd never been out of the greater Philadelphia area. He knew a lot of people like that, knew men and women even older than himself who'd never ventured more than fifty miles from their birthplace, who lived their entire lives within a proscribed radius, and he could think of nothing more depressing. That was not going to happen to him, and it was why he had decided to make this break and to do it while he was still relatively young and unencumbered.

He wanted to travel. Even as a boy, he'd felt the pull of the open road, and though his career aspirations had varied over the years, from train engineer in grammar school to truck driver in junior high to UN ambassador in high school, they all had one element in common: travel.

This was merely the realization of a long-delayed dream.

His mom had cried when he'd told her of his plans, and even though he'd pointed out that she and his dad had traveled halfway around the world to get here, uprooting themselves from their families, their friends, their culture and even their language, she did not seem to understand the parallels. In her mind, what he was planning was a lot more foolish and dangerous.

She'd been working on him for the past month, trying to get him to cancel his trip. "Your job!" she kept telling him in Cantonese. "You can't quit your job!"

But the truth was that people quit jobs all the time, especially in his business. He'd been working for a rental-car agency for the past three years, ever since dropping out of college to his mother's great shame and embarrassment, and he'd worked his way up to manager, not through any great skill or aptitude or commitment or desire, but because he was still there. Amid a turnover rate that averaged about one employee every four months, his staying power had marked him as stable and reliable, and the owner of the franchise had promoted him up the short ladder to manager.