How to Start a Fire

by Lisa Lutz

  As Anna got to her feet and brushed herself off, Lena said, “Are you done?”

  “Yes, I believe I’m done,” Anna said in an oddly formal tone.

  The previous morning, Malcolm had looked out of his window and observed the fourteen-year-old girl with the wild, uncombed hair in the midst of an animated debate with a thirtysomething man in painter pants and a battered Red Sox T-shirt. Malcolm found the air of professionalism in their interaction disconcerting. He had seen the man around recently, painting the Fury garage. White paint over the very same white of five years ago.

  The painter shook his head no; Anna nodded yes. He shook his head with less conviction. Anna swept the backyard with her emphatic yes and held out something for the man to take. A beat passed. The man in the Red Sox shirt took the thing from her hand and shoved it into his pocket. He nodded his head in defeat and spoke a few more words. The odd pair parted in the yard. There was a smirk of satisfaction on Anna’s face. A familiar sight.

  Colin knocked on the guest-room door and entered. Malcolm was still staring out the window.

  “Your sister’s up to something,” Malcolm said.

  “Always,” Colin said.

  “Do you worry about her?”

  “I worry about anyone who might cross her.”

  Anna had set her alarm for 2:00 a.m. There were certain hours in the Fury home when you could trust its stillness. She crept downstairs and began collecting her provisions, contemplating items that could be stored for weeks, maybe months. She was always amazed at the number of things that didn’t require refrigeration. She’d already stockpiled bottled water, nuts, cookies, candies, and even a liter of cheap vodka. Its absence would never be noted. She hated the smell and taste, but a few minutes after the slow burn down her throat, she felt as if a soft warm blanket had been wrapped around her.

  Footfalls sounded on the staircase. Anna closed herself in the pantry and crouched next to a slab of empty jelly jars. Feet padded around the kitchen. The refrigerator opened and closed. Silverware clanked. The noises were all wrong. Anna had lurked for years in this house; she knew the sounds of its inmates. The whoosh of her mother’s dressing gown; the slight tap-shoe click that her father’s slippers made; the chronic throat-clearing that Colin succumbed to in the middle of the night. He claimed to have allergies only in the home where he was raised; he said they mysteriously vanished in any other location. But this inmate was new, quieter than the others. Stockinged feet. Only the creak on certain floorboards hinted at a trespasser. Kitchen cabinets opened and closed in slow motion, but with unfocused frequency, as if the person didn’t know what he was looking for.

  It wasn’t Cesar. He had moved out a week ago. He and his wife were now living in a cousin’s trailer. Anna had just given him his final payment. They’d argued over the secret latch. He thought a pushbutton lock would suffice, but Anna thought that was too plain. She wanted the showy security of a secret room, even if she was the only person who would ever appreciate it. Cesar made her promise not to tell; she made Cesar promise not to tell.

  As Anna crept over to the pantry door to confirm the identity of the late-night snacker, she dislodged a jelly jar from its pack. It clunked on the ground but didn’t break. She could hear the feet padding toward the pantry door. She had only seconds to hatch an explanation.

  Malcolm opened the pantry door and stepped backward as if a bat might take flight. When he spotted Anna, he shook his head, exasperated.

  “I should have known it was you,” he said.

  “What are you doing up?” she asked.

  “It’s hot upstairs. Seeking lower ground.”

  “My mother is very thin, ergo, always cold. Ergo again, thermostat always set too high. I’ve tried to talk to her about it. It’s bad for the environment. She has a remarkably sound argument: in summer, we don’t turn the thermostat down as much as most people do. She claims it evens things out. Truthfully, it doesn’t work out fifty-fifty, but still, she has a point.”

  “What are you up to?” Malcolm asked.

  “Just doing some nighttime shopping.”

  Malcolm picked up the grocery bag at Anna’s feet, placed it on the shiny granite countertop, and inventoried the contents, taking them out one by one.

  “Crackers, olives, Cheez Whiz, biscotti, peanut butter sandwich cookies—my favorite.”

  “Help yourself. I have some storage bins for opened items.”

  “Caviar?”

  “Just a little jar I found behind a can of sardines. They’ll never notice it’s gone.”

  “Do you even like caviar?”

  “No. But I have been told that I will develop a taste for it,” Anna said.

  “Bottled water, soda, and … vodka,” Malcolm continued. “This is a very strange party you’re planning.”

  “It’s not a party,” Anna said, returning everything to the bag.

  Except for the vodka. Malcolm held the bottle under his arm like a football.

  “Then what is it?” he asked.

  “Provisions.”

  “For what?”

  “A disaster, End of Days, the usual.”

  “Why not leave it where it is?”

  “Are you going to give me the vodka or not?”

  “Not,” Malcolm said.

  “Whatever. I’ll get it later,” Anna said.

  She picked up the bag, left the kitchen, circled through the den into the foyer, and went down the stairs that led to the basement. Malcolm, out of pure curiosity, followed her, and Anna did nothing to evade him. He had caught her smoking three days earlier under the gazebo and never said a word. She prided herself on her ability to spot a snitch. Malcolm wasn’t a member of that breed.

  Anna plucked a flashlight from a hook at the bottom of the basement stairs and illuminated the corridor that led to the laundry room.

  “Where are you going?” Malcolm asked.

  Anna said nothing. She opened the tiny door by the washing machine and crouched down to enter, then returned to grab the bag of groceries. Malcolm had to get on his hands and knees to crawl through the space. Inside, he caught glimpses of wooden beams, a maze of pipes, and drywall flickering in and out of view as the flashlight bounced around, carried between Anna’s teeth. He missed the part where Anna slipped her finger along the baseboard to the secret latch.

  Suddenly a small door opened to his right. It wasn’t like the first tiny door, which had a knob and some presence. This one sat on hinges and swung inward, its seams barely visible in the dim light. Anna crawled inside. Malcolm followed after her. She flicked on an old lamp, the light dimmed by a patterned cloth over the shade.

  “What is this, Anna?” Malcolm asked as he surveyed the four-by-six-foot space.

  “My office.”

  “Who knows about this?”

  “No one,” Anna said. “Well, you do now. But you won’t tell.”

  “Is it safe?” he asked, knocking on the walls and studying the architecture.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “It doesn’t look safe.”

  “You’re just not used to secret rooms. They don’t look like ordinary rooms.”

  Malcolm noted the sleeping bag, the milk-crate bookshelf, and a series of marks penciled on the wall: I I I I.

  Anna slashed across the quartet, and Malcolm realized she was counting the days.

  “It’s not that bad here, Anna.”

  “Here? Or here?” Anna asked, the second here referring to her hideaway.

  “Most kids would kill to live like you do.”

  “I am extremely aware of my good fortune,” Anna said stiffly. “I do not know what I could have said to make you think otherwise. Can I offer you a complimentary snack or beverage?”

  Anna served them both sandwich cookies and hot cocoa from a thermos. She wished she had brought some wine from the cellar. She had a new idea for a cocktail she wanted to try out; it involved spiking her cocoa with wine. She planned to call it cocoa vin.

  “Wh
at do you do down here?” Malcolm asked.

  “Think.”

  “Can’t you think upstairs?”

  “Not as well. Besides, I need the privacy.”

  “Your bedroom isn’t private enough for you?”

  “My mother doesn’t knock, and it’s searched on occasion.”

  “You’re fourteen, Anna. What have you got to hide?”

  “Not much. It can all fit in here,” Anna said, sweeping the room with her hand, “and here,” she added, patting a metal lock box by her side.

  “I hope you have something more interesting in there than cigarettes, cash, and weed.”

  She had all of that and more. It was the other thing, the thing she’d found while rummaging through boxes in the basement, that she treasured the most. It had taken her a few days to recover from the discovery. Like any dark secret, it wasn’t something she could be alone with. She toyed with the idea of telling Colin, but it felt as if she’d be crossing a line. Even reading the letters gave her a rush of danger, the sense that she was doing something filthy and wrong. Some girls recoiled from that feeling; Anna didn’t mind it that much.

  She pulled the key from the long chain around her neck and unlocked the box. Inside was the predictable contraband and a small stack of old letters, yellowed with age and wrapped in a red ribbon, a cliché of old-fashioned missives. The letters were addressed to Lena Fury. From a J. L. Who lived in Vermont.

  “What have you got there?” Malcolm asked.

  “Proof.”

  “Of what?”

  “Proof that my mother doesn’t love my father.”

  “You can’t prove something like that.”

  “All you have to do is look at the two of them,” Anna said. “Is that what love looks like?”

  “Love looks like all sorts of things,” Malcolm said.

  “This is what love looks like,” Anna said, fanning the dusty letters.

  “Those letters are private, Anna.”

  “My mother got pregnant and had to marry my father. Whoever wrote these letters was trying to stop her. Didn’t work, obviously. The funny thing is, the letters are all signed J. Just J. At first I thought Jack, John, Jim, but then I read the letters over again and I consulted a graphology book. The script is swirly and ornate. I realized that it could be Jane, Jill, Jennifer.”

  “Should I ever need the services of a graphology expert, I now know where to go,” Malcolm said.

  “J. L. was also on the field hockey team,” Anna said.

  “You’re currently on the field hockey team.”

  “Because I couldn’t make the basketball team. What if the love of my mother’s life was a woman? Sad, isn’t it? She’s married to a man,” Anna said.

  What Anna thought was different than what she’d said. It wasn’t the sadness of the idea that stoked her interest. If these letters narrated the story she’d let run wild in her mind, it changed how she saw her mother, made her more complete. She’d always seen Lena as strangely two-dimensional, like a photograph of a stern relative who had long since passed.

  “Your mother has a right to privacy,” Malcolm said, startled that he was defending Lena.

  Malcolm also had an oddly incomplete and two-dimensional perception of Anna and Colin’s mother. A stately villainess. Her chilly severity always smacked of performance. He was wildly disappointed in Anna for bleeding her mother’s secrets, but mostly he didn’t want Lena humanized. He realized he enjoyed the luxury of disliking the woman and not having the remotest desire to please her, since he had that need with virtually everyone else he met.

  “She has no idea they’re missing, if that makes you feel better.”

  “It doesn’t. Get rid of them,” Malcolm said.

  “No. I need them.”

  “What do you need them for?”

  “Leverage,” Anna said flatly. “As long as I have these letters, my mother doesn’t have the power she thinks she has.”

  Malcolm bowed his head and rubbed his eyes. It was only a year since he’d saved Anna from the lake, when he’d pulled her up and felt the violent gasp for breath in her lungs and her thrumming heartbeat. What Anna was, who she became, mattered to Malcolm, and he saw with stunning clarity that the little girl he’d saved might be turning into something ugly.

  “Put the letters back. If I hear you’ve done anything with them, I’ll tell your mother every secret I know about you and then I’ll make up a few.”

  “You wouldn’t take her side,” she said, calling his bluff.

  “There’s some part of you, Anna, that isn’t good. It worries me and it should worry you too.”

  Not a scratch of emotion surfaced on Anna’s face, but Malcolm’s disapproval struck her hard. She busied herself by unpacking her provisions. She avoided his gaze until her glassy eyes dimmed.

  “Did you hear me?” Malcolm asked.

  “Yes. Do you have anything to add?”

  “No.”

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked. “Homemade peanut brittle or liver pâté?”

  “Good night, Anna.”

  2000

  Richmond, Virginia

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?” the father of the bride asked Anna.

  “I don’t have a bedtime anymore,” Anna said.

  It was late. Anna hadn’t bothered changing out of her bridesmaid’s dress. But it was a “normal” dress, as George had promised—navy blue, bateau neckline, no bow or taffeta in sight. The bar at the Jefferson Hotel was finally emptying out after spillage from the wedding had taken over. Now it was just Anna and Bruno Leoni and a very cozy private couple at a back table. Anna had watched them for a while. Adulterers, she’d decided.

  Bruno ordered himself a Scotch and another of whatever Anna was having.

  “Unless you were leaving?” he said.

  “No,” Anna said. “I don’t like to leave until I’m asked.”

  When the drinks were served, Bruno and Anna clinked glasses.

  “Congratulations,” she said.

  Bruno formed a smile, but it took effort. He cast his eyes about the room, as if he were looking for something to distract him. “Thank you. I couldn’t be happier.”

  “Lovely wedding,” Anna said. “It was very … white, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Bruno said.

  “And those pillars in the ballroom were enormous.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And that was some chandelier,” Anna said.

  A real conversation masquerading as small talk. Anna was commenting on how utterly un-George-like the wedding was, down to the white-tiered vanilla cake. George liked chocolate cake. She always said vanilla was so vanilla.

  “Why are we here?” Bruno asked.

  “To drown our sorrows,” Anna said, taking a sip of her drink.

  “No. Why are we in Richmond, Virginia? The bride’s family lives in the Midwest and the bride currently lives in New York.”

  “The groom and his family are from Richmond.”

  “I thought weddings were all about the bride,” Bruno said.

  “Not this one.”

  “My daughter once told me that when she got married, she wanted to wear a sundress and waders in the muddy yard of my lakefront cottage. Who got married today? It wasn’t George.”

  “People change,” Anna said.

  “Not that much,” said Bruno.

  “You okay?”

  “I feel old,” Bruno said. “Time is slipping by so much faster than it used to.”

  “Is that all?” Anna said, trying to lighten things up.

  “I have a slightly indelicate question I must pose. My daughter’s looking a little different lately. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  Anna had clocked so many differences. The even tan, the plucked eyebrows, the unnecessary weight loss. But Bruno was thinking of something more indelicate.

  “You mean her boobs? Yeah. They’re fake. There’s no push-up bra in the world that can do that.”

  Bruno
drained his drink and ordered another.

  “I never thought she was the type to do something like that.”

  “She wasn’t,” said Anna.

  For months after meeting Mitch, Anna and Kate had believed that George would come to her senses. Then they learned of the boob job and realized that sense had flown the coop. Kate started talking plots and kidnapping and grand interventions. Anna tried to subtly slip in hints during phone calls, planting seeds of doubt in infertile soil. At the bachelorette party, Kate was relentless.

  KATE:

  What have you done to yourself?

  GEORGE:

  Nothing that many other women haven’t done.

  KATE:

  You were happy with your tits before you met him.

  GEORGE:

  How do you know?

  KATE:

  Please tell me they’re saline.

  Anna knew they weren’t. You could get that teardrop shape only with silicone.

  GEORGE:

  My boobs are none of your concern.

  KATE:

  Silicone implants have been banned since 1992, and you had them put into your body. You didn’t even talk to Anna about it?

  GEORGE:

  These were fifth-generation implants and I was dealing with one of the best plastic surgeons in Manhattan.

  KATE:

  You signed up to be a guinea pig.

  GEORGE:

  They are safe. I’m fine. All current studies indicate that the newer silicone is not a problem.

  KATE:

  But saline is even safer. It’s also cheaper and not as high maintenance.

  GEORGE:

  Cheap and not high maintenance isn’t exactly a selling point for breasts.

  KATE:

  That’s how I’d describe my own.

  Anna yanked Kate off the barstool before she could repeat her statistics on the first-generation silicone implants. Or discuss the environmental ramifications of the disposal of implants, which rarely lasted more than ten years. When Kate began her research, she’d imagined a giant landfill of discarded breast implants swollen with saline or silicone. Her research informed her that they would be treated like medical waste. So, the plastic boobs would be incinerated and the remains would rest in peace with other medical trash. Kate had planned to mention the environmental impact of burning plastic, but Anna interrupted the lecture, having heard the details over breakfast months earlier when Kate was fully ensconced in her research.