How to Start a Fire

by Lisa Lutz

  For almost a month Kate managed to work her library schedule around the half of the week that Zooey spent with Colin. Three days a week she’d tuck Zooey into bed, go home, read, sleep, return to Colin’s house at 7:00 a.m., and get his daughter ready for school. Every other weekend, when Colin had Zooey but could care for his daughter on his own, Zooey would ask after Kate. Sometimes she would call her and tell her about her day. When Zooey was with her mother, she asked for Kate. Madeline phoned Colin in a rage.

  That was when Colin offered Kate the job. Kate turned it down at first, but Colin appealed to her sense of thrift. He offered her more money than she made at the library, free rent, and three and a half days a week in which she could kill as much time as she wanted among shelves of books without having to actually shelve them. Kate immediately gave notice and moved out of her three-hundred-square-foot apartment into Colin’s three-thousand-square-foot home.

  A few weeks later, after Kate served breakfast to Zooey while Colin read the newspaper, she choked on her coffee as she recognized the comically domestic tableau. She was even wearing a chef’s apron (to hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra). Zooey ate Cheerios laced with white chocolate, which would have been forbidden on most school mornings, but Zooey and Kate had brokered a deal the day before when Zooey had strict instructions to clean her room and found herself lost under toddler flotsam, unable to even begin to comprehend the task. Kate sat on the bed and bribed and coached until the room was suitable for the housekeeper to clean—a concept Anna once told her she thought was hilarious. Clean your room before the housekeeper gets here, Lena used to say every Thursday morning for almost ten years.

  Zooey hunched over her cereal like a convict protecting her food. She was mostly trying to hide the dead chocolate weight at the bottom so her father wouldn’t catch on. When Colin did check his daughter, he grimaced at her rounded back and elbows on the table.

  “Sit up straight, like a nice young lady.”

  Kate’s expression tightened into a cold stare.

  “Zooey, sing the bath song for your dad,” Kate said.

  Zooey put down her spoon and launched into a loud rendition of a tune she’d heard in Kate’s car that later became the theme song for bath time.

  Ain’t nobody dope as me, I’m just so fresh and clean

  Don’t you think I’m so sexy, I’m just so fresh and clean.

  Kate approached Colin and whispered, snakelike, in his ear, “I’ll teach her every swearword in the book if you ever say anything like that to her again.”

  Neither Kate nor Colin informed Anna of their new living arrangements. Kate and Colin discovered this fact when Anna arrived at Colin’s house during an unscheduled trip to the East Coast. Don had recently been diagnosed with stage 1 esophageal cancer and insisted that Anna come home to consult. Two years before, he had received a diagnosis of early Alzheimer’s. Most of the time he remembered that his daughter was no longer a resident at Boston Medical Center and that she lived three thousand miles away and worked as a paralegal. But when the diagnosis came in, the trauma of the word cancer seemed to choke out the hard facts he had come to accept.

  Anna arrived in the middle of the afternoon and took a cab from the airport to Colin’s house. Kate answered the door.

  “What are you doing here?” Anna asked as she dropped her bags in the foyer.

  “Didn’t Colin tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” said Anna, leaping to a conclusion that felt disquietingly unnatural.

  “I live here,” said Kate. “I thought he told you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The women had spoken at least a few times since Kate’s move, and many things had come up in conversation: the origin of Brillo pads, the decline of the seersucker suit, the gradual disappearance of phone booths, dangerous ingredients in sunblock, those crazy motherfuckers who didn’t believe in global warming, Kate and Anna’s mutual fondness for turtles, and how to sanitize kitchen sponges in the microwave.

  “I guess it never came up,” Kate said.

  While that statement was true, Kate had known that whenever she spoke to Anna, she was omitting an important piece of information.

  Anna remained in the foyer, slack-jawed, glaring at Kate with an alarming expression of disappointment.

  “It’s not like I robbed a bank, Anna.”

  “If you robbed a bank, I’d know what to do.”

  This was no time for a conversational detour, but Kate was curious what Anna’s response to that particular event would be.

  “So what would you do?”

  “I’d help you lie low for a little while, then I’d secure you a new identity and get you out of the country.”

  “Really?” Kate said. “You’d do all that for me, even if I committed a felony?”

  “Sure. Although I would make you give the money back.”

  “That’s pretty swell of you.”

  “Can we get back to the subject at hand? What the hell were you thinking, moving in here?”

  “I was thinking free rent.”

  “Huh.”

  “You remember I’m cheap, right?”

  “Does my brother know this?”

  “That’s how he lured me here. By telling me to think of all the money I’d be saving.”

  “How romantic,” Anna said, parking her bags at the bottom of the stairs and making her way into the kitchen. She promptly turned on the kettle, a marginally satisfying substitute for pouring a drink. Her friends marveled at the ridiculous number of herbal beverages Anna could consume in a day. The hot liquid was soothing going down, but there was no lasting effect.

  “I think you have the wrong idea,” Kate said.

  “What idea should I have?”

  “I’m Zooey’s nanny. The last one quit and all the others were going to cause permanent psychological damage. He offered me a handsome wage and free rent. I have the maid’s quarters all to myself. More square footage than my last apartment. And it comes with a bathtub.”

  Anna drew Kate into a bear hug and said, “Thank God.”

  “Did you really think—”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be very … odd,” Kate said.

  When she said it, it sounded like a bluff, like she was hiding something. On occasion, Kate had caught herself looking at Colin in ways that would complicate her role as domestic help. But she knew his history, his reputation, and she had more than a few times witnessed his schooled flirtations. That gave her an excuse to subjugate her desires, and Kate hardly needed an excuse to do that. Most days she could shove the nuisance thoughts aside; some nights she couldn’t.

  Anna visited her father after his first chemo session. Lena had hired and fired two nurses before she found Alvita Bailey, a Jamaican woman with green-card issues, an impenetrable accent, and the remarkable ability to make virtually anyone do her bidding. She rarely used the imperative to elicit a desired response. She was a master of the judgmental interrogative.

  To get Donald to put his clothes on: “Are ya going to sit around all day in your pajamas like a schoolboy home with da cold?”

  To encourage Donald to eat his untouched plate of food: “Are you on a hunger strike?”

  To make him exercise: “Will I have to carry you or will you walk on your own?”

  She would even use the same tack with Lena: “Will you be eating lunch with your husband or going out with your girlfriends again?”

  And to anyone who was visiting Donald, Alvita would offer a variation on the following: “He’s in a mood t’day. It’s best to ignore it.”

  When Anna visited, he was most definitely in a mood.

  “I need you to call in a prescription for Ambien. I can’t sleep. If I can’t sleep, I can’t work.”

  “You’re retired, Dad. Remember?”

  “I consult,” Donald said. Sometimes he did call his old colleagues and offer suggestions on the stock market. Sometimes the research was current and sound. No matter what s
tate his mind was in, Donald always read the morning’s business section. Whether it stuck was another story. Donald could read today’s news and then pick up the phone and remark on conditions five years past. You should consider adding some environmental funds to your portfolio. That global-warming talk isn’t going away.

  “I think it’s best if you take the meds your doctor prescribed,” Anna said.

  “I’m not demanding Vicodin. Although my knee is still giving me trouble. I just need a prescription for sleeping pills, and I don’t have the energy to go in to the doctor today.”

  “I can’t do that, Dad.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t write prescriptions anymore, remember?”

  “What kind of doctor doesn’t write prescriptions?”

  “I’m not a doctor anymore, Dad. I haven’t been for four years.”

  “Why did you quit?”

  “I didn’t quit. I had a problem with drugs. I lost my medical license. Four years ago.”

  “You’re weak,” Donald said, his face burning red. That was the standard attack in his Rolodex. Nothing was worse than weakness. “How did I raise a drug addict?” Donald said. This was the second time Donald had learned that his daughter had been an addict and destroyed her career. It would not be the last.

  Anna had seen enough shrinks to know how easy it was to blame her parents. She blamed them for many things, but not for who she had become. She took full credit for that.

  “Go. I don’t want a druggie in my house,” Donald said.

  “I’m clean now.”

  Anna left the house and drove straight to a meeting. The following day she had a brittle lunch with her mother in a restaurant on the top floor of a department store. Lena offered to buy Anna a new outfit for work. She didn’t mention the incident at the house, although when Anna ordered French fries, she said in a warning tone, as if her daughter were stepping into heavy traffic:

  “You should be careful with that.”

  Then Lena nibbled at her salade niçoise for five minutes while remaining uncharacteristically mute. Even under circumstances more dire than these, Lena could usually manage polite conversation. The weather, gardens, charity organizations, other people’s failed marriages, the inedible food served at the last dinner party, the relative weight gain or weight loss in her circle of acquaintances who passed as friends.

  Anna let herself enjoy the quiet and didn’t try to fill the space. She devoured her hamburger and French fries and didn’t click her eyes upward to check Lena’s expression.

  After the waitress cleared the plates, Lena ordered a cup of decaf coffee, which she doctored with skim milk and fake sugar. She then spoke with more bluntness than Anna had thought she was capable of.

  “Why haven’t you ever married?”

  “I was busy. Medical school and drugs are very time-consuming hobbies.”

  “Colin said—” Lena quit on the sentence, thinking better of it.

  “What did Colin say? Go ahead.”

  “He said you were in love with Malcolm. Were you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You still think about him?”

  “All of the time.”

  “Is that why you’re like this?”

  “No, Mom.”

  “Then why? Did we do this to you?”

  “It’s not one thing. Maybe it’s nothing. Even if Malcolm lived, I might have derailed this train the exact same way. I know I didn’t turn out like you or I expected. But it’s not as bad as it looks. I’m going to be okay.”

  That was the first time Anna said that and meant it.

  The next morning, Kate, Anna, Colin, and Swinger Girl ate pancakes together before Kate drove Anna to the airport. As Anna was leaving, Colin gave her a wonderfully suffocating embrace. She had to wonder where he’d learned such things. Perhaps it was fatherhood. He lifted Swinger Girl out of her booster seat, spun her around, and landed her facing in the direction of the staircase.

  “Shoes,” he said, knowing that she would return wearing lace-up pink Converse high-tops that finished off the superhero outfit.

  Colin placed his hand on the back of Kate’s head, said, “No Sex Pistols,” and left.

  Anna turned to Kate for an explanation.

  “I had my iPod on random in the car. ‘God Save the Queen.’ Zooey liked it and asked me to play it again. Then she started singing it around the house. ‘God save the queen, she ain’t no human bean.’ She comes up with some really good lyrics. But Colin does not approve of my music. I don’t approve of children’s music. But he wins.”

  “How long are you going to live here?” Anna asked.

  “Until there’s a reason not to.”

  Anna couldn’t remember a time in her life when she didn’t want more of something. Now it was a constant struggle to be satisfied with what she had. It had taken years to feel at peace when she introduced herself to someone and couldn’t tell the new acquaintance that she was a doctor. Even now, admitting her occupation sometimes embarrassed her. And yet she remembered the days when Kate would proudly announce at a party full of high achievers that she was a barista. As she grew older and older, Anna found more and more things to envy in Kate.

  “Is this enough for you?” Anna asked.

  “Less than this would be enough for me.”

  Anna departed, and life returned to normal for Colin, Kate, and Zooey, although Colin could never assign that word to it. Every night, when he walked through the front door, a new, bizarre activity greeted him. There was the day that Zooey made cookies from scratch with her own personal recipe—inedible, of course; baking is a science, and no cookie recipe on earth calls for three packets of cherry Jell-O mix. There were forts in his living room made from blankets and chairs—a common childhood activity, but done with a grasp of military defense tactics. There were lessons on code breaking and surreptitious communications, and secret languages that would change from week to week. There were books, not just the current trends in children’s picture books but the brutal old fairy tales that had fallen out of fashion. Kate would argue that they hadn’t caused her any permanent damage, although Colin couldn’t be sure of that. He had failed to understand the recipe that made up Kate.

  The one time Colin argued against Kate’s brand of literary entertainment was when Zooey woke from a nightmare about a witch wanting to bake her in an oven.

  “People have nightmares,” Kate said.

  One night Colin returned to an empty house. A few lights were still on, and the second car was in the driveway. He saw a reflection of flames in the living room window and raced into the backyard to find a campfire burning in a pit surrounded by landscaping rocks. A tent was pitched nearby, and Kate and Zooey were toasting marshmallows on twigs over the flames.

  When Zooey saw her father, she jumped to her feet and ran toward him with the marshmallow stick outstretched like a lance, missing only the horse. Colin disarmed his daughter as she leaped into his arms. He took a bite out of the burned marshmallow as Zooey protested.

  “That’s mine, Daddy. You can make your own.”

  Colin changed clothes and returned to the campsite. Kate silently handed him a stick with a fresh marshmallow while Colin inspected the newly dug fire pit. Kate, anticipating some protest, said, “You mentioned you were going to have new sod in spring, and, since it’s almost winter, the snow will cover the hole.”

  Colin let his marshmallow catch fire and then blew out the torch.

  “You could have called and asked,” he said, unperturbed.

  “You would have said no,” Kate said.

  “True.”

  Kate proffered a graham cracker and a chocolate square as a peace offering, and it was accepted.

  The sky was clear. Zooey rested on her back and looked up at the stars and named the constellations for her father. “That’s Ursa Major, that’s Ursa Minor. I keep looking for Ursa Medium, but Kate said there isn’t one.”

  “Why should there be an Ursa Medium?” Colin
asked.

  “Ursa means ‘bear’ in Latin, Daddy.”

  “Very good. But still—”

  Zooey passed the marshmallow torch to Kate, who blew it out.

  “Can I have two pieces of chocolate?”

  “Sure,” Kate said, breaking a square in half.

  “That’s cheating.”

  “You have school tomorrow,” Colin said. “Now finish up and then you need to brush your teeth for twice as long as usual.”

  Zooey ran back into the house. Colin turned to Kate. “What was she talking about with the bears?”

  “Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There are only two bears in the constellations. She was looking for a third.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we were talking about patterns in stories and life and how everything is just a variation of something that has already been.”

  That got Colin thinking of patterns. Sometimes Zooey reminded him of Anna as a child, fearless and independent with so many ideas. He wondered if that pattern would repeat.

  Colin followed his daughter into the house and supervised her dental hygiene, having noticed her habit of staring into space without moving the toothbrush in her mouth. Anna had done the same thing as a child.

  “Circular motions, Zooey.”

  Zooey obeyed her father but believed that the task was in vain. When she’d learned that she would lose all her teeth and get an entirely new set, it occurred to her that she could neglect the originals. When she asked Kate whether her assumption was correct, Kate couldn’t argue with her logic.

  “Why do I brush teeth that are going to die?”