It’s not a big fire, it’s small, like if you lit the edge of a piece of paper and watched the flame eat its way up, but the very sight of flame sends me into a prewired panic and I run to the kitchen trying to remember everything my parents ever told me about surviving a fire. The first rule, Stay calm, is already out.
The second rule, Get an adult, is also out.
The last thing I think of, Get the fire extinguisher, sends my brain into an epileptic stutter as I try to remember where I put the fire extinguisher my mother gave me. I remember I said to her, “You’re such an alarmist,” when she handed me the heavy little red tank and she said, “You won’t need it until you need it. Just keep it under the sink.”
The sink! I clatter through all the cleaning supplies under the sink, rifle through the sticky cleaning products and dirty plungers and mystery aerosol cans until my hand strikes the extinguisher and rips it out, scattering highly flammable aerosol spray cans across the kitchen floor. I sprint back to the bathroom, where the memory pile is ablaze, and I pull every lever, shake the canister hard, squeeze the handle, and nothing. No water or chemical foam or anything comes out. I just throw the fire extinguisher at the fire and run around the house looking for Mrs. Biggles, who I almost catch, but she darts under the bed.
I find my cell phone and dial 9-1-1, hands shaking, unsure if I should be inside or outside making this call. When the operator asks me what my emergency is, I tell her my bathtub is on fire and with the briefest of pauses she says, “Get out of the house, responders are on the way.”
I drop the phone and run barefoot down the stairs and outside into the snow, where it takes me two seconds to realize that my feet are in a great amount of pain and I don’t have the cat. I charge back upstairs, hoping my bravery is noted in tomorrow’s papers, which will chronicle the tragedy. She wouldn’t leave without Mrs. Biggles. That’s just the way she was. Selfless to the end. “Please!” I yell at Mrs. Biggles, who’s still hiding under the bed. My voice is trembling. “Please come out!”
I can see my mother’s face now when she hears I died trying to save the cat. It’s an expression of grim acceptance as she calls the Scandinavian funeral home and requests an all-you-can-eat ham sandwich buffet.
I decide now is not the time for manners and start chucking shoes under the bed until she scrambles out the other side and I chase her to the kitchen and out the back door. Now I only have moments to live and I must decide what I should save of all my earthly belongings. Do I grab my vinyl records? My plaster replica of Princess Diana’s wedding cake? My illustrated medical anomalies book? I’d love to get sentimental, but the choice is ultimately easy. I grab my laptop and my prescription bottle of Lunesta. With these items, a new world can be forged.
In the stairwell I remember I also have neighbors downstairs. “There might be trouble!” I say/shout loudly while knocking urgently on their back door. Urgently but not too urgently, because, I don’t know, it seems rude. There’s no answer, which could mean they’re not home or sound asleep, about to be consumed in the fire. That I do not want to read about. I can hear the sirens coming, but I know every second counts. I pick up a brick from the loose edging around the dead flower bed and am just about to hurl it through their window when the loud cherry-lit fire trucks of Minneapolis Station 109 scream into our driveway.
The whole backyard lights up with churning red lights, and firefighters charge toward the house. I think it would be beyond sexy to be married to a firefighter. Imagine him storming out into the night to save women and children from disasters and rescue kitty cats from trees. Then there’s a stern-faced fireman staring at me, wearing a big black and yellow helmet and clenching his square jaw with a perfect action-adventure amount of five-o’clock shadow.
I smile sheepishly.
“Are there people in there?” he asks.
I shrug and he kicks the neighbor’s door down. I’m serious. He just hauls back and with one stomp beneath the brass doorknob he wrenches the door open, splintering bits of the doorjamb and smacking into the refrigerator.
“Get to the truck,” he says with a heady blend of concern, protection, and leadership. Then he storms the apartment.
God, I love firemen.
Which is why I really wish I hadn’t started the fire.
After two hours of firemen stomping up and down stairs, and me calling my mother to tell her I had a fire, but I was fine, Lt. Herbach comes back to the truck where I wait with a blanket around me, next to Mrs. Biggles in her cat carrier. I am clutching my sassy working-girl figurine. I don’t remember when I grabbed her.
“What were you doing up there?” he asks me, all the concern and protection gone and replaced by a single suspiciously arched eyebrow. “Were you burning something?”
I stare at his stubbly jaw. What do I say? Do I tell him that even though I’m a grown woman I have an irrational attachment to emotionally bankrupt men? That I felt burning a jean jacket might alleviate the crushing sense of loneliness and pain in my heart? He’s not going to understand that, he’s a guy—and what’s worse, he’s a guy that saves lives for a living. How do you say you think your dharma is out of alignment to someone holding an axe?
You don’t.
You shrug and look at your feet, which is what I did.
“Jennifer!” my mother shouts as she rounds the corner in her pink snowflake pajamas and full-length maroon down feather coat. My father trundles along behind her and behind him is Hailey. Good Christ.
“I’m all right,” I say, which will do absolutely nothing.
“What happened?” she asks, holding a hand to her forehead. “Were you attacked? Was there a peeper? On the news they said there was a winter peeper, and they usually only peep in summer.”
“No, Mom, a fire. See?” I point to the red engine in the driveway. “Fire truck. The peeper truck is mirrored.”
“Don’t start,” she says.
The lieutenant tells my mother they don’t know what started the fire, but whatever it was, it was in the bathtub. “The bathtub?” my mother says. “What on earth were you doing in the bathtub?”
“Leave her alone, Mom,” Hailey says. “All that matters is she’s all right.” She looks at me. “Are you all right?”
I nod and feel like throwing my arms around her neck. Sometimes I hate hating my sister, which makes me realize I don’t really hate her at all. I just can’t stand her sometimes.
Finally the last fireman empties out of the house and walks up to the lieutenant and hands him a plastic doohickey. “Okay”—the lieutenant nods—“we have a positive identification for arson. Suspicion of arson.”
“Arson?” my mother says, releasing her coat and taking an aggressive step toward the lieutenant.
“Well, how can you tell that?” my father says, peering at the doohickey.
“This tested positive for lighter fluid,” the lieutenant says.
My father grumbles something.
“Who would set the house on fire?” my mother says protectively. “You don’t think my daughter would set a house on fire, do you?”
“Unless Miss Johnson has something else to say,” he says, showing me the plastic doohickey, as though I knew what it was and could read it as conclusive evidence of my treachery, “we’re going to have to call the police.”
My mother clutches her coat closed. “The police? Well, you go right ahead, mister. I know my rights. You can’t walk in here with your big hoses and point fingers.”
“Arlene…” my dad says, “please.”
“Attempted arson,” the lieutenant says and lets the word hang there as though the thought of being convicted of arson would make me feel worse than I already do.
Wrong.
“Were you getting high?” my mother asks me. “Did you do some crack things?”
My father tells her to settle down.
“Oh, she could be in a cult, for all we know!” she says. “One of those ones where they take you to the airport and make you scam the In
ternet and weave straw baskets!” She bursts into tears. My poor mom. That’s it. Game over. When Mom cries, it’s time to surrender anything and everything.
“I was burning things,” I say. “Things I didn’t want anymore.”
“Uh-huh,” the lieutenant says. “Things?”
“Mementos.”
All the firemen stop and listen.
“What’s a memento?” the lieutenant asks, and the guy who handed him the plastic doohickey says, “It’s like a keepsake.”
Someone else says, “What you put in a scrapbook. Jerry’s wife does scrapbooking. Right, Jerry? Scrapbooking’s for mementos, right?”
“And keepsakes,” Jerry shouts back.
“It was just stuff my boyfriend gave me. I mean, my ex-boyfriend.”
“The musician?” my mother says and smacks her forehead. “Him again!”
“Arlene,” my dad warns.
“I just wanted to burn it all,” I say. “Get rid of it. I thought the tub would be safest. I soaked everything in lighter fluid from the grill. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t understand,” my mother says forlornly to my father. “She was such a good baby. A champion ice skater! And she wrote that Mother’s Day poem that won the school award. What happened? What did I do wrong?”
“It’s okay,” Hailey says and sits down. “I would have burnt all that stuff, too. That guy was a jerk.”
“Why didn’t you just use your grill?” the plastic doohickey guy says. “You can burn anything on a grill.”
“If it’s far enough away from the house,” the lieutenant adds.
“Well, yeah,” the doohickey guy says. “I’m just telling her she could use the grill to burn keepsakes if she wanted. Better than the tub.”
“Tell her to watch out for glue guns,” Jerry says, who’s now standing with the group coiling a length of yellow nylon rope. “My wife got that glue gun that got no safety switch. Nearly started the kitchen table on fire.”
“When was this?” the lieutenant asks.
Jerry shrugs. “Month ago maybe.”
“Well, it would have been nice to know about that,” the lieutenant says. “That should have gone in the newsletter.”
I put my hands over my face because the tears are coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I start to sob. My mother puts her arms around me and kisses me on the head because the crying game goes both ways.
“All right,” the lieutenant says, “I guess that’s all. We taped up that door downstairs, but you better have your landlord fix it before your neighbors get home.”
“Thank you, Officer,” my mother says as they load up on the truck. “I’m so sorry. We’re so sorry about this. She really is a good ice skater.”
My family and I go look at my apartment so my mom can make sure there are no peepers, rapists, or ex-boyfriends lying in wait. We stare silently at my charred bathtub and the burned shreds of shower curtain dangling like smoking cobwebs from the curtain rod. My mother goes to the kitchen and reappears with a can of Comet and a green scrubbie sponge.
“All righty, then,” she says, “let’s get to work.”
I sit in a shame stupor on my bed as they all clean the house. Hailey doesn’t even get mad when she discovers her old Barbie head on my bookshelf, the one she used to style when she was little until I dyed the hair blue with food coloring and gave it a Mohawk. I just keep saying how sorry I am and how they don’t have to help. When I do try to help my mother just tells me to lie down. “Everybody needs to just lie down sometimes,” she says.
They work until the ashes and crisp bits of burned shower curtain are gone, and in the end, everything almost looks normal again, but it still smells like smoke. My mother wants me to come home and sleep at the house. “I’ll be all right,” I tell her and she finally concedes, shaking her head, weary from the world, trying to understand the complicated nature of things.
“First the pickle dish,” she says, “and now this.”
In the morning I get up super early so I can start my life of utter solitude.
Alone, naturally.
I still smell like smoke. Everything I own still smells like smoke. I do a big load of laundry in the basement. I even run it through twice, but no amount of detergent can wash the smell away. The worst part is it would be cheaper to buy all new clothes than to dry-clean them. I asked my dad if I should call the insurance company, since it was him who made me get renter’s insurance, but he said, “Sweetie, renter’s insurance is for accidents. Not arson.”
So much for renter’s insurance. If they won’t cover the occasional personal meltdown or anger fire, what’s the point in having it?
I drive to work an hour late. I don’t even care if I get yelled at. What could be worse than what I just went through? I’m waiting for the elevator, imagining my clothes are smoking and my hair is singed to a crisp when my cell phone rings. It’s Hailey.
“Thanks for last night,” I say, “for being so nice.”
“So, are you going to pay for your replacement dress?” she asks.
“What?”
“Your replacement dress,” she says. “We have to pay double because now it’s a rush order.”
“Can’t…can’t I just wear a dress that’s the same color?”
“You can’t just try to match the color, Jen. All the dresses are supposed to be identical.” She’s talking to me like I’m retarded and sounds out each consonant, like “eye-dent-i-cal.”
“You wouldn’t have to pay for a new dress if you hadn’t ‘slipped’ under the sink,” she says. “And I don’t think I like you trying to ruin my big day.”
“Don’t worry,” I sigh, “there’ll be others.”
She hangs up on me. I can’t believe her. One minute she’s nice to me and the next she’s a psychobitch. Why? I punch the elevator button again and consider using the emergency fire stairwell, but before I can decide, Hailey calls back and the elevator doors open. She starts screaming at me about the cost of replacing my dress and accusing me of doing it on purpose.
“No, I didn’t,” I shout, “that’s completely untrue.” I step on the elevator. “Well, I remember the time you vomited on my sundress at the Valley Fair. Are you telling me you didn’t do that on purpose? I know for a fact you did it on purpose. I saw you deliberately eat relish right out of the plastic hot dog condiment thing. Then you turned around and barfed on me and then you cried so Dad would pick you up and put you on his shoulders while I had to walk all day covered in your hot dog vomit. So don’t tell me I am the only one that ruins everything, Hailey, because as far as ruining things go, you pretty much took the big ruining cake when they brought you home from the unwanted Swedish baby shelter, all right? Hailey?”
She’s gone. The line’s dead.
I’m so mad right now I think I’m going to blow an artery. Then someone clears his throat behind me. I whip around and there is Brad Keller.
“Yeah, there’s really no way for me to pretend I didn’t hear that,” he says.
My face gets hot. “I didn’t know anyone was…was here.”
He smiles. “It’s cool. Sometimes I hate my sister too. Once she shaved my eyebrows off.”
“Oh! I don’t hate my sister…” I stammer. “I just…”
He shakes his head. “Took three months to grow back. Totally bald face. The kids called me testicle head. She still thinks it’s the funniest story she’s ever heard.”
He snickers and I feel this light, free-flowing breeze around me, like someone just opened a window to Tahiti.
The doors open and he steps off.
“Coming?” he asks and I follow him.
We’re standing on the fourth floor in the home furnishings department, surrounded by living room displays and mahogany dining room tables. It’s relatively empty up here. I immediately imagine these aren’t just displays in a department store, they’re real rooms. Our rooms. Brad and I are having martinis on the leather Millstone three-piece couch set, a
nd then I’m serving him dinner at the Brownville high-gloss black dining room table, which is perfectly set with white Wedgwood china and sterling silver candlesticks with tall tapered white candles. Then, after proposing to me, Brad knocks the candlesticks off the table and takes me right there on it.
“I hope this isn’t weird or whatever,” he says, looking a little nervous, “but do you want to get a drink sometime or something?”
I make a face. I don’t think I heard right. “What?”
He smiles. I think maybe he’s talking about finding a water fountain, and I’m about to direct him to the customer service comfort station when he says, “You know, like a date?”
“A date?” I repeat. A lone saleswoman wheels around the corner carrying an armload of upholstery samples and stops dead in her tracks when she sees us.
“Sure,” I say.
“Great. How about this Friday?”
I blink.
“Is that a yes?” he asks. “You’ve got this sort of…unique way of communicating.”
The sample woman has her eyebrow arched so high it threatens to join her hairline. “Sure,” I say, keeping an eye on her, “you bet.”
“Okay, so Friday then,” he says, backing away slowly. “You’re not going to cancel or not show up or something, are you?”
I shake my head no.
“Okay, good, and you’ll get whatever anger management help you need by then.”
I smile.
“Good,” he says, “good. We need that, because I didn’t want to have to call ahead and have them clear out any sign of hot dog relish.” I cover my face with one hand. He’s practically standing right next to the sample woman when he says, “All right then, see you Friday!”
“All right then,” I say to his retreating back. The sample lady looks at me and then back at Brad and then back at me. I quickly retreat to the stairwell, where I can panic in private. I try to call Christopher, but he doesn’t pick up. I leave a message.
“Something amazing just happened,” I tell him, “and I need you to confirm I am not asleep and this is not a dream.”
I dash over to the Skyway. I want to shudder and tingle in the presence of my lovely fellow humans. Hello, thick-ankled secretary! You’re beautiful! Hello, fat man! Aren’t you jolly! I walk right past Cinnabon and the counter girl says, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single Page 8