Those Who Favor Fire

by Lauren Wolk

  Dropping his gear by the door, he walked to the far side of the desk. He first opened the window and then examined the sill for a moment, took up his father’s sterling letter opener, and scraped the paint from two small hinges on the far edge of the sill. He loosened each hinge with a sharp rap—paused for a moment, listening for sounds from his father’s bedroom overhead, waiting to be sure his father had not heard, would not be storming down to face him—and then, with a bit of coaxing, tipped the sill back on its hinges to reveal a hollow space inside the wall. From this narrow compartment, Kit lifted a locked firebox.

  The sight of it after a dozen years filled Kit with satisfaction and, despite himself, pride. “This is between us men, eh?” his father had told him with a conspiratorial wink. “For emergencies, understand? You are never”—and he had become stern for a moment—“never to open this unless you absolutely must. And never in front of anyone else. Don’t even go near the window unless you’re alone. I’m trusting you to keep this a secret.” And Kit had promised that he would.

  “But why not have a real safe?” he had asked.

  “If you want to make sure something escapes notice,” his father had intoned, “don’t put a lock on it.”

  On the wall beside the window was a watercolor of several small and spotless sailboats tacking through a narrow, rocky channel. “Four skiffs tacking to starboard,” Kit murmured as he spun the dial on the firebox to the right and stopped at four. “Two prams tacking to port,” he continued, turning the dial left to the two. “Eight girls sailing the lot of them,” right to eight. “And one lighthouse on the shore.” Kit could not remember any nursery rhymes but this one.

  As he opened the box, Kit once again marveled at a man who could look at a painting so full of color and light and see in it a way to grant a little boy access to a fortune.

  Inside the box Kit found five bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills, three ten-ounce bars of gold bullion and half a dozen gleaming Krugerrands, a small velvet bag that held his mother’s rings, and a second bag he’d never seen before. When he turned it upside down, Kit was only mildly surprised at the spectrum of gems, cut but unset, that tumbled across the blotter on his father’s desk. He automatically admired their brilliance and calculated their worth but did not consider taking them. He had enough money of his own.

  As he poured them back into their velvet pouch, however, he paused over a fiery opal the size of a robin’s egg and, without thinking twice, slipped it into his pocket.

  Then he locked the gems in the firebox, put the currency, the gold, and his mother’s rings into the paper sack he’d brought with him, replaced the firebox in the wall, and closed the windowsill. He knew that his father would notice the intrusion when next in his study, for he liked to stand at the window, his hands resting on the paint-locked sill, and admire his rhododendron. Kit decided not to think about this until later.

  Holly was still awake when Kit arrived at the carriage house. “I won’t stay long,” he promised when she invited him in.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You haven’t been up here in years. Have a seat.”

  Kit sat down heavily. Holly looked at the paper bag in his lap. “You want something to drink?” she asked. “Are you hungry?”

  “No, no, I’m fine.” He looked at his hands. Seemed not to know where to begin. But Holly was a patient person. He had waited for her that morning. She would wait for him now.

  He began to speak several times, but each time he stopped after a word or two.

  “It’s all right, Kit,” she finally said. “Believe me, I understand how hard it is to talk about it. You don’t have to get it perfect. Just say it.”

  He looked at her and nodded. “I know,” he said. “It’s just that I feel so many things. One thing contradicts another. Maybe in a week or a month or a year I’ll know how I feel, but right now I’m absolutely flummoxed.” He cleared his throat, plunged ahead. “But I’ve spent the day thinking about everything you told me this morning, and I believe you. I believe all of it. All but one thing.

  “You seem to think that Dad was being kind when he lied about how you were hurt … about how I hurt you. But I think you give him too much credit. He’s spent his entire life perfecting the art of escaping blame. Everything is always someone else’s fault, never his. And when he absolved me of my guilt—Christ, before I was even remotely qualified for any kind of absolution—he made me his conspirator. Twenty years ago, he lied so that I would not be blamed. Last night, when I came home and found him under the magnolias, he lied again, said that you and your life were none of my business or his. He’s always been good at deflecting accusations, creating scapegoats, saving his own skin at all cost.”

  Kit put a hand to his throat. His voice had grown hoarse and whiskery. “I’m just like him,” he croaked. “You said so yourself.” It was as if he had only just noticed that his fingers were webbed or his pupils square.

  Holly did not say anything. She looked sad and sorry but not very sympathetic. He had spent years ignoring his own sister, and he was not surprised at the distance that remained between them.

  “I’m going away for a few days,” he told her. “I’m not sure where. Anywhere but here.”

  Holly sighed and looked at him impatiently. “Have a heart, Kit,” she said. “Don’t tell me about your plans to go off soul-searching. I’ve already found my soul, and I’m dying to take it away from here.”

  “So what’s stopping you?” Kit said. He placed the heavy paper sack in his sister’s lap.

  “What’s this?” she asked cautiously. When he didn’t answer, she opened the bag and dumped its contents onto the coffee table.

  “The money should see you through to our birthday,” Kit said. “And the gold ought to make a nice nest egg. Open the small bag.” He watched with real pleasure as she poured their mother’s rings into her small palm.

  Holly cried for a while after that. She put the rings on her fingers, put her face into her jeweled hands, and cried. Kit smiled at her now and then, when she wasn’t looking, and eventually got up and ran his hand over her smooth hair.

  He was pleased at her reaction, although he realized that he could not possibly understand the enormity of her relief. He had not suffered as Holly had, though he was beginning to think that his father’s influence would give him much to regret. Nor had he ever looked at money the way Holly had. She had known for years that to live in a mansion means nothing if you can’t afford to leave it. But Kit had credit cards, bank accounts, plenty of everything. His father had always paid his debts when he came up short and had attended to the nuts and bolts of everyday life so that Kit himself had never had to pay a bill, stick to a budget, make ends meet. High finance Kit understood. But he’d never known what a gallon of milk cost … or cared. Nor had he ever learned to take care of himself. There was always someone else to do that, to wash his clothes, cook his meals, clean up after him. Holly had never made her own living, or held even a summer job for that matter, and the money that was allowing her to leave was not money she herself had earned, but she knew how to take care of herself in other ways, was far more self-reliant than her brother, and he both envied and respected her for it.

  “I’m afraid you won’t have time to pack much,” Kit said. “I should have given you a couple of days notice before I”—he nodded at the trove on the coffee table. “I’m obviously not thinking too clearly.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Holly said, wiping her face with her sleeves. “You’re thinking very clearly. Besides, I don’t need much time to pack. An hour, tops. There’s not a lot I want to take with me. And I don’t need to make any plans. I’ve spent years imagining what I’d do when I had money of my own. All I have to do is throw some things in a suitcase.”

  “I’ll help you,” Kit offered.

  He followed her around the apartment for a while, bumping into her and getting underfoot, until she finally handed him the phone book and asked him to call a travel agent. “Find out abo
ut flights to San Francisco for tomorrow morning,” she said, “and book me a room for tonight somewhere near the airport. Somewhere nice.”

  While he made the calls, Holly finished packing, tucked her riches into a fat leather bag, and carried her things down to Kit’s car.

  She was gone for such an oddly long time that Kit was on the point of going after her, afraid suddenly that their father might have found them out, when she returned. She was a bit breathless and looked as if she might have been crying.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Fine. I’m a little overwhelmed, I guess. It’s finally beginning to sink in.” She took a quick look in the fridge and, after a moment, reluctantly poured a quart of milk down the kitchen sink. “I hope you won’t mind giving me a ride to the hotel.”

  “Of course not,” he said, glad that they would be leaving together.

  “Oh, here,” she said, fetching a postcard from her desk, writing out a name and a telephone number, handing it to him. “I’ll write to you at Yale in the fall to let you know where I am, but I don’t think I’d better try to reach you here. If you need me before then, call the Corrigans. Emily Corrigan’s my best friend. She’s been my roommate at Bryn Mawr for the past two years. When I go back to school in the fall, I’m sure it will be somewhere else, but I’ll still be in touch with Emily. She’ll know where I am.”

  Kit was ashamed to realize that he had not known about an Emily, that he had never bothered to ask Holly about the man she’d been with the night before, who had unintentionally played such a pivotal role in their lives. But he believed that there would be time to learn about Holly’s life, and he looked forward to meeting her again on neutral ground where the only shadows would be their own.

  On their way to the hotel, Kit and Holly Barrows said their good-byes in roundabout ways amid long silences that struck them as less odd than the sound of their two voices together. When they arrived at the hotel, Kit waved away the doorman and helped Holly carry her luggage into the lobby. He said good-bye to her then, held her head against his shoulder for a moment, and drove away without giving a single thought to where he might go. It just didn’t seem important at the time.

  Chapter 6

  When Rachel woke up in Harry’s bed, it took her a full minute to remember where she was and why she felt so ill. It was a long and frightening minute, measured by a parade of sensations that compounded her bewilderment, one by one. The clenching of her stomach, the sour film on her tongue, the pasty lethargy of her eyelids, the sticky ache where her thighs met, the sting of her abraded cheeks.

  “Thank God,” Rachel whispered when she realized she was alone. She lay in the bed for a while, listening, but finally climbed unsteadily to her feet, hoping that Harry would not return before she’d had a chance to dress and compose herself. When she could not find her sweater, she gingerly searched through the clothes that were draped over chair backs and radiators, lampshades and bedposts, across the neglected room. The green chamois shirt she chose was fairly clean, worn just enough to smell vaguely of Harry.

  Once in the bathroom, Rachel locked the door and began to clean herself carefully and thoroughly. She ran Harry’s toothbrush under very hot water, both before and after scrubbing every part of her mouth, including, especially, her lips.

  It didn’t surprise her when the cloth she used to wash herself came away red, for she ached and throbbed as if a piece of glass were trying to work its way out of an old abscess. She looked around the bathroom, found a small mirror in the medicine cabinet, and by perching gently on the edge of the tub was able to look down at the reflection of her genitals.

  Where her flesh had before been smooth and pink, it was now jagged and empurpled and the point of each tear bore a hard, black knob. Everything seemed to have congealed or clotted in a businesslike way, however, so Rachel simply dressed herself again, brushed out her hair, and smoothed her cheeks with white, shaking hands.

  She had no idea what she would say to Harry when she encountered him. Part of her was appalled and suspicious, so sure she’d made a mistake that humiliation had already begun to set in. Another part of her set aside the indistinct memory of Harry, grunting and grinning as he detected and quickly dismantled her virginity and then later, when they had rocked to an abrupt halt, turning his back. It was so tempting to think of Harry instead as he had been before last night and as he might be from here on in—a promising boy for whom she longed.

  As she left the bathroom, Rachel smelled coffee and heard the sound of the television turned low. She was so nervous that she found it difficult to smile. But only Paul was there to see her enter the room, pale and hesitant. He sat up, shoved a ratty blanket off the couch so she could sit down.

  “Don’t talk,” he said. “Save your strength.” He poured her a cup of coffee, built a nest of cushions around her, and opened a window so that the cold October air flowed through the stale indoors like surf.

  He told Rachel that Harry had gone out and wouldn’t be back until much later in the day. She felt herself slip, then, into a posture of resignation and recognized the beginnings of remorse. But a part of her was unconvinced, well stocked with explanations and pardons. A part of her wanted very badly to believe that her infatuation with Harry would not leave her scarred.

  She changed into her sweater and then sat with Paul for a while, sipping coffee and nibbling plain toast, until they felt equal to the long walk back to campus. They went slowly, stopping often, for they were both in several types of pain and had no reason to hurry. It made them feel better to walk and to be together. They talked, laughed from time to time, and singly wondered why it was taking them so long to get down to the business of sharing their secrets. As they crossed the campus green, Rachel finally led Paul to an empty bench in the sun and told him what had happened.

  “No kidding, Rachel? Really? Golly. And I thought you two were playing cribbage all night. Well, I’ll be damned. Just when you think you know somebody, something like this—”

  “Shut up, you ass, and let me finish.” Rachel picked up a red maple leaf from the grass and slowly dissected it. “You think you know me so well, but you didn’t know I was a virgin, did you?” She had expected surprise, even shock, but she was instantly dismayed to see the effect that this had on Paul. He sat back as if he’d been sucker-punched, put a hand to his mouth like a woman. But he didn’t say anything. He simply looked at her.

  “I know you told me not to come crying to you if things went wrong with Harry,” she sighed. “And I won’t. But I want you to tell me honestly whether I would be foolish to expect him to … I don’t know … phone me later. Or come looking for me.”

  Paul took his hand away from his mouth. “I told you that I’d introduce you to Harry but nothing more. No matchmaking and no handholding. If I tell you that you were a one-night stand, you’ll deny it. You’ll even be angry with me for saying so. And if I tell you that Harry will call, I’ll hate myself for postponing the inevitable. Because Harry won’t call, Rachel.” He got angrily to his feet. “He’ll walk right past you in class tomorrow. If you corner him, he’ll be civil and smug and call you by the wrong name. But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.”

  As Rachel watched Paul walk away, she wondered why he was so angry. Perhaps he was feeling some vicarious strains of her own doubt, fear, hope, and confusion. It wasn’t until two weeks later that Rachel finally understood the extent of Paul’s involvement in her encounter with Harry Gallagher.

  Harry had not called, of course. And so she, after a week of wondering and agonizing, had finally convinced herself that it would be all right to call him.

  “Hello, Harry?” she said, when a man answered. She could barely hold the phone. Her hand felt as if it were broken. She wished she’d never done this, after all.

  “No,” he said. “Harry’s gone out. You want me to give him a message?” He had a slight British accent, which Rachel thought quite lovely. She had not known of a roommate.

&nbs
p; “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess you could tell him that I called. It’s Rachel. I’m a … friend of his.”

  “Oh, Rachel,” he said, with a great deal of emphasis on the first part of her name, as if he were saying, Oh, that friend. “Yeah, Harry mentioned a Rachel.” She listened carefully for clues but was not sure what Harry might have said about her. “This is Skip,” he said. “Harry’s apartment mate.”

  “Hello,” Rachel said, feeling foolish.

  “Listen,” Skip said. “Harry will be back soon. You can try him again in a bit. Better yet, come over and wait for him. I know he’ll be glad to see you.”

  Rachel began to smile. She swung her foot.

  “I guess I will,” she said. “If you’re sure it’s okay.”

  “I’m sure,” Skip said.

  Rachel changed clothes, and then again, then stripped and quickly showered, dressed, and was on her way to Harry’s before she realized that her AmCiv discussion group was about to begin without her. She had spent three hours the night before preparing for group. She felt unlike herself, suddenly, and was both elated and alarmed by the sensation. But, as she had on the night that had ended in Harry’s bed, Rachel gave herself up to fate and possibility and the hope that there would always be an exception to every rule.

  “You don’t mind if I eat something, do you?” Skip said. “I’m starved.” He offered her white bread, pink bologna, emphatically yellow mustard, and a knife. Still Life, she thought. I haven’t eaten bologna in years.

  “Thanks,” she said, “but I’m really not hungry.”

  “Beer?” It was one-fifteen in the afternoon.

  “No. Thanks.”

  Skip took a bottle for himself, pulled out two chairs at the wobbly kitchen table, one for him, one around the corner for her. He ate his sandwich in immense bites. It was gone quickly. His lips were vaguely yellow, and the beer made him belch.