by Brian Hodge
She crabbed backward into the loft—a loft filled with flammable hay—rejoicing that she had lit her attacker on fire after all, because even though she knew that she had absolutely not done it, she told herself that there must have been an ember or a spark that had taken a few seconds to catch hold. So now the combustion had her in its thrall. Even after the thing was thoroughly immolated and tongues of flame were gesturing like melodramatic arms in a silent film, she kept sliding sideways, back and forth, as bereft as a spider in a bottle. The fascination was utterly irresistible because she could see that the malign creature was starting to break up into discrete particles. And that was a glimpse over the wall that all who live must take. This was not just another earthly death, or even the hastened transformation of matter to energy. It was annihilation—the reverse of creation. How could she have caused such a thing? In the midst of her calamity, she wanted to understand that.
Now the red scarecrow was fire within fire, as if each wisp was being torn loose to be seared into oblivion as it rose toward the rafters. Up went the embers, a diaspora of red straw, everywhere and nowhere. Red straw, red straw … Absurd and innocent, but now a cry of tramontane exile, a catch phrase of warning, given reinforcement by the others of the household as the barn went up and they came first to the windows of the house and then to the porch and the basswood. Red straw … red straw. The ululation of an exanimate population, wailing with horror as they rose like bits of straw into galactic winds that blasted them back to the far side of infinity.
Dana didn't remember letting herself slide off the gradient loft, or passing slowly through the firestorm of cinders raining down from the roof, or coming out into the sunlight from that orange hell and seeing her companions. She said nothing, remembered nothing. No one called the fire department. Ariel watched stonily from not more than thirty feet away, leaning on her cane, ashes pelting her like condemning angels.
When the pillar of fire had undulated to the ground and a huge pyre of shingles and beams flickered and smoked, Molly put her arm around Dana, grounding her from across the universe, reeling her in, restoring a human circuit that instantly lit up with what seemed an impossible denial.
"I didn't do it…. I didn't do it," Dana said, birthing the words like a half-drowned person glutted with water. "I tried to do it, but the match was already out. I didn't do it."
Chapter 17
It was pretty amazing how you couldn't really feel the heat from the burning barn inside the cupola. You could smell the smoke some, but even that didn't seem to stop the sauerkraut smell that had been coming up through the house since early afternoon. Molly always made sauerkraut when she was sad or mad, and Amber thought she was both today. Even before the fire she had been sad or mad about Mrs. Korpela. Everyone was. Except her mother.
And that made Amber sad and mad, because there wasn't anyone else to talk to. No stories of the Taron pygmies who were dying off one by one in far-away Myanmar because the world shouldn't have them anymore. No Sir Aarfie; No friends her own age. Just herself to talk to and whatever friends she made up. She still had the red paint, though, and she was going to get good enough so she could paint friends and pets and stuff, the way her mother did, and then she would never be lonely again.
That was why she had come up here on the roof to the cupola early this morning. And why she had taken the almost washed-out picture of her scarecrow and touched it up a little. She didn't think that would hurt, and it was good practice. But when she had come back this afternoon, she saw Mrs. Novicki and Mr. Bryce in the cornfield, and she had watched, hoping they would do kissing and stuff, but they never did, and when he finally left, she saw Mrs. Novicki go into the barn. And then she saw the scarecrow—her really, honest-to-God red scarecrow, just like she had painted him—go into the barn, and she knew she had made a mistake. She shouldn't have touched up the painting of it at all.
So now her heart started doing flip-flops because you could tell by the way the scarecrow was following Mrs. Novicki that it didn't want to be seen, but then when it went into the barn, it must have known it would be seen. So that was bad. And when Mrs. Novicki didn't come out afterward, Amber felt sick. She had seen the blood in the hallway the night of the break-in, and heard Mr. Seppanen screaming, and now she was going to hear Mrs. Novicki screaming. She should have painted the scarecrow out with white as soon as she had found the rain-streaked picture that day. But she hadn't had any white then, and she didn't have any white now. She only had the magic paint in the cupola. So she did the next best thing. She painted him out with red. Red fire. Fire was easy. She had always been good with fire. And she prayed.
Dear God, make my fire real.
She thought there must be a God, because who had painted things before her mother came along? So then she saw the smoke, and then the roof started to glow and the shingles began to curl, and she knew it had worked. But Mrs. Novicki still wasn't coming out. Amber shouted to her, and then the people in the house started to come outside and she didn't want them to see where her hiding place was up on the roof, so she didn't shout again. But no one looked inside the barn. They could see it was on fire, but they just stood there. So Amber was going to have to yell again and tell them that Mrs. Novicki would burn up if they didn't go inside and get her. But then she thought, her prayer had worked once, so she tried it again—Dear God, make Mrs. Novicki come out okay—and sure enough, out she came.
So everything was okay now. Except that Amber couldn't come down until everyone left. She had to stay up there and smell the smoke and the sauerkraut and watch through the slits in the louvers. Her mother was standing right there too, and if she found out that Amber had caused the barn to burn down, there was no telling what she would do. Kill her, probably. Take away TV and make her live in her room on sauerkraut and water. Amber wished her dad was better, and that he'd tell her mother to "lighten up," like he used to.
And then she saw Mr. Bryce—not the young one who had almost been kissing Mrs. Novicki in the cornfield, but old Mr. Bryce. He came out all upset and shuffling as fast as he could. And when he got to where the others were standing, he went right on by. He was trying to run, but he couldn't lift his feet that good, so he just shuffled straight toward the fire. Then Mr. Seppanen and the others grabbed him and wouldn't let go. He tried to slug Mr. Seppanen the way he had slugged Mrs. Novicki when she had tried to get him to take a shower. That was funny, when you thought about it: old Mr. Bryce slugging her, and young Mr. Bryce taking her to the cornfield to fool around. But it wasn't funny the way old Mr. Bryce was yanking and pushing right now, trying to get free so he could run into the barn. And then Amber heard him shout.
"Tiffany!"
And that just made her feel sick again, because of course he was trying to save her.
"Tiffany!" he bellowed.
And when the barn finally collapsed, old Mr. Bryce collapsed too. Sitting down there in the dirt like he was a little kid or something. Everyone moved away from him in a circle and just let him get it out of his system.
A couple of times Amber almost shouted down to him, because that's all it would've taken to make him see that she was okay. But she didn't. Even though she felt ashamed, she couldn't give herself away. Finally old Mr. Bryce just sprawled out in the dust and looked exhausted. Some of the others helped him into the house then, and pretty soon everyone was gone. Miss Hoverstein was the last to go in.
So it was over. And Amber was tired and had to pee, and she didn't know what she was going to eat if all they had was sauerkraut and sausage. It was going to be one of those sit-there-until-you-eat-it-young-lady meals that would end when she gave up dessert or went to bed early. But all in all, she was relieved. Things had started out really bad, and now they were okay, if you didn't count the barn or how badly old Mr. Bryce felt. Amber would take whatever medicine went with the meal and just say another little prayer tonight, she thought, thanking God that her mother wasn't any the wiser about things, and if she didn't see Mr. Bryce before everyone w
ent to bed, she would go to his room tonight.
So she scuffed down the roof to the chimney and made her leap to the pipe and then down to the lightning rod and the window to the sewing room, and it was all pretty quiet in the house. Scrambling inside, she slowly lowered the sash. No problemo, she thought. And there wasn't. Except that when she turned, her mother was sitting there in the dark in the high Queen Anne chair.
"Is that where the paintings are?" Ariel said. "Up on the roof?"
Amber was too shocked to answer. She was trying to figure it out—how her mother knew—and of course it must have been when Amber shouted down to Mrs. Novicki in the barn. Her mother had probably been upstairs and could tell where the shout had come from. And once she knew, she had responded to the fire and never looked up at the roof, Amber was sure of that. That's how smart her mother could be. You might fool her for awhile, but never forever. And when she stopped being fooled, you wouldn't know it. Worst of all, you couldn't tell what she would do about it.
"I can't go up there, of course," her mother said. "None of us can. Except you," she added with a hush of magic in her voice. "It's too bad you don't remember your previous life past the age you are now. Then you might have learned your lesson about climbing dangerous things. It's no fun being in a wheelchair, Amber."
"What do you care?" Amber said petulantly, trying to gain the upper hand.
"I care."
"You killed me," she asserted breathily. "You killed your own daughter."
She could make out her mother's face in the gray light now. The "dead-on look" her father used to call it. No one could look straight at you like her mother. Eagles looked like that. Burning eyes and everything just sort of aimed at you so you knew you couldn't escape.
"I made you better."
"You made me dead. You showed me my grave in the cemetery."
Ariel plucked something from her skirt in the gloom, a thread perhaps. "I should have known you would eventually accuse me of this."
"It's true!"
"What's true is that you're alive—young, healthy, and impertinent. I didn't know what was going to happen when I gave you life again. In fact, I didn't know I was giving you life. I just painted you as my last act."
"What do you mean?"
"Never mind. You've succeeded in putting me on the defensive, because I'm a caring mother and I dwell on my mistakes. But a caring mother tries to keep her daughter from making the same mistakes. I want the pictures you have, Amber."
The dead-on look. All silhouette except for her eyes and a little bluish gray on the left side of her nose, cheek and brow. Demanding in that way she had that made you feel that all the right was on her side. All the right and all the might. She had made the people in this house—made them!—like she was God. Only she had done some awful things too. Making people go away and come back, and maybe, like with Mrs. Korpela, she shouldn't have made them come back at all
"Right now, Amber!"
"I don't have any paintings. I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I don't have them. They all blew away when we had the storm, except for two that I found in the fields, and one of them was no good and the other was almost no good, but I tried to fix that and … and that's how the barn got burned down. The red scarecrow went in there and he had Mrs. Novicki, and I saved her—I did, Mom. I painted fire and that made the scarecrow burn up, only the barn got burned up too."
She was crying now, the final punctuation of a child's confession, because while the appeal was exhausted, the fear of punishment remained.
"So you still have paint," Ariel said quietly.
"'What?"'
"If you painted fire, then you must still have my paint."
"It’s—I think it’s all used up."
"Bring me the empty jar."
"You said not to climb on the roof."
"I'll make an exception.”
“But you just got through telling me how dangerous it is. Like I said, you don’t really care about me, do you, Mom?”
“Well. If something happens to you, I can always bring you back, can't I?"
Terrifying words. Especially the "can't I?" A question that implied If I want to. Even the child could hear the thrill of power in the mother’s voice. Ariel Leppa nonchalantly twirling an umbilical cord that now stretched over two births, assessing whether it could possibly extend to three. And her daughter-of-the-moment felt the centrifugal pull of this. So it really was dangerous – what Amber did next. But she had to do it. Because she feared what her mother would do once she had the paint back. Then Amber would have nothing to bargain with. And no one could imagine the things her mother could imagine, being an artist and all.
“I threw the jar at the barn when it was burning," she said.
"Ah. The burning barn. I see. Well. That takes care of that. You can go now."
Danger, danger. Why was she talking that way? What was she going to do? Amber couldn't let it go. Couldn't walk out of that room not knowing if her mother really was satisfied with the way things were, or whether she had just given up persuasion in favor of something more subtle.
"Aren't you going to punish me?"
"Do you think you need it?"
"No."
"Good."
Amber took a couple of quick steps toward the door, then pivoted on one foot. Her mother's face caught a little more light from this angle. She was no longer looking dead-on.
"Maybe just a little," Amber amended about the punishment.
"What do you suggest?"
"Um…I shouldn't get any dinner."
"Done. No sauerkraut and sausage for you."
"No dessert either."
"Good. I don't think Molly had time to make any anyway."
"No dessert all week."
"My, my."
“Stop making fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you, Amber.”
"And I shouldn't listen to music or watch TV."
Silence from the Queen Anne chair. She was overdoing it, and her mother was no longer amused. Nothing had changed. The danger was still there. Better to shut up and just go to her room.
"We won't be using this window anymore," Ariel said when Amber got to the doorway. "I'll have Paavo nail the sashes together. You'll want to make sure he doesn't do it while you're up on the roof."
Amber lay awake in the massive bed frame her grandfather had supposedly hewn together for her mother before he went off to fight in WWII. White oak corner posts as big around as water heaters and sideboards thick as curbs. You lay in it and you felt like you were anchored to the center of the earth. In her imagination Amber had survived storms and stampedes in its embrace, earthquakes and a direct meteor hit from outer space. But tonight it felt like a coffin. Tonight it paralyzed her with dread. Physical movement seemed impossible. When the sheets got hot and her legs itched, she didn't roll to a cool spot, she thought about rolling to a cool spot and then she just lay there. She didn't even get up when she heard old Mr. Bryce passing in the hall, his hand hissing along the wallpaper the way it did whenever he was unsteady. But later, hearing shuffling outside her window, she dragged herself up on one elbow and saw him standing in the moonlight in front of the still-smoldering barn.
His arms hung limply at his sides, and he seemed to lean a little, as if he were listening to something. What could he hear from ashes? Maybe he was hungry, she thought. Maybe she should take him some nice lemony yogurt. But if she got caught, her mother would think she was getting it for herself despite her declaration that she should go to bed without eating. So she flopped back on the pillow.
She heard Mr. Bryce come back in and then go out again. She lost count of the number of times he went out to stand looking at the ashes of the barn. But at some point she began to cry for him—or maybe it was for herself—because he was looking for her, wasn't he? His Tiffany. And in a way she was just as doomed as if she really had been in that burning barn. Because when she went to sleep, she might wake up ancient. In fact, she might not
wake up at all, if her mother decided to destroy the portrait that had brought her back. So maybe it was better to just let old Mr. Bryce think she was already gone.
A little later it occurred to her that what her mother had said about having Paavo nail the window shut was good, because it meant that she expected Amber to be around. If she didn't, then it wouldn't matter about the window. And if Amber really needed to get up to the roof, she could probably still do it. Because her mother didn't know exactly how she got up there—that she used the lightning rod and the side of the house—and if she had to, she could do that right from the ground, she thought. She could climb up using the brackets probably, even though she wouldn't have the gutter to relieve some of the weight until she got to the sewing room window ledge. Like her father said, the trick was to pretend you were on the ground. You could dance and jump on a two-by-four on the ground and never fall, so climbing with hands and feet should be no problem. If the lightning rod held.
But her mother had also said that about Paavo nailing the window shut while she was up there, which meant that she expected her to try, and also that she didn't believe Amber had used up the paint and thrown away the jar. Not that it had been a very good lie. But any lie—even a transparent one—was better than just defying her mother to her face. Whatever happened, she had to hang on to the paint in the jar, Amber decided. Her father couldn't protect her anymore, couldn't tell her mother to lighten up, couldn't coax his little girl through her darkest feelings in that fade-away voice of his:
I hate Mommy.
No, you don't.
I do. I wish she was dead.