Valley of Ashes

by Cornelia Read

  “The guy’s used cigarette fuses before. And—off the record?”

  I nodded, crossing my heart. “Scout’s honor.”

  “He’s doused his sites with acetone, exclusively.”

  “So arsonists are usually male, I take it?”

  “Statistically? White male, aged twenty to forty, with low self-esteem, poor communication skills, probably unemployed. Given the places he’s targeted, he might be motivated by a need for change, or an expression of anger, or possibly revenge. Almost all these guys have a problem with alcohol. And there’s a good chance he lives within a two-mile radius of the fires.”

  “Smart?”

  “The vast majority of profiled arsonists have low IQs. Then again, if they’re profiled, that means we caught them. Maybe the ones who get away with it are all mad geniuses—hate to say. We only clear about seventeen percent of arson cases.”

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Yeah. And if this guy’s graduating to structure fires… He’s going to end up hurting people.”

  “That’s got to be stressful for you guys,” I said, thinking about McNally’s end of the phone conversation with his friend, back at the paper.

  “Some days it’s awful,” she agreed. “Mostly, I’ve been lucky. And on a good day, it’s the best work there is.”

  “What’s the worst thing, on a bad day?” I asked.

  She looked down at her beer bottle, picking at one corner of its label. “The ‘pugilistic position.’ ”

  14

  What’s the ‘pugilistic position’?” I asked Mimi. I knew pugilism was boxing, but I still wasn’t following.

  She looked up at me, somber. “Intense heat causes the muscles in a victim’s body to contract, but the flexor muscles are stronger than the extensor muscles.”

  “Wait, which ones are the extensors?”

  “You use extensors to straighten out your limbs and digits.”

  “Okay.”

  “Flexors make you do this.” She raised her arms so her fists were in front of her face and lifted her knees a little, bringing the soles of her feet off the floor. “Almost always, when you find someone who burned to death, their knees are bent, their arms are raised, and their hands are making fists.”

  I shivered.

  She lowered her arms, relaxed her legs.

  I closed my eyes for a long moment.

  “Yeah,” said Mimi. “When you have to see that, it’s a bad day. A soul-wrenching day.”

  Eyes open again, I said, “I can’t begin to imagine.”

  I placed my empty bottle on the coffee table, standing up to shake off the specter of that image. “May I grab you another beer?”

  “Thank you,” she said, “but I should get home. My dogs—and your kids—will probably wake up early.”

  “Most assuredly.”

  Mimi stood, grabbing our empties and toting them into the kitchen.

  “Thank you,” I said, trailing after her.

  “I appreciate the beer. And the conversation. Perfect antidote for today’s work.”

  “I appreciate you letting me tag along, and thank you for coming by the house, too. When Dean’s away it’s always nice to have someone to talk to after the girls are asleep.”

  “You mentioned New York, earlier,” she said as we walked back toward the front door. “What part?”

  “West Sixteenth between Sixth and Seventh when the girls were born, but Oyster Bay off and on when I was a kid.”

  “Ah ha,” she said. “I grew up in Locust Valley.”

  “Jesus,” I said, “no wonder you lit out for the Wild West.”

  That made her laugh. “I’ll keep you up to date on the investigation, and let’s get together for lunch at some point, talk about civilian stuff—see if we know anyone in common from the old stomping ground.”

  I walked her out to the porch. “That would be terrific. Dean’s away quite a bit and I don’t know a lot of people here yet.”

  Even outside in the crisp winter air, I could still smell the smoke in my own hair. “So how long does it take to get rid of this, um, fragrance?” I asked, holding up a lock of it.

  “Depends,” she said. “I got to see an archive of documents in San Francisco last year that had been rescued after the earthquake in 1906, when half the city burned down. They still reek of smoke—made my eyes sting.”

  “So I’m basically going to smell like refried shit for the next ninety-nine years?”

  “Try rubbing your hair with a couple of those dryer sheets. Always works for me. Baby wipes are pretty good, too.”

  “Cool. I’ve got major stockpiles of both, as it happens.”

  “If all else fails, white vinegar.”

  “I value your expertise.”

  “And don’t worry,” she said, heading toward the sidewalk, “you’ll have loads of friends by the Fourth of July—that’s what I love about Boulder.”

  “From your lips to God’s multitude of ears, Mimi,” I replied, lifting my palms like a plaster front-lawn saint as I gazed up beseechingly at the porch light.

  “Call me if you need anything else for your article?”

  “Will do.”

  I waved good-bye as she climbed up into her pickup truck, its cab’s illumination making her blond hair shine, a beacon in the night.

  Before I went to bed, I dragged our old red-vinyl kitchen stool around the house, putting fresh batteries in every smoke detector. Then I got the box of dryer sheets down from the laundry-closet shelf.

  The girls were restless all night. Parrish woke up shrieking around two. I opened the hallway door into their room and found her standing up in her crib, wide-eyed and sobbing.

  “Shhh, sweetie, it’s okay,” I said, lifting her up and out over the wooden sidebars. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  She wrapped her arms around my neck, clinging tight. I rubbed her back, swaying gently until her body relaxed and she quieted down.

  Her forehead was cool and her diaper was still dry. I could hear the steady rhythm of her sucking her thumb and tried to lower her back into the crib, but that made her start crying again, which woke up India.

  Now they were both cranky and red-faced and sobbing. I moved back and forth between the cribs, trying to soothe each of them in turn. After ten minutes of this with no diminuendo in the stereo crying jag, I was sorely tempted to just bring them into bed with me, but knew that would set a precedent sure to bite me in the ass for many long nights to follow.

  “I need you guys to hang on for a sec, okay?” I said. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

  The wails cranked up the moment I crossed their threshold, the girls’ cries echoing down the hallway behind me as I jogged groggily back to the master bedroom. I grabbed up two pillows and my duvet from the marital futon, bashing my shoulder against the door frame as I hurried back out.

  “Shhhh,” I said softly, tossing my bedding against the baseboard between their cribs. “I’m back now. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  I got them both to lie down, tucking little quilts around their bodies, stroking their hair.

  “I’m going to stay right in here with you guys, until you go back to sleep. Nothing to worry about.”

  I propped my pillows up against the wall’s cool plaster and sat down, drawing the duvet over my raised knees.

  “Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a little girl named Goldilocks, who went for a walk in the woods. The trees were very tall, and it was cool in their shade, but every once in a while the breeze would come up, rushing through the leaves on their branches and making little spangles of sunlight dance across the path before her…”

  Parrish’s eyes fluttered closed just as Goldilocks sampled the third bowl of porridge. India followed suit when our discerning heroine had finally tucked herself into Baby Bear’s bed.

  By that point, I couldn’t be bothered to go back to my own room, so I just curled up on the rug and settled in for the night.

  Mimi’s advice on getti
ng the smoke out of my hair had worked like a charm. Now I smelled liked I’d spritzed myself with the kind of drugstore perfume hopeful eighth-grade wallflowers wear to dances in twilit gymnasiums: half cotton candy, half Holiday Inn bar soap.

  I didn’t want to think of flashover temperatures, or the comparative weakness of flexor muscles under infernal duress, or flame-ravaged houses whose sodden contents would off-gas lethal fumes.

  So instead I pictured Goldilocks’s Nellie Oleson ringlets scattered across a plump little pillow, a tiny cigar-silk quilt pulled up under her dimpled chin. She lay dreaming beneath the dark wooden eaves of the forest cottage, breath sweet as honeyed milk.

  Mama Bear raised the silky finger of one paw to her lips for quiet when she found the sleeping girl, then she and her ursine family padded softly back downstairs to the warmth of their kitchen.

  15

  Parrish and India were wide awake by seven the next morning, standing up in their cribs and babbling happily at each other. Sodden diapers sagged down between their knees, not a visual anyone sane relishes waking up to.

  After my short night with nothing but thin rug between me and the hardwood floor, I could’ve used a forklift’s help to get vertical.

  “Your mother is old and creaky, my darlings,” I croaked, rising slowly to my feet. “She no longer springs back with the meadow flower’s dewy freshness, of a morning—undoubtedly because she drank far too much beer in college, though she only had one last night.”

  India laughed and performed three bouncy pliés, gripping the side of her crib as a barre while her pendulous diaper swayed lower with each dip.

  “So let that be a lesson to you,” I concluded, “O my tiny wonders.”

  I lifted them up, positioning Parrish on my left hip, India on my right.

  “Ah, just what I’ve always yearned for…, ” I said, feeling the sides of the sweatshirt I’d slept in grow instantly hot and wet against my skin, “leakage.”

  On the bright side, their crib sheets were still dry.

  Twenty minutes later, the three of us were clean, dry, freshly clothed, and—God willing—no longer hotbeds of urinary microbial splendor. The girls gave each other scalp massages with their maple syrup–drenched strips of French toast while I put the finishing touches on a pint of coffee I hoped would be strong enough to eat through several dozen marble tub surrounds.

  “Ah,” I said, raising the glass in my daughters’ honor when I’d knocked back the first gorgeous, life-giving swallow, “more powerful than a locomotive. Just the way I like it.”

  Parrish drained her sippy cup and threw it at my feet. “More?”

  “That’s good asking, sweetie,” I said, groaning as I bent down to retrieve the damn thing from the autumn-hued linoleum. Sleeping on the floor had been sheer idiocy.

  When I’d hosed down the kitchen and de-syruped the offspring, I decided this morning was the perfect occasion for a Disney-video double feature. I plopped the three of us down on our decrepit, sorry-ass sofa as the previews I’d long since memorized started rolling.

  A basket of fresh laundry sat in front of me, yearning to be folded, but by the time Scatman Crothers was jazzing around fin-de-siècle Paris with Phil Harris and Eva Gabor in twee feline drag, my eyeballs felt like I’d dunked my face repeatedly into a sandy beach bucket brimming with soy sauce.

  The girls were so entranced with the story I figured it was safe to put them on the floor for a minute and hit replay on the espresso machine.

  “Kitty!” said Parrish. “Kitty kitty kitty kitty!”

  “Kitty says ‘meow,’ ” added India.

  “Cheese Nip!” agreed her sister.

  Thank you, Sainted Uncle Walt, for your blessed succor in this, the hour of my starkest need.

  After 101 Dalmatians, an extended family jaunt around the sunny backyard, and second kiddie-luncheon helpings of steamed carrot slices and ravioli, I finally got the girls back upstairs and napping. I would’ve given my right arm and sore eyeballs to join them, even curled up on their bedroom floor again with no pillows, but I figured it would be my last chance all day to get my article written before Dean came home from work.

  I’d had so much coffee by this point that my stomach felt like the English Channel on a rough day, complete with lanolin-slathered Gertrude Ederle doing the Australian crawl.

  Once I got the computer booted up and my opening paragraph written, however, I started feeling okay. I was in the zone, constructing a little diction-fueled movie of everything I’d seen the day before.

  There was no chaos on the screen—unlike pretty much every room in the house around me. I knew the rules; all that mattered was exactitude.

  Heaven.

  When I was closing in on the allowed word count, I realized I wanted to explain a little more about what would happen in the aftermath of Mimi’s investigation, at the hands of the claims adjustor.

  What else did these people do, besides tabulating the household Q-tips and tampons? How long would it be before buildings with that kind of damage were habitable again, if ever?

  I scrabbled through the laundry pile until I found Mimi’s card, then dialed her at home.

  I typed as she spoke, describing how everything electronic in the house would probably be “TL’d,” chalked up as a total loss: stereos and speakers, microwaves, telephones and answering machines, videotapes, televisions, computers, mini-fridges, hair dryers, and clock radios.

  It didn’t matter whether these items had been anywhere near actual flames or the slightest heat: The smoke would insinuate itself into the deepest recesses of any mechanism at all, ensuring the utter obsolescence of, say, a curling iron.

  “Jesus,” I said, typing faster to catch up when she paused for breath.

  “The cabinetry will have to be ripped out,” she continued, “and those bookshelves. Even if they’re not damaged, there’s no way to get the smell out, or the chemical residue. And the smoke leaves stencils around everything. Inside closets and cupboards, you’ll see outlines of what was on the shelves—toilet paper, shoes. You can’t get those marks out, either. All their clothing will have to go to a dry cleaner, but they’ll still have to throw most of it out afterward because of the smell. Same thing with bedding, towels, mattresses… all Dumpster fodder. And that’s not getting into Sheetrock, flooring, subfloor, structural damage.”

  “And how long before they can move back in?”

  “Hard to say. With good insurance, you get two years of ALE—additional living expenses. That’s a whole other story, pretty corrupt sometimes. And then there are the contractors who pack everything up and move it out of the house. A thousand and one details.”

  “Endless nightmare?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “All around. Most houses, you might as well torch them again and finish the job, start over from scratch.”

  I thought about that, quiet for a moment.

  “But they’re alive, Madeline. Five people in that family,” said Mimi. “That’s the only thing that matters, in the end. You can always buy more scrapbooks, take new pictures to fill them with. When I can go through a scene without the medical examiner, I count all of us damn lucky.”

  “Amen.”

  PART II

  None of her friends thought she was the better for the surrender of her fine free spirit to the control of a man, I am ready to believe, of strong intelligence and ability—but also, I certainly know, of a dry and narrow and supercilious temper.

  —Percy Lubbock describing Edith Wharton’s relationship

  with Walter Berry, quoted in Louis Auchincloss’s

  introduction to Wharton’s The Reef

  16

  Nobody will care,” said my husband when I asked him whether I should dress up a little for the Sunday-afternoon barbecue to which we’d invited a couple of his pals from work.

  He’d been home for several days now. Hadn’t mentioned my birthday again, or the fabulously great present he’d promised me on the phone from New Orleans.


  “I’m a total hag,” I said. “And also my hair is stupid.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, his back to me as he rooted through his sock drawer.

  I felt about as sexy as Queen Elizabeth trudging through gorse in the Scottish rain: imaginary corgi under each arm, body thick with tweed under my Barbour coat, damp Hermès scarf tied over my lacquered blue-white hair.

  Yeah, me and Liz Windsor: sex on wheels.

  “You look perfectly all right,” said Dean, still with his back to me.

  “The endearment every woman longs to hear.”

  That got me a put-upon sigh. “You know what I mean, Bunny.”

  I stepped up behind him and twined my arms around his waist, standing on tiptoe to press my cheek between his shoulder blades.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just feel like a Betty Friedan cypher-eunuch, plummeting disenfranchised into the black bourgeois abyss of toddler muck and Disney vids.”

  Dean grunted, shoulders tensing.

  “I started whistling in the grocery store the other day,” I said, “and realized five bars in that I was musically regurgitating the goddamn theme song from The Lion King. What next, Andrew Lloyd fucking Webber?”

  “I can’t believe I don’t have a single pair of goddamn socks that match,” said Dean, slamming the drawer shut. “What the hell do you do with them?”

  He pushed free of my arms.

  “Airlift them to Romania,” I said, repulsed by my actual reflection in the mirror over our bureau, now that he wasn’t blocking my view. “UN volunteers stitch them into fluffy monkeys for all those poor little orphans to play with.”

  Dean sat down on the edge of the bed and yanked on two socks that looked pretty damn similar, if you asked me.

  He stood up. “Let’s get the goddamn grocery run over with. I need at least a couple of hours for a decent bike ride.”

  “Sure,” I said. “And hey, here’s a thought… you can buy me a birthday present. A cantaloupe or a lemon zester or something. King Soopers has pretty much everything.”