Almost Dark

by Letitia Trent

  He looked at her—his eyes were red from the smoke, his face flushed from proximity to the fire.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s at least twenty new jobs lost for the town.”

  His voice was different than usual—flat, drained of all inflection. Miriam wished she hadn’t approached him, that she had let him mourn on his own. She imagined that he was in shock, watching as his building burned. But she couldn’t leave him now that she’d offered her condolences.

  “I want you to know that we appreciated it,” she said. “I mean, we appreciate the work you put into it, your good intentions for the town. I know that you wanted so badly—”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Nothing can be done now.” He crossed his arms and held them against his chest. He didn’t look at her.

  Miriam nodded and returned her gaze to the fire.

  “Perhaps you can build again.”

  He nodded. “We’ll find out. I doubt it, but we’ll find out.”

  Miriam nodded and moved away—he didn’t want to speak and she felt her presence stifled him. The heat burned her cheek anyway, and she was suddenly very tired and wished that she had stayed in bed. It wasn’t hard to pretend that she hadn’t been out there earlier, that she didn’t know what had happened—she felt that she really didn’t know. What she had seen earlier hardly seemed real.

  She watched as the fire roared over the slate, the building blackening under the orange flames, until her eyes watered from the smoke and began to feel heavy and irritated.

  She watched as the fire climbed the walls of the building. She felt the heat on her skin, noting how the fire itself generated wind, how it moved like a living thing.

  Right after Joan’s death, Miriam had sometimes imagined (against her will—if she could have stopped it, she would have) what Joan must have felt when the fire started to burn her hair, then her clothes, and then her skin. Miriam would lie in bed imagining she was dressed completely in fire, wondering how it might feel as it ate through her clothes. Would it tickle at first? Would the heat feel comforting before it burned? And how much would it burn? Would it burn the whole time, or would the feeling fade as the skin numbed and the body went into shock? How long would it hurt? She would make herself cry thinking of this, make herself shake and heave in bed just imagining what might have happened to Joan’s body.

  She couldn’t help doing it again, as the building burned. She imagined herself inside the factory, her skin blistering. She had burned her thumb on a hot pan a few days before. Her mind applied the sting of the burn everywhere—she imagined the feeling on every inch of her face, her arms, her scalp.

  The firemen emerged from the billowing smoke. The air filled with tiny, papery tufts of char, the brightness of the fire. They pushed the crowd back, their enormous, gloved hands held palms out.

  “It’s gonna collapse,” one of them shouted, “everybody get back.”

  The crowd moved away as the firemen again soaked the grass and gravel around the factory with their high-pressure hose.

  Miriam stepped back, obedient. They had set a safe perimeter, she knew, but fire was unruly and could easily slip beyond the barriers set for it. The new lawn, freshly bought and laid out in squares by Beans, soaked up the water, overflowing, streaming down the street and soaking Miriam’s canvas shoes.

  Something snapped within the flames—breaking timber. Miriam, at the front of the group, heard a great gasp and shift. The crowd tightened. Miriam stepped back with the others, their bodies now close. She looked behind her—it seemed that the street was filled with people. She didn’t know where they had all come from, how they had heard about the fire, or why they had decided, of all things, to get out of bed on a Monday night and watch a building burn down—a building that nobody had worked in for almost a dozen years. But still they watched, some with their hands over their mouths, heads shaking. There was another crack, and then one of the outer walls buckled inward, sending up a flurry of sparks.

  Miriam had never before noticed how animal-like fire appeared, how it climbed, how it exhaled and inhaled, growing as it consumed. She’d never been so close to a fire that wasn’t contained. It roared and blackened and fed on the building.

  An enormous crack like a rifle shot spit from the flames. The crowd stepped back as one. The front wall appeared to waver. The firemen shouted, “Get back, get across the street, clear the area.”

  Later, Miriam would doubt her memory, imagining that she had exaggerated the quiet that came in that moment, as if she had been so wrapped up in her own head, in her memories, that the scene was hushed only for her. But it had seemed so suddenly still, like they were all waiting to see the building fall, not breathing or speaking for fear of missing the exact moment of collapse.

  Miriam felt her hair blow back from a hot blast of wind as the building let out one last exhalation before the front wall tumbled down, hitting the muddy yard with a solid slap. Water hissed against the fire. She saw the firemen motioning them back, rushing to the truck to hose down the burning pieces of timber, the hot, black rocks, broken and brittle on the ground. Sparks like a firecracker spit from the torn hole at the front of the building.

  Something’s escaping, Miriam thought. Black smoke rose up in columns, reaching up and away from the source. Sparks flew in great gushes out into the black sky and disappeared, wave after wave like the bodies of swimmers shimmering out into the distance. She felt the heat reaching out for her and shrunk back, along with the crowd. Somebody—a stranger—grabbed her elbow, and she grabbed the stranger’s in return. They cowered against each other and turned away from the fire.

  Miriam blinked against the brightness and held her breath. The world suddenly felt very still. Something had left: she sensed an absence, the loss of a pain that she’d had so long that she had no longer registered it as pain. She looked up and let go of the stranger, who detached and disappeared into the crowd again. Miriam never saw who it was. The building still burned, the sparks flying like hot confetti over them. A spark fell on Miriam’s arm like a fleck of cigarette ash. The slight sting made her nostalgic for those days when she stood by the back door of the Crossroads Diner during break and smoked a cigarette, looking out onto the highway, the cars passing by. She was always dropping ashes on her knees and hands when she smoked as a teenager. She’d never gotten the hang of it in a way that looked natural, as though she wasn’t just a beginner. That had probably been a large part of her quitting—not looking sexy or cool when she smoked, but like a kid trying to look sexy and cool but simply burning herself. She had been so eager to get away then, had so wished to be a person in one of those cars going somewhere bigger. But here she was, still.

  The fire appeared to be dying—though it was still visibly blazing, the life seemed to have burnt out of it. Whatever urgency the crowd had felt was gone. People started to disperse as the firefighters put their attention on the flaming remains of the building’s front wall. They had felt it, too, that great exhale.

  Miriam turned and made her way back to her car. She’d lost track of Justin. Maybe he had gone home.

  Miriam was fully awake now, with no hope of getting back to sleep. She suddenly wished that she were free to get in her car and drive away from this town—north, maybe, until she reached the Canadian border, then up to Quebec City. She could still remember some French—enough to get by. But she was far past the point of running away from what confused or unsettled her: she was no-bullshit Miriam. Running away because a building had burned down was a prime example of bullshit.

  I knew what was happening and I didn’t tell anyone, she thought. She shook her head. It didn’t matter, did it? It was over now. Claire had succeeded in stopping the project in the only way she could. Miriam tried to rouse the desire in herself to tell someone what she had seen, but she couldn’t. She’d have to explain too much: why she’d been there in the first place, why she had come back
home instead of reporting it. The idea exhausted her.

  She couldn’t manage to feel sad for anyone but Justin. But he was young. Life would go on.

  She reached her car, cold and dark like something abandoned, and got inside. In the dry, pickled air of the car she could smell the fire in her clothes and hair.

  Away from the heat of the fire, she felt the chill. Her birthday was coming soon, she remembered, experiencing a familiar feeling of excitement, as though something important might happen on that day. But she was past the age of gifts, of parties full of family members who wanted nothing from her but to see her grow, past even the age of birthdays marking new wisdom—her fiftieth birthday had been one such, an age that carried some measure of respect. At fifty, one could still prove useful to the world. But it was downhill from there.

  On her seventh birthday, Miriam had gone to her grandparents’ house to blow out the candles on her cake and open presents. Her mother had baked a spice cake with lemon icing—her favourite kind. She had been more excited about the cake than the presents. She hadn’t expected much that year—her parents had just had a new baby, and each year it seemed that she got fewer new clothes, fewer toys, and less attention. There just wasn’t enough of anything to go around. Miriam recalled her grandmother had worn bright red lipstick that day, which was strange for her, and had left an imprint of her kiss on Miriam’s cheek.

  Happy Birthday, my beautiful girl, she had said. Her hands, always dry and warm, brushed against Miriam’s cheek.

  Joan was there, as she always was for birthdays and holidays, though she bickered and smoked and rolled her eyes.

  Come here, kid, Joan said, and jerked her head toward the bathroom door. Miriam followed. Her mother and grandmother were busy laying out plates and napkins, talking or arguing—it was sometimes hard to tell the difference.

  “Look.” Joan fished a square, velvet box from her purse. Miriam couldn’t imagine what might be inside—usually she received only clothes for her birthday.

  Joan handed the box to her. “Open it,” she said.

  Miriam found the thin, almost invisible seam where the edges of the box met. She pried the lid up and it flipped on a hinge. Inside was a blue and white cameo necklace, its chain thin and delicate, the links so small and perfect that Joan was afraid she’d break it if she touched it with her fat, clumsy fingers. The woman on the cameo was bone pale, her profile sharp, precise, nothing wasted. Her hair billowed at the back of her head in a fat, elaborate knot.

  Miriam looked at Joan, who smiled and lit a cigarette. She blew smoke from the corner of her mouth, away from Miriam’s face. Miriam realized, for the first time, that this was done out of consideration to her and not just as a clever trick.

  Joan likes me, she thought. She really likes me. Maybe she even loves me.

  “Let’s put it on you,” Joan said. She took the box and pulled the necklace free, winding it around her fingers. Miriam felt Joan’s fingernails brush the back of her neck as she swept up her hair and fastened the cool chain around her throat. Joan turned her around and crouched down to eye level. She threw her cigarette into the toilet, where it hissed.

  “You look so lovely,” she said. “You’re getting to be a big girl now. Take care of the necklace.”

  Miriam nodded and touched the chilly stone surface of the pendent.

  Miriam wished that she had the necklace now to hold in her hands. It was gone, though. She had kept it, for a while, but one day she’d intended to wear it and it was simply gone, not in her jewellery box, not on her bedside table, not anywhere.

  VII

  In the days that followed, Justin moved in a fog, unable to remember what he had been doing moment-to-moment. He had to call the company, of course, and hurry the fire inspectors to clear him of any wrongdoing. It was clearly a case of arson, but the insurance company had to be assured that Justin had nothing to do with the fire.

  “Sorry, my friend, but it’s company policy,” Gary said when Justin protested. At the time, it had seemed unfair, unseemly, cruel even, to make him report his whereabouts before the fire, to make him prove that he hadn’t burned down the place he had worked so hard to build. Eventually, the Fire Chief wrote a statement clearing Justin of all wrongdoing.

  It was probably some kids, he had said, his slick black moustache curving down into a sympathetic semicircle.

  Later, Justin was embarrassed to realize that his grief, his attachment to the place, had been obvious to everyone. People felt sorry for him. He was some kind of tragic figure in Farmington, a man who loved something so much, and so irrationally, that it was bound to be taken from him. Nobody else seemed all that devastated.

  To tell you the truth, the Town Manager had told him in private,

  I doubt the place would have lasted more than a year. We’re not Burlington or even Brattleboro: people here are content to get their coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. But we know how much it meant to you. This kind of sympathy was almost worse than silence.

  Justin stayed in Farmington, though Beans decided not to rebuild—the historical building had been half of the sell. Without the building, there was no reason to rebuild. But Justin stayed. He quit his job with Beans and became the manager of the local sporting goods store. He took a fifteen thousand dollar a year pay cut, but found that it didn’t matter—he hadn’t known what to do with all of that extra money anyway, and living alone in Farmington was far, far cheaper than living in Albany with Karen had been.

  Having less money freed him. He ate at home more often, often a can of soup in a large bowl, soaked saltines covering the surface. He ate in front of the television or in bed, dripping broth onto the cover of his latest library book—a biography of Lincoln, the myths of the Celtic people, and a strange, musty biography about Marie Curie, its pages freckled with the red specks of bedbugs. He drank less often. He took runs around the block to fill some of the time he had now that the factory was gone, that Claire was gone, that he had nothing to worry about besides himself.

  He called Karen soon after the fire. He needed to speak to somebody who understood what he had hoped to do. With Claire gone, she was the only person he could talk to.

  His life, he realized, had been very small. Only two people knew what he truly wanted.

  When he called, her voice was sweeter and higher than he remembered. She spoke softly, as if she understood that he was grieving even before he told her what had happened with the factory.

  “I’m so sorry, Justin,” she said. He detected genuine emotion in her voice. It was easier for them to be kind to each other when they were separated by distance. They did not offer to visit one another; they didn’t offer their homes if either of them happened to be in town. They both seemed to understand that they would not be happy together and should not try again. He did not tell her about Claire. By then, there was no Claire to tell her about.

  The day after the fire, Justin had gone to Claire’s house. He had knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. He went to the library, but the head librarian said that Claire was on a two-week vacation. Justin felt the blood drain from his face. He smiled even as his stomach turned.

  She hadn’t said anything to him about a vacation. Maybe she’s going to surprise me with a phone call, he thought, and propose that he join her on this getaway, but it seemed unlikely. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who liked surprises. He went back to her apartment that afternoon and pounded on the door. No answer. He stood on a flowerbed and peeked in through the kitchen windows—there were no dishes on the table, no cups on the sink. He saw no sign of her.

  He went back to the library the following day.

  “She called and said she wasn’t coming back. She didn’t even give a two week’s notice,” her boss said. The woman shook her head.

  “She didn’t tell me until this morning, on the phone—no explanation, nothing.” The woman pursed her lips. “It’s not ea
sy for us, either,” she said, as though she were already annoyed with Justin’s complaints. “We can’t just find somebody with that kind of experience. I wish she’d at least come in and talk to me about it.”

  Justin nodded and left. He didn’t go back to her apartment.

  He was certain then that Claire had burned down the factory. He remembered the day he’d met her, how intently she had been staring at it, and how he had never found out exactly what she had been doing there. It had slipped his mind completely. From the moment he had met her, he had wanted to tell her about himself, to fill her up with his ideas. But he didn’t know anything about her, and she hadn’t offered much. Had he even given her the chance?

  It didn’t matter. She was gone now.

  He imagined that she must be a particular kind of psychopath. She had taken everything he cared for—herself, included. She had ruined the life that he was planning, the good work he was going to do. And she’d left him nothing—no note, no word, not a hint of what she had planned or why. For weeks, he would wake in the morning and immediately think, I hate her.

  But he didn’t go to the police and report her. A detective had asked him if he suspected anyone in particular. “No,” he said. “Nobody in particular.” He didn’t know why he wanted to protect her, but he did. Each morning, he would think, This is the day, I’ll tell somebody today. But it never happened. After a while, so much time had passed that it felt too late.

  At first he considered leaving Farmington. Everything there reminded him of failure—of everything he had blindly trusted as permanent, or at least secure. But he didn’t want to leave. He loved the deer park, the marble catamount, and the fact that when he drove down Main Street he saw faces he recognized from the café, from the bank, from the grocery store. Children played on the sidewalks in packs. He couldn’t help it: he wanted to live here. He wanted to pick a child up from the elementary school, a beautiful brick building right by the Farmington monument, and he wanted that child to call this place home.