by Drew Perry
Firemen get them out of the shower and take them to the ambulance, which is parked on the front lawn, near the undersea creatures. Three fire engines are out in the street, lights turning, flashing red on his house, his other house, his neighbors’ houses. It certainly looks like an emergency. A few more firemen come jogging past, axes in hand, saying get back, get back, get back. The inside of the ambulance is lit up. Everything is very white: White sheets, white towels, white gauze, white uniforms on the EMTs, who want to know if Beth or Jack are hurt, too, and they’re saying no, no. The EMTs have got Hen sitting up on the stretcher in the back. He’s breathing more regularly now, at least. But he’s silent. He hasn’t said anything since the kitchen. Somebody brings them blankets, and Jack uses his like a towel, dries Hen’s hair, then his own. The EMTs are wearing latex gloves, are working every inch of Hen’s body. Nothing. They’re finding nothing.
Jack keeps looking back at the house, at the roof, keeps waiting for flames to come shooting out the windows. He’s seen houses on fire in movies, on television. This does not look like that. It looks like a training exercise. They’ve got everything but the fire. Another fire truck arrives, sits at the end of the street, engine idling. The neighbors are out of their houses. Frank’s standing on his porch. Jack’s life is on full display. Nobody’s hooking hoses up to the hydrant yet. That has to be good. The EMTs scissor Hendrick’s shirt and pants off him, saying This is just a precaution. Jack looks. Still nothing. Hen’s clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Where’s he hurt? Beth wants to know. Is he OK?
I don’t see anything yet, one of the EMTs says. So far, so good. It comes to Jack that there might be too many ambulances and fire trucks in his life of late. Wait, another EMT says. Here. They’ve worked his entire body over and come back to his hands. Hen’s got his left hand balled into a fist, and they pry it open, and inside is a little constellation of blisters, white and red, a palm full of raw skin. Jack reaches up for him, takes his arm, and the EMTs push him back, saying Please, sir, and he wants to say No, you don’t understand, wants to explain it all to them, wants to tell them that one easy mistake could land Hendrick sprinting back into the fire, if there even is a fire, but it doesn’t matter: Hen’s not paying any attention to what they’re doing to him. He’s watching the lights on top of the nearest engine. His legs hanging over the stretcher don’t make it anywhere near the floor of the ambulance. He’s a doll, a toy. It doesn’t look so bad, the EMT says. He shows Jack and Beth. I think we can deal with this right here. Beth’s blinking a lot, and she picks up Hen’s cut shirt, holds onto it. Hand me a burn box, the EMT says to his partner, and she does, opens a drawer and takes out a kit wrapped in plastic. She pulls the wrapping free and gives it to him, and he opens the box, opens a tube, squeezes some kind of gel onto Hen’s hand. This ought to cool things down, he says to Hendrick, who ignores him, lets him do it, stares out at the yard, the trucks, the street.
“Is he OK?” Beth asks Jack.
“I think so,” he says.
Canavan and Rena are across the lawn. They’ve got Yul Brynner on a leash Jack’s never seen before. Maybe a neighbor brought it. Maybe Rena keeps leashes in her car for emergencies. Canavan doesn’t have his crutches. They must still be in the house, Jack figures, and he’s thinking about what else is in there, what he’d lose if the roof did suddenly collapse in a hail of sparks and fire. Beth’s shaking his arm, pushing at him. “Listen,” she’s saying. “Listen.”
“What?”
He turns and it’s the EMT who wants to talk to him, to both of them. He’s got Hen’s hand wrapped up already. His thumb’s just barely sticking out. “OK, folks,” he says. “We can take him in if you like, but it’s really not a serious burn, and that’s an expensive ride, if you want my opinion. It’d probably be just as good if you just keep an eye on him, change his bandage out in the morning.”
“OK,” Jack says.
“But if he loses any significant amount of skin, you should see a doctor.”
“What’s a significant amount?” Beth says.
“Anything bigger than a quarter,” he says.
“Oh my God,” she says, wrapping and unwrapping his shirt around her own hand.
“That shouldn’t happen,” the EMT says. “It really shouldn’t.” He reaches behind him, into another drawer on the other side of the ambulance. “If he’s in any pain,” he says, “give him these.” He hands Jack some little packets.
“What is that?” Beth wants to know.
“Headache powders,” the EMT says. “We’ve got other stuff on the truck, if you want, but that works the best. If he won’t drink it in water, put it in peanut butter.”
“Like he’s a dog?” she says.
The EMT smiles. “I just always figure whatever works.”
“You can put it on ice cream, too,” his partner says.
“So he’s OK?” Beth wants to know. “He’s fine?”
“Yeah,” the EMT says, and pats Hen on the back. Hen flinches away a little. “He’s real brave.”
“Thanks,” Jack says.
“What happened in there?” the EMT asks.
“The refrigerator was on fire,” says Jack. “He was reaching for it.”
“Reaching?”
“I don’t know what he was doing,” Jack says. “I don’t know why he did that.”
“Kids do some things that don’t make sense,” the EMT says, and wraps a blanket around Hendrick’s shoulders. Hen shrugs it right off.
“How did it catch on fire?” Beth asks.
Jack says, “It just did.”
“Can that happen?” she asks him. She turns to the EMT. “Can that even happen?”
The EMT says, “Ma’am, I wouldn’t know about anything like that.” He shakes his head. “But I’ve never heard of a refrigerator being on fire.”
The firemen come back out of the house, finally, coats open, carrying their helmets. Walking. They walk back to the truck, hang their coats in one little compartment, their axes in another. Two of them sit down on a step on the truck, and the other one walks over to Rena and Canavan, who shake their heads, point Jack out. The fireman crosses the lawn to the ambulance. “Captain Gary Arnold,” he says, introducing himself. “Everybody OK here?” Hendrick stares at Captain Gary Arnold like he’s some kind of god.
“I think so,” says Jack. “I think we are.”
“Good,” he says. “Whose home is this?”
“It’s mine,” Jack says.
Captain Arnold nods. “I’m afraid we had to make a little bit of a mess of your kitchen,” he says. “But the fire’s under control. We took care of that.”
“Good,” Jack says. “Thank you.”
“What kind of a mess?” Beth asks.
“The fire was in the wall,” Captain Arnold says. “We had to go into the wall.”
Another firefighter goes inside, carrying what looks like a video camera.
“What’s he doing?” Jack says.
“That’s a heat sensor. We cut the circuit to the refrigerator, but he’s gonna check to make sure the fire didn’t spread any further. Standard procedure,” he says. “Just precautionary.”
Beth looks at him. “Spread where?”
“Through the electric into another wall.”
“So the walls could be on fire?”
“That’s pretty rare, ma’am,” says the captain. “But that’s why we do the heat imaging. Infrared. To make sure.”
“How rare?”
“They’re checking,” Jack tells her. “That’s why they’re checking.”
“We won’t let you go back in there until it’s all clear, ma’am.”
“How did it happen?” Jack asks.
Captain Arnold shrugs. “You know,” he says, “the wiring fails, gets hot, starts a fire. Simple as that,” he says. “People forget how dangerous electric can be.”
“It was the fridge, then?”
“That, and the outlet,” he says.
“So it wasn’t anythin
g we did.”
“Not unless you put that receptacle in. The connections looked a little screwy, if you know what I mean.”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I didn’t do anything to the electric,” he tells Beth. She nods, and Jack thinks she might believe him.
Captain Arnold holds his hand out to Hen, who’s still staring. “Pleased to meet you, young man,” he says.
Hendrick doesn’t say anything, but he reaches out his right hand, the one that’s not bandaged, shakes Captain Arnold’s hand.
“He’s a little shy,” Jack says, explaining.
“Doesn’t seem shy to me,” he says. “How is he?” he asks the EMT.
“First-degree,” he says. “Maybe second. Small, though. Pretty good, considering.”
“Nobody else injured?” Captain Arnold asks.
“Nope,” says the EMT.
“Good enough,” the captain says. He looks across the yard, at the catfish, the octopus. “What are those things, anyway?” he asks.
“They’re from a putt-putt,” Jack says, a kind of exhaustion coming over him now. Hen’s OK. None of the rest of it makes any difference at all.
The captain looks a little closer at Jack, squints at him, and from the way he’s doing it, Jack can tell he must have a pretty good shiner already. “Y’all been in some sort of accident?” he asks.
“Yes,” Jack says, but doesn’t explain what kind. Captain Gary Arnold doesn’t ask any more questions after that. A small, important kindness. The captain looks at Hen in the ambulance, and at Beth, who’s up there with him now, stroking his face, his hair, whispering to him. It seems like the captain knows. It seems like he knows every piece of it. He tells Jack Have a good night, now, sir, be safe, and he goes back to his truck, to his men. Jack looks for Rena, who’s sitting over by the mailbox. She’s still got Yul Brynner. Canavan’s limped over to talk to the firemen out in the street. There’s not much more Jack can do except to wait here with Beth and Hendrick for the last fireman to come out of the house, wait for somebody to tell them they can go back in. Hen’s watching the firemen put all their gear back away in all the open doors on the side of the engine. Jack stands on his auctioned front yard, fire truck lights spinning. This is all mine, he thinks. My house, my marriage, this mess of my own making. Whatever all this is, whatever else it is, it’s his. It belongs to him. He’s done it, he’s made it, he’s punched holes in it, he’s dug it up, he’s lit it on fire. It’s his. It has to be. A radio on the fire truck Canavan’s standing next to kicks on, announces somebody else’s fire, somewhere else. There’s a string of numbers that must mean what kind of fire it is. Jack’s going to need more ice for his eye. Canavan backs up, and the fire truck edges forward, pulls away, turns the siren on at the end of the block. Jack waits. The red lights run right to left across the fronts of the houses. All of this, Jack thinks. All of it mine.
Hendrick’s still not talking, and the kitchen is torn to shit. There’s foam and powder everywhere, footprints through all of it, and it’s tracked back to the front door. The refrigerator’s well out into the room, and from the hole in the wall behind it, it looks like the firemen went after it with the axes. The wire running to the outlet’s been cut. The wallboard and the studs are scorched. The bottom of the fridge is black. It smells like fire. It smells like cigarettes, actually, like wet ashtrays. It’ll be at least a weeklong job to put it all back together. Hendrick’s playing with the foam, pulling his good hand through it. Jack wonders if this is the same stuff they spray runways down with for crashing jetliners. Beth comes in the door with Yul Brynner, walks up behind them. “Don’t put that in your mouth,” she tells Hendrick. He looks at her, doesn’t talk.
“Are Rena and Canavan still out there?” asks Jack.
“Yes,” she says.
“Did he find his crutches?”
“No.”
“Should we be looking for them?”
“No,” she says. She reaches for Hendrick, pulls him gently back away from the foam. “I don’t think so.” Hen’s wearing sneakers and his underwear. Beth’s holding his ruined clothes. “We need to get him dressed,” she says.
“OK,” says Jack.
“You brought his clothes over, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. “In his room. In his dresser.”
“Right.” Beth walks around the corner, flicks on the light in Hendrick’s bedroom. “Does he have any new favorites?” she calls.
“It’s all the same,” Jack says. She’s opening drawers. Jack holds his hand out for Hen, takes him in there. Beth’s got shorts and a kid-sized Kinnett College T-shirt laid out for him. They sit Hen up on the bed, and he lets them take off his shoes, put the shorts on, pull the shirt down over his head. His bandaged hand is like a mitten. He won’t let them put his shoes back on, which Jack takes for a good sign, a sign that he’s OK.
“Why isn’t he talking?” Beth asks.
“He’ll talk,” Jack says. “Right, buddy?” Hen looks at him, makes a popping noise with his lips.
“He’s not talking,” she says. She sits down in his half-size desk chair.
“He will,” Jack says. “I promise.”
She says, “You said nothing ever happened to him.”
“He’s fine,” Jack says. “You heard the ambulance guy.”
She points at his hand. “He’s not fine.”
“He’ll be fine,” Jack says.
She stands up, and then she sits back down. The chair spins a little to the side. “Your eye looks bad,” she says.
“It does?”
“Go look at yourself,” she says.
He goes into the bathroom, looks in the mirror. He looks like she hit him with a baseball bat. Or a bulldozer. His left eye is swollen half-shut. There are blue bruises in moons above and below it, and on the side of his nose. “You did a good job,” he says. He touches it, and it hurts like hell.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Yes, you did,” he says.
“I’m still sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“It’s OK,” he says, turning the bathroom light back off. “I’ll live.” He stands in the half-dark, looks at the outline of his head in the mirror. The air conditioner kicks on again. He can hear cicadas out the window.
“I’m done with Terry,” she says, from the other room. “I’m finished with that.”
He walks back down the hall, stands in Hen’s doorway. “What?”
She says, “I’m finished.”
“We’re talking about it?” he says. “Now?”
“I thought you should know,” she says. “That you’d want to know.”
“Why?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why now? Why are you finished?”
“I just am,” she says. “I have been.”
“No other reason?”
“I had reasons,” she says. “We can talk about them.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” he says.
“People don’t do this,” she says. “I didn’t want to do this any more.” She gets up, pulls the pushpins out of the periodic table on one side, straightens it. She pushes the pins back in.
“Why’d you do it in the first place?” he says.
She says, “I had to, Jack.”
“You had to?”
“Well, what about you? What about you and Rena?”
He thought they were all going to have to sit in some circle in the living room and confess things to each other. He did not think she’d hit him, did not think he’d light the house on fire. He did not think she’d sit in Hen’s chair and tell him plainly that whatever all this was is done. What about you and Rena? What is it he’s supposed to tell her? That in some other version of his life, he could have ended up with somebody like Rena? He knows he could have lived a slightly louder life. The life Rena kept wanting him to have. But the life he wants, the life he’s grown to know, is this one, and he knows that he’d rather choo
se this one, that he needs to, that a life with Rena would be one where no one ever said are you sure, or wait a minute—she’d be cheering him on, endlessly, cheering them both on. They’d end up owning an ostrich farm, or they’d be owner-operators of a plane-banner advertising concern, or they’d become acrobats, or they’d be like his uncle and aunt, who built a house that sat on its point, a square turned diagonally, tilted up, because the county taxed property by the square footage of the home’s footprint. They hung an addition from steel cables off a tree. When they were kids, they called it the Crazy House. Are we going to the Crazy House this summer? He knows he needs Beth to save him from his crazier angels, or try to, and he knows, too, or hopes, that she needs him to try to save her from her plainer ones. “Rena’s over, too,” he says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he says.
“I’m not coming back yet,” she says. “You can say no if you want to.”
“What if I had said no?”
“I wouldn’t have come home then, either, you idiot,” she says.
“What’re you going to do, then?” he says. “Stay with Canavan?”
She says, “I’m not sure.” Then she says, “I was thinking I might move back in across the street. To our house.” She slides Hen’s desk light over some. “I thought maybe we could try that for a while. We could be neighbors.”
“Neighbors?”
“We’ve got to be something, Jack.”
“I know,” he says.
“Something else,” she says.
“I know that, too.”
“I miss you,” she says. “I did the whole time.”
“I miss you, too,” he says. He looks at the ceiling, at the ceiling fan, at the model space shuttle hanging there. He did, at least, do a good job in here. It looks almost exactly like Hen’s old room. It’s finished, complete. It’s a room. “I want to ask you something,” he says.
“What?”
“Come outside,” he says. “I want to show you the racetrack. I want to show you how it turned out.”
“Oh, Jack, I don’t think so, OK? Not right now.”
“Come on,” he says. “Five minutes. Just come see it.”
“Now? Really?”