Set the Night on Fire

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  She checked the clock. The dial read 2:00 a.m. She turned on the light and got out of bed. Danny’s condo was in a recently renovated three-story Evanston building a few blocks from Lake Michigan. The view was mostly obstructed by other buildings, but on a clear day you could glimpse slivers of silvery water between the structures. Little details inside the apartment, like decorative moldings and hand-painted woodwork, gave the place some character, but, like his office, Danny hadn’t invested in decorating. The furniture was minimal, there was no art on the wall, no blinds covered the windows. Lila had taped up sheets but held off buying anything permanent. She’d be going back to New York.

  She made sure the deadbolt was seated, even though she remembered doing it when she came in. She heard the satisfying click as the cylinders dropped. Then she began to wander. She went into the room Danny used as an office and opened the closet door. Tucked away on a shelf was his old baseball glove. He’d played second base. She pulled it out and slipped her hand in. The leather still felt soft and supple. She held it up to her nose, inhaling the faint residue of saddle soap and leather. Danny had squirted shaving cream on the glove right after he got it. Lila thought he was crazy, but Danny swore it was the only way to break it in, and her father said Danny was right.

  She clasped the glove to her chest. It was tangible proof that her family had existed. That she had been part of a bigger whole. That there had been a “once upon a time.” A photo album would have helped. But Danny didn’t have one, and the “official” family album kept by her father was destroyed in the fire.

  She put the glove back in the closet. The album had been important for one big reason—it contained the only photo of her mother she’d ever seen. It was on the first page, as soon as you opened it. Lila had gazed at it so often that, years later, she still could call up every detail.

  Her mother was fair-skinned with long blond hair. Petite and pretty in a delicate, waiflike way. Her father used to tell Lila that except for her dark coloring, she had inherited her mother’s looks. The photo showed her mother from the waist up. She was squinting into the sun but smiling. It had been taken in the summer, and there must have been a breeze blowing, because wisps of blond hair framed her face. She was wearing a white peasant blouse, and there were flowers in her hair. Real ones, it looked like. Behind her was a stand of trees, and if you just glanced at the picture, you’d think she was one of those forest nymphs from Grimm’s fairy tales.

  Lila remembered asking Gramum about her. Her name was Alice Monroe, Gramum would say, her lips tightening, and she came from someplace in Indiana. Gramum never met her, she would add. Her grandmother wasn’t trying to be cruel, but Lila understood that any mention of her mother evoked memories—few of them good. Her father’s marriage was something he and Gramum refused to revisit. It wasn’t a mistake, mind you, Gramum would say over and over. She and Danny were blessings, and if it hadn’t been for their mother, they wouldn’t be here today.

  Indeed, her mother had died giving birth to them. Her delicate constitution just couldn’t bear children, Gramum said, especially twins. Gramum would tell her how they’d named her Lila, from the Aramaic word for “night,” because her father had brought them both home in the dead of night. Then she’d change the subject and remind Lila not to bother her father with questions—he was just too busy.

  She’d defied Gramum only once, when she was a teenager full of insatiable curiosity. She’d waited until Gramum was in bed, then crept down to her father’s study to ask about her mother. He didn’t know where her mother’s family was, he said; she hadn’t been on good terms with them. As far as he knew, they never knew she was pregnant. Yes, it was a shame, he added, but he wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to find the Monroe family. With such a common name, they could be just about anywhere. When Lila asked him why he never married again, he said he was just too busy.

  Exactly what Gramum said.

  She’d even asked her aunt about her mother, but Val quickly changed the subject back to herself. Val—she demanded that Lila call her Val, not Valerie, or God forbid, Aunt Valerie—had been married three times but was childless and currently single. She wasn’t evil, and, on occasion, she was fun to be with, but she wasn’t what Lila would call dependable. She was always dashing off someplace, traveling all over the world.

  Now Lila wandered into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, took out a bottle of wine, and poured a glass. The Pinot Grigio was tart but with an underlying sweetness. Danny did have good taste in wine. Clothes and women, too. She was just about to take another sip when she heard a scratching noise outside the kitchen door.

  She froze, the wine glass halfway to her mouth. Danny’s apartment was on the second floor, but the back door opened to a porch with stairs down to the street. The scratching stopped. Lila clutched the glass. Her nerves were shot. Was she imagining this, too?

  A moment later it started up again. This time it sounded as if someone was lightly scraping against something metal. Not her imagination. Her eyes slid to the phone on the kitchen wall. It would take the police at least ten minutes to respond, but she needed help now.

  She heard snuffling and what sounded like labored breathing. Slowly she moved to the kitchen counter, set down the glass, and opened a drawer that housed Danny’s knives. Three lay inside. One was a carving knife with a long curving blade. Another, a short paring knife. The third was a sharp, sturdy-looking knife with a six-inch blade. The long knife would be awkward and unwieldy. The short one, too little. She picked up the sturdy one. The handle fit easily in her palm. Like Goldilocks, it was just right.

  She edged her way to the door. She had surprise on her side. Would that be enough? What if there was more than one person? She thought again about the scratching. She had no idea what was making it. Her heart pounded. She smelled the fear on herself.

  She tore the door open and went out to the porch. Below, at street level, a dog whimpered and trotted away from the garbage cans.

  Lila was being chased by a large dog that turned into a snake and slithered faster than she could run. The snake was almost on top of her when she came awake. It wasn’t quite dawn, but the blackness outside had thinned, leaving a fog of gray.

  She ran a bath, threw in a handful of bubble bath she’d bought at Walgreens, and soaked for half an hour. Afterwards, she flitted restlessly from room to room again, like a fly landing on objects only for brief moments. By the fifth circuit, she realized she was being compulsive and made herself stop.

  She thought about calling Rich, her ex-boyfriend. A stockbroker in New York, he would be up by now, maybe on his way to the floor. No. They’d broken up three months ago. What if another woman answered the phone? Or she heard a quiet female murmur in the background? Bad idea.

  Maybe she’d call a girlfriend instead. But who? There were women she worked out with, colleagues at Peabody Stern she collaborated with, even women in her building with whom she traded elevator pleasantries. But Lila didn’t make friends easily. She wasn’t comfortable with “girl talk.” She thought about calling Annie Gossage, but pushed away the idea. With her three kids and husband, Annie’s life was too busy already. If Lila called, Annie would make time for her, but she’d feel sorry for Lila, and Lila couldn’t tolerate the humiliation of being pitied.

  She decided to check her email. Back in Danny’s office, she sat at his desk and booted up the computer. She clicked on her email program and waded through the spam cluttering her in-box. After deleting them, only three messages remained.

  One was from a grassroots political organization to which she’d pledged twenty-five dollars for Internet neutrality. Not only did the initiative fail, but she was now on every mailing list of activists ever known to man or beast. The second was from her “team leader” at Peabody Stern about an upcoming departmental staff meeting, which she would be missing. The third was a message about a genealogy website. It promised to locate ancestors, make contact with long lost cousins, even run background checks. Lila
moved it to her deleted items folder. She was about to erase the folder altogether when something made her pause. She retrieved the message, and read it again.

  Death had tagged her and run away, snatching everything she cherished. Her father and Danny were gone. But they were only half of her family. Her mother’s family was out there somewhere. If she could find them, connect with them, maybe she could find comfort, even a sense of belonging.

  She clicked on the genealogy website.

  NINE

  “Take these.” Val opened her palm. In it were eight or nine little white pills.

  “What’s that?” Lila asked.

  “Ambien. To help you sleep.” Her aunt slipped them back into a small brown plastic vial and set it on the table. They were having lunch at Milano’s, a white-tablecloth Italian café in downtown Evanston.

  Lila held up her palm. Unlike Danny, she was reluctant to take any drug if she didn’t have to. “Thanks, Val, but they’d be wasted on me.” She smiled weakly and looked out the window. A few snowflakes drifted down, dissolving on contact with the sidewalk, uncertain whether they wanted to be there at all. Chicago winters were like that, she recalled. Furious blizzards followed by periods of apologetic calm.

  Her aunt shrugged and dumped the vial back in her bag. Val was as different from Casey as Lila was—had been—from Danny. Tall and statuesque, her aunt cut a dramatic figure, and she usually milked it. She could be amusing, even exciting, but she was often like Auntie Mame on steroids.

  Today she was trying for a vintage look, but her shawl was too large, her blouse too busy, and the pants too tight for her middle-aged body. Her thick hair, piled on top of her head, was a rich black this season. Lila suspected a few extensions were woven through it. Her cheeks were as taut as the skin on a drum, the result of two facelifts. Her face would probably vibrate if touched. But Val’s blue eyes were large and luminous, and they regarded Lila with curiosity. “How long will you be staying?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I took a leave of absence from Peabody Stern.”

  “Can you do that? I mean, without sacrificing your position? You’ve worked so hard.”

  “They said to take all the time I needed,” Lila said, a little surprised by the question. As far as she knew, her aunt had never worked a day. She remembered Gramum’s scowl whenever the subject of Val came up. Still, Val had managed to accumulate enough income to travel. She also claimed to be an artist, but Lila had never seen any paintings or heard her allude to any work in progress.

  “That’s wonderful. So …, ” her aunt’s voice turned businesslike, “ … what’s going on with the insurance claim?”

  The insurance adjuster, Rick Witt, was a man whose trousers and sleeves were too long for his stocky frame. He’d interviewed Lila several times. Each time he’d had a runny nose, and his constant sniffling nearly drove her crazy. “He’s waiting for the final report from the fire marshal’s office.”

  “Fire marshal? I thought they just investigated arson.”

  “Whenever there’s a death by fire, apparently, the state fire marshal’s office is called in. All I know is that I was interviewed by the local fire department, the state fire marshal, and the insurance adjuster. And then Dad’s lawyer said I should hire a public adjuster, just to make sure Midwest Mutual didn’t weasel out of its responsibility.”

  “Have they told you what they think happened?”

  “They think the lights on the tree shorted out and started a fire. Which then spread to the curtains and the furniture, and … ” Her voice trailed off.

  “I still don’t get it. Why didn’t Danny or your father get out? There was a smoke alarm, wasn’t there?”

  “It wasn’t working.”

  The surprise in Val’s voice made raising her eyebrows unnecessary. “Really?”

  “Dad was conscientious about that kind of thing. But with his hip replacement and everything, he might have forgotten to replace the battery.”

  “But don’t they keep beeping when the battery goes?”

  “I have no idea, Val.”

  “And don’t you think Danny should have gotten him out? I mean, he was more mobile.”

  Lila hesitated. “They found barbiturates in Danny’s system. He was out of it. Probably slept through the whole thing, until … ”

  Val colored, as if she just remembered she’d offered Lila a stash of sleeping pills.

  “They say Dad looked like he was trying to get out but was overcome by smoke. His body was by the door.”

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry, darling.”

  “The thing is …, ” Lila’s voice wavered.

  “What?”

  “I thought I unplugged the lights before I left.”

  Val shot her a look.

  “So I don’t understand how unplugging them triggered the fire.”

  “What do the investigators say?”

  “Nothing conclusive. In fact, things seem to be dragging.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Val’s face took on a knowing expression.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fire happened right before the holidays. No one wants to do extra paperwork that time of year.”

  Lila stared at her aunt.

  Val took a long sip of chardonnay. “Lila, darling. I’m going to BA at the end of next week. It’s not too late for you to come with.”

  “BA?”

  “Buenos Aires.”

  Lila thought about traveling with Aunt Valerie, being with her 24/7. She remembered her father constantly rolling his eyes when she stayed with them for a while between her second and third husbands.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll hang around here. I … I should wait for the insurance report.”

  “Too bad. Travel is a tonic for me. But I suppose it’s different for everyone.” She scavenged through the bread basket, surfacing with a soft Italian roll. She broke it in two, buttered half, and popped it in her mouth.

  Lila leaned back. “Aunt Valerie, do …”

  “Val, darling. Val.”

  “Sorry. Val, do you ever feel … well … that … you’re … well … just treading water while you figure out where you’re supposed to be?”

  Her aunt stopped chewing and gazed at Lila. Lila couldn’t tell if she’d hit the bull’s eye or said something so ludicrous Aunt Valerie was struggling to find a courteous response.

  “I don’t see life that way, darling,” Val finally said.

  “How do you see it?”

  She finished chewing, taking her time. She folded her hands. “Life is a grand adventure,” she said. “And I’m the captain, first mate, and boiler room operator all rolled into one. You better believe I know where I’m going.”

  Funny how traits run in families. When he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself, Danny was that way, too.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Val went on. “You’ve suffered a horrific loss. Of course you’re off balance. You’ll bounce back.”

  Lila fought an achy feeling in the back of her throat. “You lost a brother.”

  Her aunt smiled. “Yes, but I’m closer to the end than the beginning. You’re still at an age where it’s a shock to confront death.” She pointed her finger upwards. “He and I are becoming more acquainted every day.” She picked up her wine glass. “Although we’re both taking our time, mind you.” She paused. “And, frankly, your father and I were never that close.”

  “Why not?”

  “Different people. Different goals. For example, I could never have built a business the way he did. Or raised the two of you.”

  “Gramum helped.”

  Val rolled her eyes. “That too. Living with our mother.” She shook her head. “Your father is … was a saint.”

  Lila cocked her head. Val was talking to her like she was an adult. She liked that. Maybe her father and grandmother had been the tiniest bit unfair. Despite the melodrama, her aunt wasn’t as superficial or as foolish as they’d led her to believe. Still, Lila gathered her cou
rage before asking the next question. She’d asked it before, but it still felt like venturing out on a high dive. “Did you know my mother?”

  Val gazed at her for a moment, then took another sip of wine. She set her glass down carefully. “I never met her.”

  “How come?”

  “She and your father … didn’t live nearby. And they were … well, involved in other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “I told you … I wasn’t around.”

  Something in Val’s words sounded scripted to Lila. She propped her elbows on the table. “Val, why is … was … everyone so stingy with information about my mother? Gramum never mentioned her, and Daddy never said anything unless I forced the subject. Why didn’t anyone want me to know about her?”

  Val tightened her lips, the same way Gramum used to do. “Your father … and your mother … er … got together during a …” she seemed to choose the word carefully, “… a turbulent time.”

  “Dammit, Val. What is this wall of bullshit?”

  Val studied her. Lila had the feeling she was coming to a decision. Then Val leaned back. “Your father never told you about that part of his life?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Val sighed. “For the record, you should know I never agreed with his decision. I thought you and Danny should have been told.”

  Lila had a sense that Val’s next words might change her life. “Told what?”

  “Casey … your father … dropped out of college. After his freshman year.”

  “Dad dropped out? But he went to night school. At DePaul.”

  Val made a brushing aside gesture. “After you two were born. But he started out at Michigan.”

  “The University of Michigan?” Lila straightened up. “In Ann Arbor? Are you kidding?” When Val nodded, she said, “Why didn’t he tell us?”