How to Set Yourself on Fire

by Julia Dixon Evans

  “You never play with her,” my father said. He wore shorts and loafers, which is how I knew it was a Saturday.

  I’d never specifically noticed. My childlike self-centeredness just assumed all grown-ups were tedious bores who got off on ignoring kids. My mother, though, looked ready to snap.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she said.

  Suddenly they were both attentive to me, handing me toys in the unlearned way of people who never played. Both of them, arms outstretched with an offering: a doll or a block, me grabbing at neither. Until my father put his down, stood up, and walked inside.

  My mother shook the doll once toward me, and I took it.

  “Let’s feed your doll some of these nice weeds,” she said, a cheeriness I never bought. She grasped a handful of broadleaf clover in her palm, violently pulled at them, and then sprinkled them with surprising tenderness at my doll’s feet.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING IS the first morning with the hours askew, and it feels too late, like the middle of the day, like I’ve missed something already. I sit in the courtyard on one of Vinnie’s faded green plastic lawn chairs. Torrey is in the other, stretched out with her head swung all the way back to the wall, eyes closed. She looks insanely long and lanky, more like a boy than an almost-woman. I wonder if it’s sick of me to long for the waistline of a twelve-year-old girl. I wonder if it’s sick of me to wonder if Torrey appreciates her own waistline. I wonder if she’s even sexual yet, because I was starting to understand it at that age. I see a pimple forming in the crease around her nose and I feel better and snap out of it. The table is the same green plastic as the chairs, cracked at the corner. One leg is loose, dangling like an extra limb. Vinnie’s ashtray rests on the intact side of the table, full and pungent.

  “Hey,” I say.

  Torrey opens her eyes and lifts her head slightly, then closes her eyes and puts her head back. That’s going to be her only salutation.

  “You know, I never really liked my mom,” I say, and I put my feet on the table.

  Torrey sits up. “God. That’s an awful thing to say to me.”

  “What? Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

  The table is not going to be sturdy enough to hold my feet. I put them down. I’m angry that in a conversation with a twelve-year-old girl, I’m somehow the awkward one.

  “No!” she says. “That’s like…that’s like telling someone whose mom just died that they’re lucky.”

  “Well,” I say. “That’s pretty much exactly what I was saying.”

  Torrey lets out some sort of preteen sound.

  “My dad warned me about you.”

  I laugh. “Vinnie?” I laugh again. “Vinnie. Warned you? About me?”

  “God, why are you even out here? Did you come out here to try to talk and, like, bond with me and shit?”

  I don’t answer. Because, yes. Yes I did.

  “Just leave me alone,” Torrey finishes.

  She puts her feet up and the entire table falls. The plastic ashtray bounces as it casts cinders all over the concrete slabs between our doors. I feel victorious for a second, like I won the awkwardness war. Then I feel shitty. In the face of this feeling, my strongest desire is to go back inside and close the doors and windows. I remember why I do not keep friends, why I can’t keep friends: I can’t stick around beyond this phase, when it’s not as easy as that first meeting, when I doubt everything I say, everything they say, every expression on my face, every expression on their faces, and it’s the summer after eighth grade again and just when I think I have a “group,” the other moms plan a father-daughter camping trip to the mountains. “You can come anyway, Sheila,” they said to me the day before they left, weeks and weeks too late to properly invite someone camping. Just in time for a pity invite. Just in time to let themselves off the hook. “You can share my dad for the weekend,” they said, but they didn’t look me in the eye, or maybe they did but I wasn’t looking them in the eye. I’d never look them in the eye again.

  I didn’t even want to be Torrey’s friend. I just wanted a moment. Any initial inspiration to be a good person, to be some sort of support to this strange, sad girl, it’s all gone.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Torrey, don’t be sorry,” I say. “I’m the asshole.”

  “I know,” she says. “Oh my God!” she adds. “I didn’t mean it like that! I don’t think you’re an asshole.”

  Suddenly she’s not even twelve anymore. She slaps her hand over her mouth and her eyes go wide, like a young child. I remember the last time she was out to visit Vinnie, a year ago. Eleven is so different from twelve. She seemed much smaller then.

  “No, it’s okay. I am.”

  She leans back and rearranges herself in her original position, the crown of her head flush to the bumpy stucco. It doesn’t look comfortable or comforting but I try it, too. The wall is prickly on my scalp, but it’s not worth the effort it’d take to lift my head back up. I feel momentary pride in understanding a preteen girl.

  “Tell me about her,” Torrey says.

  I laugh.

  “God, you laugh at everything me or my dad says. Either we’re really funny or you have mental problems.”

  I laugh again. “That time you were funny.”

  “Great,” she says. Sarcasm is an admirable trait in any child. I reward her with a laugh.

  “No,” I say. “You don’t need to hear about my mom. She’s just a normal mom. It’d piss you off to hear about our problems. Tell me about your mom.”

  The silence between us is fragile. I hear a toilet flush inside. It makes me think of Vinnie sitting on the toilet for the entirety of this conversation, taking a shit. Vinnie’s shits historically reach the courtyard with their stench. Sometimes even if I’m indoors, I have to close the windows against them. I brace myself for this one but it doesn’t come.

  “I mean, I’ve never met her. I just used to hear all of Vinnie’s Skypes with you and she was there. I guess I’ve heard her voice a few times. She seemed so much nicer than your dad.”

  “You need to learn to stop talking.”

  “Well, it’s true. I mean, Vinnie was always a raging prick when he talked to her.”

  “Like I said.”

  “I always liked Vinnie when he talked to you,” I say.

  “It’s so weird that you eavesdrop on him,” she says, but she’s smiling.

  I tilt my head toward her.

  “You kinda look like your dad when you smile.”

  It’s Torrey’s turn to laugh.

  “No, I’m serious. A less old, less ugly Vinnie.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re not going to talk about your mom, then?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Okay. I can tell you a fucked-up story about mine, if you want.”

  “Go on, then. Nothing can make me feel better or worse,” she says, and I marvel at her wisdom. I wish I had half of it. I wish I understood that feeling now, in my thirties, never mind as a kid.

  “Let me pick a story.”

  “Oh, you have more than one?”

  “Of course. My mother is crazy.”

  “Are you crazy?” she asks.

  “Yes, but not like her. I actually think it was her own mother’s fault. I just found out that my grandmother had this, like, unconsummated affair for basically her entire life.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Never have kids, Torrey, is what I’m saying.”

  She laughs. “I’m too young to think about that,” she says, like it’s a practiced line. Like the teachers at whatever ultra-progressive school she went to back east fed the little girls some specific drivel when they were caught playing dolls or house.

  I take a deep breath, and I feel like a moron for taking a deep breath to steel myself. It doesn’t even work.

  What would I say about my mom to a daughter who has just lost her mother? I think about when she sa
t with me on the stairs after my dad left the first time, temporarily, and she must’ve been so sad but she didn’t take care of her own sadness, she took care of mine, but I hated what had happened so much that I couldn’t separate it from her. I couldn’t stop blaming her. She made me a warm drink, honey and lemon in hot water, comfort food, and nothing tasted the same. What did blame and hurt taste like?

  Or the time he left for good, that morning, she came to my Confirmation and smiled, dressed in linen, transparent red plastic-framed sunglasses in the church courtyard, greeting the other mothers, greeting the bishop, her arm around me. I was annoyed by how proud she acted, how fake it seemed. The next day I was angry that she hadn’t told me about my father. Even then, I think I knew I would’ve instead been angry at her for ruining my Confirmation day. Under the silent gaze of Torrey, of a girl already proving herself to be smart and kind and weird, I couldn’t come up with a single memory that showed my mother as batshit crazy. The only things I could come up with showed that it was all my fault.

  “Did Vinnie tell you that my grandma recently died?”

  “No,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to be sorry,” I say. “It’s just important if you want to know more about my mom.”

  “Sheila, I don’t know if I want to know more about your mom,” Torrey says. She has a bit of dread in her voice.

  “It’s not that bad. Don’t worry. It’s mostly just a story about my grandmother. Right before she died, like hours before, she told me she wanted to give me something, this ancient shoebox. But she said it could wait until the next day.”

  “And then she died.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, did you get the shoebox?”

  “Well,” I say. “I had to sneak in and steal it from my mom’s house.”

  “That’s terrible! You’re dysfunctional.”

  “I know. But in the box were hundreds of letters. Letters from a man who wasn’t her husband. Letters of increasing intimacy.”

  “Ooh.”

  “I know. I’m glad you see it that way, too. My mother, apparently, doesn’t.”

  “How’s that?” she asks.

  “She seemed really stressed to have lost track of the box,” I say, and I sit up straight and shift the chair a bit so I’m facing her. The plastic legs scrape against the concrete and I worry for a split second that I look too intense. I try to apply some nonchalance to my face. “I think she’s paranoid people might find out. She wasn’t gonna tell me what was in the box, or who the letters were from.”

  “Well, I guess that makes sense,” Torrey says.

  “Anyway, I had to lie to her.”

  “I bet you’re really good at telling really good lies,” Torrey says. She still has that childlike ability to say something incredibly innocent and offensive. It’s hard to be angry when it’s so true.

  “Yeah, well, I have my talents.”

  “What did you tell her?” she asks.

  “I told her I found it, but that I put it in the coffin and it got buried with Grandma. But it’s really still in my house.”

  “Oh, shit,” she says. “You still have the letters.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  I feel a fire inside, a spark. I’m almost certain this is a terrible idea. “Wanna read them?”

  EIGHTEEN

  “WHOA.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “This is the last one?” Torrey says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, obviously, I guess. But I wish—I mean, I just want him to change his mind.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t disagree.

  That night, I read them all again. Every single letter. Three hundred and eighty-two. Sleep never happens. I always sleep somehow, even if it’s a nap at four in the morning. Five hours into reading, I close my eyes, but all I hear is Compline, a holy rite, a remnant, leftovers from who I used to be. In the darkness, I even see the print of the prayer book, a strongly serifed font with tall, round capitals.

  “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”

  It was repetitive, but never repetitive enough for me. It was always a little disappointing that the line was only repeated at the very end of the brief service. I wanted it over and over again. Right now I let it repeat a dozen times, maybe more, until I cannot bear to keep my eyes closed any longer. My fingernails dig into the skin on the opposite elbow, my arms cross beneath my breasts, my shoulders hitch up. And then it’s the opening supplication, and I’m whispering it, and I don’t love church and I don’t love God, but I can’t stop myself.

  “O God, make speed to save us.

  O Lord, make haste to help us.”

  Unguarded, unsaved, unhelped, I do not sleep.

  Torrey’s not there the next morning. We’ve had two mornings of sitting together and I was getting used to it. I thought we had a pattern going. A habit. A thing.

  Vinnie comes out instead.

  “Vinnie,” I say with a nod.

  I’m trying out green tea. It looked like the best decision on the shelf, the most life-improving. Vinnie lights up to smoke. He looks well rested and I distrust him for it.

  “Where’s Torrey?” I ask.

  “It’s 9:30 on a Monday. She’s at school.”

  Oh. “Since when does she go to school?”

  “Since she was five?” Vinnie says.

  I realize it’s a dumb question.

  I roll my eyes and fake a serious voice. “I mean, is this her first day at her new school out here?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “That’s gonna suck,” I say.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. Torrey’s a good kid. Other kids love her,” he says. “They always do.”

  How do you know that, I want to ask. How do you know anything about a girl’s social life, much less a life lived somewhere else. I wonder this because my dad is nowhere. I wonder if he ever pretends to know me, too. I wonder if he ever pretends I’m a good kid.

  “She’s not like you, Sheila. She’s not like me. She’s good with people.”

  I laugh. “I’m great with people.”

  It feels like I’m a kid again, waiting for the mail. I sit all the way over to the side of the step, so I can see the rusty-gated entrance to our shared courtyard. I try to remember. Middle school gets out at two thirty? Maybe three. I need something to do.

  NINETEEN

  THERE ARE ANTS ON the front step, again, still. Sometimes when I watch them, I’m impressed. I can’t help humanizing their systems, their shared work, their collaboration, the purity of their social order. Their ability to exist in nearly every place on Earth. Their ability to evolve. Their ability to do all the things I can’t. There’s no purity in my social order. I can barely exist in one room in one house.

  I squat at the bottom of the step with a kettle full of boiling water like my grandmother taught me. I pour the water slowly and watch as their little bodies curl up when they’re scalded to death. Or maybe they drown first. I think about whether I would notice the burning water against my flesh as I drowned. Or maybe the feeling of my skin bubbling up and peeling off would mask any sensation of drowning. Maybe it would be an interesting way to go.

  “You’re good with her,” Vinnie says.

  I jump a little. I didn’t know he was right behind me. Usually Vinnie moves like a goddamn elephant. He is never where I don’t know him to be.

  “No,” I say. “No, I’m not. I’m terrible with her.”

  Vinnie doesn’t answer right away. I turn around and sit on the front step, facing him. The kettle is hot through my jeans when I rest it on my lap. I count in my head. One, two, three, four, five. It starts to feel good. Six, seven, eight, nine. Too hot. I move the kettle. I’m a coward.

  Vinnie picks at a callus on his palm. He has a whole row of these calluses, right at the base of his fingers, but this one is half off. He pic
ks some more and pulls it completely off. He twirls the amputated callus between his thumb and fingertip for a few seconds until it’s some sort of balled-up, once-human pellet and he flicks it to the ground. I watch it come to rest right next to my river of drowned, scalded ants.

  “Yeah, well,” he says. A shrug. “No one ever knows what’s good for them when it’s right in front of them.”

  He lets that hang in the air. I pick up the kettle and pour more water on more ants and surreptitiously aim for the callus. I watch it float down the tiny rivulet of ant carcasses and finally disappear in the soil next to the step.

  “It’s good for her to talk to you.”

  I hear his feet shuffling back to his door, and then it creaks open, then clicks shut. I don’t look up. I keep watch on the dead bodies at my feet.

  TWENTY

  “SO WHERE ARE THE rest of them?” Torrey asks.

  Her voice startles me awake. This is the shittiest place I could doze off for an afternoon nap, sitting on my doorstep with my cheek against the rough stucco. I assume I look horrific, with the wall’s indentations red on my cheek like a vicious pox. Torrey really must be good with people after all, because she doesn’t say anything about it.

  “The rest?”

  “The letters,” she says.

  “There’s over three hundred of them! We read them all.” I try to act like I don’t know there are exactly three hundred and eighty-two. I try to act like I don’t know what she is talking about.

  “Surely you’ve thought of the others.”

  I rub my cheek. I can feel the stucco embossed there.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Yeah. The other half.”

  I’m about to stand up. Or go inside. Or ask Torrey about her first day of school. But then she says: “What was she like?”

  “My grandmother? I don’t know, really.”

  “But you must have been close.”

  “As close as we could, all things considered.” I kick at the wall. “Fuck,” I mutter. “I sound just like my mother.”