Vinnie comes out. “Hey, Tor. How was it?” He doesn’t wait for her answer before he adds, “And stop teaching my daughter how to curse.”
I glare.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
Torrey opens her mouth to talk but I interrupt.
“I’m just teaching your daughter about star-crossed lovers. It’s worse than the F word.”
He looks like he’s thinking of something to say, mouth closed and pursed to one side, but instead he just goes back inside.
“Sheila, we don’t even know if they’re star-crossed!”
“First of all,” I say. “We? And of course they are. Look at his letters. They reek of a reciprocated love.”
“Well. I have nothing to do right now. Nobody expects the new girl to do any homework.”
“And?” I ask. But I’m smiling.
“Let’s go. Whatever we can’t find online we can find in the library.”
“Torrey, you think I haven’t tried looking this shit up?” I’m not sure why I say this. I haven’t looked anything up.
“So, you have tried?”
I don’t answer right away. “I googled a bit.”
“Try harder. Come on. I’m good at this stuff.”
“How can a twelve-year-old be gifted at stalking?”
“My mom taught me how. We ran our own little background checks on any guy she met.”
“That…” I pause. Is it okay to badmouth her recently deceased mother yet? “That’s kind of dysfunctional.”
“Whatever. First we find out when the house was sold.”
“What house?”
“Oh my God. Keep up, Sheila. Harold’s house.”
I feel a bit of relief when a prior sale date on Harold’s old house matches up with Harold’s final farewell letter. Sometimes I wondered if it was all fiction. It might have been my grandmother’s opus, a work of art, a game of hide and seek for future generations. Mixed somewhere in the relief is disappointment, because that kind of work, that kind of craft, would have been astonishing. But despite this almost-relief, I start to panic. It’s a dull ache, starting in the top of my gut, kind of esophageal. Then it’s in my chest, thick and heavy. The air is poisoned; I can smell and taste it. The ache is a trap, a lock, a temperature vice in the back of my throat. My eyes feel heavy with unfocus but also like they’re going to float out of my head—my entire head could float away, eyeballs first, then scalp, then everything else.
“Torrey, go home,” I say. I brace both hands against the desk.
“What?”
“Go home. I need you to go home.”
She looks crushed. She leaves, quietly. I lie down on the floor It takes twenty minutes for me to get up off the floor. I only bother so I can get to the toilet and throw up, weak and slow. Vomit gets caught in the back of my nose. The last time I threw up was the night my grandmother died, before I knew she died, so it’s not like it was connected. Finished, I lean back against the cold iron edge of the bath. My chest still hurts. My hands still shake.
I crawl to my bed to lie down again and nothing changes. I take a letter out of the shoebox. It’s a hard one to read.
Dear Rosamond,
My. It was such a pleasure to meet you. I will assuredly still purchase a new doll for your daughter, despite your insistence that I not. But not yet. First, I wanted to write to you. Would you think of me as silly if I were to walk to your home to deliver this letter before I left for the toy shop this afternoon? You are incredibly kind and forgiving. Not just in the things you said to me, but I can see it in your eyes. Even your hands look gentle. Oh, it was such a pleasure to meet you. Perhaps you might come to the back fence one afternoon to drink a cup of tea and share a conversation?
When you came to my door to deliver your message, well, I just can’t explain it. Thank you so much, for not only allowing me to redeem myself and repent for the sins of my terrier, but also for affording me the chance to converse, however briefly, with such a lovely and bright young woman. I have felt quite lonely in this part of town. Until I met you, I felt I was the only one like me.
Well. That is all. I look forward to speaking with you again. Or perhaps you could write back. It would be quite amusing to have a pen pal with a shared back fence.
Sincerely,
Harold C. Carr
It’s three in the morning when the feeling in my chest and throat lets up and I decide to get in the car. I drive to my grandmother’s old house. It only takes fifteen minutes in the dead of night. There’s a new streetlight just to the right of her house. The light pools onto the front yard and the small stretch of grass that leads to the back. I wonder who lives here now. They have two cars in the long driveway, a Subaru and a minivan with a large dent in the side. The idea that there are new children in the house makes me hurt. I imagine a daughter, four years old, playing with a doll in the backyard. I get out of the car and sit on the sidewalk, directly beneath the streetlight.
It’s Jesse Ramirez’s letter that I’ve brought with me. Not Harold’s. I don’t remember reaching in my nightstand drawer to get it out of the gallon-sized Ziploc. I don’t remember putting it in my back pocket. It’s bent now from sitting in the car.
“Fuck,” I say, at full volume.
It’s not just that I’m afraid of myself for bringing this letter without noticing. It’s not the idea that I perform physical tasks without remembering. It’s not that it’s bent after so long of keeping it nearly immaculate in the baggie in my drawer, save for the drop of my own blood—my DNA, blood cells, skin cells, the insides of me dead on my breath—soaked into the fibers of the paper, the etchings of the ink. It’s all of these things. It’s the fact that I am here at all. It’s the fact that I didn’t bring Harold’s letters. I wonder if I’d feel something, holding the letters so close to their birthplace, their origin. The moment Harold and Rosamond began.
I try to think like a young mother. I try to think like the two of them. How would I act if I met Harold C. Carr? And how would I act if it were me asleep with my happy family in my new house, with my minivan and Subaru in the driveway, when I woke up to a woman sitting on the sidewalk cursing?
If I never have children, I’ll never need to know.
I read Jesse’s letter again. His voice was always kind, quieter than the usual cheerful delivery person. I imagine the way he might talk to a lover, even kinder, even quieter. I read the line on the second page that I never want to read again. I read it twice. It’s the part that tells me exactly where I would stand if he ever noticed me again. If he ever noticed me in the first place.
“But how.” I read it out loud, the streetlight’s beam a yellow-green cone around me, the hiss of insects, the quiet staccato of a single cricket, a nearly imperceptible buzz from the power lines. “Can I even begin to imagine a life with someone else when they’ll just occupy spaces still taken by you?”
I read it again, slow and loud.
“But how,” I tell the night, the sick way my skin looks in the streetlight.
“Can I even begin,” I say.
“To imagine a life,” and I stand up.
“With someone else.”
I walk up the steps. Now’s a good time to go back to whispering. I don’t.
“When,” I say, as my bare feet touch the grass in the side yard. It’s wet with dew.
“They’ll just occupy spaces.” I walk slowly, but I speak even slower.
“Still,” and I’m in the backyard. Away from the streetlight’s preternatural glow, the night is lovely. The moon is at three quarters, the kind of moon where the waxing edge is blurry and smudged. There are no clouds, just a slight chill in the air and on my dew-drenched toes, signs of November in the coastal desert.
“Taken,” I say as I get to the back fence.
“By you.”
I stand in the dirt where the sunflowers used to grow and put both hands on the fence. I put Jesse’s letter in my pocket. I think about leaving it here, about poking it through t
he gap in the fence, some sort of ancestral closure, but I’m too selfish. As I stand there, looking over the fence, the dawn changes the color of Harold C. Carr’s old house. Then I slowly walk back through the strangers’ garden, across the street, and drive away.
“History always repeats itself,” my grandmother said.
TWENTY-ONE
Dear Rosamond,
It was lovely to have you over for tea this morning. You are such sunshine in my life. I’m sorry your daughter could not join us, but I suppose we would not have been able to speak so easily if you had a small child to tend to. It is indeed fortunate that you had a friend to watch her for you. I hesitate to admit this, but over the last week I have observed you a little bit. I watch from my back patio. It’s charming and haunting all at the same time. Ellen seems to be at a troubling age. Lots of crying and tantrums. And it fills me with another emotion that I am only just beginning to understand: it feels like longing. I long for a child, for a family, but at the same time that life feels so far away. I cannot explain it yet. Perhaps one day I will understand it, and I hope you will be around to sit in my kitchen with a teacup and listen to my monologue on the subject.
I do hope your daughter is enjoying her new doll, or, better yet, she has not noticed a difference between this one and the former doll, may she rest in peace.
Please either come to see me again, or steal time away to come to the back fence to say hello. If I see you there, I will come and greet you.
In fact, shall we put our correspondence through the gap between the fence? It seems easier than the United States Postal Service or walking our letters around the block. I am so pleased that you have agreed to write to me. It will be enjoyable to have a friend. I shall feel silly saying this, but I already feel quite fulfilled by this endeavor, and it has only just begun.
I also acknowledge that perhaps your husband does not know that you are receiving letters from the man who lives behind you. And I acknowledge how disastrous that sounds. I admit to having heard his temper from all the way in my own bedroom at night. I would understand if you did not wish to tell him. Perhaps the fence-gap correspondence method will be more discreet. I will poke my next letter through so that it ends up beneath the small bush growing next to your lovely sunflowers.
Sincerely,
Your new friend,
Harold
TWENTY-TWO
“VINNIE,” I SAY AS I step outside. It’s noon. Torrey is at school. The sun is strong for November. I smell the edge of a wildfire far away.
“Sheila,” he says. He lights a cigarette. His fingertips are red and peeling. It looks like some kind of chemical irritant.
“What do you do, Vinnie? I’ve wondered this since the day I moved in and saw you here all day every day.”
He smiles. “Well, I do a little freelance work,” he says.
“You mentioned that.” I can’t tell if I’m angered or amused by this.
“Listen, nosy woman. I am a taxidermist.”
I laugh. “Oh come on. Just tell me.”
He stubs out his cigarette and rests it on the edge of the ashtray. He stands up.
“Wait here.”
A minute and a half later, he emerges with a white plaster dog-like creature mounted on a long wooden base. He sets it on the wobbly table. The mouth is open and those are fucking real teeth pointing right at me. The eyeballs bulge out. I want to touch them to see if they’re glass or real eyeballs preserved in formaldehyde. I try to touch my own eyeballs, but that semi-autonomic reflex lets me down.
Next, Vinnie brings out a pelt.
“It’s a gray fox,” he says. “Quite common, yet elusive in protected wilderness areas in San Diego County.”
“Holy shit.”
An hour later, I come back outside, determined. The fox is still on the green table. Vinnie is reading some sort of newsletter.
“Vinnie?” I say.
“Yes?” he says, not looking up.
“When’s the last time you had sex?”
He puts the page on the ground. The wind moves it a little. The sound of paper on concrete makes me shiver. He’s slow to answer. He picks up his once-discarded cigarette and relights it, and I breathe in deeply as he expunges the first smoke.
“It’s been a while,” he says.
“How long?” I ask. Impatient.
“Well, quite a while. It’s not like I’ve had any inclination. Sarah’s death and Torrey moving back here have been a bit preoccupying.”
“How long before Sarah died?”
“Goddamn it, Sheila.”
“Well, do you have any inclination now?” I ask.
He speaks slowly and carefully. “Inclination?”
“Inclination,” I repeat. “For sex. Not to mean anything. Just to get it out of your system.”
“What are you doing?” Vinnie asks.
“I don’t know.” I don’t know.
“Are you serious about this?”
“Yeah,” I say. I don’t know.
“’Cause if you’re serious, then, fine.”
“Fine?” I laugh. “You’re so agreeable all of a sudden.”
“It’s easy to be agreeable when your neighbor suggests a no-strings-attached thing with her oaf of a neighbor.”
“Don’t call yourself an oaf, Vinnie. It’s a turn-off.”
“I call it like I see it.”
“You’re more interesting than that.”
He laughs. I don’t often hear Vinnie laugh. It’s uncomfortable how unfamiliar it is.
“Since when am I interesting?”
“Well, look at you,” I say. “You’re a goddamn taxidermist.”
“So you’re saying I was a regular oaf until you found out what I do for a living?”
I don’t answer. For as oafish as Vinnie technically is, he is razor sharp. He is so much smarter than I ever imagined, and I feel shitty about being surprised by that.
“So you’re saying taxidermy is sexy?” He points to the fox. The wide-open mouth, the exposed tongue. The bulging, glossy eyeballs.
I laugh. I’m not even sure I do find Vinnie sexy. I’m not even sure I want to have sex with him. Despite the fact that I’m about to. “Yes, Vinnie. It’s the taxidermy.”
He stares at me and I stare back, the fox between us, grotesque but already kind of normal.
“I’ll fuck you,” I say, slowly, and I can see his breath quicken as my voice changes. “I’ll fuck you, as long as you bring over some sort of preserved creature to watch us.”
Vinnie looks concerned.
“Jesus. I’m kidding!”
“I never know with you.”
“Go home,” I say, as if he’s not currently leaning against his wall. “And do whatever you need to do to, like, get ready.” Part of me wants to suggest a shower but even I realize it would be a terrible thing to say.
“Okay.”
“Then, just come over.”
“Like, inside your place?”
“Yes, Vinnie.” I roll my eyes.
“Well, I’ve never been inside. You’ve never been in here, either.”
I’m surprised he’s noticed.
I watch Vinnie. He is not an ugly man—in fact, he’s quite nice to look at. His jawline is attractive. I like the look of his strong forearms. His belly is a bit hairy but I imagine the forearms propping him up above me and it’s easier to be okay with it all. We have never touched, Vinnie and me. Our coexistence survives on being in this same tiny, fenced-in piece of planet, small but with just enough elbow room. Until now, until me.
Inside, I remove my clothing. I fold my things carefully and put them back in the drawers. It’s only noon. I can wear them again later.
I lie on my bed and close my eyes. I love the idea of sex in the daylight. It’s been so long that I love the idea of sex at all. I push two fingertips as far as I can inside my vagina and this is how Vinnie finds me when he walks in.
“Oh hell,” he says.
I don’t stop, but I cl
ose my eyes. I want to be touched. I want to be alone. I want sex. I want to feel something. I want to feel someone else’s something. I want someone else to feel something. I want to be left alone and to never talk to another person again. I don’t even know what I want.
“What should I do?” he says.
I consider Vinnie’s hygiene.
“Put your mouth on me,” I say, and just like that, the very first time that my neighbor touches me at all is with his mouth between my legs. I bring my fingers to my own mouth and lean back, my head almost dangling upside down between my propped-up elbows. I don’t watch.
It takes forever but it’s better than anything I’ve ever felt.
“You’re a good man,” I say. I still don’t look at him. “Fuck me.”
TWENTY-THREE
THE LAST MAN I tried to sleep with, before Vinnie, was a man called Sloane I met while briefly temping at an engineering firm, a wishful screenwriter settling for a technical writing job. He was sweetness incarnate, everything I should have been seeking in a partner, but I couldn’t handle it. Jesse was too big to me, even after I’d stopped working at the church, even after I’d stopped parking my car outside his house.
Sloane, a kind man, soft and hard at the same time, smooth and scruffy, a beard but skin that seemed almost liquid beneath my fingertips. Sloane, the kind of man I should’ve brought to my childhood home to meet my mother. We’d’ve stood there in the living room waiting for her to get ready, because she’d have to look her finest vision of grace, because she’d love him already and, with the two of us alone in the room, he’d lean close to me and he’d run his fingertips across the top edge of frames on the mantel, the same frames I’d seen a million times, the pictures I’d forgotten to be embarrassed about because they’d become background noise, wallpaper. And when he’d touch the places where all the pictures of my father used to be, would I notice? Would I even think of my father when a kind man was leaning against my hip? That’s a question I knew the answer to without ever bringing Sloane home. I’d have thought of my father the whole time. He was a kind man, almost all of the time. He was kind when it didn’t matter. Sloane was kind, too. Would Sloane always be kind?
How to Set Yourself on Fire Page 7