How to Set Yourself on Fire

by Julia Dixon Evans

  “How long does it take?” I ask.

  “Does what take? Putting varnish on?”

  “The whole shebang. Stuffing an entire animal.”

  “Well, Sheila,” he says, not looking up from his jaw project, “it all depends on the animal. And let’s not use the word ‘stuffing.’”

  Torrey comes out and sits down next to her father. She has a Pop-Tart. It’s strawberry, with icing and sprinkles. I could identify it by the smell alone.

  “And,” Vinnie continues, “of course, it all depends on how much decay there is.”

  “How much decay?” I repeat.

  “How dead it is,” Torrey says, picking at her Pop-Tart. “You’re up early.”

  “Yeah. Can’t resist a little death in the early morning.”

  “I like to work early in the day,” Vinnie says. “I don’t eat while I work, so I like to get it over with.”

  “I suppose this is why it took me years to find out what you do for a living.”

  Torrey makes eye contact. She looks so old this morning, like she has so many more secrets than I ever gave her credit for. Maybe I should stop sleeping with Vinnie. I feel insecure in this moment, like Torrey intentionally chose not to come over to my house to hang out. But I catch it before it spirals any further. This is why I don’t have friends. This is why I stopped having friends. This is why it’s not worth it. Nobody is ever worth getting close to if I second guess myself all the time. Nobody is ever worth getting close to if the night before my Confirmation he’ll just walk out of our house and never return.

  And then it occurs to me: if Torrey walked right out of my life right now, never to return, I’d be crushed. I’m already in too deep. It’s not like she is a normal friend. She’s not a sister. She’s not a daughter. She’s something else—someone I don’t have to care about, but I do.

  And then another thing occurs to me. If Vinnie walked right out of my life right now, never to return, I’d be devastated.

  “Fuck,” I say to no one in particular.

  My sweet Rosamond,

  Yesterday afternoon, did you feel it, how close we were? I was sitting in the backyard, near the fence. I was completely still, perched on the large wooden chair with my feet up and Ripper slumbering on my knees. I was close to dozing off myself. But then I heard Ellen’s small voice over the fence. I haven’t heard her speak much. I hear her plenty—squeals, cries, shouts, and the other clarions of early childhood—but I think this was the first time I heard much from her linguistically. That small voice of a very small child is such a thing of wonder.

  Have I told you about my siblings? I was the youngest for a long time, many older brothers and sisters, some of them well into their teenage years when I was born. I was raised with many mature minds and hands in the house. But then, when I was eight years old, my mother became pregnant. She gave birth to a very tiny girl, my new sister Delilah, the apple of my eye. Tragically, my mother passed away that day; the birth, her ninth, proved too traumatic for her. It was on that day that an eight-year-old boy became a mother.

  Certainly, there were many people in that home to care for the child, but with the loss of my own mother, to whom I was very close, I channeled all of the love we had shared into that tiny baby. My older brothers and sisters, sometimes even my father, would often turn to me for the final say regarding Delilah. Your daughter reminds me a lot of her, from the brief bits and pieces I have seen. She speaks almost exactly like my Delilah did at that age, the same missing “r,” the same trouble with double consonants.

  When I was away at war, Delilah was married and moved up the state to San Francisco. I’m afraid I haven’t seen much of her since. She is very happy in her new life. I suppose it’s always easier on the baby bird. I don’t know if she knows how important she is to me. She had a baby very young, and named him Harry after me.

  But this is all inconsequential to what I wanted to write to you about, my dear Rosamond. Did you know? Did you know I was there, outside with you? Mere feet away? I sat there in my dreamy state, inches from sleep, when I heard your voice, your sweet voice singing to Ellen. My heart raced. I felt I was soaring. You sang “Oranges and Lemons,” which my own mother always called “London Bells.” It’s such a silly and detailed song. I could never remember all the different church names and what the bells say. I was impressed with your memory as well as charmed by your editorial skills. “And here comes your mother to tickle your head” is so much sweeter and less sociopathic than “And here comes the chopper to chop off your head.”

  I have always wondered if I would ever have children. It didn’t seem like the inevitability for me as it always seemed for others. Raising Delilah gave me a taste of unconditional, unfailing love and unconditional, unfailing worry. I am not entirely sure I could have a child of my own without being overwhelmed by the proper, grown-up versions of that love and that worry. And this is a strange and curious thought, a new layer: I cannot ever imagine having a child since I cannot have a child with you.

  I’m not entirely sure this type of longing is welcome to you. I’m not entirely sure this type of longing is welcome to me.

  My sweet Rosamond, till we meet again.

  Sincerely,

  Your Harold

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  IT’S BEEN THREE DAYS since I met the woman who lives in Harold’s old house. I wonder if one day she’d let me sit in the backyard, against the fence. I want to meet the family that lives in my grandmother’s house, and at the same time I don’t want to meet them. I just want to sneak past them while they sleep and sit in their backyard. I want to feel dirty and creepy. I want to feel insane.

  Rosamond must have felt insane. Rosamond must have known Harold was there that day and every other day they were both in their adjacent backyards, breathing the same air. No dog could sleep soundly through a toddler’s play. Ripper would have made tiny ruffs and growls in response to my mother’s childish noises. Rosamond knew. Rosamond felt him there. Did she feel dirty and creepy? Did she return Harold’s longing?

  It’s dawn. The low light spills into my single room, faint but thick. I don’t remember another time in my life when I slept this little. I let the pages get out of order; it’s his longest letter, many small sheets of tissue-thin writing paper. I’ve never before let them get out of order. I turn on my side and release the letter, allowing it to flutter to the ground, page by page. I’m wearing my grandmother’s dress again and by now it’s wrinkled and has some crusted dirt on the skirt. An onlooker would mistake this scene for devotion, for grief. I reach for my chipped teacup on the nightstand. I made this tea eight hours ago, after I watched NOVA, but I would still drink it. It’s just water and leaves and honey. There’s only a tiny bit left, strong and sweet and cold.

  But my fingers, they are tired, my eyes, they are tired. The teacup is not quite where it looks like it is. I fumble and it falls to the ground, splashing and shattering. Tiny slivers of gold-rimmed china fly across the floor, under the bed, over the letter, the tea-soaked letter. I close my eyes; I squeeze them shut until my forehead hurts. I sleep.

  Eight years old. Technically the same age I was two weeks prior when my father walked out on us for the first time, though I felt like I was a new person. I felt so much older. I felt like I’d had a hundred birthdays, a hundred cakes, a hundred party hats, a hundred things my dad hadn’t been there for. My mother and I were doing the dishes after dinner: hot dogs, no buns, steamed broccoli, Rice-a-Roni. I was washing and she was drying and the water was running, a tinny whoosh against the stainless-steel kitchen sink, so we didn’t hear the rattle and twist of the key in the lock. We didn’t hear the click of the door opening, the muted creak of the rusted hinge, or even the click as it closed. I heard my mother first—her gasp, the way she dropped a cutting board onto the drying rack as she stared into the blackness of the kitchen window. Reflected, behind us, was my father, standing with his arms at his sides.

  I spun around. I didn’t know how to act. I was
so happy to see him and so sad that he had been gone in the first place, but something else too. It was just brewing, bubbling beneath the surface, and it’d take me years to figure it out, but it was shame, more than anything. I felt like my emotions were wrong. I shouldn’t be happy to see him because I was supposed to be mad that he’d left. I shouldn’t be mad that he’d left because I was supposed to be happy to see him. I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t want to say something that would make him feel bad about leaving, although I wanted him to feel bad after all. I didn’t want to say anything that would make him leave again. I wanted to look to my mother for help, but I was scared that I might see her crying and that might make me cry.

  I was already crying, I just hadn’t noticed it yet.

  “Oh Sheila,” my father said, taking a step closer, reaching, pulling me toward him. “Oh Sheila.”

  That night, when I brushed my teeth, I heard them whispering, the loud sort of whispering, so I tiptoed to the top of the stairs. They were in the living room and I couldn’t see them. But I heard bits and pieces. “I don’t care,” said my mother, and “I’m sorry,” over and over again from both of them, but not in the kind way, not in the really sorry way. It was the I’m sorry but way, the I’m sorry you feel that way way. The I’m right way. I heard my father say “I don’t know” a lot. I heard my mother say “I don’t care,” followed by “I don’t fucking care where you were,” which made me cover my mouth with my hand, absolutely shocked.

  And then they were quiet. I wondered if they remembered themselves. If they remembered me. I hurried back into the bathroom and flushed the toilet to make them think that’s what I’d been doing, and then I remembered I still needed to pee before bed. What if they asked me why I flushed twice. What if they asked me what I was really doing. What if they asked me if I overheard. This was dumb, because they never asked me anything.

  My father read me a few pages of Matilda, my favorite book, which felt awkward at times because Matilda had such a shitty home life with shitty parents and nobody wanted to mention how my father had just disappeared for two weeks. But it also felt good, because my dad was back. My dad was back and he wanted to read to me from my favorite book.

  “It’s almost nine o’clock,” my father said, closing the book. We were only a few pages into it. We hadn’t even met Miss Honey yet. Matilda didn’t even know what she could do yet. All we had was the parent hate. “Time to go to sleep.”

  He left the room. For the next few years, until it finally happened, each time he left a room I’d wonder if that would be the time he left forever.

  My mother tucked me into bed and sat there, silent, when my father came back in to kiss me goodnight. He looked at her, but she looked away. When he left, she lowered her head next to mine on my pillow, pale yellow with an eyelet ruffled edge, and stretched out next to me. “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s” she sang. “You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St. Martin’s.” She didn’t sing the rest. I made my breathing quiet, which I now know is not how breathing sounds when someone is asleep, but at eight years old I wasn’t yet well schooled in the art of faking. My mother was silent, but she wasn’t asleep either. I wanted to tell her everything, but I didn’t want to make her any more sad.

  In one night, a happy reunion, a family stopped saying the important things to each other. A family stopped talking.

  The next morning, my parents were both in the kitchen when I came downstairs.

  “There’s not enough milk left for cereal and for coffee,” my mother said. “Can you have toast today?”

  My father sipped his coffee, milky.

  “I’ll drop you off at school today, Sheila,” he said. “But you have to hurry. It’s late.”

  My mother handed me a slice of toast on a paper towel as my father ushered me out the door.

  “You’re getting crumbs everywhere,” he said, halfway through the drive. “Can you not?”

  And then, not even a minute later, seconds really, his voice soft: “It’s okay,” he said. “Hey, it’s Friday. Let’s have a movie night tonight, kiddo. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I mumbled, my mouth full of toast. I panicked, afraid to get in trouble for talking while eating, and pulled the wadded-up paper towel to my lips. A piece of crust I’d pulled off fell onto my lap, and then onto the floor. I heard my father sigh. I felt like a failure. I wished I’d had cereal. I wished I was tidier. I wished I was on the school bus instead. I wished he was still gone. I wished he was still sitting with me, on the edge of my bed, reading for hours, all the way up to the part where Matilda makes chalk float in thin air. I wished he’d never left so I would just be upset about the toast mess, that it wouldn’t mean all these other things too. I wished he wasn’t the kind of dad who had left and who might leave again.

  It’s not that we all stopped talking. It’s just that we only said the things that didn’t matter.

  Torrey’s been just as friendly as ever, but she seems to be giving me space. I overanalyze. I worry. I’m not even sure what I’m worried about.

  “Sheila?” she says through the door. “Let me in.”

  I turn to my side. I don’t know if it’s morning or evening. The blinds are closed and the light is low but I can’t tell which direction it comes from. My eyes are too crusty and blurry to focus. I’m very hungry and my bladder is uncomfortable. I wonder how long I’ve been lying there. I wonder how long it’s been since I got out of bed. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to speak.

  “Sheila?” she calls again. “Are you in there?”

  Above all else, I don’t want Torrey to suffer. I don’t want her to worry.

  “I’m here. It’s open,” I say. I really only lock my door when Vinnie is over.

  The door clicks and creaks.

  “Whoa, Sheila. What happened here?”

  I realize I never cleaned up the spilled tea, the shattered teacup. I don’t even feel like lying to her.

  “I was sleepy and knocked the cup off the nightstand. I was too sleepy.”

  She stands in the open doorway for a while. It’s cold out there. The breeze is too cold to be late afternoon, so I assume it’s morning. I assume I did not sleep an entire day away.

  “By the way,” Torrey says. Her voice is curious and amused. “Your mom is outside.”

  I snap up. I swing my feet to the floor and stand up. A sliver of teacup wedges between my toes, sharp and stinging. The teacup. I remember now, how I knocked it to the floor last night while surrounded by letters, sleepy, out of it, and then left it there, shattered beneath my bed. I don’t let myself think too much about how disastrous this must look to Torrey. The shard of china between my toes aches. I think of the medicinal properties of tea leaves, the medicinal properties of honey, and try not to panic.

  “Outside?” I repeat, slowly, doubtfully.

  “Yeah, she’s talking to Vinnie.”

  I take a step and it presses the piece of teacup further between my toes.

  “Shit,” I say. Then I cover my mouth and switch to a whisper. “Shit shit shit.”

  Torrey closes the door and comes in.

  “I’ll help you.”

  She walks me to my tiny bathroom. I’m in there for barely a minute with a pair of tweezers before I realize.

  “Torrey!” I whisper, running out to the main room before even finding a bandage, smudging bloodied footprints on the tile. She’s cleaned up the entire tea mess and straightened out my bed. “We need to hide the letters.”

  “Done,” she says, holding up the shoebox.

  “Hide that, too!”

  “Done,” she says, as she drops it in her pink and white Jansport backpack.

  “I want those back,” I say. Maybe I’m being greedy, or maybe I’m just surviving.

  “I’ll leave them in my room,” she says. “And you should probably change. You look a bit suicidal in a black dress first thing in the morning.”

  I change right in front of her. Torrey takes th
e dress and hangs it up, handing me some clean clothes, a grey dress—hardly an improvement, I want to say, but I feel helpless. Inside of that helplessness, I also feel failure. When did I become one more thing Torrey has to deal with? Now’s a good time to thank her. Now’s a good time to say I’m sorry.

  I look at her, searching for something, some way of saying the right thing, but I can’t do it. I can’t say the things that matter. I must just look stunned, half asleep. I must look like someone who needs her to come in and clean up my messes, to dress my wounds. My shoulders sink a little.

  “Okay, I think we’re done,” she says. She smiles at me and furrows her brow and I feel like maybe she doesn’t mind this, that I can trust her with this, with my mess.

  “Okay,” I say. Okay. “Shit.”

  I follow her to the doorway and out into the courtyard.

  “Hi, honey,” my mom says.

  There’s a part of me that thinks maybe we could just do this out in the courtyard. Surely any conversation will be easier with Vinnie and Torrey there, too. They’d rescue me. We could just talk about them the whole time. But they get up, gathering their stuff, Vinnie his phone, Torrey a small bottle of black nail polish. Vinnie lifts his chin up in the air, a brief nod that makes me want to mock him, before they both disappear into his house.

  “Come on in, Mom,” I say.

  As soon as I watch my mother sit down on the small couch, I see it, beneath the bed. The letter. The one I read last night. The long one. The one stained and wrinkled with old tea, and how did I not notice it last night or this morning? It’s too far under the bed. Torrey must have missed it. It’s stained and wrinkled. The tea. Oh God. It’s ruined. I forget myself for a moment and squat down next to it. Some of the writing has smudged and run beyond recognition.

  “Fuck,” I say. “Hold on.”

  And while my mother watches, I grab my journal and skip past the first thirty pages where, over and over again, I’ve copied my favorite lines from Jesse Ramirez’s unsent letter. Then I begin to copy the entire long letter from Harold, filling in the smudged blanks as best I can from memory.