What Burns Away

by Melissa Falcon Field

  While he worked, I pulled plastic bags full of starfish, tiny sea horses, and two silver angelfish, intricately speckled, from the boxes. Setting them on the bed, I examined the delicate sea creatures inside each clear balloon and told Miles, “This is really nice. Thank you.”

  He turned to me, all smiles. I remember something in his shoulders easing.

  “In fact,” I goaded, “they look so lovely I want to eat them.”

  We both laughed at my reminder of Miles’s single complaint about our move—the city’s lack of fresh seafood, the reason, he claimed, for his new diet of burgers, pastries, and cheese curds, along with his fifteen-pound weight gain. And with my taunting, he tackled me onto the bed, arms dripping wet to the elbows.

  “It’s not a perfect situation,” he reminded me, straddling my lap, holding me down against the pillows. “But it’s an excellent place for clinical work and academics. It’s the medical teaching setting I hoped for, with important science happening and Lasker fellows, all these great thinkers, and device innovations. It’s the perfect combination, everything I wanted.”

  He kissed me hard on the cheek and returned to the tank.

  “So these critters will need to bob around a while,” he instructed, depositing the bags atop the water with the same gentleness I’d seen him use to place Jonah in the crib, with the careful hand I imagined he used to operate on his patients. “When the temp hits 78 Fahrenheit, cut their bags open and let them dive on in.” He pulled a tiny thermometer from his pocket and left it on my nightstand.

  “Thank you,” I told him. “It’s pretty.”

  “I’m still working on procuring a beach.”

  I leaned into him then, wanting to be close, to be held. Remembering how we were, how we could be.

  Miles nuzzled a spot beneath my ear. “I miss you,” he said, twirling a strand of my hair around his finger.

  Clinging to my husband, I felt my morose mood dissipate. “I miss you too,” I said in perfect time with the resounding ping of his pager.

  “Probably the fellow.” He sighed, crestfallen, searching his pockets to silence the noise. “I know, Claire, I know. I’m frustrated, too. It’s just…the ER’s a mob scene, really sick patients coming through. My procedures are booking months out, and all the fellows are still in their first few months of training. Walking them through the more complicated clinical cases is part of the deal. And then there are my research deadlines—I’m sorry I dragged you into all this craziness. But it won’t always be this busy, honey. And I do believe that in the long run, this move will be good for all of us. The whole family.”

  I fell limp, my hands slipping from our embrace. This job was everything he wanted, yet it had claimed so much of him that there was little left for Jonah and me.

  Miles phoned the hospital call operator and held the line. After listening for a while, he flatly asked a few questions about the patient, then said, “Sounds critical. Let’s call anesthesia. Consent the patient and round the team. I’ll head over now to scrub in.”

  After rummaging for his coat and keys, he came back to me, trying to be close. “We’ll give it another sixteen months, fulfill the two-year contract, and if it’s still not working for you, we can recalibrate.” He kissed my forehead. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sixteen months from right now?”

  “Yes.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll sleep in the call room at the hospital tonight and try to swing by in the morning maybe, if it’s not too crazy. To see the baby.”

  Downstairs I heard a fork scrape a bite from his dinner plate, then the slam of the door before Miles headed back out of the driveway and into the hospital for the night.

  The next morning, when I woke to Jonah’s cry, the spot beside me was empty, the sheets cool. Miles was maybe rounding on patients or at the lab hunched over slides, a coffee in hand, gliding through the work, refueled by it even.

  But his ambition left me lonely. And motherhood too. Although it had been everything I wanted, it did not fulfill me the way I expected it would—the way science had. I felt so fortunate to be home with Jonah, so in love with him, and yet so completely bored by the routine of domesticity, daunted by the redundancy of household chores, which no matter how Miles tried, left me feeling undervalued and starved for intellectual conversations about things beyond how much toilet paper was left in the hall closet.

  The timing of our move had made it hard for me to find work in the middle of the term, so I had chosen to stay home to attempt to be the kind of mom I most admired—the kind of mom I had always wanted for myself—one who found satisfaction in beautifying her home, one who had patience for the tears and the tantrums, one who loved cooking for her children.

  When I left my career, I had imagined myself decorating Jonah’s room as if it were a Pinterest board, cutting out owls for his walls to mount onto a hand-painted mural, and making all his food from scratch. But no matter how good I was at some of those things, mostly I failed. I was terrible at crafts and had no patience for baking, and often I became derailed because those kinds of things were not second nature to me, and because I felt myself becoming more and more disconnected from that decade of my life pioneering ozone research and identifying the chemical compounds contributing to environmental problems.

  The things I had once been so successful at were orbiting out of my reach, and my knowledge of them was quickly becoming too obsolete for even the most lackluster professorship. So even though Jonah was an early talker and a good boy most of the time—although some days as inconsolable as me—I found myself longing for the easy gratification that comes from work. Simply, I pined for it more than I ever dreamed I would, and I felt ashamed about missing it.

  I paused to admire the tiny ocean my husband had so sweetly brought home to me the night before. And as I stretched my feet out of bed, I discovered the smaller of the two angelfish stuck to the filter.

  Unacclimated, I thought, exactly how I felt.

  I studied the fish’s eyes fogged dead white.

  And as I rose, I wondered what else would be sacrificed for my husband’s dreams of academic distinction that I’d been asked to chase.

  • • •

  After I learned that Dean had purchased 101 Quayside—the place that housed the poltergeists of my youth—my preoccupation with Dean grew like a cancer, a fixation Miles noted in the expression on my face.

  “Claire, what is going on with you?” he asked, fiddling with his glasses. “I’m worried. You’re distracted, like you’re somewhere else all the time. You don’t laugh. You’re not playful like you used to be. I know you miss our life in Mystic. I miss it too. But this is a good place for us, babe.”

  Getting up from the table where we sat, I silently looped a scarf around my neck and tugged a wool beanie over my head. I moved into the living room and recalled the promises Miles had made when he took the job here, assuring me that it would mean more time spent with Jonah and more time to think about how we might grow our tiny family. I tossed another log on the fire, knowing that despite the best intentions, those promises were ones he could never keep.

  With my wine in hand, I set my computer on the end table and dropped into the wingback chair by the hearth. I scooted closer to the blaze and pictured a different life: Dean living at the Quayside, drinking coffee in the third-floor bedroom with his beautiful wife, her long legs and perfect teeth, the sun in her eyes and backlighting her hair in the only photo I’ve seen of her on Facebook, in which she sits on the hood of a Jeep with her arm around Dean.

  Dear Dean—

  I haven’t talked to my mother in years, so I never heard about your acquisition of the property. And, wow, Quayside is quite the place.

  That said, I’ve always felt haunted there.

  You may already know this, but as my mother explained it to Kara and me, a long time back, the house was originally built for a sea
captain, Thomas Moses. According to the historical society, Captain Moses served on the USS Constellation, where in 1803 he became master of the brig. Then, in 1810 or thereabout, he bought that block of land along the beach and built the Quayside house for his wife and seven children. But he lived there only one year after the construction was finished because he died at sea during the War of 1812. There used to be a pretty creepy portrait of the old captain above the mantel, until Kara and I moved in with Mom. But it terrified my sister so much that she started to pee in the bed, so my mother sold it.

  And, no, I really can’t picture you there in that house or across the way at the White Sands Country Club, smoking your menthol cigarettes, having a PBR, and chasing it back with a shot of Jäger. I bet you turn some heads. But then again, you always did, and from your photos here, I see nothing in that department has changed.

  It is snowing in the Midwest tonight. It never stops. And I do miss home, not the house you are in as much as the old farmhouse that Miles and I restored in Mystic, and always, my whole life, I’ve ached to go back and find my dad at his little place on Willard Street, where I first saw you shoveling snow.

  Isn’t it strange how we grew up in those tiny ranch houses, exactly the same, like they were dropped from a cake tin? Remember how you could hear the foghorns from the back deck? I miss the fog rising off the Sound when the water is warmer than the air. I think the beach is my favorite this time of year. I’m so lonely for it. In fact, I’ve never been so lonely in all my life. It doesn’t help that my husband is distracted with his new job. I’m actually jealous of the hospital. It’s pathetic. I dream about breaking into it to kidnap him. Or the place vanishing all together. I have dark ideas about it. Anyway, the whole transition here is more than we had counted on. So I’m alone mostly, raising my boy and hoping to be scooped up from 3534 Topping Road by some crazy spaceship that’ll take us away from this perpetual storm.

  Much love,

  Claire

  The firewood in front of me popped and hissed. I sipped my wine and watched the embers warm to the color of a summer sunset, and then I returned my gaze to the screen, toggling through newly uploaded pictures of Dean.

  In the shots he looked the part of an L. L. Bean model, rugged and strong. Unshaven, in his survival gear, he hiked up the backside of Connecticut’s highest peak, Bear Mountain, wielding an ice pick. Standing beside a sign that read “Rica Junction, Appalachian Trail,” he posed with his hands on his hips in the falling snow. With no stretch of my imagination, he looked better than ever, statuesque even, and in his gaze was all that old mystery about him.

  I studied the pictures, zooming in to make out another face I recognized: Jimmy Pistritto, who ran around with Dean during our time together, until he was arrested for theft and sent to Enfield Correctional Institution just before I left town for college. In the snapshot Jimmy’s eyes had the same dark leer I remembered, something sinister behind them as he furrowed his brow at the camera and held up a beer.

  The rest of the shots were postcard images taken under a blue twilight, in which the Berkshire Taconic landscape was dusted with new snow. And while I was scrolling through scenes of mountains and valleys, the severity of that topography not found in the level terrain of the Midwest, Dean popped up on chat.

  Dean: You there?

  Claire: I am!

  Dean: Just read your email. Captain Moses, huh? Fantastic, also, that you remember my love for shitty beer. PBR, yes please! I’m actually throwing back a tall one right now. Is it bad to admit that I can’t stop thinking about you?

  I hesitated, unsure how to respond, wondering how much to encourage what he initiated, sensing the momentum of it, understanding then that I could let myself grow dangerous with him again.

  Dean: Well, I can’t stop thinking about you. About us.

  Claire: We had fun.

  Dean: You were so beautiful. And smart. But we were so young. I wish I met you later, when I was more grounded. When we knew ourselves better. When I knew what I wanted. Maybe we would have had a shot.

  Claire: Are you grounded now?

  Dean: Maybe not completely, but I’ve sure as hell learned a lot.

  Claire: Me too.

  Dean: Let’s have dinner sometime.

  Claire: I’m eating dinner now. By the fire.

  Dean: What are you wearing? ;)

  Claire: Sweater, hat, scarf, and jammies. In my defense, I’m freezing to death. It’s colder here than anywhere I’ve ever been in my life.

  Dean: You need a bigger fire and some company. You know, I can see it—you there in the window, all by yourself with your dinner plate, wearing flannel pajama pants. The girl I remember. It makes me sad. I want to snatch you up and take you out for dinner on a proper date, with PBR tall boys for me, and for you, a few gallons of red wine.

  Claire: I need all of that.

  Dean: I’ll head right over.

  I giggled like a teenage girl, flattered, eager to pursue the fantasy when Miles stepped in front of me, eating a giant cookie covered in red and green sprinkles.

  “What’s funny?” my husband asked, licking crumbs from his lips and coming to stand beside me.

  My face blushed as if my flirtation was apparent. “Just emailing friends.”

  My computer sounded as another message from Dean popped up on my screen.

  Miles smiled, sat on the arm of my chair, and asked optimistically, “Friends here?”

  “Home,” I said. “I don’t have any friends here.” I pulled my computer close to my body, shielding the screen.

  He nodded and took another bite of his dessert.

  “I made those cookies for Jonah,” I told him.

  “Can’t I have one?”

  I shrugged and patted Miles’s belly.

  “For warmth,” he said, sucking it in. “I’ll run again when the snow melts. Oh, and, honey, can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Yes,” I said, half listening, glancing down at my computer, eager to get back to Dean.

  “Did you tell the neighbor across the street that we were only here until the end of the year?”

  “I guess I did.” I paused. “Why?”

  “Well, first of all, because it’s not at all true, and second, because her husband works in the Department of Medicine.”

  “So?”

  “So we have a two-year obligation, Claire. That’s the absolute minimum before we can even begin to discuss other options. You know that. Anyway, her husband came up to me in the lab and asked if I was already looking at other jobs. My reputation is important, babe, especially if we should ever want to make a change, which right now I don’t. I can see this place being really great for us. Madison is a beautiful city. And, my colleagues need to know I am committed to the department and the research at hand.”

  I sipped from my wineglass. “Sorry,” I said.

  “And by the way,” Miles told me through his final mouthful of cookie crumbs, “you left the oven on. I turned it off. I smelled something burning. Same thing happened yesterday after you went to bed. Could you be more careful? Maybe you’re distracted. But just, please, honey, take more care.”

  “Yup,” I said, nodding. Wanting him to leave me alone. “I’ll be more careful.”

  He leaned in to kiss my forehead and stood. “I’m going to work on my grant a while. Don’t wait up on me.”

  “Okay. Good night.”

  Miles shuffled off in his slippers, and as he went, I read the last bit of Dean’s correspondence, queued in our thread.

  Claire, don’t you wonder what it would be like with us now? As grown-ups? Hopefully, this isn’t saying too much. But I wonder. In fact, I’ve wondered about that for a long time.

  Since he was no longer on chat after Miles left the room, I sent Dean a brief email before logging off and heading up to bed, hesitating momentarily before del
ivering my own restrained confession.

  Dean—

  You can’t say too much after all we shared. After all you did for me. And thank you for the compliments. I’ll admit, I’ve wondered too. And I’ve imagined it some. In any case, I hope you’re happy and well.

  Love,

  Claire

  Closing my laptop with my feet stretched out toward the hearth, I thought then about fire and its scientific definition—“a high-temperature, self-sustaining chemical reaction, resulting in heat and often casting flames”—quite certain that Dean and I still had that old fire between us, in every sense of the term.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fire

  Mr. Barnet, my ninth-grade science teacher, wore the same green-and-black flannel shirt every day of my freshman year, cuffing his sleeves to reveal a periodic table tattoo on his forearm. I’ll never forget his lessons in fire, as they influenced most who I would become that year—and who I would become again so much later in my life.

  Mr. Barnet began the first unit on combustion by announcing: “Fire is one thing in nature that is not matter.”

  I can still hear the force of his chalk striking the blackboard as he wrote in block letters:

  Fire = Combustion.

  Fire = The visible, tangible side effect of matter changing form.

  He turned to face the class, rubbing his goatee.

  Someone let out a belch.

  Norwell Jackson, the captain of the basketball team, was tipping back in his chair, playing with a Rubik’s Cube. Mr. Barnet pegged Norwell in the shoulder with his eraser, a warning.

  Then, he turned to me. I was snapping my gum when he said it, the words I still hear every time I see flames: “Fire is a weapon with unlimited power.”

  Onto the overhead projector, Mr. Barnet placed an artist’s sketch originally printed in an old Harper’s Weekly, rendering the Great Chicago Fire that we were reading about in history class, the sky dark with smoke, masses of people running from towering flames.