What Burns Away
Page 24
His belief that he could forgive me everything failed to take into account that the “everything” I disclosed was a more convoluted and complicated betrayal than he could’ve anticipated. So despite making love in that makeshift tent through tears, while Miles whispered “How could you?” and “No, no, I want you to tell me” and “Of course I’ll forgive you,” I found him, nearly three months later, out in the snow, drinking Scotch and stoking a fire of his own.
• • •
Late this past Friday I startled to the sound of a dog barking, to find the bed empty beside me and, out the window, the curling tail of drifting smoke. Tiptoeing, I headed downstairs, where the back porch was lit and Miles sat outside, bundled in the late March cold, the never-ending Wisconsin winter still upon us.
I slid the glass doors open and called, “What are you doing out there?”
Miles did not answer.
Smoke billowed up from a fire before him.
“Honey?” I said.
He shook his head.
I stepped into my boots.
He sipped from a tumbler. And I approached.
The fire flashed orange and blue, and Miles stoked it with a stick as I came closer.
Kneeling beside him, I followed my husband’s stare to the center of the blaze, where the white cover of our wedding photo album charred black, its plastic coating shrinking back, while the flames crackled and hissed.
My heart panged. And to steady the tremble in my knees, I sat on a log beside him, the ground still frozen beneath my feet, the snow glistening. I hugged my arms around my chest to fend off the bluster and withhold my hurt, remembering the ivory dress I wore on our wedding day, the eyelet fabric that fit slim and spilled out into a train, the baby’s breath in my hair, and how Miles beamed as I stepped toward him under a gazebo on the village green.
I said, “How can I make things right?”
Miles stared straight ahead. Brought his glass back to his lips. I couldn’t help but notice his absent wedding band and wondered if maybe I should leave him alone. But I also felt deserving of his anger, whatever form it might take, and so I stayed. Waiting.
From him, there was only silence.
“Miles?” I said.
He reached between us into a slouched canvas bag and lifted another album into his lap. He tapped his naked ring finger on the word HOME typed in gold across the book’s center.
I set my hand on his wrist. “Honey,” I said. “Don’t.”
But he pitched it underhanded into the flames. Hot embers spattered at our feet.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered.
And as the cinders cooled from orange to ash, burning up with our wedding album were the pictures of our home renovations in Mystic, the before-and-after shots Miles had meticulously captured with his Nikon in early-morning sunlight, images he had developed himself after the reconstruction was done. The photo book was a gift he made for me the first Christmas in our newly restored house.
At the epicenter of the flames, the album seemed to go liquid. The smoke billowed, black.
I reached for my husband.
He shirked.
The fumes were toxic; the flames went blue-hot.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
With his face twisted into a grimace, Miles tossed the last of his drink toward the glare. Then he stood and, walking away from me, boomed, “Shame on you, Claire.”
• • •
These past two days, nothing is certain. Miles’s address of me wavers with a constant swing of emotions—a pat on my knee this morning in bed, then a moment later, a stern glance in my direction.
Outside, the place where the photo books burned looks like a rabbit hole in the snow, and I think about Alice falling down the dark center of it, chasing after the White Rabbit into that troubled and peculiar Wonderland.
At the breakfast table, I warily join my husband and son, where I unfold the Sunday paper to read the forecast, hoping for a thaw.
Miles makes coffee.
Jonah dips a paintbrush into a watercolor palate.
The one hundred forty days of snow cover we’ve had this winter are tallied in the Wisconsin State Journal, the calculation in agreement with Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction that we should be in our last stretch of a long, brutal winter. I remind myself that this kind of early April freeze is a metaphor, the frozen snow protecting and insulating the grasses and seeded grains beneath it while they await better weather for their bloom.
Jonah taps his brush on the edge of a glass.
“Pretty,” I tell him of his work.
Miles sets a steaming mug in front of me, and I echo the mantra Anna keeps tacked to her clinic door in an attempt to steady the race of my heart every time my husband stands close to me: “Live in the present. Be in the now.” Because to do otherwise means worrying about the future or hating myself for the past, both of which send me spinning with fear and guilt and sadness.
Of course to “be in the now” also means to live where the consequences are, while in the meantime I attempt to forgive myself enough to go forward and be a good mother to sweet Jonah, who happily paints three tiny rainbows beside me.
“For Mama, Dada, and Jonah,” he says. He arcs red, green, yellow, and blue across the white paper as I have taught him.
Miles flips the pancakes. Then comes close again to study his son’s work. He tousles Jonah’s hair and whispers, “Artiste.”
Next week, our big boy will be eighteen months old. And since he will be old enough, Miles has encouraged me to enroll Jonah at the university day care, reassuring me that it’s an amazing place. Once Jonah starts “school,” as we’re calling it, I’ll begin a new job as an environmental consultant for Midwestern Energy Manufacturers, who face ozone compliance issues. Miles found the posting and said it was not an option, that I had to apply. After three interviews and a few follow-up phone calls, I was shocked to be offered the position. It’ll be my first employment since my pregnancy, and starting it, I’ll be scared to death.
The fear is not just about how I’ll need to work double time to make up for knowledge not gained during my eighteen-month sabbatical at home, or about leaving Jonah in the care of someone else, although those concerns make my thoughts spin: What if there’s an emergency? What if Jonah doesn’t nap? How will we all get out the door in the morning? What if I misread the printouts from the spectrometers?
But even if all those worries come to pass, taking the position means accepting that I will never be a NASA correspondent like my friend Gillian, acknowledging that for me it’s a girlhood dream passed by. And with that acceptance, I also can’t keep from wondering if Miles pushed me into the job so that I can become financially and emotionally independent—so that he can eventually leave me on my own.
This morning I struggle to stay hopeful, knowing that in time these answers will reveal themselves. Until then, I’m toiling through things with Anna to see what work I have left to do on myself, on our marriage, hoping Miles will continue to slog it out with me—hoping to get more clarity about what I learned and what I can still change.
On the table, Miles sets out the breakfast plates.
I breathe deeply. I sip from my mug. “Can I help?” I ask.
Miles shakes his head no and lays a platter of pancakes in the center of the table, and as he leans forward, Jonah smiles and paints a splotch of blue on his daddy’s nose. Proud of himself, our little boy reaches out and wraps his arms around us both.
• • •
In meteorology, dark matter is a term used to describe all that appears to be missing from the universe, things there but unseen. The existence of dark matter is inferred only from the gravitational pull it asserts upon observed objects. No doubt, I’ll always feel the pull of what I can no longer perceive—my dead father, the demolished Quayside, perhaps even Dean.
So like the little girl in the Khoisan legend, I tossed red-hot embers from my fist, but in my version of the story, what I illuminated was that dark matter from my past. I do believe I learned from the flames at Quayside and all that brought me there, that I was vulnerable to those childhood holdovers like we all are, and that to linger in their wrongs means to blight the life out ahead.
I can only hope that one day Miles will trust me again. And, God willing, if I am given that second chance, I want to be, for all of us, the mother and the wife and the scientist he loved—one I hope he still does. What I learned from all of it is that maintaining the wellness of my son, my husband, and myself—who we three are together, with respect for who and what we sometimes need to be independent of one another, not losing ourselves inside each other’s ambitions or affections—is what counts most. And I do believe now that no matter how strong the pull of the past, I can persevere in the present and do my small part to restore the wounded sky, righting the troubles instigated long ago when that old comet Halley went passing by.
Reading Group Guide
1. We see Claire depicted as vulnerable throughout much of the novel—not just as a new mother and homesick wife, but also as a person who bears the weight of her past. What strengths do you see emerging out of Claire’s vulnerability?
2. In what ways do you see Claire’s guilt over her father’s death manifesting itself in the plotline of the novel?
3. Is Claire ever able to see Dean for who he really is, or do you think people always fall victim to seeing the most redeeming qualities in their former lovers?
4. This novel demonstrates how influential the virtual world is, not just in Claire’s life, but also in Dean’s ability to find her. How are relationships affected by our constant use of social media and virtual communication?
5. Claire is very clearly the central character of this book, but is she the character you feel most connected to? Why or why not? What other characters do you find most compelling?
6. At the end of the novel, we are led to believe there may be a possible resolution between Claire and Miles. Do you think this is the best thing for them? Or do you think they would be better off on their own?
7. This novel plays with the intersection of the present and the past. How hard is it for the characters in this novel—Claire, her mother, her sister, even Dean—to evaluate people from their past?
8. Many marriages are changed with the arrival of children. Do you think having a child changed Claire’s expectations for her marriage to Miles? If so, in what ways?
9. Miles is obviously the breadwinner in the story, so Claire stays home to raise her son. Do you think the stakes of their marriage would have been different if Miles were the one to surrender his career to raise Jonah?
10. In the final chapter, Claire has resolved herself to “living a life without fire.” What is she talking about here?
11. When Jonah goes missing in the story, we realize that everything is at stake for Claire. How does that scene influence our feelings toward her as a mother?
12. In this novel, motherhood and professionalism are clearly in conflict with each other. In what ways is Claire’s plight universal?
13. How does Claire’s father’s infidelity affect Claire’s understanding of her mother and herself?
14. Do you think there is hope for Claire and Kara sustaining a relationship? Do you have a sense that they will ever be closer, like they were as children?
15. If you were Claire, would you have been able to light the match at the Quayside? What was her ultimate motivation? Do you believe Claire will be able to put her haunting to rest now that the Quayside is gone?
A Conversation with the Author
In What Burns Away, which character do you feel most connected to, and why?
The story is Claire’s story, of course. She is the one we have the most access to—her loneliness, her loss, and her confused identity. Initially, when I first wrote the book, I found myself most deeply connected to her and the ever-changing world of new motherhood, its required self-sacrifice. And because I too was still in that place, coming to terms with having a young son and what it meant to put a teaching and writing career on the back burner, I found myself identifying most closely with Claire and her sense of isolation. But, through the process of revision, I’ve grown deep affection for Miles, who is so focused on providing for his family that he nearly loses them altogether. Throughout the rewrite, I lingered most in scenes with him, most especially the one after his lab has burned, where we see Miles, perhaps for the first time, as vulnerable as Claire. Understanding how Miles is made powerless during that crisis, I’ve become tender toward him, especially in those moments where his professional polish and impenetrable drive crack. Once things go undone in the lab, and later when he comes searching for Claire and Jonah in Connecticut, I worked hard to reveal Miles’s tender underbelly and his emotional responsiveness so readers understand that he too is struggling. And finally, at the close of the book, Miles undergoes what I feel is a real reversal. There beside a fire of his own making, burning their wedding albums, it’s my hope that the reader will note the subtle parallels between him and Claire’s father—men aching to reclaim broken marriages they, too, have failed to nurture, maybe realizing belatedly their own role in the relationships’ unraveling. But for Miles, it is not yet too late.
What was your inspiration for writing What Burns Away?
For most of my adulthood, while I was perusing a writing life, I also worked full-time as inner city schoolteacher—first in the South Bronx, then in San Jose, California’s Eastside Union District, followed by downtown Boston. I had many complicated students who came through my classroom doors, including three teenage arsonists, one of whom was a fourteen-year-old girl, who, aside from loving fire, was also, like me, infatuated with the sky. Although this young woman was deeply troubled, having survived a traumatic childhood, losing her parents to addiction and bouncing between foster homes before she struck the match that would take her out of my charter school and back into a juvenile detention center, we spent afternoons bent over star charts and reading the legends of Halley’s comet, working on her research paper, awed by all of it, together. I always wondered about that young woman after she was gone, imagined where she might be and how I could have saved her somehow. I also wondered who it was she might become. So there’s a bit of that student in Claire, along with a bit of my own family. My maternal grandfather, Jim Horan, who died tragically in a car wreck shortly before my birth, had been a Hartford firefighter. Despite his absence during my upbringing, his work was what my mother and her four brothers most often talked about around our holiday tables. Often, those discussions led to the legendary Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 and Grandpa Jim’s understanding of the fire science that led to the devastation there.
What advice would you give to aspiring fiction writers?
Touch it every day—just a sentence or a word. Take a walk with your story, think about it as you rock your baby to sleep, do everything you can to hold on to the thread of your story, because once you drop it, it’s hard to find again in all the chaos of everyday life. I say this because there was a long stretch of time when I wondered if I would ever finish Claire’s story, juggling teaching responsibilities, then orchestrating my own cross-country move, all with a very busy and often missing husband and a young child in tow. But I’d say too, if nothing else, scribble new notes daily in whatever handful of time you can find. Along the way, I wasn’t getting a lot of encouragement for my writing, but there always remained a part of me that needed Claire to stay afloat, to have something all
my own, and for me, her story and her voice had become real. It sounds hokey, but I really did want to know what it was she was supposed to teach me, so I keep returning to the narrative to find out. I think aspiring writers need to take those simple steps. Some days it’s literally writing one word or one sentence, on better days it is one paragraph, and later, all of it comes rushing out in pages. And most important, of course, is that while writing, you must read—obsessively. By this, I mean reading like a writer, studying the crafting of a book, wondering about the choices the author made, and considering all the ways the story was constructed.
Did you do any particular research about arson to write this book?
I always thought I didn’t like science. It was not my strong suit in school. But as a kid I liked to set fires, small ones out behind the local drugstore, bonfires on the beach, and at home, even now, when someone lights a candle, I can’t keep my fingers out of the wax. I knew there was a science to fire, a chemistry about it, but none of that science really spoke to me until I found Michael Faraday’s old lectures from the Royal Institution of London. And, really, I just loved reading them. I thought the experiments were dazzling, and I performed a few at home. I loved that trick of dipping arsenic into a flame and watching it go blue; for me, so much of that chemistry felt new, even though I learned some of it in school. So, yes, I started to research fire science, learning how fires behave, studying how they move through enclosed rooms. Then, in my backyard, while my son napped and my neighbors mowed their lawns here in Madison, Wisconsin, I lit Ping-Pong balls on fire and made flamethrowers with aerosol cans. I studied combustion so I could understand Claire’s draw to those flames.