How to Set a Fire and Why

by Jesse Ball

  4. I asked him if the principal had called Hausmann. He said it had happened and that now it looked like I couldn’t go. They were very hesitant to take on a high-risk individual. He was really disappointed in them.

  5. He said his wife and he had talked and if I needed a place to stay, they would help me out. He said he knew my situation was rough and I shouldn’t give up on myself. I said I had a place, but thank you.

  6. He said he and his wife would like to help me. He said again, I could stay with them and potentially do a GED. Then, he was sure I could get into a great college. I said I couldn’t talk anymore, but I’d think about it.

  LANA

  I was standing there holding Lana’s phone. The call was over. I said, I’m through with having people try to help me out.

  What’s wrong?

  I guess I’m not going to that fancy school.

  It’s not so bad. That means we can keep hanging out.

  Yeah.

  I mean—if they get into you for something like this, maybe it was a bad idea anyway.

  I just wish …

  I felt pretty awful. Maybe I even started to screw up my face a little like I was going to cry.

  Lana looked over. She started to mock me.

  That goddamned landlord. He really did a job on you. All he has to do is call the police and no matter what happened, you’re fucked.

  Lana grabbed my head in both her hands and looked into my eyes.

  Now you’re completely screwed. You poor child, now you can never accomplish anything.

  Fuck off.

  I tried to shake her, but she had my head real good.

  Now there’s nothing left for you. Why don’t you cry some more?

  Fuck off, Lana.

  Cry little baby, cry. You don’t get to go to your fancy school.

  Lana! Stop.

  No, no I won’t. You’re the one who has to stop being a little bitch.

  She stuck her forehead right against mine.

  Nobody knows what you can do. Nobody knows that.

  She pushed me away.

  Surprise them. Do whatever you want. They don’t matter anyway. It’s like you keep telling me—they’re all stuck in their own heads.

  Thanks, Lana.

  Lucia, you are a foul bitch—not a sucker. Keep to the script.

  Have you been reading my pamphlet?

  Are you kidding? I memorized it.

  MOTHERS

  We went on a walk then, after Lana’s pep talk. There is a sump about a half mile from Jan’s house and we walked down there. Some guys honked at us from a car and drove slowly next to us; Lana gave them the finger and they laughed. Evidently that was what they liked, so they started to pull over. We went into a torta shop and waited until they went away.

  We were staring out the window. I was thinking about boys and how terrible it must be to be a boy. They seem to feel like they have to stand up to everything, and for no reason.

  The cashier at the torta place asked us if we were going to order anything, so we got up and left.

  Just then Lana asked me about my mom. She did it this way, like she was far down her train of thought, and it somehow jumped straight out into speech:

  What kind of bullshit is that? Tell me, please.

  What are you talking about?

  Our conversations. They are like this: I say something about my mom. You say nothing. I say something about my dad. You say nothing. I tell you about my brother. You say nothing. So, the question is: what kind of bullshit is that?

  Lana, what do you want me to say?

  Why haven’t you taken me to see your mom? You go there every week. I don’t mind going with you.

  Maybe I mind.

  Nobody said anything for a while and I could tell she was hurt—and here’s the thing, I like Lana. I don’t want her to feel bad. Basically, she is near the end of the line of people I wouldn’t mind seeing hurt, and it’s a long line.

  Lana, listen. My mom, you would have liked her a lot. You would have. But there’s nothing to like now. Going there—you’re not going there to see a person. It isn’t like that.

  Why don’t you tell me about her then?

  Fine. I told her a story:

  She was really wild. Sometimes she didn’t care about consequences. She and my aunt would argue about this a lot. My dad was pretty crazy too, but he was the one who kept my mom in check. Once, they were sitting in a diner, and I was with them. I was maybe eight. Some guy pulled up in a truck and he went inside real quick, he left the truck running. We paid, and he was still in line as we were leaving. The back of the truck is full of Christmas trees. My mom says hurry up to my dad. They jump in the truck, me on my dad’s lap, and we peel out. My mom drives it full speed down to this one neighborhood, a pretty bad spot, and we dump all the Christmas trees onto a lot, drive to a spot under an overpass. They left the truck there and we walked home in the cold, laughing and laughing and laughing. She never got caught. That was one thing about her, she never got caught.

  So, that was one thing about her, one side of her. The other side was: she’d take the newspaper out and we’d sit down on Sundays and we’d go through it page by page finding lies and weasel words. It’s pretty fun. We would compare the new paper with old ones. We would just laugh and laugh. My mom would do impressions, and different accents, trying out what the different articles said. It was one of my favorite things. Sometimes we would call my dad over to verify if we couldn’t remember things, and he loved it, too. I think he wanted to do it with us, but he could see it was nice that we got to do it alone. Also, she would make cheesecake compulsively. I actually don’t even like cheesecake.

  Sounds like a pretty great family, said Lana. My mom doesn’t know one end of a hot dog from the other.

  She’s sweet, though, I said. And she managed to not die or turn into a vegetable.

  Lucia, come on. Don’t say that.

  If you saw her, Lana, if you saw her and she was your mom, it’s the worst thing you could ever see.

  I guess that made Lana feel bad. I shouldn’t have said it, but the truth is the truth:

  We’re just not permanent at all, not the way we want to be. Something happens, maybe even something small, something no one even notices, and next thing you know someone is spooning porridge in your mouth and maybe you like it. Next thing you know someone is wheeling you into a room with carpeted walls.

  FIRST

  When we began, I bet you didn’t think things would go this way, did you? I didn’t think so either. When I look back, the girl I was at the outset was pretty helpless. I imagine I continue to be pretty helpless now. Helplessness: it’s our essential condition with regard to the future, no?

  The idea was: for the first couple of weeks I would stay sometimes at Jan’s, sometimes at Lana’s. I didn’t have a plan beyond that.

  Lana’s mom was pretty angry that I quit school. I think this was mostly because it meant Lana was a hop skip and a jump from quitting school herself. Her mom had the misguided view that school was educating people for glorious and varied lives in a vivacious modern world. But, as my aunt would say—it’s not my job to improve anybody. That meant instead of arguing with her I would just bring her little presents—some wildflowers or a rock or something I stole from the grocery store. Her tune changed from, Lucia should go back to school to Lucia has such good manners, Lana. Why don’t you have manners like Lucia has? And that was fine with me.

  Alternately, when I stayed at Jan’s, things were pretty calm. He does different things to get money, I don’t know what, so he is only there part of the time, and he doesn’t care if I hang around. If there is food in the kitchen, I can eat it. Basically, he doesn’t care. You can come up with your contribution later, he said.

  So, what did I do all day if I wasn’t at school and I had no job?

  I sat around a bunch and wrote down things I could remember about my aunt. Ever since she first went to the hospital I have been writing down everything I could
remember about this whole time—from when I got kicked out of the first school, right up until the present. That’s what you’ve been reading, obviously. A person writes down what has happened in order to know it. Then a person can find the way forward.

  I thought a lot too about my dad and what he would say. He might say something like: head out west hopping freight trains and be a labor organizer. He was a real romantic that way, my dad. Nowadays nobody cares like that. If you showed up at a construction site people would be too busy looking at their phones to listen to anything you might say. The problem has to be handled differently. But how?

  So, I was thinking about stuff like that. Hausmann had maybe given me some false hopes, but now I was realizing: maybe I had made a mistake by believing in this ludicrous fantasy. Lucia, I said to myself sternly, you should believe in inevitable things. Anything else is frippery.

  Oh, and there was still the matter of my aunt’s funeral.

  FUNERAL

  My aunt hadn’t gotten a real funeral. They just cremated her one day. I wasn’t even invited. There I was crying my eyes out, expecting I would somehow know. I mean—you imagine you will know when your own aunt’s funeral will be. But it isn’t true. It’s not like a cherub flies through the sky and blows a horn for you.

  When I went to the funeral home, they didn’t have any information. When I went to the church, they said it was all over. I mean, all over, but it had never really happened. They showed me a place where they put you if you have no money for your own grave. It is essentially a garbage dump for ashes.

  So, what you’re saying, I told the chaplain, is that she’s somewhere in there.

  Yes.

  Along with a bunch of other people.

  Yes.

  And dogs, cats, pets?

  Oh, oh no—those go somewhere else entirely. I don’t want you to think that …

  Oh, don’t worry, I told him. Whatever it is you don’t want me to think, I’m not thinking it.

  +

  There was a certain correctness to the absolutely unceremonious annihilation of my aunt’s body. It is a kind of perfect finish for an atheist. Even I can’t complain—it’s not like I think my aunt was sticking around inside her own body.

  Nonetheless, I wanted to have some kind of funeral for her. So, what I decided was this: the fire I was going to set, that would be my aunt’s funeral. It would be a kind of homage to her and to the life I hoped to lead.

  The question was—how would I do it?

  JAN, LANA, LUCIA

  Jan and Lana never agree. Whatever it is that we are talking about doing, or planning, or arguing about, they are always on one side and the other. I mean, one is on one side, the other is on the other. This is funny because most of the time I agree with both of them. I’m almost positive they just disagree out of spite. In any case, there is one thing that they both agreed about, and it was this:

  When we got to talking about the fire I was planning on setting for my aunt’s funeral, I mentioned, I mean it just fell out of my mouth, that I wanted to burn the wedding dress. Somehow, I felt it needed to be burned. If for my aunt it represented her life, then it shouldn’t stick around. It just shouldn’t.

  That’s when Lana said if I felt that way I should go burn it, or I’d feel like a coward forever.

  That’s when Jan said: he took that dress and that suit—it was like a little shrine to your aunt’s life. If you want to give her a funeral, burn it to the ground.

  I said let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  Jan said, he chose to take it into his house. He took it there. For the funeral, all that you want to do is burn those things, but if they are in his house … well, who chose to have them there? It is pretty simple.

  That’s what I’m saying, said Lana.

  When they said that, I felt somehow that it was right, just right.

  The plan, then, was basic. I wasn’t even mad at the landlord, not really. I was just sad and tired. It was like a signature. I was going to give this funeral like writing my signature in ash, and then I would get out of town. For such a long time I have wondered: what does a beginning look like? I said it out loud.

  Maybe this, said Lana.

  We have to make sure, I said, that he isn’t in there.

  That’s easy, said Jan.

  He’ll just end up in the position that I’m in—having nothing.

  I’ve got some of it right here.

  Lana held my bag open.

  Licorice and nothing!

  You and your fucking licorice, said Jan.

  The Hausmann letter was in there, though. I remembered it, and it suddenly bothered me. I pulled it out. I don’t know why I had kept it until then, so I tore it in half.

  More nothing. More and more and more. More nothing. I threw the pieces on the ground and Lana and I danced around on them. Why did we do that? What does it mean to dance on something? I don’t know. Obviously you can dance for a reason, but sometimes I think we dance for no reason at all.

  STEPHAN

  The next morning something unfortunate happened. I was sleeping and I heard a knock on the door. I don’t know what day exactly it was—I guess Saturday. Jan was off somewhere. I went down to see who it was. When I got to the door and opened it, standing there in Jan’s yard before the busted bungalow was Stephan.

  Stephan?

  Lucia?

  I hadn’t seen him in a while—obviously.

  What are you doing here?

  Why are you wearing Jan’s shirt?

  What are you talking about? Do you want something?

  He was really uncomfortable.

  He just repeated himself.

  What are you doing here?

  Stephan, hello. Can I help you with something?

  Tell Jan I came by. He asked me to.

  Okay.

  As he made his way across the yard, he kept looking back. I almost felt like—I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t true, but I almost felt like he was crying, which is weird. Don’t you think?

  When I told Jan about it later, he thought it was funny. I forgot all about him, he said. I guess I did say he should stop by, but the problem is, with a guy like him, you tell him something like that, and then there is just no way you can remember. You might even want to keep your word, but you just cannot remember what you said to him. It is all so non-notable.

  GERTY

  I was just leaving Green Gully—I had made it about forty feet down the sidewalk when I hear a voice calling my name. It was a close thing—I almost ran, and I’m sure you can guess why:

  I had three boxes of licorice under my hoodie!

  But, when I turned around, I saw that it was just some old lady from my aunt’s church. I didn’t know her name, so I decided to call her Gerty; that’s what I did when I spoke to her.

  You might ask why I would do that, well, here’s the thought process: if she knows from the outset that I don’t know her name, then she might want to wrap up the conversation sooner; if she decides to pretend that is her name and prolong the whole business, it makes the conversation funnier; if she decides to tell me what her real name is, then we have two options, a) real understanding, and b) I pretend to forget and call her Gerty again.

  Now, mind you, I am always really nice to people, so none of this is like, Lucia is being mean to an old lady. It is just—well, I have had to have too many conversations like this in my life, and life is short. Anyway, when I talk to people like that, I am really nice. I look them right in the eye and smile for all I’m worth.

  So, she comes up and says that my aunt died. I mean, I know that. What she says is—something about my aunt dying and how it relates to her. So be it. I am not that interested in that kind of thing. She asks me what I am going to do now. What are my plans now that I am alone?

  I say that I am enrolled in a beauty academy and I am going to learn to do makeup really good. Then, I can be an “active part of it all.” This is what I said.

  Maybe she thought I was going
to say something else. What I did say kind of took her off guard, and she was relieved. Evidently, she thought I had a lot of common sense, like, head screwed on right and all that.

  I think she wanted to give me a hug, but I didn’t want her to notice the licorice boxes under my sweatshirt, so I just made off.

  THE PLAN

  I wrote out the plan on a big sheet of paper. Lana sat next to me on the bed and watched. She was eating a donut.

  She said, if I eat any more of these donuts I am going to be a fat shit and it will solve my donut problem because my boyfriend will dump me for being a fat shit and then I won’t get any free donuts anymore. That’s what they call a logical syllogism.

  I laughed.

  She said, see, I’ve been doing some reading of my own.

  I said, that’s not a syllogism. A syllogism would be like, All girls who eat donuts become fat girls. All fat girls stop eating donuts. Therefore all girls who eat donuts stop eating donuts.

  That’s what I’m saying, she said. The problem solves itself.

  On one part of the paper I drew up the resources that we have: