Burn Our Bodies Down

by Rory Power

  “Don’t give it another thought,” Gram says, slowing down as we ease into the other lane. “It will all sort itself out.”

  “How can it?” I say. How can she be so calm? “That girl. She’s—”

  “She’s what?” There’s a challenge in her voice that stops me short.

  “Nothing,” I say. This is still too fragile. It isn’t safe.

  “No, let’s hear it,” Gram says, just like Mom when she won’t let go, when she makes me make her angry. “Say what you mean, Margot.”

  Fine. She asked for it. “My sister. She has to be. She looked exactly like me, and she was on your land. And I know you said you didn’t know what the police were talking about, I know that, but we’re not with them anymore, and you can be honest with me. You can just tell me you were keeping her.”

  The truck squeals as Gram hits the brakes. I swallow a cry of surprise.

  “Excuse me?” she says, turning to me. Dust drifting in through the open window. The heat catching up with us.

  “Why did you stop?” My heart racing, my mouth dry. I knew I shouldn’t risk it. I knew it, and I did it anyway.

  “I must have misheard you,” she says. I don’t know how to read her yet. Just her expectant face and her dark eyes, and it’s Mom and nothing like her all at once. “Are you suggesting that I’m lying?”

  “No,” I say hurriedly. “No, I didn’t—”

  “Good.” Her face softens. “I would never lie to you, Margot. That’s not how family should behave. And we’re family. I understand; I know you were there with the police for a long time, all by yourself. I’m sure they told you all kinds of things.”

  “Not really,” I start. “I mean, some things, but—”

  “Things like how Nielsens are all kinds of trouble, I’m sure.” She rolls her eyes, and it startles me for some reason. She’s sharp in ways I’m not ready for, in ways that will cut if I’m not careful, but warm, too. It coaxes me closer.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Like that.”

  Gram seems to relax, and she throws the truck back into gear and eases onto the highway again. The fire is burning in the distance. I wonder if it’ll be out by the morning. If this will have happened at all.

  “Don’t listen to Thomas Anderson,” she says. Easy, like this is just an unfair parking ticket. “I’ve known that boy since he was seven years old. He’s no more than a nuisance. His father was the same way.”

  This isn’t safe, I can feel that thrumming through my blood. Familiar, so familiar that for a moment I could be back in Calhoun, Mom in her room and me with a lighter in my hand.

  But I’m not. I’m here. And Gram’s hiding the truth, and calling me family, and I have to decide which is more important. If I push now, I lose this forever. If I wait, I get Gram. I get Fairhaven. I get another chance to find out what happened.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  And then she reaches over. Her hand tight around mine. And she says, “Me too. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  An apology handed back to me. I’ve never had one from family before. I’m here, it means. I will still be here.

  Not the answers I wanted, but something better.

  We keep driving. The crops outside my window are blackened, broken, oozing smoke. Across the ash field I can see the lingering glow of the fire, the plume and spray of the fire hoses, and beyond, the red gleam of the engines. They’re parked on another of the access roads that seem to run like spider’s legs off the main highway, cutting through the fields.

  “Is that where it started?” I ask.

  Gram nods. “From what I can tell. But with weather like this, it’s hard to say. We’ll know more once it’s out.”

  She doesn’t seem upset. Isn’t this her livelihood? I want to ask, but I don’t think she’d take kindly to that.

  Gram doesn’t say anything more as we pass the last of the fire. I twist in my seat, keep watching it for as long as I can. She sounded like she thought it was an accident. But I know what the police are sure of. Me, and that girl, and a fire all our own.

  TEN

  Fairhaven isn’t much farther. I still have the photo folded in my pocket, the name imprinted on my mind in Gram’s handwriting. It looks just the same as we pull up to the long, straight driveway, the house in the distance, set a ways back from the road.

  “There she is,” Gram says, turning us onto the dirt road, the rattle of the tires nearly drowning her out.

  The house is big, three stories and tilting like somebody bumped into it and forgot to set it right. White siding, or it used to be. Now the color’s closer to spoiled milk, and the paint is peeling. A rusted weathervane tops the roof, and a rickety porch is striped across the front of the house. I trace the line of it, try to find where it corners, but it feels like the whole place twists around itself.

  The corn crawls right up to the edge of the driveway, golden and crackling, tilting in the wind. It’s dead, I think—by that color it has to be dead—and yet it still seems to be growing.

  I stare out the truck window as Gram parks. Tess said Gram plants. I’m not sure she’s right, though. The corn is growing, but from the emptiness, from the complete absence of any kind of machinery, I doubt Gram has much to do with it.

  “Well,” Gram says, “let’s not dawdle, shall we?”

  She’s already out of the truck, peering at me through the open window on the driver’s side. I get out, stumbling on my weak legs. It’s midafternoon, the sun still bright, and I can’t believe it. It feels like a year since I left Calhoun.

  I round the truck, my shoes kicking up dust, my hair sticking to my forehead. I could drop to the ground right now and never move again, the rush of the day leaving me in a heartbeat. But the shade of the porch beckons, and so does Gram, waiting for me on the steps now, her hand outstretched.

  When was the last time someone reached for me? Someone with my mother’s face, my mother’s last name? I follow her like it’s a dream. Up the stairs, boards creaking underneath me, the whole house seeming to sway. I can’t feel the pain of my blisters anymore. Can only feel Gram’s hand as it closes around mine.

  She props open the screen door and pushes back the solid one behind it. Neither locked. Nothing in this whole place kept away from me. “Come on in,” she says, so I do.

  The entry is close and shadowed, all paneled walls and heavy curtains. Immediately ahead of me, a staircase climbs to the second floor. Next to it an arched doorway leads into a big kitchen, the opposite wall cut through with windows that look out onto the back porch and the fields beyond. Off to one side, a huge set of double doors stands slightly open, showing me a sliver of a dark room dominated by a dining table and chairs.

  Fairhaven. The house where my mother grew up.

  It looked real from outside. But here I can’t keep all of it in my head at once. Just a room, just a wall, just the edge of my mother’s body disappearing around every corner. She’s not here, I remind myself. Nobody but me.

  And Gram. She’s ahead of me, waiting in the doorway to the kitchen. “Come on, Mini,” she says.

  The kitchen is large, skimmed with yellow light. Through the screen door to the back porch, I can see acres of gold. Beyond them, a strange stand of trees on the horizon. Some seem jagged, their trunks bent at odd angles, while others blur into green growth.

  Everything here is old, older even than what we have back in Calhoun, but where our apartment is falling down, Fairhaven is neat. Well kept, even as it gets further away from being new. A small table is tucked against the wall, an empty vase perched in the middle of it, one chair pushed in. One chair, for Gram. Nothing to tell me another girl ever lived here.

  Doubt drops through me. But I saw her. We all did. She had to come from here—where the hell else?

  Across from the table is the fridge, humming, gleaming brightly, like it’s just been polished. Gram goes to it, carefully adjusting the fall of a hand towel looped over the oven handle before pulling the fridge open and remo
ving two bottles of water. My mouth goes dry at the sight.

  “Finish this,” she says, handing one bottle to me and pointing me toward the chair. “The whole thing. You look about ready to faint, and a mess besides.”

  I nearly drop it, my hands trembling. The first sip feels like neon sliding through my veins, lighting up every bit of blood, shocking me into somewhere else. It’s so cold. I’ve never felt anything so good.

  I drink half the bottle before I sit down, the chair rickety underneath me. At the sink, Gram is busy wetting a washcloth, wringing it out, and I watch her, measure her against this house. It’s big enough for so many more than just her, but she’s all there is. One chair at the table. One cup and one plate in the glass-fronted cabinet next to the fridge. “Is it just you?” I ask. I mean so many things. The girl. My grandfather, or aunts, or uncles, or anyone. Anyone.

  “Just me,” Gram says, nodding. “Been that way for a long time.”

  How long? Since this morning?

  “And now me,” I say instead. I shouldn’t be so eager. I shouldn’t show Gram how much I need her to want me here. I can’t help it, though, can’t help my instinct to throw myself forward at the slightest opening.

  “Now you,” Gram repeats.

  She comes toward me then, draws her fingertips along my jaw before I can flinch and starts dabbing at my forehead with the washcloth. It comes away black, stripping ash from my skin. She’s a little too rough, and it hurts, but I go stiff, sit as still as I can. Watch her watching me with stern, dark eyes.

  “There,” Gram says, stepping back. “That’ll do for now. Although you’re still a sight, I’m afraid.” She tosses the washcloth into the sink, wipes her palms on the front of her jeans. “Right. Let’s get you fed.”

  I nearly faint with relief. Besides the chips from the Omni, it’s been almost a day since I last ate, and my body feels like it’s flickering in and out. “Please.”

  “And then I’ll call your mother.”

  Oh. I was really hoping we could avoid that. I look down at my shoes, at the peeling soles. “I, well—”

  “With feeling, Margaret.”

  I jerk at the sound of my full first name. Even Mom never calls me that. “She won’t answer,” I say. “She won’t come.”

  Gram almost looks proud as she pulls her hair over one shoulder. “It’s true that Nielsens are a stubborn sort,” she says. “But your mother has nothing on me.”

  With that she turns and makes for the entryway. “You wait here,” she says. “I’ll go get your room sorted and find some clothes you can wear.”

  She disappears around the corner, her footsteps muffled as she climbs the stairs. And here I am. Alone in Fairhaven.

  I turn around slowly, scanning the room for any sign of Mom. No framed school pictures, no old holiday cards. Now that I’ve met Gram, I wouldn’t expect anything different. If there was ever any sentimentality in our family—and it still sends a shiver through me to think about it, my family—it was bred out a long time ago.

  She would have been here, that girl. Would have sat at this table and lived in this house, and where did all the proof of it go? Did it burn up with her?

  But why hide it? Why keep it from me? All I’ve ever wanted was somebody to be there with me. I would have never let her go.

  I finish my water bottle and go to fill it back up. The tap is dripping, hitting the metal sink with a wet smack, and as I get closer, something twists in my stomach. A sugary smell with a bitter tang spiking through it is coming from the drain. I think of the glimpse I caught of the inside of the fridge, the cases of water waiting there. Maybe this isn’t safe to drink.

  Still, I reach out and hold one finger under the drip. The next droplet splashes onto my finger, and I draw back, hold the water into the light from the windows. At first it seems normal. But the more I look at it, the more I realize: it’s pink. So soft and so blushing you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t look close enough. But the color is there, along with a touch of grit that I can feel as I rub my thumb and index finger together.

  I wipe my skin clean on the towel hanging from the oven handle. No sign of Gram coming back yet. Through the back windows, the trees on the horizon look blackened, their branches broken, bodies standing like columns of ash against the sky. That must be where the old fire was. The one Tess mentioned, the one that sent Mom running.

  When Gram comes back, I’ll ask.

  I cross the kitchen, heading out to the entryway. The hallway leading to the rest of the house looks too complicated, full of too many corners and too many closed doors. I choose the other direction, the double doors and the dining room.

  Here the rug is plush and thick, and clean. I wince at the ash and dirt covering my clothes, but that doesn’t keep me from going in. The table is lined with four chairs on either side, and one each at the foot and the head. Each has elegant scrollwork along the back, gleaming and smooth. There was money here, once.

  The table matches. It’s covered in a film of dust that’s broken here and there by smudges and tracks I think must belong to mice. I step closer, drag my hand along the surface, leaving trails behind. There’s a strange texture. I bend down, squint to get a good look.

  Scratches on the table, long and thin. Near the edge and close to me. Scars in the wood, biting deep and sliding shallow at the ends.

  “Margot.”

  I jump. When I turn, Gram is watching me from the doorway. She doesn’t look mad. But maybe that only means the worst is coming.

  “Sorry,” I say quickly, and I step back. I mean to head for the kitchen, but something catches my attention. Photographs, hung the whole length of the wall behind me, dusty glass glinting dully. The faces in each of them are almost familiar. None of them look as similar as Mom and Gram and I do, but I can spot our eyes looking out at me from a dozen photographs.

  “Is that—” I start, and Gram nods.

  “That’s us,” she says. A catch in my throat, and an ache in my chest. Us. All these people. All this history. And Mom just cut it out of our lives. Closed the door on it and left us out there, alone. What happened to her here? What could be so bad that she’d leave this behind?

  I look more closely at the photographs. I’m not sure, but I think they run from past to present, older and more faded closer to the door. More and more people in each one, arranged on what must be the front porch, staring into the camera with only a handful of smiles between them.

  “Is there one of you and my grandfather?” I ask. The Nielsen name probably came from him, and I’d like to see him, to see what our line looked like before Gram was part of it. But she shakes her head and points to the far end of the photographs.

  I frown, staring at the last picture—a man and a woman, in black-and-white, with a little girl standing between them, her hair in two braids, a stuffed animal of some sort hanging from one hand. The girl’s face is immediately recognizable. That’s Gram, and her parents.

  “You were the Nielsen?” But as soon as I say it, it’s not a surprise. Of course she was. I can’t imagine her arriving in her husband’s car, getting out and looking at a Fairhaven that wasn’t already hers.

  Gram sniffs disdainfully. “As if I’d give up my own name for anybody.”

  I look back at the photographs. It seems like they take one of every generation, so there has to be one of Mom’s. But there isn’t. The whole row’s off center, like it’s missing something, and there’s a slightly paler rectangle on the wall next to the last photo, and a hole where a nail was.

  There was one, once. And now it’s gone.

  “She took it with her when she left,” Gram says. “I don’t suppose she ever showed you, did she?”

  I can’t help laughing. “Of course not.” I don’t know how to explain to Gram that this, everything—it’s more than I would ever get from her, even if I tried my whole life.

  “Then what did she tell you, exactly? About us.” There’s something careful about the way Gram is asking. But there’
s nothing careful about my answer.

  “She never told me anything,” I say. Gram raises her eyebrows, like I’m exaggerating. “I mean it,” I say. “I only found your number by accident. Whatever I know, I know from here. From you. From—”

  I break off. Gram’s already dismissed everything the police said. She’d hate the kind of rumors I heard from Tess. But my face must give it away, because she says, “You spoke to Theresa, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That girl loves a good story.” She holds out her hand, ushers me through the double doors and back toward the kitchen. “It comes down to your mother leaving home and this town being full of busybodies. Do people say that anymore? Busybodies?”

  “No,” I say, smiling, and Gram gives it right back.

  “One day you’ll find yourself left behind just like me,” she says, knocking her knuckles gently against my cheekbone in a way I think is meant to be fond. “She got pregnant with you when she was just eighteen. No father in the picture. You must know all that.”

  The thing is, I don’t. I mean, I know how old she was when she had me, but only because I figured it out myself. As for my father, I never wondered. Could never imagine it being an answer big enough to fill the space Mom left between the two of us. No, those years of Mom’s before I showed up, they’re hers. And she keeps them that way, packed in boxes in the back of a pawnshop.

  “Why did she leave, though?” I say as we head into the kitchen. “I mean, I’m sure people talked, but—”

  “It doesn’t take much in Phalene. But that, and the accident.” She points through the screen door, toward the stand of trees. “There was a fire out back that fall. In the apricot grove. She got wrapped up in all of it.”

  “Wrapped up how?”

  Gram doesn’t answer. She just sighs, and for the first time since I met her, I hear a mother in her. “It was a lot to put on her,” she says. “A girl can only take so much.”