Burn Our Bodies Down

by Rory Power

  “Hello, Sarah,” Gram says as we get close, and Tess’s mom looks up, startled, her fingers poised over the fruit plate with a strawberry pinched delicately between them. “Thank you for having us. This is my granddaughter, Margot.”

  Mrs. Miller hesitates, and I catch the moment of tension that takes hold of her body. Gram can’t be an easy neighbor to have. Especially not now. Even so, it’s only a heartbeat before she smiles and says, “I’m so happy you could join us,” like she had any idea we were coming.

  Tess skirts the island, snags the strawberry from her mother’s hand and shoves it into her mouth. “You love company,” she says around it. “My gift to you.”

  “Of course I love company,” Mrs. Miller says. “And it’s been so long since we’ve had the chance to see you, Vera.”

  That isn’t hard to translate, no matter how thick Mrs. Miller wants to lay on the politeness. Gram and the Millers are not friends; they don’t do this.

  “But a better gift,” Mrs. Miller continues, “might be washing your hands, Tess, before you touch the food I’m serving.” She leans across and presses her palm to Tess’s forehead. “How are you feeling? Better?”

  “Fine,” Tess says, batting her mom away and heading for the sink. “Eli’s coming down,” she says over her shoulder as she rinses her hands. “He stayed the night.”

  Mrs. Miller’s mouth goes tight. “You need to ask me about that sort of thing, Theresa.”

  “He’s stayed here a thousand times.”

  “And we love him,” Mrs. Miller says. “But until you live under your own roof, you’ll ask me or your father before you invite someone in.” She glances at me and Gram. “To stay the night,” she adds, clearly for our benefit.

  “Well, he’s here,” Tess says, shrugging. “So. Okay.”

  Mrs. Miller looks to Gram and smiles ruefully, as if to say, “Daughters,” but Gram doesn’t give anything back.

  “I hope we’re not imposing,” she says instead. At Fairhaven she looks like she belongs, like she grew up out of the floor right there in the entryway, but here she has a tightness about her, an unexpected discomfort, and I wonder if she’s feeling the same thing I am. Like I’m too much, too clumsy and too blunt to live in a house of white carpet and delicate words. Sure, I had to be careful in Calhoun, with Mom, but that was different. Nothing I learned there will serve me here.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Miller says. She carries the fruit plate around the island, toward a long dining table in blond wood. “The more, the merrier. Richard should be off the phone any minute, and we’ve got Eli joining us too.”

  Tess grins easily from where she’s leaning against the counter, ignoring her mom’s pointed tone. I just stare at the two of them, at the way whatever Mrs. Miller was trying to impress upon Tess slides right off. I didn’t know it could work like that. I didn’t know there are ways to keep everything from feeling like the end of the world. I look up at Gram, who’s been quiet, and see her staring not at Mrs. Miller but through the french doors to the green sway of the Miller crops. We both want what’s here. Just different parts.

  “Margot,” Tess says. She’s opened the cabinet next to the fridge and is peering inside. “Come here and help me pick all the marshmallows out of my cereal.”

  “I made pancakes,” Mrs. Miller says. “Don’t ruin your appetite.” But she doesn’t stop me as I slot in next to Tess and watch her dump half a box of Lucky Charms into a bowl.

  “How are you?” she says quietly, our backs to the adults, her hair a curtain, thick and dark. “After yesterday.”

  I shrug, drop a rainbow-shaped marshmallow onto my tongue. “Fine.” She’ll know I mean anything but. “What about you? Were you sick?”

  “My stomach’s been weird. It’s nothing.” She knocks my fingers away from one of the other rainbows and takes it for herself. “Look, I was at the station for a while after Vera took you home. I’m pretty sure the police are gonna come after you. Or her.” She shrugs. “If there’s a difference.”

  I knew that yesterday. At least, I was afraid that was true. And I did nothing wrong. I know that. But there are things here Gram is hiding, and no way am I letting anybody else get to them before I do.

  “Okay,” I say, careful to sound as bland as possible. “So?”

  “So,” Tess says, drawing it out, “I want you to know it’s gonna be fine. I said you have me, and that’s still true. If you don’t want them looking at you, they won’t.”

  Behind us, Gram and Mrs. Miller are making painful small talk. I wait for a moment, to be sure they’re not listening. It’s not a secret, what happened yesterday, but I don’t want Gram to hear me trying to dig deeper. If she does, she’ll close up even more tightly. I understand that much, even if I don’t understand why.

  “Why would you do that for me?” I ask Tess. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

  She shrugs, and for a second I wonder if it’s something else between us. I never got good at recognizing attraction in other girls—it took me long enough to recognize it in myself, and even longer to say “lesbian” without blushing. But then Tess sorts through a handful of cereal, dumping most of it back into the box, and I wrinkle my nose, the tension evaporating. Sure, she rinsed her hands, but I don’t think she used soap.

  “Well,” she says. “I know what it means to have your last name matter more than your first. To put it one way.”

  “Oh.” I can understand that, even if Tess’s probably gets her out of trouble and mine gets me into it. But still. There’s an odd sort of shyness to her right now, like there’s more she isn’t saying. I nudge her arm. “And to put it another?”

  She doesn’t answer right away. When she does, it’s just: “It’s nice. To be part of it.”

  I think of her and her friends coming out of Hellman’s yesterday. All of them gathered around her, watching to see what she’d do next. That’s distance, isn’t it? Even if it’s not the kind I know.

  “I’m glad you are,” I say. I mean it. Back in Calhoun I never had anyone. Maybe Tess never really had anyone either. Or at least nobody who needed her the way I do.

  The memory of this morning’s fight with Gram flickers bright. I check over my shoulder. Gram isn’t listening—she’s busy looking offended as Mrs. Miller hands her a slice of honeydew on a pretty china plate. And maybe I should just let it go, but I can’t. I want this life for my own, but to do that, to protect it, I need to know what the hell is going on.

  “Listen,” I say quietly, turning back to Tess. “I saw something. At Fairhaven. I really think the girl from the fire was living there.”

  I catch Tess’s frown out of the corner of my eye. “What do you mean?” she asks. But I don’t have time to answer. Mrs. Miller comes over, dusting her hands together and peering over our shoulders at the mess we’ve made of the cereal.

  “All right, girls,” she says. “Tess, would you go fetch Eli? I don’t want the pancakes to get cold.”

  “Sure,” Tess says. And then, to me, “Later. We’ll talk more.”

  She slips up the stairs at the far end of the kitchen and comes back down with Eli just as Mrs. Miller is ushering us all to the table, where a tray of pastries is waiting. He stops when he sees me, and for a second I know exactly what he’s thinking, because I’m thinking it too. That I died yesterday, and he saw my body.

  “Eli doesn’t get coffee,” Tess announces, sidling by him to take a seat. She pulls me into the chair next to hers and drags the coffeepot closer. “Punishment for turning up the AC after I fell asleep.”

  “You keep it too cold.” He sits down across from her, wearing the frown that I haven’t seen him without yet. “I’m not trying to get frostbite.”

  “Whereas I absolutely am.” Tess fills her mug, and mine without asking if I want some, before reaching across and pouring some for Eli, too. I watch, baffled, as she sets the pot back down and pulls a pastry from the bottom of Mrs. Miller’s carefully stacked pile, sending a croissant rolling onto the
table. She was joking, with Eli. I know she was. But still. To see a threat made and dropped so easily—it’s nothing short of a miracle.

  “Dad coming?” she says through a mouthful of pastry. Terrible manners, but then I don’t imagine she’s ever needed good ones.

  Mrs. Miller is in the kitchen again, carefully stirring blueberries into a bowl of yogurt. “In a minute.”

  “I’ll go tell him we have company.”

  “He’s speaking with the chief,” Mrs. Miller says, glancing sidelong at Gram. “Don’t disturb him.”

  “The chief?” I say, and every pair of eyes flicks to me. Tess nudges my elbow, and I bet she means for me to back off, to not look so curious, but I can’t help it. “You mean the police chief?”

  “After yesterday,” Mrs. Miller says, coming to the table and setting the yogurt down near the empty chair at the head.

  “It didn’t touch your land,” Gram says from her seat at the foot of the table. It’s the first real thing she’s said since we got here, and I’m startled by how sharp it is, by how much else it seems to mean. “There’s no need for Richard to get involved.”

  “Well, of course, but I didn’t mean the fire, Vera,” Mrs. Miller says seriously. She sits down next to Eli, adjusting her skirt and folding her hands. “I meant the girl they found.”

  My breath catches. How much does Mrs. Miller know, exactly? Did Tess tell her parents what the body looked like? From the reassuring squeeze she gives my hand, I doubt it.

  “The girl?” Gram says, after a moment. “Yes, it’s a shame. I heard she was a runaway. Wrong place, wrong time.” I’ve never heard anything so bland, so carefully careless.

  And Mrs. Miller jumps at it. “Poor girl,” she says dreamily. Like she’s eager to pretend it happened a million miles away. I recognize that, I think. Anything to keep the peace with Vera Nielsen. “I imagine it must be an inconvenience. Even Theresa was at the station for hours.”

  An inconvenience? Someone died. Someone died and nobody will acknowledge how much it matters.

  “It was exhausting and terrible,” Tess says over the rim of her coffee mug, “and I’ll never recover.” It earns her a stern look from Mrs. Miller.

  “Hours?” I ask, before I can help it. “What did you talk with the police about?”

  “Oh, it was all bullshit,” Tess says.

  “Theresa.”

  “What? It was. It was just all the same stuff they asked you, Margot.”

  It’s a show she’s putting on, I can tell. To prove she doesn’t care, to prove it’s no big deal. And I don’t know why she would bother, or who it protects me from, only—

  Gram. It protects me from Gram.

  I go flush with it, anger and resentment and a gratitude so deep it embarrasses me. She’s my family, and you don’t need protecting from family. Except, a little voice reminds me, I know better than anyone that sometimes, you do.

  “And then they had to ask me,” Eli grumbles as he spoons a blueberry from the yogurt. “Like I had anything different to say. But why hear something once when you could hear it three times?” Tess snorts with laughter, and they share a wry smile. I wish I could thank him for playing along, for pretending. He carried that body out of the fire and everything since has clearly been more than he ever asked for.

  “Is your mother with you?” Mrs. Miller asks me, and I know it’s only small talk, but it strikes me between the ribs.

  “No,” Gram answers for me. She hasn’t touched anything—not her water glass, not the coffeepot, not the food. “Margot’s staying with me for the summer.”

  I am? I smile, wide, and it’s nothing I could stop, even if I wanted to.

  “Your daughter hasn’t been home in a long time, has she?”

  Mrs. Miller doesn’t realize what she’s asked. But I see Gram flinch the same way I do, and I feel Tess’s eyes on me. Watchful, and quiet, two things I wouldn’t have called her yesterday.

  “Phalene’s not for everyone,” Gram says. “Especially a Nielsen.”

  “I’ll never understand all that.” Mrs. Miller looks at me and leans in a little, smiling. “More than fifteen years since we took the farm off Richard’s parents. Tess was barely walking. And by Phalene standards I’m still just visiting.”

  “Did you know my mom?” I ask, and Gram makes a small sound. I might pay for this later, but I want anything anyone can give me of her.

  “I didn’t,” Mrs. Miller says. “She was gone by the time we moved back. But my husband did.”

  “Really?” He would have grown up with her, known her before she could close herself off. Maybe back then, the smile in the photograph I tucked in my nightstand was something she wore all the time. He can tell me that.

  And he can tell me, too, if it was really the fire that drove her away, or if it was something else. I can tell by now that there’s no way I can talk to him with Gram here, though. But she’ll stand between me and any answers that she hasn’t already approved. I have to catch him alone—like he is now.

  “Excuse me,” I say to Mrs. Miller. “May I use your restroom?”

  She gives me that gracious hostess look and sends me down a hallway that splits off a smaller family room next to the kitchen. It’s narrow, cool and shadowed, lined with framed photographs of Tess posed on the porch, Tess by the Christmas tree, Tess younger and younger as I pass, until she’s a toddler sitting on someone’s knee. I think of the dining room wall at Fairhaven. Of the generations hung there, and of how none of those pictures seemed alive the way Tess’s portraits do.

  The bathroom is on the right, white tile and white towels with a white monogram. I hesitate in the doorway, my eyes meeting my reflection in the mirror above the porcelain sink.

  I look like a mess, my hair straggly and slick with grease even though I washed it in the bath last night. Slowly I reach up and run my fingers along my cheek, the one where a scar would be if my mother and I were really matching.

  Now it’s me and Gram, and my somehow sister. I asked for this. I wanted a family. That body’s a problem in my way, but all I have to do is solve it. Then I can make a life with Gram worth something. Then I can have what I want.

  I leave the bathroom and turn back to the hallway. It ends in another pair of french doors, their glass panels mostly covered by a dark curtain. Through a gap I can see the glow of a computer screen and a burnished wooden desk, and there’s a muffled voice coming from inside. It must be Mr. Miller talking to the police chief.

  I lean back against the wall to wait, in a slot between two of the photographs. But something scuffs against the floor in the study, and it’s only a moment before one of the doors is being pulled open. I straighten in a hurry, try to look lost and unsure. It’s not really that far from the truth, anyway.

  Mr. Miller isn’t what I expected after meeting his wife. She’s out of the pages of an old housekeeping magazine. But he’s more like Gram. Faded denim and a button-down with the sleeves rolled up, the starch all but gone from the collar, if it was ever there in the first place. He’s homegrown Phalene, just like her, I remind myself. That’s why I’m here looking for him.

  “Oh,” he says, startled. “I didn’t know we had . . .”

  He trails off, and I know that expression by now. Wide, wary eyes, like I’m something between a shock and a haunting.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was looking for the restroom.” And then, even though I probably don’t need to bother, “I’m Vera’s granddaughter.” I gesture to my face, the proof I was born with. “Margot.”

  “Margot,” he says. “God.” But he seems, then, to remember his manners, because he reaches out, and we shake hands, his palm calloused against mine, just like Gram’s. “Welcome, Margot.” He’s still staring at me. It must be unnerving, if he knew my mother. To see me, just like her.

  “Thanks for having us,” I say. “Tess invited us over to brunch. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” he says automatically, and his smile is warm. “Have you been here
long? In town?”

  “No,” I say, and if he was talking to the police chief just now, he knows this, but if he wants to pretend I’m just a new family friend, that works for me.

  He steps past me, motioning for me to join him in heading back to the kitchen. I do, but slowly. I need more time to bring up Mom.

  “How are you liking Fairhaven?” he says.

  “It’s all right. I wish I’d seen it before.”

  We pass out of the hallway and into a smaller family room, two couches and a fireplace. Mr. Miller comes up next to me, and for a moment we both stop, looking out the large bay window, across the porch and toward Fairhaven.

  “My mom never told me much about it,” I say. Mr. Miller is older than Mom—she had me early, after all—but their lives would’ve crossed, at least for a little, especially if he grew up here, and her right there at the house we both can’t take our eyes off. “Did you know her?”

  He gives me a once-over. “I assume you mean Jo?” “Yeah,” I say, and the oddness of the question is buried under the crush of hearing her name. Familiar, living. He knew her. He actually knew her.

  “Then yeah,” he says. “A bit, anyway. But she was a kid when I left Phalene for school. And by the time I came back to take over the farm, she was gone. Is she here with you?”

  I want to laugh. “No,” I say instead. “It’s just me.”

  “Well,” he says, “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about her. They always kept to themselves.”

  “Gram and my mom?”

  He frowns. “No,” he says, slowly, warily. “Did she not . . .”

  “Not what?” I say, confused, and I watch his mouth drop open.

  “Nothing.” He clears his throat. “Let’s get to brunch. I’m starving.”

  He doesn’t wait for me, just heads down the hallway. And I follow, but I’m thinking about his expression, how it closed itself up in that way adults’ faces do. How it said, This is not for you. For your own good.