Things We Set on Fire

by Deborah Reed

  Elin stayed put with her mother, unable to move. Kate had never before threatened to do such a thing.

  Vivvie finally slapped her palms onto the table, shoved her chair back, walked with an unfamiliar slow measure, and banged once on the bathroom door. “Knock off your damn foolishness and get to the dinner table,” she said.

  Kate immediately quit crying.

  “I mean it,” Vivvie said. “You aren’t half as crazy as you’d have us believe. Now get out here. Dinner’s getting cold.”

  To Elin’s surprise, Kate swung open the door, her face puffed red and wet when she sat down at the table. She didn’t look up, just slung sweet potatoes and forked a pork chop onto her plate, and started eating.

  It was one of few times Elin had actually felt sorry for her, the humiliation and defeat so apparent in the way she cast her watery eyes to the bathroom door, wiping the residual tears from her cheeks. She chewed every bite of food so thoroughly that Elin could feel the lumps getting smaller in her own throat.

  NINE

  FIRST THING IN THE MORNING Elin’s mother was on the phone saying, “What time did you get in? I could use a hand over here with these girls.”

  Elin hadn’t yet dressed. She drew the blanket over her bare legs, and then her waist, and when she moved, her hips were still sore from the drive.

  “Late,” she lied. “I didn’t want to wake you.” Her mother’s voice, the image of two little sisters, the ridiculous lacy frames on the walls sent Elin into a slow, thick spin. Where was she? Or maybe the question was when was she? The sensation was long and sedated, like being pulled through layers of time. Elin drew her knees to her chest like a shield.

  “Is she out?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Kate.”

  “Not yet. I just called.”

  “I’m not sure what I’m doing here,” Elin said. “She’s going to leave the hospital in a day or two, pick up her daughters, and act like nothing happened.”

  Her mother ought to have shot right back, told her she was wrong or in the least not right, because that was how they spoke, back and forth like mismatched dancers, one leading, one fumbling, until they switched, and switched again, but here was nothing, a misstep that caused Elin to lean in. “Mom?”

  “It’s not like we can just hand them back,” her mother said. “Not like everything’s fine.” Her voice cut off, and Elin sat upright.

  “What is going on?”

  “Well,” her mother said. “You’ve come all this way.… I don’t exactly know. I don’t have any kind of plan. I figured you probably did.”

  “Me?” Elin asked. “Why would I have a plan?”

  “Because that’s just how you do things.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s not supposed to mean anything other than what it means.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Oh, good Christ, Elin. I’ve got to get to work. I’ve taken all the days off that Roth’s could give, and then some. I don’t live a fancy lifestyle. These girls will be here with the neighbor if you care to see them.”

  “Who lives a fancy lifestyle?” Somehow they had fallen straight down the well of conversation that Elin had tried avoiding for years, into the details of her life she’d always withheld because she did not want to hear what her mother had to say about it.

  “How would I know?” her mother said. “I’ve never even been to your house.”

  “It’s not like you don’t have my address.”

  “Like I said, I don’t live a fancy lifestyle.”

  “Is a plane ticket to see me part of some fancy lifestyle?”

  “Well, if that was the case you might have flown home to see me once or twice.”

  “Oh, please. I’ve offered to fly you to Oregon.”

  “This is not what needs addressing, Elin.”

  “I realize that—”

  The phone rustled around, and then her mother said, “It’s in the kitchen cupboard next to the refrigerator. Tell your sister to reach it if you can’t.”

  Then more rustling and Elin felt ashamed, imagining her nieces alone in that house with this strange old woman, their own mother locked away in a psych ward.

  “Do they have any idea what’s going on?” Elin asked.

  “As far as I can tell, no, not the full picture,” she said. “I can’t bring myself to mention anything close to the truth.”

  Elin dropped her head in her hand, massaged her temple. “What was Kate doing before this happened?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You still don’t know where she was living or who with?”

  “I’m guessing not far from the police station where I picked them up across town. And I assume they were alone. Averlee is the one who called 911.”

  “And no word from Neal?”

  “Ha. No. The only thing the officer said when he called me was, ‘There doesn’t seem to be a father in the picture.’ ”

  “Why would Kate do this? I can’t believe they were right across town this whole time and you never knew.”

  “That’s not for sure. I’m just saying—”

  “That’s less than ten miles. Isn’t it?”

  “Ten miles or ten thousand miles, it makes no difference, Elin. She didn’t want to be found.”

  “Those girls are your granddaughters.”

  “And where the hell have you been?” She didn’t give Elin time to answer. “You need to get off your high horse and stop acting like she’s just going to show up and everything’s going back to the way it was. Stop acting like you’re above everybody. I don’t need you coming down here trying to blame me for what your sister’s done.”

  “Oh, here we go. Who said I’m blaming you for anything?”

  “Don’t start. I’m in no mood.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  “You think you know so much.”

  “Who said anything about knowing?”

  “What’d you come here for, Elin? Huh? Why the hell did you agree to come?”

  “Why the hell did you ask me to come?”

  “Goddamnit. I’ve got to get to work. The girls will be next door if you can bring yourself to lend a hand.”

  “If I can bring myself,” Elin said with a snort, but her mother had already dropped off the line.

  TEN

  THEIR GRANDMOTHER STOOD AT THE side of her truck as if deciding whether or not to leave for work. Averlee, Quincy, and Wink watched from across his yard, Grandma hollering, “They’re not allowed in the woods. And don’t forget their snack. And call the direct line if you need me. They’ll send it straight to the register.”

  Wink lifted his hand. “We’re all right,” he said, but their grandmother continued. “If she shows up, stall her. I’m only ten minutes away.”

  Averlee wondered if this she was her mother or Aunt Elin. Could be another relative, too, no telling how many were out there.

  “Quincy, use the tissues in your pocket if you need one,” their grandmother yelled. “And be good. Both of you.”

  When the engine started Averlee’s chest rumbled, and Quincy covered her ears until their grandmother was out of sight, the truck a dull hum in the distance.

  Averlee held Quincy’s hand, straining to see Wink’s eyes behind his sunglasses, to see if one or the other batted, if that was how he got his name, but the glasses were dark, so dark she wondered if he could see her, this strange and tall skinny man in a white T-shirt and tan shorts, his blue boat sneakers, ankles white where his socks should have been.

  “You girls know any songs?” he asked.

  “Why?” Averlee said.

  “To sing.”

  “Are you a Girl Scout master?” Quincy asked.

  Averlee tugged her hand.

  “A what?” Wink said.

  “Never mind,” Averlee said.

  “I play the accordion,” Wink said. “Not very good, but I thought you might like to sing.”

/>   “No, thank you,” Averlee said, so politely it sounded rude.

  Wink’s long shadow stretched the length of Averlee, Quincy, and their shadows combined. He was quiet now, and they were, too, just the sound of her grandmother’s white work shirts flapping on the clothesline. A tiny pinwheel spun near Wink’s flowerbed and Averlee thought this was why the birdfeeder next to it was empty of birds. Even the scrub jays, like the one at home that ate sunflower seeds from her hand, would be scared of the spinning sparkling blue. Her mother had taught her that.

  Wink hooked both thumbs into his front pockets and glanced around at everything except Averlee and Quincy, the way their grandmother had done at the police station, and the ambulance driver, too, before he shut their mother up inside. But now Wink was grinning. He snapped his fingers above his head, and disappeared behind the wooden screen door identical to their grandmother’s, the whole house its twin—white and square, and hardly bigger than the slave-worker houses her school had visited at the living museum.

  “When’s Grandma coming back?” Quincy asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. Mom’ll get here before she does.”

  “He’s weird. What’s an accordion?”

  “He’s nice enough.”

  Quincy took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose, shooting her eyes sideways at Averlee as if doing the thing her grandmother had asked of her was some kind of betrayal.

  Averlee picked mosquito bites on her arm, and then the uneven skin around her nails, a habit her mother always hated. She and Quincy were alone in the yard for what felt like a long time and Averlee thought about the snake her grandmother had killed, and then her mother at the kitchen table. She’d gone her whole life seeing nothing like the things she saw these last two days.

  She’d never say it, not to anyone, not even Quincy, but there were times when she thought her mother looked ugly, her face puffy in parts, saggy and tired in others, the dark around her eyes making her seem meaner than she was. But when Averlee found her there, sleeping peacefully, her skin was smooth and pretty and white, her hair shiny in the street light from the window, everything about her as untroubled as Averlee had ever seen, and so she’d considered taking the cold medicine to Quincy and going back to bed, even knowing what she knew.

  “Let’s get out of the sun,” Averlee said, but right then Wink returned with a square piece of cardboard in one hand and a gun in the other. Averlee looked again. A gun. A black gun. Quincy dashed behind her.

  “An air pistol from the flea market,” Wink said.

  Averlee felt her eyes grow larger, the glaring sun not enough to draw her lids.

  “I’ll hang this bull’s-eye to the hickory and we’ll have us a round.”

  “We’re going to shoot it?” Averlee asked.

  “It’s just a toy,” he said, and Quincy stepped out into view.

  Wink pulled a roll of duct tape from his pocket and fastened the cardboard at the top and bottom, running the tape around the tree. The red circles of the target were sloppy but the bull’s-eye was round and perfect as if he’d traced a paper cup.

  “Ain’t nothing to it,” Wink said, joining them where they stood, as far back from the target as a couple of cars in a row. He retrieved a handful of black plastic BBs from his other pocket and dropped them into the open slot on the side of the pistol, then snapped it closed. “Just point it like this, aim through the top here, and squeeze back on the trigger.” His thin arm seemed unusually long when he held it out, his hand jerking slightly with the suck and pop of the gun.

  It wasn’t clear he’d hit any part of the target until they got close enough to inspect the tiny pluck in the center of the red. “Don’t point it at anybody,” Wink said, smiling and offering, handle first, the pistol to Averlee.

  ELEVEN

  EVERYTHING HAD CHANGED. WHERE PASTURES once sprawled between orange and grapefruit groves, where pockets of pines and swamp and gators had lined the truck routes, miles of anemic concrete roadways had been poured, every corner staked with blue decorative street signs reminiscent of theme parks. Stores Elin had never heard of had fountains out front, cedar and wrought-iron benches to rest on after all the shopping, after walking across half-mile parking lots. Behind all that, matching sand-colored homes spread across the landscape.

  Elin was so disoriented by the time she found her mother’s driveway that the pang in her chest at seeing her mother’s house—the only thing that hadn’t changed—defied her relief. The bougainvillea was slightly fatter and lower to the ground, the white siding on the house yellowing with age, the concrete driveway once a canvas for her chalk drawings not nearly as wide or long as she’d remembered, but it reminded her now, as always, of Kate scuffing her rain boots through Elin’s chalk drawings the minute Elin looked away.

  She forced the brake with her foot, the car already in park, her whole body tensing as if for a fight, but what she felt, looking at her mother’s little cracker house, was guilt, and then annoyance at herself for being so short with her on the phone.

  Fluke jumped up, paws on the back window, and peered out. Elin followed his line of sight. The neighbor across the yard, an old man, stooped beside a girl with wiry white hair, a smaller version of the same girl who stood to her side.

  Elin opened her window, heard a pop, and the girls ran toward a tree, arms in the air, shouting some kind of victory. The older one, Averlee, Elin assumed, was waving a pistol with both hands.

  Elin stepped out, immediately light-headed in the blazing sun. She left the engine running, closed the door, and leaned her back into it. Before she could say a word, Averlee was on her, Quincy trotting right behind.

  “I know who you are,” Averlee said.

  “What are you doing with that?” Elin asked.

  “It’s an air pistol for shooting targets,” Averlee said, but Elin was struck mute by the color and shape of her eyes and face, the shape of her fingers, on or off the gun.

  “I’m Averlee. This is Quincy.”

  Fluke barked from inside the car.

  “You must be Elin,” the man said, offering a hand from nowhere. “My name’s Wink Cyrus. I live next door. Just looking after your nieces while Vivvie’s at work.”

  Elin’s hand felt lost inside his. “How do you know who I am?” She could have been Kate, after all.

  “Your Oregon tag. That’s one hell of a drive.”

  “Oh. Yes. It is. It was. I just came here to…” What? Baby-sit? Fight off Kate if she tried taking Averlee and Quincy? “… wait here with them today,” she said, faltering, her eyes absorbing the girls again, the delicate dip of their noses, sun-blushed cheeks, a line of faint freckles sprinkled across the curves. And all that white curly hair—their father Neal’s hair.

  But Averlee. What strange fates had overseen Kate and Neal giving birth to a girl who looked exactly like Elin, her hair the only difference, and that identical to Neal’s, a man Kate eventually claimed to dislike just as much, if not more, than Elin.

  “What’s your dog’s name?” Averlee asked.

  Fluke fogged the glass with this breath, his whole body swaying from the strength of a wagging tail. “Fluke. Do you like dogs?”

  Averlee didn’t answer.

  “What about you?” she asked Quincy, who nodded but never quite met her eyes.

  “Would you care for a drink?” Wink asked.

  “Oh. Well…” Alcohol could trigger a migraine. But she was sweating and suddenly craving a glass of clear, searing liquid, something icy with a lime.

  “I’ve got lemonade,” Wink said.

  “Oh. Sure. Thank you.”

  “We can sit at the picnic table in the shade,” Wink said. “I think it’s about time for their snack.” He went inside his house and Elin felt a sudden pull toward her mother’s, the need to crawl inside its walls, draw close the dusty green shutters, have a cookie, take a nap. The house was so much smaller than she remembered, a fraction of the house Elin owned outright with Rudi.

  Averlee he
ld up the pistol. “You want to try?”

  “Please don’t point that at me,” Elin said.

  “I’m not.”

  “I bet it hurts to get hit with one of those BBs,” Elin said.

  Fluke barked again, the sound encapsulated, as if he were far off in the woods. Elin smacked the window to make him stop, and Averlee flinched.

  What was taking Wink so long?

  Averlee shoved the pistol into Elin’s hand. “Just look through the top thing right there and shoot,” she said.

  “You keep it,” Elin said, but it was already in her grip. She joggled it lightly. Across the yard Wink placed a pitcher of lemonade and cups and a plate of cookies on the picnic table. “I’m not sure Fluke and I are staying,” Elin said. “Wink seems to have everything under control.”

  Averlee pulled Quincy by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “You need to get out of the sun.”

  The pistol looked genuine, the black metal barrel, its weight heavier than a toy ought to feel. Elin turned the car off, opened the back door, and Fluke beelined it to the girls, who fell to their knees petting him, laughing, dodging and then jutting their chins toward his tongue. She swung the car door shut and the sun ricocheted off the side mirror, her mother’s coffee-can ashtray on the front steps, and even the porch swing behind the wraparound screen.

  She slipped free of her sandals and walked barefoot through pockets of hot grey sand in the grass, edging her heels around red ants. Mugginess prickled her arms; her wedding band tightened around the swelling of her finger. She’d thought to remove it, and reconsidered for the sake of conversation with her mother.

  “I made you and me some grown-up lemonade,” Wink said, handing her a blue glass of icy, lemony liquid. “Grey Goose lemonade.”