Smoke

by Catherine McKenzie

  It’s where Ben went and where some of his old friends send their kids now. He hadn’t wanted to teach there—he really would’ve preferred to be in the public school system, or so he used to say—but there wasn’t a job open when he passed his qualifications, and he wanted very much to stay in Nelson, so he gave in. “I’ll teach them to be little liberals when their parents aren’t looking,” he said ruefully when he told me about his decision. “Work on the inside.”

  “How was Write Club?” I say now.

  “The first rule of Write Club is that you don’t talk about Write Club.”

  “Ha.”

  “It was fine. Same group of kids, mostly.”

  “That Tucker kid and his friends too?”

  “Looks like it. Apparently, every budding sociopath likes to share his dark fantasies with his classmates.”

  Ben finishes building my sandwich and pushes it across the counter to me.

  “Do you think that’s what it is?”

  “Who knows? I hate how I have to wonder half the time whether I should be reporting kids to the principal because of the zero-tolerance policy on violence.”

  Last year Ben had no choice but to turn one of Tucker’s stories over to the principal because it went into detail about how he wanted to practice cutting up his sister by starting with her ballet outfits. He’d initially been suspended for three days, but when it turned out his sister didn’t even take ballet, he was let back in and the principal (and Ben) had to apologize to the family while Tucker looked on with an evil smirk. The next week, Ben found a cut-up ballet leotard in his staffroom mail cubby, but when they couldn’t prove who’d left it there because the camera feed was down, that had been the end of it.

  “You don’t have to run the club,” I say.

  “Hardly seems fair to the other kids if I don’t. Besides, maybe I can be a good influence.”

  “I’m sure you can,” I say gently.

  Ben watches me as I pick up my sandwich and try to get a corner of it into my mouth.

  “So,” he says. “Who’d they send?”

  “Mmmfff?”

  “To command. The fire?”

  I put it down in defeat. “Kara.”

  “I like her.”

  “I know. Will you pass me a knife and fork?”

  “Ha! Victory is mine.”

  He walks to the utensil drawer, doing a little dance along the way, and removes a knife and fork. Then he takes out a second set.

  “Wait,” I say. “You didn’t even try. You totally defaulted.”

  He shrugs instead of giving me the laugh I expected.

  “How do you know Kara’s in command?” he asks.

  I feel like I’ve walked into a trap. Like Ben already knows the answer, and he’s waiting to see if I’m going to tell the truth.

  “The sheriff’s department asked Rich for my help with the investigation.”

  Ben just looks at me, waiting. I feel a stab of sympathy for John Phillips because this is how I made him feel earlier. Like there was a silence that needed to be filled.

  “It makes sense, right?” I say, speaking quickly. “They have to figure it out. All those fire warnings and how much money it’s going to cost and . . . Anyway, it looks like it started in this guy’s fire pit.”

  Ben starts slowly cutting into his sandwich. He takes a bite and chews it thoughtfully while I resist every impulse I have to say something more.

  “Someone was stupid enough to make a fire outside after this summer?” he says eventually.

  “He said there’s been high school kids hanging out there at night, drinking beers, burning stuff.”

  “Did he know who they were?”

  “Just general descriptions. Sixteen or so. White. Rowdy.”

  “Sounds like half my class.”

  “Right. Actually, did you hear anything at school today?”

  “Such as?”

  “Rumors? Kids acting weird? Don’t the teachers usually know what’s going on?”

  “I don’t patrol the halls looking for the telltale heart.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m probably going to have to go to the school. And to Nelson High. Start asking questions. See if there’s any connection.”

  “That’s going to make you popular.”

  I cut off a corner of the sandwich and chew it. The mayonnaise and bacon feel overwhelming in their normalcy and goodness.

  “Miss Popular. That’s me.”

  Ben smiles as my phone flashes next to me with an incoming text. It’s from Andy Thomas, and the part that’s visible to both of us on the screen reads, Talk?

  Ben’s smile runs away and is replaced by the hard, angry look he was wearing earlier.

  “You better answer that,” he says, then stalks out of the room.

  DAY TWO

  * * *

  From: Nelson County Emergency Services

  Date: Wed, Sept. 3 at 12:01 A.M.

  To: Undisclosed recipients

  Re: Cooper Basin Fire Advisory

  * * *

  The Cooper Basin fire continues to spread rapidly and has now consumed more than 800 acres of brush and timber. Because of the direction of the fire’s path, the evacuation advisory for the West Nelson area bounded by Oxford and Stephen Streets has been lifted, though an advisory remains in effect for the Cooper Basin. There will be emergency vehicles and heavy machinery working in those areas overnight. Residents can expect the activity to be disruptive. There is a possibility that the West Nelson evacuation advisory will be put back in place should circumstances change.

  More information is available at www.nelsoncountyemergencyservices.com.

  Further advisories will be issued as necessary.

  CHAPTER 10

  To-Do

  Elizabeth

  I wake on Wednesday morning with the first streaks of sun coming up over the horizon. Ben’s bedroom has never had proper curtains, and unless I’m in total darkness, my body always rises with the sun, like a switch has been flipped in my brain.

  I reach under my pillow for my phone and see the e-mail from the county’s emergency services floating on the screen. I’d put my phone on vibrate, sure I’d wake if it buzzed in the night, but the e-mail came in just after midnight, and I’d heard nothing.

  I read it and think about what it says, how it means that we can return home now, if we want to. Then I check the weather map again, and I visualize all the downed timber I saw on the backside of the Peak on my trail runs. That’s what the fire is rushing toward, where Kara and her crews are pushing it, hoping to contain it, stop it.

  We’re better off staying where we are.

  Besides, do we even really have a home to go back to?

  I turn on my side, away from Ben, and come face-to-face with the photo sitting on the nightstand. It’s from our wedding day, taken on top of Nelson Peak. I look at our smiling faces, our full-toothed grins. We’d eaten our canary, and we were proud.

  It was a glorious June day ten years ago—typical Nelson summer weather, all skyscraper skies and dry warmth. It wasn’t a big ceremony, not according to Grace and Gordon, anyway, just our college friends, immediate family, my fire crew, and some old friends of Ben’s. Despite that, the planning of it all felt like more than I could manage. If it hadn’t been for Grace’s generous offer of a wedding planner, it never would have gotten done. I couldn’t focus on the details or make decisions that should have been easy. Maybe it was the timing that was getting to me—I could be called away to a fire, theoretically, at any moment—but as the ceremony grew closer, my anxiety rose to a steep peak.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to marry Ben. Of course I did. But there was my own parents’ divorce. And the fact that I hadn’t lived in one place since college. And Ben was hinting that he wanted to start a family soon. And . . .

  “We can cancel if you want to,” Ben had said, finding me hiding out in his boyhood tree house in the small woods on his parents’ property, my knees tucked under my chin, my arms wrapp
ed around my legs. I wanted to small myself up, maybe disappear if I could manage it.

  I looked at him, wondering how he knew what was in my head, what I’d never said out loud, even to myself. And then I was so relieved that he did, I almost broke down completely.

  “I don’t want to do that,” I said in a wavering voice.

  “You sure?”

  He copied how I was sitting so our arms were touching. I could hear the snowmelt rushing in the brook just out of view.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want to make a mistake this big, Beth. If you don’t want to do it, then just say.”

  I dropped my arms and turned to him. I wanted to crawl into his lap like a child. I wanted it to be just the two of us getting married right there in the tree house with only the birds as witnesses, the wind in the new grass our wedding song.

  “I’m not ready.”

  “I figured.”

  “No, I’m ready to get married. It’s all the other stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “A house and babies and quitting my job and—”

  “What are you talking about? We don’t have to do any of that.”

  “We don’t?”

  He lifted my chin with his hands. Our faces were inches apart.

  “Of course not. Who says we do?”

  “Your mother, for one.”

  “Ignore her.”

  “I think you want those things too.”

  “I do want some of them. But only if you want them. When you want them.”

  I searched his face, feeling my heart speed up, maybe in relief, maybe in happiness.

  “But I can’t be responsible for all those decisions,” I said. “If you want those things . . .”

  He placed a finger on my lips. “I want you. And I’m not making you responsible. We’ll decide together. When the time is right.”

  “But how will we know when the time is right?”

  “We just will. Okay?”

  I kissed him for an answer, and four weeks later, after a sleepless night on my part, we assembled at the base of the mountain and rode a rusted yellow ski chair up to the summit. I was worried I’d lose a shoe or that the light chiffon of my dress would get torn on the rough metal seats. But Ben had arranged for blankets to cover the chairs, and he held my shoes in his hand until we got to the top, keeping me distracted by finally revealing how his parents had reacted when he’d announced our intended marriage location.

  The ceremony took place on the wood-slatted lookout that gave a view of the town and the spiked, snow-covered mountains behind it. The columbine was out in droves that year, and a white raft of flowers circled the platform, their gentle perfume better than any hothouse blooms. As the wind whipped around us, we said the old, solemn words.

  In sickness and in health.

  In good times and in bad.

  Till death do us part.

  I felt them weave around us, binding us together.

  When we were man and wife, Ben took me in his arms, kissed my trembling lips, and said, “You’re stuck with me now.”

  He lifted me up and carried me, bride-style, into the old ski lodge, and we sat down to the formal dinner Ben’s parents had insisted on. I could only imagine how much money they’d spent transforming the 1960s decor into what I was seeing: walls draped in soft silk panels; pink and blue lighting; tables set with the finest linen. I caught my father’s eye, and he raised his eyebrows twice, our signal for Nicely done, kid. I shrugged and shook my head, hoping he’d find a way to enjoy himself even though he was seated with my mom and her new husband.

  And as we sat there, drinking champagne and cutting into thick slabs of beef, looking out over this town that was to be my home, all the worry leading up to the ceremony seeped away.

  It was done, and we were one, and I knew the strength of our love could carry us through anything.

  I roll back toward Ben to find him awake.

  “Hey,” I say. “You still angry?”

  “I wasn’t angry.”

  After he saw the text from Andy on my phone, we spent the next thirty minutes hissing at each other like snakes, arguing as quietly as we could, even though his parents were out for the evening. Like if we shouted, the volume of our words might stain the walls, creating evidence of our discord for his parents to find when they returned. And then they would know, and then . . . Neither of us knew what happened then.

  “You told me you weren’t speaking anymore,” he said at one point.

  “We’re not. Today was the first time I’ve talked to him in a year.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Beth. Okay? Just don’t.”

  “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “You know why.”

  “I’ve apologized for that over and over. What more can I do?”

  And so on.

  Oh, we are good at fighting, Ben and I.

  We’ve had so much practice.

  “I don’t want to argue anymore,” I say to Ben now as we lie facing each other, bound together by circumstance, our pasts, and, somewhere underneath it all, the love that sometimes feels erased by everything that’s happened.

  “I never wanted to,” he says.

  “Ben.”

  “I’m joking, okay? It’s just a joke.”

  Not funny, I think. But, “Okay,” I say.

  “Can I ask you one thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you at least try not to be involved in this fire?”

  “Yes. Of course. But Rich—”

  “No, that’s fine. That’s enough.”

  “Ben,” I say again.

  He closes his eyes. “Let’s not right now, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And just . . . don’t see him again, all right? Andy.”

  “I won’t,” I say, although it’s already on its way to being a lie.

  Ben’s eyes stay shut, and after a few moments I know he’s fallen back asleep. Maybe he isn’t really that angry, if he can just slip into slumber. Then again, falling asleep has always been as easy for him as closing his eyes.

  I watch him as he breathes in and out. The dark rough of his beard along his jaw. His full lips that still, all these years later, surprise me with their softness. The perfect length of his nose. Is he really sleeping, or has he just retreated behind its facade to turn the page on us? Does he still dream about me the way he used to, waking up with my name on his lips and his intentions hard against my back? He agreed to the divorce, but does he want it? Did he just give up on us because I was insisting, or is it what he wanted too?

  I could drive myself crazy with these questions.

  I’ve spent months doing that very thing.

  I shove them away, rise, and take a quick shower. As I lather my hair with shampoo, a waft of smoke emanates from it, like I’ve spent too much time roasting marshmallows on a mosquitoed summer night. It reminds me that the fire can still find us, even out here.

  When I walk into the kitchen, it’s a few minutes after six. Despite the early hour, Gordon is sitting at the island working his way through his morning grapefruit. He’s wearing a pressed white shirt and dark slacks—all he needs is a tie and blazer to complete his Captain of Industry look.

  “Good morning, my dear,” he says, lowering his Wall Street Journal. “What would you like for breakfast this morning?”

  He’s asking me, but he’s really addressing Rosalia, their live-in maid, who’s the daughter of the woman who mostly raised Ben and his siblings. Rosalia is standing discreetly at the stove in a blue smock uniform, making an egg-white omelet, Gordon’s second course every morning after his perfect half a grapefruit. Nearly six feet, Gordon is still as trim as he was when he married Grace forty years ago, something she’s fond of mentioning. The same applies to her, come to think of it, but that’s not the kind of thing you say about yourself. At least, not when you’re Grace.

  I know better by
now than to protest Gordon’s offer of Rosalia’s services, so I put in an order for a poached egg and toast and push down my middle-class resistance. I might as well enjoy the amenities while I can. There’s surely a time limit on this hospitality. It surprises me, in a way, that I’ll miss this place. Though I’ve mocked it and never felt quite comfortable with its rhythms, there’s comfort in knowing a set of parents—whole, intact, loving—were available and welcoming.

  “Grace asked me to remind you about your appointment for your fitting tomorrow,” he says when I’ve taken a seat across from him.

  Grace is a late riser, and she often uses Gordon as a kind of verbal e-mail service. She’s never used actual e-mail. Too impersonal, she says, though I suspect computers make her nervous.

  “Fitting?”

  My phone buzzes with an incoming message, and I pull it from my pocket to check for what I’m sure is a fire update. But it’s not about the fire. It’s an automatic reminder from one of the town’s two divorce lawyers about an appointment I scheduled a couple of weeks ago as a way of making myself tell Ben that I wanted to separate. I’d meant to cancel it. I only wanted to put a clock on bringing it up, not on getting it done. I shove the phone into my pocket, hoping Gordon doesn’t notice my shaking hand.

  “Surely you haven’t forgotten about the Fall Fling?” he says, amused, over his half-lowered paper. “I believe the theme this year is a very original ‘black and white.’”

  Gordon’s ambivalence about all the socializing he has to do is one of the things I like about him. Between the cocktail parties and the art events, he could be in his tux every other week. Many of his friends are. But Gordon prefers the comforts of home over glad-handing. He and Grace have some sort of arrangement, some calculus about how much of it he needs to do to keep his standing. But the Fall Fling is the height of the social season, an event we’ve often been dragged to. And Grace knows I’m hopeless at picking the right attire, not because I can’t choose a pretty dress but because I’m simply likely to forget to do so until it’s too late. She took me to my first fitting two weeks ago when the dresses she ordered came in. Tomorrow’s appointment is for final adjustments.