Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  We’d sat in our homes through a week that became a weekend, the days indistinguishable. We sat taking in the news: local news. National news. Radio broadcasts. St. Louis Post-Dispatch special sections on memorials and weapons, on gun control, on cancellations and chronologies and school plans and where we could possibly go from here. The newspaper tried to reconstruct where Caleb had been and when, what hallways he moved through before traveling to other hallways and classrooms, a trail we hadn’t thought to replay. Matt asked his father why it mattered and you can’t imagine the destruction was all he said, an indication that it would take time. We awaited news of funerals. We triaged our options. We considered whose we would attend, whose we would not, who among thirty-five we’d release in our own way from the quiet privacy of our homes. We hadn’t thought to contact one another until we saw the broadcast of the Blacks’ home.

  Matt was the first of us to see the news, after only three hours of broken sleep. He drifted off past 4 A.M. in a bedroom that had already begun to lighten, a dawn that spread through slatted blinds when he got out of bed and crawled from the basement to the living room, where his father watched the morning broadcast, already in his police uniform on a Sunday. His father stood from the couch and moved toward him, a gesture meant either to embrace him or to shield him from the news. Behind him, Matt saw the grained faces on-screen of Arthur Black and Jean Black: faces Matt recalled from school-wide assemblies and holiday parties at Des Peres Elementary, faces turned away from the crowd at the vigil. Matt listened to the newscaster speak it, not local news but already a national affiliate, both died in a house fire late last night. Matt didn’t have to ask. He knew his father would be called upon for forensics. He knew his father had been granted a reprieve from the investigation at Lewis and Clark High but that he would be needed for this.

  Are you going to the house? Matt asked.

  The only thing he could think to say.

  They have fire scene investigators for that, his father said. I’ve been called to the station. Chemical analysis of the debris.

  Debris. A word that pulled the breath from Matt’s body, that allowed him the indignity of a single thought: that nothing remained. That a fire had razed not just the walls or a roof but the entirety of a house.

  Zola awoke to find her mother seated at the kitchen table, her elbows bent in a triangle, her hands folded. The newspaper spread across the table beneath her arms, a front-page headline screaming house fire. A half-page photo of the house’s collapsed frame, a home Zola recognized immediately by the barn-shaped mailbox included in the photo’s vantage point to illustrate the only thing left standing. Caroline Black’s house: a home Zola had visited countless times for playgroup in kindergarten. A group of four children that included herself and Caroline and two twins, Amy and Althea Robinson, a group formed by their parents when they began school at Des Peres Elementary. Zola remembered the rooms of Caroline’s house. Her kitchen. Her small bedroom. Her living room carpeted in green shag. Her basement where the four of them once played with Barbies and board games and My Little Ponies, a basement with a Ping-Pong table and a pullout couch and so many lamps and side tables, all gone. Zola’s first thought: suicide. A burden too vast for a parent to live with, fire its only reprieve.

  Nick’s parents had already left for church when he woke, leaving behind a scrawled note on the kitchen counter, Wanted you to rest. They’d taken his brother with them, he knew, Jeff’s bed empty and already made. Nick noticed the newspaper missing, usually folded on the dining room table once both of his parents finished reading it. He searched the kitchen and the recycling bin and found it folded and placed near the trash can, its contents hidden away and, Nick later understood, purposefully misplaced by his parents so he wouldn’t see the headline: House Fire Kills Two. So he wouldn’t sit in the silence of a house. So he wouldn’t pull the scissors from the kitchen’s utility drawer and clip the article and place it in his nightstand drawer, the beginning of an archive, so he wouldn’t spend the morning until his family returned sitting in front of his computer researching fire and smoke and grief.

  Nick read of the neighbors and the emergency and the two hours it took firefighters to douse the flames, a blaze that left only the faint blueprint of a home. He glanced at other news: the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, a multinational team organized to determine whether Iraq housed weapons of mass destruction, that after six months of searching Iraq there was no evidence of any kind. That although the team would keep looking, no nuclear or chemical or biological agents had been found but only remnants of long-dormant activity from the First Gulf War, a war Nick barely remembered, a war that began when he was only three years old. He flipped back to the front page and let the scissors glide through the thin film of newsprint. He placed the clipped article in his bedroom’s nightstand and lay on his back, his computer off. He heard the whirring of sirens beyond the window, a sound that had become constant across the past days. Reporters filled the streets. Local teams. CNN. FBI officials who hadn’t left Midvale County since Wednesday morning. He focused on the stilled blades of the overhead fan and thought of how only neighborhoods away the Blacks had entered their home after the vigil and disintegrated.

  Christina sat curled into the armchair beside Ryan’s hospital bed at St. Mary’s Medical Center. After waiting several days beyond visiting hours for immediate family only, Christina had gotten up early and left her father and brother in the house and driven to the hospital to be in Ryan’s room when he woke. He was already awake and barely acknowledged her when she walked in, the first time he’d seen her since Wednesday, but she told herself it was distraction from determining how to still complete college applications for tennis scholarships. She held his hand as he drank water from a plastic cup and clicked the remote toward the small television mounted in the room’s corner. MSNBC. Christina grimaced at the coverage, a constant stream of news replaying over and over across the weekend, national affiliates buzzing through Midvale County to interview students, eyewitnesses, teachers. Turn it off, she whispered but Ryan kept the television on, his leg cast in plaster and elevated. Milking the injury for its worth, she thought, though she said nothing and let the television drone on until an anchor interrupted with breaking news. Christina sat forward in her chair. Squinted at the television, so small in the corner. Despite its distance and Ryan’s calling to a nurse for more water that drowned out the sound of the speakers Christina recognized immediately whose house had caught fire and burned.

  That’s Caroline Black’s house, Christina said.

  Who? Ryan leaned back in his hospital bed.

  Caroline Black, Christina said again, her voice carrying above the television.

  Who the fuck is Caroline Black? Ryan said and Christina got up immediately from her armchair. Hey, where are you going? she heard him shout as she made her way down the hospital corridor. Her legs moving. Brain hazed. She located the nurses’ station and laid her hands on the counter and one of the nurses looked up with concern, a young woman who’d brought Ryan a tray of scrambled eggs an hour before.

  Your boyfriend okay? the nurse asked.

  I need to use your phone, Christina said.

  The nurse smiled. It’s only for emergencies.

  I need to use your phone, Christina said again and watched the nurse lose her smile and hand her the receiver.

  CHRISTINA HAD BARELY spoken to Zola since Wednesday, had only acknowledged her and her mother across the crowd at the vigil. Zola answered on the first ring and said nothing of the Blacks’ house and Christina wondered which of them would break first.

  How is he? Zola asked when Christina told her where she was.

  He’ll be released from the hospital this afternoon, Christina said. Her voice even, as calm as she could keep it, the nurse listening behind the counter. Zola asked how bad it was and Christina told her the shot to his leg had just missed a major artery and that they’d discussed nothing else, not his college applications or how the injury would af
fect his chance of scholarships. Christina watched a man shuffle past her down the hallway, wearing a cloth gown and pulling a wheeled metal stand holding an IV bag. Her anger softened. Ryan’s reaction was forgivable given the circumstances. He’d been a state champion his junior year, readying this fall for a final spring season in both singles and doubles. His record of excellence was exactly what had attracted her to him two years ago, both of them athletes, her JV teammates encouraging their relationship as a given. He’d attracted college recruiters as well, a full ride he’d planned on taking before a bullet ripped through his leg.

  Has he talked about it? Zola asked.

  Not really. Christina glanced at the nurse and lowered her voice. There were other guys there. He says that’s where Will Isholt and Sam Scott were. I can’t even imagine what he saw or heard.

  Will Isholt and Sam Scott: two names on the list of thirty-five. Christina said it before remembering that Zola had been in the library, where the news reported the most gunfire. That her best friend could easily imagine what Ryan had seen and heard.

  Zola was quiet for only a moment. Is he acting okay?

  He’s been distant, Christina said carefully. He didn’t even call me after it happened. His mother had to call me late Wednesday night.

  He was probably just in shock, Zola said, and Christina heard in her voice the subtle catch, what she knew Zola felt but never said: Zola didn’t like him. Hadn’t liked him since Christina started dating him as soon as they entered Lewis and Clark. Back when she was a freshman on the junior varsity swim team, Ryan a sophomore and already playing varsity tennis. Back when she and Zola had thrown Tootsie Rolls and Double Bubble from the freshman float in the Homecoming parade, candy Ryan caught as he rode ahead of them on the sophomore flatbed. Christina had called Zola late at night sometimes when they fought, Zola listening without judgment. When Ryan said something terrible. When he stonewalled her for two, sometimes three full days. She’d told Zola about losing her virginity that summer, a July night after they’d gone mini-golfing and it started to rain and they stayed parked in Ryan’s car. She’d told Zola sex had become habitual, that after nearly three months in Ryan’s backseat or at his house when his parents were at work she still felt nothing close to orgasm. She’d stopped herself sometimes from saying too much, a widening gulf between the initiated and uninitiated, Zola who’d never been in a relationship beyond a three-day stretch in seventh grade that involved Carter Johnson and her first kiss and the only time a boy had slid a hand beneath her shirt. Christina sensed in her listening what at times felt like silent judgment, that Zola didn’t want drama, every phone call and complaint Christina made about Ryan pushing her further toward her resolve to be alone.

  Zola alone. Christina watched the man with the IV bag disappear down the hallway and wondered if anyone had been beside her in the stacks of the library.

  I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, Christina said.

  It was nothing. I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt.

  Did you see the news? Christina finally asked.

  Caroline Black’s family, Zola said. I can’t believe it.

  I know. I can’t even imagine.

  I wouldn’t blame them. I wouldn’t blame them at all if they chose this.

  Christina let her eyes lose focus down the hospital corridor. Suicide: what Zola meant. What she herself hadn’t considered. She’d never been in the Blacks’ home but had known Caroline since their first days together in kindergarten. Christina hadn’t joined Zola’s playgroup with Caroline and the Robinson twins, hadn’t lived near enough to really know them, but her budding friendship with Zola in their first-grade classroom had pushed a permanent distance between Zola and the group. Christina remembered Caroline’s feistiness. How when a group of parents suggested Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale be banned from their sophomore year English curriculum last year, she’d circulated a petition around the school to make sure it stayed included. How she’d always been the first girl at their annual Des Peres Elementary roller skating party to grab a boy during slow songs as the lights dimmed and the mirror ball glittered above the rink.

  Come over this afternoon, she said to Zola. A statement more than a question, one she hoped would not sound like a demand.

  Don’t you want to be around for Ryan when he goes home?

  Christina glanced down the hallway toward his hospital room. Who the fuck is Caroline Black? Her anger flickering again toward ignition.

  I’m sure he’ll be busy with his family, she said. Please, just come over.

  ZOLA TOOK HER bike to Christina’s, a habitual two-mile ride. Her mother out with the car buying groceries for the week, the only window Zola had alone across the days since Wednesday. Her mother watching over her like a night nurse on call. Her mother knowing she’d been in the library. Despite her mother’s vigilance and care, Zola had been unable to speak a word of it. The day shone bright and crisp, the sun a high disk in a cloudless sky, the leaves a shock of yellow and copper. The sun’s light hurt her eyes: a light she’d waited for, fall her favorite season, every color alive. A light that broke over her as she pedaled fast past Alisha Trenway’s house on the corner, her legs spinning to outpace the choked lump of her throat. Christina had asked about the library. The first thing Zola had thought: not screams or the rasped gasping for air or the metal of gunfire but the urine stain that had darkened her jeans, and whether any of her classmates had seen what control she’d lost. At times across the past days she could think of nothing else at all, an awful vanity, what she couldn’t tell Christina or her mother or anyone else who asked.

  Christina answered the front door before Zola could knock and led her past the living room where her brother, Simon, was on the couch reading a book and down the hallway to her bedroom, her small television glowing through the darkness, her bed unmade. Her father out running errands, Christina said, and Zola noticed their freshman and sophomore yearbooks open on her bedroom carpet, books they’d assembled together, meetings that seemed like a separate lifetime.

  Why do you have these out? Zola asked.

  I don’t really know. Just passing time.

  We don’t have to do anything yet. Don’t even think about it.

  I know. I wasn’t looking for ideas.

  Zola kneeled to the carpet, the sophomore yearbook open to a photograph of the women’s swim team. Through the haze of the library and the dark stain of her jeans, Zola had forgotten other rooms in the high school, other gunshots. Other pinpoints of loss.

  Elise, Zola whispered. Ran a hand across her classmate’s face and Christina’s teammate, so small in a group photograph beside the community pool.

  Her mother was so sad, Christina said. At the vigil. She was so sad.

  Zola didn’t want to ask. Do you know where she was in the school?

  I have no idea. I don’t know where anyone was. I clipped the list of names from the paper. It’s in my nightstand. I didn’t know what else to do until you arrived.

  Are you doing okay?

  Same as everyone else. I’m doing fine.

  Zola thought of the week’s photo shoots that never happened: the Math Club meeting, the marching band practicing on the football field. She turned to the yearbook’s section of celebrations and events, photographs of last year’s Homecoming dance she’d taken. Students spilling across the dance floor. Strobe lights and crepe paper streaming down. A picture of Caroline Black smiling in a pale blue dress, one Zola had snapped just before Caroline helped crown the winners of Homecoming Court.

  I can’t even believe it, Zola said. Caroline Black’s house. Her entire family.

  On the small television upon Christina’s nightstand, a reporter stood in front of the Blacks’ home. Zola hadn’t turned on her own television that morning, hadn’t seen the home’s ruin. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the blackened dust and the broken foundation and the stream of firefighters behind the reporter, the legs of their suits darkened with ash. She remembered Caroline’s white
bedroom furniture, a set that had probably long since been replaced. A trundle bed pulled from beneath Caroline’s bed when Zola slept over, two twin mattresses side by side. A koala teddy bear placed always on her pillow. A Sega Genesis console in the cool damp of the Blacks’ basement, video games they played while drinking Juicy Juice boxes and eating Nilla wafers. Zola watched the coverage and tried to imagine what it was that Caroline’s parents had last seen. If this was suicide. The horrible possibility that it was. The sad tragedy if it wasn’t. What dark ceiling they watched from the insomnia of their beds as some outlet sparked, as a stove knob neglected in the ocean of their grief ignited a flame that jumped the counter, that climbed the stairs to their bedroom and up the mattress and across the sheets.

  I wonder if Matt’s dad is there, Christina said. I wonder if he knows anything beyond what they’re telling us.

  Have you talked to Matt? Zola asked.

  I haven’t talked to anyone. Have you?

  Just my supervisor.

  You’re actually going to work?

  She’s giving me time, Zola said. I can go back when I feel like it.

  Christina looked back at the television. The coverage terrible and even still, Zola felt a flame of irritation bubble up beneath her skin. She had so few frustrations with Christina but if one was her asshole boyfriend, the other was work. Christina didn’t have a job, worked as a lifeguard only in summers, her father’s work at Boeing and her mother’s career at a small university in Edwardsville enough to pay for her college outright. She didn’t need to save for the possibility of tuition, nor did Nick, whose father was a doctor, his mother a lawyer. Nick had summer jobs, same as Christina. Matt was the only other one of them who’d had a worker’s permit since fifteen, a single-income household like hers that made him start shifts as soon as he could at Midvale Cinemas. At fifteen, Zola chose the Local Beanery, a coffee shop within easy biking distance from home and school where she learned quickly how to make lattes and cappuccinos and flat whites, where she learned how to make money. Her father gone since she was three, a man she remembered only in the soft focus of bedtime stories, a disembodied masculine voice lulling her to sleep. Her mother’s salary high in pharmaceutical management but challenged by the rising cost of college. Christina understood Zola’s job only to the point of balking when it interfered with their weekend plans and of coming in sometimes for free hot chocolate when Zola worked after school, shifts full of bused dishes and slanting sun and the scent of burned coffee.