Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  How there was so much of everything beyond knowing.

  The empty pan on the stove. So many yellowing cookbooks. A Peter Rabbit tea set, a flowered apron, a hutch that held his father’s glass decanters. Every item in the kitchen held a history. A series of moments he’d never seen. How his parents must have purchased the hutch together sometime before he was born. How they might have been laughing, a joke, an odd name for a store, Tom’s Trunk of Treasures. How the sky might have darkened with rain or else the beginnings of a sunset. How much younger they must have been, whether they remembered carrying it to the car—which car? which car in the line of vehicles they had owned together?—or whether it was an outing lost to the scattered record of time. Or what might have been gifted: a tea set. What might have caused a friend or his mother’s mother or his aunt Catherine to pick up a teapot while browsing the aisles of a thrift shop, to carry a piece of porcelain to the checkout counter. What items bore witness to his parents’ history: what books or trinkets were picked up on vacations, against seasides, so many isolated moments that made up a life.

  I don’t know her history, Matt said. I feel like I know nothing about her.

  You do your best, his mother said. That’s all that you can do. You have a heart, a brain. Those things will make a profile she would have wanted.

  Matt pulled his hand away. His mother glanced down at the newspaper on the table beneath her hands. What she would have wanted. As if anyone could guess. A girl who just days ago had taken in the scent of wet leaves, the sharp coolness of October sun.

  I can’t believe this sovereignty council, his mother said, her finger on the headlines, skirting those of Lewis and Clark. As if we can go in and upend a country and expect anyone to know where to go from here.

  Matt pushed his plate away and leaned back from the table.

  What did Dad see? he asked again. What did Dad find at the Blacks’ house?

  They don’t know, she said. No one knows. But things will move quickly at their house, I imagine. We should be prepared for a memorial service. That’s all I know.

  CHRISTINA SAT IN her car on the street outside of Ryan’s house, the windows rolled up and fogging with her breath, her hands clenched on the steering wheel. She still wore sweatpants. Her brother was at home. Ryan had finally called that morning, the first he’d called since returning from the hospital, and told her to come over, that his parents were both back to work, that his father would only return over the lunch hour to check on him.

  He was in bed. He said he’d leave the door unlocked for her. Christina checked her makeup in the car’s rearview mirror, a slick of mascara she swiped on regardless of wearing pajamas. She hadn’t wanted to appease him, hadn’t wanted to come immediately when summoned, but here she was, the feigned casualness of sweatpants, looking away from the absurdity of herself in the rearview mirror. She glanced down the street toward Benji Ndolo’s house, a freshman who’d lived six houses down from Ryan and whose mother had spoken at the vigil. A house she’d sometimes passed on her bike when she’d ridden from her house to Ryan’s on the wooded path that connected their neighborhoods. A kid neither she nor Ryan knew aside from seeing him on the sidewalk waiting for the bus sometimes when she’d picked Ryan up in the car for school. She thought of Benji’s mother, the way her face broke when she tried to speak at the vigil. Christina opened the car door and made her way across Ryan’s front lawn.

  Ryan’s house was the scent of cinnamon and air-conditioning and stale smoke and vanilla sugar candles. She slipped her shoes off in the foyer and padded softly down the hallway carpet. Ryan’s bedroom door was cracked open, a sliver that revealed his shape resting in bed. The sound of a television buzzed from the room, a late-morning game show. His foot elevated on a pillow. His leg wrapped in a hardened cast. The same as the hospital room, the covers stretched over his legs and up to his bare chest.

  Christina stood at the foot of his bed. His gaze drifted to the standing figure of her shape, the television emitting the sharp ping of bells and whistles, contestants winning prizes. Christina watched him, then crossed her arms at the bottom edges of her shirt. She pulled the fabric over her head and let it drop to the floor.

  What are you doing? Ryan said.

  Christina ignored him and pulled off her sweatpants. Beneath her pajamas spanned a length of shaved skin. Her legs, her abdomen. Swimmer’s calves. Swaths she’d run a razor across the night before to eradicate every bump and hair, every imperfection she could find. To not think of a pool’s waves, Elise nowhere within them. To not think of a phone silent at her bedside. She stood before him in the bright red of a laced bra and walked to the bed and straddled Ryan’s body and placed her hands on his chest.

  What are you doing, he said.

  Taking care of you, she said.

  Ryan pushed back her shoulders. I’m hurt.

  I know. She leaned in close, ran her breath against his neck.

  He pushed her head away. A shove more violent, one that carried an acute pain.

  No, Chris, I’m hurt. I was shot. Don’t you fucking understand?

  She sat back on her knees. Of course I understand, she said. She pushed herself off him, away from the bed. She gathered her clothing from the floor and clutched it against her chest.

  I didn’t mean—he started to speak, his voice softer but she was already pulling her sweatpants on, already yanking the T-shirt back over her head. She backed away from him, stood near the safety of his dresser. She kept her eyes on the floor.

  It’s just that my dad will be home soon, he said.

  Is that it?

  Yeah, that’s it.

  Then why did you call? Why tell me no one was home?

  Because it’s true. No one’s home.

  The television whirred and buzzed, a cacophony of chimes.

  Look at me, Ryan said, his voice hardened. Look at why I’m here, why we’re at home. Why we’re not at school like we’re supposed to be.

  Yeah, we’re home, she said. And you won’t even touch me.

  What, you want to fuck, Chris? You want to feel better? You think my dick will make the gunman go away?

  She grabbed a framed photo from his dresser and threw it. The frame hit the wall beside his bed and glass shattered and rained down on the carpet. A photo of him on the tennis court, racket held high. Slipped from the frame to the white down of the carpet.

  Ryan looked up at her. He didn’t have to say it: You crazy bitch. His face screamed it instead though he’d already said it once before, what she would never tell Zola, the time last spring after a party when he’d been drinking and driving home 20 miles per hour too fast, when at a stoplight she’d stepped from the car and slammed the door behind her and started walking home alone, the roads deserted and the streetlamps blinking and he’d pulled up next to her and rolled down the window and yelled, Get in the car, you fucking bitch.

  He hadn’t even asked her across the past days what she recalled from inside the school, as if knowing she’d been in French class was enough. His pain the sun. Everything about him the center always of their orbit. How she’d been to every one of his tennis matches and watched him lob the ball across each net of singles and doubles. How she’d listened to him complain for two years that Chad Stapleton wasn’t as serious about tennis scholarships as he was, a doubles partner he claimed brought down his performance. How he’d been to only one of her swim meets, the first one she’d completed freshman year right after they began dating. Elise among the members of her 200-meter medley relay team, how they’d finished second and how she’d placed first in every other women’s freestyle and relay competition that year and even still he hadn’t been to a single one of them, had only told her at that first meet when her relay team placed second that her stroke could have been stronger. His mouth curved into a smirk.

  How she should have known then.

  Christina fled into the hallway, the television and his voice shouting after her. She pushed her way out the front door and into the
light of late morning, a torrent of cold air, a crispness her skin absorbed in the absence of soft hands. She pushed herself into the car. Her fists slammed the steering wheel. She exhaled into the sealed interior. She pressed her palms into her eyes and only then let tears come.

  ZOLA SAT ON the swing of her back porch. Chamomile tea. The softness of an afghan her grandmother had knitted. The sun filtered down, a winking glow. Pinholes of light and shade, nothing she felt moved to capture on camera. Zola’s mother had taken one more day off from the pharmaceutical company where she worked near Lambert International Airport. Express Scripts, Zola knew, though she knew nothing else of her mother’s job. She understood certain words—consulting, clinical research—but she couldn’t say what her mother did. She only knew that her mother made more money than Zola imagined she herself ever would, a salary that more than compensated for her father leaving but still necessitated Zola’s after-school work. Her mother was inside at the computer, returning emails, finishing tasks from home, checking on Zola frequently. Zola’s supervisor had called: she wouldn’t return to the Local Beanery until Wednesday, two more days off. Zola pulled the blanket around her shoulders and felt the porch swing rock beneath her, the sound of late afternoon cicadas surrounding the backyard.

  Caroline Black’s funeral: that evening. Her mother had shown her the notice in the Post-Dispatch that morning. A memorial service at six, a private burial following. No visitation. No donations in lieu of flowers. Until the service, Zola wanted nothing but to sit and be still. She hadn’t thought of the yearbook. She’d seen the newspaper, its wave of listings. She knew her neighbor Alisha Trenway’s funeral would also be held that evening. She hadn’t known Alisha, a freshman, and her mother didn’t know Alisha’s parents but only exchanged pleasantries with them when passing along the sidewalks of the street they shared. Zola had stood with her sometimes at the bus stop on the corner before she began biking to school. The neighborhood connected them. Zola couldn’t say what else it was that bound them to one another. She hadn’t seen Alisha’s parents come or go from their house since Wednesday, the blinds shut, the lights dimmed.

  Zola watched the line of oak trees in the backyard and tried to imagine what it was to die. Where Alisha had been inside the school. What resolve could make a boy she’d only said hello to at a 7-Eleven charge into a school wanting to kill and to perish himself. Her heart murmured. That there was no way out. That there would be a last breath one day, that this was fact by simple math. To cross a border. To scale a ledge. To freefall into wide-open nothing. That she could have died inside the library, her heart beating hard against the stacks. That an officer found her instead of a bullet, her jeans darkened with piss and not blood. There but for the grace of God: her peers at the table of her academic lab. Alexander Chen. Jessica Wendling. Connor Distler. What had they seen? What beyond had they lunged themselves into? What vision, what sensation, what cluttered black or closing in? The sound of choking and the gargled cries the last shred of earth they’d claimed, a bearing away more terrible than anything Zola could imagine.

  The sound of a sliding door opening. Her mother’s footsteps on the porch.

  You have a visitor, her mother said. She doesn’t look so good.

  Christina appeared behind her, mascara streaking her cheeks. Zola had no time to ask what happened before Christina curled herself into Zola’s blanket.

  He’s an asshole, Christina whispered against the afghan. Zola looked up at her mother, who lowered her gaze and stepped back into the house.

  What happened? Zola asked.

  He didn’t even call yesterday.

  Did you go over there?

  I tried. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want me at all.

  Maybe he’s just grieving, Zola said. Like every single one of us.

  That’s not it. He’s always been like this. I can’t believe it took this for me to see it.

  Zola didn’t pry. Didn’t make her explain. Didn’t say that she’d thought Ryan was trouble since Christina began dating him freshman year. They sat in a silence broken only by songbirds until Christina pulled away and sat up, wiped a hand beneath her eyes.

  This is so fucking stupid, she said. Everything happening, and this is what I choose to cry about.

  Caroline Black’s funeral is tonight.

  I know. I saw it in the newspaper. My father, all of us are going.

  We are, too. My mom and me.

  How is this happening? Christina asked. How the fuck did this happen?

  Zola watched Christina’s hands bunch the afghan, clutch the yarn into the core of her fists. She knew this had happened by the hand of a boy who remained inscrutable to her beyond a gas station hello, a boy who walked into a high school’s doors knowing he and so many others of his choosing would die. Zola wondered if he’d had a plan beyond a shotgun. What was random. What was deliberate. If he’d known which classroom doors he would open, if he’d made his way to the library or the gymnasium for a reason. If she could have died by forethought or if he’d only zigzagged his way from room to room, rattling guns against the railings. Zola wanted to respond to Christina, to offer some word of comfort, but there was nothing, no utterance or solace, no sound but the hum of cicadas and the rustling of the trees.

  NICK READ THE newspaper at the kitchen table, both of his parents at work though they’d called to make sure he was okay. His mother phoned from the car, a public defender for the city, her voice strained as she moved through the streets of downtown St. Louis. Nick’s father’s call was much quieter, a phone call placed from the solitude of his office, which overlooked the eastern edge of Forest Park, from Barnes-Jewish Hospital, where he worked as an obstetrician. I am fine, Nick told both of them. His brother in the living room watching cartoons, the sound traveling into the kitchen. He didn’t know what else to say. He’d stayed up late in front of the blue glow of his bedroom computer, researching the construction of crime scenes, though in the end he’d found nothing of consequence.

  He’d called Sarah’s house that morning, her mother claiming she was asleep and unable to talk. She still hadn’t called back, still hadn’t left the walls of her own home. A girl who’d spent hours after school in the choir room only days before, who’d planned to try out for the spring production of Pippin. A girl who chastised him for coming home by himself every day after school, no extra-curriculars or clubs, except yearbook with his closest friends. A girl who claimed once across the summer during their most heated argument in her bedroom that they hadn’t had sex not because he worried about her welfare and future, but because he was always too much in his head and never enough inside the center of his own body.

  He flipped through the continued Post-Dispatch features on gun safety, on updating school policies, on ongoing public memorials. Donation sites for the victims’ families: where to offer money for medical bills of those who had survived with injuries, even where to donate frequent flyer miles to bereaved family members who would travel to St. Louis. A list of business openings, resumed events, what would return to regularly scheduled activity. The St. Louis Blues starting a new season, an away game against Denver, where the victims would be honored. The St. Louis Rams playing the Arizona Cardinals that evening, a Monday Night Football home opener that would air as scheduled but would hold a memorial before the game. Nick turned to an extended section of obituaries: a list of longer write-ups beyond what the Post-Dispatch had already printed, write-ups that included the most basic of information about each funeral service.

  Jacob Jensen: Tuesday. Mr. Rourke: Wednesday.

  Deborah Smalls: Thursday. Kelly Washington: Tuesday.

  And tonight, six this evening: Caroline Black and her parents, Jean and Arthur.

  Nick flipped back to the front page, its headline announcing the ongoing investigation of the Blacks’ home. Information still sparse. Indicating only that burial would happen quickly, that no bodies would be held for investigation. The orchestrations of a cartoon’s introduction resounded
from the living room, his brother watching another episode of Tom and Jerry. Jeff only nine years old, dismissed from Des Peres Elementary, the entire district shut down. Caleb Raynor drifting past the window of Nick’s English class: a synapse firing inside his brain. He tried to imagine Caleb at nine, whether he’d watched Tom and Jerry or Merry Melodies or kept the television off for the wilds of his backyard. If there was any indication in his behavior that he would one day become a killer. Nick listened to the television warble down the hallway, his brother curled into the couch. He picked up the telephone and called Matt’s house.

  MATT SAT IN the recliner of his family’s living room reading Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel he continued for English class though he didn’t know if the assignments would change, the schedule altered. His mother sat across from him on the couch, the book on President Bush in her lap. She looked up when the phone rang.

  I’ll get it, he told her. He anticipated the cinema’s manager, that he was needed for a shift though he’d already spoken to her midmorning and agreed to return tomorrow. When he picked up the phone Nick asked without pause, Have you heard from your dad?

  I’m going downstairs, Matt told his mother. Can you hang this up? He moved down the basement stairs to his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  Have you seen the paper? Nick asked when Matt’s mother hung up.

  I saw it this morning. I didn’t read it.

  Caroline Black’s funeral is tonight. Her parents’, too. Nick paused. It just seems soon, he said. If they still don’t know what happened.

  My dad’s at work. He’s told me nothing.

  Are you going? Nick asked.

  Matt sat back on his bed. Of course he was going. They would all go.

  I asked my dad about the fire last night, he said. He didn’t tell me anything.

  Maybe there’s nothing to tell, Nick said. Maybe they know it was an accident.