Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  I wrote about Caroline last night, Matt said. A profile. I couldn’t sleep.

  What did you say? Nick asked.

  I said nothing. Nothing important. I have no fucking idea what I wrote.

  I was up, too. Nothing we can use in a yearbook. Just crime scene stuff. How they handle an investigation involving so many victims.

  Did you find anything?

  Not really. Nothing you probably couldn’t find out from your dad.

  Matt heard Nick’s breath halt on the line. A pause he recognized, one preceding a question. Does your dad know anything about motive yet? Nick asked.

  About the fires? I told you, he didn’t tell me anything about why it happened.

  No, I mean Caleb.

  Matt closed his eyes. A name he hadn’t spoken, a name some newscasters were avoiding to privilege a list of names and their lives. He hadn’t wanted to think of motive, as if there were a reason that could explain. Caleb in the cafeteria line grabbing a carton of milk. Caleb at his desk in the back of the room, his hand unraised. Caleb someone he never thought about until it mattered, someone who confronted Caroline Black in the hallway and left her on the carpet outside the second-floor bathroom for Matt to find.

  My father’s only working on the fire investigation, he said. But you read the newspaper. They say they don’t know. Does it even matter?

  I don’t know, Nick said. Does it?

  It won’t change anything, Matt said. He imagined what the investigation entailed. Ransacking Caleb’s room for journals, plans, schematics of the high school. Reviewing his computer if he had one, what files he’d deleted or online rants he’d posted. Receipts for ammunition, gun sales. When purchases were made. How a boy could buy a shotgun and a handgun and stockpile two other assault rifles beneath his bed, how a catastrophe in the making could slip so easily through so many cracks.

  It won’t change anything, Nick echoed. But it might help everyone move on.

  Like a yearbook will? Matt said.

  It’s the only thing we can do, besides pretending none of this happened.

  Matt sighed. What are we doing?

  What he wanted to say: Can we even do this?

  We’re putting together a record, Nick said. An archive. As fucking impossible as that’s going to be.

  But why? Matt watched two oak trees sway beyond his window. Why would anyone want to remember this?

  They won’t. But they’ll want to remember them.

  Them. Everyone scattered like confetti across the industrial carpet of a high school. That there was a them, that something awful bound a random group together and without their consent, something a boy in their school had made happen. A binding they would never know, recognize, see, understand. That Nick was comfortable assuming what everyone left behind would want. That a future was possible. That they would live with this. That there was no alternative but to be those left to know this.

  Do you want me to read what you wrote? Nick asked.

  No. I’ll probably just end up throwing it away.

  We’ll need to start something soon. Beyond just listing names for profiles.

  Overhead Matt heard heavy footsteps, a trail from the garage door through the kitchen to the living room.

  My dad’s home, Matt said. I should go.

  I’ll see you tonight.

  Matt replaced the phone and bent his head to his hands. His brow hurt, an ache splitting the space between his eyes. His gaze fell on his dresser. The profile. Crumpled on the wood’s surface. He stood and grabbed the notebook paper, folded it four times, and slid it into his back pocket.

  His father sat in the armchair by the window upstairs. His mother on the couch, the book on the War on Terror closed.

  The department let us out early, Matt’s father told him.

  For the funeral? Matt asked. Why is it so soon? Her parents. They’re barely gone.

  We couldn’t find anything, his father said. We did the autopsies. There was nothing to find.

  Matt looked at his mother, who was watching his father.

  Tell me, Matt said to his father. You both know something.

  Matt, his mother said.

  No, I’m tired of this, he said. His voice rising. Do you know what I saw? Do you? Do you have any fucking idea?

  Matt’s father closed his eyes. We know, he said. His mouth a firm line.

  You know? Matt looked from his father to his mother. What, you told him? Did you call him this afternoon? Tell him what I saw?

  Believe me, his mother said. We just want you safe and okay.

  By keeping things from me? By lying? Just tell me! Just tell me what you saw!

  There was nothing, his father said. Let me tell you this: there was nothing at all. I sat in the lab all goddamn day and found absolutely nothing, no hint or clue, no suggestion of what the hell happened at that house. There weren’t any autopsies. There was nothing left. Nothing left to examine or understand.

  Matt felt something escape him. He didn’t want to hear any more.

  I’m not a fire investigator, his father said. But I know there’s always something left, something to investigate. Something that helps us determine a cause. Son, there was nothing left. No bodies. Nothing but burn and ash.

  Matt looked at his father. What does that mean?

  It means there was no trace of Caroline’s parents. I’ve never seen anything like it. We don’t know what it means. All we know is where the fire originated.

  His mother was weeping. It’s just awful, she whispered.

  I’m sorry, Matt said. To his mother, and to his father.

  We’re just trying to protect you, his father said. As best as we can.

  Of all the things his father could have said, five words that crushed him. As best as we can. He understood in his father’s voice that he meant more than what a police force could do, that his parents ripped themselves apart for not being in the hallways where they could have never known to be and for not knowing when he was a child to buy another house, in another district, for not being there at the men’s bathroom door to turn him away, to not look upon a carpet that would disfigure him.

  Where did the fire start? Matt asked.

  In the bedroom. His father looked at him. In Jean and Arthur’s bedroom.

  Matt recalled what Zola said. Was it suicide? Could they have done it themselves?

  Matt’s father was quick. It’s possible, he said. We still don’t know what started it. We’re looking at the electrical wiring of their entire house, to rule out the possibility that they did this themselves. As far as we can tell, the fire started where they were sleeping.

  Matt didn’t want to imagine them: the bodies of Caroline’s parents, bowed by hurt. Bodies that wouldn’t be at the funeral beside their daughter, only the empty shells of caskets. Bodies that had disappeared completely, leaving nothing but smoke and ash. Bodies curled into one another only nights ago in the softness of their sheets, sheets that would catch a flame and burn every last thing in their house to the ground.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF FATAL FIRES

  CARBON DIOXIDE AT 6 percent: headache, dizziness, drowsiness, illness, coma.

  Carbon dioxide at 10 percent: breathing threatened.

  Carbon dioxide: heavier than air. Forms pockets of lethal concentration.

  Carbon monoxide: percentages at 0.01 cause no effect for four hours. At 0.04, no effect for one hour. 0.06: headache, fatigue, queasiness within one hour. Percentages at 0.1: life-threatening within one hour. Percentages at 0.35: death within one hour.

  Oxygen levels below 14.6 percent: collapse and unconsciousness.

  Oxygen levels below 6 percent: suffocation, death.

  Investigation: victim. Establish physical background, mental state, emotional state prior to the fire. Determine cause and origin of the fire. Secure medical records. Obtain fire reports from chief officers, establish the condition of a found building. Leave the body in place, moved only in the possibility of further fire damage before a medi
cal examiner arrives. Inspect for bruises, broken bones, any sign of struggle. Make maps, diagrams, sketches. Check the burn pattern around the body. Note a pugilistic position. Note a charring of the skin, indication of death at the time of fire. Note what remains.

  Note split skin. Bone fractures emanating outward. Loss of tissue. Protruding tongue. Steam blisters. Soot inside the mouth and nostrils. Deep red to the skin. Indication of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, lividity in colored patches as blood settles. Note particular damage to the head, indication of malicious intent. Note visible bite marks, cuts, claw marks, stab wounds, bullet wounds, defense wounds.

  Cigarettes: the leading cause of fires in the home.

  Bedding: the most common fuel source for home fires.

  Night: the majority of fire deaths between 8 P.M. and 8 A.M.

  Wrap the body in a cloth sheet. Preserve the clothing.

  Remove any dentures, bridgework, false teeth.

  Circulate the body before removal with the use of photos. Canvass the exterior fire scene for witnesses.

  Preserve what surrounds the body.

  Preserve all artifacts, everything saved.

  WHAT TRAIL OF LIGHT WE LEAVE BEHIND

  PEWS. ORGAN HYMNAL. Two pillared candles guttering at an altar. A slant of light falling through the stained glass of chapel windows, the sun casting us in blocks of coral, turquoise, honey. We sat with our families. We sat apart. We watched so many faces we knew file in, the faces of our classmates alongside those of adults and children and elderly men and women we’d never seen, every resident of Midvale County who had known Caroline Black’s family. We watched them take their seats. We averted our eyes to the pipes of an organ, to the wood graining of pews, to the lightbulbs of lanterns that dotted the rows of a congregation. We bowed our heads. We concentrated on our shoes, worn holes, scuffed spots upon our heels.

  Zola sat with her mother at the edge of a back row, her hands folded in her lap. Large photos of Caroline and her parents stood on easels before three coffins. Zola watched her hands so she would not look at the gleam of cherrywood caskets, all three of them solid as fact at the altar. All three of them polished. All three of them closed. Her mother lined an arm along the pew’s back and wrapped her fingers around Zola’s shoulders, as if just looking at the caskets reminded her of how close she’d come to losing her daughter in the library, a violence of sound and grief that Zola still hadn’t found words to speak out loud.

  Nick sat with his parents, his brother, Sarah still at home, still unresponsive. He’d stopped by her house just before the funeral, had driven separately from his family just to see if she’d come. She’d opened the front door, her hair a mess, had shaken her head no. He knew she was hurting and afraid but even still, looking around the church, Nick couldn’t believe she hadn’t come. The church a cold hollow, Sarah nowhere inside of it, the summer’s dense humidity long gone. How she’d been someone else entirely when they’d set off firecrackers in her backyard on the Fourth of July, the remnants still sitting in the trunk of his car outside the church. Black cats and smoke bombs, roman candles, sparklers Sarah had held at arm’s length until they sputtered out. How he was the one then who’d needed guidance, Independence Day a holiday he’d never celebrated robustly, how she’d lit off fireworks with her family since she was small. How her slender fingers moved along his skin. How she tilted his hands to the sky. How he felt the timed release of roman candle detonations, quick balls of light, through the intervals of kickbacks radiating through his body. How he could have watched her confidence all night, her hands so close to the flame as trails of light spun out into the dark beyond her.

  She was younger. She’d never known Caroline’s mother or father, never known Caroline herself. But Nick had. He’d been Caroline’s lab partner in seventh-grade biology, had dissected a worm and then a frog under the supervision of her care. Her fingers precise, her handling of a scalpel and pins far finer than his. How when they opened the frog’s heart Nick turned away while Caroline forged ahead, her eyes upon the three chambers, the atria, the ventricle. Nick thought of the research he’d done, hours at his computer looking into fatal fires. How skin burned. What was left. What it was that Matt’s father had investigated. He looked at the closed caskets and wondered what they could possibly contain and his brother fidgeted beside him and kicked the pew in front of them and Nick felt a hot flash of anger: Sarah at home, her refusal to carry a weight.

  Christina crowded into a center pew with her mother, who’d driven in from Edwardsville. Her father at home. Her brother preserved for funerals to come, for those lost in his freshman class. Their mother: every other weekend, a settlement based solely upon location. An admissions coordinator for Southern Illinois University, her mother had commuted to Edwardsville since Christina was in second grade, and after the divorce had simply moved. Christina had been twelve when they sat her down. Seventh grade. Braces and acne, bad teeth, her bangs growing out. The start of the school year, early September, still a hot, humid day. The living room couch where Christina felt nothing but the faint pressure of her brother’s weight beside her as their parents told them they were divorcing, the outside seam of his jeans scratching her thigh. Christina begrudged her mother nothing but even still she missed her proximity, an ache she regretted for its triviality in the church. As trivial as hoping Ryan would call her, even still, long after she’d stormed out the front door of his house. His leg propped up on pillows. Television droning. His lack of presence at every swim meet. His car edging along beside her on the sidewalk. Get in the car, you fucking bitch. Christina lowered her eyes and they fell on a family of five sitting quietly beside her mother, three children Christina had never seen. All blond, a stairstep of ages, kids Christina imagined attended the Blacks’ same church or a volunteer organization. Aged two, maybe three, up through seven or eight. They crowded into the pew and the smallest stood on the wooden bench and Christina’s mother huddled closer to her and placed a palm on her leg.

  Matt sat near the front with both of his parents and watched a gathering of people file in and occupy the first rows, what he assumed were Caroline’s aunts and uncles: the siblings and nephews of Caroline’s parents, cousins and family members who had peppered their daughter’s life. She had no siblings. He watched how the church’s light fell on the caskets. Rectangles. Empty boxes. Tyler running through the hallway. Caroline’s empty gaze. He wanted to tell someone what his father had told him. He wanted to hear himself speak it, that nothing was left, not a trace of hair or skin. He wondered how many people knew that two of the caskets were fully vacant. How only ten feet and the cherrywood finish of a box separated him from Caroline’s body, a body he’d left upon the floor.

  I’m sorry, he wanted to whisper.

  He wanted to place his hands upon the wood.

  He wanted to pull the scrawled profile from his back pocket where he’d left it stuffed all afternoon and throw it to the flame of the altar’s candle, to watch it ignite and dissolve. His father shifted beside him. His mother sat still, her back straight against the pew. Matt thought of Tyler and how they still hadn’t spoken, a thought that felt small inside the church’s walls, a thought silenced by a minister stepping to the altar.

  We heard the organ’s hymnal diminish as she stood, the soft scramble of people taking their seats, a hush falling across the congregation.

  Where to begin, the minister said. Where is there to begin, to offer words of comfort?

  Zola looked above the minister to the light falling through the central stained-glass window. There was nowhere to begin. There was nothing to be said in the span of thirty minutes, forty-five, an hour. There was nothing in the world that a minister could claim, no word pulled from the ether to the grounding of a congregation, nothing proffered or extended or tendered that could change or reverse what was. Zola closed her eyes. Caroline’s basement. The cold of a sweating can of Coke. My Little Ponies. Althea and Amy Robinson. A playgroup of four. The cool damp of a windowl
ess cellar in the middle of a St. Louis summer, the heat bearing down upon the house’s edges and all four of them inside, protected, safe.

  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

  The minister spoke words of solace. We listened to proverbs and prayers, a making of meaning from the sharing of nothing. Nothing but bowed heads, eyes gripped shut. The sound of quiet weeping. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, but there was so much of everything that we wanted. The gasped air of breathing. A clock unwound. Custard stands and midnight movies. The burn of birthday candles. The flicker of a mouth upon ours, a first nearness. Clear blue swimming pool. Slick steam, humid sweat. A flatline of sun sinking into the Midwestern sky above a flutter of cornfields, tassels running for miles, our cars parked within them and the taste of watermelon Schnapps sugar-sweet on our lips. And a voice among ours: a damp palm extended on elementary school risers to help us sing. A trundle bed. A frog’s aorta, the urgency of reading Margaret Atwood. A peer, a playmate. A study partner. A friend. The minister spoke and we heard none of her words but only the lost voice of a girl who’d been ours.

  That the past was something. A noun. A thing that was.

  A woman from the first row took the minister’s place at the altar. Caroline’s aunt. The apple trees when we were young, she whispered of her sister. How you always climbed the highest. Eulogy as memory, as valediction. A requiem impossible to hear. We listened until the woman’s voice failed her, until her hands shook as they gripped the edge of the podium and a man came to the pulpit beside her, a man we assumed was her husband, who brought her back to the pews. The minister stood and extinguished the candles, a flame our chests ached to watch sputter out.

  ZOLA STOOD WITH her mother in the churchyard until Christina emerged from the wooden double doors with her mother. Zola stepped forward and grabbed her hand, their mothers greeting one another in embrace, Christina’s palm drained of heat and her face empty of any expression at all. A pale-marbled sky and the sun’s afterglow already setting, speckled in tendrils across a wisp of autumn clouds. The trees burnt brown and eggplant, even in the faded light. Zola glanced at their mothers talking quietly, two parents who’d been closer when Christina’s mother still lived in Midvale County. Their daughters best friends since elementary school, a camaraderie Zola knew her mother had always valued and yet she wondered watching them what it was to be a parent, to make friends with the parents of your children’s friends only to watch them disappear. By moving away. Zola glanced back at the church. By a home taking to flame. Matt emerged from the crowd and gathered Christina into a hug. Zola scanned the churchyard until she spotted Nick and his family across the entryway, his dress so formal, a suit two sizes too big. He looked like a child wearing his father’s clothing and for a moment Zola understood their age, how young they were. Sixteen, seventeen. How old were they supposed to act? He walked over and took her hand as the sun disappeared and the coming night brought the cicadas’ hum.