The Arsonist: A novel

by Sue Miller

  “I guess not,” Frankie said. She held up hers, still half full.

  “Ah, I should start supper anyway,” said her mother. “You’ll stay?”

  And not even thinking about whether she was hungry, she said yes.

  Alfie had napped instead of reading, and he seemed refreshed at dinner. They talked about Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, about marital fidelity, about the hypocrisy in Washington. They talked about the raging success of the movie about the Titanic, and then about the event itself, the actual sinking. Alfie, not surprisingly, knew a good deal about it.

  It was almost dark when Frankie left. The rain had stopped for the time being. Her mother had loaned her a flashlight, and she walked home on the dirt road, jolting on each step down the hill, the little circle of light skittering and dancing on the wet gravel ahead of her. She thought once more of her walk in the dark her first night home. It seemed, yes, a real possibility that she’d seen the arsonist. His car, anyway. She’d need to decide what to do about that, if there was anything to do.

  When she turned off into Clark and Liz’s driveway, the house loomed, a dark shape in the field. Then she saw it: a light flickering inside. She stopped short, her heart suddenly pounding. She stood there for perhaps ten seconds, remembering that she hadn’t locked the door when she left, the first time this had occurred to her.

  The light in the house had vanished when she froze, and now, as she moved again, the light moved, too—and she realized, with a kind of ecstasy of relief, that she was seeing the reflection of her own flashlight in the dark panes of glass. She moved the light beam back and forth, and the light in the house moved, too, from window to window. She drew a deep, sighing breath.

  Even so, she approached the house nervously. She opened the door and waited on the threshold for a moment or two before she entered the kitchen, listening to the stillness, running the flashlight around the room. The sudden groan of the refrigerator coming on startled her. She switched the flashlight off.

  She came in and shut the door behind her, turned to slide the bolt into place. She looked up and was startled for a half second to see a movement in front of her, a shift—before she recalled that there was a small mirror on the wall next to the door, a mirror that had a little shelf for keys below it. She leaned forward to look more closely at the face—her own face, transformed by the dark: the glint of her eyes, evil-looking in the surrounding blackness, her grim mouth. A stranger. She was remembering suddenly that she had done this as a child sometimes, looked at her reflection in a mirror in the dark, perhaps to scare herself with her transformation. Or maybe not so much to scare herself as to wonder at it, at the sense of herself as an other in the world, the sense of seeing herself unfamiliarly, as perhaps others saw her.

  Her hand found the light switch and she flicked it up.

  And there she was. The same face she’d seen thousands and thousands of times, looking back at her, not a stranger, not frightening or other. So familiar that she couldn’t really know how she looked.

  She thought of her father. She wondered if he saw himself as a stranger sometimes when he looked into a mirror. As an intruder in the house. She’d read about that as a symptom of Alzheimer’s, and there was some fancy, Oliver Sacks–y name for it, the failure to recognize yourself in a mirror, in life. This must be the kind of thing that was beginning to happen to him, this misunderstanding of reality. Like seeing a fire when it wasn’t there, when it was just a reflection of light in a glass pane; like seeing a stranger when you looked at yourself in a mirror. But he wouldn’t have the ability she had to figure things out, to correct himself, to reassure himself.

  When she was finished in the bathroom, she went into the bedroom and undressed in the dark there. The sheets were cold against her naked flesh, and she huddled into herself. Slowly the room began to emerge as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and to the shades of black contained within it—the two slightly paler rectangles where the windows were, the darker darkness that signaled the bureau, the different tones in the different planes of the walls. She was aware of the stillness of the world around her and, slowly, as with the blackness, the emerging variety of quiet noises within that stillness: the air stirring, the leaves responding, the drops shaking from them as though it were raining anew.

  Then she was in Kenya, hearing the feral dogs howling, the music and faint shouting of some distant, celebrating neighbors, the conversation of the guard with someone walking by, the creak of her wooden bed when she shifted in it. In this complicated stillness and darkness of memory and the present, she lay and waited for sleep.

  9

  WHAT LUCK! HERE SHE WAS, the Pre-Raphaelite, parking outside Snell’s just as he was setting the groceries he’d bought into the passenger seat of his car, having to awkwardly slide a bunch of crap—papers, wrappers, tapes—onto the floor with his elbow as he did this.

  “Hey,” he called over, straightening up, turning in her direction.

  “Hey, yourself.” She came around the car that was parked between them. She was smiling, wearing baggy shorts and a man’s denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. There were freckles decorating all those long white limbs.

  He leaned back against his car, facing her. He was aware of this as a way he might hold her here for a minute or two. Or longer. “How are you doing, in our regrettably exciting new world?” he asked.

  “You’re speaking of the fires.”

  “The arson, we suspect. Don’t you read the paper? And if not, why not?”

  She smiled. Another thing he liked about her, the gap between her two front teeth.

  She raised her finger. “Actually, this reminds me that I wanted to get the paper. Subscribe, that is.”

  “Very easily done.”

  “But here’s my problem: I don’t have a mailbox.”

  “But I can just put two of them into your parents’.”

  “No. The thing is, I’m living at my sister’s house now. Just down the road from my parents.”

  “Ah, the new house in the field.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I’ve watched it go up. It looks nice. Better than nice.”

  “It is. But it doesn’t have a mailbox yet. I suppose it won’t until they move up here, and God knows when that will be.”

  “Then I’ll bring it to your door.” He made a foppishly elegant gesture, a half bow.

  “Oh, do you deliver the papers?”

  “About a third of them. I’ve got a kid who does it around the green. The urban route. And someone else who does Route Seventy-Two. But I do the outliers on the other side of town. Like you.”

  “I had no idea you were so … multifarious.”

  “Some say talented. I wish you would too. Multifarious sounds kind of utilitarian.”

  “Talented, then. But what is the news?”

  “You probably know better than I do. I feel as though I’m always bringing up the rear, marching along well behind the gossip. You must hear it all, with your parents around.”

  “Not so much now. Since I moved out I don’t get the news. So”—she gestured, her hands opening at her sides—“I need you.”

  “How nice, to be needed.” She looked away quickly, and Bud felt embarrassed. Felt he’d pushed something. “You heard about yesterday’s fire,” he said quickly.

  “I did. You mean, the one at the Frenches’ place.” He nodded. “Yes, my mother had heard, so I got the story when I borrowed the car.” She gestured behind herself at an old station wagon. “I guess I do still get some of the gossip.” She frowned. “But they put that one out, right?”

  “Yeah, the Frenches happened to come home pretty soon after it was set, apparently. They called it in themselves and had started to run their hose on it while they waited for the fire department.”

  Bud had gotten the page and gone again to the fire, but by the time he got there, it was out. There was a kind of childish giddiness among the guys, and no rush to pack up. It was still light out, for
one thing, and more important, they’d beat this one. The kitchen cabinets along the wall by the door were partially burned and the ceiling scorched, but not much more was damaged. The Frenches had made a celebratory pitcher of martinis and were serving those and beer to anyone interested. Many were.

  “So I heard correctly,” Frankie said now.

  “You did. But have you heard this?” he asked. “Guys for rent.”

  “ ‘Guys for rent’?” She wrinkled her nose. “What does that mean?”

  “Guys will come to your house and stay awake for you. Sit on your porch. Armed.”

  “Shades of Africa,” she said. “Who is this?”

  “Oh, a couple of local guys. Kids, really. Peter Babcock. Gavin Knox. They’ve got signs up in a couple of places with that frill of tags at the bottom with their phone numbers. Quite a few takers, it looks like.”

  “How entrepreneurial.”

  “I guess. But this is just a by-product of the fire news.”

  “Everything is now, isn’t it. A by-product of the fire news. Every conversation I have starts with that.”

  “Every conversation everyone has.”

  “Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking about something.” Her face was suddenly very serious. “I was realizing it only last week, after the town meeting where we first heard the dread word.”

  “Arson.”

  “Yeah. Because I think I might have seen the arsonist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, his car anyway.” And she told him a story about taking a walk in the middle of the night—the first night she was home, she said, jet-lagged. About the smell of smoke. And about a car coming over the hill from the Olsens’ direction at that unlikely hour.

  “God, it might really be something,” he said. “So, what else do you have? The make? The color, the license plate?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing else?”

  “No. I mean, that’s why I didn’t think of it earlier, I suppose. It didn’t really … register at that time. Maybe it was grayish. It was so dark out. It was a beater, I think—do they still call them that? It seemed, maybe, older. It had slanty-eyed taillights.”

  “Ah, ah. None of that racist stuff.”

  She smiled. “Sorry, but that’s the only thing I remember clearly. The slant, and then watching them go away. The eyes. Kind of disappearing behind a rise in the road, and then appearing again lower down.” Her hand made a wavy gesture. “So,” she said. “Who do I report this to?”

  “You probably need to talk to Loren Spader, sad to say. It’s not much, but it could help, looking for those Asian eyes.”

  “Why ‘sad to say’?”

  “Just, he’s kind of a local jerk.”

  “He’s the fat guy, right? The police chief?”

  “Yes. The chief, and then, as it happens, also the entire department. Do you want me to set it up for you?” He’d go along with her, he was thinking. It might be of interest. And then there was his interest in her.

  “Would you?” she said. “It’d make it quicker, I suppose. Otherwise, I’d have to track him down.”

  “I will. I’ll let you know.”

  She was frowning. “But you know, I’m not sure how well I remember them. The taillights. If he wanted me to pick them out, somehow. You know, if there were five of them backed up to me …”

  “A kind of vehicular lineup.”

  “Precisely. I’m not sure I’d get the exact lights. I was really, really tired. And distracted.”

  “By what?”

  She was silent for a few seconds. Then she shrugged. “Just … by jet lag, I guess.”

  “Ah, yes.” Another silence. It occurred to him that she might be shy, and this touched him, somehow. They stood there. And then, stupidly, he asked, “You’re shopping?”

  “Yes. Dinner. I’m going to go in and buy pasta and a cheap bottle of wine. And cereal. And bread.”

  “Carbs galore.”

  “I’ve been to the farm stand already.” She gestured toward her car. “Fruits galore.”

  “Ah, then you’re excused.”

  She started to turn away.

  “It was … it was nice to run into you. And come Tuesday? You’ll find a paper waiting for you.”

  “Where will I find it?”

  “On the porch. There’s a porch, right? I’ll try to hit it from the car. Always a challenge.”

  “You’ll drive in with it?”

  “For you, of course.”

  “That’s so nice of you. And what will I owe you?”

  “Depends how long you want it. There’s a summer rate, and then a different rate if you’re staying on. Are you?” He said this as though announcing to himself that this was an impossibility, he heard that in his own voice.

  “Not … really. Not past, maybe, early fall.”

  “So, you’re going back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what?”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  “Oh, just … It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Because, I guess, I’ve come to feel—in Africa—that I’m …” She looked at the ground, then up, at him. “Temporizing, I guess you could say. With my life.”

  “More.” He made a beckoning gesture.

  She seemed embarrassed, suddenly. She said, “Just … in work. In love.” She shrugged. “Or in sex, anyway.” She made a short laughing noise.

  He was startled, maybe even a little shocked. He was about to try to ask her about this—he couldn’t quite imagine how—when she said, “I think what I’m going to do is explore some other possibilities in the States.” Her eyes moved around. “I couldn’t live here, though. I don’t think.”

  “Many do”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the kind of work I do. It’s not … transportable to a place like this. I mean, I could be in New York. I could do something connected to it there.” She shook her head, and her hair swayed thickly. “Not here.”

  “What is your work exactly? AIDS work?” Hadn’t she said that?

  “No. It’s hunger. Aid work. Malnutrition. For me, it’s African work. I know it could be lots of other places, but Africa is the place I … Well, I was going to say the place I live, but I guess I can’t.”

  “The place you might or might not be going back to.”

  “Right. But there is, there’s lots of other stuff I could do here, in the States. I mean, the program I work for is actually run out of here.”

  “Here, meaning New York.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s not here—New York. That’s there. Way over there. I locate myself”—he pointed to the ground at his feet with both forefingers—“here.”

  She looked at him and smiled. “Are you scolding me?” she asked. “For not planning on staying here?”

  “No. No, no. How could I? Not ever. I just got here.”

  She tilted her head. “Okay, then.” She started to turn away.

  “Okay, then. I’ll be in touch about Loren.”

  She stopped. “I don’t have a phone,” she said.

  “Ah. Well. I’ll leave you a note.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Are there days, or times, better for you than others?”

  She grinned at him. Mind the gap. “All times, all days, are utterly the same for me at the moment.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” he said.

  “You think so,” she said. She started to walk away again.

  And he turned away, too, went around his car to get in on the driver’s side, carefully not looking at her as she disappeared into the store.

  Bud was up in the night on Saturday at a fire that destroyed most of the house belonging to the Coolidge family. No martinis served there. They’d been home, in bed, and had barely gotten out. They stood watching their house burn in their nightclothes, the parents and three kids, preteens. S
omeone had given the children blankets to wrap up in. Natalie Coolidge kept saying—to Bud, to anyone else who spoke to her—that all that mattered was that they’d gotten out, that no one was hurt.

  He wrote this up when he came home, and then, after sleeping fitfully, half waking from time to time with the smell of fire on his skin, in his hair, he went to pick up Frankie.

  She was quiet on the way to meet Loren. Bud couldn’t stop looking over at her as he drove. She’d dressed up a little. This would be wasted on Loren. She wore sandals and bright red toenail polish, thank you very much. Her hair was loose again today, the curls swarming her shoulders.

  Her profile was unmoving, remote.

  “You couldn’t be nervous.” She didn’t answer. “Are you?” he asked.

  She drew in a long breath, looked at him. “What if the car had nothing to do with it? With the fire. I don’t want to get some innocent … adulterer, sneaking home in the dead of the night, in trouble.”

  He smiled. “I like your sense of sin.”

  “Me and Bill Clinton.”

  “Now there’s a guy who’s given adulterers a lot to be grateful for.”

  “Mmm.” She turned away again.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. This would just be something to start with. They’d need other evidence before they arrested anyone.”

  She was quiet for a while. Then she said, “What kind of other evidence do you mean?”

  “Well, motive would usually be a possibility, wouldn’t it? But in this case, I guess maybe not—this seems so almost without any possible motive to me. Or with a motive so … perverse as to seem uninformative. But I suppose they’d be looking for the weapon.”

  “The rope, the knife, the candlestick.”

  “Yeah. Or maybe a can that smelled of kerosene, or whatever the accelerant was. Or maybe fingerprints. Or footprints.”

  “Tire tracks.”

  “Yeah. That kind of thing.”

  She shifted her long body slightly, turning it to him, and he was aware of a sudden sexual thrum in himself. “So, do they have any of that?” she asked.

  “They’re not talking, if they do. No comment, no comment, no comment.” This was true for the arson squad and the state police. Bud had been in touch with them both. Loren, on the other hand, was full of hints. He’d suggested they did know what the accelerant was. “Oh, we got a good idea about that, all right.”