Everything Burns Read online

  “But your Land Rover?” I said.

  “It can wait,” she said. “What’s wrong? You have something better to do right now, Mr. Best Seller?”

  I shook my head, smiled. She knew how much I was enjoying this drive, even if I was trying my best not to let on.

  Downshifting, I pulled into the overgrown two-track that led to the farmhouse. Knowing in my gut what Lisa wanted, I pulled in far enough so that we were hidden from the road by the boarded-up two-story house. Without a word, she turned and leaned into me, kissed me. We didn’t stop there. We tore one another’s clothes off and made love in the backseat of my Jeep as awkwardly and as well as anyone can inside such a cramped space. Lisa finished by taking me into her mouth. She worked me slowly but deliberately, doing things with her mouth and tongue that I had never felt before. She’d learned some new tricks during the years we’d been apart. When I exploded, she didn’t back off or away. She kept me in her mouth until there was nothing left of me but an empty, yet happy-in-the-heart, exhaustion. It was the first time we’d made love since we’d split up, and it had come to us unexpectedly and wonderfully.

  Twenty minutes later we arrived at the auto repair shop. When Lisa was presented with a bill for twelve hundred dollars that included unanticipated repairs and parts for the Land Rover, she nearly passed out from sticker shock. I jumped at the chance to make good. To pounce on an opportunity to prove to her that I was no longer the broke, unproductive writer I had been when we were married. Despite her protests, I insisted on paying. It took some time, but eventually I got my way.

  On the way out of the shop, she took hold of my hand and smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said. “That was sweet. I didn’t make you come with me as a way of making you pay the bill.”

  “No,” I said. “You made me come with you so you could jump my bones.”

  “You jerk,” she said with a laugh, issuing me a quick little punch to the arm. “Well, okay, but I honestly wasn’t planning on jumping your bones.”

  “You just made sure you wore sexy underwear anyway.”

  Now I was laughing.

  “Hey,” she said. “One should always be prepared for those unexpected pleasures in life.”

  I turned to her, took hold of both her arms. “Lisa, I still love you,” I said. “It makes me feel good to pay for things for you, but it’s you I really want. I want to try again.”

  “You want to pay for my stuff? Oh well, Mr. Novelist, I’ll just have to remember that.”

  Ignoring what I’d said about love and starting over, she began walking to her now-repaired sea-green Land Rover, parked just past my Jeep. I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she looked in her torn blue jeans, white Converse sneakers, and long-sleeved, blue horizontal-striped Russian sailor shirt, her long dark brown hair put back in place and draping her tan face. I could only wonder how it was possible I’d ever let her slip through my fingers.

  After getting behind the wheel of the Jeep, I called her name.

  She looked at me over the Rover’s hood.

  “That was beautiful back there,” I said. “Back at the old house. Really beautiful.”

  She brought her extended index finger to her luscious lips, as if to say, Shush. It’s our little secret.

  “Will you ever come back to me?” I said as she unlocked the Land Rover door with the electronic key ring, the lock releasing with a bird-like chirp.

  She pressed her lips together, made sad eyes. “I do love you too, Reece,” she said. “I think I just showed it. But it could be that in the end, we’re just too broken. And I am still with David. There’s no denying that. But I promise you, I will think about it. Think about it hard.”

  She climbed into the Rover and drove off, leaving me feeling both sad and elated at the same time. My ex-wife still loved me, but I think as far as she was concerned, common sense stood in the way of our ever reuniting as a couple. I had brought too much trouble into her life so long ago. Too much pressure, anguish, sadness, and, yes, fire.

  A short time later, my father dropped dead while tying his work boots in the garage of the house I’d nearly burned down as a boy.

  Since I was the father of our daughter, Lisa felt it her duty to come to me, to comfort me, to be by my side through it all. And in my dad’s sudden death there emerged a new life for us, like somehow God had struck up a strange bargain with the old man: “It’s either your life, or your boy’s love life. So what’s it gonna be?”

  Despite the secret hopes and dreams I harbored for years, our coming back together was, in the end, entirely unplanned. But at the same time, it seemed so natural. Now, two months later, as I uncover her still-unbroken connection to David, I’m beginning to think that the shrinks, the websites, and the naysayers might have been right after all. That our coming back together has all been a tragic mistake. That when it comes down to it, ashes are just ashes.

  Chapter 17

  The Loudonville Medical Center is located on Everett Road, not far from the big house Lisa and I lived in when we were married. A stone and red wood, three-story corner-lot monstrosity for which her father, Alexander, generously put up the one-hundred-thousand-dollar down payment. But even then I couldn’t afford to pay the remaining measly monthly mortgage while I was still waking up every morning to the blank page and going to bed with an even blanker one.

  When I come to Everett, I take a right and drive along a road that, not too long ago, was surrounded by pristine farm country that supported thick stands of tall pines and oak along its perimeter, trees now long bulldozed in favor of suburban sprawl. Part of that sprawl is a four-story, red brick and glass building that must take up ten or twelve acres of farmland while its surrounding black macadam parking lot spoils at least twice that much land.

  I pull into the overcrowded parking lot, slowing my new red Ford Escape so that I won’t miss out on an empty space. I’m maybe one quarter of the way in when I discover Victoria’s Volvo. And I’m halfway in when I spot a puke-brown Honda 4x4 hatchback.

  I punch the brakes so hard the tires squeal and I’m thrust forward.

  I sit back and lock eyes on the vehicle like it’s the chariot of the devil himself. But then, these Hondas are everywhere these days. They’re almost like disposable vehicles. So cheap and small you can practically fold them up and stuff them into your back pocket. Maybe it’s not David’s at all. Maybe I’m just back to being paranoid. I could cross-reference the license plate, but I never thought to study it earlier when he unexpectedly pulled into Lisa’s driveway.

  The blaring of a car horn directly behind me nearly sends me through the windshield. Some asshole in a Dodge Ram, his grill practically pressed up against my rear bumper. Redneck.

  I throw the Escape back into drive and move forward down the line of cars. When I come to the end, I hook a right and motor my way back up another row in the opposite direction. No spaces are available.

  I hit the brakes.

  “Jesus,” I say aloud. “What the hell am I doing?”

  What if my gut serves me right and David has indeed shown up to be by her side?

  What good can come out of our being in the same room together?

  I can just picture the scene. I would demand an explanation, and that explanation could very well lead to my punching him in the mouth. I’ve been in my share of bar fights and I’m not altogether unfamiliar with a jail cell. More importantly, what better excuse for Lisa to show me the front door for the second and final time than for me to wallop her ex in the face? The ex she claims is sweet and docile. A man who wouldn’t hurt a housefly.

  I stomp on the gas.

  When I come to the edge of the parking lot, I make a right-hand turn back onto Everett Road. My heart beating inside my throat, I head directly to the Stewart’s convenience store on the corner of Everett and Albany-Shaker Road. Parking the Escape, I dig my left hand into my jeans pocket,
pull out a twenty-dollar bill. Just enough for a twelve-pack of beer, a pack of smokes, and a Bic lighter. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but the perfect recipe for a man who is speedily losing his shit.

  Chapter 18

  I head directly to the back coolers, where I grab a twelve-pack of Budweiser, then hustle to the counter. The college-aged kid standing behind it is wearing an old T-shirt that says “Fuck Bush” on it. He’s listening to something on his iPod, nodding his head to the beat.

  He looks down at the beer.

  “That it?” he says disinterestedly.

  My left hand stuffed inside my pocket, I rub the twenty between forefinger and thumb, feel the paper heating up.

  “Pack of Marlboro Lights and three mini-packs of Advil,” I say, pulling out the money, laying it on the counter. The Bic butane lighter display is positioned beside the register. I choose a red one and set it down onto the counter beside the beer.

  “Twenty ain’t gonna do it, dude,” he says. “Sin taxes will burn a hole in your wallet these days.”

  I feel a wave of warmth fill my face. Pocketing the twenty-spot, I pull my wallet from my back pocket, open it, slide out the credit card, and set it onto the counter between the lighter and the beer.

  Sighing, he runs the barcodes of the cigarettes and the Advils under the scanner, then sets them down onto the twelve-pack and glares at my purchases like he’s staring down at a pile of his own charred remains.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?” he says.

  “Just run the card.”

  “In a rush to get home, are we?”

  I wonder what the penalty is for slapping a college-aged kid across the face. Whatever it is, might be worth it.

  He runs the card, then hands it back to me along with the receipt, which I sign with a pen stored in a cup that bears a red, white, and blue New York Giants logo on it. “Go Giants!” I return the pen to its rightful home.

  “Would you care for a bag to go with your purchases, sir?”

  “Don’t need one, thanks,” I say, stuffing the smokes and the lighter into the left-hand pocket of my bush jacket while I store the Advils in the side pocket. Grabbing the beer by the cardboard “suitcase” handle, I go for the door.

  “Sure you don’t want a porno magazine to go with that?” the kid chuckles.

  But I just stiff-arm the door and make my escape to my Escape.

  Chapter 19

  Here’s what’s running through my adrenaline-fueled brain: This whole second-time-around thing is a bust. I was doing just fine on my own before the old man died and Lisa came storming back into my life. I was writing, building my audience, travelling, not thinking about fire, not thinking about Lisa as much as I used to. David Bourenhem was of zero concern to me. I was free.

  I’ll say it again: I . . . was . . . free.

  But now the old paranoia has raised its ugly, scarred head again. The paranoia, the obsessions, the bad habits. The fire. They’re all sneaking back into my life. And listen to this: I’m not writing. It’s not even noon and I’m sitting in the Escape in the parking lot of a Stewart’s convenience store with a twelve-pack of beer at my side and a pack of cigarettes screaming at me to smoke the living shit out of them.

  I think it’s time I left Lisa again.

  I’m thinking the right thing to do is to pack up what little I have in Lisa’s house and split-the-scene-Gene while she’s still recovering from tear duct surgery at her parents’ house. I’ll just grab my backpack, shove my laptop into my writing satchel, book a one-way ticket to Rome, and leave this hot, toxic place behind for Lisa and David and the love they still obviously bear for one another.

  I pull the lighter from the bush jacket pocket and thumb the trigger, which sparks a tall flame, as if the kid behind the convenience store counter jokingly thumbed the flame control to its highest setting. Not that I’d think of minimizing the flame. Instead I flick the trigger no less than five times, my insides calming down with each and every burst of red-orange flame.

  Tearing open the beer’s cardboard packing, I pull out a cold one, pop the lid, and take a deep drink, then set the can into the center-console cup holder. I tear off the plastic on the pack of smokes, open the cardboard lid, and pull one out. Firing it up with the Bic, I taste the smoke and feel the heroin-like calmness pour over me with the first glorious drag. I retrieve the beer, steal another mind-numbing drink, and yearn for some peace. But I know in my gut that peace is just a pipe dream with David Bourenhem still in the picture.

  I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror.

  Jagged veins protrude through the thin skin on my forehead. Both the veins and the fire scars run up deep into my scalp, my ever-receding hairline leaving them exposed like miniature tree roots popping out of a cracked, concrete sidewalk. The three-day facial growth makes me look worn-out. Wired-out would be more accurate. Anxious. The horn-rimmed glasses I sometimes wear might make me appear somewhat smart, but I feel boneheaded stupid for having been lured back into this relationship with Lisa when she still isn’t over her life with David.

  Or is it more than that?

  In my head I begin to rehash Bourenhem’s film script:

  LISA

  Would you be willing to kill for me?

  I trigger the lighter and keep triggering it. I take the time to drink another beer. By the time I’m feeling sufficiently calmed, forty-five minutes have passed since I first pulled into this convenience store lot. Tossing the two empty cans onto the floor, I crack open another, set it into the cup holder, and start up the Escape. A new cigarette burning between my lips, I back out of the parking space and drive out of the lot.

  Having turned onto Albany-Shaker Road, I head back in the direction of Lisa’s house. If I have my way, it will be the last time I ever lay my eyes on the place.

  Chapter 20

  Dad rides shotgun while I drive. At first he says nothing. He stares down at the center console, picks up the half-full beer can from out of the cup holder, sets it back down. He picks up the pack of smokes, sets them back down. Then, with a disgusted shake of his head, he resumes staring out the windshield. After a beat, he clears his throat and speaks.

  Do you remember how you got back to the nuthouse, Reece?

  Oh, you must remember how it happened. You finally broke through the writer’s block, but that didn’t make the loss of Lisa any easier to bear. And when you discovered she was seeing another man . . . another writer, who had just finished his first novel . . . it was all you could do to keep what strings of sanity that remained holding you together from snapping.

  They snapped.

  You snapped.

  You tried to burn them, Reece. You set a fire on their back deck and tried to burn the house down, just like you tried to burn down the little home you and I lived in after Mom and your brothers were gone.

  You remember how I found you outside around the back of the single-story bungalow, trying to light the wood siding on fire with some gasoline and a pack of matches? Remember how I dropped to my knees and sobbed into my hands, just like I did on that night back in ’77? That botched attempt on our bungalow earned you your first official hospital visit, and then, what do you do almost three decades later? You go and do it again. This time to the place you shared with Lisa and Anna.

  Lisa might have had you arrested, but after I begged her not to, she did you the favor of having you hospitalized. You remember what it was like on that cold, cloudy morning back when they rolled you on a gurney into that white-tiled room? I remember because I drove you there in my truck and watched them wheel you away.

  Yeah, Dad, I remember.

  I remember my eyes were drawn to the angelic white light that shined down upon me from the ceiling-mounted, stainless steel–shaded lamps. No matter how much it burned my retinas, the light reminded me of heaven, just like it did when I was a boy and kept lo
oking for the faces of Tommy and Patrick in that blazing light. This time around I wasn’t looking for my brothers, but my body was still shaking and trembling like a leaf when I felt a gentle hand set itself onto my bare forearm.

  “What’s this I hear about you setting fires again?” An attractive, brown-eyed, female doctor in her white lab coat. “You should be writing, not playing with matches. But never fear, Mr. Johnston. This time, we’ll make sure that we fix you for good. So just try and relax and enjoy the flight.”

  “Happy to be aboard,” I said through chattering teeth.

  She knew I’d been here before. Of course she did. She’d read my chart. She’d studied my life. Those records never die, unless they burn.

  A long time ago, when I was still just a boy, the doctors thought the best solution for a child obsessed with burning things was to try to erase as much of the past as possible. Or, as the therapists put it, to neutralize the effect the past had on me. Since completely erasing the past was a practical impossibility, they decided upon the next-best thing.

  Erasure of my short-term memory.

  That took a series of electroconvulsive shock therapy sessions which, in the end, did indeed succeed in erasing my recollections of the fire that killed my brothers and mother. But only for a time. And my obsession with the manner and the means by which they died never went away. Not really. My need for fire only became more controlled, more carefully reined in.

  Now, decades later, the electroshock therapy was being applied again. Not only for fire this time, but also for something else. To help me with the loss of Lisa. I was having a bit of trouble with that. Okay, that’s putting it lightly. I was having a lot of trouble.