Читать книгу The Burning House - Paul Lisicky - Страница 10

CHAPTER 2

The new house ate up every square foot of its lot. Copper roofing, copper flashing, copper downspouts: every last detail crying out, notice me, notice me, keep up with me. Exactly the kind of house Joan would have despised, with good reason. Dozens of these were sprouting up on street after street, replacing the tidy modern ranch houses on the water. The houses were little, I know. But did anyone these days have a clue they were once sold fully furnished, all the way down to the toothbrush, from the seventh floor model home at Bamberger’s, Newark? And even the minister of French culture, invited by builder, Boris Letsky, had a thing or two to say about them: “The higher the satellite, the lower the culture.” As if that were the cleverest thing. But look, those ranch houses with their clerestories, open rooms, tongue-and-groove ceilings, and pocket doors were exactly what serious architects were aping these days, even as the dodos in our zone were tearing them down.

At least that’s what Joan had made me see.

Just between you and me, though, I had to admit that I loved the new house. Okay, not that I loved it exactly, just that seeing a house like that come together blew out all the fog in my head. All the fog that enabled me to pass through the world without looking. I looked forward to it day upon day. Here was the ugly of it: as long as things were being thrown up around me, I’d never feel stuck in myself.

At my feet, a bumblebee dragged itself across the gravel.

I picked up shards of wood, stuffed my pockets until they were fat with it. This was how I filled the hour after dinner every night except Tuesdays: I walked through the new houses just as the sky went dark. It was my time to be alone, time to be apart from Laura and Joan, who stirred up the rooms they passed through, agitating the air. So much energy between them, energy and nerves, voices stormy, legs impossibly tall and tapered. How could I stop from being lost? I loved them, don’t get me wrong. They were excitement; they were beauty to me: a big bright bank of redwoods sparking at the edge of the sky. But sometimes a man needed to know who he was again. I went from one house to the next, standing inside their privacy, their loneliness. Boards aching, smell of dust still hot from the blade. Little shifts like murmurs above my head. So this is how I’ll spend the foreseeable, said the pieces of the house. So this is the weight I will carry. And somewhere, deep inside, the memory of the woods where they came from: the dense, mossy thick, three-thousand five-hundred miles away.

“I take it you set your own rules.”

A ruddy fellow, a little soft in the belly, trudged up the ramp. I couldn’t help but think of some fuming hen, body swaying side to side, head pecking. For some reason, I thought this particularly funny, and I started to laugh before I had the chance to explain.

“What’s up?”

“I take it you’re not a reader.” He pointed to the hand-lettered sign on the fence I’d pushed through:

ACTIVE CONSTRUCTION SITE: TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED TO FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

“You think I’m up to something?”

I kept the reaction from my face, stony and plain. It was a trick I’d taught myself, years back, in the guidance counselor’s office, or in front of my moody father just before the thought of spanking me passed over his face.

He raised his chin some. “I do.”

“You’re asking to pat me down?” I half-turned, held up my arms against fresh drywall. I couldn’t get a laugh out of him, though. Instead, the air buzzed as if he were convinced that I wanted to be boned by him.

“How do I know you’re not going to come back in an hour, walk out with some pipes and fixtures?”

“You don’t.” I looked him over without reservation: the orange crew cut, the puckered white star to the right of his nose, as if someone had pushed a screwdriver into his face.

“What’s in your pockets?”

I folded my arms, pushed up my biceps with my fists. I used the grin I depended upon when a little charm was in order. “So you really are after me.”

“Fuck you.”

“What makes me think you’re going to believe what I say anyway?”

“We’ve been missing three cords of wood from this property in the last week. A good two thousand dollars’ worth in supplies. At least.”

“You want to come over to my backyard and check?”

The guy cleared his throat, part awe, part disgust. Nothing like zoning in on the thing he least wanted to hear. To serve it up to him, to force his face in it, and make him eat it on his knees. The dolt. If I truly liked guys, he’d be the last person I’d fool around with. Try losing that mushy ass, pal, I wanted to say. Then maybe someone, woman or man, would want a roll in the hay with you.

He started swinging his arms freely, a little violence in it, not aimed at any particular target. Was someone going to get hurt? I could take him down, I knew that. I could send him straight to the hospital if that was what he wanted. But the scenario was almost too easy: the thin red drip from the nose, the squint of vulnerability. No golden, molten rage. I’d have rather been blindfolded, force-fed raw chicken with a knife to the throat.

The truth was I hadn’t hit anyone since high school. Joe Batschelet, in the far back corner of the library, throwing tiny balls of wet Juicy Fruit at the back of my head. I was skinny back then, half of the weight I am now. In his thickness, Joe had decided that I was a worthy target just because I kept my head down all the time and didn’t say a word in class. The bad part wasn’t the punch; it was shocking how easily my fist fit into his face. It was as if my whole life had been leading toward that moment: his face, my fist, our marriage. What bothered me was the aftermath. Joe had lost part of his sight in his left eye. And wasn’t I reminded of that each time I passed one of his friends in the school hall? They looked at me as if I’d held a sour, curdled secret. And I wanted to say, but I’m not what you think I am. I’m good, I’m good.

Another guy, much taller than the ruddy fellow, walked toward us now. I couldn’t see who it was, but the sheer height of him was wonderful to take in. The insides of my bowels froze. And I felt shorter than I’d felt in ages.

“Evening, gentlemen.” The police badge he flashed managed to catch the light from the street lamp.

“Craig,” I said with a relief too broad, too long.

He wasn’t in uniform. Instead, he had on a navy-blue polo shirt that he’d tucked into his jeans to hold the fabric as close as possible to his torso. He looked like he’d been airbrushed in real life, up and off the page. “Someone isn’t happy here?”

“The man violated a no trespassing order,” Red said.

“The gentleman thinks”—I couldn’t stop the smile on my face—“the gentleman thinks I’m here to steal property.”

“Oh yeah?”

“And he doesn’t think I can read.”

Craig Luckland looked at the guy as if he were expecting someone to come out behind a tree to take his picture. He had the kind of face that had always known it was handsome. The man behind that face knew that it could get him anything he wanted. Luckland’s love for himself would have enraged me if it hadn’t been so weirdly magnetic. Still, it helped no one in town that Luckland had just appeared in a reality show about bachelor cops. Now he couldn’t even concentrate without thinking about every lift and turn of that expensive face. The truth was he’d eat off his underpants on another reality show if it ensured his place in front of the camera. But that didn’t mean I didn’t like the guy.

“We’ve lost ten thousand dollars this week,” Red said.

“And you saw Mirsky stealing something.”

“I happened to be walking around the property,” Red said.

“I guess I missed the sign,” I said, shrugging.

“Well, then,” Luckland said.

Then Luckland took him by the arm and drew him aside.

He drew his head to the guy, talking in low, confidential tones, more counselor than policemen. He kept almost aiming his face of great concern and patience at the guy’s lesser face, blond-red, with babyish features. It didn’t take long for Luckland’s eyes to harden. They gave up a shock of raw feeling above the practiced smile. The guy simply wasn’t giving him what he wanted. What was it that Craig wanted?

Then I got it: he was waiting to be recognized.

Luckland walked over to me, still smiling, but weary about the eyes, as if the direct challenge to his star power had hit him where he lived. It told him the tale of his fate from here on out: life in our town would never give him what he needed.

“What timing,” I said. “What if you hadn’t come by? Shit.”

We watched Red moving down the street, his walk deliberate and henny. Buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, said the walk.

“You’re not naked,” Craig said, rubbing his shaved chin.

I pictured the corners of my smile held up with pushpins. I asked him what he was talking about.

“You,” he said, “you always have your shirt off. Every time I run into you. I’m surprised you even have any clothes in your closet. Do you have clothes in your closet?”

“Is that right?” I felt my expression changing, though I tried to remember the old trick: keep it stony, keep it plain.

“And you’re not singing something. Aren’t you always singing a little tune?”

“I don’t sing.”

“As if you don’t sing.”

“What do I sing?”

“What are you usually singing? ‘Born to Run.’ Yeah,” he said, pleased with his ability to make connections. “That’s it.”

I tried to reach for something witty, but I came up short. I’d never sung “Born to Run” in my life. At once, I felt that rude, rash desire to get away fast and quick. The deadly effect of standing in the presence of an authority figure whom I was expected to suck up to but couldn’t without seeming false, or looking like some totally extinct bird.

We started talking—Laura, Joan, my truck accident, everything you’d imagine. But my mind kept going back to his assessments of me. He hadn’t been making fun—I’d have been taking myself too seriously if I’d thought he’d been making fun. But I felt a little crazed. Who wanted to be told that he’d lost the ability to surprise and change, that he’d finally become himself: a man whose two coordinates were his body and his singing? Even as he’d been standing up for me, I knew he saw me as someone who’d never lived up to his potential, an aimless joeboy who’d leave the world without a mark or a stain. Maybe it was all about the effects of that face on me, a face with such magnetizing power that it could pulverize steel, draw water from stone. It said: I’m embedded in the world, while you’re only halfway here. A woman would take me over you any day, and isn’t it a sign of the brute injustice of this world that you were born yourself and not me? In another situation I might have laughed aloud at the absurdity of it, but what if he was right? What if I was already dead and was the last to find out? What if I wasn’t fully present enough in my life to give myself memories? No connections made, no ability to sustain a conversation: a phantom, a walking ghost, a Frankenstein monster.

And what about the women I’d loved? What had I given them?

I looked up. I imagined a trash fire inside the corners of an unfinished room until the house was charred.

“I need a job.” And it came out with such desperation that I turned my face away. Hot tears roiled in the base of my throat.

Then Craig put his arm around my shoulder and smiled with characteristic concern, as if our rightful places in the grand scheme of things had been assumed.

“I was waiting for you to ask.”

But I hadn’t always been a member of the walking wounded. Once the world had been brighter and alive, rich with incident:

1982. I’m making my way to my high school algebra classroom. A crowd gathers outside the doors of the auditorium. Mrs. Muscufo tries to break it up. Voices are raised, but only a few do as they’re told. I’m fourteen. I should keep going—isn’t it about time for a pop quiz? Instead, I stand on my toes, flex my calves until they’re stopped up with blood. Everyone is tall: eager and greedy and ruthless. There’s a sour smell of hot woolens. Why am I here? I can’t tell you that. Instinctively, I hate crowds and anything that draws crowds: sports, tournaments. Send me to the outfield, and watch me drop the ball from my mitt, screwing it up for my team. And yet I can’t tear myself away. I’m losing precious minutes as my algebra teacher is most likely handing out the pop quiz.

In seconds, I work my way to the front of the crowd so that I’m standing inside the dark vault of the auditorium. The stage itself is drenched with red-gold light. I’m still small; this is years before my arms thickened. There’s a piano player hunched over the baby grand. And on the stage, a voice so large that it destroys the girl who’s singing. Her body doesn’t so much matter anymore: the voice is somehow greater than the body. If the room had been any smaller, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it. Too private, too intimate. But she might as well be handing me a chain, pulling me up the side of the highest mountain, link by gorgeous link.

Uptown, going down, old lifeline ...

The song punishes as much as it feeds. It comes apart in pieces just as soon as I can pick out a pattern. I’m not sure I even like the song, but that’s not exactly the point. It’s as if I haven’t even known my skin before; it feels stranger, yet more beautiful. I’d always thought my body was mine alone: small and wholly mine and expendable: who would have known that it was a part of something else? I glance back at those who stand behind me. There’s Tom Pomeroy, there’s Jose O’Neill. Though they’re concentrating, they’re not as radically changed as I. On a pure animal level, they only know the voice is something they have a duty to hear. God wants it from them, though they wouldn’t call it God.

She finishes. I want to get away before she starts the next number, because I know she’ll never sound like that again, and I need to preserve it, like something I’d keep in a jar. But I’m wedged in between two people; I can’t move without stepping on feet. Someone turns, and then I see her between two heads. She isn’t radiant or extraordinary anymore, but she’s one of us, a senior. Someone I’ve seen walking up and down these halls. There’s nothing remarkable about her, nothing to write home about her rounded shoulders, her deep-black bank of hair, her height. But her singing tells me something different: she’s an old soul, older than anyone I’ve ever known, including my grandfather.

Walking down faster, walking with the master of time ...

Life could still change: that’s what her singing told me. She came at a moment when she was exactly what I needed. It wasn’t like those were the worst of times. My father hadn’t died yet; nor Uncle Moishe or my cousin Danny. Or none of the friends that were to come later. But listening to that bright big sound, I could tell that my life wasn’t going to be the neat, predictable shape I’d already pictured. There was no way out of it. The years ahead were going to be hard, harder than I had it in me to imagine. And yet the news didn’t make me want to run or curl into myself. Though it took me a year and a half to speak to her, I already knew that we’d share the same house and bed one day. I saw us sitting across from each other in our kitchen, a warm, yellow sun streaming through a part in the curtains, lighting up the table.

The fact of that gave me comfort, and I walked on to algebra, where the teacher, Mrs. Voorhees, didn’t seem to care that I was late, and flashed, somewhere beneath the sternness, a look of approval.