She double-locked the door as she left. At the top of the stairs, hearing the elevator groaning upwards, she stopped. Why kill herself? She got in as the movers came out. “Any objections?” she asked. The doors closed and Mrs. Hanson was in free fall before they discovered they couldn’t get in.
“I hope it crashes,” she said aloud, a little afraid it might.
Slime was standing guard over the kitchen which was huddled together beyond the curb in a little island of light under a street lamp. It was almost night.
A sharp wind with dry flakes of yesterday’s snow swept down 11th Street from the west. With a scowl for Slime, Mrs. Hanson seated herself on one of the kitchen chairs. She just hoped that Slime would try and sit down too.
The second load arrived—armchairs, the disassembled bunk, cupboards of clothes, the teevee. A second hypothetical room began to form beside the first. Mrs. Hanson moved to her regular armchair and tried, with her hands in the coat pockets, to warm her fingers in her crotch.
Now Miss Slime judged the time had come to really twist and squeeze. The forms came out of the briefcase. Mrs. Hanson got rid of her quite elegantly. She lit a cigarette. Slime backed off from the smoke as though she’d been offered a teaspoonful of cancer. Social workers!
All the bulkiest items came in the third load—the sofa, the rocker, the three beds, the dresser with the missing drawer. The movers told Slime that in one more trip they’d have it all down. When they’d gone back in, she started in again with her forms and her ballpoint.
“I can understand your anger, and I sympathize, Mrs. Hanson, believe me. But someone has to attend to these matters and see that things are handled as fairly as the situation permits. Now please do sign these forms so that when the van comes … ”
Mrs. Hanson got up, took the form, tore it in half, tore the halves in half, and handed the scraps back to Slime, who stopped talking. “Now, is there anything else?” she asked in the same tone of voice as Slime.
“I’m only trying to help, Mrs. Hanson.”
“If you try to help for one more minute, so help me, I’ll spread you all over that sidewalk like so much … like so much catsup!”
“Threats of violence don’t solve problems, Mrs. Hanson.”
Mrs. Hanson picked up the top half of the lamp pole from the lap of the rocker and swung, aiming for the middle of her thick coat. There was a satisfying Whap! The plastic shade that had always been such an eyesore cracked off. Without another word Slime walked away in the direction of First Avenue.
The last boxes were brought out from the lobby and dumped beside the curb. The rooms were all scrambled together now in one gigantic irrational jumble. Two colored brats from the building had begun bouncing on a stack made from the bunk mattresses and the mattress from Lottie’s bed. Mrs. Hanson chased them off with the lamp pole. They joined the small crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk, just outside the imaginary walls of the imaginary apartment. Silhouettes watched from the lower windows.
She couldn’t let them have it just like that. As though she were dead and they could go through her pockets. This furniture was her own private property and they just stood about, waiting for Slime to come back with reinforcements and take her off. Like vultures, waiting.
Well, they could wait till they dropped—they weren’t going to get a thing! She dug into her freezing purse for the cigarettes, the matches. There were only three left. She’d have to be careful. She found the drawers for the wooden dresser that had come from Miss Shore’s apartment when Miss Shore had died. Her nicest piece of furniture. Oak. Before replacing them she used the lamp pole to poke holes through the pasteboard bottoms. Then she broke open the sealed boxes looking for burnables. She encountered bathroom items, sheets and pillows, her flowers. She dumped out the flowers, tore the broken box into strips. The strips went into the bottom drawer of the dresser. She waited until there was no wind at all. Even so it took all three matches to get it started.
The crowd—still mostly of children—had grown, but they kept well back from the walls. She scouted about for the kindling. Pages of books, the remains of the calendar, and Mickey’s watercolors (“Promising” and “Shows independence”) from the third grade were fed into the dresser. Before long she had a nice little furnace going inside. The problem now was how to get the rest of the furniture started. She couldn’t keep pushing things into the drawers.
Using the lamp pole she was able to get the dresser over on its side. Sparks geysered up and were swept along by the wind. The crowd, which had been closing in more tightly around the bonfire, swayed back. Mrs. Hanson placed the kitchen chairs and table on the flames. They were the last large items she still had left from the Mott Street days. Seeing them go was painful.
Once the chairs had caught she used them as torches to start the rest of the furniture going. The cupboards, loosely packed and made of cheap materials, became fountains of fire. The crowd cheered as each one, after smoking blackly, would catch hold and shoot up. Ah! Is there anything like a good fire?
The sofa, armchairs, and mattresses were more obstinate. The fabric would char, the stuffing would stink and smolder, but it wouldn’t burn outright. Piece by piece (except for the sofa, which had always been beyond her), Mrs. Hanson dragged these items to the central pyre. The last mattress, however, only got as far as the teevee and her strength gave out.
A figure advanced toward her from the crowd, but if they wanted to stop her now it was too late. A fat woman with a small suitcase.
“Mom?” she said.
“Lottie!”
“Guess what? I’ve come home. What are you doing with—”
A clothes cupboard fell apart, scattering flames in modules scaled to the human form.
“I told them. I told them you’d be back!”
“Isn’t this our furniture?”
“Stay here.” Mrs. Hanson took the suitcase out of Lottie’s hand, which was all cut and scratched, the poor darling, and set it down on the concrete. “Don’t go anywhere, right? I’m getting someone but I’ll be right back. We’ve lost a battle, but we’ll win the war.”
“Are you feeling all right, Mom?”
“I’m feeling fine. Just wait here, all right? And there’s no need to worry. Not now. We’ve got six months for certain.”
41. At the Falls
Incredible? Her mother running off through the flames like some opera star going out for a curtain call. Her suitcase had crushed the plastic flowers. She stooped and picked one up. An iris. She tossed it into the flames in approximately the direction her mother had disappeared in.
And hadn’t it been a magnificent performance? Lottie had watched from the sidewalk, awestruck, as she’d set fire to … everything. The rocker was burning. The kid’s bunk, in two pieces, was burning propped up against the embers of the kitchen table. Even the teevee, with Lottie’s own mattress draped over it, though because of the mattress the teevee wasn’t burning as well as it might. The entire Hanson apartment was on fire. The strength! Lottie thought. The strength that represents.
But why strength? Wasn’t it as much a yielding? What Agnes Vargas had said years ago at Afra Imports: “The hard part isn’t doing the job. The hard part is learning how.” Such a commonplace thing to say, yet it had always stuck with her.