The master bedroom was spacious. There was crown molding around the room and a large walk-in closet nearly the size of a fourth bedroom.
Maggie led her clients into the master bathroom. It was roomy as well. There was a large soaking tub in one corner and a separate shower. The toilet was sequestered in a closet. Bill stepped over to the closet. The door was open. The lid to the toilet was down, but in keeping with his inquisitive nature, he leaned over and lifted it. There, floating in the water, was a large umber-colored turd. It was solid, yet discernibly segmented. There was nothing else in the bowl. No toilet paper. Just the floating turd.
Bill closed the lid, but not fast enough for Heather and Maggie to miss seeing the turd.
Had he been alone in his discovery, Bill would simply have dropped the lid and walked away. But the fact that there were other witnesses to his find required that he do the thing this situation customarily required: he flushed the toilet.
For a long moment no one spoke. Bill could not keep himself from looking at Maggie. Maggie looked at the wall. Heather, for her part, could not avert her eyes from the toilet as hard as she tried. The toilet took its time emptying its tank and then refilling itself with fresh water. The sound of lavatory hydraulics echoed throughout the cavernous bathroom.
Eventually, Maggie led the couple out. A minute or so later, the Hollons and their real estate agent were standing in the backyard, looking at a few of the beautiful oak trees that had given their names to the subdivision: “Towering Oaks.”
Maggie, who had previously been sunny and quite chatty in her description of the many winning features of the house, now spoke in dull monosyllables. “Well-kept lawn. Um. Nice deck here.”
Heather cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder at the part of the house where the master bathroom was. Where the toilet closet was. Where they had all seen the big, brown, floating fecal log.
Not much was said in the car. Nor did conversation pick up in the fourth house that Maggie showed the Hollons. Bill avoided looking at either of the two toilets in this house, although Heather found herself staring at the closed lid of one of them, her face rigid with worry over dangerous possibilities.
That evening, after Bill and Heather had finished their slices of pizza and Bill had downed almost all of his second beer, the new husband said to the new wife, “So which house did you like the best?”
“The third one,” said Heather.
“The one with the shit log?”
Heather nodded. Then she said, “Bill, was that her shit log?”
“We’ll never know, honey. But probably.”
“Why would she leave it there?”
“Maybe it didn’t go down when she flushed. Try not to think about it.”
“I love that house, Bill, but it had a turd in it.”
“I know, angel.” Bill put his arm around his new wife consolingly. After a moment, he drew back. “As embarrassing as it was for us, it must have been doubly hard for Maggie.”
“I can only imagine,” sighed Heather.
“Do you want this last piece of sausage?”
“No,” said Heather. “I could not possibly eat it.”
Later that night, Bill awoke to the sound of Heather’s soft sniffles.
“Are you okay?” he asked with whispered tenderness.
“No, Bill. I’m not okay.”
Bill rolled over and enfolded his wife’s convulsing body. The tears flowed freely now, great moans of sadness emanating from deep within her throat.
“Oh God, how I loved that house!” she keened, her voice crepitating with pain.
“I know you did, angel. Go ahead and let it out. Let it all out.”
1997 COMBUSTIBLE IN OHIO
Randi Bryce didn’t like the interrogation room. The overhead light was harsh and the dark concrete walls made her feel as if she were sitting in a prison cell. It was a sobering reminder of her potential fate.
None of it made sense. It was as if she had entered her own Twilight Zone episode or one of those stories by Kafka in which one is doomed by circumstances both menacing and illogical. Randi Bryce had stood at the kitchen window and watched her husband burst into flames. She had rushed out with an afghan snatched from the daybed in the adjoining sunroom. Josh was rolling upon the ground, howling in a primal voice she had never heard before. She threw the afghan upon him to put out the fire that still consumed him. Her hands were singed.
She looked down at those hands now, bandaged and lying still upon her lap — hands tremulous beneath the gauze.
Randi was being accused, indirectly, of setting her husband on fire. The police officers who brought her in after the ambulance had taken Josh away wanted to know how such a thing could happen. She hadn’t been formally arrested, but she could tell that they were getting close to making it all official. She could tell that they suspected she had used a match and the five-gallon can of gasoline they found sitting accusingly upon the awning-covered patio behind the house. Yet there was no smell of gasoline on her husband, or in the yard. There was no dribbled trail upon the patio’s pebbled surface. Moreover, the lawnmower parked next to the can made the container’s presence appear even less incriminating.
Maybe this is why they have yet to slap the handcuffs on me, Randi thought.
Josh’s burns had been severe, but thankfully, given swift actions on the part of both husband and wife, they weren’t life-threatening, barring complications. Randi wanted to see Josh, but being a person of interest in what was now being considered a possible attempted homicide, she could not.
There were injuries to go around. Things had been said by husband and wife the night before during an argument that was unfortunately witnessed by Josh’s mother Agnes after Randi and Josh’s ten-year-old daughter Brie had been sent up to bed. Randi and Josh had had it out in front of Agnes, and the next morning, a couple of hours after the “incident,” Agnes related the vitriolic exchange to the two investigating officers, Lieutenants Selvera and Leggio — willingly, even eagerly, and in great detail.
Now it was Randi’s turn to give her side, to try to convince the two detectives that in spite of the obvious motive, she could not possibly have done this terrible thing. Her mother-in-law’s allegation was outrageous. She could hardly speak to it. But she calmed herself. A glass of juice had been set before her. She took a drink from the straw.
Randi was well aware that she didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to. But she wanted to talk. Randi knew that once she was charged, she could have an attorney at her side advising her as to what she should say and what she shouldn’t so that she wouldn’t dig herself a deeper hole than the one she was already in, but she didn’t care. There was a small chance that by simply telling the truth about what happened, here at this early stage, she might be thoroughly exonerated in the minds of the suspicious officers. In the meantime, the cause of her husband’s combustion was still being investigated. Circumstantially, she was the culpable agent. But there was still this: a total absence of any evidence showing how the fire had been ignited.
The pretty female officer sitting across the table from her, Lieutenant Selvera, was patient. Her voice had a slow, soothing cadence. “Take your time,” she said. “Tell us everything that happened last night and everything that happened this morning leading up to the incident.”
The shovel-nosed young male detective leaning against the dingy cinderblock wall nearest the door agreed with a nod.
“Why do I have to talk about what happened last night? Haven’t you heard it all from Agnes? She was right there when the fireworks went off.”