She lifted her head to gaze out the kitchen window. Beyond the slope of leafless trees the Hudson was marbled black and orange, like the interior of a forge. There was the occasional spatter of rain, the bite of a cold draft making its way through the walls. These—along with the smells of fresh cooking, the growing stack of cleaned dishes, the smell of Scotch—made for one of those rare moments when chronology and atmospheric effects conspired to make everything seem not all that unchanged. It really could be Thanksgiving Day.
“He would have thought it was the end of the world,” said Jack. In fact his grandfather probably wouldn’t have thought that at all. But Jack did. It reminded him of a January afternoon with Leonard, when they were both seventeen. Side by side on the floor of an empty classroom at Saint Bartholomew’s, an hour or so after fucking in a closet; watching a blazing sunset fall through blackened tree limbs to ignite the windows. The sight had filled Jack with exhilaration and dread, confused with sexual fever and its aftermath, the sense of things burning, dangerously, somewhere just out of sight. Since then winter sunsets always moved him thus, a touch of terror amidst the glory. He was surprised, now, to realize he had not felt this way in some time—because there had been no real sunsets, no real winter, for over two years; and because he had grown accustomed to that soft hem of terror brushing against him daily.
“… think I would ever live this long,” Mrs. Iverson was ending with a sigh.
Jack looked up guiltily. “Oh, please don’t say that.”
The housekeeper moved a stack of plates from counter to cupboard. “Doesn’t matter what I say.” She turned and smiled, placed a hand still damp with soapsuds on his. “Oh now, Jackie, don’t you go looking like you just got the bad news about Santa Claus! That was a lovely meal you put together—you saw how Mary Anne ate, and your grandmother, too! You’re a good boy, Jackie. Go on now, I’ll finish up—”
She shooed him out of the kitchen. He went, still feeling guilty—men never seemed to stick around until every last dish was done, no matter how good their intentions—but grateful to have some time alone. Like all Thanksgivings, it had been long. The shadows and sense of repleteness made it feel late, but a consensus of Lazyland’s clocks seemed to agree that it was only around four. He wandered through the dining room, his grandfather’s study, living room, then out into the entry, feeling lost and melancholy. He finally settled into the Stickley chair beneath the grandfather clock, leaned his elbows on the battered table, and stared mournfully at the telephone. He lifted the receiver. The line was dead. He went upstairs.
On the second-floor landing he paused. Loud snoring came from his grandmother’s room and Marz’s. Jack shook his head: so much noise from two such little people. Three, if you counted the baby. From the back steps behind the linen closet he heard Mrs. Iverson exclaiming to herself, her heavy tread as she began to climb. He turned and hurried up the curving stairway to the third floor, taking the steps two at a time and being careful to chuck the moth-eaten caribou under the chin as he went past.
He went into his bedroom. Darkness was falling quickly through the old house, low heavy clouds in the west streaked with vermilion. Jack found matches and lit the lantern, went to his night table and squirted some Fusax beneath his tongue, chased it with stale water from a plastic tumbler. For several minutes he sat at the edge of the bed, watching sheaves of light ripple across the windows, black and scarlet and silvery grey. The light oppressed him, made him think of Good Friday, the altar stripped of everything save shadows and candles guttering in red glass holders. It was like that now, he thought, seeing the world without her makeup was not a pretty sight. Wind tore at the shingles, a rattle of rain or hail swept across the roof. From somewhere down near the river echoed laughter, the explosive roaring of an engine that grew ominously silent. A sense of something terrible about to happen swept over him, certain as the rain; but what could be done? There was no one to call for help, no one to wake; nothing to do but ride it out.
His mother had always said, No matter how bad things are, they will look better in the morning. But now morning never came. The glimmering had stolen the promise of dawn. He could only take a deep breath and wait for the horror to pass.
It did, slowly. He was not conscious of having shut his eyes, but it seemed he must have—when he blinked, the room had changed. The wind had died. A sharp, foul smell clung to the air, as of burned hair or feathers. The light had shifted. It was no longer black and scarlet but a lambent red, the deep lurid red of blood, so brilliant it cast no shadows. It was like staring at the world through an infrared lens. He stumbled to his feet and lurched to the window.
The sky was in flames. Not clouds that resembled flames, but fire, huge explosive gouts of fire stretching from horizon to horizon, roiling and expanding as though they would devour the entire sky. He watched in horror, looked down but saw nothing—no trees, no earth, not even the walls of the house beneath him. Only a vast cauldron of molten light, seething like some monstrous bacillus. The light tore at his eyes, made them stream and burn. He turned and staggered to the door. He crashed against the doorframe and all but fell downstairs, blinded.
“Grandmother! Grandmother—”
He stumbled into Keeley’s room. The heavy jacquard curtains were drawn, as always. They filtered out the light, so that he could see his startled grandmother sitting up in bed, still wearing her fisherman’s sweater, a sleep mask pushed up over her white curls.
“Jack! What is it—”
“The fire! Are you all right—”
Fire? Keeley started to climb from the bed. “Where, where—”
“Grandmother, don’t! Please—”
Someone appeared in the doorway: the blond girl. She yawned and shook her head, staring at Jack through sleep-slit eyes. “Fire? There’s no fire. What, you have a dream or something?”
“A dream?” He shook his head. “No, I…”
His voice trailed off.
“There was a fire.” He cleared his throat. “Outside. There was a fire.”
Marz walked into the room, arms crossed above her waxing belly. She went to the window and fiddled until she found a heavy sateen cord. She yanked on it. The curtains opened.
“You were dreaming ,” she said. “See?”
The window framed the same view as his own did—dark trees, carriage house, sloping lawn, sluggish river. All untouched by any flames save a few bright brief flashes from the evening sky, silvery purple and acid green.
“No,” Jack said, but the girl had already crawled into bed with Keeley, grinning.
“I have dreams like that, sometimes.” Marz shivered, and Keeley draped a blanket over her thin shoulders. “Like I’ll see the sky at night, there’ll be words written up on the sky, but I can’t understand them. And bridges—I have this dream, a lot, this dream about a bridge…”
Jack walked to the window and looked out. She was right, there were no fires. He rubbed his eyes.
Jesus fuck, it seemed so real.
“I never remember my dreams,” Keeley said. “Not anymore. Your father, he used to have dreams. And nightmares…”
Jack turned, thinking she spoke to him. But the way Keeley smiled at Marzana, the way her hand traced the headboard’s carven whorls—as though another palm moved there beneath her own—told him that she spoke to the girl. That she was seeing the girl, again, as Mary Anne. Your father was his grandfather.