She takes her phone off the bedside table and begins to scroll through her photos. She has only one of April. Somehow it seems wrong to photograph a blind person. It’s like stealing something valuable they don’t even know they own. In this same spirit, Rachel self-edits to never say, “What a lovely sunset” or “Eyes this way, honey.” Around April, to exclaim, “What a beautiful flower!” would seem cruel.
She and Ted had met on a blind date, another phrase Rachel rigorously avoids.
Recently her daughter has begun to call out, “Look at me, Mom! Look at me! Are you watching?” April obviously had no idea what she was saying. That was simply the universal chorus of children, sighted or blind. The essence of being a parent was the shift from being the person who is watched to being the person who does the watching.
Again, Thursday, the girl refuses to utter a sound. Rachel scrutinizes with her ears. Rachel wheedles and promises until Ted takes the phone and says, “Sorry.” She can hear the helpless shrug in his voice as he says, “I can’t make her talk.”
To that Rachel says, “Try.” Ted has a real talent for giving up. She suggests he poke April in the ribs to make her laugh. She asks, “Isn’t she ticklish?”
In response Ted laughs, but mostly from disbelief. “You’re asking if she’s ticklish?” He snorts, “Where have you been the past three years?”
* * *
After the night of the fire, all that Rachel would ever accept the blame for was throwing the switch. Before turning on the living room lights, Rachel said she’d gone to the thermostat and dialed up the heat. She’d switched on the gas fireplace at the same moment the screams had started. A wild banshee wail had filled the dark rooms. Like some wintry demon, an unearthly screeching sounded, and then the entire household seemed to catch fire. The Christmas tree flared. The black throw pillows flared. The black area rugs blazed. Ted rushed to embrace Rachel even as bedspreads and bath towels burst into raging orange flame. The air stank with smoke and scorched hair. The smoke detectors added to the head-splitting racket. They didn’t have time to back their black car down the driveway and save it before flames were flapping like bright flags from every upstairs window. They were standing on the snowy front lawn when the fire trucks came sirening out of nowhere. The house was fully involved.
In Orlando, Rachel has begun to speculate. It would be exactly like Ted to keep some awful truth from her, at least until she gets home. If April were in the hospital, if she’d been stung by a bee and had a severe reaction, or worse, Ted would think he was doing Rachel a kindness by not telling her over the phone. She goes online and searches for accidents in Seattle involving three-year-old girls in the past week. To her dismay, she finds one. According to the news item, a girl has been attacked by a neighbor’s dog. Currently she is in the hospital, in critical condition. Her name is being withheld pending notification of the victim’s extended family.
That night, Rachel listens to her new messages. They are all from herself. “Memo to self: Repercussions!” Just that one word, shrill and bullying. She has no idea to what she’d been referring at the time. She has to check the caller ID to even recognize herself. Was that how her voice really sounds?
All night the idea weighs on her: How many toddlers choke to death on rubber balls and never make the CNN scroll? She keeps hitting REFRESH, hoping for updates on the Seattle Times story. What kind of mother is she if she can’t sense whether or not her child is dead or alive?
* * *
The fire marshal hadn’t thought it was arson, not at first. The episode had made them celebrities, and not in a good way. They’d become living proof of something people didn’t want to believe could really happen.
The fire marshal had picked through the charred rooms, charting the path of the blaze’s ignition. It had started at the minimalist fireplace and traced a circle around the perimeter of the living room. Next, the perimeter of the dining room had kindled. He’d sketched a rough floor plan on a sheet of graph paper clipped to a clipboard. Using a mechanical pencil, he drew a line from the dining room up the stairs and around the perimeter of the master bedroom and bathroom.
Tucked under his arm, he was carrying something wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. “Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he told Ted and Rachel in the driveway. He’d held the bag open and let them peer inside. It smelled horrific, a combination of burnt hair and chemicals. Ted took one look and began to shake.
* * *
Friday night in Orlando, Rachel briefly entertains the idea of calling the police, but what could she say? She checks for an update about the three-year-old girl in critical condition. She calls a neighbor back home, JoAnne. They’ve had a passing acquaintance based on a mutual hatred of the local garbage collectors. JoAnne picks up on the nineteenth ring. Rachel asks if Ted has gotten their garbage can out to the curb this week. She doesn’t want to tip her hand.
She listens, switching the phone from one ear to the other, but hears nothing. Most of what she doesn’t hear is JoAnne’s Rottweiler mix barking. It’s always barking and clawing at their fence.
At last JoAnne says, “Garbage pickup is next week, Rachel.” She sounds guarded. She says Rachel’s name as if she’s signaling to other people within earshot. She asks how Orlando is, and Rachel racks her brains trying to remember if she’d mentioned the trip beforehand. Testing, Rachel says, “I hope Ted’s not spoiling April while I’m gone.” The pause that follows lasts too long.
“April?” Rachel prods. “My daughter?”
JoAnne says, “I know who April is.” Now she sounds irritated.
Rachel can’t help herself. “Did Cesar bite my baby?”
The line goes dead.
* * *
At least the fire marshal had solved the mystery of why their old house stank every winter. Belinda Carlisle, the marshal conjectured, had been using the crushed granite of the fireplace as a litter box. Any time they’d switched on the gas jets, Ted and Rachel had been barbecuing untold pounds of buried cat waste. The insurance adjuster told them that what had occurred was without precedent. Rachel noticed he could hardly contain his laughter as he explained how the cat must’ve been voiding her bowels at the same moment Rachel flipped the fireplace switch.
One moment, Belinda was taking a secret late-night crap in the dark little cave of the firebox. In the cold house, maybe she savored the gentle warmth of the pilot light. She would’ve heard the cricket click-click-click of the electronic spark igniter. Instantly, jets of blue flame would’ve shot at her from every direction.
It had been this furry, flaming demon that had exploded, screaming, and raced around the house, setting fire to every cloth item before falling dead in an upstairs closet beneath Rachel’s dry cleaning, stored in flammable plastic.
* * *
Saturday, Rachel phones home three times and gets the voice mail. She pictures the house empty. It’s too easy to picture Ted weeping beside a hospital bed. When he finally picks up, she asks for April. “If that’s how you want it, young lady,” she threatens, “no Christmas, no merry-go-round, no pizza, unless you speak up.” She waits, not wanting to be hurtful. She blames her mood on a rum-and-cola, a double, that cost more than a turquoise belt buckle from TV. “I had a little girl who was blind,” she taunts, trying to provoke a response. “What are you, now, Helen Keller?”
It’s the rum talking. On television, an enlarged topaz sparkles hypnotically, rotating slowly with the sound turned down.
In the depth of the quiet, Rachel can hear breathing. It’s not her imagination. April is breathing, sounding stubborn, huffing angry little snorts as if her chubby arms are crossed over her chest and her cherub cheeks are flushed red with anger.