A family whose membership was now reduced.
She witnessed the debacle from the distant safety of the sky, and remembered looking down at herself with pity, though part of her was glad to be momentarily free of the pain.
She had no delusions of being an angel. In that bleak stretch of impossible perspective, she saw herself as she really was: scared, fragile, clinging to the threads of a reality whose fabric threatened to unravel.
It wasn’t at all how she viewed herself in the mirror, when vanity battled insecurity and the face was always familiar, plain, and far too old. That woman standing beside the oblong hole was an utter stranger, alone and futureless, unconnected to the flesh she had created and nurtured.
The escape was all too brief, and the wind pulled her spirit back into her body, or the illusion dissolved, or the dissociative episode of grief ended. And all that was left was the coffin swinging from the end of the chain like the tool of a brutal hypnotist.
Dishes. She plunged her hands back into the soapy water. The plates needed to sparkle like those in detergent commercials. Out, out, damned spots.
There was a knock on the door. She hadn’t had a visitor in several days, when the last of her friends had paid their obligatory sympathies. Her best girlfriend Kim, who knew secrets about her that even Jacob hadn’t plumbed, had resigned herself to the fact that Renee wanted to get through it on her own. A stubborn blonde, that’s what Kim had called her, and if she ever needed a shoulder to cry on, give a call. Otherwise, here’s a casserole and don’t hurry about returning the dish.
Renee dried her hands on a towel that was wrapped around the refrigerator handle. She didn’t want company right now. The house was a mess. No, “house” wasn’t the right word, house had connotations of home, and what had once been her home was now a heap of dark, dead ashes. This apartment wasn’t home, it was a temporary sleep chamber of the soul.
The knock came again, more insistent, authoritative. Be polite, she told herself. A good hostess. Mrs. Jacob Wells. She opened the door.
It was Kingsboro’s fire chief, stocky, dressed in an informal uniform of dark trousers and blue shirt. Her red hair was tied back but the sun caught some stray strands that glowed like firecracker fuses. Renee wondered if her hair color had led the woman to her career choice, the result of some homeopathic psychological pull. Or maybe she’d suffered some long-ago disaster of her own that had compelled her into public service.
“Hello?”
Renee had forgotten the woman’s name, since their first meeting had been in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. The Tragedy, with a capital T. That was how she referred to the night, both in forced conversation and in the hidden depths of her private thoughts. But now she saw the name above the badge, Davidson, and remembered they had spoken at some length, but couldn’t recall a word either of them had said.
“Davidson, Kingsboro Fire Department. Sorry to bother you again.”
“That’s okay,” Renee said, struggling to drive images of The Tragedy from her mind: the confusion as she rolled from the blankets, the stench of chemical smoke, the winking numerals of the alarm clock, Jacob’s shouting, her attempt to follow him before the flames cut her off, the flight down the stairs, the descent into hell, the escape into night air, and then the continuing descent into a deeper hell.
“I’d like to ask you a few more questions. May I come in?”
Renee stood aside, and the sliding of the invisible mask over her face was an almost physical sensation. “Please excuse the mess. And wipe your feet.”
Davidson looked down at her boots, which she had wiped on the outdoor welcome mat. She wiped again, then once more on the carpeted rug inside. Renee led Davidson to the couch and sat across from her in the armchair. The apartment seemed too small.
“First of all,” Davidson said, “I’m sorry for your loss. If we’d had any chance for a rescue—”
“I know. I’m sure you guys did everything you could. Nobody’s blaming you.” Because Renee bore all the blame, except for that one dark sliver she allowed Jacob.
“I understand how difficult this is, but we need some more information to help us determine the cause.”
“You already have my statement.”
“Yes, ma’am. But that was made in what we like to call ‘the heat of the moment.’” She smiled, but the expression on Renee’s face made it fade fast. Davidson’s voice shifted into an official monotone. “People sometimes remember things later, after they’ve settled their minds a little bit. Could you please go over the sequence of events one more time?”
Renee closed her eyes and tried to separate the actual events from her nightmares of the past two weeks. The reality and the nightmare had fused into one giant hell storm, a series of flickering images that seared her psyche and hot-wired her nerves. “I woke up,” she said finally. “And Jake was sitting on the edge of the bed.”
“Are you sure? You didn’t wake up first and then wake him up?”
“No. I’m a heavy sleeper—” Renee rubbed at her swollen eyelids. “I mean, I used to be a heavy sleeper. Jake always had to poke me in the ribs to get me to stop snoring. Or so he says. I’m still not convinced that I snore, and I challenged him to make a tape recording to prove it. Seems unladylike somehow, breathing through your nose like a lumberjack in a cartoon.”
Davidson nodded, and Renee knew she was babbling, but the act of recollection had pushed her to the dangerous cliff edge, the wind was blowing, the abyss was black and deep, and her balance wasn’t what it should be. Renee rushed on, afraid that if she paused, she would go back to that scary place inside that had beckoned her with the promise of isolation and safety.
“I woke up and I looked at the clock because I thought it was morning and time to get Mattie ready for school. I feel it’s a wife’s duty to have breakfast on the table, get the family off to a good start. That’s our deal, Jake works and I take care of the house. I mean, nothing personal, you being a woman in a man’s job, that must be hard, especially here in the mountains where everybody’s so conservative.”
That almost made Davidson flinch, but her firewall face kept its grim countenance. “It’s tough enough being a woman no matter what,” she said.
“When Jake woke me up, I smelled smoke, and of course I thought of Mattie first thing. I yelled at Jake, but he told me to stay, he’d take care of her. We practiced, of course. We had fire drills and we put those little child ID stickers on the window and we had one of those rope ladders under the bed. Everything you’re supposed to do. But the real thing is never like a drill, and I don’t think you could ever practice the way it really happens. But I guess you know that better than anybody.
“I followed Jake to the door, even though he told me to stay, because I usually obey him, but I was half-asleep and confused and then the smoke made me dizzy. I was about to go into the hallway when Jacob screamed at me and slammed the door, and I trusted him to save Mattie—”
Renee’s throat caught for the first time, breaking the unthinking stream of words. The fire chief waited, making no gesture of sympathy. Chapped, coarse hands, ones comfortable around an axe handle. And a wet blade of grass clung to the toe of her boot. Lying was easier now. Renee sniffed and continued.
“I waited for maybe a minute, then put my hand on the door. It was hot, and I remembered what they say about fire needing air to breathe. The alarm was going crazy—”
“Excuse me. Did your husband wake you up, or did the alarm?”
Renee shook her head. In the nightmare, the alarm was blasting like a freighter’s fog horn and Jacob had the blanket over her head, pulling it tight, cutting off her air and muffling her screams. “I think the alarm was already going. But it had gone off before, like when Jacob stayed up late and burned some toast or something, and the sound didn’t wake me up right away. It sort of turned into whatever I was dreaming and became a part of it. I told you I was a heavy sleeper. Jacob says I ought to get tested for sleep apnea, because that can kill you.”