An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes In New England Part 2

"The man whose wife you're sleeping with. He told me that you'd say it was all a big mistake. That's the other reason I know you're having an affair. Because he told me so."

"Who is this guy?" I said, grateful that I had another lying man to focus on. "What's his name?"

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response. You know know who he is." who he is."

"I don't, I don't," I said. "What's his name? Please tell me. Please. Please."

And maybe I sounded sincere; I mean, I was sincere, but maybe I actually sounded that way, too. You can never tell how you sound over the phone, that evil piece of machinery, and I would stop using one, we all would, if only there weren't these great distances we need to put between us and the people we need to talk to. Still, it's possible that I truly sounded sincere. Or maybe Anne Marie was holding out hope that I wasn't the cheater and liar she now believed me to be. Because she told me his name, as if maybe I didn't know. Which, it turns out, I did.

"Thomas," she said, and her voice sounded kinder, softer, more hopeful than before. "Thomas Coleman."

"Oh no. s.h.i.+t," I said. This, of course, was the wrong thing to say and did nothing at all to convince Anne Marie of my innocence.

"That's what I thought," she said, her voice hard again, the way it gets after you've cried and then discovered you've been crying for a good reason.

"He's lying," I told her. "Don't believe a word that guy says."

"He said you'd say that, and so he asked me to ask you why he would lie."

Oh, that hurt! Thomas had outsmarted me, and it felt bad. It's a painful thing, finding out that you're dumber than someone else. But then again, there is always someone smarter than you; you'd think we'd die from the constant pain of our mental inferiority, except that most of the time we're too stupid to feel it. Yes, Thomas Coleman was smarter than I was, I knew it, and now my wife knew it, too.

"That's what I thought," Anne Marie said again. "He also said that you'd say the whole thing with his wife was an accident, that you'd never meant for it to happen."

"That sounds like me," I admitted. You had to hand it to Thomas: he really knew me, inside and out, and how to use that knowledge against me. I had no idea why he'd told Anne Marie I was cheating on her, rather than telling her the truth about my burning down the Emily d.i.c.kinson House and killing his poor mom and dad, but no doubt there was a reason, a good one, and he was smart enough to know it and I wasn't. How did he get so terribly smart, so determined? Maybe it was the pain I'd caused that made him that way, and if that were true, then I'd sort of had a hand in it, in making him as smart and devious as he was. I was really starting to dislike the guy. But I also felt a little proud, like Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when his monster turned on him, because, after all, it was Dr. Frankenstein who had made the monster strong and cunning enough to turn on him.

"You know what else he said?" Anne Marie asked.

"Tell me," I said. I didn't want to know, of course, but she was going to tell me anyway, so why not invite in the inevitable, which is why, in the movies, vampires have to be asked inside by their victims and always are.

"He said that we didn't belong together anyway, and good riddance. He said I was much too beautiful to be with a man like you."

"Hey, Anne Marie, I've said the same thing. Many, many times." And I had. But it was different with Thomas saying it. When I said Anne Marie was too beautiful for me, it was as if only I knew and saw the truth. Now that Thomas had said it, though, I could see us as everyone else no doubt did: we were the couple that no one could figure out. What does she see in him? What does she see in him? That was the unanswerable question. That was the unanswerable question.

"Listen," I said. "I know you don't believe me. But don't trust this guy Thomas; he's bad news."

"You'd know," she said.

"I would?"

"Bad news knows bad news," she said. I could hear her light up another cigarette, which meant that she was on track to smoke more than her daily three. She didn't like to smoke around the kids, and so I thought maybe I could talk to them while she finished her smoke. I'd lost her; it felt that way already. But I hadn't lost the kids yet, I didn't think. Apparently this is what you do when you lose someone you love: you scramble to make sure you don't lose everyone you love.

"Hey," I said, "are the kids around?"

"Yes."

"Can I talk to them?"

"No," she said.

After that, silence opened up between us, big and yawning and much wider than the actual two miles between the gas station from which I was calling and our home to the west. The gap was so big that it felt as though there were nothing I could do to close it, nothing at all. It was the worst feeling in the world. Think of when California finally breaks off from the rest of country, and the people in Nevada watching it happen from their new coastline. That's what I felt like.

So what did I do? Did I finally, out of desperation, do what the bond a.n.a.lysts told one another to do? Did I tell Anne Marie the truth? I didn't. It would have been like reaching inside of me and yanking out one of my organs my liver, my spleen, or one of their vital neighbors and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. But I could tell Anne Marie what she thought thought was the truth. This is what I decided, right there on the phone: that I would tell Anne Marie I'd had an affair with Thomas Coleman's wife. After all, wasn't it better to be a philanderer than an arsonist and a murderer? Wasn't I catching a bit of a break here, that my wife was convinced I was a philanderer and not something much worse? Wasn't it better if your wife thought you were a philanderer and wouldn't be convinced otherwise just to go ahead and admit to her truth, so that you could then apologize and beg her forgiveness, and then she could get on with the business of forgiving you and things could get back to normal? This was my thinking when I admitted to Anne Marie, "OK, yes, I cheated on you. I am so sorry. Please let me come home and we'll talk this over." was the truth. This is what I decided, right there on the phone: that I would tell Anne Marie I'd had an affair with Thomas Coleman's wife. After all, wasn't it better to be a philanderer than an arsonist and a murderer? Wasn't I catching a bit of a break here, that my wife was convinced I was a philanderer and not something much worse? Wasn't it better if your wife thought you were a philanderer and wouldn't be convinced otherwise just to go ahead and admit to her truth, so that you could then apologize and beg her forgiveness, and then she could get on with the business of forgiving you and things could get back to normal? This was my thinking when I admitted to Anne Marie, "OK, yes, I cheated on you. I am so sorry. Please let me come home and we'll talk this over."

I could hear Anne Marie suck in a breath, one, two, three times, as if she were inhaling the words love, honor, and cherish love, honor, and cherish before exhaling loudly into the receiver, releasing those words into the mysterious fiber optics between us. before exhaling loudly into the receiver, releasing those words into the mysterious fiber optics between us.

"Good-bye," she said. "Don't call back. I'm serious. Don't come home, either." She paused dramatically again, sucked in one more breath, and then said, "You've really f.u.c.ked things up this time, Sam."

"Wait. . . ," I said, but she didn't and hung up.

I stood there in the gas station. It was a big one, right off the highway, with too many pumps. Suddenly the place seemed full of families, parents and their children, and there were a few extended families, too, grandparents with weak bladders who'd requested the pit stop, all of them so grateful to have a brood of their own. I hated them, the way you hate the morning after a night of not sleeping, when it comes up both blurry and sharp at the same time. It made me want to howl howl about the world that wasn't mine anymore and how I hated it, howl about the truth and how I wasn't brave enough to tell it and so I did exactly that: I howled right there in the gas station and was given a wide berth by the other gas pumpers.

But the howl had a fortuitous effect: it summoned the gas station attendant. I stopped howling long enough to tell him about locking the keys in my van, and he unlocked the door with his ingenious thin slice of metal. I paid him, climbed in, started the van, and then sat there. I had a full tank of gas and nowhere to go. Nowhere to go! I started howling again, except the windows were rolled up and so it was as though I were howling in my own crypt, with the engine running. Oh, that was loneliness! I empathized with Thomas Coleman right then, even though he'd made a ruin of my life. Because the loneliness I felt was the loneliness of someone all alone, the loneliness of an orphan.

Except I wasn't one. That thought stopped my howling, because after all, I had a father, a mother, too, and as far as I knew they were alive, which was a plus. So I would go to them, even if they didn't want me. Besides, I had nowhere else to go.

5

That's how I came to be driving on Amherst's streets for the first time in five years, even though I lived only two miles from the center of town. I'd learned that I could drive the spur around town on the way to work, and Katherine's school, which was called Amherst Elementary, was actually a new, sprawling red brick building outside of Amherst, and all the necessary superstores we shopped at weren't in Amherst, either; they were on Route 116, which is to say they weren't really anywhere. This is how it is these days: you can live in a place without having to actually have a life there.

And there was that voice, back as loud as ever, asking, What else? What else? What else? What else? The van was awfully quiet and lonely without the kids making noise and Anne Marie telling them not to, and so to fill the loneliness I listened to the voice carefully, maybe too carefully, and didn't pay enough attention to my driving, and that's how I ended up ramming into a K-Car in front of me. Luckily, it was a gentle ramming: the old lady driving the car wasn't hurt and neither was her car, really, and after some initial confusion she seemed to remember that the b.u.mper had been loose and hanging off the frame The van was awfully quiet and lonely without the kids making noise and Anne Marie telling them not to, and so to fill the loneliness I listened to the voice carefully, maybe too carefully, and didn't pay enough attention to my driving, and that's how I ended up ramming into a K-Car in front of me. Luckily, it was a gentle ramming: the old lady driving the car wasn't hurt and neither was her car, really, and after some initial confusion she seemed to remember that the b.u.mper had been loose and hanging off the frame before before I'd rammed it. I I'd rammed it. I had had, however, knocked over a few bags of vegetables and fruit in the backseat, and so I crawled into her car and tried to put the produce back in the bags. The bags were broken, though, and the produce ended up rolling all over the backseat and floor. Still, the old lady was very sweet about it, and even though I was pretty sure I remembered her from my younger days, she didn't recognize me as the boy I'd been, the boy who burned down, et cetera, which I thought was promising indeed. We exchanged information which by law we were required to do and then parted ways. All in all, it was a very pleasant, civilized accident I got into on the way to my parents' house. As the old lady pulled away, I had a vision of the fruit and vegetables happily rolling around her backseat, and I remembered that my father was a big fan of fresh produce and had once even started up a garden, which didn't work out the way he'd planned.

And so, a few facts about my father and then his failed garden. My father was an editor for the medium-size university press in town. He mostly edited books on American history, but his subspecialty was the relations.h.i.+p between popular music and American culture. In addition to his books, my father also covered the area's annual squeeze-box festival for the local newspaper.

"Sam," he once asked me, "do you know why the accordion is so important? Do you?"

I was seven at this point. I didn't know anything about anything and told my father as much.

"Because it is part of the history of music and immigration," he said. "The Acadians played it, and when they moved from Canada to Louisiana, they brought their squeeze-boxes with them. The accordion is their instrument. It is their gift to the world."

"It hurts my ears," I told him.

This simple, seemingly innocent comment pretty much ruined my poor dad. He couldn't stand knowing that his son did not admire his occupation. I was seven, let me remind you, and knew nothing about the relations.h.i.+p between a man's lifework and his sense of self-worth, and my father should have ignored me. But he didn't: instead, my father left the editing and musicology business and searched around for something else to do, something I might respect him for. Somehow he decided that I would respect him if he became a farmer. Amherst is not exactly the country, but my father turned our half-acre backyard plot into a minibreadbasket anyway. For six months May to October my father grew beets, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, garlic. Our backyard was teeming. But we never ate any of it, because my father wouldn't let us. He said we couldn't "reap the harvest" until the time was right.

"When will the time be right?" I wanted to know.

When I asked this, my father looked at me in complete surprise, as if he were hoping all along that I I would tell would tell him him when he should pick his vegetables. I was eight by this time, but even I could tell that my father didn't know what he was doing, and also that he was in some real emotional trouble. Or maybe he didn't want to harvest his crops because he was afraid that the vegetables would somehow be when he should pick his vegetables. I was eight by this time, but even I could tell that my father didn't know what he was doing, and also that he was in some real emotional trouble. Or maybe he didn't want to harvest his crops because he was afraid that the vegetables would somehow be wrong wrong. Anyway, that night my father told my mother (and later she told me) that he needed to go out in the world and find something worth doing, something that would make us her and me proud of him.

My mother apparently told my father in response that if he sliced himself open, stuffed himself with his accordions, concertinas, and rotting vegetables, and then hung himself on a pole in the middle of his miserable little garden, then he would probably make one impotent, homely-looking scarecrow.

My father left the next day and didn't come back until three years later and then was rehired by the university press when he did. But right after he left, my mother starting telling me stories about the Emily d.i.c.kinson House and the terrible mysteries therein, and if those stories were supposed to lead me, eventually, to break into the Emily d.i.c.kinson House in the middle of the night and accidentally burn it down and kill Thomas Coleman's parents in the process if my mother's stories were supposed to do all this and and send me to prison and thus take away ten years of my life then they did what they were supposed to. send me to prison and thus take away ten years of my life then they did what they were supposed to.

I got angrier and angrier in the car, just thinking about all this bad family history, and by the time I got to my parents' house, I was ready to take my anger out on someone or something. So I took it out on the front door. I banged on the door and banged and banged until my fist hurt. No one answered, so I yelled out, "It's me! Sam! I'm home!" Still no one answered, and my anger turned to dread, that sort of dread you feel when you go home and wonder whether everything has changed or nothing has.

Then I opened the door it wasn't locked and found that everything had changed: it looked nothing like the house I remembered. The house I remembered had the neat sort of disorder peculiar to the well-read and overeducated: in the house I remembered, there were books and magazines everywhere, but everything else dishes, gla.s.ses, clothes was in its proper place. This house, on the other hand, looked as though it had been strip-mined by Vikings. There were empty bottles gin bottles, beer bottles, red wine bottles scattered everywhere. There were even empty peach schnapps and wine cooler and white zinfandel bottles here and there in between couch cus.h.i.+ons, in the fireplace, on top of the microwave which made me wonder if my parents had been drinking in the house with high school girls or sorority sisters. My parents had once been big believers in natural woodwork the wainscoting, banisters, overwide windowsills but now the wood looked pale and sickly, as though it were turning into linoleum. There were ashtrays on nearly every surface the kind of shallow, thin metallic ashtrays that you could only get by stealing them from diners and restaurants but since all the ashtrays were overflowing, some of the bottles had cigarette b.u.t.ts soaking in the remaining drops of booze. There were stacks of dishes in the sink and piles of pots and pans on the stovetop, and none of them had been washed; the food had been caked and dried on them for so long that the spaghetti sauce and the flecks of vegetable and meat matter looked as natural a part of the pots and pans as the handles and the lids. The pantry shelves were totally empty except for those things confectioners' sugar, toothpicks, tiny marshmallows that you couldn't ever get rid of, plus boxes and boxes of these candy-bar-looking things. They were called Luna bars, and I a.s.sumed they were some sort of health food for women because the boxes featured highly stylized drawings of women jogging around the moon. The only items in the refrigerator were a half-empty two-liter bottle of tonic water and a jar of light mayonnaise that had probably been there for several presidential terms. The whole house smelled like a perfumed dog, even though my parents had never, to my knowledge, owned a dog, and my mother, to my knowledge, had never worn perfume. There was an exercise bike stationed in front of an enormously big and impossibly thin TV, which was perched on the middle shelf of an otherwise empty bookcase empty of books, and empty even of other shelves. That was the biggest change: in the house I remembered, there were books everywhere, but now I couldn't find a one, not even a TV Guide TV Guide. I had even begun to wonder whether I was actually in the right house when I heard a noise a grunt or a squeak coming from the guest room. I followed the sound. That's when I saw my father.

He was an invalid and in bad shape; this was obvious at first glance. His face was shrunken and drawn back, and he had a plaid wool blanket on his lap. When he saw me, my father made a kind of wounded-animal noise that I took to mean one-third surprise, one-third Welcome home Welcome home, one-third Please don't look at me, I'm hideous Please don't look at me, I'm hideous, and the blanket slid off his lap and onto the floor, kicking up a good amount of dust that floated there in the sunlight like something beautiful and precious and then sank to the wide-planked pine floor.

I returned the blanket to his lap and asked, "Oh, Dad, what happened to you?" even though it was obvious what had happened to him: he'd had a stroke. There is no mistaking a stroke victim, even if you haven't seen one before, which I hadn't. I didn't know what else to say, so I repeated, "Oh, Dad." He seemed to appreciate my awkward position, because he made the wounded-animal noise again, but this time it was much more soothing, and I was calmed by it.

"Don't say another word," I told him. "Relax. Let me do the talking and get you up to speed." I told him about college and my switch from English to packaging science, and I told him about Anne Marie and Katherine and Christian and about my job at Pioneer Packaging and our house in Camelot and how much I missed him and Mom. I didn't tell him, though, about the voice that asked, What else? What else? or Thomas Coleman or Anne Marie's kicking me out, because I figured he already had enough to worry about. But even so, this story must have overwhelmed him a little in its detail and scope, because by the time it was done he seemed to be asleep. I shook my father by the arm, gently at first, but then harder and harder until he woke up with an alarmed snort. From then on I asked only short, factual questions, like "Where's Mom?" to which he responded in a two-syllable grunt that I took to mean, or Thomas Coleman or Anne Marie's kicking me out, because I figured he already had enough to worry about. But even so, this story must have overwhelmed him a little in its detail and scope, because by the time it was done he seemed to be asleep. I shook my father by the arm, gently at first, but then harder and harder until he woke up with an alarmed snort. From then on I asked only short, factual questions, like "Where's Mom?" to which he responded in a two-syllable grunt that I took to mean, She's out She's out.

We sat there for a while in silence. It got darker and I turned on the light. I didn't feel the need to talk, maybe because whatever I might have said wouldn't have been as smart as the silence. My father had a holy-man quality to him: he struck me as having the sort of deep wisdom cripples seem to get with their crippling, and I was prepared to sit there and soak up whatever knowledge he might emanate. It was nice. But the place really was a mess. Even my father's bedroom was littered with beer cans and empty wine bottles, and there were even a few boxes of wine, the sort that comes with its own spigot. I was certain they were my mother's because she would always have a drink with dinner and my father never did. Besides, I couldn't imagine him drinking anything now without a straw and I didn't see any of them scattered around.

And on the topic of my mother, where in the h.e.l.l was she? Where did she get off, leaving my crippled father alone in his condition and not even cleaning the house before she left it? Did her crippled husband not deserve a little more dignity, a little less filth? The more I ruminated on it, the more I realized how typical this was of my mother. She, as mentioned, was always the hard-hearted one, and even when my father left us for those three years, she didn't shed a tear. My mother wasn't exactly the welcome wagon when my father came back, either, and my old man really wore himself out trying to get back in her good graces. Thinking about it now, I decided there was a direct connection between his stroke and that difficult time, too. And then there were those Emily d.i.c.kinson House stories she used to tell me, the ones that ruined so many lives, and I was really getting worked up about her, my callous mother, who had now apparently abandoned my father in his time of need. Where did she get off? I might have said this out loud, because my father nearly raised his eyebrows at me and for a second I thought he was going to chastise me for being rude to my mother, but instead he said, "Man."

"Man what?" I said.

"Grown," my father said, or that's what I thought he said, and then he raised his finger as if to point at me. Or that's what I thought he was doing. The finger made it only about an inch off his lap and then fell back again. Of course, this could all have been a big misunderstanding. But then again, maybe misunderstanding is what makes it possible to be in a family in the first place. After all, when I was eight I understood my father all too clearly: he was scared, and so he left us. My mother was lonely and angry at his leaving, and so she told me those stories about the Emily d.i.c.kinson House. I understood that, too. Maybe we had understood too much about one another; maybe if we'd misunderstood one another, then we'd have been more of a family. Maybe if we'd been more of a family, I would have seen my father in the last ten years and he wouldn't have to marvel at how much I'd grown. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

"I am am a grown man," I said to my father. And then, remembering Terrell in prison, I clarified: "I'm a grown- a grown man," I said to my father. And then, remembering Terrell in prison, I clarified: "I'm a grown-a.s.s man." man."

My father stared at me for a good half minute until his blanket slipped from his lap again. He leaned over slightly in his chair to catch the blanket before it hit the floor, and that movement, that one little thing, caused me to remember what for so many years I'd been trying not to: that moment when my father had bent over, opened the end table drawer next to him, pulled out a Converse shoe box, and shown me those letters asking me to burn down those writers' houses. There was the end table, still in the same place; there was the drawer, inside the end table. Was the shoe box still in the drawer? Were the letters still in the shoe box? I hadn't thought of those letters for years, but now they were in my head again and they were alive, making noise, joining the chorus of my neighbors' lawn mowers, the Emily d.i.c.kinson House fire, and other sounds of the past. And among those sounds was my father's voice, telling me those many years earlier, "Sam, you are are an arsonist," which was why I blurted out now, so many years later and out of the blue, "You're wrong." an arsonist," which was why I blurted out now, so many years later and out of the blue, "You're wrong."

"Wrong," my father repeated, doing his best to keep up.

"Yes, wrong," I said. "I work at Pioneer Packaging. I make containers, good ones."

My father pursed his lips and made a derisive raspberry sound; a glob of spittle landed on his chin and I tried very hard not to wipe it off for him.

"I know it doesn't sound like much," I said. And it didn't, not even when I told my father, in some detail, about the tennis ball can I'd just designed, a can that was vacuum sealed by soft plastic and not by the sharp metal top that you always sliced your finger on. He made another raspberry sound and there was more spit on his chin.

"No ... greatness ... in ... tennis ... ball ... cans," he said over the course of what might have been half an hour. Greatness! Me! What son doesn't want to hear his father say he could be great, if that's what he was saying? What son doesn't dream of such a thing? What wouldn't a son do or give to hear these words come out of his father's mouth, especially a son like me at a time like this, when I was so down and most needed a kind word or two from my dad? It was as though I'd taken the words I most needed to hear, placed them in my father's mouth, and watched them come out again, slowly and haltingly and coated with saliva.

"Are you really saying I'm great?" I asked him.

"No," he said, clearly, very clearly. And then, "Could ... be."

"Could be if what?"

"You ... could ... help ... people," he said.

This helping-people business was an attractive idea, I'll admit, because up to now I'd done not much more than be, and when I wasn't just being, I'd caused some pain, too. There was the Emily d.i.c.kinson House, of course, and the pain that everyone knows all about by now. Then there was Thomas Coleman, still in his agony after all these years I couldn't forget about him, especially since he seemed determined to ruin my life as I had his. And then Anne Marie, whom I had hurt so badly and had practiced hurting for years. There was the time, for instance, at our next-door neighbors' daylight-savings party when I found Sheryl (I have no memory of her last name, and if my memory is to be trusted, she might not even have one) weeping in the butler's pantry because (as I found out) her husband had just left her for another woman, and now she was staring down the barrel of those dark, late afternoons all by herself and she didn't know how she was going to manage. I hugged her it seemed the right, bighearted thing to do and in breaking the hug I kissed her, too. It was a comforting, "there, there" sort of kiss, but I confess that in getting to her cheek I might have touched her lips, briefly. This felt wrong, very wrong, and so to lighten my heart and conscience, I went and found Anne Marie at the party, interrupted her conversation, and told her in front of a half dozen or so people that I'd kissed Sheryl, and that it was an accident and well intentioned, but that I thought I should tell her about it because of the guilt I felt because of the way our lips brushed and maybe even briefly lingered even though it was an accident and well intentioned and I could hear soft, embarra.s.sed noises coming from some of the guests who were listening. Immediately I knew I'd done something wrong, because of the noises and also because of the pain I saw on Anne Marie's face just before she turned away from me and returned to her conversation. That same pain was in her voice, on the telephone, when she called me a cheater and told me not to come home. I had made Anne Marie's pain, just as surely as I'd made that mayonnaise jar that wasn't quite plastic and wasn't quite gla.s.s, either, but in any case was unbreakable. It was solid, the jar, not unlike the pain. Yes, it would be nice to help someone and not hurt them.

"But wait," I said, coming back to my true self in a rush. "I can't help people. I'm a b.u.mbler." My father didn't seem to understand this his eyes went even gla.s.sier and so I said, being helpful, "I b.u.mble."

"b.u.mbling," my father said, "not ... a ... permanent ... condition."

"Of course you'd say that," I told him. Because I was thinking of the garden my father had b.u.mbled and how he'd left us for three years to try to prove he wasn't one. A b.u.mbler, that is.

And where did my father go during those three years? He went everywhere, did everything, and then sent us postcards to let us know exactly where he'd been and what he'd done.

First my father went to South Carolina, because he'd never been in South Carolina before and his own inner voice said that he had to had to! visit all fifty states over the course of his lifetime. He also attended a game at every major league ballpark. He traveled to Yosemite and Badlands and Sequoia and every other national park of note. He went to the site of every Civil War battle that was supposed to be pivotal and especially b.l.o.o.d.y. He made a point of listening for the whispering ghosts of our dead boys at Gettysburg and Antietam and Vicksburg but could hear only a creaky voice squawking from rental ca.s.sette guides in the other cars as they crept at a reverential speed along the battlefields and cemeteries. My father scrutinized his Rand McNally Road Atlas Road Atlas and then made a point of driving every famous roadway made obsolete by the federal superhighway system and mourned daily on National Public Radio. He rented a canoe and paddled fifteen miles on the Erie Ca.n.a.l. He walked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Pennsylvania before packing it in after being menaced by two hunters sitting in a deer stand just south of Carlisle. He went out of his way to have a drink in every bar in North America in which Hemingway was rumored to have imbibed. He drove up Mt. Was.h.i.+ngton in New Hamps.h.i.+re and then bought a b.u.mper sticker as testimony. He kept track of every march commemorating every civil rights atrocity and victory and then made sure he attended the march, no matter how much of a hards.h.i.+p it was to do so. My father went to the site of an oil spill off the coast of Was.h.i.+ngton and bought a vial of oil and a poster of a baby seal mired in the slick and looking wistful and tragic. He went to Wounded Knee and to his great surprise found himself conflicted about the lessons to be learned there. He visited the book depository and the gra.s.sy knoll in Dallas and bought what was supposed to be an authorized copy of the Zapruder film, although he had no notion of who had authorized it. Zapruder himself, my father supposed, or maybe a close relative. and then made a point of driving every famous roadway made obsolete by the federal superhighway system and mourned daily on National Public Radio. He rented a canoe and paddled fifteen miles on the Erie Ca.n.a.l. He walked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Pennsylvania before packing it in after being menaced by two hunters sitting in a deer stand just south of Carlisle. He went out of his way to have a drink in every bar in North America in which Hemingway was rumored to have imbibed. He drove up Mt. Was.h.i.+ngton in New Hamps.h.i.+re and then bought a b.u.mper sticker as testimony. He kept track of every march commemorating every civil rights atrocity and victory and then made sure he attended the march, no matter how much of a hards.h.i.+p it was to do so. My father went to the site of an oil spill off the coast of Was.h.i.+ngton and bought a vial of oil and a poster of a baby seal mired in the slick and looking wistful and tragic. He went to Wounded Knee and to his great surprise found himself conflicted about the lessons to be learned there. He visited the book depository and the gra.s.sy knoll in Dallas and bought what was supposed to be an authorized copy of the Zapruder film, although he had no notion of who had authorized it. Zapruder himself, my father supposed, or maybe a close relative.

But my father was no dilettante, or didn't want to be thought one, and had to make a living somehow. Besides, it was his uncertainty about his purpose here on this planet that took him from us in the first place. Sure, he was a book editor by training, but he could pretend to be other things and then tell us about them in the postcards. He pretended to be a large animal veterinarian in Enid, Oklahoma, and found the job less onerous and foul than you might think. He pretended to be an air traffic controller in Newark and was admired by his co-workers for his cool- headedness and his new variations on old raunchy jokes. He pretended to be a music instructor in Mississippi and led the Dream of Pines High School Marching Band to the state champions.h.i.+p. He excavated dinosaur bones in South Dakota as a member of the state university's Archaeology Department. He was an emergency room surgeon, conducted minor surgeries in four Rocky Mountain states, and didn't botch a single st.i.tch. He was a funeral director in Delray Beach, Florida, and found the corpses inoffensive but their survivors unbearable. He was a pediatrician in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and found that this job was more dangerous and less rewarding than being a large animal veterinarian in Enid, Oklahoma. He was a charter fis.h.i.+ng-boat captain in Rumson, New Jersey, and named his boat the Angry Clam Angry Clam. To my father's surprise, his customers cared nothing about catching fish and everything about buying a T-s.h.i.+rt silk-screened with the boat's namesake a scowling littleneck clam with a cigar hanging out of its mouth for sixteen dollars a pop. He was a real estate agent in Normal, Illinois, and found married couples highly erotic when they whispered in bathrooms and hallways about what they could and could not afford. He was a Palatine priest in Platteville, Wisconsin, and found he could take confessions for hours and not hear a single sinner confess to anything but habitual self-abuse. He was a stock car driver based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and found it even more boring and pointless a pursuit than he'd ever imagined it would be.

When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were already doing or maybe greatness is the thing we want to have so that other people will want to have us, or maybe greatness is merely the grail for our unhappy, striving selves, the thing we think we need but don't and can't get anyway. In any case, I knew that greatness was the thing my father had left us to find.

And then he came back. Maybe What else? What else? What else? What else? had been the question before my father left us, and maybe he thought by leaving us he'd answer the question or at least stop hearing it, and maybe he never stopped hearing it; maybe none of us ever do. I can't say for sure: neither of my parents mentioned why he came home, and I never asked, and together, through our silence, we conspired to make it one of those family secrets that had to remain secret if we were to remain a family. My mother had told me, after my father came back, that my father was "sensitive" about what he'd done while he was gone and that I should never mention the postcards to him. She never told me why my father should be so "sensitive" about the postcards, and again, I never asked. I put the postcards in an envelope and stowed them way toward the back of my highest closet shelf and never mentioned them again. But no matter what his reasons, my father came home and got his job back at the university press, and we forgave him, or at least I did. Because he was my father, and I'd missed him. had been the question before my father left us, and maybe he thought by leaving us he'd answer the question or at least stop hearing it, and maybe he never stopped hearing it; maybe none of us ever do. I can't say for sure: neither of my parents mentioned why he came home, and I never asked, and together, through our silence, we conspired to make it one of those family secrets that had to remain secret if we were to remain a family. My mother had told me, after my father came back, that my father was "sensitive" about what he'd done while he was gone and that I should never mention the postcards to him. She never told me why my father should be so "sensitive" about the postcards, and again, I never asked. I put the postcards in an envelope and stowed them way toward the back of my highest closet shelf and never mentioned them again. But no matter what his reasons, my father came home and got his job back at the university press, and we forgave him, or at least I did. Because he was my father, and I'd missed him.

"I've missed you," I said.

"Mother," he said.

"What about her?"

"Yes, Bradley," said a voice from behind me. "What about me?"

It was my mother, of course, I knew this without turning around, and so I didn't, at first. I sat there with my back to her, imagining all the things I'd say to my mother, all the well-deserved grief I'd give her about my poor, crippled dad and the filthy house she'd left him in and the stories she'd told me when I was a boy and what a ruin they'd made of me and my life and so on. When I turned around to face her, I would be eloquent and fierce, I knew that much. Maybe it was remembering the arson letters and their possible proximity that made me feel this bold the letters and my father's talk of my could-be greatness. Maybe it was because I'd seen this mother-son moment so often in the books my mother had made me read, and so I knew how it was supposed to go. Whatever the reason, I felt powerful and righteous, like an avenging angel or something. And what do you do when you become an avenging angel? You turn around and tell your mother about it.

So I turned around to tell my mother about it. There she was, standing in the doorway. I couldn't get a good look at her maybe because it was late and my contacts were dry and cloudy, and because the hall light behind my mother made her seem hazy and mysterious and bathed in white, like the Lady of the Lake, whom my mother had also made me read about those many years before. I couldn't see her clearly, is the point, and so I couldn't see the expression on my mother's face when she said, "Your wife kicked you out of the house, didn't she?"

One of the things that mothers are good for, of course, is cutting to the heart of the matter, and in cutting to the heart of the matter, my mother had also sliced off some of my good feeling. Whether I was an avenging angel or not, my wife still thought I was a cheater and a liar and still hated me, I still couldn't see my kids, and I still couldn't go home to Camelot. Anne Marie had kicked me out, maybe for good. That was the truth, and my mother saw it, and suddenly I was tired, so tired.

"I'm so tired, Mom," I said.

"OK," she said. My mother turned and walked out of the doorway and into the hall, and I followed her, wordlessly, through the blackened rooms, up the stairs, to my old bedroom. Because this is another thing mothers are good for: they know how to get at the truth, and then, when that truth makes you too tired to hear any more of it, they know when to guide you through the darkness and put you to bed. My mother opened the door to my bedroom, turned to me, put her hand on my cheek, and said, "Get some sleep, Sam." I was so grateful for that, so very grateful, and to express my grat.i.tude I did exactly what my mother told me to do. I slept.

Part Two

6

Now that I've returned home, to the very bedroom where my mother told me all those stories about the Emily d.i.c.kinson House the stories that, as you know, caused me to inadvertently burn the house to the ground perhaps it's time to clear up some misunderstood or misreported facts about that famous fire.

I did not, as the prosecutor argued at my trial, "case the joint" earlier on the day of the fire. I merely took the Emily d.i.c.kinson House tour, the official two-dollar tour, along with a group of students and their teacher from some school called d.i.c.kinson College ("No relation," the teacher joked, and oh, everyone laughed and laughed). The teacher tossed a pen from one hand to the other as she walked. The students all wore ski jackets. If I was guilty of "casing the joint," then so were they.

I was not, as the Hampden County Eagle Hampden County Eagle suggested, a southerner who hated Yankees. True, before the tour began, I did sign the guest book "Sidney," from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but only as a joke and to sound mysterious. As Mrs. Coleman might have been able to tell you if I hadn't killed her in the fire, I regretted the joke immediately because she read what I had signed and said, "Nice to meet you, Sidney," and I didn't speak for the entire tour for fear of not sounding southern. suggested, a southerner who hated Yankees. True, before the tour began, I did sign the guest book "Sidney," from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but only as a joke and to sound mysterious. As Mrs. Coleman might have been able to tell you if I hadn't killed her in the fire, I regretted the joke immediately because she read what I had signed and said, "Nice to meet you, Sidney," and I didn't speak for the entire tour for fear of not sounding southern.

It was certainly not the case that, as one of the d.i.c.kinson College students testified in court, I was agitated and not a little maniacal during the tour. I was a kid, a normal kid, normal as kids get and as normal as I am now. It's probably so, however, that I was a little restless restless. I was restless because, after my mother's stories, I expected there to be something exceptional and sinister and mysterious about the house. There wasn't. We were shown a gla.s.s case displaying one of d.i.c.kinson's letters; we were shown her bedspread, which was red with white daisies; we were shown her furniture, which, Mrs. Coleman explained, was not actually her furniture but rather a faithful reproduction of what her furniture would have looked like. Oh, it was dull! Nothing like my mother's stories. So I was probably restless I remember yawning overloudly in boredom once and everyone looking at me and that's probably why I broke into the house later on that night: to see what I could see when the tour guide and the students and their teacher weren't around.

It was not true, again as the prosecutor argued, that I killed the Colemans "in cold blood." I didn't even know they were in the house. I've said this many times, although it seems to satisfy no one nor make them happy, which is the truth all over, which makes you wonder why everyone wants to hear it so badly.