An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes In New England Part 8

I took this to mean, I'll ask him and then come back out and tell you what he said ask him and then come back out and tell you what he said. So I waited there on the slab, for a long time. Night arrived and the streetlights came on. Neighbors came home from work, and since this was Camelot, they did their very best to ignore Thomas's car parked curbside and me sitting on the front slab. Finally I got tired of waiting. I rose from my slab and knocked on the door, and then I knocked and knocked and knocked and knocked. I was making such a racket that I wondered if even my fellow Camelotians could ignore me for much longer. But I didn't care. Let them look at me from their bay windows; let them watch me knock. I felt strong; I could have knocked all night.

I could have knocked all night, that is, if I hadn't heard a car pull into the driveway behind me. I stopped knocking, turned, and saw a dark green Lincoln Continental back in behind Anne Marie's minivan. It was my father-in-law's car; I recognized it right off because he'd always driven Lincoln Continentals and also because my father-in-law was a man of principle, and one of his most cherished principles was that you should always back into a parking s.p.a.ce.

But it wasn't my father-in-law who first emerged from the car: it was Katherine, my daughter. She was strapped into a backpack so large that it rose almost to the top of her head. She walked up the driveway very carefully, maybe so the backpack wouldn't capsize her. It was like watching a young, overburdened female gringo Sherpa walking toward you, a Sherpa you loved and missed so much. "I love you," I told her when she was close enough to hear. "I've missed you so much." I gave Katherine and her backpack a hug, and they returned it, with feeling, for which I was grateful.

"Are you coming inside, Daddy?" Katherine asked. She was already adult enough to ask questions to which she already knew the answers and then to pretend not to recognize the lies those answers were.

"I'll be in in a second," I told her.

"OK," she said. Katherine walked up to the door, turned and pushed on the handle, and discovered, of course, that the door was locked. She turned to give me a quick look of a.s.sessment You are my father You are my father, the look seemed to say, and your front door is locked and you cannot open it and your front door is locked and you cannot open it then reached behind her, unzipped one of the backpack's many pockets, pulled out a set of keys, and expertly unlocked the front door. This was the most heartbreaking thing she'd done thus far there is nothing sadder than a child with her own set of keys and I would have cried right there, if Christian hadn't suddenly been around my legs, tugging on them and me as though we'd fallen right into our old game, in which I was the marauding giant and he the pint-size villager determined to topple me. then reached behind her, unzipped one of the backpack's many pockets, pulled out a set of keys, and expertly unlocked the front door. This was the most heartbreaking thing she'd done thus far there is nothing sadder than a child with her own set of keys and I would have cried right there, if Christian hadn't suddenly been around my legs, tugging on them and me as though we'd fallen right into our old game, in which I was the marauding giant and he the pint-size villager determined to topple me.

"Hey, bud," I said, holding him close to me. "Hey, guy." I was speaking in that awkward, bluff way fathers speak to their young sons, knowing that it won't be too long before their sons will grow up enough to tell their fathers to stop being so bluff and awkward.

"That d.a.m.n car seat," my father-in-law said. He was right in front of me; his breath smelled of coffee and the Styrofoam cup it came in. "I couldn't get Christian out of that d.a.m.n thing." His voice had a transportational effect on Christian: he disappeared from my legs and a moment later he materialized on the slab with his sister. Both of them waved at me and then vanished into the house.

About my father-in-law: He was shorter than me and slim, wore and as far as I know still wears pressed khaki pants and comfortable, broken-in loafers bought in the closeout section of the L.L. Bean catalog. You'd never see him wear a s.h.i.+rt without a collar and he was wearing a collared s.h.i.+rt now, with broad red stripes and the sleeves b.u.t.toned. I'd never seen him wear jewelry except for his wedding band. His wife, Louisa, only briefly enters this story, but she figured largely in her husband's: at extended family dinners, I often caught him looking at her, his eyes wet and grateful grateful, I guess, to have her as his wife, and maybe to have the eyes with which to see her, too. He looked at Anne Marie, his only daughter, in much the same way. He was a good husband and father, is what I'm saying. Of course, he was a racist, too, as I mentioned earlier; it probably does no good to say that he wasn't a racist unless the subject of race was raised, and then only some of the time. This is not to say that he wasn't a racist, but that when I see him now, I see his racism competing with his other, better qualities. I mostly liked him, and I wanted him to like me, and he had, too, mostly, I think, until now.

"Please leave Anne Marie alone," he said. The disappointment was heavy in his voice, pulling it down to its lowest levels. His eyes were baggy and resentful, and I felt sorry for dragging him into all this. My father-in-law had just retired after thirty-odd years of being an insurance claims investigator. He had finally paid off the mortgage on his house. His daughter had a marriage that had seemed to work; she had two kids, her own house, her own life. And now this. What a terrible thing it must be to be an aging father and grandfather and have to take on a second load of familial trouble just when you'd gotten rid of the first.

"I can't leave her alone," I said. "I just can't."

"You have to," he said.

"You don't want me to leave her with that" and here I had trouble finding the right word to do justice to the specific feeling I had about this specific person "guy, do you?"

"I know," he admitted, and this gave me some hope. "He worries me. But still, Anne Marie wants you to leave her alone."

"I can't," I repeated. "I love her."

"I know you do, Sam," he said, and I got that terrible s.h.i.+very feeling you get when things are serious enough for people to use your name in conversation. "But I don't know if she loves you anymore."

With that, he, too, disappeared inside the house he'd given a short knock on the door, which must have been the knuckled code, because the door opened enough to let him inside and then closed authoritatively behind him and once again I was by myself in the driveway. I suppose if I'd been a better estranged husband and father, I would have resumed and persisted in my knocking until I'd gotten some answers, right then and there. But I wasn't any better an estranged husband and father than I'd been a normal, complacent one. And then there was my sadness, which was huge. If sadness were a compet.i.tive event, I'd have broken the subdivisional record. Sometimes when you're sad as I'll write in my arsonist's guide you have to sit around and wait for your sadness to turn into something else, which it surely will, sadness in this way being like coal or most sorts of larvae.

But in the meantime, at least I had these new mysteries to add to the old ones. Why had Thomas told Anne Marie the truth about my not cheating on her? What had he told her about that burn on his hand? And why didn't these things make her get rid of Thomas and take me back? I had hopes of finding out, as a detective if not as a husband. Because maybe this is yet another thing that defines you as a detective: not that you're especially good at being being a detective, but that you're so bad at everything else. a detective, but that you're so bad at everything else.

14

It was after seven o'clock by the time I got to my parents' house, November dark, and darker still because a fog had settled in. It was the thick sort of fog that announces some major weather s.h.i.+ft, the spooky sort of fog that makes you think you hear the mournful sound of hounds somewhere off in the distance. It was also the sort of fog where you don't see your parents' house until you're almost on top of it, and where you almost hit your mother sprinting across the street, away from the house and toward her car. My mother must have heard the squeal of my brakes, though, because she gestured obscenely in my direction without actually looking in my direction, and then jumped in her car. Her car was parked the wrong way on the street and not in our driveway because there were already several cars in the driveway, several lining the street, too; every light seemed to be on in our house, as if it were a three-story beacon in the fog, beckoning to who knew what kind of lost sailor. I wanted to see what was going on in the house, but I also wanted to know where my mother was going in such an awful hurry, on top of wanting to know why she'd lied to me about still being an English teacher, and where she'd disappeared to the night before. And so when she peeled out of her parking spot in her green Lumina, I followed her.

I followed her closely because of the fog. I mean, I was right on top of her, my headlights much too intimate with her tail. It was probably the least inconspicuous surveillance in the history of surveilling; if I'd had a license for surveillance, it would surely have already been revoked. My mother didn't exactly make it easy on me, either: she was driving angry, and following her in the fog was a lesson in rev and brake, rev and brake. Luckily my mother didn't seem to notice me, and she didn't travel far, either, just to downtown Belchertown, five miles away from our house, where she pulled up in front of one of those old, monolithic Masonic lodges that because there are apparently a diminis.h.i.+ng number of Masons to lodge there now house offices, studios, community theaters, apartments. My mother hopped out of her car, clearly still worked up about something; she sprinted across the street and into the front door. My mother had a long, graceful stride, too, making her the sort of fleeting figure you might admire as she disappeared out of the fog and into an old Masonic lodge.

I followed her, but since my stride is neither long nor graceful, I was more than a few steps behind. By the time I was through the front door and into the ceramic-tiled entryway, she was nowhere to be seen. There was one door to the left of the lobby, and one to the right. Mr. Robert Frost (whose house had less than one more day left on this earth as a viable structure, as you'll soon learn) said that taking the road less traveled made all the difference, but this was only useful if you knew which road was the one less traveled in the first place. I took the right door for no particular reason.

What I found through that door was not my mother but a large, echoing hall that no doubt had once been where the Masons inducted their young members and practiced their white magic. The hall was as big as a high school gymnasium and was sheathed entirely in dark wood: the floors were made of wide, dark-stained planks, and the walls were paneled with that same dark-stained wood, and the high, high ceilings were tongue and groove, acres of it. There were large vertical boxes the size and shape of a confessional off to the side, too, the sort of containers in which you might cast your vote or confess your sins. The only things not made of wood were a pipe organ and the elevated marble dais on which it sat. At the foot of the dais was a group of people, sitting on folding chairs arranged in a circle. They hadn't heard me enter the room, and so I crept up to them, hoping to see whether my mother was among them.

She wasn't, I saw that as I got closer, and I also saw that the group was composed of both men and women maybe fifteen total who were dressed as wizards and witches, with pointy hats and black cloaks decorated with pictures of harvest moons and magic wands and boiling cauldrons and other half-a.s.sed symbols of the occult. This frightened me for a moment, and I wondered if the Masons had reinvented themselves and gone coed and Wiccan. But then I looked more closely and noticed that each man and woman was holding a book. I recognized the book immediately. My kids each had a copy of it, even Christian, who couldn't exactly read yet. It was one of those children's books out of England that are so popular that somehow they aren't considered children's books anymore and that have, in any case, so frenzied their readers that they dress as the characters in the books dress and stand in line at midnight for the release of the latest in the series and use the word "jumper" instead of "sweater." In fact, both Katherine and Christian for a time had, like diabetics with their insulin, refused to travel anywhere without their book; they dressed up as characters from the book for Halloween, and for the day after Halloween, too. This seemed right to me. This was the way children were supposed to act: children became obsessed, children wore costumes. But adults were another matter, were they not? Was this what love for a book did to you? Did love for a book make you act like a child again? Or was this what love did to you, period, book or no book?

Possibly. But that's not why these men and women my age and peers in parenting were dressed as they were dressed, gathered as they were gathered, clutching the book they clutched. They weren't there for the book itself (I was eavesdropping now) but to better understand their kids, to become a bigger part of their lives, the way you might listen to your kids' hard-rock music or become addicted to their hard drugs.

"We need to support our kids," one wizard said. He had large, elongated gla.s.ses that were in danger of becoming goggles, and a salt-and-pepper beard, which he scratched earnestly as he spoke. "If they're reading and loving the book, then we need to read and love it, too."

"But what if the book isn't any good?" a witch in Tevas asked. "I have to say, I read the first chapter and didn't much care for it." When the witch in Tevas said this, she didn't look anyone else in the face; she looked at her feet, which were wide and fleshy and oozing out of the sides and tops of her sandals like melted processed cheese.

"It doesn't matter whether the book is good or not, in a sense," the wizard said sternly. "And besides, in a sense, the book has to be good. It's part of the culture culture."

There was a loud hum and murmur of a.s.sent from the group, and I used it as cover for my own noise as I pivoted and walked back on the road less or more traveled, whichever one was supposed to be the wrong road, and into the hallway, where I tried the left door, which was locked. What was I supposed to do with another locked door? I knew from very recent experience that knocking on a locked door would do no good. But what else could I do? Where was the poet to tell me what to do when the door to the road less traveled was locked? Where was the poet to tell me that?

He was in New Hamps.h.i.+re, or at least his house was, for the time being, and so I did the thing I knew to do, the thing at which I was getting expert: I walked outside and, through the fog, spied on my mother through the building's front windows, which were, like the rest of the building, ma.s.sive. There she was, on the second floor. Hers was the only window lit, and my mother was sitting in front of it, at a table, with her chin in her hands, staring into s.p.a.ce. The only thing lonelier than being by yourself in a room with nothing to look at or do or hold except your chin is watching someone else be that person. I wanted to run back in side the old Masonic lodge and s.n.a.t.c.h a copy of that famous book out of one of the faux witches' or wizards' hands and throw it up to my mother through her window, which I'd have to get her to open first, the way Juliet opened hers for Romeo, and Rapunzel for the guy who so desperately wanted her to let down her hair. If only my mother had a book to hold, she wouldn't have looked so lonely. And maybe this was another reason why people read: not so that they would feel feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone. Did this not occur to the wizards and witches: that their kids read books so that their parents would think them not lonely and leave them alone? Maybe I'd tell them so while I was s.n.a.t.c.hing a copy of their book to give to my mom. less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone. Did this not occur to the wizards and witches: that their kids read books so that their parents would think them not lonely and leave them alone? Maybe I'd tell them so while I was s.n.a.t.c.hing a copy of their book to give to my mom.

"Sam Pulsifer," said a voice behind me. I turned and faced the voice and the person it belonged to: Detective Wilson.

He looked more like a detective this time: he still was wearing khaki pants and work boots but had ditched the hooded sweats.h.i.+rt in favor of a blue b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt and a blue sport coat that had probably been his father's or maybe an older detective's. The sport coat would have fit Detective Wilson if he hadn't tried to b.u.t.ton it. But he had tried to b.u.t.ton it, inflicting unnecessary punishment on his stomach and the coat and its b.u.t.tons. Plus, someone had obviously told him that he couldn't be a detective without drinking way too much coffee. He was holding a large Styrofoam coffee cup, and he was blowing at the smoke drifting out of its vented top.

"What were you doing in there for so long?" he asked. "Visiting your mother?"

"Eavesdropping on the wizards," I said. "Witches, too."

"What?"

"I think I took the road less traveled," I told him.

"Speaking of the road," he said, trying to get the conversation back to a place where he could understand and control it, "I was behind you on the drive over here. You're a terrible driver."

"I was following my mother."

"You can't follow worth s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t."

"I know that."

"I could have given you a ticket," he said.

"I'm glad you didn't," I said, especially since if he'd given me a ticket, then he would have asked to see my driver's license and I wouldn't have been able to show it to him. Because I'd never gotten my driver's license back from Lees Ardor I had just realized that. I could see her in the cla.s.sroom holding it and then not giving it back to me, and, like not getting the letter back from Mr. Frazier, this was another mistake I'd regret. But then again, I was pretty certain I'd make more mistakes, so I didn't dwell on the one I'd just made for too long. This is another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: if you make a mistake, don't dwell on it for too long, because you'll make more of them.

"If you'd tried to give me a ticket," I said, "I would have asked to see your badge." I was remembering a few things about Detective Wilson, and one of them was that he hadn't told my parents what police department he was from, if he was from any department at all. "Do you even have have a badge?" a badge?"

"Here you go," he said, and then handed me his badge, which was embedded in a slim wallet. The badge was gold and had some sort of raised seal or crest, and on the crest was some writing that was unreadable in the light and fog. Still, I pretended to examine it closely, as if I knew the difference between a real badge and a fake one. On the wallet flap opposite his badge was an ID with his picture, and his name, Robert Wilson, and his t.i.tle: detective, Arson Unit, State of Ma.s.sachusetts Fire Division. The ID looked real enough: I held it up to the streetlight and saw official-looking watermarks and holograms.

"You're a fireman," I said.

"I'm a cop cop," he said with a little too much force, letting me know exactly what nerve was exposed and how much it didn't like to be hit.

"OK," I said, and handed him back the badge. Detective Wilson took it and tucked it inside his jacket pocket. When he did so, his jacket popped open and came away from his torso and I could see his shoulder holster and the b.u.t.t of his gun sticking out of it. So even if he wasn't a cop, he was a fireman with a gun, which I figured was pretty close to the same thing.

"Did you know that someone tried to burn down the Mark Twain House last night?" he asked.

"It wasn't me," I said.

"I didn't think it was," he said, although the knowing smile on his face said that he did in fact think I'd set the fire, which made me add, "It wasn't me who set fire to the Edward Bellamy House, either," for unnecessary good measure.

"I didn't think it was," he said again, this time with even less sincerity. He put his left hand in his sport coat pockets and tapped a happy beat through the lining and on his thigh.

"Sure you didn't," I said. "That's why you were following me here."

"Maybe I wasn't following only you," he said. "Maybe I was following your mother, too."

"Why would you do that?"

"Maybe I have my reasons," he said, and then waited for me to ask the obvious question, which I did.

"What are your reasons?" I asked. "Why are you following my mother?"

"The night someone tried to set fire to the Edward Bellamy House," he said, "you were at your parents' house, right?"

"That's right."

"Were they there, too?" he asked, hooking his thumb in the direction of my mother sitting in her illuminated window. "Was your mother there that night?"

"Of course she was," I said. But was she? Had my mother been home, after all? "Where else would she have been?" I said this to myself more than to anyone else, but of course I also said it out loud, thereby losing my sole rights to it.

"Maybe she was here," Detective Wilson said. "Maybe she was somewhere else. Either way, I'll find out." He sounded confident, which scared me. There is nothing scarier to those who lack confidence than those who are full of it. And so I said something right then, something that in the end, and once again, I probably shouldn't have and would end up regretting.

"I know who tried to set fire to the Mark Twain House," I said.

"You do?" Detective Wilson said. His confidence didn't disappear entirely right then, but it did seem as though I'd diluted it some.

"Yes," I said. "His name is Thomas Coleman. He probably set fire to the Edward Bellamy House, too. I don't know where he lives, but you can probably find him at my house in Camelot."

"Your house in Camelot," he repeated.

"One thirteen Hyannisport Way," I said.

"Why would this guy be at your house?"

"He's sleeping with my wife," I said, admitting this to myself and to someone else for the first time. "Or trying to."

What was Detective Wilson's response to this news? It was unexpected. He didn't ask me any questions, didn't wonder who this Thomas Coleman was or why he would want to burn down these houses or how I knew he had tried to do so. Detective Wilson didn't ask me any questions at all. He simply turned away from me, walked over to his car, opened the driver's side door, and climbed in.

"Wait," I said, walking around to his side of the car. Detective Wilson's face looked as confused as it had appeared confident a few moments earlier; his face looked younger, too, which is to say that confidence ages you, but confusion keeps you young, the way a positive outlook and Swedish facial creams are supposed to but never do. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to your house," he said, "to talk to your wife and this Thomas Coleman."

"Just because I said so?" I asked. Was being a stool pigeon this easy? Who knew that all you had to do was give voice to your suspicions and blame someone else to get such quick results? "Just like that?"

"Yes, Sam," he said. "Just like that. But you'd better not be lying. You better not be jerking me around."

"I'm not," I a.s.sured him, even though I was the person who really needed rea.s.suring. Thomas Coleman had been my number one suspect, my sole suspect, really. I had known with all my heart that he was the one who'd set the fires; I had known he was the guilty one. And then I had gone ahead and said so, to Detective Wilson, and then immediately afterward I had doubts, big ones. I'd said guilty guilty, and immediately Thomas Coleman had seemed as if he might be innocent. I wondered whether, if I said innocent, he might seem guilty again. But it was too late to say that, so instead I asked, "But aren't you going to ask my mother where she was last night before you go? Aren't you going to ask her where she was the night of the Bellamy House fire, too?" I said this not because I wanted him to ask her that, but because Detective Wilson with his badge and ID and gun and coffee was seeming more and more like a real detective, and I wanted to know what a real detective might ask, and when, and of whom.

"Not now," he said. "Besides, I know where I can find her." With that, Detective Wilson rolled up his window and peeled out into the foggy night, leaving behind the squeal of his tires and the smell of his exhaust and this lesson: being a real detective meant knowing where you could find people. I knew now where I could find my mother. But why was she there? Was this her apartment? Was she staying with someone else? Was this her home? home? Was she in the apartment and not in our house the night of the Edward Bellamy House fire, and last night, too? Was she somewhere Was she in the apartment and not in our house the night of the Edward Bellamy House fire, and last night, too? Was she somewhere besides besides the apartment? I patted my coat pocket and felt the two letters: the one from Mincher asking me to burn down the Mark Twain House, and the other, anonymous and typed, asking Mincher for three thousand dollars to do the burning. The letter had no postmark, so that meant that someone had driven there, probably from close by. But why a letter in the first place? Why not just call Mincher and pretend to be me on the phone? The only answer was that whoever had typed and delivered the letter couldn't pretend to be me on the telephone. Any man could pretend to be me on the telephone, but a woman could not. And what woman would want to pretend to be me? I really only knew two women in this world: one of them was in Camelot, and the other was right in front of me, seeming less like the mother I thought I knew, and more and more like someone I didn't know at all. the apartment? I patted my coat pocket and felt the two letters: the one from Mincher asking me to burn down the Mark Twain House, and the other, anonymous and typed, asking Mincher for three thousand dollars to do the burning. The letter had no postmark, so that meant that someone had driven there, probably from close by. But why a letter in the first place? Why not just call Mincher and pretend to be me on the phone? The only answer was that whoever had typed and delivered the letter couldn't pretend to be me on the telephone. Any man could pretend to be me on the telephone, but a woman could not. And what woman would want to pretend to be me? I really only knew two women in this world: one of them was in Camelot, and the other was right in front of me, seeming less like the mother I thought I knew, and more and more like someone I didn't know at all.

"Oh, Mom," I said, softly. My mother was still sitting at her window, not reading, not looking out the window at me, either: as far as I could tell, she was simply staring into s.p.a.ce.

At that moment, the book-group wizards and witches emerged from the building, each of them holding their copy of the book away from their body, as though it were a divining rod leading them directly to their children's heart of hearts. They looked so happy, overjoyed, the way people are when they think they've found the answer to a particularly difficult question. Each of them felt compelled to say their hearty "h.e.l.lo's" and "Good evening's" to me and then commenced to talk about the fog and how it was a very English fog, and then there was a long, sincere discussion about how very magical fog was and how they'd be sure to wake up their kids when they got home to show them the fog and then find a pa.s.sage in the book featuring fog, and then they'd compare the literary fog and the meteorological fog, and in the middle of all this I saw, peripherally, a flicker of light. I turned away from the witches and wizards and toward my mother's apartment window; it was now completely dark, and I couldn't see my mother anywhere. I must have stared at the window for five, ten, fifteen minutes. The witches and wizards got into their vehicles and drove away into the night, and still I stood there, waiting for my mother to turn her light back on, waiting for her to emerge from the building, waiting for something something. But this is another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide (which, as you've figured out by now, is also a detective's guide, a son's guide, a guide that is as specific or generic as you and I need it to be): you can wait only so long for a blackened window to be illuminated. And when you start to wonder whether the window will ever be illuminated again, and whether you were seeing what and who you thought you were seeing when it was was lit, then you've waited too long, and the best thing is just to go home. So I just went home. lit, then you've waited too long, and the best thing is just to go home. So I just went home.

15

It should be said at this point that I knew all along that my father was a drunk and hadn't had a stroke at all. I must have known that; how could I not have known that? Of course I knew that. I was just pretending pretending to believe that my father had had a stroke. Because we all know that to be a son is to lie to yourself about your father. But once you start telling yourself the truth, does that mean you are no longer a son, and he is no longer your father? And then what are you? And what is he? to believe that my father had had a stroke. Because we all know that to be a son is to lie to yourself about your father. But once you start telling yourself the truth, does that mean you are no longer a son, and he is no longer your father? And then what are you? And what is he?

The truth was that my father was a drunk, and there had been a party at my parents' house. It must have ended not long before I got home for the second time that night. The place was an even bigger wreck than before. There were ashtrays everywhere and they were full to overflowing, and so, rather than empty the ashtrays, the smokers had used every available surface flat and concave, highly flammable and less highly flammable to deposit their ashes. The living room looked postvolcanic. On the coffee table was a line of juice gla.s.ses, and inside each gla.s.s were the watery remnants of something dark and evil, something you were no doubt supposed to drink all at once or not at all. On the couch, someone had left behind the sort of visor you might see a card dealer or a cub reporter wearing in an old movie. On the floor between the couch and the coffee table, there was a translucent gasoline funnel. I picked it up and saw a long piece of white hose or tubing dangling suggestively from the bottom, and I put it down again. The exercise bike had been thrown in the corner of the room, on its side; one pedal was pointed ceilingward and still spinning. The television was on, but the sound was not; it was a program devoted to heart surgery, and they kept showing close-up shots of open and then closed chest wounds. There was music playing loudly, so loudly I couldn't tell what it was or where it was coming from, especially since my parents, to my knowledge, didn't own a stereo. I followed the noise through the living room and into my father's bedroom. The bed was as big a disaster as the rest of the house: sheets were draped over the chair, the end table, the headboard, everywhere but the bed itself. There was a boom box on the floor, vibrating from its own noise. Over the crash of guitar and ba.s.s, I could hear the singer ask obscurely, "Does anyone have a cannon?" I turned off the boom box and heard normal human voices coming from the kitchen. I followed them. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, and across from him was another man, someone I'd never seen before. In between them, on the table, was the shoe box, and scattered around the table were the letters. I missed my mother right then, badly, the way you miss one parent when the other one isn't doing what he's supposed to.

"I know where Mom is," I said to my father, but he didn't hear me, or pretended not to. The other man did hear me, though; he looked up and smiled at me in the vacant, unperturbed fas.h.i.+on of the truly punchy. He was approximately my father's age, maybe a little older, was wearing a beat-up gray corduroy blazer, and had a nose that might have been Rudolph's had Rudolph been a boxer a bad one. There were two forty-ounce Knickerbockers on the table in front of them, and empties scattered around the kitchen.

"Now, this," my father was saying, "this is one of my favorites. It's from a man in Leominster who wanted my son to burn down the Ralph Waldo Emerson House because he had been named Waldo, after Emerson, and no one had ever let him forget what a stupid name he had." I, too, remembered the letter: the letter writer had said that he probably should have wanted me to burn down his parents' house, too, for naming him Waldo in the first place, except they were dead and he was now living in their house and the mortgage was paid, free and clear, and if I burned it down, he'd have to pay rent somewhere else. My father handed the letter to the man across the table, and the man looked at it blankly, as if it were a picture of people he didn't know; then he put it on the table. "And this letter," my father went on, "is from a woman who wanted my son to burn down Herman Melville's house in Pittsfield..." And so on. What matters here was not only what my father said, but how he said it. He slurred slightly when he spoke, but there was nothing halting or stroke damaged about his speech. I heard and saw and understood this clearly now. I was seeing my father, not by himself or with my mother, but in his element, and this is another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: seeing your father in his element will make you feel sad. I had been sad when I thought my father had had a stroke and was partially paralyzed, but at least then he could be considered heroic. This was a different kind of sadness, a deeper one, a sadness you feel when you discover that the person you love is not the person you thought you were loving. Would I wake up the next morning and find my father sad in a totally different way? How many different kinds of sadness were there in the world, anyway?

"But this is odd," my father was saying, although the man across the table from him wasn't exactly listening anymore: his hand was curled around the beer can, but his eyes were closed and his neck was fighting a losing battle to keep his head from cras.h.i.+ng to the table. "There seem to be some letters missing." My father gathered all the letters, stacked them, and then began flipping through them, his lips moving as he took inventory. He finished the inventory, then took another one. The man's head fell to the table with a dull thunk thunk, but my father didn't notice. Perhaps not wanting to be further ignored, the man got up from the table, a lump already formed on his forehead, and left the room and then the house: I could hear the front door open and then shut. My father didn't notice any of that, either. "I just don't understand," he said.

"Which letters are missing?" .1 asked him gently, because as far as I could tell, he wasn't aware of me standing there, and I didn't want to scare him. Except he didn't seem surprised at all to hear my voice. Maybe he'd known I was there the whole time, or maybe he didn't care.

"The Edward Bellamy House letter, of course," he said. "But there are six other letters missing, too."

"What are they?" I asked. I knew full well that the Mark Twain House letter was missing, since it was in my pocket. Sure enough, my father named it, and then added, "But then there are five others that are missing, too. I just can't figure out which ones."

"How do you know that many are missing, then?"

He looked at me with pity. "You were sent one hundred and thirty-seven letters. There are only one hundred and thirty letters here." He knocked himself on the head, as though to dislodge the forgotten names.

"Did you know that someone tried to burn down the Mark Twain House last night?" I asked.

"Yes," my father said. He turned to look at me for the first time, although his face was empty of anything except worry and bafflement. "That's how I can remember the Mark Twain House letter, because I knew someone had tried to burn it down. Your mother told me. She also told me that whoever did it didn't do a very thorough job."

"How did she know that?" I asked him.

"I suppose she read it in the paper," he said. "How did you you know it?" know it?"