The Burning House. Paul Lisicky
stood inside the living room with her back to the windows. “Are you busy?” I said.
The worst way to start a conversation, any conversation: I knew. So much for my practicing what I had to say in my head.
She sat down on the arm of the sofa and gave me that frank stare of hers. I saw Laura in that frank stare, though that’s the last thing she’d want to hear right now. Enough comparisons to that older sister, thank you very much. Same sweet crooked mouth, same moist hair falling down her back, same tendency to keep her shoulders raised, as if she had to correct what her posture really wanted to do.
“You’re on your way out?” I said.
“Well, I bet if I showed up a little late the meeting would start on time. Wouldn’t that be the way things worked?”
“Let’s just talk in a few days, then. Saturday? I don’t think I have anything to do on Saturday. Is that good?”
“Sure,” she said. “As far as I know, I’m free.”
My eyes weren’t matching my mouth—I felt that. It was as if I couldn’t get the whole face to behave. Why?
“Your hand.” She squinted a bit, drew closer, and frowned at what she saw. “That hand still looks reddish to me. Is that a rash? Didn’t I see you lifting bushes out of the car the other night?”
I shook my head. I pushed my hand in my pants pocket so we could move on to the relevant thing.
That old habit of taking notice—she still held onto that part of herself. It was as central to Joan as blood. She’d always been like that, even when she was younger, studying maps, studying trees, studying birds. But don’t ask me how she managed to see two feet in front of her. Bad enough to lose your mother, your apartment, your business, your boyfriend—come on! But having to move in with your sister because she inherits your mother’s house and you’re left with nothing? All in six months’ time? I don’t think so. Imagine having such shit visited on you when things had been going in your favor, when your life had been humming along like a song. You might just think that your song would keep humming like that forever.
Back then, that kind of absurdity struck me as the way of things. Slip off the dock into the water, and this happens and that happens, one by one by one. And who knows how you got caught inside any of it, as if you’re just an integer in one of those terrible logic problems you could never figure out all the way back in math class.
I said, “Does Laura seem different to you?”
The corners of her mouth turned up as if she were about to smile, the kind of half-smile you learn to make when you’re used to getting news you’re not exactly able to hear. It took her a moment to clear out her head. Then she adjusted herself on the sofa as if she knew she’d be leaning back, arms folded, for a little while. “I wish I could say I thought you were completely out of your mind,” she said.
Though a part of me felt calmer, another part of me just didn’t know. It would have been easier to hear that I was dreaming up the whole damn thing. Maybe that’s what I’d been wanting to hear all along.
What could we say? There wasn’t much point in comparing notes. We weren’t talking about the obvious: no pains, no shortness of breath. No trouble getting out of bed in the morning—you’ve heard of people like that. I’m talking about people who stay in bed twelve hours a day, and then it’s at least twenty minutes more just to get moving to the bathroom. Honestly, if you didn’t know her and saw her walking down the street, you might think, that’s one beautiful woman. What is she, two years out of college? Three? What does she do, yoga five times a week? Takes all the right vitamins, avoids the sugar and salt? Dairy and wheat: they don’t even get near her, right? But I knew my wife. She was a phenomenon. She worked, she painted, she ran, she swam: she was twenty-seven people in one. Not that she didn’t have it in her to be a pain in the ass, but what living thing—human, plant, animal—doesn’t every now and then?
“The thing is, she doesn’t want to be told what to do. I get that. I completely understand that about Laura. Would I behave that way if I were in her position? Maybe.”
“You mean going to the doctor,” Joan said. “Getting things checked out.”
“Maybe. Or whatever. Maybe it’s just my threshold for patience. Maybe I’m just not as patient as I used to be.”
“You’ve talked to her about all that?” Joan said.
“Oh, yeah.”
“And she refuses to do anything about it?”
“Well, no. It’s not as simple as all that. But a check-up’s maybe a little less important than checking her e-mail and maybe a little more important than cleaning out the bird feeder.”
“And you don’t think she’s just taken on too much? A lot’s been going on around here.” Out came a little laugh, as if she meant to soften her words. “But I don’t have to tell you about that.”
“I mean I don’t like to admit to trouble as much as the next person. Wouldn’t I rather just walk around saying things couldn’t be better between us? How is my wife? Glorious!”
Out from the lagoon, a low comforting vibration like a snowplow down a street. The most fantastic boat imaginable tried to make it past our neighbor’s dock. Lights on the flying bridge, party music in the speakers: the works. I’d say it was three times too wide and long for the channel, easily. It was a dream of an apartment house, lights in the windows, toppled on its side. But the captain wasn’t giving in, not yet. He was getting to where he had to go. And the propeller scooped into the bottom, the lovely rich smell of bay mud drifting in through the dew on the screens.
Joan gave a dull, wry look as if she were long past the point of being surprised by anything.
“Maybe I could say something,” she said. “Maybe it’s easier for a sister than a husband. I could be more casual about it. I could try to be.”
“What would you say to her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Indirectly. I think that would be the only way to approach things. Let me think about this.” Then her face got very intent.
“Just don’t let her know that we had this little talk, okay? I think that would freak her out. I think it would freak me out.”
“Of course not.”
I pushed out of my chair. I stood for a second, moving my arms up and down. I couldn’t sit still. This spring in my feet, this urge to pick up: where was that coming from? I clapped my hands, once, and waited for her to come to the window, to look for the boat.
“That would be great. That would make me feel so much better.”
“Isidore?”
“And everything’s okay back in that room? It’s so small. I mean, I still think you’d be happier down the hall. You’d have a lot more privacy.”
“Oh, that’s what you keep saying.”
“I’d be glad to help out anytime. Really. Just let me know when, Joan. It’s not like I don’t have some time on my hands.”
“Thank you,” she said more gently than I’d expected. “I’m perfectly fine for the moment. Thank you for thinking of me.” And she moved her head with one emphatic turn to the left.
With that, she stood. The embrace I expected to happen with ease just felt, what?—weird. It wasn’t any embrace. She put a hand upon my back with a sort of steering. I let my arms fall back down before I could close up any space between us. It wasn’t the way I usually thought of myself, awkward with someone I’d been close to for seventeen years.
I reached for a dust cloth and tackled the dining room. The chair rungs, the floor beneath the computer desk, the hood of the