.
invisible. That part of me for which this life gave no opportunity for expression seethed. I knew I must fight to stop it from ruining this family dinner. Pete was always gone, always pre-occupied with business, always leaving me alone here. His photography was a hobby he indulged in England back then, back when I fell in love. He had been on sabbatical from his business development job at ISK, a high tech firm, which he still holds, now a sales vice president. He rarely has time to photograph us anymore much less be with us. Just this dinner, this simple Friday night of togetherness, even after my impatience with him and his required run, was the all-important present. But it felt off. It felt like Pete had pasted himself on the veneer of this family. I didn’t feel the connecting tissue.
Pete was suggesting that Lila redo some photographs with a new roll of film. I hadn’t heard all of what they’d just discussed, off as I had been on my daydream. She and Pete shared the photography hobby, not me, but I made a mental note to add film to my shopping list. She wouldn’t use the digital camera. She said film was more artistic.
After dinner, while Pete and Lila cleaned up the kitchen, the idea of a walk beckoned me, but at the front door I paused. The sky was nearly dark. The park was glowing from the street lamps and commercial lighting from the stores on the other side of the train tracks. A few shadowy human shapes with dogs on leashes strolled on the path. This had been a moist day, an after the rain kind of day, and the mist had descended below the tree line so that while I watched, it thickened. Soon, the lights cast shadows of trees upon the fog and they looked to me like tree shaped cutouts in the light beams. I knew that if I turned to see shadows of trees, they would not be visible in the fog behind me, but only could be seen as silhouettes if I faced the source of light. Still, the idea of shadows of trees on a wall of fog intrigued me much like impossible things intrigue visual artists or writers of science fiction.
“Mom, you’re not going out there,” Lila called from the kitchen.
“Oh, please, Lila,” Pete said. “If she wants to go out, I’m sure she’ll be fine. I just ran five miles and I didn’t burn up in flames.”
“It’s only the women burning, Dad,” Lila said.
I listened as they launched into an argument, Lila holding her own, Pete assuming an authoritarian tone, as a man who knows best. It went on and I stood at my distance and listened. My twins had retreated to the living room and a DVD played loud enough to drown their ability to hear what was being said. I felt amazingly calm and remembered I’d taken a Xanax. I’d relied on the drug once before. Maybe I needed to do yoga again. Maybe I should pay a visit to Dr. Gimpel. Pete was partially visible in the kitchen and I felt a bit of a sinking in my viscera, remembering his earlier response to my need to talk. I shouldn’t need a therapist for comfort, I thought. Then, the phone rang. Pete got to it before I did. He called to me and I lifted the cordless from its cradle in the hall and pressed the talk button.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Taylor?”
“Yes.” It was Doug’s calming voice. I felt a tightness leave my neck and shoulders at the sound. I turned to watch Pete hang up and that sense of a transfer of responsibility from Pete to Doug flashed as suddenly as lightning and was gone. Responsibility to soothe me. Only because Doug did it so easily while Pete did it hardly at all. It disturbed me. Stirred a mild irritation toward Pete. A sense that I must bring this to his attention.
“Your question,” Doug said.
“Which one?” I asked, momentarily distracted.
“Did Cindy Barrow’s clothes burn.”
“Did they?”
“No.”
I felt a long beat of silence pass and that beat was filled with acknowledgement for me. A small move toward knowing more about what just happened and it was because I’d paid attention and I’d asked.
“Well,” I said.
“So now the police are questioning if she treated her clothes with a chemical and, if she did and if the other two women did, was this some sort of planned thing.”
“You mean self-immolations,” I said.
“That’s right,” he said.
“I think that is unlikely. Only because I can’t believe Cindy would,” I said.
“And why?”
“Because I don’t believe Cindy would do that.”
“When is the last time you spoke with her?”
I thought. “Three years maybe longer.”
“A lot can change in three years.”
“What about Elizabeth Lindsay, the school principal.”
“Her clothes were unharmed too.”
“So they’re all the same.” I pulled at my hair at the nape of my neck. It was an old habit when I was stressed out. I caught myself and stopped.
“When will they test the clothing?”
“It’s being done.”
“Okay,” I said. “I wonder if the cops will close these up as suicides. I just can’t imagine the Cindy I knew turning to something like this. She was smarter than that.”
“I’m sorry, Cassandra. I’m sure this is upsetting.”
“Does the mayor still think we should stay indoors?”
“He hasn’t changed anything. He’s on a plane home.” Doug’s next breath was deep and slow and audible through the phone. He was tired. I could tell. “Heffly and Richmond are holding a press conference in a few minutes. I’ve got to go.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you for calling.” I hung up. That thank you felt so terribly ordinary. Now that I knew the answer to my question, I realized that the terror I’d shoved down deep into myself now rose up and through me like lava. It burned and flowed. My whole body felt hot, my hands sweating and my heart beating hard in my ribcage.
Pete could be right. It could be a cultish kind of stunt. It certainly wasn’t a mass murderer trying to burn women with some kind of device like a long-range weapon. I imagined a new kind of bullet, they already had exploding bullets. Four men had died at the hands of a gunman at our local post office sixteen years earlier and he had used the exploding kind. Could there now be incendiary bullets that ignited and burned a body from inside? That’s what she’d looked like this morning. Ann Neelam had seemed to burst into flame from her interior. Memory of how it tripped down her legs and out to her hands and fingers flooded me. I needed to stop thinking. I needed something else, something full of love and goodness to replace the fear and dread in my thoughts and heart. I joined Mia and Allie on the couch and immersed myself in their latest movie obsession, The Wizard of Oz, until the witch disappeared in a burst of flame. Once I saw that, I retreated to my bathroom, ran the faucet to fill the tub with bubbles, took off my clothes, and sank in up to my neck.
Later, Pete did his usual bedtime routine, undressing himself, brushing and flossing, and lying prone, neatly tucked under and plugged into his iPod with closed eyes, looking like a contented corpse. I arrived from Mia and Allie’s room, having recited another chapter of Peter Pan in all its beautiful prose and imagery and after delivering kisses onto two drowsy foreheads. I kept my movements quiet. I let my own shorts and tee shirt drop to the floor. I slipped into bed. Pete rolled toward me and whispered good night.
Here was my marriage.
“Pete,” my voice was soft, a whisper like the hand I was moving to him to make contact with his thigh, but he was into the music that faintly reached me in the otherwise silent night. He didn’t respond. I rolled onto my side, facing him, and lay my hand on his chest. He started, gasped, and opened his eyes.
“Ah,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Take off the ear plugs,” I said.
He did. He shut off the power. The small