That stryker has knocked him witless. He’s still on about his parents. I almost feel sorry for him as I’m unscrewing the petrolcap. Andrew looks up at me. His good eye is dark and muddy, blackening underneath. When he next speaks, his voice is clear and completely normal. If it wasn’t for that sinkhole in his temple, you’d think there was nothing wrong with him.
“Some houses are just built bad, Hazel. Some houses can’t be repaired no matter how much work you put in, because the foundations are rotten.”
He gives me a ghastly smile as I start to pour the fuel out of the canister in fits and splashes, spreading it around. The smell of petrol is awful. It always makes me feel sick. I make sure to get the bottom of the stairs, the banisters. The door to the cellar. I want to watchthatfucker burn. I pour it over Andrew, not because I want him to suffer but because I want it to be over quickly. He doesn’t even blink. Just keeps right on looking at me, reaching out as if he has some great wisdom to impart.
“But you can always knock it down and rebuild. That’s the beauty of it. It’ll look a little different, but it will still give you shelter.”
I stare at him. The canister is empty now. I toss it to one side. I’ve never been so tired in my life. I pull the lighter out of my pocket and hold it up. It’s a little plastic disposable, almost empty. On the side, a drawing of a marijuana leaf with the wordsLET’S GET LITbeneath. I laugh.
“For fuck’s sake, Cathy.”
I flick the wheel, and the spark catches, becomes a flame. Through it, Andrew is shimmering like heat haze. He nods, just briefly. I try to have a good thought, something profound. Something beautiful to go out on. But all I can think of is that stupid lighter, those dumb words.
“Let’s get lit.”
I touch the flame to the darkening pool of petrol soaking intothe carpet, and there is a softwhumph!noise like a canvas sail flapping in a wind. I feel a barrage of heat roll toward me. Tall flames skitter like nervous laughter. They circle me, sealing me in.
I see her then, rising like a vine out of the ground. My other sister, a shrieking mass of bulging skin and hair that is already beginning to catch and smolder. I can smell it cooking, that pungent, acrid odor as each fine strand crackles and shrivels to nothing. Taller and taller she gets, skimming the ceiling and swaying like one of the lofty Idless pines as the flames lick hungrily at her. There is a sharp cracking sound as something inside her pops like kindling. A bone, maybe. Some loose knuckle, cracking under her skin. She is shimmering through the flames in front of me like a walking inferno.
I think of her memory of the surgeon, opening her up. The voice saying,Does it feel pain?
I hope not. I hope she feels nothing as the ends of her hair blacken and shrivel like thin, twisted wires. I hope not as her golden eyes bulge and shimmer, bubbling from their sockets. My hands are still wet with fuel, and the flames can’t reach me, shielded as I am by her. My other sister’s mouth hangs open. It is a vast, dark cavern. A doorway. Through it, there will be blackness and warmth, a safe, wet haven.
I close my eyes.
I step toward her.
Epilogue
Pain is a revelation. It is a process, a leveler. It comes to remind you you’re alive.
You have to let the pain come.
On my third day in hospital, the nurse who had been examining me asked, “How long has your scar been presenting like this?”
I was woozy and out of shape. Dehydrated, ribs sticking out through my skin. So it had taken me a few moments to realize what she was asking, and another few to answer her. By then, she had called a doctor in, who called in a specialist. My scar was inflamed, hot to the touch. The skin around it was a bright, angry red, swollen and weeping fluid. In the end, it was decided to open me back up.
“You’ve got an infection,” the nurse told me. “We think there’s still some tissue remaining.”
Afterward, the surgeon told me there had been a thick black hair nearly a meter long wrapped around one of my lumbar vertebrae. She asked me if I wanted to keep it.
“We do that sometimes, in the cases of kidney stones and tonsils. This is a first for me, though. Never seen anything quite like it. Here.”
She gave me a small plastic tube about the size of a sample pot. My name and the date were printed on the lid. Inside, a long, stringy hair, curled up on itself. Looking at it, I could almost smell that rancid odor which had followed me all these years, could hear the whispering from gloomy corners.
You have to let the pain come.
I lower myself carefully into the old wicker chair in the garden, turned to look out toward the huge rhododendron, just coming into bloom. Clouds move slowly overhead. It is cold, but the sky is the clear, bright blue of tropical waters.
“She’ll be here soon.”
“I know.”
“I’m worried this is all too soon for you, Hazel.”
I look up at Cathy and gesture to the chair opposite me. “Sit down. You’re pacing.”
“I’m fine. I’m going to smoke.”