The Incendiaries_A Novel Read online

  He thumbed a cross on top of Phoebe’s head, and left. So, that’s Julian, I said. She’d talked about him: a close friend, the first person she’d met at Edwards. I asked what he’d said about an homage, and she explained he was raised Catholic. But he’s since quit the faith, she said.

  I had more questions, but singing burst out again. Three additional men, friends of Phoebe, tumbled toward us. They sported loose ties, silk leashes they’d pulled free. She introduced everyone, using full names. They asked if they’d see us at Phil Buxton’s tonight. She’d told me she had to go home in a little while: to fit in a bit of studying, for once, she’d said. But they teased Phoebe; they cajoled, like puppies. I smiled at jokes I didn’t understand. I’d attended Jubilee, the Bible college in California, until I lost my faith, at which point I’d had to give up a long-held plan to assign my life to God. I then applied to new schools, including Edwards, as distant from California as I could get. Child evangelical that I’d been, I knew as little about pop culture as I did about East Coast shibboleths. Why did Edwards men wear so much pink, and what, exactly, was a—cocksin? No, a coxswain.

  But Phoebe, think of Buxton! the three men cried. It’s his birthday, no less. While they begged, I kept smiling. She showed a wide slice of throat each time she laughed. Blood surged up the sharp, pale incline of her face. The tips of her ears burned red. I imagined Phoebe sprawled in bed, a thin dress pulled up like a blown magnolia. The halfwit lout on top, his pants down. I thought about what I’d offered Phoebe. I figured it would be a joke, this John Leal riddle. Phoebe’s friends loved plotting intricate pranks; they hosted lavish parties, springing naked through college lawns. Oh, fine, I’ll go, she said. The silk-tied trio high-fived. But joke or not, I still couldn’t tell Phoebe I’d help, then claim I had no time to date, and I felt as relieved about what I’d promised as though I hadn’t also been the fool trying to split us apart.

  * * *

  –

  I asked Bix if I could settle the tab. Phoebe offered to pay, but I said no, I had it. She waited with me for the bill. You have a lot of friends, I said.

  Do I?

  Well, even while we’ve been sitting here, I said. If you tallied up all the people who stopped to say hello.

  She glanced around, looking a little absent, as though she’d already started leaving. If anything, I think I know all the alcoholics, she said.

  * * *

  –

  But I’m wondering if that can be right, if I met Julian in his lilac bishop’s garb when I also first heard about John Leal, or if I’ve combined multiple Colonial visits, all of them with bow-tied Bix mixing his gimlets, the nights melting like ice slivers into one God-struck evening. I think I’m sure, though, about this sequence. It’s possible these are just the details I’ve saved. It could be grief’s narrowed vision: I’ve noticed what I’ve lacked.

  I am certain that, after my first night at the Colonial, I woke up early the next morning. I had to study for an upcoming exam. Head aching, I was still puzzling through a problem set when I heard the dull roars of a crowd. I didn’t want to lose time; I resisted curiosity as long as I could, then I dropped the pen. I unlatched the casement window, pushing it open. Down on the street, crowns of heads bobbed, marching.

  No! More! Kills! No! More! Kills!

  Who was killing whom? Still in my boxers, naked from the waist up, I leaned across the sill into the cold, trying to make out the words on a sign. Instead, I saw, or I thought I saw, a pink hallucination, a large infant floating against light-blue skies. I blinked, then it was a puppet, held up with barbershop-striped poles. It lolled on its back, the fat strung limbs shining.

  In the news, I would read that the baby was ten feet tall, assembled from cloth and foam by protest organizers, and that the crowd was rallying against an abortion clinic that had opened in downtown Noxhurst; for now, as I strained, I could make out overtly Christian placards. Depictions of the cross, mentions of God. I watched the protest pass, sick with longing. Such a lot of people who still believed they were picked to be God’s children. The unreal baby jiggled its fists, as in the divine visions I once hoped to have, the marvels I’d thought possible. The nephilim at hand, radiant galaxies pirouetting at God’s command. Faith-lifted mountains. Miracles. Healings. I turned Christian in junior high, the first time my mother fell ill. It’s a crack across the brain, she explained. It let sadness in. Pills helped, like a patch, but the usual medicine had stopped working. Lying in bed, she gazed at the ceiling fan. She didn’t wash. Each morning, I left a glass of milk on the bedside table. She ignored it, and the milk curdled. My father came home late, stumbling. He broke lamps; he slept in the living room.

  So, I prayed. I was devoted. A kid evangelist, and a pain in the ass. I traipsed through town in ironed khakis, pocket Bible in hand, testifying. I made it a personal mission to save my parents, as well: I didn’t want paradise unless I could bring them along. Though my father laughed at my improvised lectures, my mother let me talk. In bed, pallid, she listened. I proselytized until the June afternoon, five months into my campaign, when I stood witness at her baptism. She waded into the lake in a yellow poplin dress, and I shook with pride. The pastor put his hands on her shoulders. She plunged in, submerged so long I panicked, thinking she’d drown, but then he let go. She came up flailing, smiling to break her mouth. The lake healed itself around her hips. In a dress like the sun, she splashed out. She picked me up, spattering lake silt. I touched my mother’s head, the hair wet, sanctified. I, I, I—I thought I’d saved her life.

  * * *

  –

  Close to noon, as I left my suite, Phoebe called to tell me she’d talked to John Leal. He’d invited us both to dinner, Monday at 8:00. Litton Street. Did I have plans then? I didn’t. Would I still be willing to go, in that case? I would, I said. I asked if she’d enjoyed the night. She had. It had gone late. The birthday boy had rented lions.

  Lions?

  Well, they were caged, she explained.

  Phoebe’s words lagged, catching in her throat. I asked if she’d just gotten up. Oh, she said, up would be a lie. I’m still in bed.

  I said I was going to Wyeth Hall for lunch. Did she want to meet me there? Yes, she said. She’d leave in ten minutes. I walked through the quadrangle. It was quiet here, the lawn isolated from the town’s noise. I’d first come upon Edwards after days of bus travel from California to upstate New York. I planned to walk the final mile to my hall, but when I left the Noxhurst station and saw the line of taxis, clean with sunlight, I lost all resolve. Minutes later, I paid for the ride. I pulled both suitcases to the curb—

  Then, I looked up. I forgot the wasted dollars. The tall, pronged gates stood wide. I rolled my bags through the entryway, a tunnel cored out of a thick wall, and the darkness opened into light. I was in the main quadrangle. Spires and belfries spun up from stone citadels. Frisbees soared. Bronze statues gazed forward, frozen in heroes’ poses. Sunlit paths crossed the green, lines in a giant palm, holding students who lazed on the grass. It was a lost garden, but I’d been allowed in. I still hadn’t known, though I soon would, how little I’d belong.

  I approached the dining hall. I’d been up since six, while she was in bed, idling. Lions in a cage. Had she petted them, and did she wake to find the tawny fur glinting on her skin? She might have rubbed the fur around as she slept. The coarse hairs strewn in Phoebe’s sheets, bijou rays of gold. But my step felt light. If I could be anyone, I’d ask to be the Will rushing to see more, again, of Phoebe. In the distance, an advertisement painted on the side of a brick building showed a young girl, lips pursed as if to send a wish. The suck and howl of a siren pierced the cold, and the fall wind smelled of reasons to live.

  5.

  JOHN LEAL

  Three months into his captivity, John Leal was shoved in the back of a truck, driven from the gulag to the frozen riverbank, and told to cross to China. He hesitated; a guard
raised his gun, hit him with its butt. Bleeding from his temple, John Leal started walking. It was early March. Thin lines fissured the river’s ice. Each spring, the thawed waters were said to clog with all those shot while trying to escape, the bodies preserved, like fish, where they’d been killed.

  Behind him, a guard laughed. If they didn’t shoot him, they’d watch him plunge through ice, and drown. He tried the next step. Spindrift lifted, fell. Inhale. Exhale. His nerves stretched, a net to span the width of ice dividing him from the rest of his life. Filaments glittered, straining with his weight. China stood prismatic on the opposite side. He let out a long breath. His soul was blowing loose, but he inhaled. He pulled it back in. There was no being afraid. He walked on water with each step. The ice cracked; he held still. Try to live. Take a step again.

  6.

  PHOEBE

  In Phoebe’s next confession to Jejah, she might have said: If you love to win, as I did, it’s not enough to do well. Others also have to fail. In the past, I’d collected trophies, boxes full, but not like this. With Libich, I swept the top prizes. I left judges in tears. Rival pianists knew who I was, and I had the blood taste of public triumph on my lips. Each time, I wanted more, again. I thought I’d willed it into being, at last, the life I expected. I’d prove what I could do.

  Then, six months after I first played Libich for him, the teacher gave me a gift recording, a Libich revival. It was a celebrated album, hard to find. I’d read about this 1951 concert, tales of an ecstatic audience, mass fainting. Now, I hustled to find a shop that sold record players. The fifth étude was the last track, but I forced myself to wait. I played the album in full. The last notes were still fading when I tipped the machine off the side table. It crashed down. The record slid until it hit the wall. I picked it up, and I bent it. The plastic cracked, but I was too late. I’d listened to it. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t.

  That night, I told my mother I had no option but to quit the piano. I won’t be delusional, I said. I didn’t have the talent. It wasn’t enough to be good. I could see no point in devoting this life to music if I wouldn’t add to what leading pianists, the ones I idolized, had achieved. I shouldn’t waste time, trying.

  I had more to explain, but she smiled as though I were a child, ludicrous. I’d made no sense; I should be indulged. I’m serious, I said, and she laughed.

  Of course, you’re not, she said. I had to realize what she had lived through. She’d just finished college in Seoul, at the top of the class, when she allowed herself to be trapped. First, she said yes to a proposal. She followed the tradition of moving into a husband’s parents’ house. His relatives bullied the young bride. On dates, he’d been pliant, docile; in this alien house, she was criticized all day long. It was like being a servant, but with less privilege. Maids get paid. By the time she gave birth, she’d had enough. She left with the child. In months, he trailed them to L.A. He pled, full of apologies, but she’d found a job. It paid so well, they’d given up needing him. She toiled, piled cash. It was all for infant Haejin, a girl who’d get the outsize life she’d been denied.

  But I’ve heard this, I said. No, she said. I hadn’t, not if I believed I could quit. Since I wished to be a pianist, I should make it happen. What I wanted, I’d have. I was the one who’d requested a piano. It had been my idea. I had a gift, she said. It was also an obligation. I’d be lost without the music.

  * * *

  –

  I pulled all the applications to conservatories; accepted at Edwards, I said I would go. But the school also has a piano program, she said. It’s why you applied in the first place. Haejin, they’ll let you in. We hadn’t been in the habit of arguing, but now we couldn’t stop. The fight lasted until April, the night of a cello recital. Though I hadn’t listened to music since Libich, we’d had the tickets since the previous fall. It wasn’t the piano. I’ll be fine, I thought, but then string music filled the hall. I’d have given anything to be able to perform as well as I’d hoped I could. It was true, as she said, that I’d started playing the music on my own. I was so small, at first, that I had to sit on a trunk balanced on top of the piano bench. It lifted me up. Disembodied in the piano’s polished depths, I hurled back and forth like its possessing spirit, shown large, powerful. I’d loved the piano. I still did. It was too bad. I wiped my face; she noticed. She held out a tissue, but I ignored it. I couldn’t admit I’d cried.

  The cello recital ended. In the parking lot, I insisted I’d drive. I had a license, but she didn’t often let me behind the wheel; this time, she gave in. Maybe she pitied me. She’d tired of fighting. I didn’t ask, and it was the last time we talked. In silence, I drove. I got us a mile from home before I started crying again. Half-blind, I rolled into the opposing lane.

  7.

  WILL

  She picked me up to drive to John Leal’s house. Paired taillights swept ahead of us, the red lamps slewing here, there. Turning off the road, she hurtled uphill, and stopped. Phoebe and I walked up the flagstone path to a white, tall house. She held my hand, swinging it, the way children do. Piled leaves blew about, alive again. She touched the bell button. I lifted Phoebe’s hand; I kissed bitten nails that shine, in hindsight, like quartz, spoils I pulled down from the moon.

  * * *

  –

  The door flung open. Strangers appeared, drawing us into the heat, the light. The rich perfume of cooked flesh filled the front hall. Saliva flooded my mouth. They asked if we’d mind removing our shoes. Light-headed, I used the excuse to crouch. I took in a breath as I unknotted the tight laces. I hadn’t eaten since morning, when I had a stolen Gala apple. With the bus behind schedule, I’d arrived at Michelangelo’s too late for the staff lunch.

  Phoebe and I were led down a hall, into the living room. Flat blue cushions had been placed in a half-circle in front of the lit fireplace. There was no furniture. Invited to sit, I followed Phoebe’s lead: I took a cushion, the one closest to hers. It slipped as I sat, the glossed fabric smooth.

  Is John Leal here? Phoebe asked. I’d love to tell him hello.

  He’s in the kitchen, they said. He’ll join us in a minute. Before long, the conversation split in two. Phoebe chatted with a girl whose name I hadn’t caught, then with a person called Ian. He left the room, coming back with full porcelain teacups. Mulled wine, he said. Meanwhile, I jolted through pleasantries with Philip Hecht, also an Edwards student. I wondered when they’d reveal the punchline behind this evening. When, not if, I still thought. Philip asked where I was from; the girl, Jo, smiled. I started reciting lies I’d been telling since the first day in Noxhurst, the half-truths ballooning until, in moments, I turned into a different Will again, floating above the usual Kendall problems. I cut the strings. I had the balloonatic’s glee. Timelines cracked, shifted; my father pulled his emptied seat to the table. My mother’s little rental house sailed south from dull, meth-addled Carmenita to the hills of Los Angeles, expanding mid-flight into an open villa with the kind of misshapen pool no one but the rich would have. It lit up at night. I swam in its blue fire.

  While I talked, the mulled wine’s spiced heat coiled into me, melting caution, as on that first hot fall afternoon when I climbed three flights up Latham Hall, dragging bags. I’d found my suitemates in the living room, five men in polo shirts: about to go eat, they said, inviting me along. We shook hands. They were all sophomores, like me, but they’d been friends as freshmen. Jovial, polite, offering help with the luggage, they asked about my trip to Edwards: if I’d flown, or driven.

  I took the bus, I said. Well, multiple buses—from California—

  For a long instant, they looked alike, faces tight with surprise. By the time they rallied, I’d revised how I should be. My mother’s Pasadena family, rich but dissolute, had misspent the last of its fortune when she was still old enough to recall the luminous idyll she’d lost, and I could use the hacienda memories. Palm trees rising tall, June-night operas at the Holl
ywood Bowl. I drew on this inherited longing. I filled in peripheral details that helped me settle into who I was: that pool, for instance, the occasional fat plop as fruit from sunlit citrus trees ripens, drowns. In this life of blue honey, I don’t think of the waste. I lap; I crawl. Navel oranges shine from the tiles like medallions. A hired man whistles, fishing out the rot. No one lacks food, or falls ill.

  I tried to ask questions of Philip, as well. But he acted preoccupied, glancing past my head. The next time his eyes flicked up, I turned, too—I saw the figure at the doorsill, a clean white apron knotted around his waist. I saw him float; I looked again, and it was the filth, a half-inch of skin stained black at his soles, the heels split, flaking. Noticing I’d seen him, he nodded. He walked toward us, holding wine-glass bouquets in his fingers. He wasn’t tall, but his shoulder muscles strained against a plain white shirt. His wrist bulged where he’d tied a red string, letting it dig in. With his hair brushed to stand upright, a high plume, I had the sense of a surfeit of energy, not quite contained, like a child’s color-book illustration escaping its lines. He turned to me.

  It’s Will, right? he said, quietly. He set the glasses down, then he took my hand in both of his. I’m John Leal, he said. I’m late. I apologize. I had to supervise the rib eyes. Not such a good choice while having guests, or so I’m learning. You’re the first people we’ve had eat with us in a long time. I’m so glad you’re here. We all are. Let’s go in.