The Incendiaries_A Novel Read online

  In time, they’d all want me to explain how I lost my faith. John Leal, the others—they kept asking, and I’d recognize the fascination. Scripture indicates there’s no hope for the apostates, like me: having known His love, then repudiated Him, I’m believed to be past saving. I exist beyond His grace. But I tried: will that count for anything, Lord? In the final lists You won’t compile, allotting a life that You can’t give because, in failing to exist, You’ve left us behind.

  I’d returned from the Beijing mission trip split with doubt, unable to sleep. I begged His help. It was as I’d told Phoebe. I had no single problem, or quibble; the misgivings had piled up, questions I stifled as long as I could. The last hours I believed, I’d knelt, asking for a sign. He’d assisted others. Old Testament prophets, along with all the pastors who heard God talk. Friends exulting about His presence. This much love, I thought, must have its match in truth. I’d asked Him to help, then waited. Sunlight spilled in from the afternoon. White curtains rippled, a slight late-spring wind. I waited, and by the time I got up I knew I’d been pleading with no one.

  I dried my hands, and I left the bathroom. I was taking dishes into the kitchen when Paul grabbed my arm. The two-top at table nine, he said, his hard stomach bumping my hip. Give me an update, kid. Tell me there isn’t an issue.

  I started explaining, but Paul interrupted. I don’t get it, he said. If the kitchen was low, why’d you push the veal?

  I didn’t. He asked about it, so—

  But he took the fucking quail. Why didn’t you push the bird from the start?

  It was a valid question. I knew he had a camera that fed live footage from the dining room to his office; Paul, who missed nothing, would of course have noticed a patron throwing a fit, so why hadn’t I prepared a better explanation? I’d seen him fire people for less.

  Well, I said, he showed up wanting veal. He’s been here before, said he’s a friend. Miles Harris. But, ah, he asked me to tell you he thinks it’s false advertising to run out of dishes we have on the menu, and that false advertising is illegal. He said it’s a lie.

  He told you I’m lying.

  No, the menu, I said. He called the menu a lie.

  So, who writes this menu, then? Just who talks with Joel to come up with the dishes? Miles Harris. Who the fuck does he think he is? If we were back in the old country, I’d take him out to the street. We’d settle the question of who’s lying.

  The kitchen had fallen silent, or what passes for silence in an active kitchen: knife-thuds, rattled pots. Hot oil skittering, the slap of trout hitting steel. The stove’s high ping. Paul, being dishonest, hated to be told he’d lied. No one could have said, for instance, which old country belonged to him. He wasn’t Italian; he claimed to be since, he said, it helped his business. Real, my ass, he liked saying. Each fucking dish you’ll purchase in America, if it’s French, Thai, top-flight, it’s all made by diligent-as-hell illegals. Mexicans. You’ve got a Colombian, maybe a Dominican. That’s it. But people don’t want you to talk like this. They like you to choke up while you tell them about childhood frolics with the Italian grandma who rolled out tortellini dough. So, that’s what I am, I’m Italian American. If anyone asks, I piss Sicilian sunlight. I shit big, beautiful oranges.

  Six, a chef called out. It was my table. I should take that, I said.

  Write down for me the little man’s name, Paul said. I want it in my records.

  I will.

  Who’s that with him? I mean, what’s a good-looking girl like that doing with a fuck like him?

  She’s his wife, I said.

  Like hell she is. In that dress. Where’s your sense, kiddo? If she’s his wife, I’m his pop.

  A muscle pulsed in his jaw; the entire kitchen was listening. Magic kingdoms, I thought, then I let him have what he wanted.

  Maybe you’re right, I said. He might have paid for the privilege of the girl’s time.

  He nodded, half-closing his eyes. Fits with his taste for young meat, he said.

  It’s no surprise he got upset.

  Think it’s more like a long-term setup, or like a one-night thing?

  Oh, long term, I said. I heard the woman’s laugh again, its ripple of satisfaction. For him, I said, she’s like a veal calf. He’ll keep her caged until she’s ripe.

  With that, he hooted, hitting his thigh. Others had joined in, providing still more parallels between livestock and girls, when I spotted Isabel in front of the swing doors. One night, she’d admitted she had trouble being the single female hire. They’re always talking about bitches and putas, she said. In principle, I agreed; until now, I hadn’t added to this kind of machismo, but what could I do? The walk-in hissed open. I glanced at Isabel again. With a flap of white earrings, she left the kitchen.

  I carried the plates to my table. I saluted fresh arrivals. By the time I returned to the kitchen, people had started shouting out bets on the Harris wife’s alleged price. Paul had appointed himself the betting-pool judge, and all those permitted inside the dining room found an excuse to stroll past the veal aficionado’s wife. Dishwashers thronged with line chefs into Paul’s office to examine his live feed. Bets got one-upped, cash flung down. The final purse came to more than nine hundred dollars. Let’s make it an even grand, Paul said, throwing in extra bills. He called the price. A waiter, Josh, won the pool. While he crowed, I asked if I could borrow a little cash.

  Man, just take it, he said, thrusting a fistful of his winnings into my apron pocket. I promised I’d pay him back, but he declined, laughing. You made this jackpot happen, he said.

  * * *

  –

  Shift ending, I locked myself in the bathroom to count the night’s take. With what Josh had lent me, and what I’d make in the next shift, I’d have enough. I’d deposit the cash Friday morning. I riffled the soft pile of bills. The week after the Beijing trip, I’d returned from class to find my mother unconscious, holding an emptied pill bottle. I called an ambulance; while she was still in the hospital, in the psychiatric ward, the house’s water had been suspended. I hadn’t seen a final notice about the bill, but when I twisted the tap knob, nothing happened. She’d be released from the hospital in three days. If I didn’t fix the situation in time, I’d have failed again. I hit the useless faucet, but then I called the utilities help line. I negotiated. I explained. I paid what I could, and I had it all working before she came home.

  When I left the restaurant, I saw Isabel. I asked what she was doing.

  I have a ride coming.

  I’ll wait with you, I said, until it’s here. She objected, so I insisted. It was late, the street deserted. It’s not safe, I said.

  Do as you like, she said, turning aside. She fidgeted with a phone. I took out mine. I’d hoped to apologize, but Isabel’s playacted silence, this hostile charade—she didn’t know how much I needed the cash. It wasn’t as though I had a choice. The asphalt, still wet, shone with the night. A pickup truck fishtailed to the curb, and Isabel hurried in.

  11.

  JOHN LEAL

  He’d heard the stories. While attending a freshman rooftop party, in defiance of the potential eleven-story fall, Phoebe had walked the ledge with both arms out, like an aerialist. She lived as if spotlit, each laugh evidential, loud. He asked around: she hadn’t told friends what she’d lost. But all this, he could use. The public fronts people held up showed him as much, if not more, as the factual selves. He often thought of a time his gulag had received an aid shipment, boxes of nail polish. It was the first time he saw the female prisoners energized. They traded food rations, clothes, to obtain the cosmetic; they painted their nails a vital red. Though frozen, starving, they still wished to feel desirable. In a lifetime, the average woman will eat her weight in lipstick. To covet is to begin to have. The ancients had believed the soul lived in the stomach, coeval with its appetite. The girl had walked the high-dive ledge as if she couldn’t
die.

  12.

  PHOEBE

  I’m still not telling it right, though, Phoebe said: all through my disciplined childhood, I fantasized about having the time to do nothing. Now that I had time, the hours felt like a wasteland. I crossed it, back and forth. Old ambitions flopped like stranded fish. Inside, the Phoebe I’d been still flailed. I hadn’t come to Edwards to attend all its parties, but I avoided being alone. While out, with friends, I could live as they did. Oh, people here tried to be polite; raised well, they had etiquette driving them; but I, desperation. If I asked the first question, then if I listened, head tilted, providing attention, they let me ask again. Punctilios forgotten, they prattled along. They’d tell me everything. Julian, for instance, had parents who hadn’t talked to him in months.

  In months, I said. What—why—

  They don’t believe sexual orientation exists, he said. So, they think I’m being selfish, that I’m staging a quick rebellion. I lived at a friend’s place once I graduated high school, to get away from them. If they were less Korean, they’d stop paying my tuition, but the only thing they’d find more humiliating than being saddled with a homosexual child is a homosexual, college-dropout child.

  His voice cracked, splitting open; but, just then, his friend Liesl Ruhl leaned down from the daybed where she’d been dozing. Face paint had bled lawn-green onto an outfit of white bridal tulle, lace rags tied with ribbon bits. Tattered leaves pinned a veil to Liesl’s head. She flicked Julian’s arm. I want a refill, she said.

  The drinks are in the kitchen, Liesl.

  But Julian—

  I stood. I’ll get it, I said. I need a drink, too.

  I found wine; I poured two large portions, then a third, in case Julian wanted his own. Hands full, I picked a path through the paint-stained, strewn bodies of Liesl’s cast. It was the play’s final night. In ripped tulle, howling, actors had flitted across the blacklit stage. They pelted the back wall with vines, then fell in piles. I still wasn’t sure what I’d seen; when I asked Julian if he could fill me in, he whispered, Believe me, it’s my third time watching this, oh, exhibit, and I’ve quit raising questions. I’ve filed it with all the world’s riddles that lack solutions. What’s life, and so forth.

  I sat down with Julian and his friend again. Liesl lifted a mottled face, the veil lopsided. I adore you, she said, taking the glass. She leaned forward; when she settled back, the costume slipped to the side. Panties showed: a strip of cloth, flashing red. Julian readjusted the lace rags. Underpants, angel, he said. She laughed, jolting the drink.

  Jules, tell Phoebe about the time we dressed up the Hale statue, she said.

  Oh, Christ, the—

  Catgut!

  They both doubled up, barely able to talk. In high school, they gasped. It was a stunt they’d pulled. This recollection led to others, old tales, boarding-school hijinks, but it was all right. I laughed along. Julian, tired, slid down, leaning his head on my thigh. I kissed the white line of his part. I’d wait. If for a short while, Julian had split himself open. Now pain, like light, leaked through his cracked surface. Within days, he’d tell me about the brother who died before he was born. I can’t live up to him, he’d explain. He’s the ideal, this ghoul sibling. Since I exist, I can’t help upsetting them.

  Liesl licked spilled alcohol from the back of a hand, and I thought of the whine she’d used to tell Julian she wanted a drink, the expectation that he, a man, would hop to her bidding. I once heard him ask Liesl where she learned to manipulate men. Stepfathers, plural, she told him, lifting one side of a thin-lipped mouth as though it were a joke. I hadn’t talked much with Liesl, but I would: in time, she’d confide in me, as well. The dad she’d idolized, who left; the men like beads on the string of a furious mother’s life. The anorexic spells. She’d been locked up in a clinic. Obliged to eat, to weigh in. Like a pig for the kill, she said.

  * * *

  –

  I kept listening. Often, at parties, I could be found in the kitchen, a back porch, eliciting still more troubles. If people cried, I held damp hands. With the squash recruit, too; the ball-pit poet, the flautist; Tim, then Phil, it wasn’t lust. Plain lust, I’d have respected. Instead, I craved the postcoital talks, the truths told in bed. I ate pain. I swilled tears. If I could take enough in, I’d have no space left to fit my own. In turn, I couldn’t walk five minutes through Noxhurst without hearing a dozen hellos. Faces lit up if I walked into a room, the liking a light I could refract, giving it back. Phoebe, oh, I love that girl, people said, but it’s possible they all just loved the reflected selves.

  (Here’s a story she used to tell: once, I drank a bottle of my mother’s perfume while she was out of town. I was little, still too young to believe such a long absence could be revoked. So, I chased down what I did have, the love I’d lost distilled in scent. It worked, though, my mother would explain, laughing. When Haejin opened her eyes, I was there. I’d rushed to the hospital. They’d pumped the child’s stomach. I didn’t leave Haejin with anyone else for years.)

  Will, at first, was like the others. I was at a party again, dancing, when I spotted him. He stood next to the alcohol, his face a stranger’s. By this point, a month since I’d come to Edwards, I thought I’d met all the partiers. He held his plastic cup to his mouth a long while, his solitude obvious. It pulled me in. I shifted into his line of vision, but he kept looking past me, into the crowd of bodies. He lifted his drink again. Fine, I thought. I had a half-cup full of punch. Foam sloshed, poison-red. Still dancing, I moved close to him. I tipped the cup, letting punch spill down his leg.

  13.

  WILL

  I’d felt, for months, as though I lived pushed up against glass walls. I couldn’t find a way in. Out on the sidewalk, alone, I watched the crowds reveling inside. With Phoebe, the walls lifted. Invitations spilled out; warmth, life. I also pledged a fraternity, Phi Epsilon, when I heard about its influential alumni, the class portraits lined with well-known faces. I wasn’t eating enough, but at parties, in the Phi Epsilon house, alcohol was plentiful. I drank more. Still, I kept my grades high. I barely slept; I wanted every prize. I intended to outdo all these people I lied to imitate, the lotus-eaters who sprawled on the lawn. I finished the last final exam, an evening class, then I stumbled home. I fell in bed. I planned to celebrate with Phoebe at the Colonial, but instead, when I opened my eyes again, I saw that mild light filled the room. It was late morning. I’d slept through the night. I called Phoebe: she was on the train, going to the airport.

  I came by your suite when I didn’t hear from you, she said. If Julian hadn’t left for Berlin, I’d have recruited him to pick the lock. I kept calling. I heard your phone from out on the landing. I should have just let you sleep, but I wanted to see you—

  I spent most of the break in ice-piled Noxhurst, working extra shifts at the restaurant. In late fall, Paul had finally given me a promotion; I couldn’t have left during the holiday rush. I thought, too, that I should save a little cash while I had the time. I helped see Michelangelo’s through New Year’s Eve, an upheaval of white-peach Bellinis and smashed flutes, banderoles and tricolored spumoni (a Conti tradition, I heard Paul tell a table), then I flew home to Carmenita.

  It was the first trip back since I’d started school. I’d anticipated the pleasure I’d see on my mother’s face, but then, almost as soon as the plane landed, I wanted to leave again. Outlines softened, salt in liquid; I felt how easily I could dissolve into the life I’d left behind. Ripped flip-flops still held the stain of old footprints. She asked me to attend church. I said I couldn’t; I offered to drive, past the graffiti-blotched traffic signs I didn’t need to consult. I let her out, then left in a rush to evade old friends who, still God-wild, pitied me. Radio stations I’d left preset hadn’t changed. Last spring, while she was being held captive in the hospital, I avoided the house. Instead, I’d taken to driving around town at night to look in at people’s live
s. Intact families sat in the blue wash of television light, tranquil, like drowned statues.

  I noticed, too, that she’d kept up the habit of red lipstick, the starlet’s hue my father used to like. He insisted she put it on, this high-effort cosmetic: she had to check it often, making sure it hadn’t bled. She wasn’t an attention-getting woman. Bold red was his preference, not hers. Each time she applied it, she might as well have been signaling across the miles that she still loved him.

  I talked as often as I could to Phoebe. She’d grown up in L.A., and though I’d made it up, perhaps because, I felt that this shared childhood belonged more to me. It was the upbringing she’d received by chance, while I’d picked mine: I cultivated it, and kept it alive. In fact, at first, I resented Phoebe’s theft of citrus trees and jasmine, the tennis balls whirling in full sunlight. But she accepted what I said without question; now, isolated as I felt, Phoebe’s belief helped me recall who I could be. By this point, we’d had to be apart almost a month. Phone calls spun out hours at a time. She was in Berlin with Julian, visiting his boyfriend, Sunil. I drifted into sleep with the phone hot at my face, Phoebe’s voice like a song.

  Will, we didn’t get back to Sunil’s place until 10:00 in the morning. It’s so bright in his living room that I can’t sleep except with a shawl tied around my head. Julian says that, even if he’s drunk, when, I can’t let him ask Sunil to quit his Berlin experiment. I broke a heel last night, dancing. Julian said I wasn’t allowed to go home. That, as his closest friend, I was obligated to stay with him. He tore his shirt, instead. He tied the cloth rags on my feet, like booties. Dancing slippers.