The Incendiaries_A Novel Read online

  * * *

  –

  It was around this time that she first told me her mother had died, along with how it happened: that she, Phoebe, had been driving, unused to cars. I didn’t know how to respond. I’m so sorry, Phoebe, I said, at last.

  No, I just, I haven’t told people at Edwards, she said. I refuse to be the sad girl, with people whispering, but—I’ve known you awhile. I wanted to tell you. Well, I’ve told Julian. John Leal also knows, but that was my father’s doing. It’s life. Let’s talk about something else.

  * * *

  –

  I did think, during this break, to look him up online. I found a couple of local-interest articles, Edwards Herald squibs. John Leal, so I learned, while he was still a student, had gotten into a late-night fistfight with a Noxhurst local, one so violent that he’d been jailed. No charges had been pressed; John Leal, released. It looked as though the college had then suspended him. Expelled, perhaps: I couldn’t find him listed with his graduating class. The more recent article featured protests he organized with local churches. He’d marshaled a pro-life group that knelt each morning in front of the local women’s clinic, Phipps. It was the largest abortion-providing clinic in New York. Jo was mentioned; Ian, too. I told Phoebe what I learned, but she didn’t sound interested. Of all the futile causes, she said. She hadn’t seen him, not since he’d invited us to his house.

  * * *

  –

  During the fall term, I’d applied for a part-time Edwards research position with David Ling, a Nobel-lauded economist. It paid less than waiting tables, but it would, of course, help me with future jobs. I started working with him when I returned to Noxhurst, and I lived through a week of trying to do both before I realized I had to cut back at Michelangelo’s. The night I planned to tell Paul, he pitched a deboned tilapia fillet at a line cook’s head. Missing its target, the fish hit the wall, then slid down, trailing oil. It fell to the linoleum, slumped into its tail. I was going to be fired, I thought.

  But instead, when I told Paul I had no choice but to work less, he asked if this meant I was giving notice. If you’re quitting on me, you little shit, I’ll have your balls, he said. I’ll wrap them up like quail eggs. I’ll tie on a blue ribbon to match, I’ll send them compliments of Paul Conti to—

  No, I just need to cut down my hours. I’ll find someone to fill in.

  More insults followed, but he sounded tired, listless, as though forced to recite old lines. Christ, all right, he said, as long as he didn’t notice the change. Once home, I pulled out a bottle of gin. I finished the first glass, and I was pouring a second when I heard the rush of footsteps. Phoebe swept in, jingling the keys I’d had copied. She held a paint-striped mask; a floor-length cape swung and trailed around her legs. I’ve come straight from a costume party, she said. In Liesl’s suite. It was so hot, but I kept the mask on until I left. I think I should get a prize. No one except Julian could figure out who I was.

  What did you tell them?

  That I’m the queen of Tajikistan. I abdicated the throne to enroll here.

  Tajikistan, I said. I don’t think it has a queen.

  Will, that’s my point.

  She’d brought an opened bottle of champagne, which she tipped into the nearest cup. Froth dribbled onto the torn gold label. That’s for you, she said, unzipping salt-stained boots. She kissed me, tongue flickering in my mouth. With a laugh, she broke free. I was talking in a big circle of people, she said. But then, I thought, What the hell am I doing? I want to be with Will.

  She listed, taking a half-spin. I helped Phoebe lie down. I forgot to be careful. She asked what I was up to, and I said, I’m celebrating. I’ve settled the problem with the restaurant: I found a solution Paul can live with—

  What restaurant? Who’s Paul?

  Even then, I still could have fixed the mistake. But in the low-wattage lamplight, Phoebe’s face was shining. It floated like a reflection, detached, the pale, thin shape I knew as I did my own. I’m tired of lying, I said. I explained about Paul. I waited tables at a place called Michelangelo’s. Each time I claimed to be in a library carrel, I’d had to go to the restaurant. I didn’t have a carrel. I studied at home. She’d known about my mother’s illness, the pills; I’d told Phoebe my father left us while I was on a mission trip to Beijing, but now I outlined what had followed. The financial problems. Debt; going bankrupt. Double-shift nights. The profound shame of owing money in a small town. I talked about Carmenita. The first minutes on campus, when I saw the sunlit lawn unrolled.

  I’ve wanted to tell you, I said. I didn’t know how to explain. I’d have told you the truth from the start if I’d known I, sometimes I thought you guessed, but you—

  No, you don’t—

  —too considerate, or—

  Will, don’t fucking pretend I was in on this.

  That’s not what I’m saying.

  The fact that you lied to me for months instead of telling me where you’re from—

  She zipped on her boots, then left. I called, but she didn’t pick up; I left messages, apologizing. The next morning, when I went to Phoebe’s suite, she refused to let me in. I went home. I waited. I stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I tried a sedative, prescribed at the student clinic. It had no effect. Drunks traversed the quadrangle, the shouts and songs echoing through closed glass. I should get up, I thought, but then Phoebe stood across the lawn in a gilded dress. Pale limbs, exposed, were gleaming. But aren’t you chilled, I wanted to ask. The crowd swelled. Phoebe, I called, frantic, trying to keep the girl in sight. In spite of the cold, they all stripped down. Carnival masks blossomed in the field of skin; bodies mingled, and then I woke up again. The days lengthened, inflating into a full week alone, without Phoebe. Each night, I attended parties. I hoped she’d be there. Once, I thought I glimpsed Phoebe leaving the dining hall with a man who looked like John Leal, the brushed-up cockerel’s plume flaunting high above his head. By the time I pushed through the Wyeth portico, I’d lost them.

  I don’t know how long she’d have kept silent if, one night, as I walked to the bus stop for a shift, I hadn’t glanced up and noticed Phoebe in front of me, a half-block down. She paused in front of a coffee-shop storefront, reflected beneath the Café Azul sign: she might have been a levitating ghost, superimposed on the people inside. She wore a coat open, with a long slit down the back. I lifted a hand; I held my breath, afraid to wave. She turned, then walked to me. The beige coat halves rose, floating behind bared legs.

  I’m sick of being apart, she said. But if it happens again, I’ll—

  It won’t, I said.

  She was shaking, the sharp features flushed. I held Phoebe; I kissed what I could reach. Is it only in hindsight that I notice an isolated figure at the end of the street, watching us, or does the clarity with which I see him outlined in faint light prove it’s a fiction? Each time I’ve reviewed what I’ve kept of this evening, I’m less sure. I know, though, how he liked to plan. But that night, I made nothing of it. The slope of Phoebe’s neck was hot, sweat-humid. If it happens, she started saying. With a kiss, I stalled the threat; I shut Phoebe’s mouth with mine.

  14.

  JOHN LEAL

  Noxhurst, though, his group said. Of all the places he could have gone after Yanji, why had he returned here, to his old college town? But John Leal saw no need to indulge such questions. He’d had his troubles, it was true. The night he first left Noxhurst, he’d imagined he’d never return. I’ve since learned, he might have said, that nothing energizes like humiliation. It had rained his first day out of the gulag, the lines slanting like marionette strings. In each breath he inhaled, he’d heard the call of the dying Christ. But none of this merited saying. It would be weak to tell too much, to explain. It could mislead. The Lord eludes the whys. To insist is also a slight; give me, we plead, testing Him. In pursuit, we misprize. Lord, increase my bewilderment, they’d do w
ell to ask. Instead, he told them he had been called back to Noxhurst, God wanting him here. Just as He wants all of you, he said, looking in turn at his disciples’ upturned faces.

  15.

  PHOEBE

  Up at the Point, Phoebe said, Will and I lolled on full bellies. Toy-sized, a plane pitched along the horizon. It dipped then rolled, playful. I watched a coin of light slip down his chin. It was the fifth date in as many days; late the previous night, as we walked home, he’d asked if I liked picnics. If so, I’ll plan it, he said. He brought all the food. Stilton hunks, fat-pebbled pâté. Plum jam. The half-baguette. Ripe peaches. Mulled wine in a jug.

  I ate too much, past appetite. It would be months before Will admitted he was broke, and I couldn’t have known he’d paid for this banquet, with its pâté, the out-of-season fruit, using tips he couldn’t spare. Still, it was obvious he’d put in effort. The first night I met him, for instance, I’d talked about craving a good peach. To mull this wine, he’d stolen into the dining-hall kitchen. I tried to slice the fruit. The knife slipped, cutting my left hand. I winced. It was a small cut, but he insisted on tying a folded napkin around it. Here, he said. I let him have the paring knife. With his large, blunt-nailed hands, he sliced the peach. He didn’t ask how I lacked this basic skill. I held the first piece to his mouth, and he bit into it. White flesh dribbled juice. Before I could wipe off the liquid, he kissed my wrist clean.

  (I had no practice slicing fruit because my mother had always done it, bringing plates heaped with Fuji apples to the piano room: a fork, too, so that I could practice without dirtying my hands. I nibbled slices between scales, the late-afternoon sun oiling the top of my head like a benediction, a sign of grace. If I then tried to clean the dish, she didn’t let me. Haejin, go practice, she said.)

  Too full to eat more, I pointed out the plane. He raised his head, obedient; he looked up. I’d love to learn how to do that, he said. To fly a plane. Just in case.

  In case . . .

  If, mid-flight, the pilot fainted, or—

  But planes have two pilots.

  Not small planes.

  Right, I said. So, on this little plane, if the pilot fainted, you’d hurtle into the cockpit. You’d save lives, the big hero.

  That’s right, he said, laughing. I touched the tip of my nose to his. I wasn’t sure, though, what I was doing. Oh, I’d gained his attention: from the moment I spilled punch on his thigh, and he turned to find me smiling up at him, I’d had it, him. I’d chatted, then started dancing. He lifted one shoe at a time, inept. I’m not used to this, he said. I adjusted my tempo to his, following his motions until, relaxing, he twitched his limbs; he tried to spin me in a circle. I let him. I liked how he looked at me, as if he couldn’t help it.

  But since then, five nights ago, I persisted in spending time with him. Our legs mingled beneath the thick plaid blanket he’d also thought to bring. His toes pressed my calves. I hadn’t taken him to bed; I kept waiting. I didn’t think I should treat him like a one-night fling. Days passed, then weeks. He proved more evasive than even I could be. He joshed and hid. I sighted him in flashes. Late one night, while talking about religious faith, Liesl had said, I’d love to believe there’s something out there. It’s hard to imagine this is all, then we die.

  What solid logic, Will said. Top-notch wishful thinking.

  He tried to smile, as if he’d told a joke. Liesl, no idiot, winced. I filled the silence that followed by talking about the time when, as a kid, reaching for a mall-fountain nickel, I’d fallen in. Before long, I had everyone laughing; afterward, when Julian alluded to Will’s bad mood, I acted as though I hadn’t noticed. Oh, please, Julian said. But he hadn’t seen the twist in Will’s smile, how pitiful he looked. Such bravado, like a small child taught he’d be punished if he cried. From the little he let slip about leaving his church, I tried to conceive of what he’d lost. The high-minded world he used to inhabit: ordered, calm. I didn’t think I’d die, he said. It’s a fringe benefit of the faith. I believed I’d always live, along with everyone I loved.

  I wished I could ask how he’d survived giving up so much. But in general, he avoided talking about life as a Christian. He’d joke; otherwise, he pushed it to the side. With me, too, once I told him about my mother’s death, he shied from bringing it up. It was like high school, after the crash, when even close friends had failed to ask about it: afraid, I think, to remind me I was grieving. They hadn’t known it wasn’t possible, since I didn’t, at any point, forget.

  Instead, Will hustled. He strove. It felt as though, having lost the infinite, he couldn’t waste what little time he had. On piled Post-its, to-do lists proliferated. He brushed his teeth while underlining Plotinus. If he had to watch a film for class, he fit in dumbbell lifts, as well. He walked fast, then studied past dawn.

  But he also slowed his pace to mine. During the college tricentennial parade, while people with blue flags pushed down Whiting Street, he kept his arm circling my shoulders, firm, so that I wouldn’t be carried away from him. Unlike most of my Edwards friends, he could be depended upon. If he said he’d do something, he did it; if he promised to meet me at a specific time, he was there. He liked to help. To fix. The tap dripped in my suite bathroom. I said I’d call the Edwards service line, but Will, wielding pliers, solved it first. He’d been an Eagle Scout. Still am, he said. He’d kitted out a survival go-bag with basic supplies, stashing it beneath his bed: iodine tablets, a wind-up flashlight. Rubbing alcohol. Packs of food. Within a month, he zipped provisions in for me, as well. But I still didn’t feel, or want, as he did.

  When we did start having sex—less, perhaps, because I wanted to, than to please him—he often slept with a hand cupping my head, as if to protect me from bad dreams. In his tranquil face, I could picture the stolid kid he’d have been, reliable, walking to his bedridden mother with a glass full of milk—

  Toddling, I’d have said. I used to imagine him toddling with the glass brimful of milk, holding it in his boy’s hands, but this wasn’t right. He’d enrolled in his Bible college by then. If I were less selfish, I’d have released the hold I had on him, this love-dazed Will, more child than man. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. He took the stairs to my suite at a full run. Bruises formed at the tops of my thighs. If I went to bed after he did, Will turned toward me, still asleep. I might put my head next to his, but he’d clamp his hot legs around mine. He hauled me in. I tried not to pull loose; still, I did. He protested. Insistent, not quite conscious, he reached for me again. I listened to his pulse. His soft, thin hairs, dandelion strands, shifted between my lips. I breathed them in. Here’s a wish, I thought. Don’t let me go. Until Will, I drifted: he attached me to this patch of earth. He clung all night.

  16.

  WILL

  In June, I went to Beijing for a paid internship at a small investment fund. The plan had included Phoebe, who said she’d come along. But then, in the spring, she was advised she risked failing. Unless she improved a grade or two, she’d be forced to take remedial summer classes.

  I asked what I could do, and she pulled open the plastic that sealed still-pristine textbooks. She started attending lectures. I tried to help, but if discipline is a muscle, hers had atrophied. Old habits revived. She slept past noon, ignoring class. Instead, she spilled time into high-profile stunts: the Presidential House break-in, for instance. To plan it, she joined a guided visit of the house. She photographed walls, slid open a ground-level window bolt. With the help of Liesl, who acted in college shows, she pillaged the Playhouse supplies closet for matching clothes. She held a photo shoot. Invited to participate, I told Phoebe I didn’t have the time. She used the pictures she’d taken in his house to stage the president’s familial portraits. Her friends modeled poses, replicating facial expressions. The next time President Wright left town, they stole into his house, and switched his photos with their own. The Herald published a short, admiring tribute.

  I
t shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, when Phoebe learned she had to remain in Noxhurst. But I’d been hopeful. I’d already accepted the Beijing job, a position Ling had helped me find. I’d put down the deposit on a Shichahai apartment; the bank had purchased my round-trip flights.

  No, you’re going, Phoebe said, when I proposed I’d find a substitute job in Noxhurst: I could work at Michelangelo’s, for instance. Will, three months isn’t that long. I’ll visit you.

  But you’ll be alone.

  I’ll have friends here.

  Who? I said.

  If anything, Julian will be in the city. I’ll go see him. I’ll meet people. They’ll love me. People do.

  What about, ah, I said, but I hesitated. Damp spring wind blew in. I inhaled the lazy, bittersweet stink that lingered in her room from a hyacinth bouquet she’d let spoil in a vase. I’d thrown it out, but the rich hint of rot persisted. Is Liesl—

  No, Julian said she’ll be home. In St. Paul.

  I still didn’t know Liesl well; Phoebe had mentioned, though, that she’d also been directed to enroll in remedial classes. Then, in April, she’d filed a rape charge against the New York governor’s son, Neil Pugh. Details of the night had since become public: a full living room, the tall girl following him up the stairs. Not everyone believed Liesl. I knew Neil, a little. He’d joined Phi Epsilon in the spring, then dropped out. Neil, a sailing recruit, looked the part: disheveled, wind-blown, as if he’d always just strolled off a boat. Despite the Nantucket reds he affected, his ripped twilled shirts, he’d lived most of his life in San Francisco, in his divorced mother’s house. It was a short drive from Carmenita. I avoided him, as a result; despite the distance I kept, if not because of it, he’d invited me to several parties. Poor girl, I said.