Sunburn: A Novel(38)
When she answers Cath, it’s with a heat generated by these memories, the losses she has known. The father who dried up like a cornhusk, the mother who followed him too quickly, her heart doubly broken. The two daughters, neither one with Polly now because she has done what is best for them.
“No, I don’t play it that way. But maybe you should. It’s probably the only way you’ll ever get a man to stay, getting knocked up. Good luck with that. Adam says you’re a rotten lay.”
*
The dew is heavy, Polly’s feet are drenched by the time she knocks at the door to room 3. The rain that has been threatening all night starts to fall in sheets and there are thunderclaps, full and close, almost loud enough to drown out the sirens in the distance. It’s the last day of August—actually the first day of September—and the first true cold front of the season lies behind this storm. Almost every Labor Day weekend, it seems, the first true cold front arrives.
“Rabbit, rabbit,” she says to the night air. But maybe it only counts after you go to sleep and wake up?
Adam opens his door, sleepy, confused. He’s really handsome. She considered his looks too bland the first time she saw him, but now she thinks he’s the best-looking man she’s ever known.
“What the—? What time is it?”
“I missed you.”
“But—”
“I told Casper today. He doesn’t care. Everyone knows about us now. Everyone who matters. Turns out he knew all along. Guess we’re not the supersleuths we thought we are.”
“I think you mean stealthy,” he says. “Not sleuths.” He looks uneasy.
“Sleuth, stealth. Let me in, college boy. I’m soaked.”
She is on top of him when the second wave of sirens start.
“Whatever’s burning, they must have had to send for another crew,” he says, his hands pressing hard into her shoulder blades. “From Millsboro or wherever. I wonder how anything can burn in this rain.”
“Who cares,” she says, moving faster. “We’re safe.”
She stays all night, into the morning. He’s the one who suggests they go out to breakfast at the diner on Main. She contemplates last night’s dress, still damp from the downpour.
“I can’t go out in that.”
“We’ll swing by your place.”
She and Adam stroll hand in hand toward the center of town, public at last, rooted at last, a couple. No more shadows, no more hiding. The morning feels as if the world is new, bright and crisp and ready for back to school. But an acrid smoke lingers in the breeze, making her nostrils flare with memories of Ditmars. He used to come home smelling like this. A combination of smoke and chemicals, sometimes even a whiff of death, although he always swore the sweetish scorched smell was from insulation, not people. And there was no question that Ditmars knew what people smelled like when they burned.
Yet, for all her knowledge, Polly is not prepared to turn the corner and see rubble where her apartment once stood. Everything—everything—is gone. Smoke is rising from the debris, the volunteer firefighters still bustle about, their long night still not over.
It’s shameful, but she starts to weep for her small array of possessions, the first things she’s been allowed to choose for herself. Her bed, her quilt, her table, her blue glasses. The silk bathrobe. The sundresses from the Purple Heart. Tiny things, material things, objects that can be replaced. But they could have been the building blocks of this new life.
Then she sees the gurney, covered by a sheet. It looks flat, but Polly’s not fooled. She was an arson investigator’s wife. She knows what an explosion can do to a body, how it collapses the internal organs. There’s something—someone—under that sheet.
Everyone stares at Polly as if she’s a ghost. In a sense, she is. Back from the dead, just that quick. Of course everyone would have assumed it was her, the tenant, in the wreckage. Who else could it be? But as she looks around, she realizes that most of the spectators are horrified in a bland, rubbernecking way. Belleville is a small town, yet few here know her. She spots her landlord, talking to one of the firefighters. He, at least, looks upset in a specific, visible way, but then—he’s just lost a significant property. Maybe if Max and Ernest strolled by, they would care that Polly is alive. As it is, only Adam knows this is her former home and he didn’t have to worry for a moment that she had been harmed because he’s holding her hand, sure of her. He knows it’s not her on the gurney.
She wonders when he’ll realize it has to be Cath.
Part Two
Fire
22
Adam stands at the grill, making the usual lunchtime items. He has his own method of frying burgers: He takes a ball of meat—larger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball—then smashes it with great force, using two spatulas one on top of the other. After flipping, he places a thin slice of American cheese on each patty. There is simply no better cheese for burgers, no matter one’s culinary aspirations. He uses two patties per burger, otherwise the customer will feel he’s being shortchanged. Almost everyone values quantity over quality. The patties cook very fast when they are this thin, and he ruins two in a row, mesmerized by the way the flames lunge greedily for the drops of fat.
Cath probably did not die by fire. Almost no one ever does. If smoke inhalation didn’t get her, then it was probably the explosion itself. A horrible way to die, but quite fast. He hopes it was fast. An official ruling is expected soon.