An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke Read Free Book Online Page A

stationary if she kept pedaling it that hard. My heart took a sad tumble at the thought of telling her about my true self; and then, since I’m not afraid of the big questions, I wondered if she would have been happier with someone else, someone who wasn’t a bumbler like me. There had been no shortage of bumbling in our time together. For instance, there was the time when we had dinner with a guy I worked with and his wife, and we got around to talking about Jews, or the Jewish religion at least, and Anne Marie asked the woman (she was an American) if she was Jewish, and she wasn’t, and then I said to the guy I worked with, “I know you’re not.” I said this because he was German, actually from Germany — his name was Hans — the implication being that since he was a German he must be a Nazi. Anne Marie pointed this out later on. As I told her, this wasn’t my intention, but our guests may have taken it that way: they left in a big hurry, even before dessert was served. After they left, Anne Marie got exasperated with me — exasperation, that testy cousin of resignation, which is what Anne Marie seemed to feel about me most of the time. I apologized to her. But in my defense, guess what: I found out later that the guy wasn’t. Jewish, that is.
    But I suppose that wasn’t the point. Was Anne Marie happy? Had I ever made her happy? Or did I only make her busy: running the kids here and there, going to work, doing the things that needed to be done around the house that I didn’t do — which (except for the lawn and some bedtime TV watching with the kids) was pretty much everything — and cleaning up my accidents, so many of them that she didn’t believe they were accidents anymore? I was one of the things that kept her busy, all right, me and her stationary bike. Did she recently seem less miserable and weepy than she’d been because she was happy or busy? Did I make her happy, or just busy? Or was there a difference?
    “Earth to Dad,” Katherine said. She was tall enough to reach up and knock on my head, as if checking to see if I were home, and she did just that, striking me on the forehead, but softly, so that it barely hurt and only for a second. “Are you still there?”
    “Yes,” I said. “What’s your brother doing?”
    “He’s watching TV in his room.”
    I could picture Christian watching television (all of us had televisions in our bedrooms, plus one downstairs, plus one in the finished basement — we were like mission control with our many monitors). When Christian rode his scooter, he made happy sounds the way he had when he was a baby, noises that sounded like “Whee.” When he watched television he looked confused and angry at what he was seeing, like a dumb bully. I wished he were riding his scooter, even in the house, which we don’t normally allow, so I could picture him doing that instead of looking dumb and brutish in front of the television. I also wished I could give Christian and Katherine something to remember me by; this was a parental wish, I recognized it. For instance, my mother, during my father’s absence, gave me the stories about the Emily Dickinson House so that I’d have something besides a runaway father. And I still have them; I’ve kept them all this time, in my head, because they were good stories.
    My mother always talked about the Emily Dickinson House in terms of last gasps, of children vanished and sadly forgotten, of the last drop, drop, drop of bodies, big and small, new and used, down a lonely and unforgiving chasm. When I was nine years old, for example, she told me increasingly long and horrific stories about strangers, out-of-towners: men with shady pasts, faded jeans, outstanding warrants, and Marlboro whispers. They arrived as hitchhikers or bus riders, looking for a place to sleep, a place to work, not voting, not paying taxes. For them, the Emily Dickinson House didn’t loom or threaten but existed only for their temporary use: another big old