Permanence (20 page)

The liquid has a pungent, sour odor. Like syrup, it pours thickly and evenly over the newspapers and boxes marked “Jamie” in big, bold Magic Marker letters and over baby’ s highchair with Woodstock and Snoopy on the backrest.

My eyes water from the fumes.

I stand on one of the boxes. I empty out the first can on the mantle above the fireplace. Some of the photos fall flat when the weight of the kerosene liquid hits them. The tin can makes a popping noise as the liquid pours from the nozzle and as the liquid empties, the can becomes hollow, expanding and contracting.

The liquid drowns my favorite photo of Jamie, the picture taken on a stretch of deserted Cape Cod beach sometime in the late fall of the year, with the waves white-capped and angry and only the back of Jamie visible, his footsteps in the sand disappearing with the wind, like drifting snow.

The liquid drowns the first photograph ever taken of me holding onto baby—baby cradled in my arms, tightly, so that I do not drop baby. The liquid drowns all the photographs.

There is the one with me carrying a load of firewood into the cabin we rented in the mountains above Lake Placid, the one with Jamie coming down hard with an ax into a birch log. There are the photos from baby’s life—baby eating spaghetti, baby covered with spaghetti, baby in the bath.

I cherish the photographs.

I cover them with kerosene.

I will take them with me when the time comes.

The time for me

The time is five fifty-one in the afternoon.

The time for me has come and gone.

This is Christmas Eve

The second tin can is heavy when I cradle it inside my arms, and this time the liquid seems to pour out fast. The liquid spreads onto the living room floor, onto the vestibule where Jamie, newly arrived from work, would drop his briefcase to the floor, forget his keys inside the door, and go searching for baby.

I empty the second can in the bedroom.

The liquid pours over the bed, over the wedding day photo of Jamie and me at the country club—the photo I have pulled off the wall and tossed into the middle of the bed that Jamie and I shared, once upon a time. I toss in the remaining packages of photographs of doctor and me together in Italy. I watch our images fade and distort when they become immersed by the thick, golden-colored liquid. The liquid forms a pool inside the sheets and covers of the bed, until it soaks into the fabric.

I do not pour a single drop of kerosene in baby’s room.

The time is six-ten.

In the bathroom, the water that fills the tub is beginning to run over the sides and onto the floor, through the floor, and (I can only imagine) streaking its way down the freshly painted walls of the stairwell.

I hold the book of match’s in my hand.

I walk carefully along the wooden floor, soaked with the slippery, oily kerosene. I take doctor’s cigarettes from my pocketbook—the stale pack I took from his desk inside his office. This is the pack he could no longer smoke after his operation. I stand inside the kitchen and pat one out from the paper package. I place the cigarette between my lips. I strike a match. I bring the flame to the cigarette and light it. I feel the smoke enter my lungs, feel the familiar rush up inside my brain.

I am dead tired.

The water in the tub runs cleanly and smoothly over the side and onto the front of the basin, onto the ceramic floor.

I walk into the living room.

This is Christmas Eve.

I take the still burning cigarette from between my lips and toss it to the kerosene-soaked floor. A silent puff-like explosion of flame illuminates the living room like the lights that wrap around a Christmas tree. I watch it quickly spread over the newspapers, over Jamie’s boxes. I watch it spread and move up onto the mantle above the fireplace. The first to go is the photo of baby and his father playing in baby’s first snowfall. The second to go is baby covered with spaghetti. The photos become engulfed in bright yellow and orange flame and then disappear into thin air. And so on, down the line of the mantle.

I listen for the glass inside the picture frames to pop. I watch plastic and paper crumple up and turn to black as the snake-like flames eat their way through the images. I feel an odd sense of calm. Finality. I am in control again. I am fooling God and fate. I am fooling the voices.

Water

Baby’s Big Bird thermometer is just the way baby and I left it, inside the cabinet beneath the sink in the bathroom. But it is different, too. Look. You can see how the yellow plastic becomes almost transparent when I hold it up in the bright light of the open flames that make their way from the living room and into the hallway, past the bathroom, to the kitchen. I take the thermometer and dip it into the water that flows from the spigot into the basin, where the water overflows the rim and onto the floor. The mercury rises and, after a short time, levels off.

Steam fills the bathroom.

I lift the thermometer away from the water and read it. Look. One hundred and twelve degrees. Not bad. I still have it, after all this time.

I sit at the edge of the water-soaked tub.

The water that runs over the side of the bath soaks through my clothing. The warm water runs down my legs and onto my feet. I close my eyes. I feel the heat from the flame. The smoke is beginning to burn my eyes. I feel the tightness in my throat. There is no more darkness. Through my eyelids, I can still see the light of the flames as they crawl into the kitchen. Already I am feeling the heat. I can’t breathe. I take deep breaths.

I am fully clothed.

I stare into the tub.

The water that fills this tub is not for me.

Nursery

Baby’s nursery is just the way Jamie and I left it when baby left us. Listen: the nursery is just the way baby left it. Baby’s nursery is right next door to the bath, across the hall from the kitchen. I can listen to the sound of the water filling the tub from the nursery. I can watch the flames—feel the flames, smell the burning paper and plaster. The fire overtakes the entire kitchen, the entire living room. The noise of the flames drowns out the noise of the water. The sounds are surprisingly similar and yet, all consuming. The water and the flame live and breathe, spread and compete for space they cannot possibly occupy in this world together.

The voices of my husband

I can barely hear the shouts and screams above the roar of the flames from where I sit on baby’s rocker in his nursery. I have opened all of the windows inside baby’s nursery. Through the open windows I can barely make out the sound of a car pulling up outside, its tires squealing against the pavement.

“Mary…Mary…Oh sweet Jesus.”

This is a voice I recognize. This is a voice that comes to me from the past. Listen. Perhaps I imagine the voice.

Do you recognize the voice of my husband?

What I choose to listen to

I will not let my ex-husband back in this home.

Tonight I will sit alone in the darkness overcome by the bright firelight that begins to overtake the bedroom Jamie and I shared when we shared baby.

I stand from the rocker and look outside the open window.

People scream out in the darkness of the parking lot, but I have a difficult time hearing them as the fire in this apartment grows larger.

This is Christmas Eve.

But I hear Jamie’s voice above them all. It comes to me, like the voices of the demons inside my head, echoing faintly from the stairwell of this building.

Jamie must be right outside the front door to this apartment.

But I do not listen for the voices of the demons or for the voice of Jamie. I can’t hear them clearly anyway above the fire. Instead I choose to listen for the sound of a blanket shuffling, or a crib creaking, or maybe the deep baby breath that sounds not quite right to a mother—a sniffle, a sneeze, a cough. I listen for a cry in the night that I will hear no more. These were the sounds that made Jamie and me jump from our bed and run to baby. Sometimes the imaginary sounds I listen for sound so real in the dark—so loud—I think baby might actually wake up and stick his head out from above the railings of his crib.

But the noises I hear do not come from baby.

The noise I hear comes from the fire moving its way toward me. The noise is the blaring sirens of the fire trucks barely audible above the flames. The noise is Jamie pounding with his fist against the door, screaming for me. The noise is the heat that shatters the glass and splits the dry wood. The noise is my heart beating. The noise is silence, and the silence never disappears.

I remember

I close my eyes and remember the soft, fleshy smell of my mother when she cradled me through the home that burned out from under us. The burning smell in my apartment tonight is that same smell.

In my hands

In my hands I hold a silver pillbox and a hair-thin, broken chain. I feel the heat from the metal against my fingers. I squeeze tighter, feel the metal burn into the flesh on the palm of my hand.

All that’s left

Jamie.

“She’s in there, dying!” yells the voice, but I could be hallucinating. This is a voice I recognize as my husband’s voice. The flashing red lights of the fire engines whip across the walls of baby’s nursery, because the nursery has yet to catch on fire. The lights combine with the firelight from the fire outside this room, consuming the hallway between the kitchen and bath. Sweat drips into my eyes and burns them.

I listen for the sound of Jamie coming for me, but it is impossible to hear anything above the roar of the fire.

Jamie cannot break into his own home since I have attached the deadbolt.

I am dead tired.

But I am strangely at peace. Perhaps I am happy.

I am in control.

The fire is approaching baby’s room. But baby’s room is all that’s left.

Plans

I have this freedom now that I did not ask for. This is the freedom I did not plan on having the day Jamie and I posed beneath the big tree at the country club—the day Jamie and I were married, before baby came into our lives and left again. I feel my stomach like the babies—Jamie’s baby and doctor’s baby—never left me. Tonight I use this freedom to let the bath water overflow onto the floor, to extinguish the flames that have spread from my apartment into the stairwell.

The end (as in the beginning)

The front door breaks open.

I cannot hear it, but I can see from where I sit at the far end of baby’s nursery through the flaming hallway. The flames roar and explode in brilliant orange and red. Water flows from the tub and into the hallway, searing, steaming—competing with the flames. I feel the heat against my face. The red hot pillbox melts the flesh on my hand. The air inside baby’s room is almost gone. I can feel the air escaping my lungs.

The men fight their way through the flames for me—for my life. They wear facemasks. Life-giving air tanks hang from their shoulders against their backs.

Jamie is among them.

They are coming for me.

Listen: I ignore them.

I sit, motionless and breathless.

I feel no pain, only life.

I listen for the familiar sounds that used to fill the silence of baby’s room—baby breathing, baby crying, baby singing a jumbled-up song. I listen for the Jamie I used to know. I listen and search the room for the doctor who became my lover. I listen for mother and father to come back for me. I listen for the water that pours out of the bath. But I hear nothing. I only hear the beating of my heart, as the people come for me through the water and the fire that will consume my life.

THE END

About the Author

V
INCENT
Z
ANDRI is the No. 1 International Bestselling Amazon author of THE INNOCENT, GODCHILD, THE REMAINS, MOONLIGHT FALLS, CONCRETE PEARL, MOONLIGHT RISES, SCREAM CATCHER, BLUE MOONLIGHT and MURDER BY MOONLIGHT. He is also the author of the Amazon bestselling digital shorts, PATHOLOGICAL, TRUE STORIES and MOONLIGHT MAFIA. Harlan Coben has described THE INNOCENT (formerly
As Catch Can
) as “…gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting,” while the New York Post called it “Sensational…Masterful…Brilliant!” Zandri’s list of publishers include Delacorte, Dell, StoneHouse Ink, StoneGate Ink and Thomas & Mercer. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri’s work is translated into many languages including the Dutch, Russian, and Japanese. An adventurer, foreign correspondent, and freelance photo-journalist for RT, Globalspec, IBTimes and more, he lives in Albany, New York. For more go to
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Table of Contents

Praise for Vincent Zandri

Also by Vincent Zandri

Copyright

Dedication

Book One

Book Two

Book Three

About the Author