The Secrets of a Fire King (35 page)

“And congratulations. The funding decisions were next to impossible this year. You really made an impression here tonight.”

“Despite the rat?” she joked, and Raoul laughed.

“Because of the rats,” he said. “I really think so. Inez loves to tell her cobra story, and she so rarely gets a chance.”

“And who is Paul?” Claire asked, taking a step closer to Raoul and lowering her voice. “Is there something going on?”

“Going on?” Raoul repeated, and Claire saw, to her surprise, that he was fl ustered.

“Between Paul and Inez,” she said. “I thought I sensed . . .

something.”

“Oh, maybe,” Raoul said, and shrugged. “Who knows, with Inez. Anything could be happening. The woman
is
a cobra.” Claire laughed.

“Lovely evening,” Raoul said again, kissing her cheek.

Claire saw him to the door, and on an impulse she went outside, into the garden. There were no streetlights, but the moon had risen high above the city and the frangipani tree glowed, the white blossoms cascading to the ground. Claire hugged her arms, inhaled deeply, feeling the sweet release of a job well done, of success. Later tonight she and Steve would go over the evening, relishing the happy outcome, laughing, finally, at the near catas-trophe with the rats. It would be like the old times, days and nights they had spent working in the most remote villages, living in thatched huts and hauling water from communal wells. Hard experiences, in some ways, but they had lain together every night, whispering their dreams and plans, the stars so close in the well-232

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ing darkness that they might have reached out and plucked some from the sky. Now Claire pulled a frangipani blossom from the tree, fingering its waxen petals. Things had seemed so much simpler when she and Steve were young. They had gone out in the world to make a difference, and for many years had done so, without all these complications.

The rustling came from the veranda and at fi rst she tensed, thinking it was another rat. Then she saw the dull ember of Inez’s cigarette, the glow of her dress, and Steve’s voice lifted through the foliage. Inez laughed, a soft sound, and Claire took a step, meaning to call out. But a movement stopped her. They were two shadows, that was all, Steve dark in his printed shirt, Inez pale in her white dress, and she watched them pull together, intertwine. The kiss lasted for a very long time, it seemed. Claire stood in the garden and watched them as she might watch two strangers, conscious not of anger or jealousy, but rather a letting down, a disappointment so vast that she felt herself paralyzed by its weight. It was only after they drew away from one another, Inez laughing lightly and touching her long fingers to Steve’s face, that Claire roused herself.

She hurried back and met them in the foyer. Everything was no more or less than usual, Inez sliding into a white silk jacket, Steve reaching out to shake her hand.

“Divine,” Inez said, brushing her lips against Claire’s cheek.

“Delightful, Claire. All my thanks.”

“Well,” Steve said when she was gone. He closed the door and leaned against it. “Sweet success. No thanks to you and your rat stories, I might add.”

“Rats weren’t the only thing I might have mentioned,” Claire said, noticing the slackness in his jaw, the odd asymmetry of his nose, as if he were a person she had never met before.

Steve didn’t answer. He looked at her steadily, then closed his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said.

Claire ran her hands across her arms. Hours had passed, yet she could still feel the tiny rat feet scraping down her skin. “I think you know very well what I mean,” she said.

Steve pulled himself away from the door and walked across the room. Now that the long worrying was over, his face was youthful
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and relaxed again, almost boyish. Claire found it hard to move, hard, almost, to breathe. She knew she ought to say something about the kiss she had witnessed, but she could not seem to summon the words. What would he say, anyway? That it did not matter? That it did? Either way, what would they do next? There was a time when Claire’s opinion had influenced all Steve’s actions, but now she feared her words would not touch him in the least.

Steve did not seem to notice her distress. “I got the funding,” he said pensively, with a hint of venal joy. “I think that’s what really matters.”

“Is it?” Claire asked, turning back to survey the table, empty now except for a slender vase full of white and purple orchids. Already the maid had finished the dishes and gone home.

“Yes,” Steve said. He was looking at her now, standing in the doorway to the bedroom, one hand on the door frame, the other hanging loosely at his side. In his face she saw such exhaustion and such sadness that she knew the kiss she had witnessed was not the first between them, or the last. “I don’t mean to be cruel, Claire,” he said, “but right now that’s the main thing, yes.” That night Claire slept fitfully. She did not think directly of the long kiss she had seen, or what it might mean. Instead, she thought about the story she had not told, which remained vividly alive in her mind. She could not forget the feel of the rat feet, or the smell of the rats as they burst from the oven, one after another, abandoning their burning nest. There was the ruined roast, splattered on the floor, covered with rat tracks. There was the oven, turned on its side, the hairs and sticks of the rat nest spilling out the back. Neither she nor Steve had spoken as they scrubbed. The maid was on half salary, and half days. Inez was coming to dinner.

Every time Steve swore, Claire had felt it run through her like a blow. Now the day had reached its uneasy conclusion, but the scent of rats, the feel of their wiry feet, lingered still.

Once during that night she started awake in the dark room, thinking she heard the thump of rats in the wall, and later she woke again with a twitching in her extremities, convinced that rats had nibbled at her fingertips and toes. But her flesh was intact, the skin smooth and firm and whole. She curled up, drawing her
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limbs close together beneath the sheet. Was it really possible, she wondered, to have your flesh eaten while you slept? Steve’s hand was flung out across the pillow. She leaned close to it, breathing lightly on his fingertips at first, then making an experimental nip at his flesh. He didn’t stir. Claire, disturbed by this evidence, tried again. Your guests, she thought. Your agency, the compromises that you made. This was the hand that had pulled Inez close on the veranda.

She bit harder than she meant to then, and the hand jerked suddenly away. Still sleeping, Steve opened his eyes and looked straight at her, confused, unseeing, caught within his dreams.

“What is it?” he said, putting his hand on her heart, his warm fi ngers like a fan against her skin. “What’s happening?” Then his panic eased; he rolled over and drew himself to the far side of the bed, leaving Claire with a smooth expanse of sheet on either side.

Above, the ceiling fan whirred and clicked. Yes, Claire thought, listening to Steve breathe, and listening beyond to what might have been palm leaves rustling, or the faint scratching of rats in the walls. Tomorrow he would run his thumb across the dull ache in this fi nger. He would look at her, uncertain. Let him wonder, Claire thought. In the morning, let him wonder. This was another story she would not tell.

The Story

of My Life

You’d know me if you saw me. Maybe not right away.

But you’d stop, lots of people do. I bet you’d look back twice at me, and wonder. I’d be an image lingering in your thoughts for days to come, nagging, like a forgotten name on the edge of your mind, like an unwelcome memory twisting up through dreams. Then you’d catch a glimpse of me on televi-sion, or gazing at you from a poster as you hurried down the sidewalk, and you’d remember. I’d come into your mind like a vision then, a bright and terrifying light.

Some people see it in an instant. They call out to me and stop me on the street. I have felt their hands, their vivid glances, the demanding pressure of their embraces. They have kissed my fi ngertips, have fallen to their knees and wept, have clustered around me, drawing the attention of a crowd. Once a girl even grabbed my arm in the parking lot at school. I still remember the darkness in her eyes, the panic clinging to her skin like mist, the
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way she begged me to give her a blessing, to relieve her of her great sin, as if I had a direct line right to God.

“Hey no,” I told her, shrugging her away. “You’ve got that wrong. You’re thinking of my mother.”

You’ve seen my mother too, guaranteed. See her now, the star of the evening news, standing with several hundred other people in a parking lot in Buffalo. It is hot for May, the fi rst fierce blast of summer, and heat waves rise around these people, making them shimmer on the screen. But that, of course, is pure illusion. The truth is, these people never waver, they never miss a step. Theirs is a holy path, a righteous vision, and if they must stand for twelve hours a day in the blinding heat, thirty days in a row, then they will do it like a penance, they will not think twice. This Buffalo clinic is at the edge of the university, and the protestors with their graphic signs draw increasing crowds. For days we have watched the news clips: ceaseless praying, bottles of red paint splattering brick walls, scared young women being escorted through the hostile crowd by clinic workers in bright vests. Mounting tension, yes, the sharp edges of impending violence, but still it has been a minor protest, something witnessed by motorists on their way to work, then forgotten until the evening news.

It is nothing compared to what will happen now that my mother has arrived.

See her. She is young still, long-boned and slender, with blond hair that swings at the level of her chin. She favors pastels, crisp cottons, skirts that brush against the calf, shirtwaist dresses and sweater sets. On the evening news the cameras pick her out, her pale yellow dress only a few shades darker than her hair, the white collar setting off her tan face, her sapphire eyes. Unlike the others with their signs, their chanting anger, my mother is serene. It is clear right away that while she is with this crowd, she is not of it. Her five assistants, surrounding her tightly like petals on a stamen, guide her slowly to the steps. The banners rustle in the hot wind, fluttering above the famous posters.

See me, then, my sweet smile, my innocence. It is a black-and-white shot, a close-up, taken three years ago when I was just
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fourteen. My mother strides before these posters, passing in front of one of me after another, and when she pauses alone at the center of the steps, when she turns her face to the cheering crowd and smiles, you can see it. The resemblance was striking even then, and now it is uncanny. In the past three years my cheekbones have become more pronounced, my eyes seem wider. We could, and sometimes do, pass for sisters. My mother waves her hand and starts to speak.

“Fellow sinners,” she says, and the crowd roars.

“Turn it off, why don’t you?” Sam says. We are sitting together on the sofa, drinking Coca-Cola and eating animal crackers. We’ve lined the elephants up, trunk to tail, across the coffee table. Sam’s eyes are the same deep blue as my mother’s, and the dark curls on his head are repeated, again and again, down his wide chest. When I don’t answer he turns and presses his hand against my cheek, then kisses me, hard, until I have to pull away from him.

We look at each other for a long moment. When Sam fi nally speaks, his voice is deliberately grave and pompous, twisting the scriptures to his own advantage.

“Nichola,” he says, drawing a finger slowly down my arm.

“Your body is such a mystery to me.” There is longing in his voice, yes, but his eyes are teasing, testing. He knows I know these verses, the ones my mother always uses to begin.
My body is
no mystery to Thee, for Thou didst knit me together in my mother’s
womb.
He must also know that it seems near sacrilege to me, what he says, the way he says it. And truly I am flushed with his audacity, the breathless danger of his words. I am thrilled with it. Sam watches my face, smiles, runs his hand down my bare arm.

“You know what comes later,” I remind him, hearing my mother’s voice rising in the background. “
Deliver me from evil men.

Remember?”

He laughs and leans forward to kiss me again, his hand grop-ing for the remote control. I get to it first and sit up straight, keeping a distance between us. I am saving myself, I am trying to, though Sam Rush insists there is no need because one day we will marry.

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Not now,” I tell him, inching up the volume. “She’s just about to tell the story of my life. It’s the best part.” Sam catches my wrist and pulls the remote control from my fingers. The TV snaps off and my mother disappears to where she really is, 257 miles away.

“You’re wrong,” he says, sliding his hands across my shoulders, pressing his lips against my collarbone.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s not the story of your life,” he whispers. I feel his breath on my skin, insistent, pressing the words. “This is.” My mother worries, or ought to. After all, I have her looks, her blond beauty, her narrow hips. I have her inclinations. But my mother has a high and shining faith. This is what she tells me every time she leaves the house. She holds my face in her two hands and says,
You’ll be good, Nichola, I know that. I have the strongest
faith in you, I know you are not a wild girl like I was.

Well, it is true in a way, I am not a wild girl like she was. Sam Rush is the only boyfriend I have ever had. And for a long time I was even good like she means. Those were the days when she used to take me with her, traveling around the country from one demonstration to another, standing in the rain or snow or blaz-ing heat. There are snapshots of my mother and me from those days. In many of them I am just a toddler perched on her hip, while she squints into the camera, gripping half a banner in her free hand. She wore pantsuits, all creaseless polyester, with wide cuffs at the wrists and ankles. She had maxi-skirts and shiny boots and her hair was long then, falling down her back like the thin silk of corn. For years she was just a part-time protestor, like anybody else. But then she got religion, and got famous, all in a single afternoon.