What Burns Away (17 page)

I told Dean, “That's the stuff.” He pulled the last seven bottles off the shelf and put them into our basket.

Jonah was panting, his face streaked with tears. “I want Dada,” he cried.

“We need way more than that,” I told Dean and picked up my son, holding him under my arm like a football. I took my purse and the keys Dean held out to me.

An elderly man in a tool belt and orange suspenders walked toward us, belly first, his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. He had a handlebar mustache. “Folks, how can I help?”

“It's about fucking time,” Dean said. “We need more of these.” He held up a fogger.

I turned and left Dean to negotiate, Jonah tucked under my arm as I speed-walked out. When the cold air hit his face, he stopped fussing. He took deep heaving breaths, and I turned him upright. He wrapped his arms around my neck. “Where the man go?” he wanted to know.

Trudging through the lot, I required the same heaving breaths as my son, counting to ten to calm myself. In the car, Jonah continued to scream at the top of his lungs and I fished through the diaper bag for a snack. As I searched, my phone rang. The number was one I didn't recognize, a 954 area code, my iPhone declaring that the incoming call was from Fort Lauderdale.

Mom
, I thought first, then recalled the litany of friends who spent winter weeks in Florida with their kids. I declined the call.

Pulling fruit from the bag, Jonah grinned at me. My muscles slackened with his cheer.

“Banana,” he told me and pulled back the peel all by himself, shimmying side to side with pride.

Waiting, we sang two rounds of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” followed by several rounds of “Mrs. O'Leary's Cow.”

I paused to check my voice mail and found none.

Then, chanting along with Jonah, I thought about poor Catherine O'Leary, the infamous scapegoat for the Great Chicago Fire, a fire that swallowed acres of downtown real estate over two days, while the real culprit, combustible sediment from Biela's comet, went unnamed.

I contemplated the residue Halley's pass had left over my life and worried about the kind of embers yet to fall.

Jonah hummed something akin to the rhythm, and then I crooned the final verse in an attempt to push away my fear:

One night ago,

When we were all in bed,

Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed.

And when the cow kicked it over,

She winked her eye and said,

“It'll be a hot time in the old town, tonight!”

And as I belted out the last three words—“FIRE, FIRE, FIRE”—I heard Dean's approach, his cart rattling with three cardboard boxes full of flammable canisters, all haphazardly balanced on top of each other.

Two weeks before his death, my father caught me in a lie, and after that night, I vowed to never tell another.

The story I told him was that there was a party for my track team, a sleepover, where I would spend the night with the girls and our captain, Lauren Lombardino, who lived in the apartment complex in the center of town.

My father did not allow sleepovers, but I begged and pleaded. “It's the last party of the year,” I said. “Mom would let me go.”

Dad paused. He shook his head in disagreement but said, “I want you home first thing in the morning, to meet Kara.”

Dad had started working again, after our mother left, tending bar one night during the week and opening the same popular Sound View Beach Cantina for brunch on the weekends.

“Your mom and the Douche Bag will drop her off at nine. I have to open the bar.” He warned, “Be sure you're here to meet her.”

I nodded, tossing my black jelly bracelets, my pin-striped leggings, my high-top Reeboks, my Madonna T-shirt, and my clock radio into a backpack. My father stood next to me, inventorying everything that went into my bag.

When I turned to kiss him good-bye, he asked, “Why the alarm clock? Won't her parents be home to wake you up?”

I felt the flush rise up my neck and rouge my cheeks. “Just want to be sure I get home in time.”

My father simply nodded and left the room. His shift that evening started in an hour, and as he walked down the steps, he hollered, “Whatever you're up to, Claire, make damn well sure that your sister doesn't come home to an empty house.”

The real plan was to celebrate school being out. Dean had rented us a motel room for the occasion. We had never had an overnight together, and it was what we talked about most when he kissed me against his truck before dropping me off a few blocks from home at the end of the dark cul-de-sac, where we said most of our good-byes.

After my father headed to work and Kara left with our mother, I ran toward Dean as he pulled into the turnaround at the end of our street.

“Hey,” I said as I climbed into the cab.

Together we drove Route 9, turning down the strip at Sound View dangerously near the cantina where my father was bartending, two beaches down from Willard, where there were arcades, Vecchitto's Italian Ice, carousel rides, and the famous Brantmore Hotel (which served all-you-can-eat spaghetti and meatballs and featured a transvestite dancer as part of the live entertainment), beyond which a slew of biker bars had reduced that stretch of beach into an ashtray full of cigarette butts stained with lipstick and little plastic cocktail straws.

The most famous of the bars was called The Cage, in front of which we set our blanket under a cloudy evening sky, listening to the cover band play an acoustic version of Bon Jovi's “Runaway.” We waited there for Dean's buddy, Jimmy, to join us with beers.

All day I had known that I would reveal the story of my mother's affair to Dean that night. It was a burden I could not carry alone, and I thought that since both his mother and father had been unfaithful to one another, he might be able to offer me some comfort. While happy hour kicked into full swing, Dean leaned into an air-guitar solo as I looked out at the lights of Long Island, a place that in my mind was far more exotic and cultured than Connecticut, where all the houses were trimmed with white pillars, and the fathers left in suits to go work in the city.

“So,” I said to Dean, never imagining that two weeks from that night my father would be dead, “my mom is dating this creepy old guy. And I know she was cheating with him before she left us—I actually saw it with my own eyes. Now she claims she's going to marry him. But no one knows about the cheating part, how long it's gone on, except for me. Kara even seems happy about the whole thing.”

Dean dove down onto the blanket beside me, furrowing his brow as his head bounced in time with the music. “Don't tell your dad about the cheating. Or Kara. Ever. It will only make your dad more angry and crazy. And Kara is just too young to get it.”

The drinkers on the patio at The Cage hooted and hollered. Others called out requests to the band.

I asked Dean, “Don't you think it's horrible?”

“Yes.” He sighed and pulled me on top of him. “Wanna take a walk?”

Moving away from the noise, down past Sound View onto a quiet residential beach with a long jetty, the waves lapped our ankles and we strolled the beach.

“My dad fooled around on my mom when we were all really little,” Dean said after a while. “Left her with his five kids and never gave any one of us a nickel's worth of child support. That's why I got a job soon as I could. Quit school to earn my keep. I watched my mom cry for years.”

There was something matter-of-fact in his tone, something resilient that I lacked.

“That's bad,” I said. “Could you ever forgive him? I feel like I won't ever forgive my mother. And I don't know how to help my dad. He's really down.”

“My mom would take my father back in a heartbeat, but we have no idea where he lives. He's not someone I ever care to see, and if I did, I'd knock some sense into his stupidity. You already help your dad—just be there, listen, take care of Kara when you can.”

The beach ended and the bluff reached its calloused fingers into the sound.

Dean backed me against the sea wall. Waves crashed.

His mouth was on my neck, then a warm breath in my ear. “You don't have to worry about things like that with me. I'm loyal. I'm yours. And I'll protect you,” he promised, his hands inside my clothes.

I heard his zipper, the gulls, and the wash of the tide.

He moved himself up against me.

I closed my eyes.

• • •

On our return to Sound View, we strolled past the Painted Princess Tattoo Parlor. Dean had his arm over my shoulder. He raised an eyebrow.

“Want to?” he said.

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

“Only a little.”

The man at the desk of the Painted Princess was shirtless with a shaved head and a giant Puerto Rican flag inked across his back. He rested an elbow covered in dragons with long, unfurled tongues on the counter.

“
Hola
—whatcha you want? Hearts?
Nombres
?”

“Stars,” Dean said. “With flames. You know,
fuego
?” He squeezed my hand.

I squeezed back.

Dean told the guy, “I have cash.”

Together, we flipped through pages of a binder and chose the images we liked best. Then the guy who took Dean's money sketched our tattoos on the back of a dirty envelope, to practice before he opened up the needles.

Dean went first. The skin grew rashy and raised around the five-pointed star inked on his bicep and along the band of flames that looped the circumference of his arm.

The tattoo artist looked over his glasses. “You keep it cleaned,” he said.

Dean winced.

When it was my turn, I told the guy, “Tiny comet,” as he tenderly turned my foot to examine my instep.

“
Cometa
pequeño
,” he said.

I clenched Dean's hand and bowed my head, holding in a shriek as the outline of the comet's tail left my skin feeling singed.

Hobbling to our blanket, my arm hooked through Dean's, we walked through the crowd and I was disappointed to find Jimmy still there waiting for us on a night that was supposed to belong only to Dean and me. “Let's party,” Jimmy announced when he saw us, extending two plastic cups full of warm beer as a greeting.

Dean flexed his bicep and showed his buddy the meteor blazing his skin. “New ink,” he said.

I pointed to my foot.

Jimmy hollered. “Party hearty, homies.” Then he gulped his beer and belched the first four letters of the alphabet.

Dean and I held our drinks high for a toast. He winked at me, and I winked back.

“Cheers,” he said.

“Cheers,” I agreed. We drained our cups.

Dean carried me piggyback following a procession of brassy Harleys, making our way to his pickup.

In the cab, I squeezed between the boys while Van Halen's “Why Can't This Be Love” blared from the speakers. We peeled out of the lot and raced down Hartford Avenue with the windows down. The wind tangled my hair and whipped it into my eyes, while the boys lit cigarettes inside cupped hands. It was summer and hot, and with night falling, we cruised Route 156.

At a stoplight in East Lyme, under a sky the color of raspberry sorbet, Dean kissed me. Everything inside me expanded, then settled back. I loved him, I knew—his tan skin, his hair of spun gold, the way his arms were defined into hills and valleys, the salty taste of his lips, how he always smelled of cigarettes, coffee, Juicy Fruit, and rain. I loved his spontaneity, how he would suggest a tattoo, how he snuck me out of my house for beach walks late at night, how I would find flowers that Dean bribed the custodian to hide in my locker after hours, for no reason at all.

He was fearless with his high-speed driving and fake ID for beer runs. I loved that danger in him, how he blew through red lights, drove down one-way streets, and lit his cigarettes in cupped hands next to
No
Smoking
signs. Whenever he had a chance, Dean broke the rules, but sometimes he would say, “I'm gonna do something crazy, but not with you. Not with precious cargo on board.” And that was what I loved most about Dean, his protectiveness of me. I knew he meant it when he said, “I'm loyal. I'm yours.” And I believed he would always adore me and guard me, that I would always be his girl.

After stealing a second kiss, Dean hit the gas when the light turned green. We picked up speed and headed east on Old Shore Road. Jimmy tapped my shoulder and asked, “No kiss for me?'

Jimmy Pistritto was the opposite of Dean, with dark curls and pockmarked skin. He had known Dean since the fifth grade, where they were both put in a classroom for kids who couldn't read well. Dean told me that Jimmy had been a fat kid, but he had grown into someone thin and tall, funny, and, at times, frightening and mean. He wore suit jackets over T-shirts with stonewashed jeans and took on a 1980s gritty
Miami Vice
sort of persona.

Jimmy watched as Dean put my hand under his and showed me how to shift from second gear to third, third to fourth, fourth to fifth.

Racing around the curbs, we hit a speed that felt destined for flight.

In minutes, we reached Rocky Neck State Park, across from which we turned into the Bayberry Motor Lodge, our wheels grinding over the gravel lot.

Dean said, “Remember Eddie Gabes, the kid who looks like Theo Huxtable from
The
Cosby
Show
? He and I went through drivers ed together, got our licenses on the same day. He and his mom work and live here in the summer. They get free HBO and she lets him keep a cooler full of beer.”

Dean knew someone everywhere. But I had hoped we'd be alone that night, climbing the bluffs that formed stony vistas over Niantic Bay, making out on the swings at McCook Park and sharing Frosty Treat cones by the train tracks. I hadn't counted on Dean bringing Jimmy with us, or on meeting up with Eddie Gabes.

When I lied to my dad about where I was staying, I had imagined a different kind of night. My expectation was a date, an evening that was about sleeping (and not sleeping) all night long beside Dean. I hid my disappointment when I understood that he had a different plan. “Looks awesome” is what I said, my arm around Dean's waist as we walked into the motel office, which resembled a giant tollbooth.

Inside, Eddie Gabes blared Run DMC's “You Talk Too Much” and continued to dance unabashedly when we stepped in.

“What's up?” he hollered over the music pounding from a silver boom box.

Eddie's mom walked up behind her son to introduce herself. She didn't look old enough to be anyone's mother as she snuffed a cigarette out on the tile floor with the toe of a neon pump and turned the music down. “Don't you kids destroy anything, you hear?” She turned to me and stuck out her hand. “Keep the boys in line.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

Mrs. Gabes's nails had rhinestones in the polish.

“I'll be right there in number two, in case these boys get dick-brained.” As she spoke, she leaned into the hand she held above her hip. She was sexy and she recognized the power it gave her. When she reached for the door, she shouted, “Everyone better be eighteen.”

Dean answered, “What do I look like, a baby snatcher?”

“Yes,” she called over her shoulder before she slammed the door.

We all watched Mrs. Gabes walk across the lot, her tiny ankles wobbling in her heels as she let herself into a room on the other side of the building. Before she closed the door, she gave a little wave.

Jimmy bit his fist. “Goddamn. I'd die if my mom looked that good.”

“Well, she don't,” Eddie told Jimmy. “Nothing to worry about there.”

Eddie had his mother's good looks and dressed like a rich kid, even though, like the rest of us, he was not.

“You got my shit?” he said to Dean, who nodded and handed him a heavy black gym bag.

I knew better than to ask what was inside but guessed that it was more stereos. Jimmy and Dean had developed a system for scouting out car doors with manual locks that had upgraded pullout radios in the dash. A friend had sold them a lock pick that looked like a long silver ruler. It slid along the passengers' windows into doorjambs to finesse the locks until the door handles popped open. A month earlier Dean had told me, “That's the last of it,” after he sold the radios to a pawnshop to pay off his gambling debts, promising that the stealing was over.

But when he gave the bag to Eddie, he reached for my hand and squeezed it, a sign to me that my worry showed and to let it go.

Eddie stashed the loot in a closet behind the registration counter and pointed at Jimmy. “Dude, what's with the suit coat? You look straight-up hellacious.”