57

The wind was rising. Another breathy explosion blew out windows. I ducked involuntarily to avoid flying glass.

The explosions were hushed, the sound of splintering and fragmenting louder than the blasts. I had trouble pushing open the front door, the animal-pattern rug bunching, jamming the entrance. Already I could feel the heat.

Connie leaped onto my back. I shook her off, as gently as I knew how.

“Richard, don’t go in there,” Connie pleaded. “Please don’t go in there, Richard—please stay out here with me.”

She was clawing at me, and when I crossed the living room I dragged her with me. “I won’t let you do this.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” I had to shout, fire thundering.

“I don’t care about the mirror.” Her one healthy eye reflected flames. “I don’t care about the house. You planned this.”

Fire oozed down the stairs. Connie was crying, stumbling after me into the smoke. “And I’m not going to lose you again, Richard.” She was screaming to be heard. “What kind of a life do you think I’m going to have after this? What kind of life do you think I’m going to have for my baby?”

I swept Connie outside. Her bandage was smouldering, and her blouse twinkled, fine points of vermillion streaming smoke. I found the brass nozzle and pulled hard, straightening the garden hose. I drenched her while she sprawled, cursing me, telling me nothing that happened to her mattered anyway.

“I don’t want it,” she said. “I want to reach in there and tear it out.” She was bawling now, and I knelt beside her.

“Please keep the baby,” I said.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said. It.

“Have the baby,” I said. I intended this as my farewell, my summation.

“You care! That’s what you want—a baby! It’s wonderful, Richard, to find this out after all these years. You wanted children. I could have had children, Richard. It wasn’t my fault. It was you. This is Steve’s baby, Richard. It isn’t yours.”

“It doesn’t matter who the father—”

“No, it doesn’t. It’s a human baby, right, Richard? Is that what you think? If you stay out here with me I’ll have the baby,” she said, her fingers digging into my arm. “You go in there and it’s all finished, Richard. It’s not just you. You always thought you were the center of the world. But what about me?”

I was on my feet but she hung on, a sleeve ripping. I slapped her. I tried to be gentle. Even hurting Connie a little caused me pain, and I knew it was too late in the story of our lives to change anything.

Sleep, Connie. Rest.

I left Connie lying on the dark lawn, one arm outflung as she lay in a daze. Her position was almost that of a person holding out a telephone, It’s for you. The hose was on full force, the brass nozzle lifting and tossing beside her.

The smoke was solid, filling the living room. I closed my eyes. I found the stairs and took three steps at a bound, and then the fire swallowed me. The heat was not what slowed me. I made myself not feel it.

My clothes writhed around my body, pant legs alive, jacket sleeves aflame. The smell of my seared flesh filled my lungs, and then my lungs were finished, each breath cauterizing the air sacs. I made my way into the room, wading against a tide, the floor waist-high with flames.

I called her name. The fire streamed around me, wind pouring through the broken windows. Richard, stay away. Did she say this, or did one of her thoughts reach me, like a cry from a shore?

I think I saw her once more, before my eyes were lashed by the fire and I lost all vision. She sat cross-legged, breaking the looking glass into fragments against the floor, at the bottom of a pool of light.

The ruptured spheres of hurricane lamps crunched underfoot. I could feel the satisfying grind of glass turning back into sand as I made my way, but the fire was deafening. Did she speak to me, once, parting her lips to utter flame? Or was I blind by then, imagining the scene, creating a mental image of the room so I could grope my way?

By the time I reached her she was gone. Her bones were a wooden cradle someone had cast into the bonfire, furniture no one would ever need again.

I told her I loved her. Or I tried to, with what was left of my organs of speech. I pressed my hands over the remains of the shattered mirror. She had done her work well.

Glass doesn’t burn. It bubbles, and fuses. Fire transforms it, turning it into cysts of silica.