I was jolted awake by my sister, and it felt as annoying as it was familiar. All those Christmas mornings when she was up first. The family road trips, when everyone else was waiting in the car, and she was sent back in to wake me up. When I was younger, I wondered if Caroline ever slept at all.
“What?” I asked when she barged into my room. The way she walked, the smell of her hair. I knew it wasn’t my father standing in the threshold, that’s for sure.
“Oh, you’re awake?”
“I am now.”
“Get up. There’s a fire.”
“In the house?” I sat up quickly, grabbed my shirt and khakis, crumpled from the night before. She turned her back at the sight of my blue boxers.
“No, outside,” she said and left.
I got dressed, ran downstairs. Outside could mean anywhere, and from our porch, we could almost certainly see it. A boat explosion in the harbor, kitchen fire at the White Elephant, arson at the lighthouse, terrorism at Brant Point Naval Station. But I knew, instinctively, exactly where it was.
In the kitchen, in the living room, all the doors, usually wide open, were closed against the smoke and ash. John and Caroline argued in the kitchen, struggling to keep their voices down.
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Asleep,” Caroline said.
“Alice isn’t asleep,” John said.
I went to the back kitchen door and looked out. Flames in the outline of a house, like some kind of symbol or magic trick, a hoop you could jump through. It appeared as if it would burn itself out quickly; there was nothing else on that side of the lot to burn—no trees or grass. Just the framing set in concrete.
The fire truck sirens blasted around the corner; flashing lights lit up the block. We all heard their shouted instructions, the step of their heavy boots, the dragging of their hoses.
“Work men with cigarettes?” I said to no one in particular. “Kids smoking pot? Fireworks?” My voice was hopeful.
“Mom said he probably did it himself, for the insurance money,” Caroline said.
“When did she say that?”
“When I went in to wake her.”
“She was already awake, though, wasn’t she?” John asked.
“What?”
“Did she smell like smoke? Like kerosene?”
“John!”
“Well, everything smells here now,” I said, sniffing.
“She was down here, late last night. I left her right here, with a full pot of tea, staring out at his house.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, John. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“This cat-and-mouse game the two of them are playing—”
“He’s playing, but we don’t really know what she’s done.”
“I told you, I saw the newspaper scraps. And if the detective did any investigating at all, he probably saw me ferrying them away too.”
“What paper?” I said.
“The cut-up newspaper,” John said. “From the poster.”
“So you made it? John, you surprise me.”
“Very funny.”
It wasn’t funny, but I didn’t want to think my mother was that childish and that petty. However, there was one thing I was sure of: John was not a liar.
“Well, a note of warning is not the same as arson,” Caroline said. “Everything on this island is made of wood. How many times did Mom tell us that, did she yell at Tom and Dad to put out their cigars? I just…I just can’t see it. I can’t.”
“Caroline, that man is either over there right now telling the firefighters that your mother burned down his pool house, or he’s planning his retaliation, or both.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it, John?”
“I think we should send Matt over there to negotiate,” I said.
“Matt’s not family,” she spat out.
“Precisely.”
“Speaking of the newspaper,” I said, picking up the one on a kitchen chair. We stared at the front page together.
Hate crimes rock Hulbert Avenue residents
Two properties along Brant Point have been vandalized in what police are investigating as potential hate crimes this week. An anti-Semitic poster was found on Robert Brownstein’s Henry Street property while under renovation, and a Nazi symbol was found on Thomas Warner III’s lawn when his family returned after an outing.
The investigation is ongoing, and police are unwilling to say whether the events are linked. But both beachgoers and homeowners have expressed shock and fear.
“I’ve never locked my doors before,” one resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “But I’m locking them now.”