13

Fire is an astronomical necessity. On stars, everything burns.

When Irene was six years old, her mother burned their house down. It was not an accident, but it was not suicide. The difference between an accident and a suicide is that someone dies. So the fire was not a suicide because Bernice did not die. Had she died, it would have been full-on suicide, because the fire was absolutely set by her. Much time was spent among neighbors, discussing whether the fire was set by her on purpose. It was actually caused by drunken mishandling of a smudging stick, and a profusion of oil-soaked silk scarves.

Was it a suicide? What death is not a suicide? What choices does a human really make, and where does the fault lie? When you have determined what constitutes “on purpose,” then you will know.

The police had questioned everyone, and no one knew what happened. Bernice did not know. She was screaming when she woke up, screaming louder than anyone had ever screamed. At the time the fire started, she was unconscious. She had been drinking. She had been smudging. That’s all they knew. Whether she purposefully laid down a smoldering smudge stick on a pile of oil-soaked scarves, or whether she had genuinely fallen asleep with a smudge stick in her hand and cascaded over herself onto the scarves, or whether the scarves and the smudge stick had not been involved at all was unclear. You could say that when you take that first big gulp of liquor, the rest is like falling off a log.

Irene did not remember waking up that night, but the smoke was probably making her choke. She most likely fell out of bed coughing, her eyes bleeding tears. Taught by her schoolteacher to crawl along the floor in the event of a fire, she stayed on her knees and crawled. This is what they learned from the bruises on her knees: she crawled fast. Irene did not remember crawling out. She must have crawled down the stairs, maybe calling “Mommy, mommy!” or maybe just trying to breathe. It doesn’t matter what was poignant or what was real. It only matters that Irene went down the stairs and, finding her mother lying there, on fire, she had begun to kick her and pull her burning hair. What was known for sure was that Irene had kicked and dragged and prodded and forced her mother out onto the porch, where the firefighters were arriving. And they saved Bernice and Irene from that fire.

It’s not possible for a six-year-old to carry a woman out of a burning house, whether or not the woman is on fire. Therefore, Bernice must have saved herself. Even if she didn’t remember. Even if she never meant to. What the firefighters and neighbors saw coming out of the door, along with belching smoke and hot air, was a woman crawling and a child kicking the woman and pulling at her burning hair. The child was shouting angrily, “You don’t die! No, you don’t die! You don’t die!” If you’re dying in a fire, sometimes the best thing for you is a person who will stand there kicking you, telling you not to.

The only remnants of the fire on Bernice were the bubbles of scars on her neck and back. Her dreadlocked hair burned all away, leaving wounds on her head that were awful to see, but some hair grew back. Who knows what really happened, in that burning house? Irene’s memories began the following day. She could not remember the fire or anything that came before. She had learned to get by with something adjacent to forgiveness: forgetting. She tried to forget that her mother had burned them up in a fire. But she could never, ever forgive.

* * *

On the weekend visits during college, Bernice and Sally studied astrology together. Sally was enamored of it—soon they were both doing star charts and reading Manly Hall. Sally learned the art and philosophy of it, Bernice the science. Sally said her dream was to return to Toledo and open a psychic shop with Bernice. They could do a radio show. They could write a book. Summer of sophomore year, they apprenticed themselves to the infamous “Witch of Toledo,” an ancient woman rumored to have descended from Esther Birchard, who lived on a creek offshoot of the river in Maumee and took in clients for psychic readings, curses, cures, and charms. So many people had crashed in cars on the road beside her house that there were hexes and wards hung from the trees, yes hexes and wards even in a highly sophisticated scientific center like Toledo. After all, she called herself a witch. Never mind it was a blind curve with no guardrail.

Sally and Bernice worked for her for free through the summer of ’82, cleaning her house, ordering her appointments, and being allowed to listen in on client visits. Sally learned how to talk about the way the winds move through time, and Bernice learned how to apply statistics to an individual, so that holding a client’s hand and gazing at her palm became a riddle of mathematics, a rigid flowchart of possibilities. Sally got really good at talking and believing, and Bernice got really good at tricking and pretending, until together they could captivate anyone they practiced on. By the summer of ’83, she was allowing them to practice on clients and giving them a cut of the fee. By the summer of ’84, before their senior year, they were practically running the place, and Witch told them she would give them half her business, were they to set up shop on their own.

“I’m done,” said Witch sadly. “All these people are wearing me out.”

* * *

In their senior year, Sally got engaged to Dean. She did try dating other people, but then she would get back together with him in a mad, tantric affair. Bernice said it was like she kept getting on lifeboat after lifeboat, but then when the lifeboats got too far away from the ship, she had a panic that she would never find land, yanked the oars away from whoever was rowing, and paddled right back to the sinking vessel. Bernice didn’t care for Dean much. But Sally couldn’t live without him.

As Sally approached graduation, Dean switched from the philosophy department to visual arts. He painted large canvases with scenes part science fiction and part mythology. His form was graphic and dark, like a comic book in paint.

“I love him,” said Sally. “I know it’s crazy. I mean, he’s an artist. But I love him. And you know what? I think he’s really talented. He dazzles me.”

“That’s stupid,” said Bernice. It was the weekend of the first basketball game of Sally’s senior season, and Bernice was in Ann Arbor to see it. Sally and Dean had a place off campus, a little half house that Sally’s mother had insisted on purchasing and furnishing. “You’re just drunk on fucking him. Tantric this, tantric that. That’s no reason to marry the guy.”

Bernice was living in her parents’ old house in Toledo while finishing her degree at Bowling Green. Her father had been only too happy to give her the house, as if her graduation from high school had been some kind of finish line that he was eager to cross. He also bought Bernice a car, and she could drive to Ann Arbor to visit Sally whenever she wanted. This was good, because the only way they could dream together was if they were in the same city. It still worked best in Toledo. Sally said it was because the energy was right. Bernice wouldn’t have said, “Sally, it’s because you suck at lucid dreaming.” But it was true. Sally would lie down and hope for magic every time, where Bernice was learning exactly what physical behaviors would contribute to maintaining control of her dreams. “Just put your body to sleep, but keep your mind awake. It’s not mystical. It’s not even difficult,” said Bernice. But Sally struggled, and could only dream with Bernice if Bernice would come and find her in one of her own dreams. Sally always had trouble sleeping. It was something that troubled her all of her life.

“I thought it was stupid at first, too, this art thing,” said Sally, throwing herself down on the leather sofa her mom had gotten from Finland.

“But then you took him to bed,” said Bernice. “And then it didn’t seem so stupid.”

“Hey, shut up,” Sally said. “You should try it sometime. You might like it.”

But Bernice had actually had sexual encounters with several girls. Her thin dreadlocks, her porcelain skin and large gray eyes, her tiny frame made it easy to pull in someone whose warm mouth would bump against her crotch enough times to forestall the aching need there. Whose fingers would slide around in a pleasing way, soothing her. She did like it. But she was a greedy lover, uninterested in giving back what was given to her, and sometimes she slapped her girlfriends, so she didn’t have a lot of repeat customers. This didn’t bother her. She didn’t want a lot of love.

“You’re leaving disappointed,” she would say to these girls, and then blame it on the liquor. “You shouldn’t have let me get so drunk.” The booze she could leave in Ohio long enough to visit Sally for one day, two days, and then she would be driving south on 75, back to the comfort of gin, back to pushing her crotch into the face of some sad soul who didn’t mind keeping her pants on, who didn’t mind having her hair pulled a little, just to be in company for the night. She wouldn’t say, “Sorry.” She certainly wouldn’t say, “I apologize, but I’m in love with my best friend. And when your tongue is on me, I’m pretending it is hers. And that’s the reason I have such a longing for your tongue.”

“Hey,” said Sally. “I have something to show you. Look in that envelope on the counter and pull out what’s inside.”

Bernice reached over and slid a manila envelope close to her, reached inside and slipped out a bundle of stapled papers and some photographs.

“What do you think? This is the place I picked out. You know. For the astrology studio. When we take over from Witch.”

Bernice spread the pictures out on the counter and looked them over. They showed a strange little farmhouse and some wooded land. Yes, they could appoint this place with all the trappings of a gypsy’s lair. It already had an old well, a busted-down split-rail fence, and plenty of odd outbuildings.

“We could make it really arty and interesting,” said Sally. “Kind of like Witch’s house but even more so. So it’s a real experience, not some tawdry affair in a strip mall in the suburbs or glassy storefront downtown, like next to the cheese store. Or the magazine rack. Let them feel the magic of it.”

Bernice glanced at the map, the survey. She said, “From here we could see the stars. Witch’s house is too close to the city. This place would be perfect.”

“Exactly,” said Sally. “You get it.”

“But what about Dean?” Bernice asked.

Sally rose from the sofa and came over to the counter. She leaned over Bernice and pulled aside one of the photos. It showed a little shack, maybe what used to be an old sheep barn.

“This,” she said, “will be his art studio.”

“What about his degree? Won’t he be staying here?”

“Well, he’ll have to come back up, you know, on weekdays or sometimes,” Sally explained. “But of course he’ll be there, I mean, I can’t leave him. I need him, Bernice. This will be our house, mine and Dean’s. We’ll live there,” Sally said slowly. “We’ll live there. You’ll keep living at your house, of course.”

“Oh, of course.”

“I mean, you don’t want to live with us, do you? I just assumed you wouldn’t. I mean, that would be kind of awkward. We’re in love.”

“Of course.”

Sally laughed suddenly. “Whoa, that could have been super uncomfortable!” She tossed her long body onto the other barstool and leaned against the counter.

“Don’t be dumb,” said Bernice. “I think the farmhouse idea is perfect.”

That night, Sally scored twenty-nine points and her team won. Bernice sat in the stands, watched her friend going left and right, left and right, twitching the basketball jersey forward on her shoulders, folding her waistband over, pushing down her socks. Three months later, Sally missed her period. It was early February, midseason for basketball. Sally took a pregnancy test, and it was positive. She spent an hour crying in the bathroom in the dark, and a day in near silence. Then she called Bernice.

* * *

“BER-niss,” she said. “BER-niss, what I have to say to you is very SERI-iss.”

“OK,” said Bernice. She closed the book she had been reading and switched on the television. Laverne and Shirley. They both had boyfriends, equally distasteful and equally serviceable. Maybe if there was another Dean, she would, too. Would she, if there was another Dean?

“I’m pregnant,” said Sally. Then she coughed or sobbed. “I’m pregnant; I just found out.”