The War of the Roses

13

The smell of burning had set off a reaction in his dreaming mind, suggesting fire and recalling a Boy Scout episode when a fire had gotten out of hand and burned down a country cabin. He was on his feet in a moment, bursting through the doorway, running down the steps in his bare feet.

The branches were smoldering and the flames were just beginning to sprout like orange needles among the green. He kept an extinguisher in a closet under the stairs. Grabbing it, he rushed back to the library, where the flames had already begun to eat away at the paper wrappings of the gifts.

Upending the extinguisher, he squirted the foam in large white arcs on the creeping flames.

‘Daddy.’ It was Eve behind him, stifling a scream.

‘Get back,’ he responded. The flames were quickly under control. But a foul, smoky smell permeated the room as he continued to pour out the contents of the extinguisher until the fire was out.

‘The damned lights,’ he cried. ‘I should have fixed the lights.’

‘You’ve ruined everything.’ It was Barbara’s voice, filled with anger.

‘What was I supposed to do?’ he shot back. ‘Let the whole house burn down?’

‘You knew they weren’t working right. You knew they were dangerous.’

He dropped the extinguisher, banging it on the floor, and glared at her.

‘I suppose I’m being accused of ruining everybody’s Christmas.’

Eve and Josh had begun to poke through the remains. Most of the gifts were charred or utterly destroyed. Oliver had bought Josh a pair of binoculars, which the heat had bent out of shape.

‘Well, it was a nice thought, Dad,’ Josh said, holding up the distorted object.

‘I’ll get you another pair,’ Oliver said.

‘What did you get me, Dad?’ Eve asked quietly, wiping her soot-stained hands on her robe.

‘According to your mother, a not-so-merry Christmas.’ He looked at Barbara, who turned away in contempt. I saved their lives, he thought, his eyes briefly flickering as they caught some sympathy in Ann’s. She had just come into the room.

‘Isn’t it ghastly, Ann?’ Eve said.

‘Merry Christmas, one and all,’ Josh said, holding up his binoculars and smiling at the scorched tree. Orange shafts of the early sun had begun to filter through the windows.

‘I guess there’s nothing left to do but clean up,’ Barbara said, striding into the mess and beginning to sort out the remains. The Sarouk rug was sooty but not burned and the children rolled it away from the tree.

‘I hope you didn’t cancel our fire insurance as well,’ Barbara muttered as he stood around clumsily.

‘Fuck Christmas,’ he said angrily, striding out of the room. He detested her attempt to make him feel guilty.

In his room he lay on the bed and tried to ward off an oncoming massive depression. It was as if all his old values had been tortured into new shapes.

They had seen only the destruction, none of the fatherly concern. Remembering last night he wavered suddenly, almost ready to accept blame. He had, indeed, forgotten to fix the lights, but hadn’t Ann promised to remind him? Ann. The memory of desire stirred him, focusing his mind. His body responded and he caressed his erection. Any female who had found herself in his sights at that moment would have been fair game he decided, dismissing the specter of any romantic involvement. That would be fatal, Goldstein had warned. ‘Don’t get mixed up with another woman. Not just yet,’ he had intoned. ‘It’s safer to court Madam Palm and her five-sisters.’ He had been surprised at Goldstein’s levity. Besides, Ann was too young. Yet he needed a woman. Any woman.

He remembered Ann’s orgasmic reaction to his embrace. So I’m not completely sexless, he decided, like a prisoner in a dark black cell to whom any ray of light is a gift.

He watched his throbbing erection, tense and trembling, as if it hap! a mind of its own. Closing his eyes, he imagined Ann naked, thighs open, waiting, nipples erect. He was plunging his erection into her, plunging deeply, urgendy. He reached for it, feeling the pleasure begin, then recede. Something was intruding on the mechanism of his fantasy. He tried to fight it away, but its momentum was relentless and his body reacted. The tide" of blood ebbed. He saw Barbara’s face, rebuking: ‘You knew they were dangerous,’ she had said about the lights. Had he really?

Leave me alone, he pleaded.

But he did not want to be left alone.

Not alone.

He stayed in bed most of Christmas Day, although both Eve and Josh came in to apologize or commiserate. He wasn’t sure which. They had opened the windows to air out the house and he had said it was all right if they went out for Christmas dinner with Barbara and Ann. He knew it troubled them, not having him join them, but wisely they hadn’t pressed the point. When they left,

Benny jumped on his bed and burrowed his head into his chest. But he stank so badly of doggy odor that finally Oliver had to swat him off. But the odor had given him some purposeful activity for the day.

Getting dressed, he went downstairs, first taking a peek at his orchids. To his dismay, they seemed to be browning along the petal edges, an ominous sign, surprising, since only yesterday they had been in mint condition.

‘Don’t mock me,’ he told them, proud of their beauty, especially compared with Barbara’s more pedestrian plants. He watered them, offering whispered encouragement, then went down to his workroom, lifting a shaking Benny into the big cast-iron sink, which he filled with lukewarm water.

‘You and me, kid. Merry Christmas,’ he told the frightened dog, whose brown eyes begged relief. As he scrubbed the stinking dog he remembered inexplicably their Gift of the Magi Christmas.

They had vowed to give each other something non-material. He was senior at Harvard Law then and they were tight for cash, barely able to survive on her job demonstrating kitchen gadgets at Macy’s. By a stroke of providence – he used those terms then – he had gotten word about the job offer with the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, providing, of course, that he passed the bar exam. He kept the news from her for nearly a week so that it would coincide with Christmas. He had been curious, of course, about what she had gotten him, certain that, whatever she offered, his would be the topper.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she told him after he had made his announcement.

It was, in a way, a total deception on her part. Fair warning unheeded. He had hidden his confusion and displeasure, wondering why she had complicated their lives without consultation. The object is to control our lives, not let our lives control us, he told her, and she had agreed.

‘But kids bring luck,’ she had said. ‘They’re incentive.’

She had sat on his lap, smothering his face with kisses.

‘I was worried sick you’d scold me. But here you’ve come up with that fabulous job. Perfect timing.’

‘The Gift of the Magi,’ he had said, hugging her. ‘A little love child.’

The feeling of uncertainty quickly passed and he remembered how by the end of that Christmas Day they had become incredibly happy. Their future had begun.

He dried the dog and turned on the sauna. Leaving Benny to dry in the workroom, he went upstairs for his robe. The sauna relaxed him, sweated out his terrors, and the dry heat and wet cold that the shower provided left him mellow and relaxed. As he passed the sun-room on the way back to the sauna he noted that the browning had increased on the orchids’ petals and the stems had begun to bend. Looking closely, he inspected the plants, then dug his hands into the soil. The odor on his fingertips was vaguely familiar, like the foam that had spewed out of the fire extinguisher. It couldn’t be. Another sniff confirmed his suspicion. Not Barbara, he thought. Hadn’t she loved his orchids? Cimbidium was one of the few species that could be nourished indoors, and getting them to grow had been both a challenge and a chore. Not Barbara. Was she capable of that? Again he smelled his fingers. The odor was unmistakable. The confirmation removed his doubts. They were his orchids. His. For him to be the recipient of her wrath was one thing, but to vent one’s frustration on a defenseless orchid was criminal. She’s a murderess, he told himself. And a murderess must be punished.

He stormed about the house, thirsting for revenge, seeking a fitting punishment for this hideous crime. He went into the kitchen. Her domain. Opening cabinets, he looked over the myriad arrays of cooking equipment and foods, searching for something, although nothing specific had occurred to him.

Then he saw the neat silver bricks in the refrigerator. Removing one, he unwrapped it and sniffed at the meat. Of course, he thought with anticipatory pleasure. He contemplated the labels on. the spice rack, removing containers of ginger, curry powder, and salt. Then he poured huge quantities over the loaf, kneaded them into the mix, and reshaped it to fit the tinfoil. He repeated the process with the other six bricks, using different spices, substituting sugar for salt, relishing the impending confusion as Barbara’s customers argued among themselves what it was that had polluted the taste.

In the sauna he mourned the orchids, but the manner of his revenge had more than assuaged his sense of grief. He lay back on the redwood slats and felt the delicious heat sink into his flesh. For a moment the emptiness receded as he thought of the answer he had given to her message of death.