The Book of Speculation (32 page)

A car pulls into the driveway, followed by an insistent pounding recognizable by its annoyance.

“It’s open.”

Enola stomps in with Doyle behind her, a languorous presence. “I told you to come back. Where the hell have you been? I tried your cell but it’s going to voice mail.”

“It got shut off. Watch the floor.” I gesture to the hole.

“Was that there the other night? What the hell happened?”

“Pothole,” Doyle says, grinning.

Enola edges around the living room, eyes roaming the floor and walls. “I thought you didn’t want to come back here. That’s what we agreed. Thom said he’s good to take you on when you’re ready.” She pauses by the picture of her and Mom, the picture Frank took. “You can’t be here anymore. Get your stuff and come with us for a while. It’ll be fun.”

“Little Bird, what’s a day’s difference going to make? He can catch up to us.” To me Doyle says, “We’re heading to Croton for some of August before we swing down south again. Atlantic City for part of the fall, then down south.” He leans up against the door and props his feet on the frame, worn boot heels showing this to be a favorite position.

She shoots him a look.

“I’ll come with you,” I say. “There’s a curator job in Savannah I’m looking into. I just need to take care of something first.”

“If it’s about the book, it has to stop, Simon. You’re scaring me. If it’s about Frank and Mom—let it go. She’s dead and there’s nothing he can do to take it back.” As if on cue, Frank’s truck starts up. We watch it roll out of the driveway and down the street—to the marina, to the bar, to wherever sad men who’ve fucked their best friends’ wives go.

“I think we should have a last bonfire before we go.” The idea is so quick, so natural, it’s almost brilliant. “Remember when we were little and we used to cook out?”

“No,” she says. Doyle is up from his post at the door, rubbing his hands against her shoulders.

“It was great. Corn and hot dogs, burgers, lobsters, too. Dad and Frank would make a bonfire and let us toast marshmallows.” The
us
who toasted marshmallows was Alice and me. Even then we had our shared and parallel lives, watching each other while flakes of charred sugar and cornstarch flew into the sky. “I want a last bonfire. I want one good memory here. We deserve a good memory.”

“As if one bonfire could fix it,” she says.

I picture Alice across that fire, Alice standing on my porch, furious, Alice at the restaurant waiting for me while I talked to Enola, Alice on a date with me, without
me
.

“Haven’t I been here every time you’ve called? Haven’t I always answered, even when it’s three
A.M.
and you need me to drive somewhere to take care of you? Haven’t I always? I carried you when you were bleeding. I patched you up and I waited for you to come back. Don’t you know that’s why I stayed? I thought you’d come back but you never did.” Enola was never abandoned; I was. I have the right to guilt. “I want one last bonfire.”

She shakes off Doyle’s hands and flops down on the couch. The floor squeals and we all hold our breath to see if it will give out. It doesn’t. I’ve got her; she’s pissed off, nearly crying, and thinking of a hundred things to yell at me, but I have her. She looks at Doyle, then me. “Then you’ll come with us?”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“Fine.”

“Cool, cool,” Doyle murmurs.

“Good. Thank you,” I say. I get up, test my weight on my ankle. The pain is still there, though duller than yesterday. “I want it to be perfect.” I turn to Doyle. “I need you to help me get something.”

*   *   *

Doyle and I stand outside Frank’s workshop. Enola is inside with Frank’s wife, having refused to participate in these activities. She’s checking on Leah, to see how she’s holding up and to keep her distracted. Once Leah let her in, Doyle and I went to the barn. He offered me his shoulder when my ankle threatened to roll. He has no objection to what we’re about to do.

“I get it, man. Dude took a wrecking ball to your family so you want to torch a few of his things. I totally understand. It’s okay.”

In front of the workshop it’s not okay. A large padlock hangs on the door latch, rusted and intimidating. Of course it’s locked. Why would I think it wouldn’t be locked?

“We need bolt cutters,” I mutter.

The man next to me tilts his head, swings an arm back behind his neck and pops his shoulder in a gruesome cephalopodan spasm. “Nah,” he says. “We’re good. I got it. Hang on a second.” He disappears for a few minutes, leaving me alone with the light-headedness that seems to accompany impending thievery. Eventually he comes loping back, empty-handed. “Car,” he says, by way of explanation. I must look confused because he adds, “Paper clip,” and pulls a large silver clip from the pocket of his baggy cargo shorts. “Always got a few.”

Before I can respond he’s already unbent the clip, straightening one end and leaving a large hook at the other, clearly something he’s done before. He drops into a crouch below the lock, and begins to gently work the straight end of the clip inside. His tongue pokes from the corner of his mouth. He strokes the top of the lock, as if feeling for movement. Suddenly, he flicks his wrist and the lock twists open, pulling free. He spins the paperclip around on his finger and stuffs it back into his pants. “Haven’t done it in a while, but you never really forget.”

“Doyle, why do you know how to do that?”

A shrug, the tiniest movement of suckers at his brow. “I used to play around with stuff like that when I was a kid. Wanted to see what I could get into. Started out because I always forgot my keys. Figured it was a good idea to make it so I didn’t need them.” He opens the door.

“Did you ever steal the change out of pay phones?”

He winks and smiles broadly, enough to be charming. “Now why would I do that?” Unlikely as it should be, my sister has found her perfect match.

Frank’s workshop is littered with empty bottles, freshly accumulated since I was last here.

“I’ll get the paintings. You work on the curtains.”

We pile it all, portraits and fabric, onto the frame of the dory Frank was working on. It needs to be gone, everything that was drawn in the book, because it, too, is marked by tragedy, if not intent. I’m moving slowly, awkwardly, but Doyle manages the curtains with an acrobatic grace, jumping and tugging, flinging the fabric over his shoulders.

“You’re freaking Enola out, you know,” he says, tossing a length of curtain onto the boat’s bones.

“I don’t mean to.”

“Yeah, I know. But just—I don’t know. I’m worried about her a little, okay? She talked like you guys were really close. I thought her coming here and seeing you would make stuff better, but then you’re not close and you’re not so good either. This is making her worse.”

“Worse how?” I stack the pictures on top of each other, bearded face upon bearded face, stern-looking people, vaguely Slavic.

“You saw,” he says. “She doesn’t do that, not to kids. She sometimes messes around with people who are assholes, but she never does a reading like that to kids. I’ve never heard her talk like that before.”

I tell him not to worry, because it’s all I can do. I’m not sure if I can explain how burning a few things will make everything better, or how much of this is hinged on hope. “Let’s get this stuff to the beach. She may not remember it, but she loves bonfires. They’re good for the soul.”

Doyle carries the bulk of things down to the beach, where we heap it all on a flat stretch of bulkhead to keep it from being swarmed by horseshoe crabs. We stare down at the scrabbling throng.

“No worries,” he says. “I’ll find some wood and kindling and see what I can set up. You get Enola, I’ll get this.”

“Thanks.”

“Hurry up. Smells like lightning.” He bends over the bulkhead and pulls from it a piece of driftwood that was sandwiched in the space between the posts and the boards. The Electric Boy not only juggles lightbulbs, but he can pick locks and smell lightning. A bubble of laughter rises.

Enola is more than happy to be rescued. Frank told his wife everything, from the story about his palm being read, to how my mother brought him coffee each morning, and about the house. When Leah opened the door her face grayed at the sight of me and for a brief second I thought she’d be sick. I thought I might be sick as well.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“For what?” Leah said. “It’s not as though you did it.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, because it’s what you’re supposed to ask, and following the prescribed motions is all we can do.

She laughed, loud and fierce. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s not like I didn’t have other options. It’s not like I don’t have choices.” She leaned against the door. “I could take him for everything, you know. I could kick him out. But right now, right now, I’d like to see what his back looks like after a week of sleeping in his workshop. Then, we’ll see. Nobody loves you quite like someone who’s sorry.” She smiled and her eyes took on a hard edge. “We’ll see.”

For a moment I pictured Alice’s straight back, grinding coffee, and Frank, curled inside the skeleton of the dory in the barn, sinking into the frame.

Then my sister appeared behind her and we left Leah alone.

“She spent last night and this morning finishing the wine,” Enola says as we walk down the drive. “I don’t mean a bottle either. She finished
all
their wine. I’m surprised she isn’t dead.”

“It looks like Frank did some of that too. The barn was filled with bottles. Was Alice in there?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“This sucks,” she says softly. “I loved them. I mean, didn’t you want to be their kid even just a little bit, even just once?”

“Sure,” I say. “Once in a while. Couldn’t help it.” But then, maybe being us wouldn’t have been quite so terrible were it not for Frank. “Leah will be fine,” I say.

“She’s tough,” Enola answers. Then after a while: “Did you get what you came for?”

I nod. “Doyle picked the lock on Frank’s barn. Did you know your boyfriend is a thief?”

“We’ve all got to be something,” she says.

Dusk has fallen and Doyle appears to have been right—thunderheads are pushing in from the west. We’d best get moving. I tell Enola that I’ll meet her down on the beach; I need to swing back to the house to get something.

Climbing down the ladder rungs to the beach is difficult with the book and a bottle of lighter fluid under my arm. It would be easier to drop everything down, but the book would be mobbed by crabs, and the last thing I need is to have the thing get so damp it won’t burn.

And maybe I want to hang on to it a little longer, this last piece of us.

Once you’ve held a book and really loved it, you forever remember the feel of it, its specific weight, the way it sits in your hand. My thumb knows the grain of this book’s leather, the dry dust of red rot that’s crept up its spine, each waving leaf of every page that holds a little secret or one of Peabody’s flourishes. A librarian remembers the particular scent of glue and dust, and if we’re so lucky—and I was—the smell of parchment, a quiet tanginess, softer than wood pulp or cotton rag. We would bury ourselves in books until flesh and paper became one and ink and blood at last ran together. So maybe my hand does clench too tightly to the spine. I may never again hold another book this old, or one with such a whisper of me in it.

But on the beach stands my sister. She is not in my books, and what kind of man would choose words that are already written over what might still be? When I carried her, her legs torn open, part of her flowed into me, and who would I be if I could not part with this beautiful thing for the person to whom I promised, “I will take care of you.” I said always. Even if it meant hurting me.

I dig my good foot into the sand for balance.

Doyle has made a driftwood tepee, under which the curtains and paintings are stashed in a pile. Enola stuffs dry grass in the folds, sticking pieces anywhere they will stay.

I thank him and he shrugs. “Don’t know if it’ll light. I put the parts with the chains on the bottom. Figure that’ll keep any of the damp in the sand from creeping up too high.”

I shake the bottle of lighter fluid. “Hopefully it won’t be a problem.” His eyes gleam.

Crabs scuttle around us. Enola kicks at them, swearing. Yes, I remember walking into the water, how they crawled up me and it felt like an itch being scratched. And I remember her sitting back on the shore, knees pulled into her chin, petrified.

I will make things better.

I douse the wood and the curtains, squeezing until the bottle splutters out its last drop. The fumes are strong enough that even the crabs move back, forming a circle around us. I tear a page out, then tuck the book into the very top of the pile, nestling it between a curtain and a log. The page is ruined, an illegible muddle of brown and blue ink, unable to speak the names that were written on it. I roll it tightly and set Enola’s lighter to it.

I only need to touch the burning paper to the curtains. A wall of heat pushes back as the pile becomes a Technicolor bright chemical blossom. Eyebrows and eyelashes singe and I fall. Enola and Doyle pull my shoulders, dragging me from the inferno. There is a putrid stink—smoke and rot together. The hair burned off my forearm and foul-smelling soot dusts my skin.

“Holy shit,” Enola shouts. She repeats it like a mantra,
holyshitholyshitholyshit.
Soon it falls apart into laughter. The chemicals burn off and the fire settles to a slow roar as tinder smolders and logs catch fire. I watch a curse’s touch turn to ash.

The crabs back away from the fire, retreating toward the water, and Enola and Doyle sit in the sand beside me. It looks like one of the fires Frank and my father built. If I leaned just to the other side I might see Alice, light hopping across her freckles. If I looked out to the water, I might see Mom swimming or hear her calling me.
Simon.

“You burned the book,” Enola says. She briefly touches her forehead to my shoulder. The gentle press is her thanks. Words she’s always had trouble with.

“I burned everything. I got caught up in it because I lost my job.”