“What?” Dara asked, wondering if she was dreaming.
“I saw her once,” Marie said, her feet wrapping around Dara’s, warming them. “Changing her costume behind the stage.”
“They were the same?” Dara repeated, needing to be sure.
“They were the same.”
FIRE, SNOW
The dream came fast—moments, it seemed, after she closed her eyes, Marie curled up beside her. They were at the carnival, watching the Sword Swallower in the sideshow tent.
She was tall and grand, with scars around her mouth like hatch marks, like tribal signs.
The swoosh as she raised the sword, hoisting it high above her head. Then, bending her knees, springing herself into a spin, head whipping around in a pirouette.
One turn, two turns, then suddenly the sword became a torch and, stopping, she was no longer the Sword Swallower but the Fire Eater, scars around her mouth like hatch marks, like tribal signs.
Her arms mighty and rounded, lifted up over her head, forming a perfect oval. Her arms corded red and invulnerable, holding the torch high, so high it reached the sagging top of the tent.
The canvas, scarlet and gold, above them and suddenly shuddering with fire.
Dara, we have to go! We have to go! It’s time!
How she reached for Marie’s hand but couldn’t find her, the heat coming down like a vibration.
Opening her eyes, she thought she could still see it.
Waves of fire rolling across the ceiling, fingers of fire stretching to all corners.
I’m burning. My body is burning.
* * *
*
Is it morning, her eyes pinching, the room bright as noon but the clock saying four a.m. And then remembering the bedroom window faced west and dawn never came in there.
“Dara, we have to go! We have to go! It’s time!”
It was Marie, her hands on Dara, lifting her.
And she was on her feet and the room suddenly fell dark and her mouth filled with stench. The door open, the hallway black and her hand on the wall, her palm sticking to the hot plaster, and Marie pulling her, pulling her so her arm felt it might leave its socket.
The floorboards burned under her feet and she was running, Marie’s hand clamped to her wrist, pulling her down the stairs, stumbling to the entryway and the jussssssh of air sucking them in, gasping to hold them, and Marie nearly dragging them forward, nearly yanking Dara’s arm from its socket, across the threshold and out the door.
* * *
*
A swarm of fire trucks, a police car, outside, a neighbor must have called, great white tides of smoke, rolling across their house, swallowing their house, swallowing everything.
* * *
*
It might have been fifteen minutes or two hours, the hushed awe of neighbors in flannel pajamas, a little boy in mouse-paw slippers crying loudly, mournfully, the whine of sirens, a chemical smell in the air of singed metal, melting plastic, burning foam, but the fire was gone, leaving a heavy black streak up the center of their house.
What was left of their house, its center sunken, its cavity exposed: buckled floorboards, snaky wires, a few remaining rafters like fingers pointing and white ash like confetti shaking from its rafters.
Shivering under a heavy blanket someone had draped over her, Dara stared at it in wonder. How small it looked, how diminished. Like looking at a fuzzy Polaroid from childhood, like stepping into your kindergarten classroom again, its furniture like matchsticks under your feet.
“You’re so calm,” a neighbor was saying to her.
“She’s in shock,” whispered another.
She turned and looked at them, a white-haired couple in matching robes. Holding hands, their bony knuckles knocking against each other.
“I’m okay,” she said. Because she was, though she couldn’t say how, or why.
But she was looking past them at Marie in the distance.
Marie, except her blond hair was black, black streaks running up one arm.
Sitting in the back of the fire truck, an oxygen mask over her face, mottled legs dangling, she was waving at Dara, waving her over. Come here. Hurry. It’s time!
Dara waved back and began walking toward her, the blanket falling from her shoulders.
Breathe. Breathe.
* * *
*
The firemen were talking about the gas furnace, the flue. Years of junk caught in there. Old leaves, a bird’s nest, dead mice.
Flame rollout, they were calling it. Flue gets jammed up, flames escape and roll out like a great wave.
It’s a shame how much junk people keep in their basement, right by that combustion chamber and I always tell my dad, the flame should be clean and blue.
Dara was listening, sort of, but she was mostly listening for Marie’s breathing, her mask fogging up. It was so soothing, like a metronome, like a promise.
A firefighter appeared suddenly, his face glistening with soot, holding something on a stick.
“I was worried it was a pet at first, or something,” he said. “A dog or cat.”
“No,” Dara said, looking at Marie. “It’s just an old blanket.”
“Rabbit fur,” Marie said, the oxygen mask off now, cradled in her blackened hand. “Vienna Blue.”
“Found it halfway up the basement stairs,” the firefighter said. “The force of the flue must’ve sent it flying. You’d be surprised how often it happens. Crowded basement, old house. Bad luck.”
“Yes,” Dara said looking at it, the sooty and wet pelt in the man’s hands. “Bad luck.”
She looked at Marie, who looked at her, a sneaking smile there.
* * *
*
They made Dara sit in the truck and take the oxygen, the smell even stronger now, the strongest she’d ever known. Burning plaster, carpet glue, dry wood, mildewed crates.
Breathe, breathe, she told herself until she could again.
Until she heard Marie again.
“Dara,” Marie was calling out, running toward her on the blue-black street. “Look! Look!”
Her voice was high and light like a bell.
Looking up at the streetlamp above, Dara saw how there were suddenly snowflakes everywhere, swirling everywhere, dappling the asphalt, their hair.
Marie stepped backward, the fireman’s blanket falling to the ground, her nightgown drenched, and her body turning, twirling, her bare feet on the pavement, her long neck, her arms like white birds, and the snow falling and falling.
“Save a few,” Dara found herself saying, her eyes filling, her face hurting from her smile. She was smiling. “Save them.”
Marie smiled, lifting her arms into the air, Dara lifting hers too.
And as they landed in her outstretched palm she saw they weren’t snowflakes at all but ashes, pale and bright, falling silently over everything that had been theirs.
It didn’t matter if it was snow or shredded paper or ash in her hands, because she could breathe and Marie was dancing under the streetlamp and it was over, over at last.
FOUR
EDEN LOST
One Year Later
You’ve never seen true longing until you’ve seen a theater of young girls gaze upon the opening moments of The Nutcracker. All in their holiday best, their red velveteen dresses, their glitter-threaded tartan jumpers, pearl headbands, flocked hair ribbons, their mouths open, agape, their eyes hard dots of wonder.
But it wasn’t only the little girls. It was their mothers in their beaded sweaters and sweeping skirts, their heads heavy from to-do lists, from cleaning the snow off the car. It was their fathers in their navy blazers, maybe a tartan necktie, their faces red from the cold or the quick scotch before heading out the door.