“How’d it happen?”
“Who knows.” He was biting his lip, hard. The skin looked ready to break open. “Unless you have something you’d like to tell me.”
I did not want to tell him anything. Definitely not about the phone call, and not about Bastien murdering any of the animals. “I’m not even gonna respond to that.”
We sat in silence for a minute. Birds chirped away outside, annoying as hell. But I couldn’t let it go. It bugged me. My own brother, thinking I would commit arson. “You really think I did that?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
He dug the remote out from between the couch cushions and turned on the television. He muted it and surfed channels before stopping on a local news station. A reporter was on location at the gallery. Smoke drifted from the roof and wafted into the street. Yellow tape blocked traffic, orange cones set up to allow only news vans and fire trucks through. At the bottom of the screen, the ticker read: LOCAL GALLERY BURNS, ELECTRICAL FIRE SUSPECTED.
“Was anybody hurt?” Everyone we knew was supposed to be at that opening. My mother, the kids, Lucinda. All the people from the neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine being trapped in a fire with all those taxidermied animals. The chemicals from their skins—the tanning fluids, the formaldehyde—would fill the air like a poisonous, smothering blanket.
“I don’t know.” Milo covered his eyes. “I don’t think so. They didn’t find anybody in the building. Mom’s traumatized. Vera had to drive her home and give her a Xanax.”
“Where are the kids?” The last time I’d seen Bastien, he’d been tallying the register. There was gel in his hair and I remembered thinking how dumb it looked, spiking up the front.
“Lolee’s over at Kaitlyn’s. I haven’t seen Bastien.”
My stomach burbled so I stuffed a handful of potato chips into my mouth to try to tamp down the acid. There was a subtle, acrid smell coming from beside me, and I realized smoke and chemicals were embedded in the fibers of his jacket.
How had things gone wrong so quickly? Of all the things my father had wanted from me, the number one thing he’d stressed was everyone’s safety and security. Not their happiness, not their wants, but that word again—the one he’d used against himself. Need.
What did my family need from me? What was it that I was supposed to give them?
The news switched over to a weather report. I turned off the TV and straightened some clothes piled on the floor next to my foot. Then I took the beer from Milo’s slack hand and grabbed a semi-clean afghan from the closet in my bedroom. He was asleep before I’d even finished covering him up. Every wrinkle and vein around his eyes stood out, a burst blood vessel prominent in his nose.
I stared down at Milo and understood I was looking at a stranger. This was a person I’d allowed to grow apart from me, someone I’d never tried to understand out of the context of our relationship as children. I’d expected my family to understand me as an adult but somehow thought they’d always stay the same—a family encased in the skin I’d stretched over them, ill-fitting and irregular.
I called Bastien. He picked up after the second ring, and the relief I felt when I heard his voice was like a live thing scrabbling in my chest. I told him that he needed to get some animals into the shop immediately. He needed to find his sister and bring her there too. That I needed it all done by two that afternoon. When I hung up, I took a shower and put some clothes in the wash. I ate some toast. I brushed my hair.
The coffee in the cabinet was so old I worried it might poison me, but the smell as the first drip landed in the dirty machine made my mouth water. I chugged three cups, drinking until my body turned jittery. Woke up my brother by setting a cup on the table closest to his face.
He cracked a lid and peered up at me.
“Get up and go to work.” I nudged the coffee in his direction until a little spilled over the lip. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
Bastien brought a muskrat, a coyote, two red-and-yellow parrots, a possum, a couple of raccoons that looked like they’d been scraped directly off the pavement, mallards, squirrels, and another peacock that was jaw-dropping in its iridescent splendor. When I stroked its tail feathers, they fanned magnificently, a beautiful spot in the dim gray of the workroom.
“What do you think?” He scratched at his chin and dug loose a zit. It sprouted blood and left a trail leaking down his neck.
“Not enough, but it’s a start.” I tapped one of the squirrels with a gloved finger. It was quickly settling into rigor and was probably useless. I’d need him to go out and get us some more, but I was hesitant to send him out for anything live. Recently I’d noticed a pinched look to his face whenever he came back with something fresh. He didn’t like it as much as he pretended; he was just very good at hiding his feelings. Very Morton of him.
Lolee snorted and rolled over on the cot, turning to face the wall. Bastien had picked her up at the bowling alley. She’d been hanging out at the snack bar with a senior from the high school, a boy with a rattail and a bottle-blue pickup truck with lightning bolts painted freehand on the sides. Bastien looked ready to strangle somebody, most likely Lolee, who kept growling at him whenever he walked too close to where she lay pouting.
“So should we gut these? What’s first?”
“We head over to the gallery. I want to see what we can salvage.”
Bastien laughed. “That stuff is wrecked. Toasted crispy. No way you’re gonna be able to use any of it.”
“We don’t have enough here. Not for what I’m thinking. We can use some of the pieces from the front of the shop, but we’re going to need more.”
“I’ll go clean out the truck.”
I pulled an apron out of the clean stack at the back of the shop, and on second thought, grabbed a couple more. Lolee was still facing the wall, so I slapped her on the butt. She yelped and turned over, frowning ferociously at me.
“Wow, you look like your momma when you do that,” I said. “Stop acting like a little asshole. Let’s go get your grandma’s shit.”
Lolee and I loaded up on cleaning supplies and grabbed a supersized box of Hefty bags, my tool kit, tarps, and some paper towel rolls. We threw everything in the back of the truck when Bastien pulled around.
On the drive over, we rolled down the windows and listened to the afternoon traffic. None of us talked. We just sat and smelled the cool of fall finally coming on, everything in the air permeated by smoke. I thought about my mother and her art showcase. It was hard to imagine what she might be going through. I still found the work repugnant, but it had been hers. The one thing solely hers since my father died. To lose that must have felt catastrophic. So why did it take a catastrophe for me to recognize that fact? What had I thought was gonna happen when I’d decided to unleash hell?
Yellow tape fluttered on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, but there were no police cars or fire trucks. We went right up to the front and tried the door, which was unlocked.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.” We picked up tarps and loaded them with supplies, carrying them with us into the building.
A heavy odor of chemicals and char hung in the air. “Careful,” I said after Lolee walked across a bad piece of flooring. It creaked underfoot, giving the room a fun-house vibe. Standing water soaked the corners, full of wet ash. Lolee touched the wall and scowled at the black mess that came off on her hand, scrubbing it on her track shorts. I was glad to see she’d put on sneakers instead of her usual flip-flops. There were too many nails and sharp bits of debris that might scrape up bare feet.