Burning Down the House Read Online Free

whose fortune made possible this wedding, this plane, these people, this life. As Neva pulled away in the car Steve turned and seemed to notice her from a great distance, seeing right through the tinted window. He turned his head as if he wanted her to be aware that he was watching her. When she looked back at him she thought she could feel his eyes staring directly into hers. She took two energy bars out of the backpack and handed them to Roman and Felix and the SUV went sliding out past the tiny airport along the lovely road back to the house.
    —
    Riding in the car Neva is reminded of another car ride, her first car ride, sixteen years ago. She was ten. She remembers gliding through the countryside as if on water. Now she glides through another country, another landscape, and feels as if she herself is the water. A river. The River Neva. She has let life run through her. She has suffered. She has survived. She knows this about herself so completely that this knowledge is simply a part of who she is. She is stoic like a river. She is sensuous like a river. She does not need people, like a river. The river takes everything that is thrown at it, into it, and keeps moving, moves on. She has taken everything and moved on. She has made a new life, found a place in the world. She takes care of children. She keeps them afloat. There is nothing she cannot carry. She is deep and her inner current is a storm of force in which somebody could sink. She is calm like a river. She is reflective like a river. She is strong. She is incredibly, terrifyingly, unapologetically strong.
    —
    Now come hours of solitude, hours of time change. Hours of unpacking for the boys while they eat dinner with the family and she is left alone. She’s never been to England before and she notices the way the sun bleeds slowly through layers of colored silk and evening comes on in blue glimmers and a thrilling coolness arrives and blows the leaves and flowers. The night air brings sounds of laughter and debate and bitter tones and honest whispers and the boys fall into bed with their hair swept over their faces.
    —
    She keeps to herself to avoid explanations, the complicated exposition that accompanies a new job and always tires her. Her room adjoins the boys’ and she listens to them move in their sleep as if they are playing soccer throughout the night.
    —
    She recalls a conversation on the plane with Patrizia, their words, mostly Patrizia’s words, flying along like birds darting in and out of the clouds beside the plane. Patrizia drank wine and she talked to Neva as if they’d known each other forever and her confidences fell from her mouth like teeth in some dream about losing all of your teeth, clattering and a little bloody.
    Over the ocean Patrizia tells Neva that she has been trying to have another child for a long time. In a kind of monologue, half drunk, her eyes half closing, she describes years of needles, years of drugs. All for another baby, she says, wistfully, angry, mocking herself. She doesn’t seem to care if the boys can hear her, but they aren’t listening.
    —
    Neva wonders on the plane if she will ever have children of her own, Children of the River. She once read an article about children born of rape in Rwanda. They were called Children of Bad Memories. Her children if she has them will be Children of Good Memories. Her children if she has them will be loved. She has some long-ago good memories but few recent ones. She will make some good memories. She decides to do that. Yes, she thinks, I will figure out how to do that.
    —
    In the middle of the night Neva realizes that she hasn’t eaten dinner. She goes downstairs in the dark and finds the kitchen.
    Inside, dim light and the gleaming angles of appliances here and there. A gnawing sound vibrating from an old refrigerator and the only food in it bottled water, champagne, and eggs. In the glow from the open fridge she could make out a figure leaning against the counter,