You're On Fire Pt 2

You wake to the smell of smoke and the voices of your neighbors outside; you creep through the knots of your covers and slide down to the floor, and through the gauzy summer curtains you can see the outline of the misters that live on your street: Mr. Seidel, Mr. Poppocci, Mr. Bacon, Mr. Accolades, all watching the Celletti house across the street burn. It’s leaking fire from every window and gutter, its shingles curling up and lifting into the superheated night. The yard trees and bushes, already dead because Melinda Celletti can’t be bothered to water her lawn even though she doesn’t even have a job, according to your mother and her friends, come back to life, blooming with fireballs that eat them alive. Mr. Denver, who lives next to the Cellettis, is spraying his roof with a hose as is Mr. Wilhoite on the other side; people are coming out, lining up like they’re waiting for a parade, smiling because people like fire and nobody liked the Cellettis.

You pad down the hallway to the living room where your mother is in the open entryway with her hands pressed against the screen door, her silhouette framed by the flames. Where’s dad? you ask her and she shushes you sharply as if someone might hear.

Through the side window you see Blackwell and Sedarski, cops who come to the station cookouts and block parties (though you’d never call them cops, not in front of your father, not in a million years) sitting on the bumper of their patrol car parked in the driveway. Blackwell tried to kiss your mother on New Year’s Eve; you were hiding in the pantry from your cousins and saw him do it and saw her kick him in the shin. The cops are yawning; there’s an ambulance parked nearby but its lights are off.

If there was a fire near my house, somebody says loudly, I’d be here twice as fast.

Whoever it was is hushed. The cops snicker.

Did they get out of the house? you ask your mother, and she coughs and grabs at the collar of her housecoat, and you understand: Jerry Celletti, who banged on your windows at night to scare you, will never do that again; Melinda won’t argue with your mother and Howard will never fight your father anymore.