Fire & Ice
Though the heat be outside the cold could be felt within.
Memories now taken away like a shooting spark from an electrical socket. My heart now laced with regret of never having appreciated the place. The chilled breeze gusting along my ankles makes my shorts, the last of my clothing, begin to flap across my knees, while ambulances and fire trucks gather, flashing crimson and azure outside of what used to be my front door.
A neighbor, whom my wife feuded with, looked her squarely in the face. His vision now glistening with watery drops, his eyes giving off sympathetic glances, his hand of steadying flesh reaches into his pocket, pulls out a twenty, and hands it over without a word.
A paramedic carries our felines, Satchel and Rye, over to my family. Their dingy fur wrapped in an ash-tainted blanket whose red, greens, and yellows were of a fading cloth. My sister, another adult of the household, took them gently in her arms and rubbed the side of her face with their paws.
The Fire Chief said to wait in one of the other houses for assistance. We weren’t sure what agency the Aid Workers would come from, but we hoped they were generous.
Once the charred remains of our house crumbled, we were given shelter at Sally’s place across the street. She would take care of us; her motherly instincts were fully charged so my kids would act like angels in her presence. My wife and I could also use some of her maternal gifts.
After two hours or four full episodes of Seinfeld or whatever we were watching on TV, an elderly lady, white hair, with a turquoise dress with little green turtles spread out across the various sections of the fabric, met with us. Accompanying her was a middle-age man, tanned, who carried a stocky build and wore jeans and a white T-shirt. I didn’t ask if they were mother and son, but the make of their facial cast seem to indicate my initial thought.
The patch on their bags, which held a Red Cross, told us which organization they were dispatched from. My wife, who could barely stand, invited them to sit at our neighbor’s table.
The paper work was filled out an hour later and we were given assorted bathroom supplies: a bar of soap, paste and toothbrush, towels, rags, mouthwash, razor and foam. The most important item however was food and hotel stubs. We thank them for their kindness and soon they left.
The drive from Sally’s was not very far, only about twenty miles. After we parked, I gave the stubs to the front desk manager and we entered the room of the filthy hotel. The space was not unlike most places we stayed while on vacation. We were exhausted but we didn’t want to sleep, nevertheless our fatigue won over our natural inclination to lay down and cry.
Sometimes I can still remember my dreams. I have a few mental pictures of my usual bedtime reflections. The one I had that night seemed to invoke previous deeds. It was a reemerging of a long memory, one in which my father-in-law placed a set of keys in my hand. I still recalled the rough texture of his clothing as I felt his embrace, his white teeth shining behind red lips, the tone in his voice when he said it was all mine.
As I lifted my wife off her feet, the milky, frosted dress now hanging over my hands, I knew my first task as a husband and soon-to-be father was complete when I carried her over the threshold and entered… our new home.
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. ”
-Isaac Asimov, LIFE magazine (January 1984)