After the night of the fire, all that Rachel would ever accept the blame for was throwing the switch. Before turning on the living room lights, Rachel said she’d gone to the thermostat and dialed up the heat. She’d switched on the gas fireplace at the same moment the screams had started. A wild banshee wail had filled the dark rooms. Like some wintry demon, an unearthly screeching sounded, and then the entire household seemed to catch fire. The Christmas tree flared. The black throw pillows flared. The black area rugs blazed. Ted rushed to embrace Rachel even as bedspreads and bath towels burst into raging orange flame. The air stank with smoke and scorched hair. The smoke detectors added to the head-splitting racket. They didn’t have time to back their black car down the driveway and save it before flames were flapping like bright flags from every upstairs window. They were standing on the snowy front lawn when the fire trucks came sirening out of nowhere. The house was fully involved.
In Orlando, Rachel has begun to speculate. It would be exactly like Ted to keep some awful truth from her, at least until she gets home. If April were in the hospital, if she’d been stung by a bee and had a severe reaction, or worse, Ted would think he was doing Rachel a kindness by not telling her over the phone. She goes online and searches for accidents in Seattle involving three-year-old girls in the past week. To her dismay, she finds one. According to the news item, a girl has been attacked by a neighbor’s dog. Currently she is in the hospital, in critical condition. Her name is being withheld pending notification of the victim’s extended family.
That night, Rachel listens to her new messages. They are all from herself. “Memo to self: Repercussions!” Just that one word, shrill and bullying. She has no idea to what she’d been referring at the time. She has to check the caller ID to even recognize herself. Was that how her voice really sounds?
All night the idea weighs on her: How many toddlers choke to death on rubber balls and never make the CNN scroll? She keeps hitting REFRESH, hoping for updates on the Seattle Times story. What kind of mother is she if she can’t sense whether or not her child is dead or alive?
* * *
The fire marshal hadn’t thought it was arson, not at first. The episode had made them celebrities, and not in a good way. They’d become living proof of something people didn’t want to believe could really happen.
The fire marshal had picked through the charred rooms, charting the path of the blaze’s ignition. It had started at the minimalist fireplace and traced a circle around the perimeter of the living room. Next, the perimeter of the dining room had kindled. He’d sketched a rough floor plan on a sheet of graph paper clipped to a clipboard. Using a mechanical pencil, he drew a line from the dining room up the stairs and around the perimeter of the master bedroom and bathroom.
Tucked under his arm, he was carrying something wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. “Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he told Ted and Rachel in the driveway. He’d held the bag open and let them peer inside. It smelled horrific, a combination of burnt hair and chemicals. Ted took one look and began to shake.
* * *
Friday night in Orlando, Rachel briefly entertains the idea of calling the police, but what could she say? She checks for an update about the three-year-old girl in critical condition. She calls a neighbor back home, JoAnne. They’ve had a passing acquaintance based on a mutual hatred of the local garbage collectors. JoAnne picks up on the nineteenth ring. Rachel asks if Ted has gotten their garbage can out to the curb this week. She doesn’t want to tip her hand.
She listens, switching the phone from one ear to the other, but hears nothing. Most of what she doesn’t hear is JoAnne’s Rottweiler mix barking. It’s always barking and clawing at their fence.
At last JoAnne says, “Garbage pickup is next week, Rachel.” She sounds guarded. She says Rachel’s name as if she’s signaling to other people within earshot. She asks how Orlando is, and Rachel racks her brains trying to remember if she’d mentioned the trip beforehand. Testing, Rachel says, “I hope Ted’s not spoiling April while I’m gone.” The pause that follows lasts too long.
“April?” Rachel prods. “My daughter?”
JoAnne says, “I know who April is.” Now she sounds irritated.
Rachel can’t help herself. “Did Cesar bite my baby?”
The line goes dead.
* * *
At least the fire marshal had solved the mystery of why their old house stank every winter. Belinda Carlisle, the marshal conjectured, had been using the crushed granite of the fireplace as a litter box. Any time they’d switched on the gas jets, Ted and Rachel had been barbecuing untold pounds of buried cat waste. The insurance adjuster told them that what had occurred was without precedent. Rachel noticed he could hardly contain his laughter as he explained how the cat must’ve been voiding her bowels at the same moment Rachel flipped the fireplace switch.
One moment, Belinda was taking a secret late-night crap in the dark little cave of the firebox. In the cold house, maybe she savored the gentle warmth of the pilot light. She would’ve heard the cricket click-click-click of the electronic spark igniter. Instantly, jets of blue flame would’ve shot at her from every direction.
It had been this furry, flaming demon that had exploded, screaming, and raced around the house, setting fire to every cloth item before falling dead in an upstairs closet beneath Rachel’s dry cleaning, stored in flammable plastic.
* * *
Saturday, Rachel phones home three times and gets the voice mail. She pictures the house empty. It’s too easy to picture Ted weeping beside a hospital bed. When he finally picks up, she asks for April. “If that’s how you want it, young lady,” she threatens, “no Christmas, no merry-go-round, no pizza, unless you speak up.” She waits, not wanting to be hurtful. She blames her mood on a rum-and-cola, a double, that cost more than a turquoise belt buckle from TV. “I had a little girl who was blind,” she taunts, trying to provoke a response. “What are you, now, Helen Keller?”
It’s the rum talking. On television, an enlarged topaz sparkles hypnotically, rotating slowly with the sound turned down.
In the depth of the quiet, Rachel can hear breathing. It’s not her imagination. April is breathing, sounding stubborn, huffing angry little snorts as if her chubby arms are crossed over her chest and her cherub cheeks are flushed red with anger.
Taking a gamble, Rachel asks, “What do you want Mommy to bring you when she comes home?” A bribe will help everyone save face. “A Mickey Mouse?” she offers. “Or a Donald Duck?”
She hears a faint gasp. The breathing stops for an instant before the distant, high-pitched voice squeals, “Oh, Daddy.” Delighted, it says, “Pull my hair, Daddy! Fuck me up the ass!”
It’s not April. It’s the guests next door, a voice filtering through the wall.
“How about we use a solid-gold, thousand-pound bar of chocolate-covered Rocky Road ice cream?” Rachel deadpans. Pressing the receiver against her chest, she pounds a fist against the wall and yells, “How about a pretty pony fucks you?”
Over the phone she hears the little robot vacuum humming around—a replacement—cleaning the floor and bumping into walls, like (what else?) a sightless animal. Ted sits on his ass half the day, but he still wants his labor-saving Sharper Image gadgets. It scares Rachel, the idea that April might accidentally stumble over the vacuum, but Ted insists she’s smarter than a cheap machine.
In a flash, Rachel knows. Even if she’s a little tipsy, it all makes sense. Ted blames her for what happened to Belinda Carlisle. He’s not brilliant, but he’s not stupid. Holding a grudge is something April inherited from her father. He’s bided his time, and now he’s getting his revenge.
A thin crack opens up in her voice, and now all of her panic rushes to escape. She asks, “April, baby, is your daddy hurting you?” She tries to not ask, to stop asking, but the effort is like trying to un-pop a balloon.
* * *
By the time April had been born, they were settled in a cookie-cutter ranch house a few blocks away.
Ted had wanted to bury the cat in the new backyard, but the fire marshal never surrendered the remains. The ranch house was less dramatic. It had no open fireplace and no bidet, but with a blind child, that was just as well. How could Rachel not be affected, living pregnant for six months with smoldering cat turds? As the obstetrician put it, the toxo parasite attacks the optic nerve, but Rachel knew there was more to it than that. It was retribution. Of course, Rachel swore she hadn’t seen Belinda Carlisle before she’d flipped the switch. And Ted had accepted Rachel’s statement at face value.
There were lies that married two people more effectively than any wedding vows.
* * *
On Sunday, Rachel phones and insists that Ted listen. “The next call I make is to the police,” she swears. Unless April says something to change her mind, she’s going to call Child Protective Services and request an intervention.
Her husband, Mr. Passive-Aggressive, laughs a confused laugh. “What do you want me to do, pinch her?”
Pinch her, yes, Rachel says. Spank her. Pull her hair. Anything.
He asks, “Just to clarify … if I don’t smack my kid, you’ll report me for child abuse?”
Nodding, Rachel tells the phone, “Yes.” She pictures him drinking coffee out of the black-glazed mug he salvaged from the fire’s wreckage. The color and finish are so ugly, the mug looks as good as new.
“How about I burn her with a cigarette?” he asks, his voice warped with sarcasm. “Would that make you happy?”
“Use a needle from my sewing box,” Rachel instructs. “But sterilize it with some rubbing alcohol first. She’s never had a tetanus shot.”
Ted says, “I can’t believe that you’re serious.”
“This has gone on long enough,” she says. She knows she sounds crazy. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe this was the toxoplasmosis, an infection in her brain talking, but she knows she’s serious.
* * *
When their insurance settlement for the fire had failed to come through in a speedy fashion, by then the fire marshal was calling it arson. Their lab tests had found a residue in the cat’s fur. Some incendiary chemical agent had kept Belinda Carlisle aflame during her panicked, agonizing final flight. It looked fishier yet that a few weeks before the fire Rachel had doubled their homeowners coverage. Even with a baby clamped to one breast, she hadn’t hesitated to lawyer up.
* * *
On the phone Sunday night, Rachel says she’s not bluffing. Either Ted makes their daughter emit some words, some sound, or they’ll have this battle in family court. It seems like a long time, but Ted responds.
His voice pointed elsewhere, he says, “April, honey. Do you remember what a flu shot is?” He says, “Do you remember when you had to get a shot so you could go play at Easter camp?” Silence answers. Rachel shuts her eyes in order to hear more. All she can detect is the hum of the fluorescent bulb in the bedside lamp. She stands up from the bed to shut off the air conditioner, but before she takes a step, Ted’s voice is back.
“Can you get Daddy the sewing basket?” Nothing seems to happen, but now his voice comes full into Rachel’s ear. “Are you happy? Does this make you happy?” His footsteps sound in the hallway. “I’m going to the bathroom.” His delivery is singsong, like a lullaby. “I’m getting the rubbing alcohol to torture our daughter.” He sings, “Rach, you can stop this at any time.”
But Rachel knows this isn’t true. Nobody can stop anything. The people will always be humping next door. The burning cat will always be rocketing like a comet around every house in which they ever live. Nothing will ever be resolved. Again, it crosses her mind that Ted might be tormenting her. April is upstairs in her room or playing in the backyard, and he’s only pretending she’s there. That’s easier to swallow than the idea that her own child despises her.
“You don’t understand,” Rachel tells the phone. “I need you to hurt her to prove she’s alive.” She demands, “Hurt her as proof of how much you don’t hate me.”
Before the TV can sell another thousand diamond wristwatches, April screams.
Not a beat later, Ted asks, “Rach?” Breathless. The scream echoing in her head. It would echo in her head forever. A caterwauling. The shriek of Belinda Carlisle. It’s the same squeal April had made when she was born.
“You did it,” she says.
Ted replies, “You screamed.”
It wasn’t Rachel’s scream or April’s. It was still another sex noise from the next room. It’s another stalemate. The bag will always be half full. Ted will always be cheating.
Rachel asks him to put April on the phone. “Make sure she’s got the phone to her ear,” Rachel says, “and then I want you to leave the room.”
* * *
“Your father doesn’t understand.” Into the phone, Rachel says, “He owed more on that house than it was worth. Someone had to make the ugly choices.”
She explains to her daughter how the only problem with marrying a spineless, lazy, stupid man is that you could be stuck with him for the rest of your life. “I had to do something,” Rachel says. “I didn’t want you born dead and blind.”
It doesn’t matter who’s listening, Ted or April. It’s another mess that Rachel needs to clean up. She describes how she’d combed hairspray into the cat’s fur, simple cheap hairspray, every day for weeks. She knew it was using the fireplace as a toilet, and she hoped the pilot light would be enough. Rachel overfed the cat so it would need to defecate more often. She crossed her fingers that an increase in intestinal gas might do the trick. She was no sadist. On the contrary, she didn’t want Belinda Carlisle to suffer. Rachel had made certain the smoke detectors had fresh batteries, and she’d waited.
“Your father,” she begins. “He thinks that if the dishes and the toilet are black to begin with, they never get dirty.”
Their last night in Ted’s house, Rachel had stepped into the living room. She’d rushed inside from the cold. She’d intentionally turned down the thermostat, hoping to make the pilot light more attractive. To set her trap, she’d buried tuna fish in the crushed gravel. That night, she’d walked into the dark room, into the shadow cast by the Christmas tree, and seen two yellow eyes blinking at her from the fireplace. A little drunk, she’d said, “I’m sorry.”
On the phone in Orlando, very drunk, she says, “I wasn’t sorry.”
Rachel had told the cat goodbye, and she’d flipped the switch. The click-click-click, like the tapping of a white cane. The banshee scream. Flames raced up the living room curtains. Flames raced up the stairs. In the end, the insurance company couldn’t prove definitively that any chemical residue wasn’t the scorched remains of dry-cleaning plastic.
Saying this, she senses that April has become a stranger. Someone separate who must be respected and deserves to know the truth. April has split away to become another person. “Your daddy stalling is the reason why you’ll never see a sunset.”
The silence could’ve been anyone or no one. If it’s April, she won’t understand, not until she’s older.
Rachel says, “I only chose your father because he’s weak. I married him because I knew I could push him around.” She says that the problem with passive people is that they force you to take action. After that, they hate you for it. They never forgive you. Only then, over the phone, clear and unmistakable, does Rachel hear Ted begin to weep. It’s nothing she hasn’t heard before, but this time his sobs build until, like blasts from a whistle, a child screams. Like a smoke alarm, a high-pitched frantic child’s shriek erupts, sirening from the telephone.
Rachel’s goading has worked. He coerced, controlled, and steered her into hurting something innocent; now they’re even.
With her child’s screams and her husband’s weeping still loud in her ears, Rachel gazes at a gigantic revolving diamond, entranced, trying to divine the new future as she whispers, “Goodnight.”
About the Author
Chuck Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club and Choke, as well as ten other novels—most
recently Damned—and two books of nonfiction. Shooting will begin this summer on the film version of his novel of linked stories, Haunted. His forthcoming novel Doomed will be released later this year, as will the award-winning short film “Romance,” an adaptation of his work by the director Andy Mingo.
Read more of Chuck Palahniuk’s best stories at Byliner.com
Photograph by Shawn Grant
About Byliner
Byliner commissions and publishes original stories written to be read in two hours or less. These “e-short” stories are available on phone, tablet, or computer as part of the Byliner subscription service, and can also be purchased individually through all the major digital bookstores. Bestselling Byliner titles include Amy Tan’s Rules for Virgins, Margaret Atwood’s Positron, Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit, Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car, Nick Hornby’s Everyone’s Reading Bastard, and Buzz Bissinger’s After Friday Night Lights. On Byliner.com, readers get personalized access to an unmatched library of more than 20,000 fiction and nonfiction stories by the world’s best writers, allowing them to easily find, read, save, and share new and classic stories by their favorite authors.
If you enjoyed Phoenix, Byliner recommends …
Read an excerpt at Byliner.com
I’m Starved for You
POSITRON | EPISODE 1
By Margaret Atwood
In the first installment of Byliner’s serial Positron, Margaret Atwood, one of the most prophetic authors of our time, delivers a fictional tale of sexual obsession that is equal parts Tom Jones and Brave New World. A hilarious yet harrowing story that lays bare the very real dangers of trading liberty for safety, I’m Starved for You evokes the irrepressibility of human appetite and asks just how far a man and a woman are willing to go to get what they’re truly hungry for.