Previously in 30 Stories High/Part One (Link to Part One, if you missed it.)
“He puts on the Moody Blues, and there they are. There’s the breathtaking canyon, funneling the music to me, pinning me to the leather upholstery. So now I’m in front of a giant screen with Surround Sound drowning me in music I had hoped never to hear again…”
Part Two
I sink deep into the couch and return to the balcony of the apartment with the freeway view. The one Sam and I rented thirty years ago, in 1969, after our house in Santa Cruz burned down.
Catastrophe knocks just when we think we are so special. So smart. Sam is on track to a Ph.D. in Literature; I am chosen for interviews to become an intern in a pilot program as a public school teacher. The generous dowry from Dad buys us a hip little sports car, a Fiat convertible, British Racing Green.
As students, we rent the guesthouse attached to the garage of a popular English Professor. He pays us to proofread his novels and baby-sit his kids. We are included in faculty dinners after abalone expeditions. His wife shows me how to bake the New England sandwich bread she packs in her kids' lunches. Harriet, at five-eleven, towers over the dough as she kneads and punches it down.
"Now, your turn," she smiles.
I step in to take her place at the counter. My kneading originates from a point between my chest and my chin, about ten inches above the counter. I try to bully the dough the way she does. I glance around for a step stool. Worn out with squeezing, I step aside so she can finish. She chatters about baking bread from scratch since she was a little girl. Chop wood. Carry water. Take notes.
Catastrophe knocks just when we think we are so special.
After the fire, these rooms are reduced to a smoldering six-hundred square foot pile of things we used to care about. The walls are still standing, but blistered and black. My mother's first batch of original oil paintings claim a spot in one of the layers of stinking rubble. She left them with us at the end of her stateside visit. Her charred canvasses curl like French crepes.
My mother's first batch of original oil paintings claim a spot in one of the layers of stinking rubble.
The floor-to-ceiling shelves of mankind’s most famous stories are now soggy globs of pulp. They have toppled into a jagged heap of literature. Humpty Dumpty.
We literally don't have a thing to wear. Word spreads to the clubby Lit Department, and good hearted people stop by with bags full of things you donate to strangers when you hear they've been vanquished.
I am grateful for the soft sweat suits, already broken in on jogging trails by faculty wives. My eyes light up when I see Levi's under a stack of striped Penney's T-shirts. I make the best of a bag of clown clothes.
In her hurry to rejoin Don Diego Manuel Ruiz de Maria in Spain, Mom also left behind the VW Squareback she bought in Germany, shipped to New York, and drove to the west coast to see us. We had agreed to send her the money when we sold it.
Her insurance takes care of replacing the blown out windshield. That's the only damage to her car. It’s been parked outside, buffered by the fog. Our sports car, garaged against marine layer rust, is incinerated. Insurance doesn't cover blowing up our own car, so we keep hers. We need transportation to get me to my first job interview. I have two weeks to find something to wear.
Insurance doesn't cover blowing up our own car, so we keep hers.
During the interview, the committee asks me about the fire. I guess I need to talk about it. I haven't spoken out loud since the limp hoses were reeled back onto their drums, and one of the sweaty firemen told us we were lucky to be alive.
"We figured we’d be pulling corpses outa here."
"Thank you for coming," I whisper.
We spend the next day staggering through the ruins with shovels.
We tour the Salvador Dali landscape of our three-room rental. The telephone is solid again now, after melting into the silverware drawer. Sharpened timbers have pierced through our quilts and mattress and are lodged in the collie-shepherd’s favorite spot under the bed. Clothes are welded together in the closet. My beloved Navy Pea Coat is slumped over leather boots, until Sam pokes it with a broom handle. Then it disintegrates.
"We figured we’d be pulling corpses outa here."
The stench is everywhere and deep. Burnt wet carpet. Burnt wet books. Burnt wet upholstery. Grotesque bricks of fabrics and nasty plastics. High on the kitchen counter, two blackened, petrified loaves of New England homemade bread.
Outside, we set up cauldrons of soapy water and form an assembly line. We start with things that still have their original shape. Dishes and glasses. Lamp bases. Belt buckles. We scrub and rinse. We dry and let dry, but it is futile. Neighbors help us heave our household artifacts into the bed of a pickup truck, and the Chaucerian scholar with lamb chop sideburns, having previously experienced the bombing of London, mercifully hauls everything away to the dump.
Thank God it wasn’t the Johnsons!
About noon, spectators begin to arrive at the scene of last night's commotion. They walk, jog, and push strollers past our barbecued house to see for themselves. A surreal parade of vicarious victims, several blocks removed. Speechless, I stand out by the curb, leaning on a rake, listening:
"We saw the sky--it was nearly four in the morning--we wondered if it was the Johnson's place--but they're a section north of here--thank God it wasn't the Johnson's."
Adrenaline finally gone, I collapse. Post traumatic flu. Heat sweeps through my head, throat, and lungs. I climb into a charity nightgown, 100% cotton, ripped at the armpit, and crawl into the daybed of the landlord's writing trailer. I linger in a smoky delirium for fourteen days.
The SAUNA dream careens and loops, careens and loops: the trips the husbands make for lumber and hardware to do it themselves. Measure, saw, hammer, banter. Bring in the wood stove, connect the pipe.
Garage Spa! Hip Hip Voila! Grand Opening! Hip Hipoisie!
"Ooh, the redwood is spicy, the carpentry fine,
The night dark and brisk, stoke it up! Bring the wine!"
We finish the wine after midnight. We've been sweating and dripping and drinking and giggling. The two couples retreat, toasted. We go into separate comas for a few hours while waves of heat from the wood burner continue to rise up the new tin chimney and hover in roof beams, blocked from reaching the cold night air by a botched incision in the roof.
"The house is on fire," I tell myself quietly, not to disturb Sam and the dog.
"The house is on fire," I whisper again and slide out of bed to investigate. No smoke, no flames, no heat.
"The house is on fire," I chant to the trashcan under the kitchen sink. No smoke, no flames, no heat.
"What's going on?" Sam asks from under the quilts.
"The House Is On Fire! Get Up! Get Out!"
He and the dog and I meet in the kitchen to hammer out wild-eyed escape plans. The deafening roar quickens our steps. The sound suggests something is sucking the oxygen out of the rooms.
The windows hold out as long as they can, then implode.
Sam yells, "Grab Something and Go!"
"But I can't swim!"
"Don't worry! The fall will kill you! Get out!”
The sound suggests that something is sucking the oxygen out of the rooms. The windows hold out as long as they can and then implode.
The doorknob that leads to the landlord's adjoining porch is not hot. I scurry the few steps across the landing, barefoot, my jaw stiff and shivering, clutching my yellow nightie as I knock knock knock on the big front door. Two adults, two young children, an aggressive Airedale, all need to know the house is on fire, so get out.
Bang, bang, push the buzzer. Push the buzzer and bang at the same time!
I hear footsteps come thumping from the Master Bedroom down the long hall. Breathe.
Just let them know the house is on fire. A robe, a pair of shoes for each kid. Breathe.
Harriet opens the door and starts screaming before I tell her the house is on fire.
I feel a little superior. I’m surprised at her panic. I stay focused and levelheaded as she runs bucking and squawking back down the hall to rouse her family.
I dial the Fire Department from the phone in their hall, rehearsing the address as I wait for a response. No dial tone. No ring.
"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"Is this the Fire Department?"
"No, I’m reporting a fire! My house is on fire!"
"Harriet?"
"What? Who is this?"
"It's Me!"
"Where are you?"
"On the hall phone! I'm calling the Fire Department!"
"I'm calling them! Hang up!"
I feel a little superior. I’m surprised at her panic.
We are interrupted by sirens and the roar of engines.
"They're already here! Get the kids out! Take them across the street!"
She grabs her children and drags them past the trucks and hoses, ladders and slickers. I scoop up two stuffed animals and rush back outside.
Oh, that must be why she screamed when she saw me: it was probably the flames that followed me out my door, shooting out and up, mad for oxygen, gobbling the night air.
Fireballs are erupting through the thick fog bank.
I notice the professor, barefoot in boxers, several rungs up a six-foot ladder leaning against his house. He wets his roof with a garden hose as the west side of Santa Cruz wakes up to witness the spectacle.
Fireballs are erupting through the thick fog bank.
30 Stories High/Part Three of Three…up next Wednesday.
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