Free An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

drawings of women jogging around the moon. The only items in the refrigerator were a half-empty two-liter bottle of tonic water and a jar of light mayonnaise that had probably been there for several presidential terms. The whole house smelled like a perfumed dog, even though my parents had never, to my knowledge, owned a dog, and my mother, to my knowledge, had never worn perfume. There was an exercise bike stationed in front of an enormously big and impossibly thin TV, which was perched on the middle shelf of an otherwise empty bookcase — empty of books, and empty even of other shelves. That was the biggest change: in the house I remembered, there were books everywhere, but now I couldn’t find a one, not even a TV Guide . I had even begun to wonder whether I was actually in the right house when I heard a noise — a grunt or a squeak — coming from the guest room. I followed the sound. That’s when I saw my father.
    He was an invalid and in bad shape; this was obvious at first glance. His face was shrunken and drawn back, and he had a plaid wool blanket on his lap. When he saw me, my father made a kind of wounded-animal noise that I took to mean one-third surprise, one-third Welcome home , one-third Please don’t look at me, I’m hideous , and the blanket slid off his lap and onto the floor, kicking up a good amount of dust that floated there in the sunlight like something beautiful and precious and then sank to the wide-planked pine floor.
    I returned the blanket to his lap and asked, “Oh, Dad, what happened to you?” even though it was obvious what had happened to him: he’d had a stroke. There is no mistaking a stroke victim, even if you haven’t seen one before, which I hadn’t. I didn’t know what else to say, so I repeated, “Oh, Dad.” He seemed to appreciate my awkward position, because he made the wounded-animal noise again, but this time it was much more soothing, and I was calmed by it.
    “Don’t say another word,” I told him. “Relax. Let me do the talking and get you up to speed.” I told him about college and my switch from English to packaging science, and I told him about Anne Marie and Katherine and Christian and about my job at Pioneer Packaging and our house in Camelot and how much I missed him and Mom. I didn’t tell him, though, about the voice that asked, What else? or Thomas Coleman or Anne Marie’s kicking me out, because I figured he already had enough to worry about. But even so, this story must have overwhelmed him a little in its detail and scope, because by the time it was done he seemed to be asleep. I shook my father by the arm, gently at first, but then harder and harder until he woke up with an alarmed snort. From then on I asked only short, factual questions, like “Where’s Mom?” to which he responded in a two-syllable grunt that I took to mean, She’s out .
    We sat there for a while in silence. It got darker and I turned on the light. I didn’t feel the need to talk, maybe because whatever I might have said wouldn’t have been as smart as the silence. My father had a holy-man quality to him: he struck me as having the sort of deep wisdom cripples seem to get with their crippling, and I was prepared to sit there and soak up whatever knowledge he might emanate. It was nice. But the place really was a mess. Even my father’s bedroom was littered with beer cans and empty wine bottles, and there were even a few boxes of wine, the sort that comes with its own spigot. I was certain they were my mother’s because she would always have a drink with dinner and my father never did. Besides, I couldn’t imagine him drinking anything now without a straw and I didn’t see any of them scattered around.
    And on the topic of my mother, where in the hell was she? Where did she get off, leaving my crippled father alone in his condition and not even cleaning the house before she left it? Did her crippled husband not deserve a little more dignity, a little less filth? The