Free The Arsonist by Sue Miller

the summer, in some ways, with the summer people. But I get what that’s about. They’re transient, and maybe I am, too. Or at least I’m seen that way.”
    “Wait a minute— they don’t think of themselves as transient. The summer people. They are permanent summer people.”
    “Well, sure.” He smiled over at her and then looked back at the road.“But I think it’s possible that the permanent winter people think of them as transient. In any case, they still think of me that way, I’m pretty sure.”
    “Well, if they think of me at all, they probably think of me that way, too.” She lifted her hands. “Why not? I do.”
    “But where did you actually grow up?”
    “Oh, all over the place. My father, Alfie …” She stopped and looked over at him. “Do you know my parents?”
    “I’ve met them. Can’t claim to know them, but I know who they are.”
    “Well, anyway, Alfie was making his way in the academic world all through my childhood.” She smiled. “Mostly sideways, it must be said.”
    “So, how many places?”
    “Five? Six? Something like that. He took a while to find his … niche, as it were.”
    “That must have been hard.” When she didn’t answer after a moment, he turned his head to look at her. “Or was it?”
    “I don’t know.” And then she was remembering. “Actually, for a while, I think my sister and I thought it was a privilege, we thought it was exciting. Something other kids didn’t get to do. All these fresh starts. Another chance to be a great success at … whatever.”
    “That’s a nice spin to put on it. On … transience.”
    “Yeah. My mother’s spin, I think. At that time.” Frankie was thinking of her mother’s irritation with her father later, of the sarcasm that had slowly taken over her tone. When had that happened? “At some point, it seems clear, it started to piss her off that he couldn’t make a go of it anywhere. Until finally he sort of did. But early on I remember her—or I think I remember her—as insistent on his valor.” She straightened up and made a fist. “His value . His worth .”
    “Hmm,” he said.
    After a moment, Frankie said, “Here’s an example: Once I asked her what class we were. We must have been studying something about it in school. Or maybe I read the phrases somewhere. Upper class, middle class. Anyway, she said to me something like, ‘Class has no relevance to our lives.’ ” And then Frankie changed her voice, made it fluty, definitely upper class. “ ‘Your father is an intellectual.’ ”
    Even as he laughed, lightly, hoarsely, Frankie felt a vague embarrassment.She had parlayed this anecdote widely in the African world she’d inhabited, where it was risible, fantasy, to imagine you could escape the insistence of history, economics, tribe, race, class. “Anyway,” she said, “right now, I’d settle for anyplace with a bed, I’m so jet-lagged.”
    “Oh.” He looked over again. “You just got here.”
    “Yeah. Two days ago, in fact.”
    “Do you want me just to take you home then? To your parents’?”
    “No, I’m interested in this, actually. Curious, I guess.”
    “Okay. I’ll be quick. I only need the one good shot. Then I’ll take you home.” He smiled at her. “Or whatever you call it.”
    She leaned back. There was a comfortable silence between them as they swung off the paved road onto dirt. At least she felt it as comfortable. She was watching the patchy sunlight moving through the thick trees they were passing as the car mounted the hill. Her window was open. The fresh air was blowing her hair back from her face. She shook her head and thought suddenly of the Muslim girls on the ferry from Lamu.
    They had passed the turnoff to Liz and Clark’s little house in the field and to her parents’ house. About three-quarters of a mile beyond that, they turned in at the Kershaws’ driveway. And then she smelled it. The fire. It was different from the kinder, more melancholic smell