Free Burning for You (Blackwater) by Lila Veen Page A

time
I saw Heidi she was living at home.  I have no idea where she lives now.  I
still haven’t spoken to my mother about last night and her reaction to Gabe
picking me up and not dropping me off.  Neither one of us seems very eager to
discuss it, so it seems like the subject will just drop.  I am curious about
her unexpected reaction, or why she would care, but not curious enough to start
a conversation.
    I’m not surprised when I see
Heidi’s house is a large blue and white painted lady Victorian with a
wraparound porch.  Heidi has always presented herself as old fashioned; from
her hair or her clothes or her ability to pass out upon hearing anything
shocking or gross.  If smelling salts still existed, she would call for them.
    She must have received warning from
our mother that I was coming.  The minute I pull into Heidi’s driveway, she
opens her front door and stands on her porch to wait for me to approach.  She
is wearing a high buttoned collarless blue shirt that matches her eyes, tucked
into a high waisted pair of slacks with a thin, silver belt.  She looks
physically cold and both of her small hands are wrapped around a steaming mug
that I know is her laxative tea.  Some things never change.  “How did the
interview go?” Heidi asks me as I walk toward her.
    “I have a job offer, but need to
wait for the offer letter,” I tell her, as though she’ll even know what that
means.  Heidi is a kept woman.  Her husband Jack Bellamy is a lawyer, and also
highway commissioner or something of Blackwater Township, whatever that means. 
It’s Monday, and I remember that Monday is the day that everyone who got
traffic violations for the previous week gets to come to court and attempt to
fight their parking and traffic tickets.  I reflect on my own car accident and
how I’m lucky I’m not standing in front of Jack right now instead of Heidi.
    Jack and Heidi were not high school
sweethearts or anything like that.  It would be impossible considering they’re
seven years apart.  Jack is nearing forty and I’m wondering if they’re going to
have children.  Heidi is self-absorbed and likely prone to Munchausen Syndrome
or something that would require the state to take her kids away.  Perhaps it’s
best I don’t become an aunt if it means Heidi and Jack end up breeding.  Heidi
married Jack out of the blue when she was nineteen.   I think Heidi wanted to
leave home just as badly as I did, but got out a different way.  We’ve kept in
better touch than my mother and I have after I left to go to school in Chicago,
though we were never close as sisters. 
    I step inside the house into a sky
blue great room.  Heidi is obsessed with the color blue and often surrounds
herself in it.  I think it calms her down, since she’s a bit high strung.  She
looks like my mother, only tinier and frailer.  Not that my mother has ever
been anything but slim, but Heidi’s weight dwindles around 94 pounds.  I recall
that being the magic number that she and her doctor agreed on.  “Nice house,” I
tell her.  “Blue, of course.”
    “Of course,” she says, casting me a
glance backward with a small smile as she leads me through.  “Do you want some
tea or coffee?”
    “Just water,” I reply.  I step into
a blue tiled kitchen that’s bright and spacious and see that Heidi already has
company.  “Eleanor!”  Eleanor Dubois – no, actually, it’s Laurent now, I have
to remember – is sitting at Heidi’s kitchen counter nibbling on a baby carrot
and drinking tea.  I hope it’s not Heidi’s special tea, I think.  She hoists
herself out of the stool she is perched on and I see she’s very pregnant, as my
mother mentioned.  We hug awkwardly, so many years and so much baby between
us.  “You look the same.  Well, except for that,” I say, indicating her
stomach.
    She laughs, her light grey eyes
sparkling with humor.  Eleanor has always been exotically beautiful, and now
even more so that