When his house caught fire, he was asleep, dreaming of his kids and the wife he’s losing in a divorce. It was only the call of his roommate’s overnight guest that roused him. He had just enough time to grab his pants and tumble down the stairs. The air had turned from life-sustaining into a viscous mixture of paper-and-plastic miasma, the acrid smoke burning his lungs.
Glad to have lived, he stood on the drive that morning, 4 a.m., and watched flames lick out of the second-story windows and disappear into the black plume that disappeared in the night. By the time firefighters arrived, he had transformed from independent businessman into immigrant without papers in an unforgiving world.
By morning, the fire department had used 15,000 gallons of water to put out the fire. What wasn’t burned was flooded, a strange dichotomy. Hundreds of photographs and books ruined by the flood or turned into charcoal and dust. The family photographs are curled wisps of carbon. The record collection, the rows of antiques, and the original art are all now just blackened hulks. When he sees them, as he sifts through what’s left, he realizes that nothing will ever be the same.
How it must have felt to see home, shelter, burn that night. The things of a life, those that we all take for granted, were consumed. By the time morning arrived, he had slunk down the drive, his head light and dizzy, to take up residence for a moment in his wife’s house. It’s an uncomfortable position for him to be in. The divorce proceedings, the negotiations of lawyers, had begun three years before.
He had insurance, one of the decisions in his life that benefited him. The adjuster arranged for him to live for a while out of hotel room, which loosed him from his wife’s house. Bur he doesn’t do hotel rooms well and found himself doing everything he could to stay out of it. Now, he’s found a house the insurance company rents for him. It’s a part of town where he feels comfortable and can walk.
And he walks. His car threw a rod last week and he’s relegated to shoe leather to get the things he needs to sustain himself. He spends evenings when he’s not with me bounding down midtown streets, stopping in at the convenience store for cigarettes, pop, and snacks.
The poor guy has a raft of troubles that stem from the fire. His passwords to myriad accounts and investments burned. He has money, that’s not a problem. But he talks now of making his bills, which didn’t disappear in the fire. Liquidity is something we all take for granted. We deposit paychecks and expect that the cards will work, that the subscriptions will be automatically deducted from accounts, and that when we walk into a grocery store we will walk out with what we need.
But he doesn’t have that. Cards he has plenty of. They will buy him what sustains him for a while. But they need to be paid and his money was wrapped up in the worth of the house and his investments now so far out of reach. When I talk to him, he’s often at his wits end, having spent the day on the phone with banks and brokers trying to loosen up funds.
I worry about him and check on him every day. He’s a smart man, resilient. But he suffers from the same mental maladies I do. Bouncing from “I can do anything” to “what’s the use?” in a matter of moments. I think about him reaching the end, getting to the point where disappearance or death seem attractive options to the burdens that weigh so heavily upon him.
Meanwhile, all is uncertain. He’s become dependent on the grinding wheels of bureaucracies. Insurance companies do not let loose of their funds without byzantine processes of decision making. They want to make sure. He’s dealt with batteries of fire investigators, who interview and investigate. He’s had to prove that he didn’t start the fire time and time again. They have interviewed his roommate, his becoming-former wife, the overnight guest who saved him.
He’s felt the haunt that puts people like him and me into rounds of doubt. Did I start the fire? I know I didn’t but there’s the thought that, somehow, deep inside, it was my fault. Expecting he would be found to be the author of this disaster, he was delighted to hear yesterday that the insurance company had put the matter to rest and absolve him of guilt. When we went on our walk last night, I could feel the relief in him. It was almost as if I expected he would lift off his feet and float off the sidewalk and out of the neighborhood to some sort of freedom from the vagaries he’s now subject to.
The fire has benefited me and I don’t feel good about it. I have known my friend for over 25 years and see him about every week. I always relish my time with him, the way I have to accommodate his darting mind and ricocheting thoughts. Since the fire, we have been able to spend more time with each other than ever. My days tend to lag in the afternoon, as I’m home from work due to an on-the-job injury. I have come to depend on spending time with him when I have taken the nap, written the poem and essay, walked the dog, and have nothing else to do.
Now, he’s entered a period of indeterminant length. The insurance company will rebuild his house. But it was an antique, built in 1910. The contractors will have to demolish the inside of the second and third story and construct the new dwelling in the skeleton of the old. Already, he neighbors worry about what will happen, and he has had to go to a neighborhood meeting to assure them he will not change a thing about the outside of the house or its footprint. The process will take years.
His life has become infinitely more complicated. It’s not like things were simple before. He had the divorce on his mind. He had his plethora of investments to tend to. Where once he was juggling more balls than any juggler would adeptly handle, he’s had to add bowling pins and axes and vases. Meanwhile, he’s spinning plates and escaping from the locked safe at the same time.
His plight has made me think very deeply about what we have in this house. What would happen if it burned down? Where would we go? How would we deal with the loss? We worry about renovations and improvements. The terraces in the backyard are slumping down the hill. We have insurances and kids and retirements to think about.
But that is our privilege. We don’t have to worry about all that while dealing with the loss of the family home. My friend, it looks at the moment, will make it through but it will be a long time before he’s settled and whole. Anything we have to deal with pales in comparison to the burdens we would have if our lives were yanked out from underneath us. My fiend is testament to resilience. We moan about having to mow the grass.
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