“The Prescribed Burn” (Story 12, Excerpt 1)

The following excerpt is the first part of “The Prescribed Burn”. You can read the second part here.

I just needed a break. I wished that everyone and everything would disappear, and I wanted every relationship to unravel itself like yarn I used in the winter, the only time I ever wanted to knit.

I escaped to my parents’ house, if that could be called an escape. Somehow, my bedroom unearthed more emotion than I thought possible. Everything reminded me of something from my past, of things I hadn’t even thought about for a while, like the slumber parties I had with Madsy in high school, all the time I had spent sitting on the floor, painting, and the night I secretly brought Theo to my room.

I woke up in my bed alone, but I wasn’t expecting the loneliness. I thought my parents would be home to distract me, but they left early to attend a garden show somewhere in central Jersey. I called Madsy.

“I’m home,” I said.

“Veda, don’t get me wrong, I’m so happy to hear from you, but do you know what time it is?” Asked Madsy.

“I wanted to make sure you weren’t doing anything,” I said. “It’s only nine, and I’ve already spent too much time in my head. Do you want to come over and tan?”

“Too early to tan,” said Madsy. “I’ll come over at noon. Can you remain mentally stable until then?”

“I’ll try, but noon is my breaking point, so don’t be late,” I said.

I got out of bed and found my inspiration box, a cardboard container that Madsy had decorated for me in high school. It was covered with pictures of glamorous women from magazines and words that she had clipped, even whole lines from books she had gotten from the library book swap.

Madsy had given me the box as a high school graduation present. I was so proud of my best friend when I realized she had actually learned something from all the decoupage lessons I had given her in Sister Mary’s art class.

I scooped my hands into the compartment with the beads and let the cool spheres roll over the tips of my fingertips. If I really wanted to get over Theo, I could totally immerse myself in art supplies.

The sensation of the beads on my skin was more familiar to me than the body of any man could be. I moved my fingers over the scraps of paper and fabric and even let one scrape my finger so that it stung. I liked the feeling because it was familiar; I associated the paper cuts with creation, which never really hurt, at least not physically.

I had no idea if I would ever kiss Theo again, but my art supplies provided me with tactile release. I could turn to them whenever I wanted, and they would always be available. Unlike Theo, my art supplies were also something I could change and mold.

Did I even want to kiss Theo again? Would it feel the same as before? I pulled some colored scraps out of the box and also some tubes of acrylic paint. I chose colors that appealed to my mood at the moment, blue and purple and gray, and I arranged them in random fashion on my rug. I wasn’t sure what to make of this collection, but I knew I wanted to create something. I was waiting for an idea to come to me, and this waiting made me feel violently connected to my life.

In the same way that I waited for the colors and shapes to make sense to me, I decided to wait for to Theo call me, for him to tell me that he wanted me because I was sick of meddling in things that were uninspired, sick of being the one taking initiative when the circumstances just didn’t seem right. I was going to release control of the situation. Art, like love, sometimes created itself.

By the time I knew it, Madsy was ringing the doorbell of the house, and I had made nothing out of the materials on the floor. When I got to the front door, Madsy was standing on the front steps in her bikini top and gym shorts, holding a towel under her arm and a tote bag in her other hand.

I hadn’t seen my friend since January; she looked thinner, and her black, wavy hair looked neater, like she had recently had it trimmed. I noticed the sexy style of Madsy’s bathing suit, which was a little much for sunbathing on a deck with a friend, but I smiled to myself because Madsy hadn’t changed.

“Why were you so down this morning when you called?” Asked Madsy. “You’re home, you’re supposed to be happy.”

“That’s the problem,” I said.

We went through the kitchen to the sliding deck door. In the backyard, my parents had a large, wooden deck, which jutted out onto the grass from a sliding door in their kitchen. The view from the deck included a backyard filled with garden statues and, beyond the terra cotta gnomes, a thick forest.

I had sometimes played there as a child, and I knew all the paths, which lead to another part of town that was being developed for houses and a recreational center. In addition to a table, two lounge chairs filled the space of the deck.

The sky was completely cloudless. All we could hear were the rustling of the trees and the birds chirping, but I still wasn’t used to the quiet, which made me nervous.

Madsy covered one of the chairs with her towel, and I covered my own. We began the arduous process of coating ourselves with greasy tanning oil, an art that we had perfected. My finger stung from where the paper had cut me, and I had a hard time applying the oil without wincing.

Madsy had rolled over on her stomach and untied the strings of her bathing suit top.

I watched Madsy as she seemed to pose. Madsy rested her head on the back of her hand and pushed her hair back with her sunglasses. I was always jealous of Madsy’s confidence. Madsy knew how to use her body to its fullest advantage.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said.

I hated the false sense of privacy and security that the suburbs gave everyone, including myself.

“Last summer I was out here, just like this, and two strange men came into the backyard,” I said. “Apparently they were gutter-cleaning employees, and they were looking for the hose connection. I had to wrap a towel around myself and waddle to the side of the house to show them. It was really embarrassing.”

“Whatever,” said Madsy. “Don’t ever feel embarrassed. If anything, they should have been embarrassed knowing that they couldn’t have someone as sexy as you.”

“I don’t think it works that way, Mads,” I said. “If I’m so sexy, how come I still haven’t heard from Theo? I don’t think I’m going to hear from him ever again.”

“Is that why you’re so bummed? Are you seriously still stuck on that jerk?” Asked Madsy. “Theo should mean nothing to you.”

“It’s going to take a while. He really got my hopes up when he said we might be able to try for the summer,” I said.

“Screw that. I have a good story to tell you that will take your mind off the Theo nonsense.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“I went to a yoga instructor certification camp a few weeks ago. Did I tell you? I don’t think I did,” said Madsy.

I hadn’t been telling Madsy all my stories either. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell her about Pretend Boyfriend because I was so embarrassed about what had happened. I was so ashamed of myself for spending so much time pursuing romantic dead ends instead of focusing on my work.

I knew that Madsy had always loved yoga. She had been the one to coach me through yoga poses when I was trying to become more flexible in preparation for Arthur. She was the one who would tell me how to breathe if I ever felt like I was going to have a panic attack.

“Shit, you’re going to love this,” said Madsy. “But if I tell you this story, you have to promise not to mention Theo though, at all, not for the rest of the day.”

“Okay, I won’t mention him. Doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking about him, though,” I said.

“I met a guy,” said Madsy.

“Of course you met a guy,” I said.

I adjusted myself in the chair, resting my arms on the armrests and fixing my hair so that my bun wouldn’t press into the back of my head. I wished I had brought some magazines outside, but at this point it was too late to go back into the house, greased up as I was.

Instead, I covered my face with another towel so that the sun wouldn’t bother my eyes and so that I could focus fully on Madsy’s story, which I hoped would amuse me enough to take my mind off Theo.

“So let’s hear it.”

“Okay, so this workshop, it was at the Jacob Javits Center, in one of the classrooms they have in the basement,” said Madsy. “When I got there, he was the first person I saw.

Tall, broad shoulders, wearing a five o’clock shadow at eight in the morning. So fucking sexy. He was standing behind a table with a clipboard, checking people in.”

“Sounds hot,” I said.

I tried my best to imagine the situation. At first, I was sad because Madsy’s description made me think of Theo’s broad shoulders and facial hair. I had been having trouble paying attention to people lately anyway, because my mind was always somewhere else. If I was going to give my best friend her full attention, I would have to forget about Theo, for the moment at least.

“He immediately caught my eye because he was totally unlike the other guys that were hanging around,” said Madsy. “I mean, you know yoga guys. They are usually scrawny and skinny.

Anyway, I went up to him and asked him where I needed to go and what I needed to do, and I saw his nametag: Ramón. So he told me that I will need to go to room 111A for the orientation speech and that I would have to choose a partner for workshop.

I looked around at most of the other people waiting to sign in and, you would have been surprised, most of the people were old and out of shape. They had these lumpy, misshapen bodies, and I thought, there’s no way I’m going to work with these people.”

I had never realized that Madsy was so judgmental about people’s bodies. I looked down at my own belly to make sure it was flat and saw that it was smooth and glistening, covered with the oil.

I thought about the way Theo would sometimes, when he was in a good mood, kiss my tummy and tell me how beautiful it was, but I had to remind myself that those memories couldn’t matter to me because they were so inconsistent with reality.

I moved the towel up to my forehead and allowed my eyes to adjust to the sunlight, which was now beating down from directly overhead. I had to concentrate on Madsy’s story.

“So what did you do?”

“I asked him, all flirty, well, Ramón, how do I choose a partner? And he said that he was free, if I was interested.”

“Provocative and also quite stereotypical,” I said. “Was that really his name?”

With the towel no longer on my face, I began to smell smoke. I assumed that one of the neighbors was grilling something for lunch. The scent was pretty strong and was less like burning charcoal and more like burning trees. I was reminded of the sticks and logs we burned once at summer camp, at the vatras.

“Do you smell that?”

“Yeah, it’s making me hungry,” said Madsy, pointing to the grill, which stood in the corner of the deck, by the table. “Want to make something for lunch? Do you have any propane in that thing?”

“Are you serious? I don’t think we even have food,” I said. “My parents stopped cooking since I moved out.”

I wasn’t hungry, and I really wasn’t in the mood to eat.

“Anyway, it doesn’t smell like food. It smells like trees,” I said.

“I don’t know. Anyway, so I told Ramón that we could be partners. And once he was done checking everyone in, we went to the room where we started with the warm-up poses.

One person had to do the pose, and the other person had to observe. So I went first, and I could tell he loved my downward dog.”

(Photo by Jennie Faber)