A Case Against Men

by Hannah Rome

I don’t know why I turned my blinker on when I left the burning house behind me; I’d abandoned safe practice when I bought the gas can from Safeway. The house sat in the middle of a 100-acre property, so I didn’t feel pressured to make a speedy getaway. I could savor the warmth of the flames on my back; watch them in the rearview mirror like a bright orange sunset. The fire department would be on their way eventually, so I looked both ways, measured my weight, and accelerated so smoothly it would make a driving instructor smile. I had always prided myself on my abstention from the cruelty that marked me from childhood. We tend to abstain from things we know we’d enjoy too much.

My mother died two days before it all. She had cirrhosis of the liver, and by the end she was yellow and shriveled like a golden raisin. She knew it was her last day, and when she woke up that morning, she demanded, in her way, “Take me to the pier. I want to smell the fish and gasoline.” I smuggled her out of the hospital underneath a cornflower sheet and wheeled her out over the salted planks to the boardwalk’s edge. “I’d jump if I could stand,” she said. “I’ve never seen you jump in your life,” I replied. She looked up at me and I could hear her tendons creak. “I lived before you, you know. You’re an asterisk in the story of my life.” I depressed the breaks on the back left wheel of her wheelchair. “Don’t I know it,” I said, because I could tell when she lied.

My mother asked me to turn on Frasier when we returned to her hospital room. Her breathing became slower and more labored, each exhalation like the pump of a fireplace blower. I held her small, fibrous hand in mine, and felt her pass through me when she died. She had a DNR and I had disconnected her from her monitors when I took her to the pier. It’s hard to know how much time to spend with the dead body of someone you love. I went back to her house and sat down at her vanity, putting on coral lipstick like I’d seen her do a thousand times -- three swipes on the bottom lip then blot, blot, blot. There was a small drawer in the vanity that contained her fine jewelry, and even in my adulthood she never let me open it. I spent my whole life proving my loyalty to her. When I did open it after she died, I found a few baubles and loose half carat studs, and a stack of envelopes held together by a thick powdery rubber band. The top envelope was postmarked just two months before she died. I read the return address. Robert Freeman, 112 Marigold Way, Azalea, OR. My father.

When I was very young, our apartment was broken into. My mother stuffed me in the closet, but I could hear everything. Her screaming, pleading. I could hear her muffled cries and the bedframe screeching rhythmically, like a rusted beast scratching an itch. When I’m alone, the sound of metal aching against itself haunts the silence. When the attacker left, I opened the closet door and lay beside my mother. I smudged my thumb over the bruised and split skin of her browbone, wishing my love could be thick like a salve. She took my face in her hand and said, “For you, I will endure it all. I will die a thousand deaths.” Crying and shaking, she held me tight as an iron sleeve that night. I only wished I had been big enough to save her.

Every man I’d ever know was my father, and I hated every man I’d ever known. I hated the ones who leered from beside their wives, the ones who licked their lips at affection between girlfriends. I hated the grocery store clerks who stocked tampons out of reach so you had to call them over for help, just so they could ask, “Regular or super?” My father didn’t love us enough to stay, but he did love her enough. He raised her beside her mother in a glorious wooden house with floor to ceiling windows and the right amount of bedrooms. I imagined the girl coming down the stairs Christmas morning, rubbing the sleep from her eyes in her tartan flannel pajamas that evoked the Pacific Northwest. My father and her mother would be surprisingly buoyant after staying up late wrapping the presents and fucking on the sectional. She’d unwrap the presents with such glee it could end all wars, while my mother and I drove through the In-N-Out and shared a basket of chili fries. The girl, Zosia, was off at college at Oregon State now. I hoped that without the presence of their tether, my father might finally realize that he’d chosen the wrong woman, the wrong family.

I don’t remember what happened between finding the envelope and plugging the address into Google Maps and heading up the 101. I drove through the part of California that no one talks about, all ranches and Trump flags, through the emerald forests of Southern Oregon. I stopped at the Safeway, and bought a can of gasoline because I had a bad history with gas station clerks in rural areas. The one road into Azalea was framed by green mountains and the rusted trunks of redwoods. I was reminded of when I was 11 and a twelfth grade boy pinned me against one and shoved three clammy fingers up my skirt. I drove down Main Street, where the charming mom and pop shops filled me with memories of jobs I’d gotten because the boss wanted to fuck me. I passed by the lush green track field next to the high school, thinking of all the times I’ve quickened my pace on a jog because of someone too close behind. I thought of Zosia driving down the same street on her way home from college, warmed by happy childhood memories. The rage inside of me was quickly metastasizing into something untenable. I gripped the steering wheel and headed deep into the oil slick forest.

I turned onto the long gravel driveway. The tires crunched the tiny pebbles, a thousand little deaths. I parked the car and walked weightlessly to the front door. I rang the doorbell, which was shortly followed by footsteps down the stairs. All that presence and the big house still creaked. The door opened. He was so much shorter than I imagined. In my mind, he was well over six feet and built strong and capable, how a dad should be built. He was only an inch or so taller than my 5’4”, slight and wrinkled, his scalp reflecting the overhead lights from underneath a wolf gray buzzcut. His eyes, like two sideways teardrops, widened at me. The white hot iron inside my stomach hardened the way metal does. My father pulled me into his chest. “Baby girl,” he cooed. “I’ve missed you so much.” He led me inside and I couldn’t have dreamt of a grander room, all windows and rafters. Nearly every inch of the floor was covered in a rug from a great dynasty. The fireplace crackled the softest melody I’d ever heard, and the broad leather sofas were buttery and kind. I sat down on one and imagined its skin was his all along, what I would have felt each time he kissed my cheek.

“My mother died two days ago,” I said. “I wrote, all these years. I never heard back,” he said. His gaze didn’t leave mine. “She kept the letters,” I said. He gazed downward at his folded hands. I looked at his hands as well. They were hands I didn’t recognize. “What can I do now?” He asked. “What can we do?” I replied, “I don’t know, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.” “You can stay here a while,” he offered. I didn’t know him well enough to know if he was lying. “Zosia’s off at school, you can have her room. Miranda’s with her folks in Maine. We can get to know each other for a while.” My eyes darted upward at the mention of the woman who wasn’t my mother. The one he chose, so I never knew this house, never knew his hands. The reason he wasn’t there to protect my mother. He sat there, like all we had to do was go on a couple long walks out in the emerald woods and my life would begin again. The iron inside me was heating up exponentially, shooting flames along my nerves. Every man I’d ever known was my father, and my father was every man I’d ever known.

I stood up abruptly and when he stood too I was reminded of his slight frame, and couldn’t help but laugh. He was puny, deficient, nothing. I looked up at the great house, which seemed so offensive now. The big house lied for this small man, and the thing I hated most about men was how much they were lied for. I stormed out the front door and got back into my car, the gas can sitting in the passenger side footwell. My father followed me out to the car. I clicked the passenger door open and then kicked it hard so it knocked him over. I snickered audibly. Men were funniest when they were honest with themselves.

I climbed out of the car, gas can and matchbook in hand. My father was lying on the gravel, and he had a long gash on his browbone. I knelt down next to him, rubbed my hand in the dirt, and smeared it over his wound. I walked right over him, scraping the bottom of my shoes against his cheek, and over to the front door and the straw welcome mat that said “The Freemans”in garish script. I poured the gasoline all over the floor, lit the match and dropped it to the ground. The fire erupted with a whoosh. “What did you do!?” The man howled. I walked right over to him, thinking of all of the men who followed him, all of the monsters he made. I thought of the assaulters and the leerers, the ones who thought they were entitled and the ones who would’ve crumbled under the weight of my love. I thought of the worst one of all, that night I hid in the closet. I knelt down next to his little bean-shaped head. “You think you know hell?” I said. “You wouldn’t believe it if you did.”

My clammy fingers lightly grazed the steering wheel. My stomach felt raw, and all I wanted was carbs and my bed. I don’t know if it was the fire or the fact that I hadn’t drank water in two days, but I felt hungover. I remembered the mornings after nights on the pier with the high school boys. My mother would give me buttered bread and Pepto. Whatever alcohol takes out of you, rage must, too. I drove back to the home that used to be my mothers’ and mine. It would always be just ours.