The Arsonist’s Mum on Talk Radio
by Christopher James
My husband and I had argued and weren’t talking. We were in the car, and we weren’t talking, and it was deafening.
I wanted to keep the radio off because I liked to float and drown and float and drown and float in the silence, but Mark wanted to listen to something, anything, and in our family it’s driver’s choice.
Talk radio, or maybe a podcast. A woman had called in about her son, who was an arsonist, bless his heart.
She listed all the things he’d set fire to. He’d burned down the school. He’d burned down their garage. He’d burned down a barn in Bulgaria. They only went to Bulgaria because they thought it might calm him down. He tried to set fire to their boat. They’ve got a boat, I thought. Lucky them. He did set fire to a paint factory out in Porter’s, but they put that out pretty quick. He set fire to a fire station, can you believe it? They didn’t catch that one, it caused all kinds of trouble. There’s about a hundred small things she was forgetting, she said. He sets fire to his sister’s hair in the car.
Well actually, one of the hosts said, your son isn’t an arsonist.
He bloody is! she said. Can I swear on this?
We can bleep it out, said the host.
He bleep is an arsonist, she said.
No, insisted the host, an arsonist sets fires for financial gain, or to get rid of something they don’t want. It’s not the fire itself they like, it’s what the fire brings. But that doesn’t sound like your son, does it? I’m no diagnostician, but it sounds to me like your son is a pyromaniac. Now a pyromaniac is somebody who starts fires out of some internal compulsion. Usually, they do it after a build-up of stress or tension of some kind, and the setting of the fire releases that. I hear they find it rather euphoric. Interestingly enough, pyromaniacs often set fire to fire stations. There are many reasons why somebody might have this impulse to set things alight and many reasons why they might fail to control it.
And the host was about to list many reasons but the woman interrupted him. No, she said, that’s not why I’m calling. I want to know if I ought to get a dog.
I reached out and switched the radio off.
What did you do that for? said Mark.
Kid’s going to set fire to the dog, I said.
Don’t be daft, said Mark. She wants to know if a dog will calm the boy down. Stop him setting fire to things.
You don’t know that, I said.
I do, he told me. This is a repeat. Later they play Firestarter, the Prodigy song.
How crass, I said.
I love that song, Mark said. This was one of our fights, too, the things he loved that I didn’t appreciate enough. Even if I didn’t like it myself, couldn’t I pretend to like it for him? Couldn’t I learn to tolerate it?
Let me choose something to listen to, I said.
He agreed, like he thought he was some kind of saint. Mark, patron saint of relinquishing control of the dial. I picked an easy listening station. I knew he’d pretend to like it because that would be one more thing he could hold over me. I didn’t even like easy listening. I’d only chosen it because I was tired of hard listening.
And we fell back to not talking.
On the rest of the journey we passed four fires, which felt remarkable given what we’d been listening to. Still we didn’t talk. We didn’t remark. I was waiting for him to apologize and I’m sure he was doing the same. I forget how the fight had begun, maybe it was his fault, maybe it was somebody else’s, but I didn’t like some of the things he’d said during the row, and that’s why I was upset. He’d fought dirty. He’d brought up things that happened a long time ago. I’d done the same. We accused each other of holding on to past grudges just to fling them at each other at moments like this. We had to let things go, we said. But they’re not gone, are they? Funny how they only come back when you’re upset with me. We knew this song. First a small thing, a comment, some slight, a few words, the escalation, a raging fight, screaming, shouting, accusing, wounding, then a day or two not talking, then a thawing, an apology later on, when it doesn’t hurt to give or receive, an apology that doesn’t really mean I’m sorry for what I did but I’m sorry we fought like that. I’m sorry too. Like when the baby has peed in the bed and you put down a towel to soak it up because you’re too tired to do anything else.
He pulled into a petrol station and I stretched my legs and sat on the car waiting for him. I thought about driving off, but he’d taken the keys with him. Didn’t he trust me?
Across the road, in a field, another fire. And a kid, watching it. Beside him, bouncing around, happy as Larry, a big hairy dog. Woof, said the dog. Woof, said the boy. Woof, I said. Even from here I could tell the fire was beautiful. It would upset Mark if I wasn’t there when he got back, but I didn’t care. I crossed the road, to join the kid and the dog, to watch it all burn.
Christopher James lives, works, and writes in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has been published online by Tin House, Booth, Wigleaf, SmokeLong and others. He edits Jellyfish Review.
