Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler Page B

look at her and aimed his eyes at her kitchen table.
    She said, “Getting a divorce doesn’t mean you failed. It just means you grew apart. Happens every day.”
    â€œYou and Dad never got divorced,” he said, still looking at the table.
    â€œOh, sweetie,” she said, “your dad and I weren’t happy for years.”
    â€œBut I still love her,” Mason said.
    â€œI know you do, baby, I know that you do.”
    *   *   *
    Ren é e returns to the kitchen. “I’m hungry,” she says. “Let’s go. We can come back tomorrow.”
    He lets his head sag. Feels the refrigerator’s fan kick on, warm air hitting his knees, cold air against his face and neck. He is tired, lonely, heartsick.
    â€œCome on,” she says, “get up.”
    He can’t look at her. “No,” he says. “I’m going to stay here. There’s food enough here.”
    He reaches for an orange Tupperware container in the back corner of the refrigerator. He peels off the top and the container seems to burp. Or sigh. It is cassoulet. He stands, carries the Tupperware to the microwave. Leans against the counter while the food heats. He looks at her.
    â€œYou know I won’t eat that.”
    He nods.
    â€œSo what? So you want me to bring you back something? So you want to walk home? So what?”
    The words are a reservoir; his teeth, his lips are the dam. He shakes his head, bites his lip.
    â€œMason?”
    Inside the microwave, the food circles like a carousel. The light in there is strange.
    â€œMason?”
    â€œI’m going to stay here,” he says.
    He owns the house now. Or they do. But already he’s certain that he wants to live there the rest of his days. The microwave beeps three times loudly. He lets it beep; what is the hurry? Reaches for the Tupperware, and it is hot enough to burn his fingers, his palms, but he does not wince, won’t give her that gift. Carries the Tupperware to the kitchen table where he has eaten hundreds, thousands of meals. Walks again across the kitchen. Gathers a fork. Pours himself a glass of whole milk. It is so opaque, so thick, so white.
    â€œMason, that food could be a week, two weeks old. Who knows? Are you all right? Mason?”
    Her voice is rising.
    He looks at her, says, “I’m so sorry.” What he thinks is I want a divorce .
    Then he forks a bite of beans, of duck, of sausage. Lifts it to his mouth, chews, swallows. He imagines his mother’s hands preparing this food. His mother’s mouth eating this same food. He imagines tasting her lipstick. Imagines her alone, sitting at the very table where he sits now.
    He chews slowly, washes the food down with a swallow of milk. His throat pumps it all down.
    â€œMason,” she says. “Mason, I’m your wife.”
    He shakes his head, says, “I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.”

 
    BENEATH THE BONFIRE
    Meant, I knew—of course I knew—
    That it would be only a matter of weeks,
    That there was nothing more to do.
    â€”James Merrill, “Christmas Tree”
    T HEY WERE DRAGGING THE TREES across the frozen lake by their stumps, a trail of needles behind them, the crowns of the trees down against the ice, snow, and slush where once the apexes of the little trees had supported a brightly lit star or angel. Most of the trees had long since stopped drinking, the needles beginning to dot carpeting, the trees wrapped in lights and ornaments no longer gleeful, no longer merry, just combustible.
    The tradition was to burn the trees out on the frozen lake on the first night of January. Kat watched as they marched out from shore, the trees making a low steady scratching sound over the ice. Her boyfriend, Pieter, hunched over a chainsaw, checking its fluids, a can of gasoline beside his knee.
    â€œIt’s kind of sad,” she said, rubbing her arms, “to end this way. Every year. Just to be