A Box of Matches (13 page)

A succession of days is like a box of new envelopes. Each envelope is flimsy and can be treated as two-dimensional. But when you pull out all the envelopes from the box at once, there is a hard place in the middle—a thick lump—that you wouldn’t expect
envelopes to have. The lump is created by the intersection of the four triangles in the middle of the back. Most of the envelope has only two layers of paper, but on the place where you lick the flap there are three: the front, the lower edge, and the gummed edge. And in the middle of the back there is a place, sometimes two places, of further overlap, and it feels as if the envelopes must be holding something quite hard, or sharp, even—but of course they’re empty. You notice it when you are writing thank-yous for wedding presents, or when you are sending out Christmas cards, or if you have bought a new box of envelopes and you see the edges of them through the clear window and you want to compress them, since envelopes are so springily compressible—and as you reach around them and squeeze them you feel the nugget, the something that isn’t in the envelopes but is of the envelopes. I would almost say that there is a hint on the meaning of life there, in that revealed kernel. That’s what they feel like, in fact, these hard places—little popcorn kernels or apple seeds.

Good morning, it’s 5:15 a.m.—While I was building the fire I noticed a warm glow coming in one of the windows. I thought there must be a light on in some other part of the house, but the angle was wrong. I went to the window and saw that the inside lights of the minivan were on. They looked quite cozy. I didn’t want to have a dead battery two hours from now, so I found my coat in the dark, slipped on a pair of cold boots that were on the porch, and crunched outside.

It was dark and starry and the wind was up. I was shocked by how cold it was. I haven’t been outside in the middle of winter at four-thirty in the morning—except perhaps to hop into a cab to go to an airport—ever, I don’t think. I opened and then closed the rear door of the
car—one inside light turned off right away, and then the dome light in the front did the slow fade-out that automotive engineers believe is an improvement. Good. Just to be sure the battery was all right, I reached in and turned on the ignition: the radio came on, loudly playing Brahms. I withdrew the key and was done with the car. But I stood for a moment to sense the cold’s spaciousness and impersonality. It was remarkable to think that human beings felt that they could endure in this dark, inhospitable place. If I slipped and fell and was unable to move I’d die. And yet the duck, more or less immobile under her shroud, lived through the night just fine, and was ready to burble in the warm water of her eating bowl as soon as I came out. I heard the wind in the denuded trees—there was no upper hissing of leaf wind, just the longer wailing whistles that the old branches make.

When I turned toward the house, I saw another glow in a living-room window. I crunched through the snow up the little rise and peered into the living room. “Will you look at that,” I said. There was my fire, as orange as could be, looking warm. I half expected to see myself sitting there, in my bathrobe, but the chair was empty.

Now I’m back inside. I leaned forward just now so that I could turn to the right and take hold of the handle of my coffee mug, and I moved it around towards me in a wide slow curve, and the sight of this movement in the fiery dimness had a beauty to it. Why are things beautiful? I don’t know. That’s a good question. Isn’t it pleasing when you ask a question of a person, a teacher, or a speaker, and he or she says, That’s a good question? Don’t you feel good when that happens? Sometimes when the fire puffs out it gets so black it’s almost frightening. I don’t want to use the last match. Finally a crumple will catch and burn down to fireworms. Then darkness again, and cold. That’s what I like about this living room: when I come down here, it is really cold. The chair is cold to the touch when I sit down on it. When I sit here and breathe in and out with my eyes closed I can think of myself as a spinning tire, rocking back and forth past a low point in the frozen driveway. The tire wants to spin its own grave, melting the ice to its shape, and you have to help it get beyond that wish. You drive as high up on the upslope as you can and then, just when the car is weightless, you clunk the transmission into reverse and use the ride back down into the self-created valley to help you over it, and
if you don’t make it the first time, rock again. As you move the shifter back and forth, from reverse to drive to reverse to drive, and you begin to smell that faint whiff of hot rubber, you feel the same sort of wild joy you felt when you first learned how to swing, and learned how to go higher without being pushed. Actually it’s better than swinging on a swing, since with a swing you can never quite go so high that the swing will fly all the way around, but when you’re stuck in the driveway you finally reach the point where you are no longer tethered to a particular harmonic center point, and you churn off on your errand, sometimes at a slight diagonal, as one wheel pushes better than the other.

Good morning, it’s 4:49 a.m., and this is my last match. After I lit a few corners of paper and cardboard, I let the match fall onto a fold of a Circuit City flyer where I’m sure it will contribute its pittance.

What’s the best thing I can think of at this very second? Best thing. Let’s think. All right. Okay, one time Claire and I were driving to the beach and Claire pointed out a Yield sign standing by a field. “Mist,” she said. The early sun was heating up the reflective substance on one side of the sign and evaporating the dew or night-rain that was clinging to it. Morning mist rising from the Yield sign against a field: that’s one thing. Here’s another. Claire and I were sitting on the couch. This was seven years ago. I was doing some work, she was reading a paperback and
giving our infant son milk from her breast. “I’ve got a new way to turn the page,” she said. I looked over. One of her arms was holding up Henry and so was out of commission. The other was holding the paperback splayed open. When it was time, she put the tip of her tongue on the lower right-hand corner of the right-hand page. The tip held the paper, and by moving her head to the left, she could make the page slide and buckle, whereupon her thumb dove underneath it and was able to send it over to the little finger on the far side. So, Claire turning the pages with her tongue: that’s another thing.

You know what I think I’ll do? I think I’ll creep back in bed, very carefully so as not to joggle too much, pull the covers over me, relax all my muscles, and go back to sleep for a little while next to her, then get up at a normal time.

I tossed my apple core into the fire, and then, as an afterthought, I crunched the empty matchbox into a mound of orange bits the size of sugar cubes that had fallen away from a log. It caught right away and burned with a generous yellow flame. In thirty seconds it had curled away into a twist of ash and the fire was orange again. I was done.