i think my dad burned down our house (on purpose)
and that's on my absentee alcoholic father simply doing *the most* to avoid doing anything at all.
We spent all spring (2011) househunting, my younger sister, my stepmom (D), and I. We toured house after house, my sister and I reinventing our future selves with each and every one.
I wouldn’t say either of us had the happiest of childhoods, so there was something hopeful in househunting. Exploring new rooms, new nooks and crannies with which to fantasize that possibly, in this house or that one, our parents might be new too.
The evil stepmother in Cinderella had nothing on D. As her “step” child, I quite literally spent summers polishing her furniture, copying lines of text from books for hours to ‘correct’ my shoddy handwriting, playing mind games with her over what food I could eat if I was hungry (sometimes all she’d offer was a single stick of gum).
For D, it was always about control. And I wasn’t her only victim.
Enter, Dad. Now, Dad is about as non-confrontational as a person can be. Workaholic, alcoholic, and though he exclusively worked from our home, he still managed to be an altogether absentee parent.
Like many fathers, our basement was his sanctuary, his fortress of solitude. With a vodka tonic in hand, he could slip into his office, and the rest of the world – my sister and I included – would simply cease to be.
Now, given that my sister and I were too young at this point to be clued in on the nuanced relationship dynamics between Dad and D, for now, we have to make some educated guesses as to the catalyst for this move.
5 house showings… 10… 15…
On the umpteenth house tour, a frustrated D tells our realtor to just pick the most expensive house in the area for us to outright buy, sight unseen.
This always struck me as a curious request, seeing how in the 10+ years I’d known D, she only ever bought off-brand food and that scratchy one-ply toilet paper, shopped exclusively at Old Navy, and would charge me 25c every time I left my bedroom light on.
But, as any good realtor (paid on commission, of course) would do, a house was found the very next day, and we moved just as the school year came to a close.
What happened next is simply the events as I recall them, but stick around for the added color that, in the years since, has led me to the conclusion that the fire that ultimately burned down our new was no accident.
For two weeks in the summer of 2011, I went to sleepaway camp. A first for me, but in a familiar location where my mom’s side of the family would vacation every year.
I was away for a total of three weeks, maybe just a few weeks after the move.
In the third week, with camp over, I’m back with Mom at our rental in the area. She gets a call from Dad and hands me the phone.
“Hey, so, um, there was a fire.”
The story goes that lightning struck nearby, causing a faulty wire in one of the ovens to spark and ignite.
“Luckily, no one was home,” with D and my sister being out of town for the weekend –something they absolutely never did – “but I was at work” on a Saturday? “and it took the firefighters too long to reach me. Everything is gone.”
This is a logical point where you might be thinking: smoke detectors?
Well, according to Dad, the house was too new, and our permits hadn’t come in for the smoke detectors to be activated. (Do remember, I’m 13 and have no idea how the f these things work)
The house was minutes away from being nothing more than ashes and dust. Much to my father’s dismay, I assume, firefighters were able to save the structure just enough for the interior to be rebuilt.
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At this point, maybe you’re following along just enough to be a tad suspicious, but not enough to think Dad could be behind such destruction.
Now comes the little spicy tidbits I’ve collected in the years since. (Trigger warning)
Important Context:
