Table of Contents
DUNBARTON TOWNSHIP: FIVE CHARGED IN ATTACK ON HOMELESS MAN
ETRUSCAN IS PROUD OF SUPPORT RECEIVED FROM:
Praise for the Work of Paul Lisicky
About The Burning House
“...took hold of me from the first page and I read it straight to the end. There is a compulsive forward movement to the story that makes it feel like a mystery—except the enigma here has to do with the different attractions of the beautiful sisters, Joan and Laura, and the allure of the old seaside town. It’s the sort of very good book that makes you feel like you’re dreaming when you’re reading it, and opened-up and curious when you finish. So much happens, each word counts. I really loved it”
—Alice Elliott Dark
“...an achingly lovely novel about the things that bind us together in this life and the things that pull us apart. Paul Lisicky has an extraordinary gift for exploring emotional nuance and the rhythms of desire. With this book he yet again asserts himself as one of the select writers who continues to teach me about the complexities of the human heart.”
—Robert Olen Butler
About Lawnboy
“Quite simply, the real thing, a novel of mystery and great beauty. The appearance of a writer like Paul Lisicky—a writer who deeply respects the complexities of love and desire, who can find tragedy and transcendence almost every where he looks—is a rare event”
—Michael Cunningham
“Lisicky’s prose shines, at times hilarious, at others entrenched in sorrow and longing, but always gorgeous to read... The reconciliations between the characters are moving and earned, graced with compassion and vitality.”
—Bret Anthony Johnston
“Nobody writes about hilarious longing the way Paul Lisicky does. Some writers manage to be funny and sad in turn... Lisicky manages to be both at the same time.”
—Elizabeth McCracken
ALSO BY PAUL LISICKY
Lawnboy Famous Builder
For Denise Gess,
In memory
There is a way if we want into everything
—MICHAEL DICKMAN, “My Autopsy”
Acknowledgments
Portions of this novel appeared in The East Hampton Star, Ecotone, Hunger Mountain, fwriction: review, The Literary Review, NANO Fiction, and in the anthology A Book for Daniel Stern (Sheep Meadow Press). An earlier version of the opening paragraph appeared as the poem “The Night in Question” in Verse Daily. Outtakes from the novel appeared in Prairie Schooner (as “Bess Helen’s Dog”) and Le Petit Journal (as “Lumina Avenue”). The excerpt from “My Autopsy” by Michael Dickman is used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
With thanks and love to Denise Gess, Deborah Anne Lott, Elizabeth McCracken, Victoria Redel, and Carol Houck Smith for reading multiple drafts of this book. Thank you to Philip Brady, Robert Mooney, Starr Troup, Marissa Phillips, and everyone at Etruscan Press for their kindness and enthusiasm. Thanks to Jim Cihlar for his precise eye, to Kapo Ng for his fantastic cover.
And to Mark Doty: light, climbing up the aerial—Everything.
CHAPTER 1
The rising seas, the sinking lawn: none of that bothered me tonight. Laura’s health and mind, shifting like water. Mister Greasy, Son of Unabomber. Far away. Yay. I walked from the bay. I could not see. But I might have been given a fresh brain, inspired and outwardly turned, and as soon as I spoke those words to the deep, I swear creatures started coming toward me. Squirrels, raccoons, deer, herons, catbirds, footfalls on fallen leaves. I was like someone out of a freaking folktale, who knew not death or the churned-up stomach but moved through the night with the lightest tread, changing it with the benevolence of his passing. Oh, I’m exaggerating for effect now, I’ll admit it. Real contentment has none of that extremity or loopiness. No sign of endings, or the long black coat creeping out from behind a bush. What was I telling you? It was something like this: the world was made exactly for us and we’d never have to leave it.
Laura had told Joan and me not to expect her till midnight. There was accounting to take care of, some missing shipments from Connecticut. Then that little heart-to-heart with Madison, who’d taken to dealing behind the register, silly girl. As if we’d never once think about the parade of big talkers who seemed to show up ten minutes before closing every night.
But trust in my instincts?