Matches

Our daughter is at the neighbors’ house again. This despite the restraining order. She’s over there, leaned up against the Henderson mailbox, legs crossed at the ankles, lighting kitchen matches and tossing them at the green edge of the neighbors’ perfect lawn.

I didn’t even know it was possible—a restraining order against a fourteen-year-old.

When cars pass by, curling past our shared cul-de-sac, our daughter pulls from a glinty steel flask full of water, pantomiming her mother when we sit toward the back of our local Presbyterian mass. The Hendersons are Presbyterian. They’re there too, up in the furthest row from us. My husband told them that a church was legal sanctuary and that retraining orders are no good there.

Our daughter has looked like a grown-up for as long back as I can recall. She’s out there wearing one of my summer dresses; the breeze kicks up the skirt and blows out the matches before they hit the ground.

Later, in bed with my husband, I tell him that our daughter was over at the Hendersons.

My husband sighs. When he sighs his stomach clenches and I can see his stomach muscles like he had when we were young.

“Where did she get the matches?”

We have a house without matches. We keep an electric car. Our stove-top burners are electric. The shed with the lawnmower and the two-stage gasoline mixture is forever locked. But matches are everywhere.

My husband promises to talk to her but I don’t say anything. My husband goes down on me while upstairs our daughter soaks socks in a mixture of rubbing alcohol and hairspray.

Our daughter is fourteen but looks much older. There are boys with their own cars who drop her off at our house. She wears my clothes and when I ask her to stay away from the Hendersons I’m not sure I really give a damn.

The first time the neighbors’ house caught fire, all of our neighbors stood out in the chill bright midnight, watching. It was like a community bonfire. We all watched it, but I watched our daughter. She was smiling and her eyes were somehow back-lit by the fire. She glowed, and her glowing has heated our house since.