A Lesson in Fire

My girlfriend’s father blew up last night. It was really quite interesting. Mr. Riley was lying on the sofa watching the Knicks when suddenly he burst into flames. Whoosh! Just like the Hindenburg. It was really quite interesting, but I already told you that.

Lisa and I were in the corner playing Scrabble when it happened. We saw the whole thing. One second, he was there, and the next he was barbecue. Mrs. Riley ran in from the kitchen with a spatula, her hands still soapy from washing the dishes. She looked at Lisa, and then pointed at the flames.

“Is that your father?”

Lisa nodded without looking up.

“Well, don’t just sit there. Get the fire extinguisher.”

“We don’t have one,” Lisa said. “We bought the Keurig instead. Remember? Wal-Mart had a sale.”

The neighbors didn’t have a fire extinguisher either, so Mrs. Riley called the Fire Department. We tried to put out the flames with glasses of water and little cups of coffee, but it just didn’t work. So we stood around the sofa and chatted instead. The flames, orange and pink, slithered and jutted like snakes.

“Poor Jeffrey …he was such a dreamer,” Mrs. Riley reminisced. “There were so many things he wanted to do with his life, but there was always something good on TV…”

Clouds of smoke rose toward the ceiling fan. The fire began to smolder.

“Tell me, Donald,” Mrs. Riley asked. “Are you in love with my daughter?”

“I care about her very much,” I said.

“That’s meaningless,” said Mrs. Riley. “Caring is easy. I care about lots of people. I

even care about Dr. Potter, our dentist. But caring and loving are two separate worlds. So I’ll ask you again, Donald, do you love my daughter?”

I felt Lisa squirm beside me. “Mom, you’re embarrassing me!”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Riley. “You’ve already seen each other naked. After that, how can a question be embarrassing?”

“Mom!”

Mrs. Riley poked me in the chest. “Your time is up, Donald. Please answer the question. Do you love my daughter?”

“Probably,” I said. “Probably I love her. I think about her lots. I’m happy when I’m with her. When I look into her eyes, I see beautiful rainbows and shooting stars.”

Mrs. Riley did not like my answer. She frowned, shaking her head. “That’s not love,” she said. “No, that’s not love at all.”

She gazed at the nest of flames still dancing on the couch. Somewhere in those flames was her husband of thirty-three years.

“This is love,” Mrs. Riley told me, and she stuck her right arm straight into the fire. It was really quite interesting. Her skin shriveled up like newspaper in a campfire, but she didn’t even flinch. She held it there until the fire department arrived. Lisa started crying. I put my arm around her and shielded her eyes while the firemen dragged in a big yellow hose and doused her burning parents.

After that we drove Mrs. Riley to the emergency room. She stayed for three nights while they treated her for third degree burns. When we took her back home, the sofa was covered in ash, but Mrs. Riley slept on it anyway.

Three years later, Lisa and I were married.

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We have our own house in the suburbs now, a three-bedroom cape with a patio and a fireplace. Sometimes at night I throw on some kindling and we snuggle on the couch, staring at the flames.

“Do you love me?” Lisa asks.

“Do you love me?” I ask.

Hand in hand, we walk toward the fireplace. The flames crackle and hiss. Nothing ever hurts as much as we think it will.