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| A backyard burn. Incriminating Evidence? Sissy says so. |
I've always had a little thing for fire.
From my days as a blond haired and woefully under-aged three foot package of energy, I loved those sparklers just as much as my GI Joe's, cap guns and freeze pops.
Those were the days where parents let their kids play with matches, saws, knives, rope- just about anything so long as they left them to drink their martini's in peace.
I'd spend hours lighting sparklers, mesmerized by the white tip of the metal stick as I scrolled my initials into the dark sky.
They made my little pyro toes twinkle.
Though sparklers now fail to ignite those childhood passions, give me a pile of brush, some gasoline and a book of matches and I somehow morph into cave woman.
I'd like to think I'm getting in touch with my Neanderthal brothers and sisters.
One of the greatest advantages of living on Cape Cod, besides the icy Atlantic Ocean, Wellfleet Oysters and sweeping vistas, is that you can burn your junk in the backyard. Not cars or trash, but garden debris, like branches, rotten fence posts and the occasional wheelbarrow load of leaves.
I'm a responsible burner, most of the time. Okay, I do toss in a few leaves here and there. Maybe a pizza box or two. A chair went in one time. And I'm having a flashback of dragging up a desk from the basement and it ending up on the fire. I can't help it, I get carried away.
Fire is cleansing.
I've got my own little backyard baptismal font.
But if you happen to mention my passion for backyard burning to Sissy, don't listen to whatever she says because she still blames me for setting her eyelet curtains on fire when we were in high school. She'll tell the mailman, the toll taker, anyone who'll listen that I'd been smoking in her room, had left a match burning on the dresser, which ignited her favorite curtains. A wide open window on a blustery spring day gave that little match what he needed to incinerate Sissy's curtains.
I swear on Dot's grave I didn't start that fire.
In fact, Sissy should thank me for my cat like reflexes and quick thinking because I sprinted into action, racing into our bathroom, grabbing the four ounce water tumbler and battling the fire like a trained professional, saving her frilly canopy from going up in flames.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
But no matter how many times I tell Sissy it wasn't me, she just opens those big brown eyes, raises an eyebrow and mouths, "Guilty as charged."
"You always wanted my room."
Okay, I admit, when we moved into our new house, she nabbed the best bedroom, a spacious and sunny front of the house room that overlooked our neighborhood, which in those days, was pulsating with teenage hormones, Schwinn Bikes, basketballs and sprouting facial hair.
She spent hours flipping through the sample books, picking out a plush cranberry wall-to-wall carpet so thick, pennies would bounce off it. I got stuck with a yellow scalloped patterned shag that took on a decidedly mustard glow because I was too busy pulling up my tube socks and dribbling my basketball around the new neighborhood to look through the giant carpet books.
My room overlooked the back yard, a pretty boring place for a nosy tomboy who liked being smack in the middle of the action. Sissy had the VIP seats in the house; I looked at Mom's new rock garden. She had the double canopy bed; I had the twin. But what I really envied was her closet, a double wide cavernous hideaway because she was able to squeeze a vanity and a Hollywood style lighted mirror inside. She'd spend hours tucked away in the dark mysterious room picking zits, plucking eyebrows and trying to subdue her wildly crazy hair.
She really pioneered the lady cave long before man conquered his subterranean refuge.
Her entire room was off limits, a highly secured big sister vault and she guarded it with ferocious drive. She'd unleash a cacophany of screams even if I touched her carpet with my big toe, or craned my head around the door, hoping to catch a glimmer of her lady cave.
So I'd have to sneak in when she wasn't around being careful not to leave my footmarks on that damn carpet. My friends and I would tip toe in, slide open the doors to her lady cave and lust over her lighted mirror, the Clairol steam curlers, the Conair blow dryer, the makeup, the magazines. Her lady cave would stay warm long after she'd finished blow drying her hair.
It was like looking into someone's diary or handbag, because once you started, it was impossible to stop. I'd always snoop around in there, jealous that I didn't have my own little lady cave, but I was always on alert because when she caught me in there, she'd pinch me.
The Cade sisters' are big boned gals and when Sissy pinched me, her big paws squeezed out more pounds per square inch pressure than a croc and left a welt that would hang around for days.
So when her curtains went up in flames, shooting across the room, threatening to ignite her canopy bed, she blamed me.
I'm certain I didn't start that fire.
I think is was my mother's lucky strike.
Or it may be been my sister, Debbie.
But it wasn't me. No matter what Sissy says.
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