I cannot be the only woman who fantasizes, sometimes, about spinning the wheel, driving her car off a cliff. It seems impossible to do, and therefore I long to do it. If only to make a hole in the preordained. If only to do something other than follow along, bumper to bumper, a dutiful mirror, for once in my life. If only to destroy something, even if it is myself.

I say this, but I can’t even take a leap into the goddamn ocean.

I imagined what it would be like, to stand across the street and watch my house burn down. The house where my parents had fought. The house where my mother had hit me in the face with all her strength. The house with the empty room in the attic. The house with the empty hole in the wall. The house where my father had read to me, book after book, as I curled against his warm shoulder. The house my father had decided to leave. I imagined the whole thing burning at once, as even and bright as a match head. I imagined the fireman approaching me, asking if there was anyone inside.

“Yes,” I would say, closing my eyes as the heat came off the house in waves. “Upstairs, on the left.” I wouldn’t give him the key, but it wouldn’t matter, he’d have an ax. I wouldn’t be the one to kill her, not me. If it happened it would be the blaze (an accident), the inexperience of the fireman (budget cuts), the slow traffic between the new fire station and the old house on fire (can’t be helped). If it happened, it wouldn’t be because of me, the bereaved, the new orphan standing on the curb, shiny and sore as a burn. But it wouldn’t happen anyway. They would save her. Probably, I mean.

I blew out the match and dropped it to the floor. I put the matchbox back into the drawer where it belonged. I reasoned with myself that if my father came home, which he could still do, at any time, despite everything, I didn’t want him to return to a hole in the ground. I didn’t want him to be angry with me.

Before you ask: I don’t know if I could have done it. I do know that I wanted to punish her. I wanted her to know what it was like to have something she loved taken away. (As if she didn’t know—but I wasn’t thinking about that, not then. You can’t expect so much from me.)