The Progress of Love

you’ve accumulated a lot, over the years. Some of it is probably very interesting.”
    “There is more to it than anybody knows! And I am the one has to deal with it!”
    “Anti-patriarchal rage,” said Dane, taking up the card again. “What do they mean by that?” He wondered why they used capitals for Female Craziness and Frustration and Oppression.
    “I’ll tell you,” said Violet. “I’ll just tell you. You don’t know what I’ve got to contend with. There’s things that are not so nice. I went in there and opened up that old trunk to have a look at what was inside, and what do you think I found, Dane? It was full of filth. Horse manure. Set out in rows. On purpose. Inside my trunk in my own house, that’s what I find.” She began to sniffle, in an uncharacteristic, unattractive, self-pitying way.
    When Dane told Theo this, Theo smiled, then said, “I’m sorry. What did she say then?”
    “I told her I’d go and look at it, and she said she’d cleaned it all out.”
    “Yes. Well. It looks as if something snapped, doesn’t it? I thought I could see it coming.”
    Dane remembered what else she’d said, but he didn’t mention it. It didn’t matter.
    “That’s a disgusting trick, isn’t it?” she’d said, whimpering. “That’s the trick of a stunted mind!”
    Violet’s front door was standing open at noon the next day when Dane drove down her road, heading out of town. He didn’t usuallytake this route. That he did today was not surprising, considering how much Violet had been on his mind in the last several hours.
    He must have come in the door just as the flames started up in the kitchen. He saw their light ahead of him on the kitchen wall. He ran back there, and caught Violet heaping papers on top of the gas stove. She had turned on the burners.
    Dane grabbed a scatter rug from the hall to shield himself so that he could turn off the gas. Burning papers flew into the air. There were heaps of paper all over the floor, some papers still in boxes. Violet was evidently intending to burn them all.
    “Oh, Jesus, Aunt Violet!” Dane was yelling. “Jesus, Jesus, what are you doing! Get out of here! Get out!”
    Violet was standing in the middle of the room, rooted there like a big dark stump, with scraps of fiery paper flying all around her.
    “Get out!” Dane yelled, and turned her around and pushed her toward the back door. Then, all of a sudden, her speed was as extraordinary as her stillness had been. She ran or lurched to the door, opened it, and crossed the back porch. Instead of going down the steps, she went off the edge, falling headfirst into some rosebushes that Wyck had planted.
    Dane didn’t know right away that she had fallen. He was too busy in the kitchen.
    Luckily, paper in heaps or bundles doesn’t catch fire as readily as most people think it does. Dane was more afraid of the curtains catching, or the dry paint behind the stove. Violet wasn’t anything like the careful housekeeper she used to be, and the walls were greasy. He brought the scatter rug down on the flames that were shooting up from the stove, then remembered the fire extinguisher that he himself had bought for Violet and insisted she keep on the kitchen counter. He went stumbling around the room with the fire extinguisher, chasing flaming birds that fell down as bits of charred paper. He was impeded by the piles of paper on the floor. But the curtains didn’t catch. The wall behind the stove had broken out in paint blisters, but it didn’t catch either. He kept at the chase, and in five minutes, maybe less, he had the fire out. Just the bits ofburned paper, dirty moth wings, were lying over everything—a mess.
    When he saw Violet on the ground between the rosebushes, he thought the worst. He was afraid she had had a stroke, or a heart attack, or at the very least broken her hip in the fall. But she was conscious, struggling to push herself up, groaning. He got hold of her, and lifted her. With many grunts and exclamations of dismay coming from them both, he helped her to the back steps and set her down.
    “What’s this blood on you?” he said. Her arms were smeared with dirt and blood.
    “It’s from the roses,” Violet said. He knew then, by her voice, that there was nothing broken in her.
    “The roses scratched me something fierce,” she said. “Dane, you’re a terrible sight. You’re a terrible sight, you’re all black!”
    Tears and sweat ran together down his face. He put his