Ashes of Fiery Weather (3 page)

—that story, right. With Sean and the guy who gave us the finger?

Norah, though she'd been about to slam the door in frustration, stopped.

Nah, I don't think so.

I know it. It's fucking funny.

This was a couple years ago. We're heading back to the firehouse after another fucking false alarm and Tommy's driving. It's got to be eleven at night.

We're coming to the light and this asshole in a Toyota shoots right in front of us, cuts us off. Tommy slams on the brakes and hits the horn, and the prick sticks his hand out the window and gives us the finger.

Asshole.

Yeah, so, Tommy, he's pissed as shit. He floors it. He goes around the corner, goes around the corner, we're hanging on in the back. I don't know how he does it, but we beat the guy to the next intersection. He's sitting there at a red light. Tommy stops the truck and gets out. You know him, he's a big fucking guy. He goes over to the car and opens the door and pulls the guy out and he says something we can't hear.

So he gets back in the truck, we're heading back and it's dead quiet. Then Sean goes, “Hey, Tom, you misunderstood the guy. He wasn't flipping us off. He was telling us we're number one.”

Norah smiled into the general laughter. Sean never told her that but then he'd never talked much about work. There had to be a lot of stories, she realized. Stories starring Sean. Sean, alive. Stories that would come to Aidan and Brendan someday.

Norah went back upstairs and into the living room, trying to prepare for the onslaught of pity. Brendan scampered over and declared he was hungry. She didn't see the other two, but she knew Aidan would be in the center of a pack of boys, with Cathal nearby, she assumed. If they weren't in Delia's yard, it was because they'd already gone over the fence to the firehouse. Aidan would want to show his uncle Sean's locker, which still had to be cleaned out, and then no doubt he'd take Cathal up to the bunkroom to visit Sean's bed.

Maggie might be with Joe Paladino's daughter, Isabel, who was her age, though they weren't quite friends, mostly due to Maggie's reserve, a thing that had puzzled Sean and frankly annoyed him. More likely, Maggie was in her grandmother's bedroom, with Delia's books. If Sean were here, he'd say, “Put the book away, Magee.” If he were here. If it weren't his funeral.

Grateful for a job, Norah took Brendan's hand and led him to the dining room. The smell of cheese always got to her in the first two months. She'd been avoiding the dining room, though if she threw up, surely it would be put down to nerves.

Ray Cavalieiri had handled the food. He owned a deli with his brothers, and he told her not to worry, they'd get everybody fed. Indeed, Cavalieiri's supplied trays of ziti, lasagna and meatballs, and cold cuts for sandwiches. Roast beef and ham and Swiss and American cheese. There were rolls and Italian bread. Salads and olives and pickles. Norah wasn't sure if the deli had also taken care of the soda and beer and ice, but somebody certainly had.

Seeing the abundance of food made Norah suddenly wonder about the cost. Was Ray expecting to be paid? Would he bill her? Or was he donating the food?

There was maybe a twenty in her wallet. The morning after the fire, she'd snatched the checkbook from the drawer of the desk in the corner of their bedroom where Sean sat and paid the bills every month. She hadn't recorded the checks she'd written for the funeral home and for the casket. She'd ordered a wreath from the children and one from herself.
Beloved Father, Beloved Husband.
But she'd put those on the credit card, as well as her black dress and a navy-blue one for Maggie, whose only other dress was her Easter dress, and she wore that on the second day of the wake. The boys wore the same suits for both.

Nobody had ever told her that you spent the day after a death shopping. When was the credit card bill due? Norah felt a shot of panic. She'd never thought of herself as a helpless sort of wife. But when was the electric bill due? The mortgage? The phone bill? Would she get Sean's paycheck on his usual payday? Would it be his last full paycheck? It would have to be. Would they keep her and the children on his insurance?

The FDNY had assigned her a liaison, but so far they'd only talked about the funeral.

If she couldn't keep up with the mortgage, would she have to move all of them into an apartment? Stuff all the kids into one bedroom and keep the other for herself? She could divide the kids between the two bedrooms and sleep on a sofa bed.

The questions were like bees diving at her head. She always waved her hand frantically when a bee got too close, and Sean would laugh and tell her that was exactly the way to get stung.

Norah swallowed hard, fighting the rise of sick.

There would surely be a lot of leftover food. She would donate it to the nuns of St. Maren's, the cloistered convent in the neighborhood, and that would be her last bit of shopping for them. Buying groceries for the nuns who had retreated from the world had seemed little enough money to spare before, but not now.

It wasn't long after she was first married that she accompanied Grace on a shopping trip so Grace could take her through what to buy. Oatmeal and fruit. Milk and juice. Bread and cheese. The nuns never said what they liked to eat. They simply accepted what they were given. She went with Grace to the convent, around the back to the one public room, the turn room, and watched Grace place the grocery bags in the turn, a revolving cabinet in which the parishioners left their offerings for the nuns in exchange for their prayers.

For prayers, people tended to leave sweets, cakes and cookies they bought at the bakery.

Grace had explained that it was the wives of the firemen who took care of the practical side of things. The founder of the convent was Saint Maren of Ireland, the patron of those in danger of drowning and those in danger from fire. There was Saint Florian, the patron of firefighters, and it was his medal the wives all wore. But there was no patron saint for the wives.

“The wives of firemen don't need a patron saint. They're saints themselves.”

That was the joke they told now, and maybe it was as old as the custom, which Grace said went back at least to her grandmother, but probably further. The wives of the Glory Devlins had adopted Saint Maren as their patron.

Norah had done her duty by the saint, hadn't she? She'd gone to the grocery store and filled a basket with things for them, even if she'd never actually prayed to Saint Maren. It should have been enough.

As if her thinking of the nuns had conjured their presence, she saw on the table of food a plate of soda bread, each slice wrapped individually, and wondered who had brought it. The soda breads were baked by the nuns and sent out of the convent wrapped for sale at Agnello's bakery. The nuns used some of the money to pay for the upkeep of the convent, and the rest they gave away.

One slice from every batch was blessed, and whoever ate it would have a prayer answered. There were stories of women conceiving who had not been able to. Letters arriving from husbands away at war.

Norah wondered if the person who'd brought the bread knew of the blessing. Surely they knew the only thing Norah would want was Sean to be alive. Not the only thing. Perhaps not. She picked up a piece of the soda bread and held it for a minute. What if she ate it and ended up with twins? What if two babies instead of one was considered a blessing, and never mind what she actually wanted?

Her hands shaking, she made Brendan a cheese sandwich on a pumpernickel roll, spread thickly with mayonnaise. Brendan dove under the dining room table to eat it. She tried to coax him out.

“It's hot under there! Brennie, you can go outside on the stoop and eat.”

Brendan mashed his hand into his sandwich to flatten it, ignoring her. She felt the heat rising in her face as people turned to stare. One of the other wives nudged her husband.

Kevin Grady, who was standing nearby, said, “Hey, Mrs. O'Reilly, I'll keep an eye on him if you want.”

Grace's oldest son was fifteen or sixteen, and was no doubt used to keeping his two younger brothers in line. The middle one, the football player, was about thirteen, she thought, and Danny was in Maggie's class. The boys all favored Grace, with her green eyes and very dark hair from the Italian side of her family.

“I guess he's all right.” Norah pushed her hair out of her face.

“Yeah, sure he is.” Kevin squatted and peered under the table. “Hey, Bren, man, you setting up camp under there or what?”

With a failing smile, she thanked Kevin and abandoned Brendan to him. She envied the Gradys the simplicity of their family. She'd often wished her own children were better organized, with the two boys close in age but Maggie had been born on June 21, and a year later Aidan, on June 19. Which made them the same age on June 20. For the first three years, they'd had a co-party on that day, but after that it became impossible to please them both, and so she had to organize a boy party and a girl party on the nearest weekend, one held on Saturday and the other on Sunday.

The long break between the boys was her fault. She thought sometimes that her Big Irish Family was one of the things Sean had been attracted to when they first met. He had this idea that families with lots of children operated like baseball teams, with everyone bonded together for a common purpose. He'd never thought to wonder how well you could know older brothers who were gone to another country by the time you were eleven.

When Brendan turned two, Sean began to suggest having another. But the thought made Norah restless. Without pregnancy stretching her in ways she shouldn't be stretched, she might take an interesting job doing something or other, or write a children's book, something Irishy but nothing to do with leprechauns. Or maybe she would take some college classes.

Sean never asked about her day. He didn't understand how much of her life was simply boring. When he worked twenty-four, Norah felt abandoned in this foreign country.

But once Brendan started half-day nursery school, she'd begun to weigh the odds of her actually doing any of those things against how happy Sean would be. She'd been hoping the new baby would be a uniter, someone they could all root for. Another girl.

Slightly stupefied, her eyes gritty as though sand had blown in them, Norah wound through the rooms again, moving with pretend purpose. She stepped out of the living room and bumped into Amred Lehane, studying the family pictures in the hallway.

“I can hardly believe this has happened for the second time in five years,” he said. “The grandson of a fireman who died in the line of duty has also died in the line of duty.”

“The second time?” Norah asked, confused. A mistake, she knew as soon as she said it. Amred was a walking encyclopedia of FDNY history.

“Bill O'Connor, who died in Waldbaum's,” Amred said. “His grandfather died of burns. Delia's father, Gentleman Jack Keegan, in 1941. Now Sean.”

Norah began edging away. She had no place to put other people's sad stories.

“Bill O'Connor's wife was there, you know, at Waldbaum's.”

“I know that,” Norah snapped.

The men talked ceaselessly about what caused the roof of the Waldbaum's to collapse in August of '78, and how the six men who'd been up there venting the roof fell into the fire.

The wives, though, talked about Louise. How Louise came by the firehouse early in the morning, right as the night tour was ending, with the kids in the car, to pick up Bill for a trip to the beach. She'd followed the rig to the fire. From the roof, Bill waved to Louise and their three children. Minutes later, he was dead.

Norah left Amred and took off upstairs to Sean's old bedroom, because if she didn't get ten minutes alone, her bones might dissolve, and then what would happen to her kids? But in the bedroom, Eileen was standing at the window, her shoulders slack beneath the blue shirt of her dress uniform, her eyes red-rimmed. She didn't turn when Norah came in.

“They wouldn't let me dig for him, you know. We'll bring him out, Sean's captain says to me.”

“I'm sure he didn't want you to see, Eileen,” Norah said sharply. “You're his sister.”

“I'm a firefighter,” she said stubbornly.

Are you? Norah thought. Hasn't this gone far enough? She'd gotten Sean's attention and her mother's. Now Sean was gone, half the audience.

“I said, That's my brother, and they said, He's our brother. And you know what?”

Eileen paused so long that Norah didn't think she was going to continue.

“I left. I walked away. Sean didn't want me on the job.”

“Eileen, please.” Norah wondered how many beers she'd had. Three at least, no doubt.

“I've been thinking about quitting.”

Norah was surprised, though Sean had predicted she would, once she realized that very little about firefighting was romantic.

“I love the job. I fucking love it,” Eileen said fiercely. “But the bullshit? Fighting fires is easy compared to living with firemen. I know some guys were giving Sean a hard time too. Saying he told me to take the test or some crap like that.”

Norah rubbed her eyes. He certainly had not. One Thanksgiving night, long after Delia had left and the children were in bed, Sean and Eileen were still drinking, and Sean began teasing her about failing the physical. Eileen, not amused, recited the points of the lawsuit. Soon they were both yelling, and then Sean stretched out on the floor and, tucking his arms behind his head, told her to go ahead and drag him out of the fire—unless women were going to specialize in rescuing kids and pets? Eileen aimed a kick at his head, and Norah had to get between them, hissing that if they woke the kids, she would set them both on fire and they could have fun putting each other out. Why, she thought now, would she ever have said such a thing?