Ashes of Fiery Weather (35 page)

“Robin,” Joe said, and Rose laughed again.

Actually, it was Sean, Maggie knew. Christopher Sean Paladino was born a year after Rose.

The bells went off.

“Outta the driveway, girls,” Joe called over his shoulder.

Maggie put a hand on Rose's shoulder and guided her back several steps. The guys waved as they took off. Rose waved back.

“Can we go to the park?” she asked when they were gone.

Maggie hesitated. “How about a nap?”

“You and me? In Daddy's room?” Rose said.

Funny she called him that when she hadn't even known him. “Sure.”

Maggie guessed it was almost noon.

Maggie was sitting up in bed, the doorstop that was
The Norton Anthology of English Literature
open on a pillow she'd put on her lap. She had a lot of reading to do for class, and usually she'd break it up over a couple of days, but she'd decided instead to save it all for tomorrow, April 5, which she planned to spend at the library. Her family would be descending on her grandmother's house after the Mass, and so Maggie intended not to be home until late afternoon.

There came a soft knock at the door. Maggie sat up and straightened her shirt before she called, “Come in.”

The door opened and her grandmother stepped in. She was wearing a jacket.

“I thought you might like to come with me to Nathaniel's.”

“Uh, is he sick or something?” Maggie asked. Why her presence would be needed she couldn't guess.

“No,” Delia said. “Tonight, at sunset, it will be April 5 by Jewish law. If you want to come, get your shoes on and let's go.”

Maggie had no idea what Jewish law had to do with April 5, but she got out of bed.

Nathaniel lived above Four Star Electronics Repair. The store was closed, but Delia surprised Maggie by producing a key and opening the door. They walked through the dark shop to a set of stairs in the back and climbed up one flight. Maggie waited to see if her grandmother would come up with another key, but she rang the apartment's doorbell. Nathaniel answered right away and smiled when he saw Maggie.

“Good,” he said.

As Maggie stepped inside, she peeked into the front room. She knew it used to be his sisters' bedroom back when Nathaniel's whole family had lived here, but it was now where Nathaniel kept his files. The products of his search for his brother were meticulously organized in boxes and on the shelves he'd installed around the room.

Maggie and Delia followed Nathaniel to the small kitchen.

To Maggie he said, “Should I ask how you're feeling, or are you tired of that question?”

“Tired of that question,” Maggie said.

“So I won't ask.”

Nathaniel opened a cabinet and took out a small candle in a green-tinted glass. “So, had you ever heard of Yahrzeit before today?”

“I've never heard of it at all,” Maggie said.

“You didn't explain to her?” Nathaniel said to Delia.

“I figured you would do a better job,” she said.

Nathaniel sighed. “‘Yahrzeit' is Yiddish and it means a year's time. You light the Yahrzeit candle on the anniversary of the death and let it burn for twenty-four hours. Usually you go by the date of the death according to the Hebrew calendar, but we don't use that. We don't need two April 5s.”

He smiled sadly at Delia. The corners of her mouth lifted in return.

“We do mark the day as you should according to Jewish law, from sundown the day before to sunset on the day. Tomorrow, your Mass, but tonight, this.”

“I'm not going to the Mass,” Maggie said.

“They aren't going to judge you, you know,” Delia said. “Nobody's going to say your mother did a bad job by herself. In fact, somebody will probably offer to build you a cradle. Somebody else will say to call when it's time to take you to the hospital, since your mother doesn't have a car. You know how they are.”

Maggie did indeed know. “Well, I don't need a cradle.”

And were that widely known, Maggie thought, somebody probably would offer to keep the baby.

Hey, me and my wife will take him. The kids'll double up. We'll get bunk beds. I'll build 'em myself.

“So, good.” Nathaniel closed the cabinet. “If you're not going tomorrow, all the better you're here tonight.”

He went over to the narrow kitchen window and pulled the shade. Holding up the candle, he said, “The window is a prettier place for a candle to burn for a day, but out of consideration for Lieutenant O'Reilly, who would no doubt be telling us how dangerous that is—”

Delia laughed.

“—we do this.” Nathaniel set the candle in the sink.

He opened a drawer and took out a book of matches, which he handed to Delia.

She stepped up, struck the match and brought the flame to the candle. The wick jumped to life.

Nathaniel said, “For our Sean. Son, husband, father, friend, soon-to-be grandfather—”

Delia made a small noise. Maggie crossed her hands over the baby.

“—who died in the service of his city.”

Delia drew in a breath, about to speak.

Maggie expected her grandmother to recite a poem. Yeats, maybe.

Instead, Delia said, “I miss him.”

After Maggie blew out the candles on the Entenmann's devil's food cake and put aside the piece given to her, she went out to her grandmother's backyard. It was June 20. Yesterday Aidan turned eighteen, and tomorrow Maggie would turn nineteen. Rose loved celebrating the day her brother and sister were the same age.

When Eileen came over with her daughter, and bearing a gift, it became annoyingly like a party. Then Noelle showed up, all the way from Queens.

Aidan wasn't any more interested in cake than Maggie was. He'd gone out with his friends last night and was still hung over. He stepped back after the candles were lit.

“Go ahead.” He waved a hand. “You need a wish way more than me.”

If Rose and Quinn (and their grandmother) hadn't been present, Maggie would have told him to go fuck himself.

Alone in the waning light, Maggie lowered herself into a wrought-iron chair nobody ever used.

Almost immediately, she heard the back door open and was ready to snap that she needed a damn minute to herself. But then she saw it was Eileen, not her mother.

Eileen pulled up the matching chair, which had been tipped over on its side, and set it down next to her. She wore shorts and a
Fidney
sweatshirt with the words in bold white on the back:
Keep Back 200 Feet.
She stretched out her legs. Maggie stared enviously. Her aunt was the fittest person she knew. She'd once run the New York City Marathon, and planned to again this year, now that Quinn was two.

“Sorry about all this,” Eileen said. “I should've known it wasn't your idea. I don't know what your mother was thinking, letting Rose do this.”

“Nineteen! Something to celebrate,” Maggie said. “At least, if you're not pregnant.”

“Norah told me you're still considering a closed adoption.”

Just jump right in, Maggie thought. “I've already told you, we're not considering it. That's what we're going to do.” She thought it was stupid to give your child away and then get letters from him, as if he were away at camp.

“Closed,” Maggie added, “but the agency we went to lets you leave word that you want to be contacted once he's eighteen. They have this book that you can look at, of parents. I'm thinking we should pick somebody out of state.”

“I was born in Ireland, and I still stared at the woman in Macy's and the woman on the bus and the substitute teacher. Me and your dad used to do it at the St. Patrick's Day parade. We'd look for women with red hair and jab each other and say, Maybe her? Maybe her?” Eileen said. “I think you get my drift.”

“No. What is your
drift?
”

Unfazed, her aunt said, “The adoptive parents can tell him he was born in Timbuktu and he's probably still going to keep an eye out for possible birth mothers.”

Maggie listened with growing unease. “I guess he'll have to deal with it then. All kids deal with stuff.”

“You're not too much younger than your mother was when she had you,” Eileen said.

“So? Mom wasn't going to do anything else with her life.”

“Maggie, for God's sake,” Eileen snapped.

“Mom's said herself if she hadn't met Daddy, she would have ended up back in Ballyineen, stocking soup cans in her father's grocery store.”

Eileen was silent for so long that Maggie began to relax, and then her aunt said, “Don't do it.”

Maggie stared at her. Eileen was studying her hands.

“You can't be sorry Gran adopted you.”

Eileen took too long to answer. “Up until your dad died, I was satisfied with my family.”

Before Maggie could answer, Eileen tried a grin. “Hey, this is not something for you to be worrying about on top of everything else.”

“Are you looking for your birth mother?” Maggie had never dared ask.

Eileen hesitated. “I've written to the place where I was born a few times. The nuns who write back say the records are sealed. When me and Madd went to Ireland we looked.” She paused. “We wanted to see if we could find out anything before we had a baby. They told me in person what they said in letters.”

“Quinnie's fine,” Maggie said.

“She's fine so far, and yeah, so am I. But does heart disease run in the family, or diabetes? Madd's got a huge family, so we thought if there were genetic diseases, they would have cropped up. Stupid logic, but it made us feel better.”

John Maddox, the fifth of six kids, the only boy. Spoiled rotten, he liked to joke. Maggie knew her grandmother certainly agreed. He was the last male of his family line, and Delia once said that was a good thing.

“Our agency gives medical records to the adoptive parents,” Maggie said. “It's not the Dark Ages anymore.”

“Well, the way it was done from Ireland was pretty dodgy. The nuns falsified birth records, gave the birth mothers fake names. They've made it impossible for mothers and kids to find each other.”

The baby began to kick hard. Logically, Maggie knew that it was because her aunt's voice went up. A fetus could hear in the womb. But she pressed his foot as if to reassure him.

“That was Ireland in the fifties! Again, nothing to do with me.”

“You're right. I know,” Eileen said. “I've never been in your position. I get that. But I will tell you,
I
couldn't have taken care of a baby when I was your age. I wasn't sure I could do it at forty. But you . . .”

“Me, what?” Maggie said.

“You're a lot more together than I was. I know after your dad died, your mom probably leaned on you a little too hard. Me and Delia could've done a better job picking up the slack. Both of us were gone in our heads most of that first year. Raising a baby would be hard, and I'm not saying it wouldn't be, but I think you'd be okay.”

“If all that is true, then don't I deserve a break? Shouldn't I be back at school with nothing to worry about but my grades?”

“Yeah, no doubt. But you know what?” Eileen pointed at Maggie's belly. “That's a baby, and it's yours.”

Maggie tried to summon her best sarcastic tone. No kidding! She shook her head instead.

“But my best advice, if you do go through with this?” Eileen paused. “Make it a private adoption, so that you and Danny can make some of the rules. Tell the adoptive parents that you'd like their contact information, a phone number or an address, and they can have yours. Now. Not in eighteen years. If something happens and you need to get in touch, you can.”

They were quiet, letting the dark fall between them. The back door opened and Noelle stuck her head out.

“Eileen? Your kid's got to pee and she won't let anybody else help her. She actually said no to Delia, which I have to admit impressed the hell out of me.”

Eileen sighed and went in. Noelle came out and took Eileen's seat.

“I heard what your auntie said.”

“Eavesdropping?”

Noelle laughed. “Just not deaf. Don't let her put her crap on you. You're doing the right thing. It's what I'd do.”

Maggie glanced at her to see if Noelle was humoring her, but she could read nothing patronizing in her cousin's expression.

“Did you not think it could ever happen, or were you both just drunk?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you're the last girl I'd ever have thought this would happen to,” Noelle said, and then added, “That Danny's gorgeous, though. I'd jump on him in a minute.”

“I didn't jump on him.” Maggie wanted to be mad but she felt something akin to satisfaction. She had at least surprised everyone.

“Did you know that it was my mother who was supposed to come to New York to live with the old auntie?”

“No,” Maggie said. “With my mother?”

“Instead of, more like,” Noelle said. “Granny said my mother was all set to go but she got married instead. Because she was up the pole. With me. That's what Granny meant but she wouldn't say it. She told me this sad story the day before I left. Her way of warning me. She got the wrong granddaughter, didn't she?” Noelle laughed.

“Yes, apparently.”

“Ah, lighten up,” Noelle said. “It'll be over with soon and you'll be back at school.”

Maggie felt her spirits lift. Noelle, at least, understood that she just wanted to be done with it. She still remembered how it had been on the trip to Galway they'd taken when Rose was a baby. They'd stayed for most of the summer. She and Noelle had grown close, to the point where the townspeople began to tease them by calling out their mothers' names as they rode by on their bikes. Maggie had not wanted to go home.

Noelle reached over and put a hand on Maggie's belly.