Ashes of Fiery Weather (38 page)

When she got back to the living room, she returned to the chair. “That's the best sleep I've had in two months,” Maggie said.

“The heat's been awful.”

“Yes, that's the reason. The heat.”

Norah shook out a shirt of Brendan's. “I'm ordering pizza if you want to stay for dinner. I don't want to turn the oven on.”

“That'll give me really bad heartburn.”

“Up to you.”

Norah's hands didn't stop moving. Shake, fold, place on proper pile.

“Not sleeping has more to do with being nine months pregnant than it being the dead of summer,” Maggie said.

Norah held up a shirt of Brendan's and examined it, frowning. “I think your brother eats buttons, I swear to God.”

“Our meeting went well,” Maggie said.

Her mother placed the shirt on Brendan's pile. She didn't turn around. “Did it?”

Maggie nodded. “They're lawyers. They make really good money. Right now they're in the city but they're going to move to Long Island. Maybe they'll have a pool. God, that would be nice, especially since he'll have a summer birthday.”

Norah picked up Rose's school blouse. “As people, you liked them?”

“Sure,” Maggie said. “They're nice. They really, really want a baby. I think they'll be good parents.” She traced figure eights on her belly.

“What do they look like?”

“He's one of those guys who was probably really cute when he was younger and now he's okay-looking. But she's pretty, really pretty.”

If anything happens to him, Maggie thought, she'll be fine.

“Danny wants me to ask Madd to check them out.”

“Oh, Maggie, I would leave John Maddox out of the equation.”

“I never got everybody's problem with him. He's funny and he's a good dad.”

Their father had been gone more than a year before he and Eileen got married. Madd wasn't a stand-in-dad kind of uncle, but he'd taken them to Shea Stadium and out to Coney Island a few times. He didn't come to a lot of their family occasions because Delia didn't like him, and it was mutual. When Maggie was a freshman in high school, Madd and Eileen separated for a time, so the family didn't see him at all for several months. But he was crazy about Quinn. Nobody could deny that.

“Your father used to say he would've made a good cop or a good criminal,” Norah said. “It could have gone either way.”

“Well, he picked cop, so Danny figures if there's anything to find out, he can do it. We should at least see if they've ever been arrested.”

Norah sighed. “Well, I can't tell you what to do anymore, can I?”

Maggie watched her hands whisk Rose's blouse into a neat square. “What would you have done if Dad hadn't asked you to marry him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can count, Ma. I know when you were married and I know when I was born.”

Norah turned, clutching a blue pillowcase. “My God, you're not getting married?”

“No!” Maggie said. “Absolutely not.”

“Good. Don't pile one mistake on top of another.” She snapped the pillowcase.

“Like you did, you mean?”

The pillowcase was folded and set down in its place before Norah spoke.

“Me and your father were a couple, not just fooling around. If we hadn't married sooner, we would have later.” Her voice was tight, quavering.

“Great. Now I'm a slut,” Maggie said.

Norah turned to fully face her.

“You are going to listen to me very carefully. It is one hundred degrees in here. I have to finish all of this and then drag your sister home from the McAleers after a fifteen-minute argument about why she can't spend the night there for the third time this week just because she doesn't like sleeping in a room by herself. I haven't got the patience to chat about things that happened twenty years ago.”

“Nineteen,” Maggie said. “The month I was at college, she had our room to herself. But anyway, I'm really sorry my getting knocked up has upset Rose.”

“
Magdalena.
I understand that you're not feeling well, so I'm going to let that pass, but from now until you have that baby, you might consider counting to ten before you speak.” Norah turned her back.

Maggie pushed herself up and onto her hip, then lowered herself onto her side and closed her eyes. She was seven pounds of baby and twenty pounds of cruel words. She knew what her mother deserved and what she did not. Still, an apology wouldn't come.

She knew, as well, that it was wrong to change the story, to cancel her parents' wedding and replace it with an adoption. Erase her brothers and her sister. Yet it was too intriguing a thought—her father, her mother and herself in the same world but set in different orbits. What they all might have been spared. Each other, how it ended.

The nurse kept telling her to push. Bear down. Maggie tried, but she was numb below the waist and this whole thing had been going on since yesterday, and it was getting dark again.

The nurse had rolled in a full-length mirror because she said it would help.

“Aim for the mirror,” she said.

Maggie was afraid to look. But Danny's attention was fixed on the mirror as though it were a movie screen. Noelle, on her other side, lowered her voice to be heard above the nurse, who clearly believed that being tough was going to produce results.

“Just two or three more,” Noelle said.

“Two or three?” Maggie said.

“Don't talk, push!” the nurse said.

“You get to sleep when you're done,” Noelle whispered.

Maggie pushed again and then again and then a third time. The doctor, who was standing by Maggie's feet as if she were waiting for a bus, suddenly tensed.

A fourth push, and in spite of the numbness, Maggie felt the moment of separation. She sensed the emptiness. She saw a small purple body cupped in the doctor's hands. “It's a girl!”

The doctor put the screaming baby on Maggie's stomach. Maggie's arms, of their own accord, reached for the infant as though the baby were perched on the edge of a cliff.

“Born at 7:07 on August 27. Lucky!” one of the nurses called out cheerfully.

“A girl.” Danny touched the baby's arm and pulled his hand back. Her eyes were shut tight. The wailing seemed bigger than her whole body.

“She's so little,” Noelle said. “I can't believe how little she is.”

The nurse lifted her from Maggie's arms.

“Wait.” Maggie tried to sit up. She and Danny had elected to see the baby after the birth. The hospital staff were supposed to know that.

Noelle put a hand on Maggie's shoulder. “She's cold. They're wrapping her up is all.”

Maggie sat back.

“A girl. I can't believe it. A girl,” Danny said. “I didn't think—Maggie? Are you all right?”

“Yes. No. I think so.” Her whole body was shaking. She couldn't feel her legs.

Danny cast a frightened glance at the doctor, who didn't look up. A nurse slid the mirror away. Then another nurse walked toward them with the baby, now quiet and wrapped in a blanket. She wore a snug white cap.

Maggie's arms automatically formed a cradle and the nurse laid the baby in it.

“Seven pounds, eight ounces. Another seven. Perfect.”

Danny moved the blanket to better see her face. Her eyes were open.

“Hey, you,” he said. “Look at you.” Danny put his finger on her cheek. She turned to the touch.

Maggie couldn't stop staring. She tucked the baby closer. Yesterday she would have said that all infants looked alike, but this baby, her baby, looked familiar. She picked up the tiny hand and cupped it in her palm.

“She has your eyes,” Danny said.

“All infants have blue eyes,” Maggie said. “Don't they? Is that true?”

Maggie was curled up on her bed. Her breasts hurt so much, just moving was excruciating. Her grandmother's house was quiet, and Maggie was glad she had not gone back to her own house after her release from the hospital as Norah had expected her to.

She didn't answer the knock on the door, but Delia came in anyway, carrying a plate with lettuce on it.

Maggie blinked at her. “You made me a salad?”

“Cold cabbage leaves. It helps.”

“I think I should feed her a little. I'm sure if I called them, they'd let me come over.”

In the five days since she'd given birth, Maggie had not been able to say their names out loud.

Delia closed her eyes for a moment. “I don't think you'll be allowed to do that,” she finally said. “Feeding her might help the pain, but it would only make you produce more milk.”

She set the plate down on the nightstand and left. Maggie steeled herself to sit up. She took the cabbage leaves off the plate and tucked them up her shirt.

Gently, she lay back down. When her grandmother came back a little while later, Maggie managed a grimace.

“Better?” Delia said.

“A little. Why cabbage leaves?”

“Cold anything would probably help, but the cabbage leaves are supposed to dry up the milk.”

“That's crazy. Who told you that?”

“I had a friend.” Delia paused. “She had a baby outside of marriage and she had to pretend he was her little brother—”

“Are you kidding?”

“This was in the late 1930s,” Delia said. “She went back to high school right after he was born. This old aunt of hers told her about cabbage leaves. I imagine it was usually done when a baby didn't live.”

Maggie found it difficult to imagine her grandmother having a real friend besides Nathaniel, but her mind was too full to pursue this line of thought.

On the Saturday before Labor Day, Noelle came by. The baby was ten days old. She would still have her little bit of umbilical cord.

Delia seemed relieved to see her and left them alone in front of the television. Noelle sat down.

“You look good,” she said.

“I look fat,” Maggie answered.

“Five or six months instead of nine,” Noelle said. “It'll go away.”

“I was never going to make it back to school this fall,” Maggie said.

“No, not with that due date.”

“I wish somebody had told me.”

“Aidan never thought you were going to give the baby up. Your grandmother never says anything unless she's asked, far as I can tell. Eileen, the same as your brother. Aunt Norah thought you'd be on the train, still bleeding.”

“But you knew.”

“It's what you needed to believe to get through it.”

“I don't know what to do now,” Maggie said. “Tell me what to do.”

“Get your school to defer your scholarship another semester. If they refuse, threaten to sue for pregnancy discrimination, or whatever it's called. Take another class at Brooklyn College. It's only the seventh. There's got to be late registration. Borrow the money from Delia if you have to. She'll give it to you. Then sign up for classes at your college over the winter break. You'll go back when mostly everyone is gone, and you can get adjusted again and start full time in the spring. How's that?”

Maggie nodded listlessly. “That sounds like a plan.”

But she still hadn't found out about Brooklyn College by Saturday, September 28, when Danny called to see how she was doing. He'd come home for the weekend. During the pregnancy, his brothers had persuaded him to apply to a few schools closer than Boston, and Maggie told him they were right. Now he was at Stony Brook.
Long Island.

Maggie suggested that he come by. He said he would, but he couldn't stay long. His nephew's birthday party was in the afternoon, and he hadn't gotten a gift yet.

Maggie dressed more carefully than she usually bothered to these days. She wore her maternity jeans and a green shirt that Brendan had outgrown a year ago. If anybody saw her and they didn't know about the baby, they'd think she'd fallen victim to the freshman fifteen.

Though it was a rainy day, Maggie suggested they go for a walk. She needed air. She needed exercise.

Danny came by her grandmother's house and she went outside to meet him. He wore a Mets cap in lieu of an umbrella. Maggie wore her blue jacket with the hood.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

The baby had turned a month old yesterday. The umbilical cord was almost certainly gone by now. Maggie wondered what Laurel had done with it. Did you just toss something like that in the trash like an eggshell, or was it something you saved like a lock of hair? Maggie hadn't read the postpartum chapters of her books.

Maggie started walking and Danny fell in beside her, letting her take the lead. They walked up Cross Hill Avenue, and when they passed the Celtic cross, she led him to the convent. They stood on the sidewalk outside the gate. The three-story building was in need of repair. Shingles were missing from the roof, and the paint on the door was peeling.

“I should tell my dad about the roof. It's probably leaking,” Danny said. “He'll get some of the guys to fix it. I guess you'd ask Father Halloran to talk to the sisters. Or you could go into that little room where you ask for prayers.”

Maggie looked up at him. “You've done it?”

“Me? No. My mom, when she got sick. My dad was pissed. I guess he didn't want her hoping for a miracle or something.”

They continued walking in silence. Danny said nothing when they arrived at Cross Hill Cemetery, and nothing still when she led him through the gate and to Fireman's Corner and her father's grave. Maggie squatted to clean off the stone, which had muddy, wet leaves stuck to it. She wished she'd thought to bring paper towels.

She traced his name with her finger. If the baby had been a boy, she would have named him Sean Patrick.

“What are we doing here?” Danny asked.

Maggie stood up. “Let's go get her.”

Danny shook his head. “The McKennas will be good parents.”