Ashes of Fiery Weather (40 page)

“Did I tell you that my father died?”

“You've never mentioned your father to me.”

“He drowned in a burning building.”

Maggie has never been able to resolve that paradox—fire, smoke, water—even though the story is simple enough. When she was sixteen, she went to the big library at Grand Army Plaza in Park Slope and read the archived newspaper stories on microfiche. There was an explosion, a collapse, he got trapped in a basement that filled with water, and he ran out of air before the firemen could reach him.

Maggie thinks for a moment how strange they must look, she and Cillian, standing in front of each other in the center of the room. She sees that he also realizes that they cannot move until she is done.

“My mother was ashamed when I got pregnant,” Maggie says. “Then I thought she was embarrassed about what the neighbors were saying, and she was, but now I see that she thinks she failed my father. It didn't occur to me then, but it should have.”

She tells Cillian that when she couldn't be around her mother anymore, because of how she turned away from even the most offhand comments about the pregnancy, her grandmother gave her a place to go.

Stay, she'd told her. Six years later, Delia was the one who said, It's time to go.

She's not coming back. Not anytime soon, and maybe never.

Delia handed her a college brochure that had on its cover a photo of a stone building covered in red ivy. Lysaght Hall, Kilmaren College, in the town of Ivehusheen, County Galway.

Delia's own grandmother Brigid only ever mentioned one place in Ireland, and that was Slievekeeran.
Sliabh-na-caorthann,
Mountain of the Rowan. Maggie has not yet taken the time to look for written records. But in the way you simply understand some things, she knows that this place is where the story begins.

Cillian steps forward and runs his hands lightly up and down her arms.

“I don't want to be inside,” she tells him.

It's chilly, so she grabs a jacket. Cillian pulls the blanket off her bed.

Once outside, he takes her hand and instead of following the road to campus, he leads her into the woods, down the path that ends at the garden. The gate stands open, though everyone has gone home.

Maggie drags her feet, but Cillian tugs her hand and they enter
an Gairdín Cuimhneacháin,
as it's officially called. The Garden of Remembrance grows over an acre of graves. Maggie and Cillian lie down near the roses. Their petals are closed, at peace, blind to the dead.

December 1984

Maggie scanned the Christmas tree for Irish Santa.

Last night, when they were putting up the tree, she'd been hunting for it in the jumble of ornaments in one box when Brendan scooped it out of another. If she'd snatched it back, her mother would have said, He's six! So Maggie had to let him put the ornament somewhere near the bottom, on the side of the tree that faced the living room.

Brendan and Aidan were watching
The A-Team.
Aidan taped every single episode. Maggie hated it, but at least it was keeping the boys busy while she fixed the tree. The Glory Devlins company Christmas party would start in a half hour.

Last year, a week before Rose was born, their mother said they'd get an artificial tree because it was easier. When Aidan had mentioned this on one of his visits to the firehouse, the next day Joe Paladino and Mickey Carson came over with a real tree and put it up for them. They'd done it this year too; today, when she and Aidan got home from school, the tree was up in the living room, perfectly straight in its stand, the lights on, the boxes of ornaments from the attic in a stack nearby.

Maggie spotted Irish Santa, in his green coat and hat with the shamrock on it, and rescued him from the low branch where Brendan had stuck him. She settled him in his proper place, near the top and on the side of the tree that faced the window.

“Maggie!” her mother called.

Maggie flicked a red bell with her finger, but neither of her brothers took his eyes off the television.

She arrived in her bedroom doorway and saw that her mother had been attempting to get Rose into a pair of white tights. Rose was lying on Maggie's bed, kicking her legs and giggling. Maggie folded her arms across her chest as her mother said, “Will you get these on her, please? I've got to check in at the office before we go.”

She was off for the Christmas party, though she usually had to work Saturdays because she was still new at Irish Dreams. She'd started in September. Before trying to put together a résumé, since she'd never in her life had one, she'd called Marian Clark and asked if the agency needed anyone to answer its phones. Marian had become the manager when Norah's own aunt Helen died.

Marian suggested Norah start as a travel agent. After the holidays, Irish Dreams would be hiring another agent, someone who didn't mind working weekends. Until then, Maggie and Aidan and Brendan and Rose spent Saturday afternoons at their grandmother's. If Aunt Eileen was free, she came to their house, which was not nearly often enough, because she bartended on her days off from the firehouse.

Her mother handed Maggie the tights, looking her up and down.

“That's what you're wearing, then?”

Maggie had on jeans and her blue shirt with the buttons on the cuffs.

“You can make me go, but you can't make me get dressed up.”

“There'll be boys there, you know, ” Norah said.

Maggie made a face, and her mother laughed.

“Try and get that little bow in her hair? It's on the dresser. Work your magic.”

She left the room. Rose was bouncing on the bed. Maggie had the urge to sit on her to keep her still. But Rose would think that was great fun.

“Rose! Time to get dressed now.”

She took hold of Rose's ankle.

Maggie got the tights and dress on Rose with minimal squirming. It drove her mother a little crazy how Rose obeyed her. Not all the time, but better than with anybody else. Aidan thought of himself as the one who took care of her. What he did was play with her.

Rose's new dress had a satiny top and a red velvet skirt. She would wear it for her birthday too. In five days, she'd turn one.

Maggie thought about carrying Rose down the hall, to show off that she'd gotten her ready in less than ten minutes. But her mother would be sitting at the rolltop desk in the corner of her bedroom, if not on the phone then writing in her notebook, which was always on the desk, a square of green in the middle of papers and Irish magazines and Irish newspapers, things her mother read to keep up with the news back home and to get ideas for Irish Dreams. Her father used to sit at the desk to pay the bills and to study for the lieutenant's exam.

Instead, Maggie took Rose downstairs. Rose toddled over to the couch, and Aidan pulled her into his lap.

The Christmas party was held in the basement of Holy Rosary Church. The basement door was at the back of the church, and they went in, her mother nodding at the guy manning the table where the company T-shirts and hats were for sale. Maggie didn't know him. She guessed he was a probie.

Each long table was covered with either a red or a green tablecloth. Grace Grady was sitting at a table with a wife Maggie didn't know. Grace beckoned them over, and a few other people called out greetings as they crossed the room. Norah smiled and waved back, Rose on her hip. When they reached the table, Grace said,

“Norah! You'd remember! I was trying to tell Mary about . . .”

Maggie looked around. She saw Danny Grady with a group of boys across the room, but she didn't see his brothers. Of course, one was in high school and the other was in college, way too old to bother with this.

Her mother lowered Rose to the floor and started taking off her coat.

“I do remember that! It was at the picnic a couple of years ago.”

Coat off, Brendan took off at a run for the stage in the front of the room. A chair was already set up for Santa Claus, who wouldn't be arriving until three o'clock.

Rose took a few steps after Brendan. Aidan caught up and took her hand.

“She walks really well,” Mary Paladino said, surprised.

“She's been on her feet for more than a month, but it's only this past week she's added a bit of speed,” Norah said.

“She looks like Delia,” Grace said.

“She does, doesn't she? I told Delia that when Rose was born, and she says to me that babies looked alike until they were six months old. I said, Oh, really? But now I get to be right about one thing for the rest of my life.”

They all laughed. Maggie checked their faces for pity but found none. It was as if her father was in the group at the bar, or in the kitchen helping with the food, or had slipped out to the store to pick up more beer.

My father's dead, you know, she wanted to remind them.

Maggie left the table. She heard her mother's voice, though not her words. The others all laughed again. Isabel Paladino and two other girls, the Donnelly sisters, were playing with Rose and glancing at Aidan, who was standing nearby with a few other boys.

Maggie heard somebody come up behind her and turned to see Danny Grady, looking past her.

“Hey, Roses. That's a pretty dress.”

Rose reached for him, and he picked her up.

Maggie loved the days they went to the Gradys' after school, because Grace took over Rose and she didn't have to do a thing. That was Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Thursdays and Fridays, they went to their grandmother's.

Grace would hold Rose up to her husband. “Don't you want to try for one of these?”

He'd actually smile and take the baby from Grace. Last week, he'd plunked her on top of the refrigerator. She kicked her heels and laughed. Maggie stayed as close as she could, petrified, ready to catch her if she pitched forward.

Danny put Rose up on the stage, which was only as high as Danny's knee. He took both her hands and swung her in the air. She squealed when she landed with a soft thump.

Aidan laughed. “You're gonna have to do that a thousand times now.”

Danny shrugged and put her back on the stage for another turn.

Again. And then again. Aidan liked Danny and didn't mind sharing Rose with him. They were on Holy Rosary's baseball team together. He talked about Danny's brothers all the time too. Brian got a motorcycle. Kevin's dating some girl two years older than him. Maybe Aidan wished he was a Grady. Maggie didn't blame him.

Maggie left, weaving through the crowd. It was like being in a forest, a forest of firemen. She scanned the room as she walked, pretending to look for Brendan but really listening to the snatches of conversation for Sean, O'Reilly, Sean O. She didn't hear the name.

“—Pillar of Fire Church. Can't beat that.”

“There was debris from one end of Sterling to the other—”

Her mother was up getting food, probably for Brendan. Maggie snatched her coat from where she left it on the back of a chair and started crossing the room. Nobody asked where she was going.

Outside, free, Maggie began walking, already scripting her mother's reaction when she couldn't find her. First annoyance: “Well, she can't have gone far!” And then, her accent thickening once she discovered that Maggie had not gone to Delia's or even Nathaniel's: “Where is she?”

In less than ten minutes, Maggie arrived at the cloister. Only after she'd stopped in front of the black gate did she admit to herself that the convent had been her destination.

If Annie-Rose was still alive, she would be turning one hundred in two weeks. She had been Maggie's favorite of her dead relatives, before her father went and joined them. A wedding picture of Annie-Rose and Jack Keegan hung in the hallway of her grandmother's house. Maggie liked to look at the bride with the dark hair and light eyes who was not smiling, even though the sad things were still to come.

Rose would have been named Sean if she'd been a boy, of course. Their mother said that the three of them could come up with a girl's name. Murdoch was Brendan's choice, and they were all polite about it. Aidan chose Daisy, as in
The Dukes of Hazzard.
Maggie had often wished her father had chosen Annie-Rose for her, but when she offered it to the baby, her grandmother spoke up from her seat by the window of the hospital room and said, “That I couldn't abide. Please, one or the other.”

Annie-Rose. She would have left the name behind when she went into the convent. Maggie wanted to bring it back from the place of lost things.

Maggie pushed open the gate and looked up at the convent, which was bare of Christmas decorations. Curtains covered each window. She stepped into the front yard, stopping before the statue of Saint Maren. Maggie had tried to find her in a few different books, but there was never more than a brief paragraph. Saint Maren founded a contemplative order in Galway in 17-something. She was given as the patron of those in danger of fire or drowning, of bakers, knitters and bell makers. It was like the church had a list of professions in need, and whatever saint was next on the list got assigned them. Maggie knew the wives at the firehouse considered Maren their saint, but that was made up, and maybe even a joke.

Maggie stared up at the statue's blank eyes. She put her hand toward the saint's outstretched hand and then pulled back.

Where were you? she thought.

Maggie walked away, afraid to look behind her, afraid the statue would have jumped down to follow her, trying to apologize, and perhaps explain.

Too soon, Maggie was back, across the street from the church, standing in front of Lehane's.

A fire truck was parked in front of the church, and there were a few kids waiting for a turn to climb in. Brendan wasn't among them. Nobody noticed her.

The October day Brendan was born, her father picked her up from kindergarten and brought her to Lehane's after telling her the news. Maggie and Aidan had woken that morning to find their grandmother in the kitchen, which meant scrambled eggs instead of Frosted Flakes. Maggie and Aidan had looked at each other desperately, but they'd known better than to object.