Ashes of Fiery Weather (41 page)

Eileen was working. Back then, bartending had still been her main job. Without her father even asking, she poured him a beer and got Maggie a Coke.

Maggie sat on the barstool beside her father's. If she sat up very straight, she could see her reflection in the mirror above the liquor bottles.

“So, Magee, you happy about your new baby brother?” her father asked.

“No,” she'd said.

“Oh well, back to the drawing board, then,” he'd said, putting his hand on her head, knocking her headband askew.

“What's he weigh? Eight pounds? I'd give Norah at least a couple of days,” Eileen said, and the two of them laughed.

Maggie had straightened her headband. She climbed down from her barstool and stood next to his. He leaned over and pulled her up into his lap with one arm. She couldn't recall what T-shirt he'd been wearing, but except for when he dressed up, he nearly always wore a T-shirt with writing on it. Maggie thought she'd probably learned to read from her father's shirts. F-D-N-Y, the letters she knew before A-B-C-D.

T-u-r-k-e-y T-r-o-t. K-n-i-g-h-t-s o-f  C-o-l-u-m-b-u-s. B-r-o-o-k-l-y-n  I-r-i-s-h.

Now Maggie pushed open the door to the bar and went inside. Her aunt Eileen told them yesterday that she was working at Lehane's in the afternoon, more as a favor to Lizzie, since there would be no tips on a Saturday afternoon so soon before Christmas.

Maggie was not sure how often Eileen worked at the bar since she'd left the neighborhood to take an apartment on Carroll Street. She lived on the top floor of a brownstone. When Maggie and Aidan rode their bikes over to see her, they would take the Carroll Street Bridge, though Eileen always told them that one of these days it was going to collapse and drop them right into the Gowanus Canal. Take 3rd or Union Street instead. But they liked the Carroll Street Bridge best, and not only because it was the shortest route. It didn't look like it belonged in Brooklyn, somehow, in spite of its obvious disrepair. Maggie thought the cobblestones made it look like it belonged in some other city, maybe in Ireland. She and Aidan would get off their bikes, stand on the bridge's walkway and stare into the canal.

Some days—only some—the water bubbled as though boiling, and if the stench wasn't too bad, Maggie and Aidan imagined that a creature of some kind might burst through the water's oily surface. Maggie pictured the Loch Ness monster, but Aidan said it would be something deformed, two-headed, like from radiation.

Maggie looked behind the bar but her aunt was not there, only the Lehanes. Amred was reading and Lizzie was knitting. Maggie turned to leave.

“Sit.” Amred gestured to a barstool.

Maggie crossed the room, climbed up on the barstool and wrapped her feet around its legs.

“Hi there. Would you like a soda? Black cherry?” Lizzie kept knitting as she spoke. She wore her gray hair back in two barrettes, one blue, one green.

Who offered black cherry first? Maggie thought. Cans of black cherry were always the last in the cooler at the company picnic.

“Coke, maybe?”

“Oh, sure.” Lizzie sounded surprised.

Lizzie, Maggie had always heard, originally intended to become a librarian. The bar had belonged to the uncle who'd raised her and Amred, and when he died, near the end of the Depression, Lizzie took over, although women weren't allowed to drink in Lehane's in those days. Right after Pearl Harbor, Lizzie opened the bar for wartime wedding receptions, which were often planned only a couple of weeks ahead, if that. Delia, Maggie knew, had been one such bride.

There were two old men at the bar, sitting opposite each other, both reading the newspaper. Neither looked up.

“On the lam from the Christmas party?” Amred asked.

Maggie nodded. “Aunt Eileen said she was working here today.”

“She said she'll be in tomorrow,” Amred said.

“We'll see,” Lizzie added, setting a Coke in front of Maggie in a pint glass.

“How is the baby? She has a birthday soon, am I right?” Amred asked.

“December 20,” Maggie said.

Amred put his book down without marking his place. “Do you know what tomorrow is, Maggie O'Reilly?”

“It's nothing. Sunday,” Maggie said.

“Sunday, December 16,” Amred said. “But not nothing. It's the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Park Slope plane crash.”

Maggie blinked. “A Christmas tree seller on the ground was killed?”

“Yes!” Amred said. “I knew Sean would have told you.”

Sean. To hear his name spoken without a pause either before or after it.
Sean.

Amred leaned over and pulled a knapsack into his lap from which he withdrew a red folder. He set the folder on the bar and opened it.

He turned the folder around so it was facing Maggie.

“This is Sterling Street.” He tapped the picture. “They think the pilot was trying to land in Prospect Park, or possibly the Botanic Garden. It nearly hit the school, St. Augustine's, and then crashed into the church and a row of buildings.”

Maggie leaned closer. She knew the street. Nathaniel's store was up the block, on Flatbush Avenue. The photograph was black and white. The tail of an airplane was sticking up at a slight angle, the word
UNITED
clearly visible. Amred flipped to the next picture, a shot of a group of firemen standing on the wreckage.

“The caretaker of the church was killed. It was actually two guys selling Christmas trees. Between the six folks on the ground, this plane and the one it collided with that went down over Staten Island, 134 people were killed.”

In the next picture, two firemen were carrying a covered stretcher between them.

He flipped the photo gently and pushed the one beneath it closer to Maggie.

“This,” Amred said. “This.”

It was a shot of the crowd, but Amred had focused the camera on her father and Eileen, who were standing with a group of other kids. They were beside each other, shoulders nearly touching, their gazes fixed on the disaster before them.

“What year was this?” Maggie asked.

“1984 minus 24,” Amred said.

“I can't do math in my head,” Maggie said.

“1960,” Lizzie answered. Her hands went still, though she didn't look up from her work.

“John Kennedy had been elected a month earlier. It was like we'd found a king. We all thought he'd be president forever. That's why they killed him.”

Maggie looked up at the picture of JFK, tucked into the mirror behind the bar. Who's “they”? she wanted to ask, but Amred was tapping the picture.

“Sean had just turned thirteen,” he said. “It was a Friday. Fog and snow. A miserable morning. That's John Maddox next to Sean. The girl on his other side is Judy Lister. She moved out of New York after her mom and dad passed. She was named Judy for Saint Jude.”

“Patron saint of lost causes,” Maggie said.

“Funny, since Judy herself was something of a lost cause.”

“Amred,” Lizzie said, a mild warning in her tone.

Amred continued. “Behind Eileen is Ally Coen. He died in Vietnam.”

“That's a boy,” Maggie said. He was taller and stockier than her father, with dark hair falling into his eyes. His hands were jammed in his pockets.

“Short for Alistair,” Amred said. “His mom was British. He was a quiet kid, Ally. Didn't have a lot of friends, never said boo. If you handed him a ball, you know, stuck it in his palm and wrapped his fingers around it, he'd drop it. Not too bright either. But,
hell,
could Ally hit. Coach put him in right field and had Sean cover, best he could. Sean played center and he was fast. Senior year, the last game against St. Phineas, this big kid whacks the stuffing out of the ball and Sean takes off. It was boiling hot, more August than May. And that's why the ball starts to drop. Not a breath of air. Sean gets under it. He goes into a slide and Ally doesn't have the wits to get out of the way. He takes Ally down. We thought he was out cold but it was just shock. Sean holds up the glove. He's got the ball. We won the game. Coach takes Ally aside after and tells him to stay the hell out of Sean's way. The two of them could've been hurt bad.”

Hearing about the past was like visiting some other place, Maggie thought. The place where her father now lived.

“It was Ally getting killed that got Sean to drop out of college.”

“Mom said he dropped out to go into the army,” Maggie said.

Amred nodded. “Yeah, yeah, after Ally got killed.”

“Sean told you that?” Lizzie asked.

“Didn't have to. Day of Ally's funeral, all the boys came in here after and Sean said he wished he'd shattered Ally's leg that day.”

Maggie searched her memory for the name Ally Coen, but she knew she wouldn't find it.

“Nothing's that simple, Amred,” Lizzie said.

“No, Elizabeth, some things are,” he answered.

Lizzie shook her head. But Maggie agreed with Amred.

Surely when Amred showed this picture to others, he pointed out her father, giving his name and his fate in one short sentence, as though reading the last line in a book.

“When Sean got back from Vietnam, he tried to get a cab at the airport and the driver refused to take him,” Amred said.

“He didn't want to drive to Brooklyn?” Maggie asked.

Amred laughed and Lizzie smiled.

“Yeah, maybe it had nothing to do with politics. The guy just figured, I'm not driving into that shithole.”

“Cabs don't want to come here because they have to drive back alone,” Lizzie said. “If you're going to the city from Brooklyn, you're taking the train.”

“Joke, joke,” Amred said.

“Did he get another cab?” Maggie asked.

“Nah. He caught the train back. See, Sean grabbed the guy and pulled him halfway through the window. Airport security came running over. He's lucky he wasn't arrested.”

Maggie could picture it. Easily. His temper. The thing they didn't talk about and probably never would again. It had surfaced mostly with her mother, when they were trying to get out of the house and she couldn't find her keys, or Brendan needed something for the car ride. Or when the house got too messy.

“Jesus Christ,” he would shout. “Let's go.”

“Jesus Christ! Look at this place. What do you do all day?”

And her mother, pressing her lips together but saying nothing in her own defense.

He'd yell at Maggie and Aidan, less often but just as loudly: “How many times have I told you—”

They knew to scuttle away. Brendan, too, had already understood. It was like the way a thunderstorm turned the night instantly fierce. Maggie wondered sometimes if her father even remembered afterward.

He'd fought with Eileen over the fire department. The only person Maggie had never seen him get mad at was Delia.

Lizzie leaned forward. “Santa must be coming.”

Maggie looked. Across the street, kids were pouring out of the church basement and gathering on the sidewalk.

She left the bar, after trying to explain that she could get money from her mother to pay for the soda, and being waved off. The fire truck was just turning the corner, siren chirping, Santa perched on top, waving.

Maggie, waiting for the light to change, expected to hear a shout. “There she is!”

But nobody looked in her direction. Every pair of eyes was fixed on the truck.

She crossed the street and spotted Brendan with a bunch of boys his age near the front. She went over to zip up his coat. He shoved her hand away but she succeeded. Then she saw Aidan near the back, holding Rose's hand.

She stopped beside them. “Where's Mom?”

Aidan looked at her like she'd asked a really dumb question. “Inside.”

“I was just gone forever.”

“Huh?” Aidan glanced at her and then down at Rose, who was tugging on his hand. Aidan picked her up. She craned her neck.

“Hey, Aidan, you want me to put her on my shoulders?”

Maggie turned. Brian Grady was behind them with Danny.

“I've got her.” Aidan hoisted her higher. Brian frowned, then reached forward and grabbed the two boys who were standing in front of them.

“You two, outta the way,” Brian said. He tugged on the collars of the boys' coats.

The boys, who were about twelve years old, scowled as they turned, but when they saw who it was, they jumped aside. Then other kids followed suit, backing away, jabbing the kids in front of them, until Aidan was able to move right up to the truck, Rose still on his hip. Maggie moved next to him, ready to catch her if Aidan happened to let her slip.

Danny stepped up so he was beside her as Santa jumped off the fire truck into the swarm of kids.

“That's Kev,” he whispered, nodding at Santa.

“My father did it once, when I was a baby,” Maggie said.

“Oh, yeah?” Danny said. “That's cool.”

Kevin was bellowing “Merry Christmas” and the kids were trailing behind him. Maggie shoved her hands in her pockets and followed the crowd inside.

Nobody would want to hear what she was thinking. Not her mother or her grandmother or her aunt. She missed the wild days. The lawless months right after the fire were a better match for what had happened to them.

For the first two weeks after the funeral, the wives had come to their house and cooked, cleaned and did the laundry. Poor Norah, they whispered in the kitchen.

They brought dinners in Tupperware or covered dishes and made Maggie watch where they stowed them in the refrigerator. Chicken. Lasagna. Baked ziti. It should go in the oven for this long. Turn the oven to this many degrees. Leave the cover on or take the cover off. Here is the extra sauce. Heat it separate on top of the stove. Heat, don't boil!

Can you do that?

Yes, Maggie said. Yes.

The times their mother was in bed, hunched into a question mark, Maggie set up snack tables in the living room in front of the television and put the food, right out of the refrigerator, on three plates. Then the three of them just ate Breyers Neapolitan ice cream out of the carton anyway, the boys competing for chocolate, Maggie preferring vanilla, all three of them turning to strawberry only when they had to. Their mother was sick all the time, and for a while Maggie and Aidan thought it was because of the fire.