Ashes of Fiery Weather (47 page)

She did say, “Why?”

“In 1966, Sean went to Nam. He wanted to buy a motorcycle when he got back. Take off across the country. He had a little over two hundred dollars saved up from bartending. Some girl once told him he should be an actor.”

Eileen paused.
Sean.
She missed the way he'd laughed at his own jokes, making others laugh ahead of the punch line. She missed the expression on Delia's face when he walked into a room. She missed how he'd looked at his kids. How he'd bent closer to Norah when she spoke and how he rested a hand on her back when he stepped close to her. She recalled Sean as he'd been when he left for basic training, tall and handsome, with a peace in his blue eyes he'd never have again.

Mrs. Jimenez was waiting.

“While he was over there, I stole his money. Not for anything illegal. Just stupidity. Think of it like somebody who gives money to a TV preacher.”

Mrs. Jimenez nodded, though she frowned, puzzled.

“Sean came home late in 1970. I told him what I'd done. He was pissed, yeah, but more—tired.” Eileen sighed. “He'd taken the test for the fire department before he enlisted. When he got home, instead of buying a motorcycle and taking off, he took his old job bartending to make back the money. I was working in the bar too and handing all my tips over to him. He met a girl there one night. An Irish girl. They got married. Right before their first baby was born, he went on the job.”

“I think I see,” Mrs. Jimenez said.

“Without what I did, he wouldn't have met Norah. He might have been gone from New York when he got called for the fire department. Maybe he would've made a life somewhere else.” Eileen touched the date of his death. “On April 5, 1983, Sean might not have been a fireman with a wife and three kids. Soon to be four.”

“You going to tell me that it gets easier with time?” Mrs. Jimenez asked.

Eileen shook her head. “The rest of the world will say you're not responsible for Alex being at the World Trade on September 11. They'd say it's crazy, there were a thousand other things that had to happen to bring him to
that
place
then.
But we know it's not crazy. My point here, what I want to say, ma'am, is that you can learn to live with it. It's hard. But you can. I have.”

Mrs. Jimenez studied the plaque for a long time.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she finally said. “Please keep looking for him.”

An hour after Mrs. Jimenez left, as Eileen and the captain on duty were in the office talking logistics having to do with the next day's funerals, one of the guys came in and told her Norah was out back.

Eileen went outside, where Norah was sitting on the bench, her face tilted up to the sun. The bench was a post-9/11 thing, for the families.

“It's a beautiful day,” Norah said.

Eileen had lately become aware of how she'd avoided close consideration of Norah over the years. Norah, alone in the living room after the kids went to bed. Norah, putting the Christmas presents under the tree alone. Filling Easter baskets by herself. Norah, on a date, smiling and nodding as the guy spoke, surely, every second, comparing him to Sean. Now the widows were passing her number around like it was a hotline. Now Norah's house always smelled of strong coffee, in case of drop-ins. These aren't the times for tea, she'd said.

“You all right?”

“Just getting old,” Norah said. “But I shouldn't be complaining about that, should I? I told the girl you sent by yesterday that Maggie would go to her house to help sort her bills and things. I came by to get her address from you. I forgot to ask.”

“Maggie? You've pulled her into this?” Eileen was surprised.

“They're getting checks in the mail and they're not cashing them, out of guilt. Thousands of dollars, Eileen, sitting in drawers. I've told them to take every penny that'll let them spend time with their kids. Maggie's going to help organize all of it. She'll go to the bank and deposit the money and help them with the paperwork. The department's trying, but they're overwhelmed. There are men whose ex-wives are still named as their beneficiaries, and men who got married but their parents are still on there and not the wife. There are girls who were only engaged, so they can't be considered next of kin. There are girlfriends of married guys who are turning up too.” She shrugged. “That's not for Maggie to sort out, of course.”

Eileen knew some of the paperwork mess. She could not even begin to get into that.

“She's not going back to Ireland?”

“Not yet. They're holding her job for her. She said the school will pay the rent on her flat. With Noelle being one of the Irish citizens killed, they want to do something. I suppose she'll go back for the next term. She hasn't said. She's not all right, none of us are, but it's because of Noelle. I think going away has helped her move on from the other.”

Your grandchild? Eileen almost said, but that would have been cruel. She remembered the day Norah called her at the firehouse and asked her to come over when she got off in the morning. They'd had a rough night, in and out. Eileen found Norah sitting at the kitchen table, and when she asked her, impatiently, what was wrong, Norah said that Maggie wasn't going back to school. She began crying so hard that it took Eileen several minutes to understand the reason why.

There had been tears for Sean, quiet crying at the wake and funeral. Norah must have gone wild at some point, more than once, but Eileen had never seen it.

“I expected Noelle to help her more, after, you know.” Norah sighed. “But she was a girl herself and she had her own life. I think Maggie scared her, the way she was, after.”

Eileen recalled, too, how Noelle visited often at first, then less and less.

“But she tried at least,” Norah said. “I didn't do anything but wait for Maggie to bite my head off about something. I would have been very glad for it.”

Eileen thought all of them were confused by a Maggie who didn't know what she wanted. She took college classes, stopped. Worked mindless jobs. Quit. Back to Brooklyn College. Norah was right. They all just waited for the old Maggie to reappear and she never had.

“But Maggie's here, isn't she? All my sister can talk about is how she never once came to visit her daughter in New York. Never got to know her life here.”

Aoife was living with Norah, in Aidan's old room. She'd set a deadline of Noelle's birthday; if she was not accounted for by then, they would have a funeral.

Eileen nodded. “How is she?”

“Not good,” Norah said. “She never will be again.”

“And your parents?” Eileen asked.

“My brother Cathal's still with them. Noelle was the one grandchild brought up in Ireland, you know. I'll go over whenever Aoife goes back, for the funeral, but I can't be away from here too long.” She shook her head.

“Do you think it really helps, them talking to you?” Eileen asked.

“I don't know about the talking, but I think it helps seeing someone so long past it. They're looking at me and seeing that a kind of moving on does happen.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“You know what a lot of them ask that I didn't think they would so soon?”

Eileen shook her head.

“They want to know why I haven't remarried.”

“What do you tell them?”

“I was busy with four kids. I had to find a job once I was able to, after Rose. It was a lot to juggle. One day you wake up and you're fifty-two years old,” Norah said. She touched her necklace with its gold replica of Sean's badge.

“What's the truth?” Eileen asked.

“I thought he'd come back,” Norah said. “Sean. Until September, I thought so.”

It was close to midnight, and Eileen was alone in the firehouse kitchen, a strange feeling after two months of constant activity. But with operations at the site officially scaled back, though not as much as Mayor Giuliani wanted, things were quieting down.

Eileen still didn't agree with reducing the number of firefighters working the recovery, but at the same time, it would probably be a good thing for a lot of them to step into some kind of regular life again. Like Aidan, now that they knew he wouldn't be going to jail.

Two days ago, the city had announced that charges would not be pressed against the firefighters from the protest who were arrested at Ground Zero after scuffling with the cops when the cops refused to let them onto the Pile. Eileen had been at the protest but she lost sight of Aidan despite her efforts to keep tabs on him. At least he wasn't the one who'd punched a cop. That guy was still in a lot of trouble.

She wondered about Brendan too. Far fewer volunteers were going to be needed, and he might find himself at loose ends. He'd been down at the site constantly since the day after his return from L.A., volunteering with the Salvation Army or the Red Cross, Eileen wasn't sure. He'd been wearing an FDNY sweatshirt and cap, both of which had belonged to Sean. Firefighters, of course, recognized them as the real deal, not tourist crap.

From the start, guys sought out Brendan when they needed something like a new pair of gloves or more eye drops. Brendan, a natural leader of his teammates but at the same time not exactly given to thinking about other people, put his charm to good use, quickly getting what was needed. Not from the city, but from businesses eager to help.

Brendan was still wearing the hat and the sweatshirt, since the weather had not gotten cold even though it was the middle of November. Eileen was beginning to wonder if it was going to stay balmy autumn forever. Thanksgiving was next week, for God's sake.

Brendan hadn't mentioned going back to California, but Eileen supposed he would after Noelle was found, or once her parents went ahead with a funeral.

She and some of the guys were in the food tent one day where Brendan was working, and one of them said something about “your nephew and his harem,” and another said, “I bet that kid's getting laid.”

There was some truth to it. Brendan had a crew of girls around him, eagerly doing whatever he asked. Put out some more bread? Can you run and get more forks? Eileen was sure they were out-of-towners, probably members of a church who had organized a group to volunteer for a month. New York girls would've said, “What, are your legs broken?”

But then again, maybe not. This was the new New York.

Eileen protested that this was her nephew and to shut the fuck up. The guys laughed. She pretended not to remember that a couple of guys in the group were among those who'd given her the silent treatment when she was detailed to their firehouses years ago. She and a few of the other women who'd been on the job a long time joked about it when they ran into each other on the Pile. Post–September 11 memory loss.

When she heard the knock at the backdoor, Eileen thought Rose had probably climbed the ladder in the yard to come look for Aidan.

A couple of weeks ago, his captain declared that off-duty firefighters could no longer stay at the firehouse. Everybody had to go home. Aidan had taken to coming by the Glory Devlins instead. He'd broken up with the girl he'd been dating since the summer after she gave an interview to the
Daily News
in which she called herself  “a New York City firefighter's girlfriend.” Rose said he was better off, since the girl was an idiot anyway.

Aidan wasn't sleeping in the bunkroom but on the third floor in the old apartment. There were still piles of sleeping bags up there from the first month, when the firehouse was crowded with not only their own people but the firefighters from Long Island who'd come to cover for them and the out-of-state people who'd arrived to volunteer.

Eileen opened the door to see Maggie, wearing pajama pants and a black coat. She stepped aside to let her in.

“I couldn't sleep,” Maggie said. “I tried working on my dissertation, but I can't focus.” She looked around. “I haven't been in here since I was a kid. It hasn't changed.”

“Martha Stewart's coming next week to take a look, see what she can do.” Eileen sat down at the table.

“That's a joke, right?”

Eileen laughed; she couldn't help it. “Yeah, that's a joke.”

“Well, with all the free stuff the firehouses are being offered, I thought maybe somebody . . . Anyway, that was stupid. Aidan said he had the chance to go to Bermuda. I wish he'd gone.” She chewed on her lip.

No way in hell would Aidan have left New York right now. She wouldn't either.

“You never came by after your dad died?” Eileen asked.

Maggie shook her head.

“How come?”

“Nobody asked me.”

Eileen sat back. “Maybe your engraved invitation got lost in the mail.”

She kept her tone light, but Maggie was too smart not to catch what Eileen was thinking. Not now.

They still hadn't found their guys, though three of Aidan's had been brought out.

“It doesn't matter,” Maggie said softly.

“So, you like it in Ireland?” Eileen asked.

Maggie smiled. “I do. Once I get my degree, I have to decide if I should come back here and look for a job or stay there.”

“Have you, uh, met anyone?” Eileen asked.

She was no good at girl talk. Eileen was still ashamed of the flash of dismay she'd felt when she heard, It's a girl! But her daughter had been a tomboy and was now growing into a genuine athlete. With a more even temperament than either of her parents, she had the potential to do really well in her favorite sport. Quinnie was a runner. She was patient, steady. If she reminded Eileen of anyone, it was, ironically, Delia.

“I have been seeing someone,” Maggie said.

Eileen raised her eyebrows. Norah didn't know. She would have been too thrilled not to share that news.

“Is it serious?”

“He's married,” Maggie said. “And he's not leaving his wife. Nor would I want him to.”