Ashes of Fiery Weather (49 page)

“You'll come to Nathaniel's funeral, though, no matter what firemen are being buried that day. He'll be gone in six months,” Delia said. “If that.”

“Hey, Gran—” Aidan started to say, but then Maggie came back to the kitchen, startling all of them.

“This is it.” She held up a white-edged photograph. “I probably shouldn't put a hole in it, but—” She pinned it to the bulletin board next to the little rosary. “Tell him that we still look,” she said. “Or I'll go visit him and tell him myself.”

“I'm going over there later,” Delia said.

From her seat, Eileen could only make out their shapes, tall boy, small boy. Nobody but their family would ever see the photo there, but at the same time, the gesture was oddly hopeful.

Nobody spoke for several minutes, then Brendan and Rose came into the kitchen.

“Nancy Drew said you were probably here,” Brendan said as he sat down at the table. Rose bent over and hugged Aidan, who pulled away, patting her hand.

She sat down in the chair next to his.

Aidan asked Brendan, “Why aren't you down at the site?”

“I'm taking a break.” Brendan ran a hand through his hair. “They don't need as many of us now.”

“Will you be going back to California, then?” Delia asked.

Brendan shook his head. “Not yet.”

“When will they start filming your movie again?” Rose asked.

“They started up weeks ago. It's not New York. Life out there got back to normal much faster,” he said. “Well, normal for L.A.”

Eileen thought the rest of the family looked as surprised as she was.

“What about your part?” Delia asked.

“I told Eddie to recast me. We hadn't shot much. Right now I'm in a minute of film. I figured, what if I get out there and then I have to leave again? It's okay.”

Leave, Eileen thought, if they find Noelle.

“Isabel told me that her dad's service is probably going to be next week anyway. You have to be here for that,” Aidan said.

“When did you see Isabel?” Rose asked.

“I showed her around the site last week.” Aidan frowned at the table.

Eileen waited for Rose to tease him, but she said nothing.

“How are they doing?” Delia asked.

Aidan shrugged. “Isabel's mom still wanted to wait, but Isabel put her foot down and said that they had to do this before Christmas. She's going to ask if you can sing, Rosie.”

Rose nodded. “Sure.”

Rose had sung at a service early on. Eileen couldn't remember whose it was, but since then she'd been in demand for the funerals. “Wild Mountain Thyme.”  “The Parting Glass.”  “Danny Boy,” of course.

Maggie set mugs of coffee in front of her and Aidan.

“What about me?” Rose asked.

“Wait until college, when you really need it.” Maggie sat down next to Brendan and brushed his hair behind his ear.

“You need a haircut,” she said.

Brendan pushed her hand way. “Hey, I'm a Californian now.”

“I might not even go to college,” Rose said, raising her voice. “I was thinking I might take the test for the fire department.”

“I might become a priest,” Brendan said.

“I can run into burning buildings,” Rose said. “You can't give up girls.”

Brendan grinned. “Sex. You mean I can't give up sex.”

Rose laughed but Aidan glared. “Don't talk like that in front of her.”

“She's not five. She knows what sex is,” Brendan said.

“It's true,” Rose affirmed.

“Both of you knock it off, ” Delia said. She got up from the table and chose an apple from the basket on the counter.

“College credits are a requirement for the job now, Rose,” Eileen said. “Lucky for me, they didn't used to be.”

“What about being an EMT?” Aidan said. “You should look into that.”

Eileen thought that was a far better idea but still couldn't quite see Rose fitting into either profession. But, hell, she was only seventeen.

Rose shrugged. “Maybe.”

“There's a service at three o'clock today at St. Stephen's, by the BQE. You're coming, Aunt Eileen, right?” Aidan asked.

“I'm going home after this,” Eileen said defensively. “I told Quinn I'd spring her from school early and we'd go to the movies.”

“Bring her to the church.” Aidan sat up straight. “The ranks are stretched thin enough. It's good of the departments from out of state to come and all, but our guys should have as many of their own in the crowd as possible. Quinn's not a baby. She can handle it.”

“She's young enough,” Delia said without looking up from the apple. “She should get to see her mother for a few consecutive hours and not at a funeral.”

Eileen wasn't sure if she was being complimented or criticized for being too busy. She let it go, like with Madd. Quinn had reported that her father kept reminding her that no matter what you see on the news, firefighters weren't the only rescue workers who died. Twenty-three cops. Thirty-seven Port Authority police. Eileen was tempted to tell her daughter to point out that the FDNY still won by a landslide: 343.

“I have two funerals the Friday after Thanksgiving. How's that?” she said. “Both guys I knew. One I worked with a couple of years ago and the other was my first captain.”

Delia turned from the counter. “You mean the first firehouse you were ever at, when you were still rotating?” She set the knife down.

“No, my first permanent house,” Eileen said. “The one Sean got me into.”

“He did?” Aidan sounded pleased.

“He never said so, but I figured he asked around about who wouldn't put up with any bullshit. Not too many of the guys were happy about getting a woman firefighter.” She looked at Rose pointedly.

“That was decades ago,” Aidan said. “Nobody gives a damn anymore.”

“Things are better, but they could hardly be worse,” Eileen said. “Sean did a good job, though. My first night, a couple of the guys pulled some shit, and the next morning, Cap locked the whole company in the kitchen and told them, not in front of me, I heard about it later—let me see if I can get his exact words—he told them that I had the right to prove I could do the job, and if they kept it up, he would transfer each and every one of them out to Staten Island. He tells them, You can take a fucking boat to work, then sit around playing Boggle all day.” Eileen laughed.

“And he's dead,” Rose said wistfully.

“No,” Delia said. She gripped the counter. Her face was suddenly pale. “I looked on the list. There was no O'Hagan killed.”

“It's not O'Hagan,” Eileen said. “I never had a captain named O'Hagan. It's Phelan. Flynn Phelan. In-like-Flynn. That's what they called him.”

“That was his stepfather's last name. I didn't think—” Delia drew a ragged breath. “He's dead?”

“Yeah. They haven't found him.” Eileen fixed her eyes on Delia. “Did you know him?”

“He lived here a long time ago.” Delia still had hold of the counter.

“In the neighborhood?” Maggie asked.

Delia didn't answer. She was breathing with effort.

Brendan jumped up. “Hey, Gran, maybe you should sit down.”

He brought her his chair and Aidan stood up too, probably pissed at himself for not thinking of it first. Eileen didn't move, assuming Delia would have more patience with her grandsons.

Aidan crouched by the chair. “Are you having chest pains?”

“No, don't be ridiculous. Boys, both of you, sit down.”

Her color was better. Aidan and Brendan backed off and returned to the table. Maggie put her cell phone back in her pocket.

“Where was he, Eileen? He had to be retired, no?” Delia asked.

“He was. But he was at MetroTech for something,” Eileen continued. “A bunch of guys who were at headquarters ran in over the Brooklyn Bridge when the first tower got hit. Captain Phelan went to look for his son. I ended up in the ER with him that morning. I didn't know who he was until later.”

“His mother?” Delia asks. “Flynn's mother, is she still alive?”

Eileen shrugged. “Cap had to be in his sixties. I guess she
could
be.”

“She's my age,” Delia said. She stood up and resumed slicing the apple.

Eighty-three, Eileen thought. She glanced at Maggie and saw from her expression that she was doing the same math. The math of mothers and daughters and how long a life might be.
Wait for her.

Delia brought the bowl of apple slices to the table and set it in front of Aidan. As she moved away, Maggie looked up at her.

“Cabbage leaves,” she said.

Delia said softly, “Claire.”

The pumper was parked in the street outside Holy Rosary. A single row of FDNYs were lined up in the street. Behind them were three lines of firefighters in out-of-state uniforms. Eileen wasn't sure where they were from. It was good of them to come so close to Thanksgiving.

Rose had run home to fetch Norah, and she and Aoife were both in the crowd of civilians standing outside the church.

The FDNY pipe and drum band had been dividing and dividing itself among the funerals in order to give every man his due. Today four pipers were poised to play. The church bells tolled and the crowd quieted. The church doors opened and the assembled firefighters saluted as the pallbearers started down the steps. The pipers began to play “Going Home.”

A dark-haired woman appeared at the top of the steps with a similarly dark-haired little girl and boy on either side of her. She was ashen, but dry-eyed. The children looked to be between the ages of five and eight. The girl, who was older, held the helmet.

Eileen tensed. Most churches, it seemed, had steep steps. At nearly every funeral Eileen had been to since September, she had waited, hardly breathing, yet the women, somehow, never fell down.

Reliable's funeral home was packed for evening visitation, which was from seven to nine p.m.

The wake was being held on one day instead of two because there were so many funerals in the neighborhood. From what Eileen had heard, the director of the funeral home gently suggested the shorter wake to all the families.

The rest of her family went in the afternoon, but Eileen had two funeral Masses to go to in the morning, both guys she knew, and Aidan had three wakes in the afternoon, all on Long Island. She and Aidan decided they'd go together in the evening, and Maggie waited to go with them.

Eileen and Aidan were in their dress uniforms, and when they walked in, the crowd quieted and parted as they approached.

Maggie poked Aidan in the side. “Now the Red Sea, Moses.”

“Shut up,” he said, but his mouth lifted.

Eileen got a little hope out of it. Maybe Maggie, as the outsider, could get him out of his head for a while after all. Aidan still wasn't listening to his mother's pleas to rest. Rose had a solo in some memorial concert held at her school, and he didn't go. Eileen didn't blame him for not wanting to listen to a bunch of teenagers sing “Stand by Me” and “Fire and Rain.” But it had been a big deal to Rose, and according to Norah, the principal had been hoping to have an actual fireman there.

Nice that nobody in her own family thought to ask her.

Lizzie Lehane stood next to the closed coffin, clutching a handkerchief. A photograph of her brother as a young man was propped on an easel beside it. Amred stood in front of the firehouse, a camera around his neck, smiling shyly, his posture self-conscious, awkward.

Amred, who had been out the door, camera in hand, minutes after hearing the very first news report, when it was still an accident of bizarre and tremendous proportions.

“It's the city!” Lizzie apparently had called after him, astonished because Amred hardly ever left Brooklyn.

“This is the big one,” he'd said, knowing, of course, that this would be precisely the way firefighters in firehouses in all the boroughs were putting it.

Amred, who got to the World Trade before nine-thirty and started snapping photographs.

Amred, who had a way, firefighters said, of getting close to the action while remaining invisible. The day after a good fire, Amred would turn up at firehouses with a box of cookies or a cake from Agnello's (he knew well the firehouse rule: Always come knocking with your elbows) and a roll of film he'd just developed. The photos would be incredible, yet afterward nobody could remember him being there. He was eighty-three and showed no signs of slowing down.

Amred, killed in the collapses, his camera found beneath him, unscathed.

Maggie thought this was amazing, but Aidan was unimpressed. That was the way of the Pit. The camera should have been bagged and tagged as evidence, since the site was technically a crime scene, but Amred was found by guys from Brooklyn. His body could not be identified by sight, but his camera had his name on it.

One of the firemen took it. It was not like Amred could've caught the terrorists on film running from the scene, Aidan quoted the firefighter as saying; the cocksucking motherfuckers were in pieces just like the people they killed. The fireman brought the camera to the Glory Devlins, as was proper, since Amred was their buff.

As firefighters who'd grown up in the neighborhood, Eileen and Aidan went together, in dress uniform, to tell Lizzie that her brother had been found. Aidan had handed her the camera, the film still inside it.

There was a line for the casket, but people stepped aside for them. Aidan ignored them, but Eileen nodded her thanks.

Lizzie stood up straight, her face lighting with pride. She glanced at the coffin as if she wanted to tell her brother who had come to pay their respects.

Lizzie clutched Maggie's hand first.

“The ball field named for my dad at the park,” Maggie said. “That wouldn't have happened without Amred.”

Eileen knew this was true. Amred started the petition a year after Sean was killed, which was easy to forget, since the firehouse took over the fundraising efforts.