Ashes of Fiery Weather (15 page)

Delia was on the couch reading
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
Claire sat on the floor at her feet going through a stack of albums. Flynn was in the firehouse yard playing ball with the firemen and a couple of their own sons.

Sammy Kaye's Sunday Serenade
was on the radio.

“Did your mother like music?” Claire asked.

“My mother?” Delia looked up from her book. “I don't think so. She hardly ever touched the radio. Why do you ask?”

“You never talk about her,” Claire said. “I bet she listened to the radio when you were at school.”

“I don't think so,” Delia said. “My father, though, he had a voice, as they say. At firehouse parties and at weddings and wakes, he was always called on to sing.”

“I always liked this one,” Claire said. She sang, slightly out of tune, “
Peggy Gordon, you are my darling, come sit you down upon my knee
 . . .  I had to sing that at our St. Patrick's Day concert when I was in the sixth grade.”

“It's not even Irish, you know,” Delia said. “That one's Scottish.”

“I bet nobody knows that but you.” Claire rolled her eyes.

“Did you wear green ribbons in your hair?”

“And a green carnation on my green sweater and a ribbon that said
Erin go Bragh
in gold letters.”

“
Erin go Bragh.
Ireland Forever.”

“Is that what that means?”

Delia laughed. “Yes! Didn't you ever ask?”

Claire shook her head. “Why do you know everything?”

But Delia didn't know nearly enough, and this used to matter so much more. Yet since Claire, her plans had grown strangely hazy. She didn't look at her college brochures as often anymore. During the school day when she set the class to do math problems or copy spelling words from the blackboard, Delia tried to envision herself as a student, but instead let her mind wander to the way Claire, after a bath, sat on the bed wrapped in a towel, and how Delia took a comb and gently pulled it through her wet hair, and how Claire did the same for her. Her face grew hot when she thought of the parts of Claire she touched, and how Claire touched her back, and how it felt when she did.

Delia closed her book and grinned. “Knowing
Erin go Bragh
isn't knowing everything.”

“Was your mother smart too?”

“No.”

“That's mean,” Claire said.

Delia shrugged. “She was pretty. How's that?”

“Do you think she's a nun yet?” Claire asked.

“I think it's too soon. Maybe in a year.”

“So she might come back?”

“She's not coming back,” Delia said. “She might as well be dead.”

“You shouldn't talk like that about a woman who's given her life to God.”

Delia leaned forward to stroke Claire's fair hair. “Well, I'm an awful person.”

Claire tilted her head back, leaning into the caress.

“I told Flynn we'd get a Christmas tree,” Delia said. “We always put ours up on Christmas Eve, but he wanted to know if we could get it sooner. I said yes. If we water it plenty, it should be okay.”

“Christmas?” Claire said.  “Already?”

“It's in two weeks,” Delia said, laughing.

Claire sat up and turned around to look at Delia. “I have to tell you something. About Ray.”

Delia pulled her hand away. “What about him?”

“He wants to get married.”

“So? Tell him no.”

Claire got up on her knees. “I said I didn't know if I wanted to marry him, and my mother said I was stupid if I didn't. That was the fight. The night we came here. She said if he was stupid enough to marry me, I should get the ring on my finger and stop giving it away.”

“Are you?” Delia asked.

Claire shrugged, and Delia drew in a sharp breath.

“Since us?” she asked.

“No! Not since us. I swear, not since us.”

“Your mother can't tell you what to do. You don't even live there anymore! You live here.”

“For now.”

“For now?” Delia reached for Claire's hand, but Claire pulled back and twisted her fingers together.

“He keeps on asking and I don't know what else to do. If I don't marry him, I mean. We've been going together for over a year.”

“You don't have to do anything. We make enough money at school to support Flynn.”

Claire looked at her with something like pity. “Oh, God, Delia, how much longer before that old crow fires both of us?”

“Sister Francis doesn't know,” Delia said, but she'd secretly thought more than once that if anybody was going to guess about them, it would be that nun.

At school, Delia was careful to frame an excuse for her stops by the office, though the true purpose was to look at Claire for a minute, to watch her glance up and faintly smile, her fingers paused on the typewriter keys, her ankles properly crossed beneath her desk.

“Not—not
that.
She knows about Flynn.” Claire was still on her knees. “She's never said so, but she does. She hired me because she felt sorry for me. I wasn't that good a typist then. I never answered phones before. I kept accidentally hanging up on people and she never fired me.”

Delia was too surprised to speak. So Claire understood that even the pity of Sister Francis could not withstand her publicly raising Flynn. Because the monsignor would hardly allow it once he caught on. And he would be informed of it by the women of the parish whose own lives had emptied out, with their children grown. They'd decide that since Sister Francis wasn't doing anything about the outrage, they had to. It would be off to the rectory, then, dressed for Mass on a weekday. Soon. Very soon.

Delia reached out a hand. “Let's go. I'll sell this house. We'll go to California, like you said that time, or anywhere we want to. We can say we're sisters.”

“Who'd believe that? We don't look anything alike. We have different names.” But there was hope in Claire's voice.

“Cousins, then. Or you're a widow and that's why our names are different. Flynn can be yours for real. We'll explain it to him. He's young enough. He'll go along.”

“I can't tell him. He'll hate me,” Claire said.

“You can't marry Ray,” Delia said. You can't leave me too, she thought.

“I don't want to.”

“Don't.”

“I don't want to.”

Delia slipped off the couch to kneel in front of Claire. She kissed her fiercely.

“
Don't.
”

Claire pulled back. “My mother will say we're crazy—”

The music on the radio stopped abruptly and an announcer's voice came on. Delia turned to stare at the radio, but Claire kept talking.

“—and then there's my real brothers and sisters. To run off on them—”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Delia dashed across the room and turned up the volume.

Claire also jumped to her feet. “What? What happened?”

The announcer was saying,
“—repeat that.
President Roosevelt has announced that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air. This bulletin came to you from the NBC newsroom in New York.”

“Oh my God,” Delia said. “Oh my God.”

“What happened? What happened?” Claire looked wildly around the room.

“Japan attacked us.” Delia's lips felt numb.

“But what's Pearl Harbor?”

“I don't know! They said it's in Hawaii. The Japanese attacked it.” Delia began turning the radio dial.

“Attacked it?”

Delia couldn't find any news. She turned it back to NBC, hoping for an update.

“The whole last year before my father died, he kept saying it was only a matter of time before we were in the war,” Delia said. “Mayor La Guardia's been working to get the government to grant military deferments for firemen.”

“Why?”

In what turned out to be the last year of his life, her father had spoken of the war often at the dinner table, when in the past the two of them had eaten in near silence, he bent over his newspaper, and she holding her book. She'd listened impatiently, the pull of whatever she was reading stronger than her father's voice, her father's words.

“Dad kept saying New York would be a target and that we'd need real firemen, not some volunteer force they threw together.”

“A target?” Claire said. “Us?”

Delia nodded. “The city. Our coastline, I guess.”

Claire made a sound in her throat. She ran downstairs to the back door, and Delia heard her shouting, “Flynn! Flynn O'Hagan! Get in here, now. Now!”

Delia couldn't hear his response, but Claire screamed, “Now! Now!”

Hawaii had been attacked from the air. They'd dropped bombs on American soil. Bombs.
America.
Her father said they would. She was suddenly furious at him for dying. Japan would never have attacked America if Jack Keegan were alive. They would not have dared.

For the rest of the afternoon, Delia and Claire and Flynn stayed near the radio.

Two more updates told them that the attack was still under way. An ordinary Sunday morning. A sneak attack on what, they learned, was a military base. Heavy American casualties were expected.

Flynn lay on his stomach beneath the front window, flipping through his baseball cards. “What's ‘casualties'?” he asked.

“Don't worry—” Claire began.

“It means a lot of our soldiers are dead,” Delia said flatly.

“Delia! He's a kid!”

“He should know. He's
going
to know.”

Flynn looked from one to the other before bowing his head over his baseball cards.

The room grew dark, but neither of them moved to turn on a light. Flynn fell asleep on the floor.

Claire whispered, “What happens now?”

“President Roosevelt will declare war on Japan.” Delia rubbed her eyes, which felt gritty, as if she'd been awake for days.

“Tomorrow?” Claire asked.

“I think so,” Delia said, and then, with more certainty, “Yes. He won't wait. We're already at war.”

Delia had paused now and again to wonder why her father had been so worried about the war in Europe. He was not a man with sons. She understood now what she should have all along: he was thinking of the firemen he commanded. All the young men he sent into fire.

Had the mayor succeeded? Delia had no idea. She knew her father had had great faith that he would. The Little Flower was a buff. He understood.

Claire took Delia's hand and laid her head on Delia's shoulder. Delia rested her cheek on Claire's soft hair.

“My mother must be going crazy, worrying about the boys,” Claire said. “They're not bums! They just never had a chance to do anything. They'll enlist. I know they will.”

Hours later, when they were in bed and the room was dark, Delia whispered, “Don't go.”

Claire whispered back, “If you could see your mother, you would. No matter what you say, you would. I'll go by tomorrow, for a little while.”

“I can stay with Flynn while you're over there,” Delia said.

Claire shook her head, whisking her hair against the pillow. “I'll bring him. Ma'll want to see him. She never hated him or anything. She let me keep him.”

“So she could torment you.”

“It wasn't like that,” Claire said.  “Anyway, I have him.”

Claire rolled over on her side and Delia followed, wrapping her arm around Claire and sliding down a little so she could rest her forehead against Claire's warm back.

Alone, huddled in her father's chair, Delia listened to President Roosevelt declare war on Japan. Claire and Flynn had left before nine o'clock. Delia had watched from the window as they walked up the block, hand in hand.

The president started speaking at twelve-thirty and was done in five minutes. Delia supposed there was little point in saying much more than that America was in grave danger and was now at war. She wondered if Claire was listening at her family's apartment, surrounded by her brothers and sisters.

According to radio reports, men were overwhelming the recruiting center at the post office on Vesey Street in the city. Women were handing out coffee to them as they waited. Delia considered heading there on the subway. She should do
something.

At a quarter to one, Delia wrote a note for Claire saying she'd gone for a short walk. Claire said she and Flynn would be home for supper, but if she and her mother got into a fight, she'd surely come back early. She had her own key, of course.

When Delia arrived at the convent, she pushed open the gate before she could second-guess herself. She passed by the statue of Saint Maren. When she was a kid, she'd heard stories in the schoolyard of the saint climbing down from her base and walking the neighborhood at night, offering her outstretched hand to anyone she encountered. Don't touch her hand, ever, it was said. You'll die if you do.

Delia followed the path to the side door. She'd half expected to find a whole line of mothers and red-eyed girls, clutching boxes from Agnello's that held cakes and cookies for the nuns in exchange for prayers to keep their sons and sweethearts safe. But there was no one. Maybe it was too soon. Perhaps none of this would seem real until the men began to leave.

There was a small backyard that ended in a brick wall. Behind it, Delia knew, lay the nuns' fabled garden. Delia turned the knob. The door was unlocked. She stepped into the turn room. The only light was from a lamp that stood on a small table beneath a niche in the wall. In it stood a statue of a female saint robed in red. A sign on the wall read,
In the House of God, talk of Him or do not talk of anything.
The opposite wall was decorated with photographs, some framed, others not. Delia went over and peered at them through the gloom. Some seemed to be fairly recent, but others were far older, daguerreotypes of families, or single men and women in the unsmiling pose of the previous century.