Ashes of Fiery Weather (20 page)

Luke stared at her and then nodded. “Whatever you need me to do, then.”

For a long time after he'd gone, Delia stood at the window where Luke, it seemed, had spent most of their marriage. How long before both she and Sean ceased to seem real to him and the guilt eased? The checks from England would stop. Six months? A year? No Catholic school was going to hire a divorced woman, and possibly not a public school either. She might have to say Luke had died.

Delia left the window and went into Sean's room. He was asleep, sprawled across the bed. She gently picked up his foot and measured it against her palm. His toes nearly reached the tips of her fingers. He would be tall, the pediatrician had told her. She wasn't, certainly, and neither was Luke. Good. Far better that Sean was all Keegan and Devlin and barely any O'Reilly.

Delia pulled the blanket over his feet and tucked it around his shoulders. Sean rolled over, and she readjusted for it and moved his stuffed dog closer, so if he woke and looked for it, it would be right there.

Tomorrow she would give her tenants notice. She would give them more than a month to move, perhaps the three months Luke had just promised, though Delia wasn't sure if she could trust him.

Sean would love the bigness of the house. The stairs. He would have a yard to play in. Delia couldn't for a moment imagine a little girl with them, and wondered if it might be better to let her go to parents who would not have to worry about supporting her.

She stroked Sean's hair. If only he had not turned her inside out to get here.

Delia went back to stand at Sean's window. She tried to recall who she'd been on December 6, 1941. What had that girl wanted? Claire. Claire, who'd moved to Long Island with Ray and their first child after the war. And Flynn too, which meant he'd been told the truth about his parentage. Delia put out a hand as though she might find Claire's shoulder, and cup it.

March 1967

On St. Patrick's night, Delia didn't get home until almost ten o'clock. Fionnula wanted her to stay until morning, but she couldn't do that, of course. There was a Closed sign on the door of Four Star Electronics Repair. She rang the bell. Nathaniel let her in, and she followed him to his cluttered work space in the back of the store. Tamar used to keep everything neat. Tamar, who'd gone out one day and never returned.

There was a small kitchen off the work room with a table that sat two. Delia took her seat. Her chair had a cushion that Nathaniel had bought for her at a stoop sale. It was green, embossed with white flowers. Nathaniel made two cups of tea and joined her.

“A good day?” Nathaniel asked.

“Overall.” Delia tried to smile. “I miss him.”

“I do too.”

“I pulled a trick on the universe to get him. What if it pays me back with his death over there in that godforsaken jungle?”

“Then we say goodbye.”

“I could never say goodbye to my son.”

“You will, though. If you know he's gone, you will,” Nathaniel said. “And where is our girl? How long did she last at the fancy reception?”

Delia smiled. “Predictable Miss took off after about a half hour. She went and jumped in the parade thinking that her real mother will see her and claim her.”

Nathaniel didn't say, as most people would be quick to, that Delia
was
her real mother since she had raised her. He shrugged. “It's human nature to try and solve a mystery.”

“It would have been easier on her if she were prettier.”

“Because beauty simplifies life? You believe that?”

Delia shook her head. Too tired to pursue this line of thought, too tired to pretend she held her worry for Sean and her worry for Eileen in equal measure, even before Vietnam.

She asked Nathaniel what he had planned for tomorrow. Nathaniel answered that he was going to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and back again. Then, once back in Brooklyn Heights, he would stroll along the promenade.

“I haven't been down that way in a while,” Delia said. “I'll come with you.”

“It'll be cold up on the bridge, heart.”

“That's all right,” Delia said.

“You changed the subject.” Nathaniel tapped the table. “Yeats.”

Delia recited:

Being made beautiful overmuch,

Consider beauty a sufficient end,

Lose natural kindness and maybe

The heart-revealing intimacy

That chooses right, and never find a friend.

She sighed. “I don't mean that I wish she were a prettier version of herself. I mean it might have been easier if Eileen looked a little like me. Coloring alone would be enough. When we stand next to each other, we look like strangers. She's always been aware of that.”

“Beauty!” Nathaniel waved his hand. “What did your pretty face ever get you but your soldier boy who ran off?”

Delia laughed and laughed. He was the one, Nathaniel. He was the one she could not do without.

CHAPTER THREE

October 1971

THE CONVICTS BEGAN
their songs at dusk. When she was a girl, Mattie walked up the road to stand outside Sing Sing's wall and listen. The voices made her think of the earth, pliable after rain.

Mattie was sitting on the small terrace off her bedroom, which faced the woods behind her house. The air had grown brisk overnight and the leaves blazed. Thirty-seven years had passed since her return to upstate New York. Autumn was the reward for living here. Otherwise, Mattie would never stop missing the city.

Her son lived near his firehouse in Red Hook. Brooklyn's Red Hook, not the Hudson Valley's. Last year, his fool of a wife went off to find herself. He divorced her and got custody of their two boys. Mattie had hoped he might invite her to move in with him, but he was able to arrange his shifts so he had days off at a time. When he had a night tour a babysitter stayed over.

Mattie considered suggesting that she move nearby at least. A small apartment. She'd be clear about that. She didn't want to intrude, but she wouldn't be so far away.

Yet even as she indulged in those moments, she knew it would never be. When there was a daughter, care of the old parents fell to her. Of course, her daughter was Josephine, unmarried. Two years ago, she'd begun yet another career, as a social worker.

Neither of her children would give a thought to her living arrangements unless she broke a hip or had a stroke and was unable to be on her own. At seventy-two, she was not in awe of her age, but the old woman staring out from the mirror with her own blue eyes was a stranger. Away from the mirror, she was only twenty.

Mattie looked at her watch. Michael was always late, unless his destination was on fire. Indeed, it was another ten minutes before she heard his car in the driveway. He entered the house calling to her and, after a moment, knocked on the bedroom door.

“Ma?”

Mattie raised her book so she could pretend that she was not aching to see his face. He hadn't been to visit in a month.

“Come in,” she called.

Michael came over and kissed her cheek. “Hey, Mom. Sorry I'm late. Traffic.”

“You should allow extra time for it,” she said.

He was thirty-nine, which frightened her. Her son, approaching midlife. But still handsome, with only a little white in his dark hair. Michael was a runner and he played softball on the FDNY's team. So many of her friends' sons who were divorced were overweight and bitter.

Michael asked how she was feeling, and she said she was perfectly well. He squeezed her hand and she tried to hold on to it, but he pulled away. He said he was beat. They were doing a crazy number of runs a night. The city was a nightmare. She was lucky to be here.

The boy, Ian, came into the bedroom.

He was eleven. If Mattie squinted, she could be looking at Michael. It made her want to grab the child in a hug, but she knew he would be horrified. “
Zaubermaus,
” she'd sometimes called the baby Ian when nobody could overhear. “Enchanted mouse,” an endearment borrowed from her own mother. That was about all the German her mother spoke in front of them, because Mattie's father insisted his sons and daughter speak only English.

Ian carried a composition notebook and a folder under his arm. After he greeted Mattie with a quick kiss, he looked at his father.

“Okay, I'll leave you two alone,” Michael said. “You can get started.”

Mattie frowned. “Where are you going?”

“I thought I'd go into town, see if I see anybody I know,” Michael said.

Mattie had insisted on being “interviewed” in person, not over the phone, because she expected that Michael would stay and listen.

“I'll bring some food back. We'll have a late lunch.” He grinned.

Relieved, Mattie smiled at him. Michael didn't hate her.

Ian perched in the wooden chair opposite Mattie and dropped his notebook and folder on the small table that sat between them. Mattie clutched the edges of the book in her lap. Perhaps the phone would have been better.

“Okay, so, I told you this is for school?” Ian said. “We had to pick a family member and write an essay about them.”

“Him or her.”

Ian squinted. “Huh?”

“Family member is singular. Grammatically, it's ‘write an essay about him or her,' which are singular. ‘Them' is plural.”

“Oh. Okay. So I guess Dad told you, I picked Aunt Josephine's father and how he was killed in a fire.”

“Did your teacher say it was all right to choose someone who wasn't related to you?” Mattie asked.

“We weren't allowed to pick our mom or dad or brothers or sisters. Those are the only rules.” Ian chewed his lip. “I know I could've picked Grandpa, but he, like, made beer.”

Mattie felt a flash of pity for gentle, homely Emmet Brauer, who'd made her smile and even laugh sometimes, though she had not loved him. His death of a stroke seven years ago made her a plain widow, not a fire widow, a term she'd always hated. She did miss Emmet.

If Emmet were here, he would shrug and say that it was impossible to compete with firemen. Still, he would be hurt that his grandson preferred to write about her first husband rather than him.

Ian flipped open his notebook, uncapped his pen and said, “First, about you. You were born in New York City?”

“In 1899, on the Lower East Side.”

Kleindeutschland.
The Starwaifs were one of the few Catholic families in Little Germany. They'd attended St. Brigid's, with all the Irish. Her father had not cared for the Irish. He thought them shiftless.

“Why'd you leave New York? How old were you?”

“I was six. My father had an offer to manage a cousin's grocery store in Ossining. The cousin had no children.”

For three days, Gus Starwaif labored over the letter inquiring about a job. He began it again and again, setting down his pen and tearing the sheet of paper in half.

Ian consulted his notebook. “Okay. So, Aunt Josephine's father was Theodore Cullen, from Brooklyn, New York.”

“Theobold,” she said. “He was Theobold for Theobold Wolfe Tone, the Irish patriot.”

“Theo
bold?
” Ian made a face.

“Didn't you ask Aunt Josephine any questions?”

“I mean, I called her, but she said it'd be better if I talked to you.”

Mattie nodded. Josephine didn't want to lie to her nephew. She decided to let Mattie do it. Fair enough.

“Where'd you and Theobold meet?” Ian pronounced the name like he was saying it with his mouth full.

“Teddy.” Mattie almost laughed. “We met in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan. June 15, 1919.”

She'd moved back to New York City from Ossining in early 1919, after her father died. She did this in spite of the Spanish flu—that's how eager she was to return to the city. Her mother arranged for Mattie to live with a cousin. Mattie took a job in a factory, sewing collars on shirts. The cousin was indifferent to her, as long as Mattie paid for her board on time and helped with the housework.

But the cousin's husband watched her. Once, when his wife was working an extra shift, he came up behind Mattie while she was washing dishes. He locked an arm around her waist as he put his mouth to her ear and told her no other man was ever going to want her. He put his hand flat on her back. She braced her arms against the sink and shoved backwards. Her strength startled him and he retreated. After that, she made sure never to be alone with him.

“Wow, you remember the date?” Ian wrote it down.

Mattie saw in her mind's eye the fountain in Tompkins Square Park, built as a memorial to the victims of the
Slocum,
and Teddy, tall and slender with his thick hair so bright in the sun, whom she mistook for German. Perhaps a relative or even a survivor. In minutes, Mattie invented for him a whole history of orphanhood by fire or drowning. She'd thought he was near her own age, twenty, but she learned later that he was twenty-nine. Teddy was one of those men who never outgrow boyishness.

“Yes, of course I remember the date,” Mattie said.

Ian wrote happily.

June 15. A small prayer service was held by the park's fountain to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the
Slocum
disaster. Mattie suspected many at the service had stopped out of curiosity upon seeing the young minister waiting patiently to begin. His grandmother, he explained, and three of her eight children had been lost. Most of the families of the dead had moved away long ago. The
Slocum
fire marked the end of
Kleindeutschland.

She let Teddy do what he wanted to prove her cousin's husband wrong. It was a mistake to agree when Teddy, his face stark with fear, said, “I'll marry you, then,” with nobility she knew even then he did not possess.