Ashes of Fiery Weather (32 page)

Maggie's phone keeps ringing, but it's the Irish. Friends and co-workers.

“Kids wouldn't have been in there, right?” Maggie says. “No school is going to schedule a class trip for so early. What time is it there?”

She is the one who should know. But numbers are a muddle in her head.

“You're six behind. It's, ah, was about nine-thirty there,” Cillian says. “Yeah, that's too early for kids. You'd never get them organized on time.”

Organized. Maggie seizes on the word. “Yes! They'd never get organized this early.”

“Are you thinking of your sister?”

“No. Not my sister.”

She reaches for her can of Guinness. They are on their second. He has turned away the friends and family members who have come knocking on his door, trying to get him to go to the pub with them to watch the news.

“There's a little girl,” Maggie says. She feels both rooted to Cillian's couch and untethered, like she might float to the ceiling if she kicked off her shoes.

“She turned nine on August 27.”

This girl was born with blue eyes, she explains, and they have probably stayed blue, though possibly they might be green.

Cillian is sitting on the couch, one cushion away.

“What's her name?” he asks.

“I don't know her name.”

“But she's your—”

“Daughter,” Maggie says.

November 1991

“I think I'm going to go with you tonight,” Maggie said.

Maggie had never bothered with the Gradys' Friday-after-Thanksgiving party when she was in high school, though the Gradys lived four houses away and, if she opened her bedroom window and looked, she could see people in the yard, their frozen breath and cigarette smoke indistinguishable.

Not my scene, she'd say, rolling her eyes. I have a working brain.

Yeah, right, Aidan would respond, smirking in a way that infuriated her.

There was beer at the party, lots of it, but still their mother always let Aidan go because Grace and her husband were home to supervise. It was Grace's way of keeping her sons close on the biggest drinking night of the year after St. Patrick's Day and New Year's.

Maggie and Aidan were clearing the table. Rose and Brendan, who were supposed to do it, had disappeared because their mother wasn't there to enforce the rule. Even though Irish Dreams had been closed today, she'd gone in to check the messages at four o'clock. At six, Maggie decided to make dinner. Now they were done and Norah still wasn't back. Some crisis, Maggie supposed. A couple got bumped from the honeymoon suite. Some group complaining that the package tour they'd chosen did not, in fact, show them the “real” Ireland. Some
thing.
Maggie understood, or tried to, that since her mother and Marian had bought the business, both were nervous about continuing its success. They'd been running it for years, really, and were now free to make changes without even pseudo-permission from Sullivan Jr., as both her mother and Marian called him, who had never been interested in taking over for his father.

“Yeah? You're cool now that you're in college?” Aidan said.

Maggie grinned. “Yes. It only took two months of getting out of here.”

Aidan snorted and dumped Rose's leftover turkey in the garbage. She hadn't touched it. In a half hour, Maggie figured, she'd be asking for a hot dog. Rose would soon be eight, but she was still as picky as she'd been at three. Brendan's plate was so clean, Maggie could have put it right back in the cabinet.

After a slight hesitation, Maggie asked, “The party is happening, right?”

Grace Grady had died of cancer in February, near Valentine's Day, which Maggie remembered because Rose's construction-paper hearts had been Scotch-taped to every window in the house the night they went to the wake. The three Grady boys, Kevin, Brian and Danny, stood beside their father in a row, unfamiliar in their jackets and ties.

“Of course they're having it.” Aidan leaned against the counter beside her. “Kev won't come because his wife won't let him, but Brian'll get the beer. Danny will definitely be there.”

He gave her a stagy nudge with his elbow.

She shoved him. “
That
was done this summer.”

He laughed. “I'm leaving around nine to go pick up Jen.”

“You don't have a car. You going to give her a piggyback ride to the party?”

“Shut up.”

Maggie knew Jen from the neighborhood but hadn't met her, since Aidan began going out with her only a couple of weeks ago. Maggie still got a small thrill to think of life at home going on without her. Though she was surprised that Aidan wanted to be tied down during his senior year of high school. It had been the opposite for the girls, she recalled. From the start of the school year, her classmates had been anxious to have boyfriends lined up for the prom.

“I'll leave with you,” Maggie said. “If Mom's back, I mean.”

“If she's not, maybe we bring the kids with us.”

Maggie laughed.

Brendan had probably already tried beer. Rose would no doubt hop up on a table and sing. She'd have the crowd bowing to her. Rose O'Reilly, a name that sounded like a song itself.

Their grandmother had already said more than once that she should have voice lessons. Maggie figured a couple more months of their mother ignoring this suggestion—because it was one more thing to research, to pay for, to coordinate the to-and-from—before Delia would take care of it herself.

Norah arrived home at close to seven, apologizing, and then aggravating Maggie by asking if she'd fed Brendan and Rose.

Maggie didn't look back at the house as she and Aidan left, but she knew Rose was at the front window, peeking from behind the curtain.

“We'll take them somewhere tomorrow,” Maggie said, and Aidan agreed.

Every light in the Gradys' house was on. Maggie went inside alone, shrugging off her coat. She scanned the room and saw a lot of people she'd gone to grammar school with and a few girls whom she'd been in high school with. They looked younger, with calmer makeup; that is, no dark lip liner and pale lipstick, or mascara that left each eyelash distinct from the other.

Maggie and her two friends from honors English had been, she thought, part chameleon. When they walked the hallways between classes, their skin turned the institutional-green shade of the walls, rendering them invisible, neither part of the crowd nor singled out for ridicule. Yet invisibility also forced Maggie to listen to endless conversations about their boyfriends, blow jobs and love. She always wished to interrupt and say, “Oh, please. In five years you won't remember his name.”

It amused her to see how, in the six months since high school graduation, those girls had grown to look more like her.

Nearly everyone held a red plastic cup. Maggie heard talk of a keg in the dining room and pushed her way through the crowd, nodding at a few people who said hello to her. The Gradys' house was exactly like theirs but they had a dining room table in their front room. At her own house, it was a loveseat and a bookcase and was her favorite place to read.

Indeed, a quarter keg sat on the dining room table. There was a group of guys standing around it, older, almost certainly friends of Brian's. Neither he nor Danny had thought to cover the table with a cloth.

Maggie took a cup from the side table, where she noticed a pile of unopened mail that had grown so high it had tilted, sending the envelopes in a slide. The sight stirred a memory of how things that should have been easy were simply not. One afternoon that first summer after the fire, Maggie had spent an hour helping Eileen open their mail and putting all the bills in a single pile. From now on, Eileen told her, collect the mail and set aside every envelope with a window.

Maggie turned to the keg, desperate to lose the edge of self-consciousness.

“—seriously, he fucking showed up.” Brian came into the room, talking over his shoulder to a guy behind him. “Maggie! Hey!”

He pulled her into a hug. She was too startled to hug back.

Brian sometimes played ball with her brothers, and when his mother babysat for Rose, he'd play with her, but Maggie he'd never paid much attention to. Over the summer, when she and Danny had been going out, she hadn't seen Brian that much. He went out to bars and he could get Danny in, but nothing could be done for her: she didn't have a fake ID.

“We haven't seen you lately. Where you been?” Brian said.

“Prison,” she said. “My mom finally posted bail last night.”

Brian laughed. “Nah, you're at school, right? Dan said you got a full ride. Where are you?”

Maggie nodded. “Gilbride College. It's in the Hudson Valley, about two hours from here.”

She had wanted badly to go out of state, even though her mother didn't like the idea.

Maggie found a surprising ally in her grandmother, who agreed that if you were going to go away to school, you should go far. Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine. Then Joe Paladino let her mother know about the scholarship for children of deceased firefighters, police officers and EMTs. A full ride indeed, but only at a CUNY or SUNY school.

After she won it, Maggie tried to find a reason to turn it down. The experience of living in a new state was more important. Maybe there was someone with a more recent loss or someone whose mother was dead too. But her grandmother turned back into her practical self. There are three more behind you, Delia told Maggie, and unless you're planning on studying law or medicine, you should be cautious about student loans. Well, she was not going to study law or medicine. She intended to major in education, with a minor in English.

“Hey, come with me.” Brian turned to his friends. “Be right back. This is my brother's girlfriend.”

Touching her lightly on the shoulder, Brian led her out of the dining room. Maggie followed him through the crowd, noting the number of girls who turned to look at him. It had been like that with Danny too.

As they entered the kitchen, Maggie said, “I'm not Danny's girlfriend.”

“If he had half a brain you would be.”

Maggie didn't know what to say to that.

Brian opened the refrigerator and Maggie peeked in. There must have been a dozen six-packs.

“Oh my God, Brian.”

“The secret stash.” He grinned. “It's a beautiful thing. Take anything you want.”

She chose a Budweiser. He opened the beer for her and handed it back and then took one for himself.

“Aidan's here, right? Let him know too.”

“He's on his way,” Maggie said, and then, trying for nonchalance, “Where's Danny?”

“Upstairs.” Brian rolled his eyes.

“Why? What's the matter?”

“Who the hell knows? He's been talking some shit about not going back to school. After I moved out to Bay Ridge, he got some crazy idea that Dad shouldn't be alone here. But first Dad told him he'd break both his legs and then he said Danny had to stay at least one semester, because that what he's paid up to. Go on up. Give him this.” He opened the beer he'd taken for himself and handed it to her.

“Drag him down here.” He grinned. “Or don't.”

“Very funny,” she called as she left the room. In the living room, she skirted the crowd and headed for the stairs in the corner.

The silence of the second floor struck her. She wondered how long it would be before couples began migrating to the bedrooms. Surely nobody would go near the master bedroom. At least nobody who'd known Grace, the mom who was so cool that everybody had called her Mrs. Grady as a mark of respect. Maggie felt a twinge of anxiety and then reminded herself it was not her problem if the house got trashed.

She paused in the hallway to gulp half the beer. She and Danny had first gotten together at his high school graduation party this past June. Maggie understood, even if Danny didn't, that he stayed by her side that night because when she saw him, she had not asked, How are you
doing?
How's your father
doing?
How are your brothers
doing?

Throughout the summer, they'd never used the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” Both of them were aware that they were due to separate in September, she to go upstate and Danny to go to his college outside Boston, Kevin's alma mater.

Danny's bedroom door was partially open. Maggie peeked in. They'd spent plenty of days this summer in the twin bed on the right, the one that had been Brian's. Danny lay on his own bed with his arm tenting his eyes. Two beer bottles sat on his nightstand.

Maggie knocked with one knuckle.

“
What?
” Danny didn't move.

She pushed open the door. “It's me.”

Maggie had forgotten—or had let herself forget—how much she simply liked looking at him. All three of the Gradys had black hair and their mother's green eyes, but Danny was the one not just good-looking but handsome.

“Maggie! Hey!” Danny jumped up off the bed and, as his brother had done, pulled her into a hug.

When they separated, she couldn't quite meet his eyes. She knew if she glanced in the mirror on his bureau, she would see a flush over her face and neck.

“Uh, from Brian,” she said, and thrust the beer at him.

“I've got a full one.” Danny took the beer and set it on the nightstand beside the others.

“Here, sit down.” He picked up a pile of clothes from the bed and tossed it on the floor.

Danny leaned back against the headboard and she perched on the edge of the bed. She resisted the urge to stroke his feet.

“How've you been? You like school?”

“I love it,” Maggie said.

If she'd had more than half a beer in her, she might have made a fool of herself by blurting out how she felt when she walked up the wooded slope that led to the library, a stone building that made her think of a castle. After the fall colors began to appear, she'd sometimes walk to class wondering if she was in a dream. She formed new friendships quickly, starting with her roommate, who spoke Spanish fluently and planned to go into the Peace Corps. She suggested Maggie think about it too. Even though she couldn't see herself in the Peace Corps, Maggie found that she liked imagining different scenarios for her future, ones that she had never before considered.