Ashes of Fiery Weather (17 page)

But she'd said they were fated to meet, and Nathaniel sighed.

Luke O'Reilly had known neither Claire nor Ray but attended their hastily arranged wedding reception at Lehane's because he was doing a story for the
Irish Eagle
on wartime nuptials. It was January 10, 1942, and Ray was due to leave for basic training in a week.

Delia bought a new green dress, unsure until she left the house if she would actually go.

Claire's sisters were her bridesmaids.

“But you're my best friend,” Claire had said. “I want you to be there.”

Delia had hung up the phone and sat on the stairs until the hallway grew dark.

“Come with me?” she'd asked Nathaniel the next day.

“You want to bring a Jew to that wedding?” he said. “You trying to get me killed?”

Delia said she didn't want to go alone. He grew serious and said he would go, for her, but he couldn't. Not on Shabbos.

She did go, of course. Later, she thought it was so she'd know it was real.

Flynn ran up to Ray right before the cake cutting, and Delia, watching from across the room, hoped Ray would be rude to him and that Claire would announce she'd made a mistake and then Delia could take them both home. But Ray touched Flynn's head and leaned over as the boy spoke. “He's a cop, Errol,” Delia wanted to shout. “You like firemen.”

She'd had two beers, and though she wasn't slurring her words or stumbling, she aimed frequent smiles at no one as she moved through the crowd. A lot of guys from the neighborhood had already enlisted. The rest were about to, having listened to their mothers' pleas to wait until after Christmas. All the girls were hoping they'd be the next bride. Claire, who wore a knee-length white wool dress with green trim at the wrists, gestured to her at one point, but Delia pretended to misunderstand. She gave a short wave back and headed for the bar again.

Luke O'Reilly had dark blond hair, worn so long it nearly touched his collar. He smiled easily at the guests, who spoke quickly with their eyes fixed on his long fingers as he quoted them in his small notebook. When he got to her, leaning against the bar with her glass of beer, he didn't ask her what she thought of the wedding or the war, if she was scared, if she was proud. He said,

“Aren't you beautiful?”

“You're from Ireland?” she said.

“Now how did you know that?”

“Your shoes,” she said, and he laughed.

“I'll have to take care of that,” he said. “Can't have people knowing I'm Irish.”

“Where in Ireland are you from?”

“Sligo,” he said.

She laughed, because he had not said Clare.

“Is that the right answer? Do I get a dance?”

Claire was watching, Delia saw. Though Luke's hand on her back felt too heavy, Delia tilted her chin up and smiled as he asked, “Are you a friend of the bride or the groom?”

“The bride is my best friend,” Delia said.

Luke, she learned, was twenty-five and had come to New York to work for his uncle, who owned the
Irish Eagle.
Mick O'Reilly, a widower with only a daughter, insisted Luke start out like anyone else, so he'd spent most of a year writing articles about ceili dances and society meetings, until Mick thought he was seasoned enough to cover news stories. After Christmas, Luke planned to start looking for a job at one of the city newspapers. Now, the war. He was going to enlist, of course.

Delia had never met a writer before.

Two weeks later, Luke asked her to marry him, and she said yes. Relax, relax, he'd whisper in her ear, and she tried, gnawing on the inside of her cheek. But she had not conceived before he left for basic training.

Now they were about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, though the marriage felt far newer because Luke had not returned until the summer of 1945. He was easily distracted with bursts of temper. Delia didn't know if the war had changed him or if he'd always been this way. He still spoke of quitting the
Irish Eagle
and becoming a real newspaperman, but as yet he had not looked for a new job.

“Nathaniel? I know you can hear me,” Delia said. “Please open the door.”

Nathaniel's sisters barely spoke to him anymore. Two had already married into briefer surnames and the third was about to. They were weary of his search for their little brother. Their mother died during the war, and their father right after it ended. Whatever promise Nathaniel, as the son, had made could be put aside. Their village in Poland was annihilated. Nathaniel pointed out that nowhere on the Red Cross lists, or the lists published in Polish and English and German newspapers, did the names Josef, Ewa or Mikolaj Kwiatkowski appear among the refugees, survivors or the known dead.

Nathaniel did find the names of many cousins and neighbors. The rabbi who told his father
they've gone
died at Buchenwald. Nathaniel argued that the Nazis were meticulous monsters. If Miko or Josef or Ewa had been transported to a camp, there would be a record. The sisters said, It's been two years since the war ended. Miko would have surfaced by now.

What's two years after such mayhem? Nathaniel countered. One young man might have been missed by the overworked repatriation people with their pencils and paper who asked the survivors their names and how to spell them.

Nathaniel's sisters didn't understand that letting Nathaniel withdraw from the world didn't work. Left alone, he might disappear into grief, not only for his brother but for every person whose fate he had to contemplate each time he scoured a list and touched his fingertip to a name.

Nathaniel needed to be brought back.

“Natan? You have to open the door,” Delia said. “I'm pathetic today.”

What if her father, in the year after the deaths of the little boys, had gotten on his knees and called into the keyhole of the room where they died, “Annie-Rose? Annie-Rose?”

Footsteps approached and Delia started to get up, but the door shook as he sat down and leaned against it. Hell, she thought. She glanced at the small bakery box she'd set down beside her when she knelt.

She'd left Luke a note saying she'd gone to Brooklyn to take care of something with her tenants. She didn't take the time to think of what that something might be. He wouldn't be home until late anyway. If by chance he did see it, he would tell her, aggravated, to sell the goddamn house. When he came back from the war, she moved into his one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, which was not far from his office at the
Irish Eagle.
It was meant to be temporary, but since no baby had yet appeared, there was no reason to move.

Delia rented her house to two firemen and their families. One had the upstairs, one had the downstairs. She saw no reason to hold on to the brownstone, except the thought of her mother, her hair cut short but free from its veil, arriving on the doorstep one day to find that strangers now owned it.

“Do you think my brother is dead?” Nathaniel asked through the door.

Delia jumped as though she'd been kicked.

Nathaniel had never asked her this before. Maybe if Delia finally said yes, he would sit shiva, say Kaddish and then, after some time, make a life for himself. Maybe with Tamar, or maybe a new girl for whom Miko would be simply the younger brother who died in the war, and not the phantom he was to Delia and probably Tamar too.

Nathaniel's sisters believed that if he mourned, it would be done. An illness cured. Delia was less certain. Nathaniel, composed only of grief and no hope. What would become of him?

Nathaniel sometimes followed young men he thought might be his brother, running after them on the sidewalk, approaching them on subway platforms, and in the past year, Delia realized that Miko Kwiatkowski also lived in
her
peripheral vision, the same sun-glare place where her daughter dwelled. The daughter who, so far, Delia had conceived only in her imagination.

Together the black-haired girl and the young man with sad brown eyes stood on the corner waiting for the traffic light to change, or together they walked along the wall surrounding Prospect Park, arms akimbo, or they turned corner after corner ahead of Delia and never did they let her see their faces.

“Do you think Mikolaj is dead?”

“Oh, Nathaniel, how should I know?” Delia said.

“You have an opinion, heart. Tell it to me.”

Delia drew in a breath that she thought was for a sigh, but then she heard herself speak.

“I went to a lecture the other night with Luke. He had to cover it for the paper. It was on the famine in Ireland. This is the centennial of the worst year of it, 1847. They called it Black '47. A million died and a million left. My own grandmother, my mother's mother, came to America during that time. I only know her name was Brigid, and she was something like eight, nine years old. I figure the rest of the family died in Ireland or on the ship coming over.”

“A famine isn't murder,” Nathaniel said.

Delia could have made her case, but Nathaniel hardly cared about laissez faire and the British government. Murder by blight.

Luke hadn't wanted to hear it either. She'd tried to talk to him about it on the way home, saying it was hard to fathom that her grandmother had been a victim. Even though Delia didn't remember her, a grandmother was so close in time. Luke cut her off, telling her that she hadn't fought a war on the same side as England. It didn't matter what the hell they'd done or hadn't done in Ireland a century ago.

“The English were incredible,” Luke said. “The men and the women.”

The subway clacked and swayed. Their shoulders nearly touched. She felt cold in the middle, as if it had begun to snow inside her.

“I'm not saying it's the same,” she said to Nathaniel, tracing the grain of the wood. “But there was mass starvation and disease. The dead were thrown in mass graves too.” She stopped. He didn't need that image in his head.

“My point is, there are millions of Irish like my grandmother who probably should not have survived, if you went by statistics and odds. But she did live, and she came here and met Patrick Devlin and married him. When she was about forty, she had a baby. Some people live when they shouldn't.”

Delia put her hand against the door where she thought his shoulder was. Nathaniel was quiet for so long that Delia thought she was going to have to try again later, but then he spoke. “So, forty? Maybe there's hope for you.”

She grinned. “I'm almost twenty-nine. I can't wait that long. I went to Agnello's today. I did it. I bought a piece of soda bread.”

“Ah, the magic bread,” Nathaniel said. “Did it work? Are you pregnant yet?”

She laughed. Nathaniel slid back the bolt, and she reached up and opened the door.

Delia pulled herself upright in the hospital bed. She tasted copper, as though not long ago her mouth had been filled with blood. Her tongue hurt. Had she bitten her tongue? She felt like she'd been shipwrecked, waking after dragging herself out of the sea and collapsing on the shore. Her breasts were so sore she was scared to touch them.

Delia lay there, not moving, until the door opened and a nurse poked her head in.

“Well, well. You're rejoining us after all. How do you feel, Mrs. O'Reilly?”

Who? Delia nearly asked. Then she remembered. Luke. Luke O'Reilly.

“The baby? She's okay?” Delia asked. She was hoarse.

“Let me go get the doctor.” The nurse vanished.

Delia closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, Dr. Fromson was standing by the bed with a frown that perhaps looked more imposing than it was because he was bald. She could see the wrinkles in his forehead, as deep as if they'd been cut with a chisel. Painfully, she pushed herself up. He congratulated her. She had a son.

Delia asked if he was sure. Throughout the pregnancy, she'd kept a notebook of names. Catherine. Juno. Isolde. Genevieve. Emily. Charlotte. Jane. Maud, as in Gonne, for a middle name. Not Mary, after Luke's mother, whom she'd never met. Not Annie or Rose and never Claire.

Delia felt a sense of loss so strong it made her want to climb out of the bed and go home. She drew the sheet into her fists.

“Your husband seemed happy,” Dr. Fromson said.

Maybe it was better. When she told Luke they were having a baby, he'd said, “Well, that's a surprise,” then stared out the window for a long moment before turning back to her, a failed smile on his face. Perhaps giving him a son would help make up for not realizing that his proposal had been a wild, romantic gesture and that she should have gently laughed, kissed him once and said, Find me when you come home, soldier. She should have listened to Nathaniel.

Delia asked if the baby was all right. Dr. Fromson said he was fine. Five pounds, three ounces. Small, but not a bad size considering he'd come three weeks before his due date. Delia asked what day it was. The doctor smiled.

November 27. Thanksgiving Day.

“A good way to get out of cooking,” he said.

Delia tried to smile. She didn't have the energy to explain that her Irish husband didn't care a bit about Thanksgiving. She'd cooked the first year Luke was back from the war, but the following year, rather than face his pointed indifference, she'd gone to the movies with Nathaniel, though she told Luke she went alone.

“Is my husband here?” Delia asked, glancing at the door, hoping her words might make Luke appear.

“Visiting hours don't begin until eleven o'clock.”

“Can I see the baby?”

“When the nurse has a free minute, I'll have her bring him to you.”

“I'll just walk to the nursery and see him.” Delia threw the blanket off.

Dr. Fromson held up a hand like a crossing guard and said she needed to listen to him.

There had been complications. After the birth she suffered a hemorrhage.

Dr. Fromson looked out the window. Delia looked too. She saw nothing but a brick wall and an expanse of gray sky. Maybe it was going to snow. A white Thanksgiving. That would be nice for the baby. Snow on his first day in the world.