Ashes of Fiery Weather (9 page)

“Hi,” Norah said, and he nodded at her and turned back to Sean.

“How long you back from Nam?” he asked.

Norah sensed the tension that ran up Sean's spine, pulling it straighter.

“Long enough.”

“The beaches were luxurious, weren't they?”

“I found the food magnificent,” Sean answered, and they both laughed.

“You a fireman yet?” Freddy asked as the kids ran to the next house.

“I'm waiting,” Sean said.

“Maybe I'll be a fireman too. Maybe I'll change my name to McLewis and make that my
career.
” He grinned.

Sean was no longer smiling, and Norah tensed, not sure what had just changed.

“Take the test, man,” Sean said. “Nobody's stopping you.”

Freddy laughed. “Take the
test,
he says.”

“Yeah, take the test.”

Freddy started after his nephew.

“Put your money where your damn mouth is,” Sean called after him, but Freddy didn't turn around.

Sean shook his head. “We played ball together in high school. Freddy was a helluva hitter. He enlisted too. Good enough guy, but he needs to shut up about the fire department. They think there should be more black guys on the job, they should
take the fucking test.
They talk like there's some secret committee slipping white guys the answers.”

Norah didn't much care. “There's a test I think I'll fail.”

“What?” Sean said. He turned to look at her. “A driving test? You want to get your license? That's a great idea. My mom's always saying she wished she'd learned to drive.”

But then it must have showed on her face, because he said, “What's the matter?”

She shook her head, afraid she might start to cry.

“Your parents said you have to go back? Listen—”

“No, no. I can never go back.”

They won't close New York behind me, he'd said.

But Ireland would close behind her.

Helen was living by the calendar, checking off the days until Norah's time in New York was done and she had her apartment to herself again. She barely tolerated Sean's brief visits. Her patience would not expand to include a baby.

Sean, and only Sean, had the power to let Norah drown or save her, though Norah was sure he didn't quite realize this.

“Norah—what the fuck?”

“I think I'm having a baby.”

Sean jerked back. Norah forced herself to meet his stunned blue eyes. He had a Hershey bar in his hand and began to methodically break it apart, and the sound was like bones snapping.

“I guess I didn't think it could really happen,” Norah said. She ducked her head so her hair would fall over her face and hide the flush spreading over her cheeks and down her neck. Sean had discovered early on that she was a bad liar. When he'd asked if she'd had a boyfriend in Ireland, she'd thought of Hugh and said she didn't. Sean had laid a hand on her reddening cheek and laughed. “Hey, I don't give a fuck. He's there. I'm here.”

Norah barely remembered what Hugh looked like. Were Hugh and Sean to stand side by side, she would still be at a loss to describe him, poor Hugh Quinlevan.

“Okay.” Sean tossed the Hershey bar down the stoop. “Okay.”

Norah stood and ran down the steps to the gate. Sean followed.

She had the gate open. He pushed her hand off it and knocked it shut.

“We'll get married.”

Norah started crying.

“I'll ask you the right way,” he said. “I was planning to after I got called for the fire department and I knew I could support us. But listen, I'm making decent money at the bar and I can pick up another job somewhere, so what the hell, right? You'll marry me?”

“Yes.” Norah nodded, and Sean wrapped his arms around her and she leaned into him and shut her eyes. In her mind, Norah played out the scene sure to happen in the kitchen at home. Her mother leaning one hip into the counter as she held the phone, as if the whole house would collapse if she dared to move. Her father, silent in his seat at the head of the kitchen table, the newspaper set aside as soon as he understood from Ireland's side of the conversation that their second daughter had gone down the same path as their first.

Her father would leave for the pub. Her mother would sink into the couch in front of the television. They would both, at different hours, climb the stairs to the dark hallway where the smell of cooking always lingered, and settle into bed.

Sean stepped back and said, “God, a baby.”

“A baby,” Norah echoed, her stomach pitching. She hadn't much thought about it as a real, actual child. It was a way to keep Sean. A way to stay.

He'd kissed her first. He took off her clothes, and she let him. She wanted him to. She'd known all the while what would probably happen, and she'd let it happen.

She had, in a way, taken his whole life. Sean didn't realize it. His mother would know.

Norah pressed her forehead into his chest. Sean kissed the top of her head and then spoke against her hair. “It's fine. It'll be good.”

April 1983

Norah sat at the kitchen table. All three children were still in bed. Today was Saturday. They'd go back to school on Monday. That would be the start of what everyone was gently calling “getting on with their lives.”

She felt sick and hungry at the same time, the way she always did early on. With Maggie, she'd overlooked the nausea and ate what she wanted to, ignoring her new mother-in-law's advice out of spite; Delia had not been happy to have her son's bride move into her house.

Thank God they'd been able to get their own apartment not long after Maggie was born.

Thank God they'd taken the leap before she found out she was pregnant with Aidan, when Maggie was only three months old. Irish twins, Sean said, trying to smile but unable to hide his panic.

If they'd still been at Delia's, they almost certainly would have stayed. As it was, Sean had too much pride to move his family back in with his mother, when he'd just moved them out.

“I suggest you get a second job,” Delia had said when they told her.

“I already have,” Sean had said, unable to meet her eyes. In fact, he had three jobs. The fire department, bartending at Lehane's and carpentry work thrown his way by an older guy in the firehouse. A lieutenant whose father had worked with Gentleman Jack.

Norah had always preferred to remember the months right after their wedding, before things got very hard. Like the day he graduated from the fire academy, when she'd been so proud to stand next to him, eight months pregnant, still not used to the idea that he was hers to keep. It turned out, the only thing she'd ever come up with for a life's goal was to be Sean's wife, the mother of his children, and it had been enough, most of the time. The days when it wasn't, well, she got through them.

Norah opened the
Daily News.
The story was on page three, with a picture of her and the kids on the steps of the church. The boys were looking straight ahead, as was she, but Maggie had her head turned.

BROOKLYN FIREFIGHTER MOURNED

Firefighter Sean O'Reilly Buried with Full Departmental Honors

Norah shut her eyes and pictured Fireman's Corner in Cross Hill Cemetery. Sean's grave, the first new one dug there since the late 1960s, was allowed because he had family there.

She glanced at the clock. It was going on seven a.m., so it was about one in the afternoon in Ireland. Aoife answered on the third ring.

“Norah, my God, how are you? We're thinking of you here.”

Norah said it was still unreal.

“I hope you'll come this summer for a visit.” Aoife spoke cautiously.

Norah said, “I'd like to.”

An infant. The way they cried. The way you were so tired when you had a new baby, that if you tripped on the sidewalk and fell on your face, you'd only be grateful for the chance to lie down. This time, she would be alone, with no one to spell her.

“Did you ever do more for women's rights?” Norah asked.

“Women's rights?” Aoife's astonishment plain from across the ocean.

“Birth control,” Norah said. “The other.”

Norah listened to her sister's breathing quicken.

“Birth control is legal here now. You must know that.”

“Of course,” Norah answered. “The other isn't.”

“God, no,” Aoife said.

“Do you think it's a terrible thing?” Norah didn't want to use the word “sin.” She and Sean took the children to Mass every Sunday, though he had not gone as a child. Had Sean believed in God? It was a question Norah always meant to ask him.

“No,” Aoife said slowly. “Sometimes it's the answer. That's terrible, but the thing itself, no.”

“Why didn't you, then?”

After a short silence, Aoife said, “That was my first thought. Go to England.”

“But why didn't you?”

“We were out at the pub and I got sick on the way home. Peter thought it was drink, like I ever drank that much, and I just said it.”

“Peter didn't want—”

“Peter was thrilled. He said we'd get married. I said I didn't want to do that,” Aoife said. “He told me he'd get his sister to talk to me. She was married. They had two kids. She'd tell me—I don't know what he thought she'd tell me.”

“His sister would have told their mother,” Norah said. “And then—the whole of town would have known.”

“I thought that's what would happen,” Aoife said. “I know it would have. So if I went to England—”

It sounded like she'd moved the receiver away from her mouth.

“Mam and Da,” Norah said.

“Destroyed altogether.” Her voice was back.

“But you're glad now?”

There was a silence so long that Norah thought they'd been disconnected.

“I'm glad for Noelle. I am.”

Norah understood. Noelle was not the sort of child you could look at with regret.

Norah had only met her niece twice. Once when she and Sean visited Ireland when Maggie was a year old, then when they went back for their fifth anniversary. Noelle and Maggie were close enough in age to be compared, and Norah had pitied her daughter. Bright Noelle, who wasn't a bit shy and had the great advantage of being at home besides. Noelle tried hard to get Maggie to play with her, but Maggie often shrank away, burying her face against Norah's leg. She and Sean had more success showing off Aidan, who was handsome and charming and delighted Norah's parents. Their other grandsons lived in England.

After she and Aoife hung up, Norah held the receiver in her hand until it started to buzz. She hung it up and then quickly picked it up again, dialing information. She asked for the number for Planned Parenthood in New York and wrote the number down on the pad by the phone, to call later, or never. The girl on the phone thanked Norah in a voice that was comforting in its blandness. She wasn't judging.

Norah sat at the kitchen table, staring at the newspaper picture of her and the kids on the church steps. She could almost believe they were other people. Then they arrived in the kitchen one by one, looking for breakfast. When the boys were done with their cereal, and left to turn on the television in the living room, Maggie lingered at the table. She was already dressed.

Norah pulled herself to her feet and started the dishes.

“When are we going back to school?”

“You'll go back Monday.”

“Are we still going to see Gran and Aunt Eileen?”

“Of course you are. Don't be ridiculous.”

“Does our grandfather know?”

“What?” Norah turned from the sink. “Of course he does. I told you, they had a Mass said for your father in Ireland.”

“No, the other one. Daddy's father.”

“Maggie, the man abandoned his wife and children over thirty years ago. Nobody's told him, far as I know, and what does it matter?”

Norah turned back to the sink, but she was sure the child wasn't through. Indeed, hardly a second passed before the small voice returned.

“Are we going to the picnic?”

Norah turned around again. “What picnic?”

“The company picnic.”

Norah answered slowly, “If you and the boys want to, we'll go.” She tried to curb her impatience. The Glory Devlins' company picnic was not until August. Right now, she couldn't think past the end of the hour.

“What about the Christmas party?”

“Christ.” Norah slammed a bowl into the sink. “You have to stop asking me questions because I don't know. I don't know!”

With a single, stunned look, Maggie slipped off her chair and disappeared upstairs.

Norah started after her and then stopped at the bottom of the steps. She sat down. The uncertainty of what she should do, what she could do, was giving her a pain in her stomach not caused by any baby. She wouldn't get up again until she'd decided.

CHAPTER TWO

March 1967

ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY,
Delia dressed in a black skirt and a green sweater and went into the city, to the reception at the American Irish Historical Society, a privilege of membership. The same people typically attended from year to year. She had a few acquaintances who went, and after the parade up Fifth Avenue, they would find a bar or restaurant that didn't skew wildly drunk, in order to hold an actual conversation. She generally enjoyed herself, though it was not like the St. Patrick's Days of old when Sean and Eileen were young and she took them to the parade, all three of them skipping school.

In the kitchen, she found Eileen leaning against the sink, spooning cereal out of a bowl. Normally Delia would say, “Sit down, Eileen. You're not at a bus stop,” but she didn't want to start the day off with a fight.