No Country: A Novel (43 page)

By the time I glanced back, Ijjybijjy Malouf had gone.

Ten more minutes to closing time, so I settled down to work, although I longed to go to one of the tall windows and look upon the greening heads of the trees. I wondered where my boy was, and found myself wishing my mother had an easy trip down to this
unfamiliar city. I felt a sharp twinge that I had made an adversary of her. In the last year, her face often looked tired, her back a little stooped. When I was a child, she would bring johnnie-cakes and cookies made from mulled oats and honey out to us—Grandpapa Brendan and me—with glasses of milk at this time of day. The simple memory comforted me.

A dancing light played just beyond my range of vision as I leaned down to finish the last of the needlework. An odor of burning leaves and their crinkling sound as they curled in the fire?

In a trice, something jolted me upright. I saw the sudden palms of fire, vivid and ochre, reaching out from the bin by Mr. Abramowitz’s table. The fire danced in reflection on Mr. Blanck’s glass office, where he stood screaming soundlessly. The tables that lay side by side, the tissue and lawn, the heaped layers of cotton ignited. Dangling from the network of wires overhead, the paper patterns in translucent tissue fluttered aflame. A whoosh of smoke gamboled and rolled toward the windows like a gray wave. The window beams crackled and the sound of breaking glass tinkled in the air. A tongue of fire licked along the wall and out a tall window, seeking the balmy air outside. The smoke lowered in the ululating room.

The door on the far side was locked. Rebecca Feibisch and Sarah Sabasowitz were among those hurling themselves against it, and in a terrible pantomime of bewilderment, crumpling down, clothes afire, on the smoking floor. I whirled around and saw the inseparable Ida Kenowitz and Sarah Kupla standing against the flaming wall, wide-eyed in terror, holding hands, their skirts swirling about them.

The smoke unfurled itself lower and lower, making it impossible to breathe. People were now running into and over each other,
with a dreadful creaking underfoot as if the floor were splitting. Cinders clattered in clumps from the roof. Wisps of cotton and lengths of lawn caught fire, rising like crazy magic carpets into the smoke. I heard the wailing of Julia Rosen, the piercing shrieks of Vincenza, while all about me flickered light, but not of a kind I had ever seen before. And beyond them, I could see the slow pirouette of Annie Starr, her eyes shut as if she had heard some dread music. In front of me I saw the pale, silent face of little Bessie Viviano.

I stood as still as ever I stood on this earth, before I knew what I had to do.

I had that dream again.

In the first months after my Jakob died, I had a recurrent nightmare: My grief had turned into a box with a complicated latch I was too weak to shut. It was so densely packed that, once opened, sunlight and air had swollen the contents, making it impossible to grapple the lid down to close it. I struggled with the box until I would heave awake, choking, in a night thick as smoke.

Bibi had written from New York; she knows about the letters. I needed to speak to Papa Brendan urgently, stranded as I was on my island of woe, the black waters rising. When he came into the kitchen that morning, still sleepy, I spoke directly.

“I want to die, Papa Brendan. I wish it were all over. I want to walk into that lake with rocks in my fists and never come out.”

He looked gravely at me, his eyebrows white, his cheeks like pink fabric wrinkled.

“Is that so, my girl?” he said, as if I were a wee child who had taken a bad fall.

My withholding the letters was past explaining now. I handed him Frankie’s letters, which he read, saying nothing, while I sat as if it were the dead end of time.

“You did wrong, Maeve,” he said simply. His eyes were keen, watching my face, aware of my plight. “But you can turn it about, you know?” I sat looking back at him, entirely confused by his manner.

“Come, dear,” he urged, “come away from this dim kitchen, for ’tis a grand morning outside.” He led me, my palm in his, to the wooden bench under the horse chestnut.

“You can bring all the happiness back into your world, and your girl’s love to boot. Do you know that?”

“And how am I to do that, Papa Brendan?” I retorted.

“Take a ship to Italy,” he said. “Take Bibi and the child. Help them find Frankie.”

“What?” I was completely dumbfounded. “Papa Brendan . . .” I wavered.

“You need to right the wrong you did Bibi.” He was looking sternly at me now. I hung my head. “Nay, nay, Maeve,” he said, “look up, look at me. Think who you are: Padraig’s daughter, dauntless Maire Aherne’s blood. Take that ship to Naples. You can take on the Atlantic. You did once.”

I took a deep breath. “And you, Papa Brendan?”

“Ach,” he said, blinking in the growing light, “I need to hold the fort here. Besides, I have to do the ledgers each month, don’t I? You’ll be back before you know it. And don’t you worry about the money. We have enough and more, saved over all these years, eh, my tightfisted girl?” He was grinning at me.

“Will you be all right by yourself in that while?” A great weight was lifting off me.

“Aye, certainly,” he said, “although, I must say, girleen, I will have to fend off Mrs. Gabrielsen’s endless baking!”

“She likes you,” I teased him, amazed to find myself in a jocular mood so easily.

“Nay, nay,” he chortled, “the widow has made eyes at all the men here, young and old. The lady cannot help herself any more than a sneeze in pollen time.”

•  •  •

I
HAVE GIRDED
myself, for my hapless love has outweighed the sum of all my fears. I ask nothing in return but my daughter’s trust back. Aye, I am the wanderer’s daughter, but I know why I am setting out. Yes, oh yes! With Bibi under my wing, I shall sail that dread Atlantic again.

That is the first thing I will tell Bibi when I see her.

I woke with a jolt on the hard railway bench, holding my sleeping grandson. The gum of uneasy sleep was still on my eyes as the train grated into the station. Standing within the doorway of a looming building, like the mouth of a cave, I reread the sheet on which Bibi had sent her address.

It was almost noon by the time I found it, reluctant to ask help from strangers. Bibi had already left for work. The apartment felt cramped, its sepia light burdened with the smell of tobacco and old paper, the wallpaper close and constricting, and the family’s oddly pronounced English unfamiliar. I did not know what to say to the two elderly men and the busy young woman, Josephine. Both men spoke with an old-fashioned courtesy. Papa Brendan would have thoroughly enjoyed their company, but I retreated into silence.

How is it that Jakob never felt alien to me? These Grunwalds are
from that part of the world, but I felt ill at ease. They kept talking of my daughter as if Bibi was theirs. Then the two men continued talking about people they thought I would know about. But these names, McClellan, Hearst, and Charles Murphy meant nothing to me. They discussed Tammany Hall.
Was that a person or a place?

Josephine Grunwald was solicitous to me and made baby Padraig comfortable and served us lunch. The food was strange, the shape of the bread unfamiliar. I did recognize the seeds of rye and thought the taste not unpleasant. The soup had bits of bread and meat in it, and I made myself eat a small portion out of politeness. Little Padraig had woken up and tried to haul himself unsteadily up by the chair, but flopped down on the carpeted floor. The old man with the pink bald head seemed delighted with the child and had him stand again. Padraig, without a trace of unease, firmly held the man’s thumbs, propelling himself a few steps before the old man planted him on his lap and offered him a piece of bread. The child gummed it with gusto, while a large cat watched gravely from a corner.

Josephine was preparing quantities of food for the evening, dishes I did not know. Nonetheless I went into the crammed kitchen to help with the chopping and cutting. I could see plainly that Josephine cooked with speed and efficiency, but no talent. I did notice that Josephine’s kitchen had some oranges, sugar, butter, flour—ingredients for Irish Burnt Orange Cake. When the young woman had quite finished and was about to untie her apron, I asked her, “Could I use your kitchen, please?” Josephine seemed surprised, thinking in confusion that I was intending to cook my own meal. She held out her hands and said, “But I cooked everything for all of us. You will eat, of course, with us, neh?”

“Thank you for that,” I told her. “I will bake for your family.”

“Of course, yes, please use anything you like,” said Josephine.
“Bibi tells me what wonders you can cook, but only if you want to make something. The kitchen is yours.” Then she earnestly added, “This home too, as long as you wish.”

So I baked. I felt calmer now.

The aroma of my cake soon made the two gentlemen sit up in anticipation. When I returned to the kitchen to take it out of the oven, Josephine followed me.

“Bibi will be so glad to see you,” said Josephine.

I could not help a shadow passing over my face in spite of myself.

“She must miss your cooking,” Josephine said, trying to put me at ease. I was silent, for I could never bring myself to speak of my heart’s ache to a stranger, kind to Bibi as she was. All the troubles that I have had with Bibi made me slow to answer.

“For certain she loves you,” added Josephine. “The letters are no matter.”

I stood stricken. The words had been so unexpected, it was as if the young woman had taken a plate and smashed it.
So Bibi has told this stranger what I have done
, I thought, bitterness curdling within me. What could this woman from no country I knew, from a strange city, begin to know of our safe garden where I wanted to protect my willful daughter? My heart was a slab of stone. Yes, heavy misery it was made of—and guilt—and also my helpless love.

I barely managed to speak. “Write me down, kindly, the address where my Bibi works,” I said as evenly as I could manage. “I have a mind to take the child there and meet my daughter when she is done for the day.”

“You will?” said Josephine, breaking into a smile. She wrote down the address and began to explain how to get there. “It is not far.”

What does this young woman know how far I have traveled, and how could she even begin to comprehend how turbulent the world could be for the likes of us, torn and uprooted as we had been from our Ireland, leaving us lost on some sea or on some unsure ice beneath us, until we found our own piece of earth?

Padraig had crawled over to me, struggling to stand up, clinging to my skirt. I picked him up and held him close. I would change him, take my small bag, and walk down to meet Bibi. I would wait on the street as long as I needed to. It was already afternoon.

In the park just across the narrow street from where Bibi worked, I found a bench under a tall elm, its bare branches showing traces of incipient green buds. Padraig sat wide-eyed on my lap, watching a flock of pigeons picking amid the sparse city grass. I had not slept much on the train, reading and rereading Frankie’s letters.

I do not believe wanderers come back. “We belong to places,” I thought wearily. “Those who think the whole world their home never find their place in it. That is why we have different countries, as surely as we need walls to our homes. Papa Brendan has begun to talk of Ireland again. Yet what is Ireland to him, or he to Ireland, once he left?”

By late afternoon, almost five, I picked up Padraig, tired and sleepy now and content to lie quietly in my arms. I wiped his face clean and kissed him on the little birthmark on his cheek. Then I carried him out of the park and stood across the street. There it was—the door through which Bibi went in and out of work.

•  •  •

H
OW OFTEN WHEN
she was a child, Bibi would storm in from play and for no reason at all, call out, “O Mamma!” and throw her
small arms about my neck and cover me with kisses. Where is that child gone, I asked myself, heartsore. “Where are you hiding, Bibi?” I whispered, as if we were playing hide and seek again. This wait seemed endless.
Please God, let her come to me with a smile. Please sweet God, give me a sign.

At first, it seemed a trick of the eye. A blue filament, like a whisper, blew out of one of the high windows. What could that be, I wondered. The street below looked just as it had a moment before. Carriages clattered by, people sauntered past, the shopsigns and billboards looked crowded and dusty. I looked up again and saw an unmistakable smudge of smoke defiling the sky. With a sharp crack and tinkle, shards of glass crashed to the pavement where the startled people ran out into the street to avoid the spars.

Standing in front of the main door was a driverless delivery-cart. The blinkered horse shook its head, flanks quivering under the rain of glass, then with a startled flinch took off. The wagon trundled after it. Its wheels caught against the curbside and overturned, but the horse dragged it on, breaking into a wide-nostriled gallop. People up and down the street gesticulated, screaming and pointing excitedly at the upper floors of the building where a billow of smoke surged out of one window, and then another next to it. A palm of fire darted out from within and began to scorch the outer wall, turning it black.

Then I heard it, the chorus of cries and wails from above. Within the cave-like windows, I saw a thicket of limbs. From this strange bush came an ululation that made my hair stand on end. A body emerged from the cave of smoke and came flying out, suspended momentarily, and then plunged. I was certain it would happen—something miraculous—anything that would prove God’s existence.

I heard the sudden thud, a hollow sound of body smiting
metal. Moving forward, I saw a broken body, twitching, a dense liquid seeping out of it, across a ribbed iron sheet stretched on the sidewalk. The body was bent oddly, but all too human. The middle-aged woman’s hair, which had been pinned carefully, had come undone. The metal had buckled where she had hit it in one mortal impact. The odour of char rose from the smoldering shoulder of her coat. And as I stood, there fell another body, and then another. I felt a great thud upon my heart as if someone had landed directly on it. I lurched back, knocking into people, holding my grandson in a convulsive force. He clung to my neck, suddenly awakened, frightened by the shouts of the people around them. A voice rang out above all others,
Look, look, see there.