A Fireproof Home for the Bride (23 page)

“Wait.” Josephine turned her head just as the town siren began to wail. “Smoke. Let me take that.” Josephine pointed at the suitcase. It had been clutched so hard in Emmy’s right hand that it had begun to feel as though her fingers had grown into the leather handle. She released it, the burning smell intensifying as the siren rose into its fourth signal.

“It’s close,” Josephine said as the air seemed to fill with the smaller, jarring shrieks of fire trucks.

They hurried into the car and Josephine swung the tail out into the street, smoothly completing the turn and pulling onto Eighth Street behind a careening ambulance. Emmy looked at her watch. She was late enough that Cindy would have started the popcorn and set up the counter for the early show. As they neared the onlooker-choked intersection at Main Avenue, Emmy’s dread spiraled into panic as she saw the black plume of smoke rising down the street. Josephine stopped the car and Emmy leaped out, pushing through the crowd, her feet swiftly rising with the throttle of her heart. She came to a sudden stop as she saw the flames licking at the high point of the Moorhead Theatre sign.

“Good Lord,” Josephine said as she came up beside Emmy.

“I was supposed to be there,” Emmy said, moving forward more slowly, her pace slackened by the surreal spectacle of the neon lights still aglow inside of the flames. They made their way up the street, to where two police cars were parked at a slant, and a handful of men were directing traffic and people away. Three fire trucks arced in front of the theater, streams of water shooting uselessly into the rapidly disintegrating façade.

“Come on.” Josephine strode forward and Emmy followed her toward a barrier in front of the candy store where a crowd stood—some with Easter-bright clothing visible under their hastily donned overcoats, others holding the hands of wide-eyed children. Josephine nodded at one officer and then walked up to a second, who was holding a bullhorn.

“Hello, Eli,” she said, shaking his hand. “How’d it start?”

“No idea,” the officer said. “Won’t know until they put it out, but the smoke came from the back, possibly the basement, and spread fast.” He glanced at Emmy. “We pulled a girl out of the basement, but everyone else walked out.”

“Is she all right?” Emmy asked, sickened by how close she’d come to being that girl, then doubly worried when she realized that Cindy could be hurt.

“Don’t know,” Eli said, taking off his cap and wiping sweat from his bald head with a large white handkerchief. “They took her over to Saint Ansgar’s.”

Emmy spotted Mr. Rakov near the farthest fire truck, sitting on the curb, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, his face streaked with tears as he watched the building burn. He lived alone in a small apartment over the front of the theater. Emmy looked at Josephine. “I should go see if Mr. Rakov needs anything.”

“Would that be all right, Eli?” Josephine asked. “Emmy’s my niece. She works here. Or, at least she did.”

“Tough break, kid.” Eli took a step back. “Just be careful, and stay out of the way.”

Emmy nodded and moved through the loud and chaotic space as carefully as she could manage, the heat and the smoke blowing into her face with the gusts of wind. Mr. Rakov was staring straight past her as she approached, the flickering light of the fire dancing in his watery gray eyes. His thin body curled like a cooked shrimp, rocking slowly and causing the wisps of loose white hair on the top of his scalp to float like a gossamer halo.

“Mr. Rakov,” Emmy said gently. “Are you all right?” She carefully sat next to him on the curb and touched his shoulder. He started and the blanket fell around his waist. His shirt was torn on the left sleeve, revealing the pink underside of his forearm, where a series of blue numbers was inked in a line, underscored at one end by a tiny triangle. He looked up at her and followed her gaze, quickly pulling the blanket around his arm.

“I am not bad guy,” he said in his dolefully accented English. “I don’t want trouble.”

“Of course not,” Emmy said, her own struggle dwarfed by his anguish. “I’m sorry.”

“Why this?” he cried, pushing her away. “Go.” His head sank to his knees and his body shook. Emmy patted his back for a minute, then stood, awkward in her inability to know what she should do.

“Just leave me be!” he shouted, and Emmy jumped backward.

“I’ll pray for you,” she said, shaken, turning away. Emmy rubbed her brow with a soot-smeared sleeve and, momentarily blinded, nearly tripped over a snaking hose.

“Get out of the way,” a fireman yelled, grabbing her arm. She looked up to see Pete Chaklis. “You?” His annoyance flared with recognition. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Emmy shook her head. “I was supposed to be at work.”

“You’re in the way,” Pete said. He walked her away from Mr. Rakov.

“That’s my boss,” she said. “He needs help.”

“We’ve got it,” Pete said. “Run on home now.”

She nodded, turning away and walking back to the barricade, where Josephine was talking to a man with a fedora slanted in such a way that Emmy could not see his face.

“Emmy, this is Jim Klein,” Josephine said as Emmy approached. “My grandniece sells tickets at the theater.”

“Popcorn,” Emmy corrected, as though it mattered anymore. Jim tipped his head enough to see her sideways from under the brim of his hat, and then raised his square chin toward the marquee.

“Shame. I wanted to see that one,” he said.

Emmy stared at the title she knew so well,
The Brothers Karamazov.
She’d watched parts of it through the round window two nights before, drawn by the sultry cadence of Yul Brynner’s voice. “It’s Russian,” she said, shaking her head. She looked at Jim.

“So I’ve heard,” he said. He took a long notepad from his pocket and a stubby pencil from where it was perched over his left ear. “What’s at the back of the theater?” he asked as he jotted something down.

Emmy hesitated. “Why?”

“Jim works for the
Forum,
” Josephine said. “I got him his first job there, in fact.”

“She never lets me forget it, either.” Jim smiled gratefully.

“The alley door, where employees enter,” Emmy responded. “Sometimes boys sneak in that way to skip the admission, but Mr. Rakov mostly keeps an eye on it.”

“Where’s it lead?” Jim asked.

“There’s a door into the theater, and to the left a flight of stairs to the basement, where there’s a storage area and slop sink,” Emmy replied. “Not much else. Does it matter?”

“Probably not,” Jim said. “Can just anyone gain access?”

“I guess so,” she said, worried about Cindy. Past Jim and far down the street, beyond the barricades and onlookers, she thought she could see the rectangular brown nose of Ambrose’s truck parked two blocks away. Her rejection of him seemed decades removed, not a handful of hours earlier.

“Excuse me,” Emmy said, her voice husky from the scorched air.

Exhausted and dismayed, she walked away from Jim and Josephine, dodging rescue workers. Ambrose walked toward her at the same measured pace, and a flood of sympathy overwhelmed Emmy’s grip on the day. Had she acted in haste? Was it possible that her decisions had set bad things in motion? She couldn’t weigh the responsibility of it all, nor could she comprehend why he would be here now. They stopped with three feet between them.

“Thank God you’re okay,” Ambrose said, his hands shaking in the void, without a welcome place to alight. “I came straight here as soon as we heard.”

Emmy touched his fingers, surprised to find them cold. “I wasn’t here.”

“That’s good,” he said, jerking his hands away and shoving them into the pockets of his jacket. “You need to come home.”

She shook her head, an automatic response. “I can’t.”

“Your parents are worried,” he said. “They found your note, but you weren’t at your friend’s house when I got there.”

Emmy took a step backward at the notion of being tracked around town. “I thought you said you came straight here?” Over Ambrose’s shoulder her gaze was drawn to a match flaring in the passenger seat of the truck. Ambrose turned to look at what she saw: the jowled face of Curtis Davidson lighting a cigarette and casually tossing the stick out of the window.

Ambrose turned to her and lifted her hand. “Yes, after we went there.”

“Why is he here?” Emmy asked, a knot of anger rising inside her. “Did he come to watch the Communist Party burn?”

“We can still get married,” Ambrose said, ignoring her comment. “If you’ll apologize.”

“Apologize?” Emmy asked, withdrawing her hand sharply. “For what?”

He looked surprised at her refusal. “You’ve done me and your family wrong.” He glanced away, at the fire, his jawline white with the effort of holding it firm. “We’re meant to be. Don’t you see?”

Emmy studied his face and comprehended for the first time the wreckage her actions had blown apart in him. “No, I don’t see,” she said, grounding her words in compassion. “I didn’t plan this.”

“The plan isn’t ours, Emmy,” Ambrose said, and straightened his posture until he loomed over her. His expression resumed its angular formality as he gazed heavenward. “Curtis says—”

“Is there one thing,” Emmy interrupted, then paused. She thought back, way back to when she was small and recalled how often Ambrose would say things like
your grandfather says
and
my father thinks.
He was a funnel for every thought poured into him by the nearest influence. “Is there one thing you say or do because it’s your idea?”

His face crumpled. “Is that how you see me?” He squeezed his angular nose, wincing with the pain. “It’s God’s plan, Emmy,” he suddenly shouted. “Not mine, not anyone’s. You must see that.”

Nodding slowly, Emmy moved away from Ambrose. “You may be right,” she said, backing up the sidewalk in the direction of Josephine’s car, away from him. “But I don’t forgive you.”

“
You
don’t forgive
me
?” he spat, pointing his finger at her. “And He said, ‘though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.’”

Emmy shook her head slowly. “I have to go,” she said, and turned away, stung by the hypocrisy of his words. She shouldn’t have said the things she’d said, shouldn’t have tried to hurt him. It wasn’t in her nature to be mean, and the way it made her head throb caused her to hug her arms around her waist in an attempt to navigate the sidewalk without tripping again.

By the time she reached Josephine’s car, Emmy was so overcome with emotion that gripping the door handle and squeezing the button with her thumb was more than she could do. She checked to make certain that Ambrose hadn’t followed her, and was relieved to see Josephine approach. Emmy gathered up the might to open the door and eased onto the rough fabric of the seat.

“I’m sorry about this,” Josephine said as she started the engine. “Rotten way to strike out on your own.”

“I’m just so tired,” Emmy said, resting her head against the cool window, not wanting to talk about how she really felt: desperate, sad, and alone. “I know you think I should go home, but I really can’t do it. If you know of a cheap hotel, I have enough to cover tonight.”

“Nonsense,” Josephine said. “You’ll stay with me.”

“I’d be very grateful.” A rush of relief came over Emmy, but then she remembered Cindy’s predicament, and all self-pity fled. “Do you think she’s okay? The ticket girl?”

“Probably not,” Josephine said, patting Emmy’s leg once. “But you will be.”

They drove up Eleventh Street, past the sugar plant and around a bend in the road that curved past a cemetery. The sky had clouded and large drops of rain splashed the windshield. Josephine turned on the headlights and the wipers.

“This rain could have happened sooner,” she said, leaning forward to look out at the sky. “I’ll have to show you around the place after school tomorrow. You can take the car, I’ll use the truck if need be. When you get back, we can go to your parents.” The wagon slowed as they neared a stretch of enormous elm trees, and Josephine turned the steering wheel to the left. They drove down a lane that opened into a yard encircled by a series of low-slung white buildings that dotted the perimeter of the drive where Josephine parked. A porch light glowed from the one that looked most like a house.

Emmy followed Josephine to the door and into a well-lit room that was half kitchen and half dining room, dominated by a round oak table with claw feet and cozy-looking chairs set next to the coal-fired heater, in front of which a cat lay curled, asleep.

“That’s Flossie,” Josephine said as she slung her cape over a chair. “Don’t even bother trying to get to know her. She only has eyes for me and will break your heart if you dare to think otherwise.” On mention of her name, Flossie looked up at Emmy, yawned, and set her chin back on her crossed paws, leaving her eyelids slightly open as she returned to her doze.

“I’ve never had a house cat,” Emmy said, resisting the urge to stroke Flossie. “Mother always said she didn’t need another mouth to feed.”

“Well, maybe when you graduate, she can get one.” Josephine cocked an eyebrow and moved through an arched doorway into the parlor. A small stone fireplace framed the wall on one side, and the rest of the room was filled with a collection of old and new pieces of furniture whose unifying theme seemed to be comfort over beauty. The room was a bit disheveled, with a used teacup delicately perched on a side table, magazines strewn across the umber velour fainting couch, and an overflowing ashtray sloped on the arm of a chair. It occurred to Emmy that Josephine didn’t need to bother with tidiness if she didn’t feel like it, as there wasn’t another person to notice the mess. In the far corner of the room was a narrow staircase. Josephine disappeared up it with the suitcase, causing Emmy to leave her inspection of the lower floor for later.

“My bedroom is below this one, but I mostly sleep out in the Jeep house, as I tend to work best when the world is asleep, and then I can’t be bothered to come back inside,” Josephine said as Emmy reached the top of the stairs and found a small landing, to the left of which was a fairly large open room wallpapered in dusky red roses. The ceiling slanted mere inches above her head at its highest point, necessitating Emmy to duck down a little as she moved around the welcoming space. Josephine went to the bed and swiftly gathered sheets of newspaper that had been laid on top of the coverlet. “Keeps the mice off,” she said. “Without the stink of mothballs.”