Ashes of Fiery Weather (7 page)

One evening, Eileen went to Irish Dreams at closing time and insisted Norah come to her house for dinner. The reason for the dinner invite, Eileen explained as they walked toward her home, was that she was sure her mother was due to lecture her about the direction her life was going in. Which was no direction. She had to think about getting her own place.

Norah wondered how she knew it would be tonight, and why at dinner? But she didn't ask. Eileen's mother, Delia, was composed and polite. If she was angry at her daughter, she kept it to herself. Her friend Nathaniel, whose long last name Norah forgot as soon as she heard it, smiled at her warmly.

Norah sat beside Eileen and studied her and Delia O'Reilly. If she hadn't known Eileen was adopted, she would have assumed without too much thought that Eileen looked like her father.

Sean came to the table after they were all seated. Both Delia and Eileen looked up in surprise as he sat down, but neither said anything. He looked like he'd just woken up.

Delia asked questions about the town Norah was from, then asked where Norah had gone to college, and Norah swallowed a bite of fish and said that her oldest brother had gone to university, but she herself had gone right into the family grocery. She didn't mention the long hours at the cash register, hoping to give the impression she sort of managed things.

Delia glanced at Sean and said she didn't understand young people. When she was eighteen, she'd wanted nothing more than to go to a four-year school, but her father hadn't let her. She'd gone to a two-year college to become a teacher instead.

Nathaniel smiled and said that his father had brought the family over from Poland and built his business while supporting them with other jobs on the side. He, Nathaniel, had taken it over. To walk away from your own dream was one thing, but to do the same to a parent's was another.

Norah was about to ask what kind of business it was when Eileen announced, “I'm thinking about taking the test for the cops.”

Delia set down her fork.

“You're too short,” Sean said.

“They're doing away with the height requirement. The Hispanics sued,” Eileen said. “Where have you been?”

“Southeast Asia,” Sean snapped.

“You should both have college degrees,” Delia said.

“You don't need a college degree to be a fireman,” Sean said, an edge to his voice.

Eileen grinned. “What if you fall out a window and they don't let you back on? What'll you do for a living?”

“If I'm dead, nothing. If I land on my head, nothing,” Sean said. “If I shatter my legs, then I'll have plenty of time to go back to school.”

Eileen laughed. Norah wasn't sure if she should, so she didn't.

“That isn't funny, Sean,” Delia said.

Nathaniel said, “It's a little bit funny.”

Delia smiled slightly at him and he winked. Norah bent over her plate to hide her raised eyebrows.

After dinner, she and Eileen had the living room to themselves. Delia and Nathaniel were in the kitchen playing cards. Norah asked how they met, and Eileen laughed and told her to stop thinking dirty thoughts. They'd been friends forever. Since the forties.

At ten o'clock, Norah said she had to get home. It had been a long day at work and tomorrow would be another. The advertising for summer trips had gone out; they were getting a lot of phone calls.

Norah insisted on going into the kitchen to say goodbye to Delia, in spite of Eileen's insistence that it was hardly necessary. Delia said it was nice meeting her.

Nathaniel held up his hand of cards. “Tonight is my night,” he said.

“Isn't it always?” Eileen said, laughing.

“Therefore, one of these days I will be right,” he said, holding up a finger. He smiled at Norah and she smiled back. There was something calming about him, almost priestly, though she knew he was Jewish, since Eileen had mentioned that instead of ham for Easter dinner, they'd always had roast beef, for Nathaniel.

Delia put down her cards. “Norah, I'm going to have Sean walk you home.”

“Mom, come on,” Eileen said. “Don't bother him. I'll walk her home.”

Norah wanted to say she knew the way herself, and she did, but truthfully, the thought of being on the street alone in the dark did unnerve her.

“And so all three of you will walk Norah home, and then Sean can walk you back.”

Home. An image of her and Aoife's bedroom rose in Norah's mind. She saw the twin beds with the matching white bedspreads and the chest of drawers they'd divided down the middle, Aoife getting the extra drawer because she was older. The room, dark and lifeless as a museum exhibit. Norah had to make herself call to mind the room she'd been given at Helen's, which was so small she'd taken to shutting the door with her foot after she climbed in the narrow bed.

“It's not the middle of the night!” Eileen said.

“It's late enough.”

Delia disappeared up the stairs to the middle floor, which Norah now knew was called the parlor floor. The bedrooms were another flight up.

“He's going to be pissed,” Eileen said.

“There are worse things,” Nathaniel said mildly.

Delia came back downstairs. “Go on, girls.”

Eileen left the kitchen without another word, and though Norah wanted to thank Delia, she didn't, following Eileen's lead. Her own mother would be horrified at her manners.

The O'Reillys rarely used the big double doors at the top of the front steps. They came and went by the door beneath the stoop. Norah had learned fairly early on in Brooklyn that the stoop was like another room of the house. Sean appeared, shrugging on his jacket and scowling.

“Okay, future cop. Let's go.”

“I haven't got a gun yet,” Eileen said.

They reached the corner, Sean walking ahead of them, practically daring them to keep pace, when Eileen called, “Hey! So this is where I get off.”

Sean turned around and Norah looked at her, alarmed.

“I've got a date.” Eileen pulled a lipstick out of her purse and wiggled it at them.

“With who?” Sean asked.

“Madd,” she answered.

“John Maddox? That explains the sudden interest in law and order. Fantastic.”

“He said he thought I'd be good at it,” Eileen said.

“I'm sure it wasn't to get you into bed,” Sean said.

“He's already gotten me into bed.” Eileen laughed. “I'll call you tomorrow, Norah.”

She crossed the street and hurried up the block.

Norah turned to Sean. “Ah—you don't have to—”

“No, now I really do,” Sean said. He turned right and she followed, prepared to nearly run, but he was walking more slowly now.

“Sorry about that. If I weren't here, I'm pretty sure she would've walked to your aunt's before taking off.”

“I know where I'm going,” Norah said. “You don't have to—”

“Nah, my mother's right. Our block's okay but you can't walk alone around here. Not anymore.”

“Eileen told me she's a teacher.”

“Principal now, but she taught fourth grade for twenty-whatever years. This neighborhood didn't used to be too bad but—” Sean shrugged.

“Oh.” Norah wondered why they didn't move but it seemed rude to ask.

“Did you come here for work?” Sean asked. “That's what I always hear the Irish say.”

She couldn't tell him about the Contraceptive Train. He would think her family was mad.

“I did,” she said. “I came to take a job with my aunt. She's been here a long time.”

They approached the next corner, where they should have gone left, but Sean said, “Want to see something? It's not far.”

“Okay.”

“It was my great-grandparents who came over from Ireland. Mom's grandparents. I swear, sometimes I wish they never left,” Sean said.

“If you were there, you'd be leaving,” Norah said. “My brothers did.”

“How many brothers do you have?”

She told him, and he said, “It's just me and Eileen. She was adopted, from Ireland.”

“She told me.”

Sean glanced at her, his eyebrows raised. “Yeah? She doesn't usually go into it.”

“I get the feeling she thinks I can tell her—I don't know, something,” Norah said. “She's asked a lot of questions about Ireland and what we eat for breakfast and our schools, that sort of thing.”

“She's hoping to go over there someday and see where she was born.”

When they reached the corner, there was a break in the row of houses. By the streetlight Norah could make out a small grassy area and, in its center, the silhouette of a Celtic cross. She stopped.

“Is that a
grave?
” she asked.

“That? No. It's a monument to a Civil War soldier. There's a name on there but I don't think anybody's ever been able to find a record of him. The story goes that he was a paid substitute. That's when a rich man got out of the draft by paying a poor guy to fight for him. Then, poor usually meant Irish. This soldier was supposedly a substitute who got killed and the rich man put up this monument, out of guilt. Nobody knows if it's true. We're on Cross Hill Avenue. This is the spot that the neighborhood get its name from.”

They walked in silence for a moment, then Sean stopped in front of a three-story firehouse that had a tower on the left side with tall windows in it.

“My great-grandfather, the one from Ireland, pretty much founded this fire company,” he said. “His daughter was born here, up on the third floor, where they lived.”

“Born in the firehouse?” Norah said. “That must have been fun for everyone.”

Sean laughed. “She married one of the men, Jack Keegan. Her and him are my mom's parents. Look at this.” He walked over to a plaque on the brick wall between the big garage doors and a regular-size door.

Norah squinted at it but couldn't read it in the dark.

“James Walsh. Died December 28, 1884. That's the night my grandmother was born.”

“That's sad,” Norah said. “Will you work here when you're a fireman?”

Sean said, “You go where they assign you. I could end up anywhere. But yeah, it'd be nice to work here.”

Norah remembered what the man at the bar had said. “The fire department's in your blood.”

“Fucking Amred,” Sean said, the affection in his voice at odds with his words. “He turns up at fires and takes pictures. He's pretty good.”

“Did you always want to be a fireman?”

“Sure. I'd go nuts sitting in an office all day.” Sean paused. “Some girl once told me I could be an actor, so for a while there I had fantasies about heading out to L.A.”

“Why didn't you?”

Sean frowned. “You heard my mom tonight, about college. I figured, I'd do the two years she asked me to and then maybe give acting a shot. Then a guy I knew got killed in Vietnam. I started thinking, Why the hell should I sit on my ass trying to earn a degree I don't need? I enlisted. I'm pretty sure I'd hate L.A. anyway.”

“I thought I'd hate New York,” Norah said.

Sean looked directly at her, and Norah forced herself not to duck her head like a schoolgirl.

“You don't?”

She thought for a moment of explaining how she'd nearly run to Helen when she saw her in the airport because she'd thought her mother had somehow arrived ahead of her to tell her the whole thing was canceled.

“I don't hate it here,” she said. “You could still go to L.A. If you didn't like it, you could just come back.”

“True. They won't close New York behind me.”

The door next to the garage doors opened then, startling Norah. Sean grinned when a fireman appeared.

The smile transformed his face, took away the faint lines around his eyes that made him look older than twenty-four.

“O'Reilly? I thought that was you,” the fireman said.

“What's going on? You got housewatch?” Sean asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Slow night so far. Nothing doing.”

“This is Joe Paladino. Joe, this is Norah. Whose last name I don't know.”

“Mulryan,” Norah said.

Joe grinned. “You don't know your girlfriend's last name? Jesus, Sean.”

Sean didn't look at her. “I'm walking her home. She's a friend of Eileen's.”

“Eileen! How is Eileen?” Joe said.

“Hanging around with John Maddox.”

“Nice enough guy,” Joe said. “A little fucking nuts.”

“He's a cop.” Sean shrugged.

“Where you been anyway?” Joe asked.

“Me? Bartending at Lehane's. You're the one who's never around.”

“Yeah, I was dating a girl from Queens.”

Joe studied Norah. “Where you from? Not around here.”

“I'm from Ireland. I'm staying with my aunt here in Brooklyn.”

“Irish?” He sounded pleased. “I brought an Irish girl home once. Mary O . . . Mary O'Something. My ma said if I married her she'd kill herself and then kill me. She tells me this in English and Italian so I know she means it. My dad's more practical. He goes, Why you want to marry a girl who can't cook?”

“Why, ah—” Norah stopped.

“Because she was Irish. That's all he meant,” Sean said, and Norah must still have looked confused, because he added, “It's a dumb thing between the Irish and the Italians around here.”

“Only an Irish guy's gonna call food a dumb thing,” Joe said.

Sean laughed. “All right, enough of this. I've gotta get Norah home.”

“Nice meeting you,” Norah said.

“You too, Norah from Ireland. You get tired of this galoot, come find me.”

“So your mother can kill herself?” Sean asked.

“She's lived a long and full life.”

Two days later, Sean called and asked her to a nun's funeral.

The phone rang at eight o'clock at night, startling Helen so much that it rang five times before she managed to answer. Norah quickly calculated: it was two a.m. in Ireland.