The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  Sophomore year cantered into junior year, then senior year, and Maddie grew comfortable with Gloucester, the same comfort she felt walking home after church on Sunday mornings, her arm resting in her da’s. When the track closed for the season, they went to museums, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Gardner, the de Cordova, the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger. And overnights to New York–separate beds, separate rooms–for the ballet, Gloucester’s great passion, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Jewels, anything by Balanchine or Robbins, anything by City Ballet, ABT, the Stuttgart, the Royal Danish, the Bolshoi. Modern dance as well. The Ailey. The Joffrey. Martha Graham. Gloucester enthused about the athletic grace of the dancers, comparing it to the beauty of the best thoroughbreds. Not original with me, he confessed. Cribbed it from Homer’s Iliad.

  Can a cribbed life be a life well lived? Maddie wondered at the time. For all his reading, his appreciation of art and ballet, his ability to bring light to the Dark Ages, he was in essence a smile, a joke, a wink, a love pat, a shadow who had never known pain. She could not imagine him comforting her after her ma’s death as Duncan Siward had or understanding the dread she felt being named after two sisters who lived out their lives in Kilmainham. He demanded little of her and did not need the emotional commitment Duncan required. He allowed her to encase her feelings in a shell, hide them from herself, bury them in the netherworld. He made life simple. She never had to trust her feelings. Or distrust them. Or act upon them. Or refuse to act. Or voice them. Or swallow them. Or even admit she had them.

  After growing up in a family riven by its own internal civil war, a family in which the turmoil of feelings and emotions were handed down generation to generation like hair color, like eye color, the peace of mind she enjoyed with Gloucester, a peace that surpassed all understanding, seduced her before she knew she was being seduced. So, when Gloucester asked her to marry him after hitting a five-figure superfecta, they set a wedding date and she became Mrs. Richard Gloucester; then, nine months after the honeymoon touring Sun Belt race tracks and winning enough to pay cash for a center-entrance colonial in Lexington with Revolutionary-era provenance, the mother of baby Elizabeth.

  Once again it was that April afternoon, snow in the air, snow on the ground, a winter which would not relent, Suffolk Downs closed because of the weather. Once again Elizabeth was ten months old. Once again the baby-sitter canceled and Maddie begged Richard to care for Elizabeth so she could go to class, Shakespeare at Harvard Extension School, the day’s topic, fathers and daughters in Shakespeare. Once again he said he’d take Elizabeth with him to Bennie’s, an illegal off track betting parlor where the next race was always minutes away. The call came half way through the lecture on whether Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan were archetypes or unique characters or whether Ophelia or Juliet existed independent of their suicides or whether Shakespeare’s concept of women honored or dishonored his queen, the first Elizabeth. At the hospital, an aide escorted her to the emergency ward where curtains separated Gloucester, under arrest, from the world, where George Harriman waited, his hat drooping between his knees.

  “The truth, Uncle George,” Maddie said.

  “A patch of ice. The car spun out of control. Elizabeth went through the windshield. Ruptured an artery. Bled to death. Vehicular homicide. Speeding. And he failed the field sobriety tests. He walked away, unhurt.”

  Maddie drove to the accident scene and walked the skid marks, black, narrow, and long, very long, thirty-seven steps, heel to toe. In the front yard of a triple-decker, a honeysuckle bush, its branches broken by Elizabeth’s fall, its white winter-defiant petals stained red with Elizabeth’s blood. For all its beauty, its branches had not been thick enough to cushion an airborne infant. Summers would come and go; first frosts would wither the flowers. Each spring, each new season, new flowers, white, sweet smelling, would blossom, ignorant of the day an infant lay in its branches bleeding to death. She breathed deeply, inhaling the sweet fragrance into her memory.

  The feelings she had imprisoned broke free and rampaged through her psyche like rioting prisoners, destroying everything, everyone, that had oppressed them. What use was beauty? It never spared a life. And how many had died for beauty?

  Brian Devlin eulogized his granddaughter with words from Yeats:

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you

  can understand.

  “He writes like he lost a child,” Maddie said after the service.

  “Ireland was his only child,” her da replied, “and, yes, he lost her.”

  At Gloucester’s trial for vehicular homicide, Ed Hornstein attacked the credentials and competence of the prosecution’s accident reconstruction expert, arguing a two-week course in accident reconstruction at the Massachusetts State Police Academy–with only one day devoted to the physics of moving bodies, the coefficient of friction, torque, and other such subjects–did not qualify anyone to reconstruct an accident from skid marks, the size, depth and location of dents on an automobile, gouge marks in the street and curb, and the other physical evidence found at the accident scene. Without a qualified expert, the science was no better than astrology or mythology, Hornstein argued, and a jury could only speculate how the accident happened and speculation would not sustain a conviction. He also attacked the field sobriety tests administered at the accident scene, demonstrating how sober people had trouble counting back from one hundred or standing on one leg or walking heel to toe in a straight line. He played the sympathy card, remaking Gloucester from a drunk and careless driver to a victim, a father who would live his life blaming himself for his baby daughter’s death. The jury acquitted in less than two hours. Later, Hornstein represented Maddie’s ex-husband in the divorce.

  After the entry of the jury’s verdict and Gloucester’s discharge, Maddie ducked into one of the wrought iron spiral staircases that turned up in odd corners of the Suffolk County court-house and spun herself dizzy racing down the steps. At the Park Street MBTA stop, she paused at the top of the staircase. Beneath her, the subway. The third rail. The arch of the entrance, the steps down, lured her. The bench where she once sat mourning the assassination of President Kennedy lured her. The Harvard-Ashmont line then, since 1965 the Red Line, its comings and goings, lured her. How easy it would be. How fast. Peace at last. She descended to the subway platform.

  A woman, elderly but erect and able to walk without a cane, appeared on the platform. She wore a veiled hat and white gloves and carried a missal. Her hair, white with age, had hints of its former color, auburn. “To what end?” Her ma’s voice? “Gloucester who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing will measure his mourning as a miser measures his pennies. And your da? Only God may inflict such pain and only God may relieve it.” The woman paused and balanced herself on Maddie’s shoulder to dig a pebble out of her shoe, her touch lighter than a breath of air, then melted into the throng rushing up the stairs out of the Park Street subway station into the open air of Boston Common where she disappeared in the gathering fog.

  Before summer’s end, Maddie filed for divorce, waiving alimony because she wanted Gloucester out of her life forever, resuming her maiden name. Father Curry guaranteed perdition. A Devlin born, a Devlin I’ll die, and as a Devlin I’ll face whatever judgment God decrees for me, she replied. In September, she enrolled in law school, not Harvard, which accepted her but would not provide financial aid, but Northeastern where she alternated work semesters with study semesters to pay her own way.

  Although she viewed law school as a trade school, except for its pretensions the same as training to become a court stenographer or airline mechanic or truck driver or any other trade or occupation whose schools of higher education advertised on the back of matchbooks, she worked hard to give her da the gift of being proud of his daughter. To dull her own pain, she became addicted to her studies, occluding her mind with cases on property law, se
curities, corporations, estate planning, criminal law, Constitutional law. She lived on legal precedents to avoid the precedents of her life. The joy her da felt at her achievements at law school–law review, magna cum laude, second in her class–brought her a measure of happiness, a brief respite from her pain.

  All this and more Maddie remembered as she hiccoughed little sobs and sank further and further into the bath water, drinking deeply the sweet, black Guinness, hugging herself tightly, trying to squeeze out the bad the way she squeezed out pus from pimples as an adolescent. “You’ll scar your face,” her ma had warned, but she hadn’t.

  If it didn’t work for my pimples, she now thought, why would it work for my soul? How bloody Irish of me. How fucking bloody Irish.

  -4-

  Shortly after sunset, Rabbi ben Reuben and Jacob Moskovitzky introduced Maddie to the intricate ritual of the seder in the dining room of the rabbi’s home, a short walk from the synagogue where he presided. The ancient story of Israel’s liberation from Egypt was retold in the prescribed order. The seder plate bearing the symbols of Passover, matzohs, the unleavened bread Jews ate on the exodus; roasted shank bone, symbol of the Paschal lamb, the sacrifice offered on the altar of the temple in Jerusalem; roasted egg, the second offering brought to the temple in Jerusalem; moror, bitter herbs which symbolized the bitterness of slavery; haroses, symbol of the mortar used to make bricks for the construction of Egyptian cities; and karpas, symbol of the arrival of spring and the gathering of the spring harvest; was explained. Kiddush was chanted. The four questions were asked by the youngest male present, the rabbi, and answered. The tale of the four sons was told. They drank four cups of wine which, on top of the Guinness, spun Maddie’s head like a speeding merry-go-round. The rabbi opened the door for Elijah. The traditional benediction was offered: The following year grant us to be in Jerusalem.

  Initially, Maddie sat politely, listened quietly, but before long she participated in the responsive readings. By the end of the meal, when the rabbi and Moskovitzky searched for the afikomen, a piece of matzoh, the last food eaten by the participants at the seder, which they insisted she hide so that it could be found and redeemed, she had warmed to the ceremony of the evening. They were so animated, momentarily children again, innocent and unburdened.

  “Why aren’t you with your grandson and his family?” she asked Moskovitzky.

  “He does not believe in seder. Too old-fashioned. Too Jewish.”

  “This is nothing like what I expected,” she said.

  “Neither are you,” Moskovitzky replied.

  “What do you know of this Howard Kaplan?” the rabbi asked.

  Outside, in the distance, a muffled sound like the solitary thump of a bass drum echoed, then faded.

  “Nothing,” Maddie said. “I’ve never run across him in court. He’s not listed in my Lawyer’s Diary. He has no entry in Martindale-Hubbell. It’s like your grandson snapped his fingers and conjured him up out of thin air. But, I do know this. If this case goes to trial, it will be an absolute disaster. It should be plea-bargained.”

  “If Avram pleads guilty,” Moskovitzky said, “every Jew pleads guilty with him and will suffer worse than his punishment.”

  “The skull-cap under the chair.” She maintained eye contact, alternating from one to the other. “The jury will believe he lost it struggling with Bumper. True, he wasn’t at the crime scene while Capablanca was open, but he can’t account for his time after it closed, can’t corroborate his alibi. Home studying alone, no juror will believe that. I doubt the jury would be out an hour before it convicted him for first-degree murder. Life without parole. It’s guaranteed. Why risk that when a plea-bargain to a lesser included offense and a sentence short of life is doable?”

  “Who will negotiate this plea-bargain?” Moskovitzky asked.

  “Me. Before I join your grandson’s firm. They’ll cave because they’re afraid of me. My track record. Kaplan’s unknown. No one’s afraid of him.”

  “What do you think?” Moskovitzky asked the rabbi.

  Before he could reply, Maddie continued, “You want me off the case, withdraw Levy’s consent and the judge will do it for you. Until then, I’m counsel of record and what I say goes.”

  Moskovitzky shook his cane in the air. “If the ancient Jews had your attitude I’d be building pyramids in Egypt and the Irish would still be subjects of Her Majesty, the Queen. Would you have plea-bargained Robert Emmet?”

  “What’s with you and Robert Emmet? You know one speck of Irish history and you think you know it all. If it pleases the court, I’m directly descended from Robert Emmet, that Robert Emmet, and yes, I would plea-bargain him to keep him alive so he could fight another day. Martyrdom is overrated.”

  “We pray for a golem,” Moskovitzky said, “and what does Hashem send us?”

  “Levy’s last, best, and only hope,” Maddie replied.

  “Who is abandoning her client for the Golden Calf,” Moskovitzky said.

  “I told you I’ll cut the deal before I join your grandson’s firm.”

  “Golems do not cut deals,” Moskovitzky said.

  “Good defense attorneys do.”

  The rabbi stopped massaging his knuckles and folded his hands in his lap. “A golem is created out of clay and brought to life by speaking the unspeakable, the name of the Almighty. In Prague in 1580, Rabbi Yehuda Loew created the Yosel golem to protect Jews from the blood libel accusation. At Passover that year, the local butcher exhumed the body of a Christian boy, drained its blood and cut its throat, and wrapped it in the carcass of a pig. He planned to bury it in the rabbi’s yard in the dead of night, then dig it up the next morning and accuse the rabbi of blood libel, but the Yosel golem caught him in the act. The butcher denied it, but finally confessed. Since then, whenever Jews suffered accusations of blood libel, they sought refuge in the belief the miracle of a golem would save them. It is said the Yosel golem is to this day buried under old prayer books in the attic of Rabbi Loew’s synagogue awaiting the time when he is again needed.”

  “If you think Kaplan’s this golem, go with him.” Maddie felt feverish from the heat, the wine, the Guinness, Moskovitzky’s resistance to her logic. If logic would not persuade him, them, retreat was the soundest strategy. The only strategy. Retreat. And, in the morning, open negotiation with Bonturo. A fait accompli would bring them around to her way of thinking. If it didn’t, let them force her recusal, abrogate the plea-bargain, take the case to trial. She mumbled a thank-you for the dinner and an apology for departing so abruptly and slipped out the front door.

  Outside, the neighborhood sweltered and the dreams of her new life wilted in the heat like a cheap plastic crucifix in a multi-alarm fire. Washington would be lonely without Michelle Furey. No woman could replace her. No man either. Not even Duncan Siward. But, if she stayed, Boston would devour her. Alive. Something no one, not even Michelle Furey, could protect her against. A hot wind slapped her face. The night sky glowed red and yellow like a sky besieged by a raging forest fire. Plumes of black smoke illuminated by the glow reached one-third of the way to heaven’s peak. Sirens blared. She rushed inside to alert the rabbi and Moskovitzky.

  “The shul,” the rabbi said.

  As they approached the synagogue, the red and blue lights of police cruisers swept across lichen covered tenement walls. Ululations filled the air with a chorus of laments. They rounded the corner and the synagogue came into view. Moskovitzky pitched forward. Maddie caught him and put her arm around his back and slipped her hand under his arm to hold him up. The rabbi supported himself on her other arm.

  “Watch out for the broken glass,” she said

  Moskovitzky shuddered. “Kristallnacht.”

  The rabbi prayed, nonsense syllables to Maddie, Kaddish, to those who understood Hebrew, then started babbling. “Time was on hot nights like this in Chelsea all the windows would be open and the whirring and clicking of sewing machines, like crickets in the field, was everywhere. Sewing machines. Rente
d to immigrants doing piecework for the mills. If you complained, a more recent arrival took your place. Work hard. Save. Penny by penny. If the baby didn’t catch the grippe, buy a sewing machine. Control your own destiny. A generation for whom sleep was a luxury stolen in front of sewing machines so its sons and daughters could go to college. That wooden sign?” It hung almost within their reach, its Hebrew letters barely legible. “The mikvah. People once lined the street to get in. Closed. The shops. A man didn’t work a lifetime so his son could become a shop-keeper in Chelsea or his daughter marry one. No, they worked a lifetime so when they died their sons and daughters would drive in from Newton or Brookline or Sharon to post the Closed sign. Another peddler had made his last sale.”

  On the curb, Shlomo the bookseller sat among the charred pages of Bibles and prayer books and Sefer Torah and Talmudic commentaries, the writings of Maimonides, the writings of Buber. “Ruined. Everything.” His frail voice sounded like a sickly young boy’s. He receded into the ashes of his store.

  They continued their pilgrimage, the weight of Moskovitzky on one side, the rabbi on the other.

  “Rabbi!” Yosef, the butcher, cried.

  They stepped over pieces of glass painted with fragments of the Hebrew letters for “kosher”. Shards jutted out of the window frame like the teeth of a piranha.

  “Did they steal much?” Maddie asked.

  “Would they have stolen everything,” Yosef said.