Home Fires

by Luanne Rice

  “With you. Thank you, by the way. In case I never actually thanked you before. You were such a big help,” Anne said, as if she were just thanking Maggie for any old babysitting job, as if there would be a thousand more to come.

  “Oh God. You’re welcome.”

  “I guess I was a little preoccupied, when I came back to the island,” Anne continued. “See, Matt hadn’t gone to New York on business. He had a girlfriend. Tisa. It’s really pathetic, but I found them in bed.”

  “Oh my God.” Maggie’s eyes glittered with the delectability of having this conversation with Anne. She had once caught Kurt making out with Shelly Marshall, and she remembered that ice-cold shock, that heart-stopping moment when you realized that you were seeing exactly what you thought you were seeing.

  “I haven’t told your mother. I haven’t told anyone,” Anne said. “You, Matt, Tisa, and I are the only ones who know.”

  “Everyone thinks …” Maggie began, but she couldn’t say the words: that Matt left because you let Karen fall out the window.

  “Your mother doesn’t. She knows there were other problems. There always are in marriages. You just hope … anyway, it’s too embarrassing to give her the details. She’s my older sister, after all,” Anne said, and for once her smile was real enough to touch every part of her face.

  “Yeah, she might not handle it too well,” Maggie said.

  “There’s something about your mother, Maggie, that makes me want to be my best,” Anne said. “It’s always been that way. My own mother was way less strict than her.”

  “And your parents drowned fishing in a rowboat only twenty yards from shore and Mom had to take on the responsibility of the bakery and raising you and she had to give up all her dreams of going to college or ever getting off this island but looking back it’s the best thing that ever happened because now she knows the value of a dollar and the island is the only place she’d ever want to live including Paris.” Maggie knew the story by heart, even better than she knew her prayers.

  Anne was laughing out loud, and that made Maggie smile. She twirled the silver snake ring Kurt had given her, pleased with herself.

  “Do you think Matt is the one who keeps calling and hanging up when he gets the machine?” Maggie asked. It had been bothering her. She knew Kurt hated leaving messages, and it drove her crazy, playing back the tape and hearing all those hang-ups.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Anne said. “It’s not his style.”

  Suddenly Maggie heard her dad’s truck pull into the driveway. That wiped the smile right off her face. He’d bully his way into the conversation, turning it into some big thing about a Democrat in the Governor’s Mansion and how they were ruining the economy, when all he’d want was the excuse to drink beer and listen to his own voice. Her mother ran her ass off all year long, twelve months without a break, but her dad had the romantic notion that he only had to work when the sun was shining and the roses were in bloom.

  “Excuse me,” Maggie said to Anne. “I’d better get to my homework.”

  But it was too late. Big Belly Beardface lumbered through the kitchen door, not even bothering to wipe the snow off his boots, and practically pushed her away from the refrigerator. He pretended the maneuver was a hug, but it was just an offensive play to get to the Bud.

  “A lot of water damage,” he said to the air in general. “Smoke damage, water damage, the whole nine yards. We’re looking at a healthy thirty grand.”

  “How long will it take?” Anne asked.

  He narrowed his eyes, gazing at the ceiling. He shuffled his boots and looked at the floor. Then, as if only a beer would make sharp his powers of estimation, he reached for a long neck.

  “Anne?” he asked, holding a bottle in the air.

  “No thanks.”

  “We’re probably talking April, beginning of May.”

  “You’re going to work in the winter?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure, Princess. Why not? If there’s work we’ll do it no matter what. And there’s work to be done down at Grandma and Grandpa Fitzgibbon’s, that’s for sure.”

  It’s weird, him calling the big house Grandma and Grandpa Fitzgibbon’s, Maggie thought. They’ve been dead for twenty years. They died before they even had grandchildren. Her father was full of shit. She’d believe him working in the winter when she saw it with her own two eyes.

  “April. That’s not too bad,” Anne said. “Guess I’ll look for an apartment till then.”

  “That couch lumping up your back?” he asked, trading his empty for a fresh bottle.

  “No, the couch is fine,” Anne said. “Thanks for letting me stay. I know it’s a pain, having someone take up residence smack in the middle of the living room.”

  “Hey, no bother.”

  No kidding, Maggie thought. Like he even knew Anne was there. She’d pull out the couch after he went to bed, and she’d make it up hours before he’d rouse his rotund hide.

  “Princess, how about doing up a frozen pizza? Mom’s got some in the freezer. Smelled her cooking ‘em last week. Pesto, something yummy like that.”

  “They’re for Valentine’s Day,” Maggie said. “She said everything in the freezer is on order for dinners and stuff.”

  Her father grinned, his red lips plumping through his thick brown beard. “Damn kids. Show no respect. Never mind.”

  He threw his parka on the kitchen chair, for someone else to hang up, and he headed down the cellar stairs to get his own stupid pizza. Anne was watching Maggie, waiting for her to say something, but all of a sudden Maggie had to get out of there. She felt so furious, she had the urge to break something. So it really confused her, the fact that her eyes were stinging, the way they did when she was about to cry.

  She left the kitchen without another word to Anne. Damn it, she thought. Shitfuck. Upstairs, she slammed her bedroom door shut. She grabbed her pillow and yanked both ends, wanting to rip it apart. Maggie was boiling mad, and tears were burning her cheeks.

  In the midst of her tantrum, she realized it wasn’t her father she wanted to pull apart, but Anne. Anne, who had seemed to have the best life, a family so wonderful that Maggie had dreamed of being a part of it. She had been a part of it: when the Davises came to the island, anyway. Anne, with a rich, handsome husband and the greatest kid in the world, had thrown it all away.

  Maggie beat on her poor pillow for a little while longer. She wiped off her old mascara and eyeliner and applied some fresh. Then she picked up the telephone to call Kurt. After they had talked for a while, they would conference-call over to Vanessa’s, and maybe they’d get a party going for later.

  ON February 12, five days after the fire at the old Fitzgibbon house, the following note appeared on the bulletin board in the fire station’s lounge area:

  10 Salt Whistle Road

  New Shoreham, CT

  Captain Richard Wade

  Island Volunteer Fire Co.

  New Shoreham, CT

  Dear Captain Wade,

  I would like to thank all the firefighters and emergency personnel who came to my house the night of February 7. Everyone was very brave, and they worked very fast. My brother-in-law says the fire could have been much, much worse, considering how bad the wiring was.

  I would especially like to thank Thomas Devlin. He came into the burning house to rescue me, and I’ll never forget it. I’m sorry my actions put him in such danger.

  You all did a great job.

  Sincerely yours,

  Anne Fitzgibbon Davis

  One by one the firefighters, who were assembling for drills, read the note. Most read in silence, but some of them snickered.

  “Sorry her actions put you in danger, Dev,” Marty Cole said. “But at least she can sleep nights, knowing her jewelry ain’t ashes.”

  “It wasn’t jewelry,” Thomas Devlin said.

  All week the guys had been ribbing him about rescuing Anne and her silver and gold. It would have been much simpler to tell them what he’d seen in the ba
g, but somehow he felt that doing so would be a violation of her privacy.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Marty said, heading toward the coffeepot.

  Thomas Devlin stood in a corner, waiting for the drill to start. His size always made it impossible to hide out, but he did his best. Ever since the fire, a dark mood had overtaken him. He felt stirred up, and the east wind had only made things worse. At night he’d lie awake, rigid as steel; when sleep finally did come, it brought dreams of the past, of a woman’s body warm and silky suddenly transformed—mangled—by fire.

  Exhaling, he turned back to the bulletin board and reread her note. She had looping, dramatic handwriting, messy in places, that didn’t seem to fit his image of her. She had used a blue fine-line felt pen on a folded-over notecard. He removed the thumbtack to see the picture on the other side of the card.

  He found himself looking at the damnedest, most exquisite thing he’d ever seen: a miniature collage, hardly bigger than a postage stamp, depicting Anne Davis’s house on Salt Whistle Road. Surrounded by snow. In flames. With a dark hulking figure too abstract to make out as human but in which Thomas Devlin somehow recognized himself.

  The collage was composed of tiny scraps of paper. Shards no larger than wood splinters, wisps of featherdown, watch gears. Purple shadows textured the snowfield, the house windows glistened black, and the flames were the brilliant orange of sunset. Bits of paper glued together to form something so perfect it brought back, exactly, Thomas’s feelings of that night. The work was signed with a single letter, no bigger than the smallest dot of paper: “a.”

  Holding the note, he made his way to the station telephone. The guys talking made a cheerful buzz, and no one noticed him. He didn’t know why, but the number came to him right away. When a woman’s voice answered, he hesitated. She said hello three times. Thomas hung up without saying anything, pretty sure the voice had belonged to Anne.

  Dick Wade clomped into the station, kicking snow off his boots.

  “It’s a mother out there,” he said. “Six inches on the ground and still coming. We should see a few fender benders tonight.”

  “Warm up the Jaws-of-Life,” Bill Viera said.

  “Did everyone see our nice commendation from the lady out Salt Whistle way?”

  “Least she knows what’s important, running back in after her jewels,” Hugh Lawson said, and a flurry of laughter followed.

  “Hey, hey,” Dick Wade boomed. “None of that, now. Be nice, Hughie. And the rest of you. I don’t know anything about the lady’s personal life, but five nights ago she nearly lost her house. Maybe you think you’re old hands at fire, but wait till it happens to you. Then it’s a different story. You don’t always act, let’s say, predictable.”

  Dick Wade didn’t have to look at Thomas Devlin for Thomas to know the speech was for him. Dick was the reason Thomas had come to the island in the first place. Thomas had served under Dick in Boston, until Dick retired to his wife’s family place out here. After Thomas had recuperated from his burns, after he left the force, he came out to visit Dick, and he’d decided not to leave.

  “Sorry, Captain,” Hugh Lawson said.

  “Never mind. Anyway, men, let me second Mrs. Davis in saying ‘good job.’ Now let’s go to work. Search-and-rescue procedures.”

  Thomas Devlin nodded at his old friend the captain. He tacked the note back up on the board, glad he hadn’t spoken when she’d answered the phone. There wasn’t much to say. He just wanted to make sure she was doing okay after the fire. Her note actually made that clear enough. And he didn’t need any complications in his simple island life.

  Following the men out the door, Thomas Devlin made up his mind to concentrate on search and rescue, the task at hand. Even though he had the sickening, unholy feeling that he was rehearsing for a moment that had long since passed.

  Chapter 4

  Downtown New Shoreham consisted of eight restaurants, a market and a pharmacy, a bakery, a liquor store, one general store (open all winter), two seasonal art galleries, twelve seasonal boutiques, a carousel (boarded up until late May), two gas stations, three boatyards, and three old-fashioned hotels with rocking chairs on the front porches in summer. The main thoroughfare was called Transit Street because Venus, in her transit through the heavens, paralleled the street exactly.

  Anne took the first apartment she looked at. It stood at the foot of Transit Street, occupying the second floor of a renovated stone warehouse and overlooking the ferry slip and parking lot. As soon as she walked in, she went straight to the front windows. A ferry was just docking. Mesmerized, as if she hadn’t seen ferries dock a thousand times, she stood there watching.

  When she turned away from the window, she knew she had found the place she wanted to live. She signed a lease and paid the deposit on the spot.

  The rooms were spare, with high ceilings and tall windows. The landlord supplied a single bed, dresser, sofa, two shabby armchairs, and a small table and two straight-backed chairs. The floors were scuffed wood; long ago, the walls had been whitewashed. A web of fine cracks showed in the plaster.

  In its austerity, the apartment reminded her a little of a monk’s cell. But no monk ever had a view like this, she thought, watching the harbor.

  Anne had always loved places with a view. When she and Matt had first found the penthouse on Gramercy Park, she had been so happy. Nursing Karen, she would sit by the window watching joggers circling the gravel path, the gardener planting bulbs or setting sprinklers, mothers playing with their children, people walking their dogs around the periphery, the neighborhood swearer who would interrupt his normally polite conversation with barking and obscenities, the cadets in blue on their way to the police academy, the old man who wore a scarf and beret even on the hottest days.

  That view and the happiness it had brought her seemed very far away.

  Anne bundled into her coat and headed for the pay phone by the ferry terminal. She had phone numbers for the local utility companies and a pocket full of quarters. A salty wind whipped off the harbor, forcing her to keep her head down. Crossing the street, she had to wait for a yellow school bus to pass and found that she had to look away.

  At the phone, after making three calls and spending twenty freezing minutes on hold, she had switched the gas and electricity into her name and arranged to have a telephone installed the following Tuesday, sometime between eight A.M. and six P.M., with apologies of the order-taker for not being able to be more specific about the time.

  Anne didn’t mind. Setting up an apartment, even as a temporary place to live, would define her days, give her something to plan. Walking along Transit Street, she began making a mental list of things to buy: a bedspread, towels, a rug, a teakettle.

  Passing Ruby’s Slippers, a local coffee shop and island hangout, she noticed its cozy glow. The plate-glass window was all steamed up, and the scent of coffee and cinnamon buns drifted into the street. She stood on the icy sidewalk, looking in. There, sitting alone in a booth, was Thomas Devlin.

  He was stirring a cup of coffee, reading a newspaper. His plaid flannel shirt strained across his broad shoulders, and his knees touched the bottom of the table, making Anne think of a big kid sitting at a first-grade desk. She stared at his face. The left side had been grotesquely burned. Covered with red and white patches, it was warped, crimped, as if someone had pinched it back together. The back of his hand was the same. Although his burns were horrible to look at, Anne couldn’t take her eyes away. She had the sense of invading his privacy: spying on him.

  Abruptly, she took a few steps toward her new building. If he hadn’t been in Ruby’s, she would have gone into the café. Her feet and hands were frozen. Her gas wasn’t turned on yet, and she really wanted a cup of tea.

  She wondered whether her note had arrived at the station, whether he had seen the collage. She had made it with him in mind. Standing still, she didn’t know why the idea of facing him made her feel so nervous. Writing the note had been so much easier than returning his c
all. But very slowly, she found herself retracing her steps.

  Once inside Ruby’s, she stomped the snow off her feet. He looked up. At first he didn’t seem to recognize her, but then Anne took off her hat and shook out her long dark hair. He rose to his feet.

  “Mrs. Davis,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said. She stood still, just inside the door. Then a group of men from the town crew came in behind her, and she realized she was blocking the way. At the counter she ordered a tea to go, then she stepped closer to Thomas Devlin.

  “How have you been?” he asked. “Since the fire.”

  “Oh, fine. Thank you. I mean, thank you for what you did. Saving me.” She blushed at the understatement.

  He nodded. He smiled, and Anne felt her heart skitter. The right side of his face lit up. He had deep dimples, and his eye was full of warmth and happiness. His mouth was full, and his lips had a handsome way of curving up and then tightening at the outside corner. But the left side of his face, the burned side, was dead. The expression in his left eye was the same as the right—warm and excitedly pleasant. But the skin didn’t lift. As if whatever had burned the surface had ruined his nerves and muscles, all the inner workings that made a person able to show a smile.

  “Will you join me?” he asked, gesturing at the booth.

  “No, thank you,” Anne said. “You’ve got your paper. I don’t want to bother you.”

  He watched her for a moment. He nodded, and slowly his smile went away. He seemed to make up his mind to let her go without insisting that it was no bother, that he’d already read the sections he was interested in, the things people say in restaurants when someone they know even slightly walks in alone.

  Anne had turned her back, was halfway toward the door with her tea, when she heard him call her name again. Only this time he said “Anne” instead of Mrs. Davis.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “That note you sent,” he said. “Your collage was beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” she said, pleased that he’d noticed.