The Real Mother

by Judith Michael

  “Abby!” Mrs. Pierce was in her doorway. “Sara’s on the phone. Says she’s been trying to call for over an hour. Pretty worried by now.”

  Carrie beat Abby into Mrs. Pierce’s kitchen. “Sara, we had a fire! Our house is all—”

  “Mrs. Pierce told me. Are you all right? And Doug? Where is Abby? Is she hurt?”

  Carrie launched into the story of the fire, her voice rising and falling as drama and hysteria reinforced each other, but Abby snatched the phone, sitting down because her legs were buckling. “Where are you? I told the policeman you’re in Chicago.”

  “We are, just about; we’ll be there in less than an hour. Abby, is anyone hurt?”

  “No, really, we were scared and coughing a lot, and our eyes hurt from the smoke, but we’re okay, only the house…the house is really awful, Sara, it’s mostly gone.”

  “I know, and it’s terrible, it must have been terrible to watch it burn, and sad and scary, but—”

  “And what are we going to do, with no place to live? And no clothes and no…we don’t have anything!”

  “We’ll figure it out, Abby, everything can be replaced. What’s most important is that you and Doug and Carrie are all right. Nothing else matters. Are you really all right? Not hurt? Carrie started to say something about her hair burning.”

  “She and Doug got singed a little bit.” Abby felt so relieved, just talking to Sara, and she was so sleepy that she felt a little giddy. “They’ll probably brag about it at school,” she said, almost cheerfully. “They’ll be the center of attention.”

  “But nothing else happened,” Sara said.

  “No, really, nothing else; we got out and we’re fine.”

  “Thank God,” Sara breathed. And then: “Mack, too?”

  “We don’t know where he is. We thought he might be dead, the fire started in his bed and Doug thought he was in it, but the firemen said nobody was there. And he’s gone. I mean, he was upstairs in his room, I smelled him smoking, and then later the fire started, and when we went to look, he wasn’t there.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Abby repeated the story she had told the policeman. “He was probably smoking in bed and fell asleep. That’s what the fireman said. But the police said that Mack had a lot to answer for, if he started the fire, or even knew about it, and ran away without warning us.”

  “I can’t believe he would do that.”

  “He was pretty mad all day. Maybe he got scared.”

  “But why didn’t you see him leave?”

  “We all fell asleep. Oh.” Abby thought back. “Something made a noise, two noises. They woke me up and I thought you’d come home.”

  “What kind of noises?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of a bang. I can’t remember. Maybe it was the door closing, though, because I thought you were back.”

  Sara covered the phone and looked at Reuben, listening while navigating through early-morning traffic. “I don’t want to frighten them any more than they are, but I have no idea what’s going on with Mack, and if he decides to come back, I don’t want them there. It doesn’t sound as if the house is safe anyway.”

  “Mrs. Pierce,” Reuben said. “Can you think of a good reason, without frightening them?”

  Sara uncovered the phone. “Abby, you need to get some sleep so we can talk about this when we get there. I want you to tell Mrs. Pierce you need some sleep and you can’t sleep in all the smoke and water in our house.”

  “The fireman said the kitchen was mostly okay,” said Abby. “We really want to go home, Sara; we don’t want to be anywhere else.”

  “I know, but I don’t want you in the house. We don’t know if it’s safe, and you need to get away from everything that’s happened. Anyway, you’re already there, and Mrs. Pierce has offered her guest rooms, and that’s where you should be, just until we get there. Please, Abby, do this for me.”

  When, reluctantly, Abby agreed, Sara talked briefly to Carrie and Doug, giving them the same instructions. “They’ll do it,” she said to Reuben. She took a long breath; she was trembling. “They could have been…could have died.”

  Reuben pulled the car to the side of the road, and reached out to hold her. “They’re all right. Don’t blame yourself for this.”

  “I shouldn’t have left them.”

  “How many times,” he asked after a moment, “would you expect the airports to close and a fire to start in your house, all in the same night?”

  Involuntarily, she smiled. “Not even once.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “You left a sixteen-year-old in charge of a ten-year-old and a thirteen-year-old for one night. No one could fault you for that.”

  Sara was silent, then she shook her head. “We shouldn’t have stopped. Do you want me to drive?”

  “Still my turn,” he said, and pulled away from the curb.

  “I’m sorry, I know you wanted to comfort me, I’m grateful for that. It’s just that I have to see them.”

  “How much farther?”

  “Without traffic, maybe forty minutes.”

  “We’ll forge a path.”

  And he did. Sara began to relax as Reuben recognized streets and drove without needing directions. How amazing, she thought, that I can feel relaxed, even a little bit. But at the same time she knew it was because of many things: she was almost home, she had talked to the children and knew they were safe, and she had shared these hours with Reuben, shared the driving, the telephone conversations with the children, her worries, her relief, instead of managing everything herself.

  And then Reuben, as if completing her thoughts, said, “We have to decide what to do about Mack.”

  Sara took a long breath. “Thank you,” she said. “I know this is a lot more than you expected, than any man expects when…” She opened her hand and it fell.

  Reuben smiled. “You never pretended you didn’t have a family; you told me about them the first night we had dinner. I knew this would be more complicated than a fairy tale.” Stopped at a red light, he held out his hand, and Sara fit hers into it. “I did think about it,” he said. “I didn’t ignore the complications or pretend they might not be difficult. I just knew they weren’t difficult or complicated enough to make me willing to lose you.”

  “Thank you,” she said again, simply, thinking that perhaps the greatest gift two people can give to each other is understanding, and simple gratitude.

  As the light turned green, Reuben said musingly, “Did you mean it when you said you thought he would come back?”

  “I suppose he might, but I really can’t believe it; how could he? He left the three of them in the house with his room on fire; made no attempt to warn them…”She began to tremble again. “I can’t even think about…They could have burned to death, or jumped out… three stories… How could he leave them? It’s monstrous, what he did.”

  “I’d guess he panicked. Woke up with a fire in his bed and ran.”

  “Is that an excuse?”

  “Absolutely not. He might have run, instinctively, but he had time to come back for them. There was plenty of time, it seems; isn’t it odd that they had time to get up there? From what Abby and Carrie said, it must have burned at a pretty low level for quite a while, the whole time Abby was smelling it but not realizing it wasn’t marijuana.”

  “We can thank my mother for that.” Sara smiled faintly. “Poor Tess, always on the alert for disasters, making our house a fortress, down to fire-retardant fabrics, but having no way to prevent the real disasters, or even anticipate them.”

  “She probably saved the children’s lives today.”

  “Yes. But I can’t tell her that. I don’t know how we’ll keep it from her, but I hope we can.”

  “And if she asks about Mack?”

  “He left once; we’ll tell her he left again. I think we all assumed he would, at some point.”

  “And no one would mourn him.”

  “No one, isn’t that terrible? To have no one care
if you come or go? In fact, to have your own family want you gone.” Sara paused. “He did try to make us love him. But he wasn’t a giving person. He gave gifts but not himself. I think he never even liked us. He wanted to live in our house, but not because he liked us or loved us.”

  “A sanctuary?” Reuben asked.

  “How odd. Yes, maybe. I’m sure he remembered Mother calling it that, a long time ago. A place to retreat and be protected. That was what she called it. I don’t have any idea what he was worried about, or afraid of, to make him seek sanctuary, but he did seem to want that, at least sometimes. Maybe his job, working for Corcoran, but I never knew what he did there, unless he really was behind the demonstrations at River Bend, but even then I don’t know why that would make him fearful. Oh,” she said, remembering the brochure Reuben had showed her on the plane.

  Reuben nodded. “That could be it. If Corcoran held him responsible for our finding out he’s involved…” At a stoplight, he turned to her. “As far as I know, the Illinois secretary of state found Corcoran Enterprises listed as the licensee for the casino that was approved a few months ago. I’m assuming Corcoran wanted the River Bend property for a docked riverboat and one or more buildings on land. He couldn’t buy the property—we owned it—but you saw him there with blueprints; what good were they, since he didn’t own the land? This is mostly guesswork, but it makes sense to me: he had the license, he wanted the property, he had blueprints ready, and about that time it just so happened that the people of River Bend and their neighbors began to demonstrate against Carrano Village West. There is no way I can believe that was just coincidence, any more than I believe it was coincidence that at the same time the local governments just happened to back away from the approvals we’d gotten so far. I turn here, don’t I?”

  “Yes. Left. Do you remember the story Carrie was making up when we drove to Galena and saw that first march?”

  “Something about a character who scares the neighbors and gets them to demonstrate— I’ll be damned. And what was the rest of it? He wanted the land for some nefarious purpose or other.”

  “I think it was to make counterfeit money or package marijuana.”

  “Or hide stolen treasure. Maybe Carrie should be a detective.”

  Sara smiled. “Or a novelist. For now, I think we’ll just let her believe it’s all imaginary.” She paused. “Why would the local governments change their minds about the approvals they’d given you? Corcoran bribed them?”

  “I think he did, and so does the secretary of state. At least, he’s looking into it. If that’s what happened, Corcoran would be in serious trouble. I don’t suppose it’s a crime to stir up demonstrations, but bribery definitely qualifies. If all our guesses are correct, Corcoran would forfeit the casino license, and could be indicted for bribing public officials. If he sees that coming, he’ll blame someone, and it could be Mack. In which case, I’d guess sanctuary is exactly what Mack would need.”

  “But we can’t let him come back.”

  “No, we can’t. We’ll have to find him, find a way to keep him out of your life. Our life.”

  Sara smiled briefly, grateful once again, but then she made a helpless gesture. “How would we do that? He’s part of my family—”

  “That complicates it,” said Reuben, “but I don’t think it dictates a single way to do things.”

  They were on Lake Shore Drive now, and moving steadily, the steel blue of Lake Michigan on their right, the harbor still filled with summer’s boats, the city on their left. After a moment, Sara said, “You’ll be ready to start building soon.”

  “I think so. We have a lot of work to do with the neighbors. You were right from the beginning: we didn’t do the door-to-door work we needed to make sure they understood what we wanted to do, and how they’d benefit from it. We took them for granted, as if they were just some of the local flora and fauna and we could bulldoze them if they got in our—” He sensed Sara’s smile, and glanced at her. “I gather I’m exaggerating again.”

  They laughed quietly, the first simple laugh they had been able to share in what seemed like a long time. “Well, anyway,” Reuben said, “we didn’t do a good job before all this happened, so now that’s the first step. We still need approvals from the local governments, but I hope they’ll see this as a quick way out of a mess. They can say they were misled with incomplete or false information, and thought they were saving their communities by taking action to keep Carrano out. I suppose they could claim those weren’t payoffs; they were the first installments in upgrading community facilities, building new ones, that sort of thing. And they might get away with it, especially if they’ve given us approval and we’ve broken ground, and we’re all good friends. The state’s attorney probably would be just as happy to have Corcoran; he’s the bigger fish.”

  “Or they’d be happy to get Mack.”

  “Could be. Even if he was just an errand boy, Corcoran could offer him up as a sacrificial lamb. It won’t be easy for him, whatever happens. I think we’re past the worst part of the rush hour. We should be there soon.”

  From then on, with the Gold Coast high-rises on their left, and then through Lincoln Park, Sara thought only of getting home and seeing for herself that the children were all right. Nothing else was important. For now, Mack could wait.

  SEVENTEEN

  What they saw first was water, the street glistening, streams running along the curbs carrying leaves and broken twigs. And then they saw the house, a blackened stone hulk open to the sky, with gaping holes where windows had been, and the enormity of it struck Sara for the first time. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “No, no, no,” overwhelmed by loss, and rootlessness.

  Reuben drove past the house, looking for a parking space. He maneuvered between two cars and put his arms around Sara. The desolation struck him, too, and he tried to imagine the destruction of his new home, here in this city, already filled with Sara and with everything that spoke to him of belonging. “But you told Abby it can be replaced,” he said. “And you’re all alive.”

  “Yes.” Tears were in her eyes as she turned within his arms to look at those stones they had thought impregnable, the sanctuary her mother had created, the place they had always known awaited them, wherever they were. But she forced herself to grasp that crucial fact: “Everyone is alive; everyone is all right. My God, when I think of what could have happened—” She stopped, and after a moment said, “We knew we loved it, but I don’t think we realized how much a house could be like one of our family, always there, always welcoming us with an open door, and protection and shelter, keeping us together no matter what happened on the outside.”

  “Houses don’t do that, people do,” Reuben said quietly. “You made your house what it was, just as you made your family. You would do that in any house you made your own.”

  “History has a lot to do with it,” she said, almost impatiently, thinking of photographs, mementos, collections now gone. She opened the car door.

  “It does. We make our own, every day.” He stepped out and they stood beside the car, gazing at the house and the devastation of the street: the sidewalk littered with splintered wood and glass, scraps of scorched fabric, fluttering pages of magazines, whole books, charred books, burned books, broken branches, twigs and leaves. “Where were your photos?” Reuben asked. “On the second floor?”

  “The children’s were. A few in my room. Most of them were in the library.” Sara smiled for the first time. “What luck. Unless they were destroyed by water.”

  “But they must have been in cabinets.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll find them, probably in good condition or at least salvageable.”

  “You were never inside the house,” Sara said as they walked up the street. “I kept thinking how wonderful it would be, the first time you stepped into our house, into our family. It was so much a reflection of us, I did want you to see it.”

  “Do you think you might be exaggerating the importance of a hou
se, when there are five of us about to make a life together?”

  Sara felt a brief spurt of anger, but almost immediately she laughed. “Tables turned,” she said. “You’re not the only one who exaggerates. Thank you, I guess I needed that. Okay, I think I’m ready to talk about all this to the children.”

  “Which house is Mrs. Pierce’s?”

  “Next to ours, on the left.” They came to the ruined flower garden in front of her house, pausing at a duffel bag with clothes spewing from it, lying in the gutter. “Where did that come from?” Sara murmured. “From your house?” Reuben asked. She shook her head. “I never saw it. I wonder if it’s Mack’s; the children might know.” She looked up and saw the front door of her house ajar, wide strips of yellow tape forming a large X across it. “It shouldn’t be open,” Sara murmured, and walked up the sidewalk and the front steps, kicking aside charred wood and paper and broken glass. Almost overwhelmed by the acrid smell of smoke and wet wood and fabrics, she pulled the door tight. “I don’t want to look inside yet. Soon enough.” She and Reuben crossed to the house next door. “I hate to wake them; maybe we’ll just take a look—”

  But Abby was running down the front steps. “Sara! Oh, Sara, I’m so glad you’re—” She threw herself at Sara, and burst into tears.

  Sara held her tight and stroked her hair, crying with her because Abby was in her arms, she was alive and all right, she was fine, nothing had happened to her, none of them were hurt, and they had been so close to being…Once again her thoughts stumbled on the word; she could not formulate it. Gone, she thought. Close to being gone. What would I be without them? Nothing is more important than this. She held Abby, waiting for the sobs to subside, her own tears drying.