Because of Our Child

by Margot Early

  “Actually, you’re right. It’s only been since then that I’ve, well, that I haven’t liked him.”

  “Because you blame him for Salma’s dying.”

  He ducked under the water and came up blinking, his shoulders gleaming from water droplets against his golden skin. “Hard to do that,” he said, “after listening to Teresa today.”

  At least he hadn’t suggested that her sister had lied for Richard Grass. They’d been involved long ago, and probably they shouldn’t have been, but that didn’t mean that Teresa would defend Richard now.

  “Do you know how that part of their relationship ended?” Jen asked. “Was it, well, cordial?”

  “I imagine one or the other of them got their feelings hurt—probably Teresa. There are reasons why it’s not a good idea to sleep with the boss.”

  “Yes, because he will always have more power than you will.”

  “Exactly.”

  It annoyed her to think of Richard Grass abusing his position that way. Granted, it was probably one of those things that just happened. But it was also one of those things that someone—he—should have prevented from happening.

  “Well, Teresa never told me about it. I’m not sure she’ll appreciate your telling me, either.”

  “She knows that I know?”

  “I have no idea. She had something on her mind that she wouldn’t discuss with me—something she figured you knew as well.”

  Max thought it over. “I don’t know what that could be, but I doubt it’s this. Salma was sworn to secrecy.”

  “And told you,” Jen couldn’t stop herself from saying. “Now, you’ve told me. Did you tell anyone else at the time?”

  “Give me a little credit.”

  They swam along the coast some distance, heading east and prepared for the tide to push them back west. During a rest stop, Jen told him that her mother planned to accompany Elena to California that weekend.

  “Does Teresa know?”

  “Yes. I told her.”

  “I’ll be glad to get to know your mother better.”

  “I doubt it. I mean, you might start with that intention, but she can be aggravating. I’ve spent most of my life trying hard not to be like her.”

  “What traits bother you, in particular?”

  “Well, she prevented me seeing my father—Teresa and me, I should say—whenever she could.”

  “You trumped her there.”

  “Thanks,” Jen grumbled. It was true. She’d failed to tell Max that Elena even existed, which was a pretty extreme form of keeping Elena from knowing her father. “It was never my intention,” she said.

  His brown eyes darted away from hers. “No point talking about it.”

  “I just told you my mother is coming because I want to prepare you for her possible reaction—her possible behavior toward you, her behavior about everything.”

  They bodysurfed, finally swimming back to their towels in time to watch the sunset.

  As she dried off, Jen said, “So, what are your conclusions about the fire?”

  “None of us should have been building fire line downhill. The Canyon Wind Estates should never have been built at that location.”

  Jen waited for him to say more, but soon realized that she was waiting in vain.

  She went to the public restrooms to change into dry clothes. Why did she feel so disappointed? Certainly not simply because Max refused to acknowledge Salma’s culpability in her own death. How big a deal was that, after all? What effect did it have on her life?

  It has to be pointed out in the documentary.

  So far, it was being pointed out. But Jen wouldn’t put it past Max to go back and cut out Teresa’s remarks pertaining to where and in what direction Salma deployed her shelter. Or to try to edit those comments, at any rate.

  She found Max waiting at his motorcycle, and it was in that moment that she understood her disappointment. He was handsome. She was attracted to him. He’d seemed to want to know her better, to spend more time with her.

  But he hadn’t even kissed her since the night before her birthday.

  “Want to go up to the tavern for a little while?”

  It was the last thing she’d anticipated. The last of the daylight was fading. “Okay.”

  With Jen behind him on his motorcycle, he drove up into the mountains, back to the tavern they’d visited on the night they’d arrived from Colorado.

  This time, there was live music.

  Motorcycles filled the dirt and gravel parking lot and lined another parking area across the two-lane highway. Bikers, male and female, stood outside smoking, drinking, talking. The band seemed to be playing a mix of styles and songs from the previous four decades. As Jen and Max walked inside, they were doing a southern-rock-and-roll version of the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah.”

  The music seeped through Jen and she needed to move, needed to dance. Max looked at her, at shoulders already subtly shimmying, and smiled. “Want to dance?”

  “Of course.”

  They went right onto the crowded dance floor. Jen had changed into her leather halter top after swimming, and now she shed her jacket to dance. She set it down a few feet from her, near the low stage. As she began to dance across from Max, she remembered being an innocent college student, loving to dance more than anything.

  Now I like to fight.

  As if fighting were the be-all and end-all.

  She’d rejected dancing, along with other parts of herself; as if she shouldn’t have the right to dance, the right to happiness, after Salma’s death and after she, Jen, had made love with Max. After she was pregnant with his child and alone, so alone, always a lone parent.

  I was so angry.

  But she was the one who hadn’t told him.

  When the song ended, she and Max went out to secure both their jackets in the panniers on his bike. At the bar, they both ordered Long Island Iced Tea. The band began to play “Sweet Home Alabama,” and gyrating bodies crowded the floor.

  “You look happy,” Max said, sipping his drink.

  “I’m glad to be dancing.” She remembered both his distance at the beach and his unwillingness to acknowledge Salma’s culpability. But even more keenly she remembered that he had not loved her because he’d been in love with Salma.

  Why can’t I get over that? Of course, she was over it. The offense had occurred between two different people.

  During the band’s rendition of “Soul Kitchen,” a biker tapped Max’s shoulder and shouted to him that his partner was “the most beautiful woman in the bar.”

  Max shouted a reply that Jen couldn’t hear, and she asked, “What did you say?”

  “‘Anywhere.’ Not just in the bar. Anywhere.”

  Later, they sat outside, watching the lighted tips of the cigarettes of bikers standing some distance away.

  Jen decided to challenge him. If he intended to continue defending Salma, she wanted to know about it—and not only for personal reasons. His attitude had a direct bearing on the film.

  “So what do you think of what Teresa said about Salma?”

  “I don’t think she had any reason to lie, to make it up or to remember it wrong. And I think the way the shelter was deployed undoubtedly had something to do with her being burned so badly…”

  “But?”

  “They shouldn’t have been there. They shouldn’t have had to shelter up.”

  “What are you hoping to accomplish? You’ve said you want to see Richard Grass fired, but frankly I don’t think you’re going to accomplish that.”

  Instead of answering, he asked, “Ready to head home?”

  Chagrined, because of every hopeful feeling she’d had about him that night, Jen told herself, You’re Elena’s mom. That’s all you are to him.

  For the first time, she began to see things in Max that might actually hurt her daughter. What girl needed the example of a man who was trapped by the past?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “WAIT TILL YOU SEE the choreograp
hy for my solo,” Elena told her mother as she climbed into the faded Suburban at the Santa Barbara Airport, helping herself to the passenger seat since Max was driving.

  “Elena!” exclaimed Jen, a little surprised by her daughter’s rudeness. Robin would surely have expected to be offered the front seat.

  “Oh, sorry, Grandma.” Remembering herself, Elena began to get out, but Robin said, in a tone dripping with insincerity, “Oh, that’s all right, sweetie. I know how important it is for you to be with your father.”

  Jen read a million things into her mother’s tone of voice. It was a voice that told her Robin and Elena had debated the importance of fathers. It told her that Robin remembered Jen’s opinions on the subject. How ironic, Jen thought. If her mother could only have known. All her old arguments aside, she might almost count it something of a blessing if Max would fade from Elena’s life even more suddenly than he had appeared there.

  Once, these thoughts would have made her ask, What’s wrong with me? These were Robin Delazzeri type of thoughts, thoughts Jen had sworn never to have.

  Max is Elena’s father, and she has a right to see him, whether or not I like him—or he likes me.

  And the last was really the point, wasn’t it? Didn’t she resent the fact that Max didn’t seem completely smitten with her?

  For the past two days, since their motorcycle ride to the beach, since dancing at Cold Springs Tavern and coming to the painful knowledge that the kisses on the night before her birthday had been enough for Max, Jen had refused another invitation for a motorcycle ride—this time to a downtown crafts fair. Max hadn’t asked again.

  “In that case, Elena,” Max said, “you should offer the seat to your mother.”

  “I’m fine,” snapped Jen. She climbed into the back seat.

  “What did you do?” Elena mouthed at her father.

  Max wondered the same thing. Ever since their trip to the beach and dancing two nights before, Jen had been cold to him. What had he said, what had he done, to provoke this response in her?

  It must have to do with Salma. Salma had died, with Max’s unborn child. A fetus, a pregnancy. Jen had given birth to Elena and not told him of her pregnancy out of fear. Fear of rejection.

  You and I are going to talk, Jen Delazzeri, he silently promised. Today, tomorrow, soon.

  THEY HAD a barbecue that evening. Teresa invited Richard Grass, and Jen watched the two of them with interest. Teresa was no longer a beautiful coed. Nonetheless, feelings of friendship had survived between the two of them. Jen sensed they were often talking about the fire, and when they went out to gaze at the canyon, she followed and joined them. “The fire definitely hadn’t spotted below when we started working on that fire line,” Richard was saying.

  “But we couldn’t see it, once it did spot,” Teresa pointed out.

  A critical point. More than one of the ten standard fire orders had been violated. None of them had to say it, the fact was so well-known. Fire orders, once learned, were not forgotten; not for someone who’d spent even a single summer fighting fire. The first letter of each order spelled out the mnemonic device, FIRE ORDERS, which made the series easy to remember.

  Fight fire aggressively, but provide for safety first. Way to start with ambiguity, Jen always thought about that. Safe was not fighting fire aggressively, except possibly with air tankers.

  Initiate all actions based on current and expected fire behavior. The Makal Canyon fire had definitely gone wrong with this one. Because they hadn’t known what the fire was doing.

  F.I.R….

  Recognize current weather conditions and obtain forecasts.

  Ensure instructions are given and understood.

  Obtain current information on fire status.

  Remain in communication with crew members, your supervisor and adjoining forces.

  There had been bad communication in Makal Canyon; the steep terrain that had made fighting the fire so treacherous had also created many dead zones for the radios.

  Determine safety zones and escape routes. Well, that had been done. But when the blowout came, neither group had been able to reach its zone in time.

  Establish lookouts in potentially hazardous situations. As far as Jen knew this had not been done at all, a fact no one, not even the fire investigators, had so far addressed. She wanted to ask Richard, but he was speaking; agreeing with Teresa that they hadn’t known what the fire was doing.

  F.I.R.E. O.R.D.E.R.

  Retain control at all times. Jen had spent many hours in many fires wondering just what control meant. Often, her musings had taken her back to Robin Delazzeri, the quintessential control freak, Jen had thought at times. She didn’t think so tonight. Robin had been frightened, yes, and her fear had made her controlling.

  Damn it, I raised Elena, and now he’s stepping in as though he has equal authority in her life…

  Not fair, Jen. Not true, either.

  F.I.R.E. O.R.D.E.R.S.

  Stay alert, keep calm, think clearly, act decisively.

  Jen understood now that it was her mother’s pain over her rejection by Gino Delazzeri that had led her to use her children as a weapon against him. And that was wrong. But was that all there was to it. Though he hadn’t driven drunk with her and Teresa in the car, she’d definitely seen him tip back more than a few beers.

  Well, you don’t have that excuse, Jen, for keeping Max from Elena. She had no valid excuse.

  “Did you post lookouts on this fire?” Jen asked Richard.

  She saw the hint of reaction before his features smoothed and he began to answer. What was it she’d seen? Surprise? Dislike? “Actually, there was some confusion. It wasn’t my role to post the lookouts. Normally, it would have been, but George and I reconstructed responsibilities to fit this fire. That was a mistake.”

  Massive understatement. Jen wanted this answer on camera. “Let’s grab Bob,” she said, “and do this conversation on camera.”

  Richard looked at the Corona bottle in his hand. “I don’t know. This isn’t my first tonight.”

  It was certainly his first at this barbecue, and Jen was certain, again, that he was lying. I’m going to nail him, she thought, with a barracuda instinct she’d never known she possessed. With his previous answers she’d sensed he was indirectly admitting culpability, admitting that mistakes had been made. Now, he was covering up. And she didn’t believe the nonsense about “reconstructed responsibilities.”

  If he had said, That was another lesson I had to learn from that fire, would she have felt more sympathetic? Max wouldn’t have, she was sure; but Max wasn’t here, wasn’t part of this conversation. He also wasn’t her.

  But she didn’t care for liars or cover-up stories. They did too much damage, and the wrong people took the fall for what went wrong. George, for instance; the fire’s incident commander couldn’t defend himself because he was dead. And if Richard criticized George in the film, family members would be justifiably outraged.

  She wanted, suddenly, to talk to Max. But she wouldn’t. The last she’d seen him, he was inside charming her mother. Elena was old enough that the courts would listen to her if she said, for instance, that she wanted to live with her father. And Elena might want something like that. And she would use it as leverage. It was only a matter of time before she began to voice the refrain, If you don’t let me, I’ll go live with my father.

  Jen and Teresa had never had that option, not back then. Jen supposed they could have run away or left home at sixteen, but by then their mother had succeeded in discouraging their father from contact with them; they saw him seldom.

  To be a mother was to sacrifice. Not only time, but one’s heart. To be big enough to say, He doesn’t love me, but he still loves you. To say, My relationship with him has nothing to do with your relationship with him. To say, Oh, I’m glad you’re spending time together. To say even one kind word about the other parent, after he’d broken your heart.

  Her mother, she knew, had never seen those things as her du
ty.

  “You remember the wildland firefighting safety orders,” Teresa said to her sister. “Do you remember LACES?”

  Aha. Teresa could spot a hypocrite, too. LACES was the acronym for the essential elements of the safety orders. “Lookouts,” Jen ticked off. “Awareness. Communication. Escape routes. Safety zones. So if you look at Makal Canyon from that perspective, all the fire orders were violated.”

  “There were escape routes and there were safety zones. We used the safety zone. You didn’t reach yours because Max chose, instead, to light a backfire—to create a black zone in which you could deploy shelters.”

  “We could never have reached our safety zone,” Jen replied, hearing the anger in her voice, as if someone else had spoken. “Max did the math. He chose to light that backfire, instead of opting for all of us to die.”

  “If he didn’t think the safety zone was good enough, he should have spoken up.”

  “Maybe he did.”

  “To me. I was his supervisor.”

  Jen found Max’s error in not complaining about the selected safety zone too minor to mention. She doubted he would make that kind of mistake today. He’d been a squad boss in his first position of leadership on the hotshot crew. He’d done his job well and had saved lives in Makal Canyon on the day of the blowup.

  Jen said, “I understand your not wanting to be in front of the camera tonight. How about tomorrow?”

  “Can’t. Work party.”

  Jen thought she’d like to be a fly on the wall at that event—if it wasn’t fictional.

  SHE SENSED Max behind her in the kitchen. She’d come in to make a cup of tea, to get away from the sounds of the party and to think about the documentary—its purpose, its stated mission. To review the events in Makal Canyon on July twenty-third, 1994…

  “I saw you talking with Richard.”

  “Do you know how accusing you sound?” Jen asked. “Why shouldn’t I talk to Richard?”

  “You were talking about the fire. Did you find out anything?”

  Jen remembered why she hadn’t gone for another motorcycle ride with Max, remembered his private purpose of removing all hint of stain from Salma’s name—or so she, Jen, saw it.