Maine

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  “This is Timmy’s friend,” Alice said.

  “Daniel Kelleher,” Daniel said, extending his arm and shaking Henry’s hand vigorously, like he was hammering a nail. “Pleased to meet you, uh—”

  “Henry,” Henry said. “And this is Mary, of course.”

  “My sister,” Alice said quickly.

  “I’ve heard of you,” Mary said, without a hint of her old shyness.

  “All good, I hope,” Daniel replied.

  “Oh yes.” She turned to Alice and smiled. “Nice dress.”

  “I know it’s yours, I—”

  “No, really, it looks lovely on you,” Mary said. “Have it.”

  The plain statement made Alice’s blood run hard and fast. How dare her sister speak to her that way, as if she were above her now? She tried to remember the Philippians—humility before all else.

  Henry and Daniel leaned into a swarm of men trying to place their orders at the bar.

  “I’m having a heck of a time of it,” Daniel said, and Henry simply signaled to a bartender in a tuxedo and said, “Charles, can you help us out?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Winslow,” he said.

  Daniel turned pink.

  “How’s it going?” Mary asked Alice when they were alone.

  Alice took a deep breath, trying to move past her bitter feelings.

  “The date is clearly a flop,” she said with a conciliatory smile. “Thanks, boys.”

  Mary lowered her voice and looked over her shoulder, making sure Daniel couldn’t hear. “He doesn’t seem so bad. You’re too hung up on looks.”

  “So you admit he’s ugly.”

  Mary smiled. “Shh! No! A bit dishwatery, maybe.”

  “I’m not exactly in the market for dishwater.”

  “Fair enough.” Mary smiled. “It’s true you two make a bit of an odd couple.”

  “I told him I wanted to be an artist and he laughed.”

  “What!”

  “More or less. He’s probably right. It probably won’t ever happen.”

  Mary shook her head. “Did you tell him you’ve sold a painting?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Alice said, though she was grateful to her sister for thinking that just then.

  “You look dynamite in that dress, by the way,” Mary said. “Better than I ever did.”

  “Hush,” Alice said.

  The men returned with the drinks, and Mary and Daniel started a conversation about the navy, specifically about Timmy’s lifelong obsession with playing pranks. According to Daniel, their brother had gotten socked in the face for shaving off a shipmate’s left eyebrow when the fella was passed out drunk.

  “Why not both eyebrows?” Mary asked.

  As Daniel began to respond, Henry gently grabbed Alice’s wrist to get her attention.

  “Can I tell you a secret, kiddo?” he whispered into her ear.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “I’m a bit intoxicated,” he said.

  “Me too,” she said. “Great secret.”

  “No, no, that’s not it. The secret is that I’m going to ask your sister to marry me tomorrow at the beach. I’ve got the ring right here.” He tapped his breast pocket and gave her a wink. “Picked it up this afternoon before I met her at the theater. You’re the only person who knows other than my sister. My father wants me to head up a branch of the company down in New York for a year or two, so we’ll likely be moving there after the wedding.”

  Alice forced out a smile and said that it was wonderful news. This was what she had wanted. But she felt herself filling up with anger—why should Mary have a love, a real love, and not her? Why should Mary be the one to go free and be a wealthy woman, living as she pleased, meeting all sorts of fascinating people? Alice had thought Henry would bring good fortune to them both, but perhaps that had been naïve. Here she was with the dud to end all duds, and there was Mary, living like Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, off to New York for a new adventure.

  Alice knew her rage and her stubbornness often burst from nowhere, but knowing didn’t change it. A daydream, that’s what Daniel had said about her life. Maybe he was right. Alice felt like a fool.

  “I’m going to ask your dad for his permission in the morning while you and Mary are at church, which I’m not terribly excited about,” Henry went on. “If you could try to keep her out a half hour longer than usual or so. Maybe go for breakfast.”

  “Absolutely,” she said briskly. Then she turned to the others and said, “I have to go home now.”

  “What? No! You two should come downstairs and have a round with us,” Mary said. “It’s not that late.”

  “Sure!” Daniel said.

  “No thank you,” Alice said.

  “Oh, come on,” Mary said. “Let us buy you a drink.”

  “You’re acting a bit big for your britches,” Alice hissed at her sister, echoing their father’s words of a few weeks earlier.

  Mary frowned. “Am I?”

  With that, Alice felt guilty. What had her sister done to her, really?

  “Let’s go downstairs,” Mary said.

  Down below was the Melody Lounge, a dim bar with booths along the wall, where Alice had allowed Martin McDonough to kiss her right out in the open one night over the summer, considering it her patriotic duty, since he would be heading to Germany the following day, though after a moment she had told him to stop.

  Alice looked toward the table where Henry had been sitting. Naturally, her sister wouldn’t deign to introduce her to their sophisticated friends. She saw that once Mary was formally a part of that world, Alice herself would be invisible to her. New York was hours away. Why hadn’t Mary told her?

  “I really can’t,” she said. “I’m going home now.”

  “Oh, Alice!” Mary said.

  Alice ignored her. She turned to Daniel. “Please get my coat.”

  He looked crestfallen, but he did as she said.

  She stood there with Mary and Henry in silence until he came back. Alice burned with embarrassment when Mary caught sight of her own mink hanging on Daniel’s arm, though neither of them said a word about it.

  Alice put the coat on. “See you,” she said to them. She moved toward the exit without waiting for a reply. The crowd had grown even thicker now. Every table on the dine-and-dance floor was filled, and people stood in any empty corner or patch of space. It was near impossible to move. Daniel followed close behind, careful not to lose her in the throng.

  “You should be nicer to your sister,” he said loudly, trying to be heard above the hubbub of voices and music and clinking glasses.

  “You don’t know the first thing about it,” she said, pushing past a group of men in heated conversation.

  “No, you’re right. I don’t,” he said. “Slow down, I’ll walk you.”

  “Walk me? I’m all the way in Dorchester,” she said, still moving. “And anyway, I live with my parents and I’m a good girl, so forget whatever it is you had in mind.”

  She knew he had nothing of the sort in mind, but she was spoiling for a fight.

  She went through the revolving door and he followed. Outside, the air was frigid. Alice pulled the fur coat tight around her waist.

  “I meant I’d walk you to a taxi,” he said. “You’re bound and determined not to like me, aren’t you, Alice Brennan?”

  She grinned with closed lips.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you,” he said. “I’m sorry for—well, I’m not quite sure what. I guess another date is out of the question.”

  “That’s right,” she said. Then, a little quieter, “Sorry for spoiling your evening.”

  “You didn’t spoil anything,” he said. “The night’s still young. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go back in there and find myself a pretty girl to dance with.”

  “You ought to,” she said.

  He smiled goofily. “Shoot, I hoped that would make you jealous.”

  Daniel raised his arm to hail a taxi for her. She looked at him and thought that
she would probably never see him again and she didn’t much care. She was eager to get home. But just as a cab pulled to the curb, Alice saw Mary coming out of the club.

  Daniel didn’t notice. He had opened the back door of the taxi and now stood there awkwardly, with his hand on the car’s roof.

  “You take this one,” she said quickly. She didn’t need him hanging about while she and Mary argued. “I’ll get the next one that comes along.”

  “No, I insist,” he said.

  “Really, look, there’s another pulling up now, and it’s going in my direction.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  Alice nodded. They said good night. She let him kiss her on the cheek. Then she watched him climb into the cab and ride off down Piedmont Street.

  Mary was approaching. Alice held her breath.

  “What got into you back there?” Mary asked when she reached her side. “Why did you run off like that?”

  Alice just looked at her, without saying a word.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Mary said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m tired,” Alice said stubbornly. “I want to go home.”

  “I’ll come with you then,” Mary said.

  “What about Henry? You’re going to just leave him inside?”

  “We’re here with other friends; he’ll be fine,” Mary said. “And anyway we’re going to the beach tomorrow for some reason, even though it’s freezing out. It’s where we had our first kiss.”

  Alice realized then why he had chosen to propose there. And while every bit of her said that she ought to be excited for Mary, she just felt numb.

  “Oh yes, your other friends,” Alice said. “I hope they didn’t catch a glimpse of you talking to the likes of me.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Mary said. “For heaven’s sake, Alice, I’m terrified of those people. Most of them wouldn’t save me from drowning if it meant their trousers might get damp.”

  Alice’s heart stung, to think of her sister that way.

  “You can’t leave,” Mary said. “Something’s happened. I need to talk to you.”

  “What is it?” Alice asked.

  “Henry is moving to New York. He just told me tonight—well, someone let the cat out of the bag at dinner. He looked really peeved and said we’d discuss it tomorrow. Alice, I am so afraid that he’s taking me to the beach to end it. I had this vision of you and me tonight, turning into those horrible old spinsters who live at home forever.”

  She hadn’t seemed worried inside the club, but Mary had always been good at painting a rosy picture in mixed company.

  Alice’s chest tightened. In the morning, Mary’s bad dream would show itself to be a misunderstanding. Mary would get everything Alice herself had wished for. Those horrible old spinsters, she had said. Was that to be Alice’s fate?

  She might have put her sister at ease, whispered that tomorrow Mary would get what she wanted most. But instead Alice said, “You shouldn’t have gone to bed with him.”

  The words were a sweet release as they came out of her mouth, but she instantly felt bad once she’d said them.

  Mary looked taken aback. She bit her lip and stood there in silence until Alice let out an involuntary shiver.

  “You must be cold,” Mary said. She reached into her purse, “Here, take my mittens.”

  “I have some,” Alice snapped. It was then that she realized she had left Mary’s suede gloves sitting on the bar. “Damn it to hell,” she said, before she had time to think. “I forgot them inside.”

  “Which ones?” Mary said, in a tone that implied she already knew.

  “The gray suede.”

  “Oh, Alice, they’re my favorite—you know that. I saved up to buy them.”

  Alice knew she ought to feel guilty, but she didn’t.

  “Go get them, please,” Mary said.

  “I’m not going back into that crowd,” Alice said.

  “Quit being willful, and go get them, and I’ll hail us a cab.”

  “No.”

  “Alice!”

  “Why do you care so much? You know Henry will buy you a new pair.”

  “Why must you always be so pigheaded?”

  “I’m not! My head hurts. And you’re the one who wants the silly gloves so bad.”

  Mary blinked. “Fine then. You hail us a cab, and I’ll get them.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Mary turned around with a sigh and went back into the club.

  Alice stood there, still as stone. She lit a cigarette and smoked it down to the bottom.

  After a few minutes, a taxi ambled down the block, and she waved it over, climbing into the backseat. She thought of leaving Mary behind, but at the last second she said, “I’m waiting for my sister, she’ll just be a minute.”

  She pulled a compact from her purse and stared into the mirror. Her makeup seemed to have drooped. She looked ten years older than she had when the evening began.

  Mary was taking ages. Alice imagined her inside, saying her long good-byes, as if she weren’t going to see Henry again tomorrow.

  The driver shifted impatiently in his seat. Alice started to feel a bit embarrassed. Hurry up, she thought.

  Still looking in the mirror, she heard a ruckus out by the doors, voices booming, the sort of noise that could mean only true joy or terror. She felt jealous of whoever they were for a moment, but then there came the sound of breaking glass and the wail of the fire alarm.

  The driver yelled, “Jesus Christ! We gotta get outta here, lady.”

  Alice looked up, confused. Smoke poured through the windows of the club. People were shoving one another to get out at the revolving door, its panes shattering in the fray. They streamed out to the sidewalk, all of them yelling, crying.

  Without thinking, she jumped out of the cab, unable to breathe. The driver sped off.

  She scanned the sidewalk, praying that Mary had already come out.

  Seconds seemed like hours, as she stood there. She felt cemented to the ground, unable to move. Sirens roared and then firemen pushed past Alice, trying to get inside.

  “You’ve got to scram, honey,” one of them said. “You’re going to get hurt.”

  “My sister’s in there!” she said, frantic. “You have to help her.”

  “Just go on home,” he said. “Tell your parents. Your sister will be okay. Just go home.”

  Alice watched them move toward the doors at the edges of the building, but they did not go in. They pushed and pushed until one firefighter screamed over his shoulder to a few others, who were unwinding a hose from the truck: “Christ, we can’t get in. They’re screaming bloody murder in there. The doors must be locked from inside.”

  “Break ’em down,” someone yelled.

  They took axes to the doors, but it was no use.

  “There’s not enough time!” the first guy shouted.

  Alice felt like she might pass out. She wanted to run inside and grab Mary’s hand, but the front entrance was already clogged with people, lying one atop another like fallen dominoes, some of them screaming for help in agonizing tones, some of them already trampled and dying. She was terrified, too afraid to be brave.

  The firemen broke in through the windows as best they could, and a few people managed to get out that way. She watched them, her stomach a jumble of nerves. She prayed as she searched the faces for Mary’s.

  The sidewalk, which had been quiet and near empty a few minutes earlier, was now swarming with chaos. Those who managed to get out screamed in horror for their loved ones still inside. Sailors and soldiers, all home on leave for Thanksgiving, just out having themselves a night, were suddenly thrown into rescue duty. They had escaped death in combat overseas, but now they were carrying people out like mad, running back into the fire five times, some of them never reemerging on the sixth.

  “We can’t get to them all,” yelled a young boy with a heavy older woman in his arms.

  Another moaned, “Oh Jesus, Jesus. When
I went to pull her out, her arm came right off in my hands.”

  Alice shouted at them: “You have to get a girl named Mary. Please! She’s wearing a green dress. Please!”

  Flames burst through the roof of the club, and a huge crowd gathered in the street, seeming to come from all corners of the city, blocking the path of the fire trucks, until soldiers formed a human chain and pushed the throngs down Shawmut Avenue.

  It had all happened so fast. Alice ran toward Broadway, thinking that perhaps she could find her brothers at the cinema. They’d be able to save Mary, she knew it. Before she could turn the corner, she saw a handful of people inside the club who had managed to break the small windowpanes along Piedmont Street, but had gotten stuck in the windows’ metal bars, their heads out, halfway to safety, their bodies burning as they screamed. A priest stood before them on the sidewalk, reading them their last rites.

  Alice looked on and screamed her sister’s name. She could not move.

  Injured people lay on the sidewalk and on the floor of the garage next door to the club, waiting for help. After a while, ambulances roared, rolling in from Lynn, Newton, Brookline, and the Charlestown Navy Yard, but there still weren’t enough of them. Taxicabs drove the overflow.

  A newspaper delivery truck was allowed to come through, and Alice watched as the two men inside began to carelessly toss folks into the back. She raised her voice to protest before realizing that all of them were dead.

  Alice vomited into a sewer grate. Her head throbbed. She felt like she might faint. She leaned forward a bit, losing her balance. A young guy in uniform came up to her, taking her by the elbows.

  “Miss,” he said. “Are you all right? Miss, we’ve got to get you home.”

  She did not remember getting on the streetcar, or walking up the block to her parents’ house. But she found herself on the front porch, the stillness of the neighborhood impossible to comprehend after what she had just seen. Then she was turning the doorknob and stepping inside, removed from her body as if in a dream.

  They were all sitting in the den. Their faces lit up when she walked through the door.

  “You’re alive!” her mother said, excited to see Alice in a way she never had been before. “There’s a horrible fire at the Cocoanut Grove. We heard about it on the radio. Oh Lord, thank you.”