A Question of Will

by Craig Spector

  But she had left something behind.

  "Holy shit..." he gasped. Dondi scrabbled forward, hunkered down on hands and knees, caught a glimpse of his discovery: a toddler, maybe eighteen months, still and clad in its bargain flannel Barney peejays and wrapped in a wet blanket. Paul couldn’t tell its sex, but the grim tableau was all too clear. The woman, presumably the mother, had tried to get out and been overcome by smoke just as she cleared the deadbolts. In her last moments she had thrown herself over her child, instinctively protective. For all the good it had done.

  "Leave 'em," Dondi said. "We’ll get ‘em on the way back..."

  But Paul was already scooping up the child’s limp form, inching back through the portal. As he turned Dondi got a glimpse of his eyes behind the visor. There was no arguing with that look.

  Behind them, the first fire team was already down the hall, engaging the blaze. Engorged hose splayed across the floor, water hissing against a dull red roar.

  "Great," Dondi muttered as he hefted the body of the mother. "I get all the fun."

  ~ * ~

  They made their way back, dodging hose and sploshing through the impromptu waterfall cascading down the steps. Inside, the fire teams were busy, knocking down the flames. Outside was a circus: the blaze had been stepped up to three-alarm status, with another Engine Company and additional ambulance crews called in to handle the overspill. An Action 9 minivan had already set up shop on the perimeter; their local man-in-the-field Link Lenkershem was busily sniffing the scene for camera-ready carnage and practicing his warm-up pitch, a casual ghoul in Dockers and an L.L. Bean parka.

  "Tragedy strikes as dozens flee into the frigid night," he intoned for the cameras, "as a mysterious blaze claims yet another Glendon property..."

  Joli came up as Paul reached the back door of the nearest ambulance, grabbed a thermo blanket and deposited his tiny bundle on the gurney bed. The paramedics were off tending to the disheveled survivors on the front lawn. Paul stripped off his mask and unslung the airtank, coughed and spat on the pavement. Joli glanced from the fire to Lenkershem, then saw what Paul was doing.

  "Shit, man," Joli exclaimed. "You okay?"

  Paul nodded and gestured back to Dondi, who was sucking wind as he labored under the mother’s dead weight. Joli ran over and pitched in, lifting her as gently as possible off the older man’s shoulder and onto the frigid grass. Dondi collapsed beside her, peeling off his helmet and mask and gloves. Joli started to check for a pulse, but Dondi shook his head.

  "Don’t bother," he said, red-faced, exhausted. He looked to Paul.

  But Paul was not done yet. He checked for a pulse, then peeled open the child’s jumper and placed his ear to its chest.

  Just then Tom came up, sweating, overwhelmed. "Hey, I could use some bodies over here..." he began, then stopped. Paul was working feverishly now: tipping the child’s head back, placing his mouth over its slack lips, blowing air into deflated lungs. He pressed on the tiny chest, counting one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three. Nothing. He repeated the process. Time crawled. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three...

  Dondi came over just as the camera crew caught sight of the dead woman on the lawn, the tense drama playing out at the back of the ambulance. Five-hundred-watt battery-powered halogens swept across them as Lenkershem’s crew zeroed in, video vultures scoping fresh kill.

  "Let it go, man," Dondi said. "You done what you could." But Paul continued to labor over the tiny body, his features intent, grimly focused. "Paul," Dondi said, reaching out. "Paul, man, it’s over..."

  But Paul just shook him off, grabbing his oxygen tank and disconnecting the facemask. Dondi shrugged and pitched in, opening the valve on the tank as Paul placed the hose directly over the child’s mouth and nose. The tank hissed, feeding pure oxygen. The babe’s half-lidded eyes were fixed and dilated, pupils milky. Paul pulled the hose away, listened to its chest, massaged it again.

  As he worked, a small crowd began to form; refugees and rubberneckers, all drawn to a fleeting glimpse of a fate worse than their own. The paramedics returned, pushing through the throng. Lenkershem’s eyes were fixed and dilated, as well, but for another reason entirely. He signaled to his camerawoman; she nodded and zoomed in.

  Suddenly the little chest heaved.

  A collective gasp sounded; Paul laughed, a nervous release, then redoubled his efforts. "C’mon, honey, c’mon," Paul murmured, part pep-talk, part prayer. "You can do it, I know you can. Breathe... breathe..."

  And then, as if in answer, the child hitched and gulped. Its eyes fluttered and squeezed shut, and in the next moment the air was filled with a raw-throated banshee wail. It squirmed in his grasp: full of fear, full of pain and rage and indignation.

  But it was alive.

  The crowd watched, amazed. Paul was laughing out loud now, blinking back tears. He scooped the child up in the blanket, hugged it to his chest as the paramedics moved in and Dondi and Joli shouted and high-fived each other, giddy with adrenaline and victory. Someone started to clap. A torrent of applause followed, a rippling wave of jubilation and relief. Lenkershem smiled, sentiment-surfing the moment, but the glint in his eyes said he would have been just as happy, either way.

  The child bawled like nobody’s business. It was royally pissed. Paul handed the toddler over to a waiting ambo crew, and a trip to St. Anthony’s.

  "Way to go, champ," Dondi said, clapping him on the back as they stumbled back onto the lawn and collapsed, dog-tired. "Way to fucking go..."

  Paul nodded thanks, too spent to speak. As the ambulance pulled away Paul fumbled inside his turnout coat for a cigarette, his mind a merciful blank. Dondi beat him to the punch, offering a Montclair 100.

  "Jesus, how can you smoke these things," Paul grimaced, as Dondi lit him up. "If I’m gonna kill myself, at least give me a Marlboro."

  "You’re welcome."

  Paul leaned back and exhaled smoke and frosted breath, realized he had completely forgotten about the cold. Somewhere in the deeper recesses he knew that there was a world of hurt awaiting the life he’d just reclaimed: hospitals, institutions, buried memories, nightmares, a lifetime of damage. But at the moment, he was simply happy that there was any life at all. That had to count for something.

  Behind them, the second Engine Company had fired up the remote water cannon, Super Squirt, and aimed it at the roofline. As the chromed nozzle roared, a white arc of pressurized fog curtained down, sweeping gracefully back and forth. Lights refracted off the mist, an aurora borealis shimmer. Ice glistened everywhere, magical and surreal at a distance, punishing up close. The fire was abating, knocked down at last.

  Dondi shivered. "C’mon. I’m freezing."

  They stood, joints creaking, reeking of smoke and sweat, and made their way back to the rig. It was twelve-thirty, and technically-speaking, a new day. But there was still cleanup and salvage to do, victims to transport, gear to repack, a dozen other tasks in the aftermath. And miles to go before they slept.

  Georgie glanced over as they passed and nodded, then went back to bitching at his men. Coming from him, it was tantamount to a ticker-tape parade, a combination of good job, congratulations, and don’t let it go to your head.

  Paul laughed through chattering teeth.

  "What?" Dondi asked. "What’s so funny?"

  "I was just thinking," Paul replied. "Was it a boy or a girl?"

  "Beats me, pal. I forgot to ask it."

  Paul smiled. Another day, another one hundred and sixteen dollars and seventy-one cents, before taxes. Tomorrow, they’d sleep in.

  And then they’d get up, and do it again.

  THREE

  The needle was short and sharp, the hand that wielded it soft, casually precise. It was a habit borne of years of experience, and as Paul watched, Julie jabbed the hypo into the tender flesh of her hip without even breaking her train of thought.

  "So there’s this new program the district wants us to implement," she said, leaning on
the rim of the sink and twisting for a better view. "It’s all about alcohol and drug abuse. Simpson wants us to have our classes come up with a series of posters that illustrate the perils of drug abuse, says he wants to use them in a regional show. Very hardcore, makes D.A.R.E. look like the Grateful Dead — you know, smoke pot once and you’re doomed. Can you believe it?"

  "Hmmph," Paul mumbled tiredly.

  "That’s what I said," Julie continued. "I mean, I told him this isn’t art, this is propaganda. We’ve basically been told to work the theme that if they ever even so much as think about smoking a joint or drinking and driving, they’ll die. They’re in third grade, for God’s sake." She rolled her eyes and finished the injection, swabbed the site with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball and let the nightshirt slip back over her hips.

  "So then one of my kids, she’s with her dad and he stops to get a Big Gulp at the 7-Eleven, and when he gets back into the car with it she starts crying, and she says to him, ‘But, Daddy, you’re drinking!’ I mean, the poor kid thought he was gonna crash and burn from having a Pepsi."

  Paul grunted. Julie laughed; ironic, angry. "Things are really getting nuts," she said. "I’ve already got one kid who’s scared to do the creative visualization exercises because his parents are born-again Christians and they told him that imaginary worlds are unbiblical."

  She clipped the tip off the needle and tossed the disposable syringe into a little hardwood trash container reserved for that purpose. Her daily insulin injections were as much a part of the rhythm of life as going to work or bitching about the system, or watching her blood sugar levels, or getting up too damned early on a Sunday.

  "Plus," she continued, "now they’re talking about mandatory urine tests, for teachers and students. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. So I said to Simpson, leaving aside for the moment issues of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, just how do they propose to pay for all this? And guess what Simpson said. Guess whose, quote, nonessential, unquote, budget they want to cut?" Julie paused dramatically.

  But Paul just grunted again. Julie looked at him and frowned. "Glad to see you share my rage," she said, only mildly sarcastic.

  "Sorry," he replied. "I’m beat."

  "Poor baby." She softened, let it slide. It was less righteous rant than end-of-the-week wrap-up, anyway, and she could see he looked thrashed. "Tough night?"

  "Yeah, kinda." Paul sat on the fuzzy covered toilet seat, trying to jumpstart his consciousness. He was bleary-eyed and rumpled, clad only in black boxers and a wrinkled Ren and Stimpy t-shirt that read I’ll keeeel you, you stinking blob of protoplasm! His hair was plastered flat on one side of his head, unfortunately emphasizing his receding hairline. He felt about three hundred years old.

  Julie, by way of glaring contrast, was maddeningly fresh and chipper for ten a.m. on a Sunday. She was two years younger than Paul but looked ten, and was the kind of cheerful spirit that aged so gracefully it appeared that she barely did so at all. She was also a morning person by nature, and could roll out of a dead sleep at the crack of dawn, do her yoga on the braided bedroom rug, then be showered and dressed and ready for action before Paul could even remember where his eyelids were, much less how to use them. It both annoyed and endeared him to her by turns, and he loved her for it, though Paul would be the first to admit that the fact that they only slept together three nights a week helped immensely.

  "Heads up," Julie said and leaned past Paul, going on tip-toe to place the insulin kit on the top shelf of the cabinet: another habit, though Kyra was certainly old enough by now not to worry about it. As she moved Paul could smell his wife’s warm bodyscent tinged by the faintest trace of perfume, a soft and musky woman-smell, delicate and familiar. The nightshirt was an anniversary present from Victoria’s Secret; it hung loose around her shoulders and unbuttoned to mid-sternum, and as she brushed against him he caught a glimpse of small breasts beneath patterned flannel, nipples dark against her pale skin. He nuzzled his face between them, and wrapped his arms around her waist. He started to growl. Julie giggled girlishly, then realized he was doing it less out of lust than pure exhaustion, and it wasn’t a growl but a snore.

  She squirmed in his grasp. "God, babe, if you’re that dead, go back to bed," she said. "Sleep in for once."

  "Can’t," he mumbled, face still buried. "Gotta meet Dondi at the house at noon." By ‘the house’ he meant the little rowhouse on Marley Street, the latest in an unending parade of Paul’s side projects. Paul said something else that featured the words sheetrock and fixtures, but it was otherwise unintelligible. Julie mussed his hair.

  "You work too hard," she replied, then leaned forward and kissed the thinning spot at the crown of his head. Her own hair was a loose cascade of dark curls, unbound in weekend day-off celebration, and it spilled over her shoulders like an ebony waterfall. Her nose crinkled. "Ugh," she said. "Shower immediately. You smell like an charcoal briquette."

  Paul nodded tiredly. He’d already had one at shift’s end at the stationhouse, but the stench of burnt property and cindered lives lingered on, in his pores, in his bones, probably in his DNA. Julie pushed away and Paul stood, stripping down and turning on the water.

  As he stepped into the stall Paul saw Julie slip her nightshirt off and stare fretfully over her shoulder into the full-length cheval mirror that stood in the corner. Like the rest of the house, the bathroom was done up in a kind of Ikea cum Town-and-Country casual, with a dash of Frank Lloyd Wright: an eclectic mix of rustic and modern, oak, honey maple, burnished cherry and black lacquer, all in a funky, comfortable hodgepodge. Pennsylvania Dutch stenciling and quaint Shaker reproduction sat side-by-side with clean, stark Scandinavian, with the odd touch of Greenwich Village bohemia, Santa Fe terra cotta and Navajo thrown in for ballast. It was pure Julie, and it suited her to a tee, and like everything else in their home, she somehow made it all work.

  They had been married for seventeen years and together for damned near twenty, but in Paul’s eyes she was still the same amazingly lithe Italian girl from the South Shore who’d come to New York to study at Parson’s. She met Paul at a loft party in Hoboken, once upon a time. They spent the evening talking about everything from Monty Python to the Shroud of Turin, were living together within a month, married within a year. It was an instant and mutual lust that had blossomed into friendship, ultimately ripening into a deep, abiding love. She was his other half, his better half, and the embodiment of all he considered good in the world.

  After Kyra’s arrival Julie’s figure had morphed from willowy girlishness into a wonderfully feminine lushness, though she still wore a size six and labored ceaselessly to keep it so. The long, thin C-section scar that arced across her pubic line was, by any estimation, her sole imperfection, and though it bothered her endlessly, Paul loved it simply because it was hers. But he could tell by both her body language and the way her brow was knitted that it was coming, the inevitable follow-up to the genial week’s-end bitchfest: the dreaded question, a marital pop quiz, as immutable as the tides.

  Paul ducked under the shower massage’s pelting spray, but it was no use: the water pressure wasn’t loud enough, and the stall was a dead end. Julie’s voice came over the curtain; mock-casual, a practiced anxiety.

  "Babe," she called out, "does my butt look big?"

  Paul pretended not to hear. Pointless. "Hon-ee?" Again, sing-song.

  "Of course not," he called out. "Don’t be ridiculous."

  "Seriously," she continued. "I think my ass is getting really huge. Do you think?"

  Paul was wide awake now. This was marital no-man’s land; there was literally no right answer, and booby-traps galore. If he said no again, she’d say he was lying and torture him relentlessly until he gave in, at which point he was doomed; if he said, sure, but that just means there’s more of you to love, he was dead meat. Pretending he had soap in his ears was out of the question, as was the real reply, the one he could never say because it wasn’t part of the game and cut too close to the
bone, besides. The real reply went something like, what are you talking about, I’m the one with the wrinkles and the creeping hair loss, I’m aging in dog years while you just get better with every passing birthday, you’re more beautiful now than when I first married you, and after all this time I still can’t believe I ever got you in the first place...

  Instead, Paul dodged, invoking their daughter as a kind of psychological human shield. "Babe, where’s Kyra?"

  As if by some secret signal, a thudding rap groove suddenly sounded from her bedroom, on the other side of the wall. Paul winced. It was a girl-thing, a subconscious conspiracy. They were ganging up on him.

  "Answer me." Tone shift. Uh-oh. Though his feet were firmly on Italian tile, they might as well have been skating thinnest ice.

  "Julie, trust me," Paul said, in the most egregiously earnest tone he could muster. "You are not fat, you do not look fat, you are light-years from fat. You are the archetypal anti-flab. Other women hate you for this. I know. I took a poll."

  "But my butt looks big."

  "Your butt is perfect," he corrected. "Your ass is a work of art."

  "Yeah?" she called back skeptically. "Which artist?"

  "Michelangelo..." Paul offered.

  "Michelangelo liked men," Julie countered. "All his women were dumpy and had fat thighs."

  "Maxfield Parish, then..." he said, going off the other end of the map entirely. No good. "Frank Frazetta?" Nope. Paul cast wildly, assiduously avoiding dada and cubists. "..um, Vargas?"

  "Please," she scoffed. "My tits are too small. Vargas women have breasts like zeppelins."

  "Boticelli’s Birth of Venus...?" he offered. No sale, and no points for his grasp of art history. Julie poked her head through the curtain. "If you say Rubens," she said, "you’re a dead man."

  "Eeek." Paul threw his hands up in a passable imitation of Munch’s The Scream, hoping the irony would not be lost. Julie did not look amused. Paul sighed.

  "Ya got me, babe," he confessed. "I give."