Home Fires

by Luanne Rice

  “This is amazing,” Maggie said.

  “Karen said it was of things she loved. That’s you.” Anne pointed to the drawing of Maggie.

  “And that’s you and Uncle Matt. The beach. Gramercy Park … what are those?” Maggie pointed to the white cubes.

  “I don’t know,” Anne said.

  Maggie narrowed her eyes, lost in thought.

  “They look like rusty old stoves,” Maggie said.

  “I don’t know. Karen told me the picture was of paradise,” Anne said, gently taking the paper out of Maggie’s hand.

  “Paradise,” Maggie said thoughtfully. She repeated it: “Paradise.”

  But when Anne turned to look at her, Maggie was frowning. It shook Anne deeply, seeing the expression on her face. As if Maggie had just thought of something terrible. Her heart in her throat, Anne was just about to ask what it was, but suddenly Maggie flashed a smile.

  “Could I have a glass of water?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure,” Anne said. Knowing Maggie wanted to change the subject, she went into the kitchen. She took Karen’s picture with her. When she returned, Maggie was leafing through a magazine. Anne’s mind blocked out the question she had been about to ask. It was gone. Her mind was blank.

  Just as well. Right now she had to focus on Maggie, on driving her home and making sure she would be okay. That’s what mattered right now.

  Chapter 6

  It was a whirlwind tour of libraries and hockey rinks, deans and coaches, dorm rooms and student centers, and snow-covered college greens. Thomas and Ned Devlin took turns driving, and whoever drove got to pick the radio station. Behind the wheel now, Thomas Devlin tuned in to Country 96.6 and listened to some singer’s sweet, lonely lament.

  “Dad,” Ned said. “You’re listening to more of that tear-jerk stuff, and there’s that lunatic smile back again. Are you going crazy or something? Should I be worried?”

  “Far from it,” Thomas said. “I’m happy, that’s all.”

  “If you say so,” Ned said, sounding profoundly unconvinced.

  Thomas nodded, turning the radio up a notch.

  “It’s just that I keep expecting you to make some kind of bizarre announcement. Like you’re moving to Florida or converting to some weird religion. Or like you have a girlfriend.”

  Glancing over, Thomas Devlin saw the blush spread up Ned’s neck, behind his ears, and into his sideburns. Thomas felt the bad side of his face tugging upward in an even broader smile.

  “Would any of those things bother you in particular?”

  “Maybe the weird religion.”

  “You can relax, there. When you’ve spent as much time in parochial school as I did, you realize you’re Catholic for life.”

  “You just seem different,” Ned said, even as he seemed to relax perceptibly. He slouched in the truck seat, trying to get his big frame into a comfortable position. He had never really liked long car rides. Finally he settled in, one knee resting against the dashboard.

  “Different?” Thomas Devlin asked, when Ned stopped fidgeting.

  “Like something’s going on.”

  “Hell, Ned. Plenty’s going on! How often do I get to tour the best colleges in America and hear what a great kid I have?”

  Ned shot him a glance full of boyish pleasure. Without leaning forward, he turned down the radio, the better to hear his father’s praise.

  “Yeah?” Ned said.

  “All the coaches want you, the admission folks want you. Who wouldn’t? You’re an academic all-American,” Thomas said. Even the players, who Thomas knew could start off feeling wary and competitive toward a potential teammate, had taken to him. Ned was as trusting and friendly as a big golden-retriever puppy, and people liked him right away.

  “I liked Dartmouth best,” Ned said. “I knew I would.”

  “It’s a great school.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll get in. I’d have to get a lot of scholarship help to go. And loans.”

  “I have the feeling you’ll get in. I was glad to see you sent your poems. The admissions guy, Mister … ?”

  “Mr. McCabe.”

  “Yes. He liked them very much. So do I, Ned. They’re really something.”

  “Thanks,” Ned said, embarrassed.

  When Ned was fifteen, he had written four hauntingly beautiful poems about his mother. His freshman English teacher submitted them, with Ned’s permission, to a colleague at the Massachusetts Review. They were published the following spring. The first Thomas knew of the poems was when he picked up his mail at the post office and found a package from Ned with a note to please see pages 20–22. It was the Review. That night Thomas Devlin didn’t go to bed. He stayed up all night reading the poems over and over. They shimmered with love for Sarah, and an almost unbelievable knowledge of her, and they made Thomas Devlin see her through the eyes of her son.

  Now, driving along, he felt a rush of sad, sweet pride. He wished that somehow Sarah could know that they’d made a boy like Ned. The miracle of it, to Thomas, was that she had died when Ned was six, and he’d still turned out so fine: in spite of being raised, not counting the year after the fire, solely by his father.

  “Do you miss Mom?” Ned asked.

  “Sure I do,” Thomas replied, but the question took him by surprise. She had been gone for so long. Thinking of her as little as possible had been essential to his survival in the early days. He had trained himself to forget.

  Right after the fire, when thoughts of Sarah had been most unbearable, Thomas Devlin had prayed that he would die. Nurses in the burn unit would pump him full of morphine, and it would zip through his veins straight into the air. You need skin to hold drugs inside a body, and Thomas Devlin had no skin. He had existed as pure pain. To him, his entire existence, his agony, was Sarah.

  Later, when he could keep the drugs inside, he used them to forget. They dulled his memories and his love. They dulled Sarah.

  “Do you think about your mother?” he asked.

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what you remember. You were pretty young.”

  “I have a long memory,” Ned said. He stopped, as if he’d decided to keep the recollections private. But then, perhaps fearing that his father would think him rude, he continued. “I remember how pretty she was. How she smelled like soap and powder. Violets, or something.”

  “Piccadilly Violets, that’s right. I’d forgotten.” Thomas smiled at the lost memory. Every Christmas Sarah wanted a bath set you could only get at Filene’s. It came with bath powder, guest soaps, and cologne, and the package showed a little girl selling violets in Piccadilly Circus.

  “She’d sure be proud of you,” he said.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Thomas Devlin turned the radio back up. He wasn’t certain why, but he didn’t think they should talk anymore just then. Ned must have agreed, because they rode along in comfortable silence for the next twenty or so miles.

  “We’re here,” Ned said as they passed the Deerfield Inn. The statement came out with a thud, as if he’d been reluctant to deliver it. Perhaps Ned, like his father, wasn’t quite ready for the trip to end.

  “This whole tour has been a thrill,” Thomas Devlin said, driving slower than necessary.

  “You know that stuff I said earlier, about being afraid your smiling meant you were about to drop a bombshell?”

  “The stuff about Florida, religion, and a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’d definitely mind you converting to a weird religion,” Ned said. “But I’d mind if you decided to move to Florida, too. It’s too far away.”

  “We’d miss the island.”

  “Yeah. Summers on the island definitely beat summers in Miami,” Ned said.

  “Yeah,” Thomas said. He was waiting for Ned to make mention of the third thing, the girlfriend. But it never came. Ned’s silence filled the car. It had the power and weight of a blessing, and it left both men�
��s cheeks beet red.

  “Take care of yourself, Dad,” Ned said, when they pulled up in front of his dorm.

  “You, too,” Thomas Devlin said, beaming as wide as his face would allow: with love for his sweet son and with the anticipated pleasure of the woman he would see when he returned to the island.

  EVER since the fire, Gabrielle had expected Anne to say that she had made a mistake by coming to the island in the middle of winter, that she was returning to New York. Instead, she’d taken an apartment in town and commenced looking for a job. It boggled Gabrielle’s mind. Why would anyone with Anne’s creature comforts abandon the finer things in a New York life for the hardships of an island winter?

  The two sisters stood in Gabrielle’s kitchen peeling root vegetables. Gabrielle had thought a chicken pot pie would be just the thing to warm everyone right down to their toes.

  “Parsnips,” Anne said. “Whoever would have thought we’d be able to get parsnips out here in February?”

  “Excuse me, but are you saying islanders are food rubes?” Gabrielle asked, only half-kidding. “Granted, it might not be Balducci’s, but for a market its size … Besides, what’s so sophisticated about parsnips?”

  Anne chuckled. She trimmed the parsnip, threw it into the crock, and reached for a turnip.

  “I didn’t say sophisticated. I was thinking of variety,” Anne said. “When we were little, weren’t carrots about the only fresh vegetables we could get out here? And maybe iceberg lettuce?”

  “I like to think the Seduction Table has upped the culinary standards around here.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  Gabrielle dropped her peeler in the sink and fiddled with the portable-TV antenna. Oprah, her hero, was on, and a storm of static was drowning her out. At the best of times Gabrielle could get only two stations with any clarity, and high winds last week had blown the big antenna off the roof. Gabrielle turned the knobs, trying to clear the screen snow and let Oprah shine through, but it was a losing battle.

  “I would trade my husband for cable,” Gabrielle said.

  Anne chuckled again. Gabrielle glanced over, on her guard. She had been half-serious, but she didn’t like Anne agreeing with her.

  “You’re in a good mood,” she said, clicking off the set.

  “You make me laugh. I like it,” Anne said.

  Gabrielle wondered what Anne would say if she knew that Matt had called that afternoon, as he had called two other afternoons since Anne had come to the island. “Just checking in,” he said, wanting to know how Anne was doing. Gabrielle had sensed something hangdog in his manner, a whipped-guy attitude that didn’t suit him one bit.

  He said he missed the family. Anne and Karen especially, but the Vincents also. Gabrielle acted stern and disappointed with him, but the truth was, she enjoyed his calls. They broke up the day. She harbored a dream that Anne and Matt would get back together, take whatever steps possible to patch up their marriage.

  “Do you ever think about going home?” Gabrielle asked.

  “To New York?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, that wiped the smile off Anne’s face. Gabrielle fought the impulse to give her a hug, get her feeling comfortable again. But this was a case of tough love: she wanted Anne to face some painful truths that might eventually make her life better.

  “No, I don’t,” Anne said. “Not right now, anyway.”

  “It’s just that … oh, I might as well spit it out. You shouldn’t be out here, hon. You’re past struggling.”

  Anne put down her peeler and faced Gabrielle head-on. Gabrielle had to admit, Anne had some color back in her cheeks. Something about island life was agreeing with her.

  “What do you mean, ‘past struggling’?”

  Gabrielle realized she’d put her foot in it.

  “I mean, don’t go taking it wrong, now. Everyone knows you’ve experienced the worst thing that can happen to a mother. I know, Anne.”

  Anne nodded.

  Gabrielle waited for Anne to say something, to express some of the terrible loss she must be feeling for Karen. But this wasn’t the time. Anne said nothing, so Gabrielle continued.

  “It’s miserable out here. I go crazy in winter. The antenna blows away, you need four-wheel drive just to get your mail. You were smart enough to get yourself off the island, and it doesn’t make sense to me, you coming back.”

  “I don’t see it that way. I love it here.”

  That’s because you have a choice, Gabrielle thought. In a minute she might boil over, say something she would regret. She stirred the cream sauce, tasted it, added a dash of pepper. Gabrielle had cushioned Anne’s progress through life, and then Matt had taken over. Say what you want: Anne understood heartache, not struggle.

  “I do,” Anne persisted. “I love it here.”

  “Taste this,” Gabrielle said. She coated a red plastic spoon with the silkily thickened sauce and held it to Anne’s lips.

  Instead of tasting, however, Anne lowered her head to Gabrielle’s shoulder. She left it there for a long moment.

  “Anne,” Gabrielle said, overcome by a surge of love. Just because Anne didn’t discuss her sadness didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  Sometimes Gabrielle wished she had a specific nickname for Anne, something dear for her alone instead of the generic “honey” or “sweetheart.” The name “Anne” was so elegant, so refined and austere; in many ways the name was so like Anne herself. Still, Gabrielle did sometimes wish for a sweeter, cozier name that would fit Anne’s soft side. “Annie” simply wouldn’t cut it. It was too homespun, too quaint. Too Little Orphan Annie.

  “Why did Mother and Daddy give you such a Queen of England name?” Gabrielle asked, stroking Anne’s silky black hair.

  “‘Cause I’m a royal pain?”

  Gabrielle smiled. “No. It’s just such a formal name. Have I ever told you that? That I wish I had something little-sisterish to call you?”

  “Well, I’ve made it to my thirties without it,” Anne said. A pause. “Gaby.”

  “Oh, I hate that,” Gabrielle said, giving Anne another squeeze. “Makes me sound like a parakeet.”

  Anne eased herself out of Gabrielle’s embrace and chose a potato to peel. Gabrielle wondered whether she had noticed that it was an Aroostock golden potato, one that had a buttery color without the addition of any butter whatsoever, instead of the usual pasty-white Maine variety. Until Gabrielle had started her business, the market hadn’t known the difference.

  The telephone rang. Gabrielle jumped for it. Steve was working on the big house, and many nights lately he had worked late. But it was Kurt.

  “I’m sorry, Maggie is doing her homework,” Gabrielle said icily.

  “Tell her I called,” Kurt said, and hung up, the mannerless loser that he was.

  “I’ll say one thing,” Gabrielle said to Anne, replacing the receiver, “Maggie seems to be coming to her senses. She refuses to talk to Kurt Vibbert or Vanessa. You know Vanessa, don’t you? Lynn Adamson’s daughter?”

  “I remember Lynn,” Anne said. “So, Maggie’s doing well?”

  “Thriving. I’m telling you. Does her homework without being reminded, no talking on the phone. Listens to the radio way too much, but she’s at that age.”

  “Good,” Anne said, smiling. “That’s excellent.”

  “I know she enjoys having you around. The sense of family, you know? She always loved having you all at the big house.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll go back there,” Anne said. “I like my apartment in town.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I need a job, and I think it’s more likely I’ll find something in town than cross-island.”

  Gabrielle tasted the sauce again. As if Anne needed the money! Matt had always been so generous, he wasn’t about to get tightfisted now. But she held her tongue. Instead, she decided to mention something she’d been mulling over for a long while.

  “The taxes on the big house are outrageous. I realize
that you and Matt have been carrying the load for a few years. Steve and I appreciate that.”

  “We wanted to.”

  “It’s getting so islanders can’t even own property anymore. The houses turn over so often now … every time the prices go up. And the taxes.”

  “Are you thinking we should sell?”

  Gabrielle put her hand to her heart. God, even the idea made her sick. No, she wouldn’t join the parade of old friends, selling their family places to rich out-of-staters, sailing into the sunset with their pockets full of gold.

  “No way,” Gabrielle said. “I was thinking more in terms of starting a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Wow,” Anne said, frowning. She was probably picturing the same thing that had kept Gabrielle awake nights when the idea had first occurred to her: strangers in their house. Strangers rocking on the front porch, strangers dozing in the hammock, strangers expecting breakfast in the morning.

  “Paying strangers,” Gabrielle said.

  “Who’d run it?”

  “Me? You? I don’t know,” Gabrielle said, although she had entertained a fantasy or two of herself greeting guests, serving breakfasts that would land her in the pages of guidebooks and Gourmet magazine.

  “Well, it’s an interesting idea.”

  “It’s a way to keep the house in the family. Taxes are due to go up again in May,” Gabrielle said, watching for Anne’s reaction. But Anne didn’t say anything. She was standing there, peeling too many potatoes, with an oddly dreamy look in her eyes.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Gabrielle said, puzzled by the shifts in Anne’s mood. From happy to sad to distant to moony. She reminded Gabrielle of a thirty-two-year-old version of Maggie.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about a friend,” Anne said.

  Gabrielle waited for her to continue, but Anne didn’t seem so inclined. She just reached for another potato. She would have peeled it too, if Gabrielle hadn’t gently leaned over to hand her a carrot instead.

  Chapter 7

  When she had finished her commission for the Chopin CD, Anne began a series of collages she thought of as Heaven. She tried to keep her mind free, unencumbered by too much religion or sentimentality. In spite of this, her first effort showed cherubs playing on pillows of cloud. One cherub had Karen’s dark features, her solemn gaze.