Home Fires

by Luanne Rice

  Gathering up the things she had brought the Devlins to go with dinner, she took a deep breath and headed up the sidewalk.

  Thomas opened the door before she could knock.

  Anne sensed the awkwardness of the moment. She wanted to embrace him, as she always did when arriving, but she held back. She didn’t want to step on Ned’s toes. Thomas stood on the doorstep, towering over her. She came up to about his waist. Their eyes, too busy darting around for Ned, hardly met. Thomas leaned down for a ridiculous nose-bumping kiss, and finally they laughed.

  They’d caught each other in the act of overthinking the game.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said, handing him the bag.

  “What have we here?” he asked, peering inside. But the moment of discovery was short-circuited as Ned entered the room.

  Even if Maggie hadn’t pointed him out on the ferry the other day, Anne would have recognized him instantly. From looking through the photo albums, she saw his resemblance to both his parents. His eyes and mouth were the same shape, and had the same far-off Irish sadness, as Thomas’s. But when he smiled, as he did now, his face took on the look of Sarah.

  “Ned,” Thomas said, clapping his son on the back. “I’d like you to meet Anne Davis,”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Anne said, shaking his hand.

  He didn’t say anything right away. He was too busy blushing and figuring out his handshake. It started off bone crushing, faded out, and came back just right.

  “I saw you on the ferry,” Ned said, a bundle of high color and twitches. Anne could tell he was shy, that it took great effort to look her in the eye, as he’d been taught.

  “I saw you, too. Maggie Vincent’s my niece.”

  “Oh.” If anything, his color increased.

  “Maggie and Ned were beach pals,” Thomas said. “Back before he went to school off-island.”

  “Yeah,” Ned said, frowning.

  “She’s something, that Maggie,” Anne said, trying to feel her way along. Everyone felt so awkward, each person trying to make sure every other person felt comfortable.

  “Is she a junior?” Ned asked.

  “Yes. A year behind you,” Anne said, letting him know that she knew about him. That she and his father had discussed him.

  “College next year,” Thomas said, smiting Ned’s upper arm.

  “Yeah.”

  “Congratulations on Dartmouth,” Anne said. “I hear all the colleges want you.”

  This prompted a new round of blushes. Ned tried to frown, but he couldn’t help smiling.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Hell, what kind of hosts are we?” Thomas asked. “Anne, can we take your jacket? Would you care for a beer? A glass of wine?”

  Anne slipped off her jacket, feeling Thomas touch her shoulder blades as he took it. She shivered, and smiled.

  “Whatever you guys are having,” she said.

  “Beer,” Thomas and Ned said at once.

  “Great,” she said, grinning.

  They went into the kitchen, and Anne stood aside while the men prepared dinner. Ned seemed very mysterious as he popped a cookie sheet into the oven, shielding its contents from Anne’s sight. The aroma of simmering black beans filled the room, and she watched Thomas assemble burritos. Sipping from a bottle of Dos Equis, she enjoyed the musky flavor of Mexico while being waited on by the two Devlin men.

  After a few minutes a timer rang.

  Ned pulled the cookie sheet out of the oven. He transferred nachos, sticky with melted cheese, to a serving plate, and set out a bowl of chilled salsa. He glanced at Anne, and she caught a devilish little smile.

  “That smells delicious,” she said.

  “Please, help yourself,” Ned said, passing her the plate.

  Anne ate one nacho in two eager bites. Fire from the jalapeños shot down her throat and up her nose, but she loved the flavor. She took a sip of beer.

  “Do you like it?” Ned asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Anne said, reaching for the bag she had carried in from the car. “I hope you won’t be offended, but they’re just a little mild for me. Would you mind if I added a few of these?”

  Ned pulled the jar out of the bag: General Estada’s Four Alarm Mouth-Burners, aka Chili Peppers, Eat Them If You Dare. Ned glanced up, puzzled, then caught the smile on Anne’s face.

  “You like hot food,” he said.

  “Love it.”

  He nodded, smiling.

  When Thomas had warned her that dinner would be spicy, she had told him one of the three things she missed about New York City was the availability of super-hot food. New England did many things right, but south-of-the-border wasn’t one of them.

  Ned opened the jar and lifted a Mouth-Burner into the air. He dangled it over his open mouth, made sure Anne was watching, and popped it in. He shuddered, as if he’d just done a shot of tequila. Then, an obvious challenge, he handed the jar to Anne.

  She looked him square in the eye, took a long drink of beer. She reached into the jar.

  The pepper juice stung her fingertips. On contact with one cracked cuticle, it made her feel like shouting out loud.

  “Go for it,” Ned said.

  Anne nodded. She shook the extra juice off a Mouth-Burner, licked it once, and swallowed it down.

  “Wow,” Thomas said.

  Anne couldn’t see through the flames. She daintily sipped her Dos Equis, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She wondered whether she had just killed all the nerve endings in her lips, but she smiled anyway.

  So did Ned. So did Thomas. The night was under way.

  For dinner, Thomas brought out lanterns Ned had made over the years. Most were shaped vaguely like coffee cans. Several were ceramic, swirls of clay forming van Goghlike patterns, with space for candlelight, coated with glossy black, blue, and silver glaze. Others were made of metal, with punched-out perforations through which the candle flames shone.

  Ned made sure Anne had enough salsa, sour cream, and Mouth-Burners. He brought new beer when bottles were emptied. Anne asked him about Dartmouth, and he told her all about its English department, the hockey team, winter carnival, the medical school.

  “Do you want to be a doctor?” she asked.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Really?” Thomas asked, and from the surprise in his tone, Anne could tell that this was the first time he’d heard it.

  Anne waited, eating the delicious dinner they had made. She listened while Ned told about reading William Carlos Williams in English, thinking he’d like to be a doctor and a poet.

  “Ned’s a real poet,” Thomas said to Anne.

  “I know,” she said, wondering whether she should say that Thomas had shown her Ned’s poems, that they were some of the most beautiful words she had ever read.

  “Anyway,” Ned said, scowling again.

  “Enough about you?” Thomas asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is a great dinner,” Anne said. “I haven’t had food this good since I came back to the island.”

  “Where’d you live before?” Ned asked.

  “New York,” Anne replied. Thomas had told her that he’d said almost nothing to Ned, that he’d wanted Ned to find things out for himself.

  “This must be a pretty big change,” Ned said.

  “Well, I grew up on the island.”

  “Still, New York is awesome.” He smiled at his father.

  “Ned and I saw Tommy in New York last Christmas,” Thomas said. “Our first time there together in a long, long time.”

  “The time before was with Mom,” Ned said.

  “Right,” Thomas said.

  “We had lunch at Rockefeller Center,” Ned said. “At that restaurant right on the ice. It was Christmas then, too. The tree—”

  “Did you skate?” Anne asked.

  “Yeah. Mom and I.”

  “That must have been nice,” she said, thinking that this was the winter she had been pl
anning to take Karen ice-skating at Rockefeller Center. She, Matt, and Karen—three years old—had had lunch at the same tourist restaurant that Ned remembered, and it had been one of the high points of Karen’s life. She had never stopped talking about it. The memory made Anne feel very close to Ned.

  “So,” Ned said, “how did you meet?”

  “Meet?” Anne asked, still thinking of Karen.

  “You and Dad.”

  “Well, we—” Thomas began.

  “He saved me,” Anne said. “My family’s house was on fire. He pulled me out.”

  “He saved you from a fire,” Ned said, staring at Anne. His words were a statement, with hard edges, and they made her uncomfortable. Just then he blushed and looked away, and she realized what must be going through his mind.

  “Ned, I’m a fireman,” Thomas said, his voice deep and steady.

  “I know.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing.”

  Ned shuffled a few plates together and carried them into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry,” Anne said.

  “Don’t be. It’s the truth. He has to know.” Thomas covered her hand with his.

  They sat at the table, watching the lanterns flicker, listening to Ned in the kitchen banging the plates louder than necessary.

  “Maybe you should have told him before,” Anne said.

  “I honestly didn’t think about the parallel,” Thomas said blankly. “It’s what I’ve done for a living. I try to pull people out of burning buildings.”

  “I know,” Anne said, giving his hand a squeeze.

  They heard Ned leave the kitchen, walk down the hall. The water ran in the bathroom; they heard music coming from his room.

  When he returned, he seemed as awkward, as uncomfortable, as when Anne had first arrived. He shuffled his feet and didn’t want to meet her eyes.

  “Dad, can I borrow the truck?” he asked.

  “Sure, Ned.”

  “Thanks.” He turned to Anne. “It was nice meeting you,” he said.

  “You, too. And thank you for dinner.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, his expression sad and distant.

  Anne waited until she heard the truck start before she said anything to Thomas. The engine caught and revved. Ned drove down the road.

  “I’m sorry for telling him you saved me,” Anne said.

  “I did,” he said, holding her tight.

  “He’s thinking of his mother.”

  “I know.”

  Anne felt Thomas’s arms loosen around her. He walked to the window, to watch the taillights disappear down the road.

  “I’m sorry,” Anne said again, feeling empty.

  “We can’t change the past,” Thomas said, staring into the distance, and Anne heard the emptiness echo in his voice as well.

  NED sped cross-island with no destination planned. In his mind, he replayed the last goal he’d made against Exeter. He saw it from the ice, he saw it from the stands, he saw it on national television with himself as commentator. His lips still sizzled from the Mouth-Burners, and he licked them, thinking of dinner.

  Of his father and Anne.

  Kids at school had stepmothers. That’s the first thing he’d thought, the minute his father had admitted he had a girlfriend. Ned had steeled himself, prepared to meet anyone.

  Mark’s stepmother had turned Mark’s bedroom into an office. Stephano’s stepmother had brought her twelve-year-old son into the family and let him play with Stephano’s Matchboxes, Tonka trucks, and remote-control speedboats. Jane’s stepmother had enticed Jane’s father to move to London, away from Jane in boarding school in Connecticut.

  So, prepared to meet a typical stepmother type, Ned had been amazed by Anne.

  Anne had seemed sweet, funny, easy to talk to. She liked hot food, and she’d made a good joke of it. She obviously liked Ned’s father, and Ned had to admit, he thought she liked him, too.

  So, why was he shaking? His entire body, every nerve under his skin. His teeth were chattering. Driving his father’s truck, he tossed his head, to throw the coldness.

  Why did his father have to meet Anne at a fire? He had had years of nightmares about flames, and he squinted, dispelling them now. He turned on the radio. The stations you could get out here were squat. He fiddled with the dial, trying to find something decent.

  Why was his father able to save Anne, and not his mother? Just one of those things, Ned told himself.

  He found WBRU, the Brown University FM station. An old Talking Heads song, a favorite of his parents, blared out of the speakers. He drove toward town, blocking his father, his mother, and Anne from his mind. He was on vacation. It was Tuesday night, and he didn’t have to get up early the next day.

  Chapter 13

  On Friday night, while Anne was waiting for Thomas and Ned to pick her up for a movie, the telephone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Anne,” Matt said.

  “Hi,” she said, trying to sound steady.

  “We haven’t talked in a long time.”

  She didn’t speak, waiting for him to continue. The sound of his voice was familiar, alien, infuriating, and endearing, all at once.

  “Don’t you think we should talk, Anne?”

  “Do you have something to tell me?” Suddenly she felt positive that he was going to say he wanted a divorce.

  “Lots of things. How are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’ve left you alone, because you’ve made it clear that’s what you wanted. But it’s gone on long enough. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “You’re right. I’ve been meaning to call you about the apartment. We should do something about it. Sell it, or rent it out. Unless you want to live there.”

  “How can you say that? We love that place. It’s where we were a family.”

  “Were,” Anne said, emphasizing the word. She had a piercing vision of the apartment, with all of them in it, and she pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead.

  “Do you want it this way?” Matt said. “Living apart?”

  “If you had asked me that one year ago, I would have said it was impossible. I would have said that I couldn’t imagine life without you.”

  “I made a terrible mistake,” Matt said. “And I’ve continued to make it by not asking you to forgive me, to take me back. Right after Karen died, I wasn’t thinking at all. That’s when I should have begged you to let me help you put things back together. Put us back together, Anne.”

  “But you didn’t, Matt. I’ve been doing it alone, but I am doing it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Deciding to live.”

  “You don’t just decide a thing like that,” Matt said. “You might decide where you want to live, or who you want to be with. But you don’t just decide to live.”

  “Oh, yes you do,” Anne said. “That’s what happened when I came out to the island. I saved my own life.”

  “Anne, please.”

  “You think it’s bullshit?” she asked, her voice rising. “I wanted to be with Karen so badly. I wanted to follow her.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked.

  In spite of the agony in his voice, Anne heard herself laugh. “Why didn’t you come to me? Didn’t you feel it yourself?”

  “It was the most horrible time of my life,” Matt said.

  “Well, you had Tisa to help you through.”

  “If you’re saying that Tisa makes up for losing Karen—”

  “No!” Anne screamed. “I’m not saying that at all. Nothing, no other person could make up for her.”

  Matt’s hard breathing came through the wire. Anne held the receiver in her lap for a moment, because she couldn’t bear to listen. She already regretted her outburst.

  “I’m sorry,” he was saying when she put the phone to her ear.

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  “You’re getting some help through it?”

  “My
family’s been great. And friends.”

  “One friend in particular, I hear.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, wondering who had told him. Gabrielle? Not that it mattered.

  “Don’t get involved, Anne. Please come back to me. Please? I want us to start over. I want us to fall in love again, resurrect what we had. Weren’t we great?”

  “I thought so,” Anne said furiously.

  “I want us to have another baby.”

  “No,” Anne said, and she felt fingers of ice up and down her back. The night was shattered. “I have to go.”

  “Please …”

  “Good-bye,” she said, and she hung up the phone.

  Fifteen minutes later, when she heard the knock on the door, she felt glad that Thomas and Ned were a little late. She had had a chance to compose herself. She’d caught her breath, washed her face, put on some fresh mascara. She’d swallowed down half a cognac while gazing at Karen’s drawing. Now her hands were steady, her facial expressions under control.

  But when she opened the door and saw Thomas standing there alone, she wanted to dissolve.

  “What is it?” he asked when he saw her face.

  “Ned didn’t come?”

  “He wanted to go out with Josh Hunter and some of his old friends. You know, it’s Friday night,” Thomas said with alert worry in his eyes. “Are you upset he didn’t come?”

  Anne shrugged, even as she shook her head.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “I don’t know why people have kids,” she said coldly, walking away from him. She stood by the front window, shivering as if she felt a great chill. She stared at the ferry docking, thinking of what Matt had said about another baby.

  “Yes, you do.”

  She gave him a hard, punishing look, for daring to question what she did or did not mean. She felt very close to a dangerous edge, and she could see he knew it.

  “Okay. Explain to me,” he said.

  She didn’t feel like explaining anything. But she forced herself to try to be civil. She was in a rage at Matt and the imaginary baby, not at Thomas.