“I think there’s even leftover roast beef. It was too rare last night. I could cook it again for you.”
“What kind of call were you out on?”
“Car accident. Two injuries. Asshole who was speeding and missed the traffic light was fine.”
Off in the distance, familiar voices were echoing into the tall ceiling. Moose. Duff. Deshaun. None of them knew she’d come in. All of them had watched as Danny had jogged across the street to her car.
“Do you remember those pictures we used to have over there?” She nodded toward the workout equipment. “Where’d they go?”
“When we had that bathroom leak, it ruined the wall.”
“Did they get killed?” As if they were mortal. “I mean, were they thrown out?”
“Nope. They’re upstairs in the hall. We figured they’d be safer. You want to go up there?”
“Yes. I do. Will you take me? I mean, you know, now that I don’t work here and I’m not on the crew.”
“You’re always welcome. Anywhere.”
She waited for him to take the lead, and as they walked over to the old steps to the second floor, she gave the boys who were around the incident command center a little wave.
God, she felt like she was sneaking around and had just gotten caught.
“Hey, Anne,” Moose called out. “You staying for dinner?”
“Nah, I’ll leave the eating up to you.”
“Is that your dog?”
“Yup.”
Before she could get tangled into a conversation, Danny stopped at the base of the stairs and motioned the way up. As she ascended, the steps still creaked the same, the narrow walls like entering a chute.
The second floor was still bead board that had been painted a million times, and the bathroom with the shower stalls still had that frosted-glass door.
The twenty or so framed pictures had been hung down the hall, the sizes and frames different, some in color and some black and white. But she recognized her father in the five he’d been in.
God, he and Tom looked so alike. And they were all group shots of six or seven guys from the stationhouse—loose configurations that somehow her father had managed to be the center of. He’d been like that. The fulcrum around which things revolved, the leader who only appeared to be phlegmatic about the role. In reality, he must have taken that identity and its preservation very seriously.
If you were sometimes the head of things and sometimes not, that was somebody who could take or leave the authority and adulation.
But when it was always you? Well, that was some shit you worked at, wasn’t it.
“He was larger than life,” Danny said quietly. “Your father was the standard everyone lived up to.”
Anne looked down at her prosthesis and wondered about the nature of anger. She wouldn’t have identified herself as a hostile person, just someone who was direct and got what she wanted and needed out situations.
Refocusing on the images of her father, standing so proud and tall among others of his generation of firefighters, she thought about how pissed off she had been about everything—and for how long.
She thought about that fire that had changed her life, and her determination to send Emilio up those stairs. Then she pictured him in that emergency room, alive by a stroke of luck and nothing else.
She didn’t mean to turn to Danny and reach for him, but she did.
As his arms came around her, she turned her head and stared at all the pictures, not just the ones that her father was in.
“He saved a lot of lives, you know,” Danny murmured.
He ruined a lot of them, too, she thought.
Chapter 42
The next morning, Anne woke up at six a.m. Or, rather, she got out of bed at that time. She hadn’t done a lot of sleeping. After getting dressed, she went downstairs to the kitchen with Soot. While he went out to do his business, she opened her cupboards.
Instead of viewing the rearrangement as an intrusion, she looked at the order. The canned goods had been grouped together by whether they held soup or vegetables. The crackers were by the soups. The boxes of pasta were next to the sauce jars.
She opened the drawers under the countertops. Her silverware was next to the dishwasher—which would make it easier to empty. The plates had likewise been relocated above the dishwasher for the same reason. Pot holders were by the stove instead of across the way next to the refrigerator.
Closing everything up, she stepped back. Then she let Soot back in, sat at the table, and stared out to her living room. The sofa was now on the far wall—so you didn’t need to walk around it to enter the kitchen. The armchair was by the fireplace and the lamp on its table had been pulled in tight.
If you wanted to read a book or do needlepoint, the illumination would come over your shoulder.
Perfectly.
Anne was still sitting there when her mom came downstairs. As Nancy Janice rounded the corner, she stopped. Her face was made up. Her hair was done. But she was still in her nightclothes, the matching gown and bathrobe pink with yellow flowers. She even had slippers that matched.
The pleasant expression that was so ubiquitous that it seemed like an actual feature—like the woman’s nose or chin—was lost instantly.
“Good morning, Anne. This is a surprise.”
As the woman entered the kitchen, the actually number of steps taken or yards traveled was small. The distance traveled was greater than miles. And Anne recognized the lines in that face. The slight stoop to the shoulders. The gray hairs coming at the temples as the hair color was growing out.
Time was passing, leaving its mark, taking its taxes and penalties in the form of fading beauty and function.
She thought of those pictures in that hallway at the stationhouse. That funeral. The childhood house that had been a place to start off from for her and her brother . . . but which had been, for their parents, a goal reached.
“I didn’t touch anything.” Her mom put out her hands. “I swear, Anne. I haven’t touched anything in this house.”
Sunlight glinted off the gold wedding band on her mother’s left hand.
“Can I ask you something?” Anne said in a low voice.
Her mother came over and sat down. “Anything. Please.”
As if there had been a wait of years for such an approach.
“Why do you still wear that?”
Her mother stiffened, those eyes dropping away. And then she put her hand under the table, out of sight.
“Why, Mom?” Anne shook her head, aware she was asking about so much more than just the wedding ring. “Why.”
Just as she became convinced there’d be no reply, Nancy Janice said, “Marriage is a private affair between two people, consecrated by the church.”
“If you have children, it’s not just two people.”
“Your father was a good man. An imperfect but good man.”
“I know what he did, Mom. I’ll spare you saying it out loud. But I know.”
The crumbling that occurred was on the inside. Even as the composure was retained, it was but the facade of a building, the walls and ceilings of which had fallen from their nails and screws.
“All I have ever done was try to make things better than they were. For you. For your brother. I have done what I could to . . . make things work. There were no resources for me. I didn’t graduate high school when I got married. He didn’t want me to get a job. I have no skills. Without his pension now? I don’t know where I would go. Where I would be. What I would do.”
Anne looked past her mother to the rearranged living room. To the armchair with its perfectly placed lamp.
“I am nothing,” her mother whispered. “That’s what he always told me. I am . . . nothing.”
As Anne stood up, her chair squeezed on the floor, and she went around, getting on her knees. Wrapping her arms around her mother, she realized it was the first time they had hugged in . . . forever.
“Oh, God, Mom,” Anne said in a voice that cracked. “God . . .”
Damn him, she thought to herself.
They stayed that way for the longest time, her mother crying softly, Soot padding over and sitting as close as he could to Anne.
When she finally eased back, she took her mother’s hands in her own, both the one that was of flesh and the other of molded plastic.