The Stars Are Fire

  “You have friends?” he asks.

  “I used to have a very good friend. But after the fire, she and her husband and children went to live in Nova Scotia.”

  “There you go, the diaspora. Why so far?”

  “They have family there. Rosie was wonderful. She made me happy every day.” She pauses. “Nearly everyone in Hunts Beach is now homeless. Many are destitute.”

  “There’ll be no charge for tonight.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” she’s quick to say. “I’ll pay. Of course, I’ll pay. You can’t very well start a practice without the patients paying.”

  “I’m going to set up a sliding scale. When I’ve assessed the general income level of the patients, I’ll determine my fees.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “It’s time-honored.”

  “You’ll have a bookkeeping mess,” she says.

  “You know bookkeeping?”

  “I do. And I’ll pay the standard rate because you just saved my daughter’s life.”

  “You saved your daughter’s life by getting her here. Seizures can be very dangerous.”

  Grace remembers the awful moment in Gladys’s house.

  “Let’s just say she’s a lucky girl,” he offers.

  “Will she really be all right?”

  “We’ll see in the morning, but I think so.”

  —

  In the morning, Claire’s cheeks are bright red, her tongue white, her throat raw, and she has a rash over her chest and arms. All the symptoms point to scarlet fever, Dr. Lighthart explains. “Any children around her have it?” he asks as the sun rises through the window.

  “None that I can think of,” Grace answers.

  “It can be serious, and it spreads easily. You have another child at home.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you put Claire in a room by herself? She has to be quarantined. You know what that entails?”

  Grace thinks about the arrangements, the three of them in the attic. Tom will have to sleep with his grandmother. “Claire and I can sleep together in one room.”

  “I’d like to keep her here for twenty-four hours, but I’m going to have to put you both in an isolation room. The receptionist and a nurse will be in this morning. I’ll leave a note on the front desk as to where you are, as well as the diagnosis.”

  —

  The nurse, Amy, has Claire fill out a card requiring name, address, phone number, blood type, previous illnesses, both for her and for Claire. Grace can do the name and her previous illnesses—measles, chicken pox, tonsils out—but the address and phone number are not her own. She wonders how much money she has in her purse and if she can pay the doctor in full today so that he needn’t bill her.

  Amy offers Grace a gown, bathrobe, and slippers, none of which fit her well. Her legs are bare from above her knees to her ankles, which would be fine if she were the patient. Not fine as a regular woman. The slippers are small and insubstantial, but she can hardly put her good heels on with the gown and robe.

  Claire frets, cries, and coughs most of the morning, which Grace knows is a good sign. Her child isn’t listless. According to the doctor, Claire likely has a terrible sore throat and a headache. Grace tries to explain to her daughter that she’s sick and will get better soon, but time means nothing to a young child. An hour, two days, four days. It hurts now. That’s all she knows.

  An hour, two days, four days. It’s all Grace knows, too.

  —

  Barbara, the receptionist, never makes it in, having skidded into a tree early in the morning. This according to Amy, who gives Claire a cool sponge bath. “I keep telling her, come in later than usual on an icy or snowy morning. Give the plows a chance. But her husband, Burt, tells her that it’s best to be the first car on the road—less danger of hitting anyone else if you skid out. Guess he forgot about trees. Burt’s an idiot. He knows all about drilling for wells, but hasn’t an iota of common sense. Strange for a man, don’t you think? And Barbara, she does what he tells her. I hope she’s not hurt, but I’ve got my hands full now. I have to keep checking the waiting room because there’s no one there to tell us someone needs attention.”

  “Don’t bother with us,” Grace says. “I can handle everything myself.”

  “You can probably take her temperature regularly, but you can’t do the injections.”

  “Injections?”

  “Yes, she’s due at six tonight.”

  “Of the antibiotic?”

  Amy looks at her as if Grace, too, might be dim.

  “For ten days,” Amy explains.

  “But Dr. Lighthart said the symptoms should subside in five days.”

  “That’s true, but you have to do the complete course with antibiotics or else the illness could come back, sometimes in a more virulent form. When the doctor sends you away, he’ll give you a prescription for an oral fluid she can take by the spoonful.”

  —

  When Claire finally falls asleep, Grace climbs onto the adult-size cot and pulls up the sheets. She turns to her side to be able to keep an eye on her daughter. She has to do better by her children; she can’t live on the kindness of others indefinitely. She’s made good progress in her driving, but what she really needs is a job in a village or a city in which she can walk to work, get a babysitter, and do her shopping on foot. With her mother’s help, until she can get a paycheck, she might just be able to swing a one-bedroom apartment in a city. But which city? Biddeford? Portland? Portsmouth? Her thinking stops there as she begins to drift off. Her mind fills with images of scintillating snowfields and someone, a child, in the distance. She strains to hear but can’t.

  Music

  Thirty-eight days after the fire, and Grace has lived a lifetime. Claire is outside, Gladys pulling her on a sled along a path, while Grace’s mother, glad that her daughter has emerged from quarantine, seems chirpy on this snow-covered winter day. “I think he’s just about ready to walk,” Marjorie says of Tom. “All the time I had him, he was holding on between the hassocks and the side tables and the chairs.”

  “I feel as though I’ve been away for a very long time.”

  “When I think of what you’ve been through—well I may have been mad at you briefly here and there—but you can’t imagine the admiration I have for you.”

  —

  During her week at Claire’s side, Grace had hours to try to solve her seemingly insurmountable problem. She, her children, and her mother can’t live in Gladys’s house indefinitely. Grace has to find another place for them, or at least convince the building commission to put her near the head of the line for a new house. She’s a single parent without a home. Won’t they view that situation as more dire than that of a family with multiple adults to earn money? But even if she were to persuade an official today, it will take months for the house to be ready.

  One night when she can’t sleep, she has a thought that at first repulses her and then begins to seem sensible. If Gladys will loan her the Chevrolet, Grace can drive to Merle Holland’s house to see if it’s empty. If it is, she can bring her children and her mother there; her mother can watch the children while Grace looks for work. They won’t have to furnish a home, and in the spring, there will be flowers. There are plenty of bedrooms for all of them, and it has the added advantage of being the first place Gene might go when he returns from wherever he’s been. By morning, the plan has solidified.

  “Mother, I have an idea. What if I were to take a drive to Merle Holland’s house—Gene’s house now. And if I found it empty, we—the kids, me, you—could move in there. It would be housing, and it would take the burden off Gladys and Evelyn. We could open all the windows for a few minutes, let in fresh air, see to the linens and pots and pans. It’s possible there’s an entire house ready for us to inhabit.”

  “But it would be trespassing,” her mother says.

  “Not really. Think about it. Gene inherited the house, he’s missing, I’m his wife, these are his children, he wou
ld want us to have shelter.”

  “But how could you settle into the house of a woman who never had a good thing to say about you?”

  “Times have changed, Mother. I’ve changed. I could settle into her house just fine. And, if I recall, there’s a nursery with a crib and toys. I’ll go first to make sure it hasn’t been taken over by squatters or by a long-lost cousin of Gene’s I’ve never heard of. I might try to do some dusting, make sure the utilities haven’t been turned off. The house has never been listed for sale, because Gene wanted us to move there.” She pauses. If he only knew.

  “Well, it’s a thought. I do feel a bit in the way here.”

  Grace meets her mother’s eyes and knows she understands the relationship between Gladys and Evelyn. How could she not? Grace would like to query her mother further, but now is not the time.

  —

  If Grace moved into Merle’s, she would have to relinquish access to a car, a hardship after having learned to drive. There has to be a bus, she reasons, that travels along the coast road. It’s only then that it occurs to her that Merle’s house might have burned to the ground as well.

  Her anxiety builds as she drives toward the shore and sees that most of the coastal land is black. When she turns the corner to enter Merle’s neighborhood, however, she sees that the houses are intact. She pulls into the driveway as if she were a newcomer to a bridge group. Gene had a key to the house, but she doesn’t. There’s nothing to search, not Gene’s pockets, not a drawer in which he might have left the key. She climbs the stairs, and as she suspected the door is locked. She lifts up mats, sticks her finger into flowerpots, reaches for ledges. She descends the steps and walks to one side of the house, searching for a window that might be partially raised. Now that she’s here, the urge to break into the house is strong. She scans basement windows, tries the bulkhead, and attempts to shimmy a window that looks unlocked but is stuck. By the time she’s reached the back of the house, she’s nearly given up. She tries the porch door, and it opens. She tries the back door, and it gives. How simple. It’s then that Grace hears music and freezes.

  Someone in the house is playing a record. Or does the music come from a radio left on? She moves cautiously toward the hall, the one that leads to both the sitting room and the turret. The music grows louder each step she takes, and she realizes it’s coming from upstairs. It has to be Gene—he’s alive! Part of her wants to run up the stairs, shouting his name, and part of her is mortified. If it’s Gene, why is he living here without her? Why has he not taken the trouble to find his wife and children?

  She can see in her mind’s eye a sweep of the keyboard, a rumbling of deep chords, while the melody skips along, and that’s how it feels—the melody skipping—and then the two are brought together in a powerful crescendo that causes hairs to rise at the back of her neck and her eyes to close. The sound is pure, sublime. It can’t be a record or a radio broadcast. She finds a chair next to a telephone table and ever so quietly, so as not to disturb, she sits. She had no idea her husband was talented in this way.

  Grace is reminded of tinkling broken glass, then of someone in great command, then of a deep and primitive growl from the lower notes. The melody, partially melancholic, moves her. It seems to seep through her skin and find its way to her center. Is it from musical notes that true longing is born? The desire to have the same thing again and again? After all, a mother’s song to an infant is a melody. Childlike and not always beautiful, but it’s a touchstone that one might long for in life. Grace craves the delicate touch of fingers on the keys, which she feels as fingers along the back of her neck. She bends her head.

  The music ends.

  —

  Footsteps from a room into an upper hallway. Perhaps Gene sees Grace’s boots. She can hear him coming down the stairs. She can’t stand. Not yet.

  There’s a moment of hesitation. Both Grace and the stranger begin to speak at once.

  “You play beautifully.”

  “I didn’t know the house was inhabited. I beg your pardon.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  “This house.”

  “It seemed uninhabited.”

  “It is. It isn’t. How did you get in?”

  “Houses like these are always easy to get into. Impossible to secure.”

  “I think…”

  “I think…”

  “This house belongs to my husband. I’m Grace Holland.”

  “Aidan Berne.”

  They shake hands. His grip is warm.

  —

  Grace sets the kettle to boil, finding tea, sugar, a little milk, and producing from a cupboard a package of Lorna Doone cookies. She wonders if Aidan Berne, too, lost everything in the fire.

  He’s at least six feet tall. He wears his light brown hair long. His eyes are light brown, she concludes, during the brief glances her way. He has on a navy sweater and gray wool pants in the drafty house. She interrupted him in his slippers.

  “When did you come here?” she asks.

  “The afternoon the fire hit Kennebunk. We were in the middle of rehearsals when men warned us through bullhorns to get out of town. We packed up quickly and fled to waiting cars, and I managed to snag a seat. Then they let us out on Route One with no instructions. They said they had to go back into the village to rescue more. We could hardly complain.” He takes a sip of tea and holds out the plate of cookies to Grace. She takes one.

  “We started walking away from the fire,” he continues. “Those who knew the area slipped down dirt roads leading to cottages, but we could see that the fire was beginning to invade the woods along the coast. We started running. When I looked up the hill, I caught sight of a piano in a round room, just a glimpse, and I peeled off. I played until nearly eight in the morning.”

  “What were you playing just now?” Grace asks. She has on Joan’s blue wedding suit, having decided she should dress up a bit for Merle’s house.

  “Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto.”

  “You can play that from memory?”

  “A lot of people can. Well, not a lot. A few. It’s meant for an orchestra and a piano.”

  “I was moved,” Grace admits.

  “By what exactly? I’ve always been curious about this. By how music affects people.”

  “The melody,” she says, setting down her cup. “The passage that keeps getting repeated in different forms. The hairs stood out at the back of my neck.” She pauses, embarrassed. “I’m not explaining this well.”

  “For some, the concerto is purely an intellectual pleasure. You sound as though you absorbed it through the skin.”

  “Yes, that’s it, through the skin.”

  “Didn’t you listen to music in your home?”

  “The radio.”

  “You’ll have to get some records.”

  She nods but wants to protest that she hasn’t any money, which leads her to her next thought, the reason why she’s here. “I have two children,” she says. “My husband, Gene, went off to make a firebreak, and he didn’t come home. His body was never found.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “Yes, thank you, it’s awful, but there’s another problem. Our house burned down, and I have nowhere to live. At the moment we’re living in the attic of a friend of my mother’s, but we can’t stay there indefinitely. Then I remembered this house. Gene inherited it when his mother died.”

  “I’ll leave of course,” he says. “I can be gone by evening.”

  Grace wants to touch his fingers. How can so much magic come from them? “Are your fingers insured?” she asks.

  “My hands.”

  “They’d have to be, wouldn’t they?”

  “I can’t do anything else except play the piano.”

  “I don’t want to make you leave,” Grace admits reluctantly. “I’d like to be able to hear that music again.” She blushes and bends her head. “The world is so dreary, so awful now.”

  “Every
thing in the house seems to be working fine, as far as I can tell,” he offers. “Good hot water, the stove works, can’t speak for the oven, the steam heat is better on the second floor than on the first.”

  “Don’t go anywhere tonight,” she says. Perhaps, she thinks, he can remain as a tenant. The money would be a relief, a source of income while she looks for a job. “When I come back with the children and my mother in the morning, we’ll have made a decision. If you would, could you unlock the front door starting around nine?”

  —

  Before Grace can tell her mother about the man at Merle’s house, she needs to be sure it’s what she wants. It doesn’t take her long to decide that the man must stay—somehow, in some capacity. The decision surprises her. She knows nothing about Aidan Berne. He might be an escaped convict, he might be a leech, he might be a spy who will endanger them all. But Grace feels certain he is only an evacuee who was interrupted in the middle of a rehearsal by a fire.

  Grace has to wait until two o’clock, when everyone goes up for a nap, Gladys and Evelyn included. Her mother doesn’t leave the kitchen, however, knowing that her daughter has news to deliver.

  They sit, her mother with a dish towel in her hand. “Well?” she asks.

  “The house is open and is in good shape, and we can move in anytime. But it seems we have a tenant.”

  “A tenant? Paying rent?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. We haven’t established that yet.”

  “I’m confused.”

  Grace lights a cigarette. “There’s a pianist on the second floor. He was being evacuated during the fire, and he saw the piano in the turret. Curiosity compelled him to enter the house. He’s been there since the night of the fire.”

  “A squatter?”

  “A squatter with immense talent. And he’s offered to leave.”

  “Well, then,” her mother says, setting the folded dish towel on the table. “That’s settled.”

  “Well, not really,” Grace says. “I think we should let him stay.”

  “Why? Will he pay good rent?”

  “I’m sure he will, but that’s not the only reason. The music is beautiful. The kids and you and I have had so little in the way of beauty or music in our lives.”