They were housewives, elderly men, women and teenagers. They were pleased to be told what to do, to be engaged in some kind of drama. They were already happily thinking of the story they would have to tell at the dinner table that night. They felt alive, dangled between the prospect of the actual fire and their story about it. The very possibility that any kind of danger existed was exciting and tantalizing. They felt involved.
I slowed my walk in front of Mayor Carrelli’s barbershop. Through the glass I could see the mayor in his neat blue barber coat that snapped up the back. He was cutting a customer’s hair. It was a woman, and something familiar about her drew my eye. She was thin and sat erect in the chair. With her wet hair and the strange smile on her face, it took me a moment to recognize my mother.
It was such an odd sight, I just stared. My mother was laughing, as if the mayor had just told a great joke. The barbershop, a dim, dusty place, had to count as one of the roughest places my genteel mother had ever set foot in. What the hell was she doing in there? Why would she let the mayor cut her hair? It made no sense.
I was curious, but not enough to face my mother. I didn’t want her to ask me why I wasn’t at the hospital. I didn’t want to hear her thoughts and feelings about Gracie’s news. I didn’t want to give my mother a chance to put me in the middle. I backed away slowly, a few careful steps until I was out of view of the window. When I turned I saw Joel standing on the curb. He was wearing his fireman’s thick rubber jacket and boots. He had his helmet under his arm.
“Hey, Lila,” he said. “You looking for your new boyfriend?”
Joel was someone I had always completely disregarded. He was my age; we had been in the same class at Ramsey High. When Gracie was dating Joel she was forever going on about how gentle he was, as though gentleness were a trait that got a person anywhere in this world. As far as I could see, being gentle didn’t make a person rich, successful, or happy. For Joel, all it had gotten him was drunk. I could smell Budweiser on his breath now from a few steps away. He was one of those quiet drunks who got away with it most of the time because he was so soft-spoken and well mannered. I had no doubt that if I managed to stay on the path I was on and he managed to stay on the path he was on, I would be treating him at Valley Hospital in twenty years’ time for cirrhosis.
But when he said that, I knew he was right. I had been headed toward the fire hoping to see Weber. I had promised myself that I would never see him again, and I’d held out for a mere three hours.
“I heard you got laid, Lila. I don’t believe it. In fact, I said that it couldn’t be true because sex is a life-affirming gesture and Lila Leary is not one to affirm life. I told Weber you wore black every day to high school and won the perfect-attendance award.”
I could feel color climb the ladder of my face. It was a McLaughlin trait, the ease with which we all blushed. “Bastard,” I said. “You’ve been drinking.”
Joel smiled, his nice-boy smile. “There was a fire at Carvel. But by the time I got there all the ice cream had melted and the fire was out.” He said this with great sorrow.
“You’re going to be a father,” I said, partly to wound him, partly to shake the truth into him and into myself. This drunken man-child who was saddened by melted ice cream was the father of my sister’s baby. This truth seemed so random, and so unlikely. It was placed here like the cars lined up in traffic, like the hospital where I was supposed to be, like my parents’ long marriage. It was all there, all in existence, but that didn’t make it right. It didn’t make it make sense.
“Not really,” Joel said. “Margaret took me back. We’re back together. We’re in love.”
“So what happened between you and Gracie doesn’t mean anything?”
“Why do you always have to make everything so complicated, Lila? I always disliked that about you.”