Everybody Loves Somebody (11 page)

We all grew still and watched in wonder, transfixed by this spectacle that had replaced the lesser spectacle I’d been, forgetting
the danger as we considered the beauty. Miracle of fire. From a glowing cigar stub and spilled kerosene to this: animate,
ravenous fire. Through the flames I saw the men shielding their faces with their hands, their blue suits given a metallic
sheen in the glare. The boy stood farther away from the fire, and as the blaze spread toward the wall he leaped back, landing
on my side of the flames.

I pulled him toward the stairway. If he’d resisted I probably would have given up and fled without him. But he was strangely
compliant. Down I ran, pushing him ahead of me, down the top flight to the fourth floor, down farther to the third, down to
the second, where I finally halted on the landing and listened for the sound of the men pursuing us. I heard nothing and so
nudged the boy forward again and we continued down to the ground floor and into the hallway, where I flung the door open right
into my husband, who had finally decided to leave behind the fun at the McAlpin and come home.

“Christ’s sake,” he moaned, rubbing his sore forehead. “What do you think you’re doing, Velma, at this time of night...”

“You idiot,” I murmured, pushing past him with the boy. But I stopped in the middle of the small lobby, for in front of the
building, through the wrought-iron cage over the front door, I saw one of the men rush up the stoop, the same man who had
led the boy to the roof, and tug at the handle of the locked door. When our eyes met, he released the handle and ran off.

Ted tried to grab my arm but I pulled free. “Vel, sheesh, just tell me”

“You win the prize for stupidity, Ted, you really do, now go, just go!” I pushed the boy against him and then herded them
both toward the rear hall, crying out, “Fire! Fire!” pounding on the Peets’ door as we passed. “Fire!”

“What fire?” Ted gasped. “Fire? Where? Do you mean fire?”

“Fire, you thickhead! Fire! Ted, get out of here. Keep the kid with you and get help.”

“What kid, what are you”

“You’ve been taking those imbecility pills again, Ted, you’ve got to stop that. All you Webbers, get up! Everyone, get up!”

The Peet door opened and the oldest Peet boy stood there, blinking sleepily. Then the families started to emerge, comprehension
set in, voices shouted into back rooms, children cried, doors slammed, and my husband finally understood what he had to do
and disappeared out the back door. With the occupants on the first floor warned I ran up the stairs to the second floor and
out into the hall, where I pounded and shouted until the captain rushed out wearing nothing but bright yellow-and-red-striped
boxers that flared open as he moved forward and revealed his stiff and ruddy member ready for action.

“Sir!”

“Fire, you say?” He was sober, dignified, quietly pleased to have an adventure to experience.

“On the roof. Evacuate the premises, sir,” I said, suppressing a sudden urge to laugh.

He saluted. I saluted in return and started to run up to the third floor but stopped, swung around, and cried, “The girls,
wake the girls!” meaning Judy and Nancy Simms and Therese Poulee.

“I’ll attend to them,” said the captain, waving me away. “Go on, do what you must do, Mrs. Dorsey.”

“And the Latvian!”

“Go on, Mrs. Dorsey.”

As I ran up to the fourth floor I smelled smoke and could see a faint veil hanging in the air. I pulled the raincoat around
me and pressed forward into the hallway, expecting a blast of heat, a rush of acrid smoke, flames breaking through the walls.
But the air was clear, the hallway quiet. I wondered whether I’d been wrong about the power of the flames—perhaps the fire
had already burned itself out, the danger was past, and I’d been a fool for stirring up a panic.

I went to open the door to my apartment, remembering only as I struggled with the knob that I’d let the door lock behind me.

“Daddy!” I called, pounding on the door. “Daddy!” I looked around for something to use to force my way in. I grabbed an empty
bucket left by Mr. Gonzales. “Daddy, wake up!” I beat the door, cracked the bucket, bruised my knuckles, but could not rouse
my father. He was an old man, partially deaf, and he slept in a windowless room at the back of our apartment. “Daddy!” When
I stopped to listen I heard only the rushing sound of my own inhalation. The pressure of silence made my skin tingle. I thought
I smelled smoke now—or was it the stale smell from my father’s pipe? I stood there panting, trying to inhale through my nose
and identify the scent. Tobacco? Wood? Kerosene? A roach emerged from a crevice in a wall and scooted down the wall and across
the floor. Another roach scuttled from beneath the door. I became conscious of a new sound, a sound I recognized immediately—the
crackle of a light rain falling against a canopy of new leaves. Rain? I looked up to see the white paint of the ceiling bulge
in a plump blister.

Wake up, Daddy! Wake up!

He was awake. He was always awake. He never did more than drift toward sleep and turn around and drift away from it. Well,
he wasn’t drifting now. He was wide awake, thanks to that racket in the hall, a lively party to which, as usual, he was not
invited. He couldn’t have cared less. He’d rather lie in bed and smoke his pipe. Where was his pipe? He coughed gently, then
inhaled, tasted the bitter smoke on his tongue and wondered who had sold him such foul tobacco. Judging from the sensation
in his bones, dawn was still hours away, though he couldn’t tell much from the quality of light in his windowless room; he’d
left the door ajar, but the hall light had been turned off. He didn’t mind. Night should be dark—moonlight outside, pitch-black
inside. Pitch-black night, and the revelers were going at it. Or maybe the noise was coming from the old one-tube Crosley
50 in the living room. No one cared a smidgen about his comfort. His daughter ran a tea shop on Amsterdam Avenue, his son-in-law
was a rascal, his wife was dead, and his country was at war. These were facts. Facts bled like cheap dye until people who
should have known better weren’t sure what was true.

He coughed again, more emphatically this time, in an effort to call attention to himself. Hello there, Velma. Where was his
pipe? Could someone find his pipe for him? Was it morning yet? Was it winter? Look at him, silky white beard curled beneath
his chin by the force of the wind as he skimmed along the dirt road from the summit of Chariot Mountain, picking up speed
with every rotation of the wheels. Old daredevil, surging on his sturdy Schwinn, the one he’d sold to a neighbor and then
bought back when the neighbor moved away.

Daddy!

I was waiting at the bottom along with the rest of them—his wife, his brothers, his cousins, his own ma. We were all waiting
at the bottom of the mountain for the reckless old charioteer to descend from Olympus, his beard wound around his neck, his
white hair surrounding his skull like the white cloud of breath blooming in front of his wife’s face on a cold autumn day
or like the smoke surrounding him in the black box of his room, smoke from his pipe, he’d forgotten to tamp his pipe and now—

Vel, where are you, Vel?

Look at him go, speeding downhill as though on the crest of a flood, his beard tightening in a noose around his neck, his
eyes tearing, his lungs burning, his wife out in the kitchen mindlessly dipping tripe in batter while I sewed a new wool patch
on his winter coat, willfully ignoring him as I so often did, though he was an old man and I a hardy young woman who could
have lifted him on my shoulders and carried him to safety.

I’
D ALWAYS KNOWN FIRE
to burn steadily. Before that night I’d never seen fire pretend to lie dormant and then without warning explode through the
walls and ceilings and then shrink back into the crumbling plaster and then explode again so I couldn’t tell where it would
appear next and my mind was seized with such panic that I could think of nothing but escape.

I have no recollection of deciding to leave the fourth-floor hallway. All I remember is a flare of intense heat, and the next
thing I knew I was running down the stairs, descending so fast that at one point I lost my footing and fell to the landing.
I picked myself up and kept going, and within moments I found myself out on the street standing in a crowd, and Therese Poulee
was asking me what had happened to my eyebrows, and I was screaming at her, demanding this delicate young French Canadian
woman, who represented no less to me than my last desperate hope, to help my father,
help him, damn you!

From the opposite sidewalk the crowd watched smoke seep from crevices and broken windows. Here and there a flame appeared
to wave wickedly and then hid before the firemen could steer the hose. Little Rosie Peet stood clutching her doll and hopping
back and forth from one bare foot to the other, splashing her toes in the spill-off that collected against the curb, squealing
with delight. The older children watched solemnly, even proudly, for they were taking part in a magnificent event and would
have something to tell their friends in school the next day.

A fireman named Floyd Coolidge climbed the fire escape to our apartment. He found my father lying in a stupor in the hallway
outside his bedroom. Floyd picked him up like he would have picked up a suitcase and then dragged him by one arm through the
smoky apartment and out to the fire escape. With the help of another fireman he carried my father down to the street, where
he was roused to sputtering rage by the ammonia a medic held under his nose. The two firemen returned to join their crew,
who kept the hoses blasting even after the fire was out, as if filling a huge container.

My father spent two days in the hospital. I went to fetch him on Monday morning. While I buttoned his shirt to his Arrow collar,
he stared sullenly at me. I knew by then that he’d heard the story about the cause of the fire, and I guessed what he was
thinking: his own daughter had been willing to sacrifice her father, her own dear father, for the sake of a hoodlum boy. Sure,
he’d be better off dead, he’d be the first to admit it, but as long as he was still alive he would never forgive me.

Since the fire, we’ve been staying in the Shannonso, in a two-room suite on the seventh floor. From the window in the sitting
room I can look out upon our building. The bricks are streaked from the rooftop to the third floor with soot, the windowpanes
are shattered, and the plate glass of Scarooms has been boarded over, though the sign still hangs lopsided on its metal bracket.
The building will be demolished eventually, though it will probably have to wait until the war is over.

I don’t know much about the boy I risked so many lives to save. On the way to the precinct he told my husband that his name
was Wally and that he’d climbed with his dad to the rooftop simply to see the view. According to the story in the newspaper,
the boy’s name is Wallace Michaud and he lives with his family in New Jersey. His father, so the reporter claimed, led the
boy to the roof of our building to have a smoke and meet a friend, a real estate shark keen on buying up property in our neighborhood.
The police say the matter is under investigation.

My husband still has his job cooking at a Midtown steak house. Most of my former neighbors have found temporary accommodations
with friends or relatives, though Therese Poulee and Glenn McDuff are both living on different floors here at the Shannonso.

I don’t do much more than take care of my father, who sits propped on the threadbare sofa, scowling with indignant satisfaction,
having concluded that his own daughter is responsible for everything that’s wrong in the world. I bring him his tea and cinnamon
toast and settle across from him in a chair. My mind drifts, and I keep thinking about the strange beauty of the fire spreading
on the rooftop. To escape my father’s eyes I open a book; any old paperback is fine, for I’m only pretending to read.

T
he girl didn’t want anything to change. She especially liked it when her mama came home late from her job at the lunchroom
wearing her juniper perfume and tussled with her across the mattress they shared, tickling her in the armpits, giving her
butterfly kisses with her wiry eyelashes, laughing the same way she wept, the fullness of the sound threatening to shatter
her bones, which would never happen, the girl knew, since Mama was as strong as the young tree planted in front of the Lafayette,
a second Tree of Hope to replace the first, which had finally grown so old it would have toppled some windy day if the authorities
hadn’t chopped it down.

Granny was growing old. Actually, Granny was the child’s great-grandmother and liked to remind her of that, her
great
age being her main claim to dignity. The old woman’s own daughter, Mama’s mama, had died long ago, so Granny had raised Mama
“by hand,” as she said, the plan being that someday Mama would take care of Granny. But it hadn’t turned out that way. Granny
had to keep on selling baked sweet potatoes and popcorn from a cart on Lenox because Mama spent her own wages at a gin mill
and every few days came home drunk, which was how the child liked her best, when Mama was in a laughing mood. But there were
bound to be words exchanged between Granny and Mama, hardly an even exchange, since out of Granny’s mouth flew complaints
pitched at top volume, while from Mama came the softest whisper, “Leave off, Gran,” her gentle voice enough to make Granny
reach for the belt.

The last time Granny lit into Mama was in sticky-hot weather, when Mama came home so saturated that she sweated gin. She’d
been too tired to play much, though she did draw her daughter onto her lap and rock her until they both fell back giggling
on the mattress. Granny, of course, didn’t find any of it funny, and she struck at Mama’s bare arms with the leather so hard
that by the time the whipping was done Mama looked like she’d been picked over by crows. But she didn’t cry. She just stood
up, tottered over to Granny, said something in too low a voice for the girl to hear, and walked out the door.