The Stars Are Fire(22)

“I’m just fixing dinner,” Joan says.

She doesn’t mention the lost baby. Good, Grace thinks. Here I can pretend to have moved on until I actually do move on. Will I be able to move on?

Inside the front door is a boy who says, “Hello, I’m Roger. I know you’re Mrs. Holland.”

“Hello, Roger. I’m sorry you had to share your house with my children.”

“Oh, they’re okay. Tom isn’t up to much, but I’m teaching Claire math.”

Grace laughs. “That can’t be very rewarding.”

“It’s all right. She’s a little slow.”

Roger has on a red plaid shirt and dungarees. She can see soot marks on his knees. He has left his shoes by the door, where there are three other pairs. Grace sits in a chair and takes hers off.

“I spend all day cleaning,” Joan says, “but I can’t keep the ash out of the house. We do our best, but it’s going to take a snowfall to settle the black on the ground.”

Grace glances at the living room, where the finest lace of dark dust permeates.

“Eventually, I’ll get it all,” Joan says, putting on an apron. “I swing wet towels around all day.”

In the entrance to the kitchen, Joan has set up a playpen and a crib. Tom raises his hands in the air, a signal for his mother to pick him up. Matthew moves a chair next to the crib so that Grace can touch her son through and over the bars.

“Mom, look!” says Claire. Grace watches in amazement as her daughter folds and then sets a napkin beside each plate on the kitchen table. Her children look months older than they did four days ago.


On the walls, pretty wallpaper. Bright oilcloth on the table. Well-ironed yellow-checked curtains at the windows. All around them is black. Black trees, black underbrush, black ruins of houses. The air they breathe is full of black. On the banks of the cove lie random burned branches and boards, the flotsam and jetsam of a hundred destroyed houses.

They sit to supper, Claire on a wooden booster seat.

“The Methodist church at Hunts Beach didn’t burn,” Matthew informs Grace. “It’s being used as a shelter now. It’s a center for information. I’m not suggesting you stay there, but I am saying you might want to have a look at their bulletin board. You might be able to find your friends.”

He doesn’t say husband. He doesn’t say family.

“I put your name and address up on it a couple of days ago,” he adds.

“We don’t have a telephone or a post office though,” Joan points out. “It could take a while for a message to get to us.”

No one has tried to find me, Grace thinks. “I’d like to go there tomorrow,” she says. “Can you take me?”

“I sure can,” says Matthew.

“I don’t have any money,” Grace adds. “I can’t pay you.”

“Good Lord,” scolds Joan. “Don’t you even think of paying. We’re just glad we have a roof over our heads we can share with others.”

“And food in the cupboards. Hope you don’t mind green beans and peaches. I thought my wife a fool for putting up so many beans. But now I think she’s pretty smart.”

“And lobster,” Roger pipes up. “My dad can pull more pots than any man.”

“Now, now,” Matthew mumbles.

“You’re a lobsterman,” says Grace.

“That I am.”

“But you didn’t go out today.”

“Matter of fact, I did. When I got home, I got a call from the hospital. They said you were going home, so I waited with my truck.”

Grace, overwhelmed by kindness, can’t speak.


Grace and her children have the guest room with two cribs. Grace guesses that either Joan or Matthew has borrowed at least one. Joan has apparently been collecting clothes for Claire and Tom and has for Grace an entire suit of clothing that looks to have been made before the war: a blue tweed skirt and matching jacket, a nylon blouse, a slip and a new package of underwear. How did Joan get her hands on underwear? Grace decides to sleep in the nurse’s uniform. In the morning, she’ll put on the new clothes, overdressed for breakfast.


“Don’t you look smart!” Joan exclaims when Grace and her children enter the kitchen. “It fits you perfectly.”

“Thank you,” says Grace.

“My wedding suit,” Joan explains as she scrambles eggs with a fork.

Grace glances at the fabric, touches the skirt with her hands. “You can’t give me this,” she says, embarrassed. “It’s a treasure to you.”

“Truth is, I was busting out of it when I got married. Never had it on since. But now I’ve found a use for it. Can’t be sentimental about clothes when others need them.”

“I’ll pay you back someday.”

“Don’t be thinking about that. Get some eggs into you. You’ve got a tough day ahead.”

If she had had a baby, Grace thinks, she would now be lying in the maternity ward for the better part of two weeks while she healed. The baby would be brought to her three times a day for bottle feedings. When she gave birth to Tom, she was offered the option of going home but leaving Tom in the hospital for thirty days, a dollar a day. “Give you a rest and get the little one fattened up,” the nurse had said.