The Stars Are Fire(65)

My little gymnast, Grace thinks. She takes off her shoes and climbs onto the bed. Mindful of the chandelier, she jumps in rhythm with Claire, trying not to tip over Tom, who can’t keep his balance on the constantly moving surface. Grace feels gleeful at the thought of the subversive activity she’s invented. Exhausted, she quits before Claire, but even Claire winds down.

“Yay for us!” Claire says, breathless.


The playing on the bed annoys Gene. Infuriates him.

“That’s my mother’s bed.”

“We were only fooling around.”

“What mother lets her kids jump on the bed?”

“I do. Did.”

“If you ruin the springs, you won’t have a bed left. Goddamnit, Grace. What’s got into you?”

Grace pauses, studies her husband’s face. “What’s gone out of me is a better question.”


In quiet moments Grace understands that Gene went to the fire to perform his civic duty. He was all but killed in the blaze. He’s suffered enough pain to last a hundred men a lifetime. He’s so disfigured he doesn’t want to leave the house. If he’s true to his word and no longer participates in his physical therapy, he will become a bedridden invalid.

Who would want that kind of life?


If you love a man, Grace thinks, you might be willing to do anything for him. And if she loved Gene, she might touch him on his good side, say soothing or funny words. She would stay in his room every free minute that she had, perhaps even installing a cot so that she could sleep beside him. She would cajole him into more and more physical therapy and would praise him for every small accomplishment. She would kiss the good side of his face and, if he wanted her to, find a plastic surgeon who might be able to improve his appearance. She would sell all the jewelry so that he and she were set for life, able to be companions and, one day, lovers again. She would take him for walks outside in the spring. They would sit together under the cherry tree she knows is about to bloom, and they would hold hands and laugh.

She is thinking of Aidan.


Time passes so slowly that Grace hates to wake up. Every moment longer that she sleeps is a minute she won’t have to fill. There are so many of them in a single day. When she was with Aidan, she was unaware of time. When she worked for Dr. Lighthart, she was so busy she was often surprised to look up and discover that it was already five-thirty in the afternoon. Now it seems as if it takes days to get to five-thirty, never mind eight o’clock, when she can reasonably go to bed.


Grace can’t read anymore, can’t even finish a magazine article at the kitchen table. Her concentration is shot. She no longer reads to Gene, who doesn’t seem to miss it.

She wonders what can be inside his head.

When she thinks it might be time to reintroduce the children to their father, she speaks to Claire and Tom for a long time and then enters Gene’s room with them. Before they have even reached the bed, Gene confronts his daughter. “What the heck did you do to your hair?”

“Mommy did,” Claire answers in a tremulous voice.

“I loved your long curls,” Gene wails. “You were so beautiful.”

Claire begins to cry.


An hour later, Grace charges into Gene’s bedroom. “Can you just answer me one question?”

He tilts his head on the pillow, his face uncertain.

“Why did you marry me?” she asks.

“You got pregnant, remember?” he says defensively.

“Yes. But before. You were romantic, you courted me.”

“Did I? I don’t think we should discuss the past.”

“But I want to know.”

“You were there.”

“But I wasn’t inside your head.”

“I could lie to you.”

“But don’t.”

He props himself up with his right elbow. “You reminded me of my love,” he says.

Grace at first doesn’t understand. “I reminded you of…your love?”

And so he gives it to her, the answer she thinks she wants, the answer she’ll wish she had never asked for. “You reminded me of the woman I loved when I was in the war.”

He waits to see how Grace will take this announcement, but she’s motionless.

“She was French,” Gene adds. “She looked a lot like you. I couldn’t persuade her to come back to the States with me. I used to write to my mother, and once I sent a picture of the two of us together. I told my mother I would marry the woman.” He pauses. “It’s why she didn’t like you.”

The explanation smacks Grace in the face as if she had walked into a glass door. She leaves the library, climbs the stairs to her bedroom, and lies on the bed facedown.


Amy comes to visit, bringing new supplies. After her time with Gene, she addresses Grace, who is waiting outside his room.

“I heard the visiting nurse was a fiasco,” Amy says.

“What did she say specifically?”

“Only that your husband was completely uncooperative. What happened to the physical therapy? He’s as limp as a fish.”

“He won’t do it.”

“It’s your job to make him do it.”

“There’s only so much I can do,” responds Grace.

“You look like hell. What’s happened?”