I DIDN’T HAVE enough time to get to 75 Hazelton before my shift, so I lugged all my goodies to the club. Instead of setting up our tables, Rachel oohed and aahed over my purchases. She had never seen anything as pretty as the L’Air du Temps bottle either, so I gave her one. When I dug out the dress and held it against me, she started to cry.
“You’ll look real nice, Toni,” Ethan said. Where had he come from?
“She’s going to a real swell party on Sunday night.” Rachel sniffled.
“Oh,” he said. And with that oh we were back to the Cold War. “Big Bob wants to see you in his office, Toni.”
Uh-oh. I didn’t have a single pleasant memory of being asked into anyone’s office. I was never one of the girls that Mrs. Hazelton or Miss Webster had asked in for a pleasant heart-to-heart over a cup of tea. And, let’s face it, I was still recovering from my last visit to Mrs. Hazelton’s office. I combed my transgression memory box and came up empty. What had I done? My panic was in full bloom by the time I got to the office.
Big Bob’s door was open, and he was on the phone. As soon as he saw me, he waved me in. “Here she is now…yeah, you too. Behave yourself and get out of there, hear.” He handed me the telephone and mouthed, “It’s Scarlet Sue. You only got a minute.”
Oh my god, the letter. I hadn’t read her letter.
“Miss O’Reilly? Hello? It’s Toni here.”
“Hiya, toots. Look, I’ve been tying myself in knots ever since I sent the letter. You got it, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Well, I had.
“So, I been thinking about it, and I apologize. It probably came out too stone-hard. I ain’t good with words on paper.”
“Ma’am?”
“The facts about the fire. I only got it all second and thirdhand, you know? I looked for youse everywhere, really I did, kid, but the cops nailed me practically the minute I got over the border, see? It was a short one that time, but by the time I got released, the trail was colder than a brass toilet seat.”
Fire? “The fire on the Noronic?”
“What? No, the one in your the basement flat!”
“Excuse me?” Dear God in heaven, how many fires were there?
Big Bob hurriedly brought around a chair and then excused himself.
It was a good thing I was sitting.
“The basement fire where you and Hally had been living.”
I started to get up and then wisely sat back down.
There was a long exhalation at the other end of the phone.
“You didn’t read the letter, did ya?”
I sighed into the phone. “I’m sorry, ma’am. No, I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. See, I’m not very…I’m sorry.”
“Oh, take off your hair shirt, sweetie. You’ve got a lot to chew on. It’s right smart to dole things out in little pieces, so you don’t end up choking on it going down.”
I nodded at the phone.
“Toni, you there? Smiling Sam here is breathing down my neck even though I ain’t ever blown my nickel on anyone before.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. I was getting well and truly tired of not knowing what people were talking about.
“Toni!”
“I’m here, Miss O’Reilly, sorry.”
“Quit apologizing, and that’s a life tip, toots. I’m the one who feels like a dog. Hally was my best friend. Do you want to know now, or do you want to read the letter?”
Did I? Was my mother alive? Did I?
“Yes, I want to know. I mean, please tell me.”
“Go to hell, Sam, the kid wants to know.”
“Are you okay, ma’am?”
“Yeah, he’s gone back to pacing and growling. So, here’s the goods as far as I got ’em. Okay, so I was away when it happened, in Buffalo on, uh, business.”
“Do you mean when the fire happened?”
“Yeah. You girls had moved while I was gone. Finding rent was always a problem.”
“And me? Was I a problem?”
“Sure. Oh, not like you was a brat or anything. It’s just that landlords weren’t keen on taking on single ladies with a little kid.” Then I heard her grumble, “I’d kill for a smoke, Sam. I’ll make it up to you later.” There was mumbling, then the sound of a cigarette being lit and inhaled. “So, the way I heard it, when I couldn’t find youse anywhere, was that there was a fire in one of the basement flats over there in the village, maybe yours, maybe not. And then, honey, the trail went dead. There was a ton of fires in those days, and I mean a ton, see?”
“Uh, no.”
“The places were run-down, and sometimes they blew because of bad wiring and sometimes the owners helped it along because of the insurance money. I’m not the only con in the city, kid, but I wouldn’t touch that kind of scam. Too dirty.”
Huh? There was a piece of me that still believed I had a monster for a mother. There might have been things that drove her to it, I knew that now, but I had a mother who had harmed her own child. “Did she set the fire? My mother, I mean.”
“Halina? What? No! I mean, what do I know, but no! Why would she do something like that? She got down a bit at times, and those pills didn’t help, but she wasn’t nuts and she wouldn’t do it for some money scheme. I ought to know. I tried to bring her in on the side with my little cons, and she wouldn’t go near ’em.”
There was a muffled “You don’t own me, Sam, so give me a another minute, will ya?” and then she said, “She’d never risk anything happening to you, kid. You were the only reason she was living.”
But that memory, that nightmare. I knew I had that right. I knew it was my mother. I could recall the smell of my own fear. I wasn’t wrong about that. Scarlet Sue had been away, after all. Things change; people change.
“When was this—the fire?”
“Well, I left right before Christmas ’49, and I got back sometime in the spring.”
I stood up again and stayed standing. “I have a hospital-release thingy that says I got out in April. So it’s got to be a fire that happened between the beginning of January and the end of April.”
“Yeah, it’s not much. Like I said, there were a lot of fires back then. It may not even have made the papers. Sorry, it’s all I got.”
“No, no, that’s good, Miss O’Reilly.”
“Auntie Sue.”
“Yes, thank you, Auntie Sue. I have a genius librarian friend, and I’m sure he’ll help.”
“Good. And…kid?”
“Yes, uh, Auntie Sue?”
“I don’t want to see you down here anymore. This is no place for a girl like you.”
“But I’d…”
“Even Sam is nodding his head. You got a question, write me. I don’t want to see your face here. In fact, I’ll refuse to see you, got it?”
“But you’re all I’ve got, and now that I’ve found—”
“I mean it! You don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re not gonna learn it visiting me. Not if I can help it. You got it or not?”
Big Bob had returned. He was leaning against the doorway and pretending to survey the back of the stage.
“Yes. I mean, no. I promise I won’t try to visit you again.”
“Okay then.” Her voice was softer, more resigned now. “I’m due to get out before the end of the year, and if I behave myself I may actually do it this time. And kid, I will do it this time because of you. Stay at the Lady Grady’s and keep out of trouble.” Then there was muttering and cursing. “Right. Smiling Sam has put his foot down. Gotta go.”
“Thank you so much for making the effort and tracking me down. It means so much, I can’t tell you how much…”
But the line was dead.
Big Bob walked in and put the telephone back on its receiver. “She’s a pistol, that one. I’d pay attention to whatever she has to say.”
“Another fire!” I stood there. “There was another fire with my mom and me in a basement flat. I’m supposed to find out about another fire! I mean, come on!” I wanted to kick something, throw something. “No way.” I shook my head. “I’m done. No more.”