Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe

walked up the wide staircase side by side.
    â€œThis was somebody’s house?” Eileen said.
    â€œOnce upon a time,” Delia said.
    â€œJesus Christ.”
    â€œDignity, please,” Delia said.
    Eileen rolled her eyes.
    Upstairs, Eileen went immediately to the tall windows that looked out on Fifth Avenue. Delia followed, eager to see Eileen’s face when she looked down on the parade for the first time. The balcony was narrow, and not many could step out at a time. Right now it was full, but it was so cold, Delia was sure nobody would be out there long.
    â€œWell, well, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.”
    Delia turned to see Tomás Breen, the novelist. She smiled at him and returned the greeting. He was her age, forty-eight, and also long divorced. When Tomás finally quit drinking, it was too late to save his marriage but, sober, his career had flourished, with two well-received novels.
    Delia had first met Tomás at the AIHS two years ago, in October, when he gave a reading. During the Q & A, Delia asked him if he thought his first novel had been denounced by the Church, yet not banned as Kate O’Brien’s had been, because he was a man. His answer: probably yes. At the reception following the reading, she’d talked with him and his sister, and they’d gone to dinner twice before Tomás and Fionnula’s return to Ireland. Since then, more often than not, when he came to town he’d give her a call.
    â€œWhere’s Fionnula?” Delia asked.
    â€œRight there.” Tomás said.
    When they were young, Fionnula dreamed of being a journalist, but there weren’t many such opportunities for women, not in Ireland, so she became a librarian. Fionnula edited Tomás’s manuscripts. She accompanied him on book tours and to social events, to keep watch over him. Fionnula was shy and it was a trial for her, but for his sake, she came along.
    Tomás made gentle fun of his sister but cheerfully admitted that without her, his liver would rise and kill him. She made his work better too. He fell in love with useless paragraphs and found it impossible to let them go, as though they had hearts and he might break them.
    She’d never married. Not that she hadn’t been asked, Tomás told Delia. There’d been a couple of fellows who weren’t afraid of her mind. But she turned them down cold. Their mother had been a beaut. She hadn’t known she was expecting twins. It was unlikely she would have, in Ireland in 1918, unless the archangel Gabriel was still in the business of giving unsolicited information to expectant mothers.
    Tomás was born first, and nearly died three times in his first half hour. Then his mother had Fionnula, and almost immediately Tomás got better. The priest who’d been called to give him extreme unction had no patience for miracles and their paperwork, but he did testify that as soon as the girl was born, the boy began to breathe normally. Their mother told Fionnula that she was an angel sent to earth to keep Tomás from going to heaven, or some churchy nonsense like that. Like a character from myth, Fionnula had tied her life to his.
    Delia looked over and saw Fionnula seated nearby, her hands folded in her lap. She gave her a small wave. Fionnula nodded once. Delia hated to see her sitting there as though she were a secretary of the old order, one who sewed buttons back on cuffs and made dental appointments for her boss. Yet for all that, the Breens’ devotion to each other reassured Delia that she’d been right to adopt a child, for Sean’s sake.
    She and Tomás began a conversation about what they were reading now, and Delia noted the eager and envious people hovering, waiting for the chance to get a word with him.
    Eileen drifted over to them. “Nobody’s coming in. I don’t get it. It’s freezing out there.”
    Delia raised a hand to brush Eileen’s hair out of her eyes.