once planned to meet Eliza Cappadora. Eliza. I had business later at UIC. But for now my business was with Renee. She had the afternoon free, having come off her shift early that morning.
Renee was the kind of woman who would always look a little like a teenager. Deceptively petite, she could haul heavy hoses up three flights of stairs without panting. Back when I was a teenager, she could chin herself a dozen times, and now, when I asked her, she admitted that she still could. Renee had to be about five-two and weigh about one hundred and ten pounds. Maybe not even. Her curly hair, cut short, looked the way kids’ hair does when they tumble out of bed. When I stood up, I felt enormous at five feet six. “I didn’t remember you being so much taller than me,” she said. “I don’t come up to your chin!” We didn’t talk about one thing and another. Renee sat down with her black coffee and said, “What do you want to know, Sicily?”
“I want to hear about the fire. The way you saw it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said.
Renee had never described that scene to me. We’d barely spoken of the fire even when she tutored me, even when she drove me to clinic appointments. I think she worried for me. Even good people have a way of hoping you’ve forgotten the things that redirected your life. You don’t remember them, not in the way you did at first. The film stutters and goes blank in places. It stops completely—a still photograph in which the clothing looks dated.
“I remember every moment,” she said. “It was the thing in my life. I remember it the way I remember my daughters being born. Maybe even more.”
On the three-minute ride to Holy Angels, no one spoke. The silence inside the cab was so charged it seemed to buzz. My father, whom Renee and the others called “Cap,” was in the front seat with the driver; Renee and Moory Tillett sat facing Tom McAvoy and Schmitty, who sat sitting backward—all of them trying to relax by breathing out but rigid with knowing that dozens of kids were at the destination and that the engine that would lay the pipe and deliver the water was still minutes away. Renee quietly finished dressing, pulling on her Nomex hood and fastening the clasps on her turnout coat. Cap said nothing. He didn’t push the red button on the truck that played the Superman theme. He seemed only to thoughtfully regard the blurred glittering of lighted Christmas decorations. Against her better judgment, Renee started to have personal thoughts: This was her first true rescue fire. Working in Chester meant a great many medicals, including the frequent fliers who made lukewarm suicide attempts every Saturday night, or grossly overweight people who fell off the sofa and had to be hoisted back on with the big black rubber sling they all called “the whale tarp.” There were some property-damage fires: Renee said Cap made the veterans dummy certificates for the grace under pressure they showed at the Great Dumpster Fire of 2006. “I started thinking about the last time I saw you, pouting because you were nearly twelve and didn’t think you needed a babysitter anymore. You’d just gotten your hair cut in that horrible shag thing that looked like old pictures of Joan Jett …”
“And you let me drink some of your beer,” I said, remembering.
“I would never have done that, Sicily,” she said. But she had.
Trying not to get caught up in looking at the building, because it was my father’s job to assess it, Renee jumped down carefully from the truck—always carefully, because she would be no good if she rolled an ankle. She followed Jamie at a brisk walk toward the single open door (you never ran; only in movies did they run). They passed a few children who were already crying and choking, sitting or lying down on the snow, some bloodied, a few barefoot—children they ignored, because the circle driveway in front of the chapel would momentarily be filled with paramedic vans
Renee was the kind of woman who would always look a little like a teenager. Deceptively petite, she could haul heavy hoses up three flights of stairs without panting. Back when I was a teenager, she could chin herself a dozen times, and now, when I asked her, she admitted that she still could. Renee had to be about five-two and weigh about one hundred and ten pounds. Maybe not even. Her curly hair, cut short, looked the way kids’ hair does when they tumble out of bed. When I stood up, I felt enormous at five feet six. “I didn’t remember you being so much taller than me,” she said. “I don’t come up to your chin!” We didn’t talk about one thing and another. Renee sat down with her black coffee and said, “What do you want to know, Sicily?”
“I want to hear about the fire. The way you saw it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said.
Renee had never described that scene to me. We’d barely spoken of the fire even when she tutored me, even when she drove me to clinic appointments. I think she worried for me. Even good people have a way of hoping you’ve forgotten the things that redirected your life. You don’t remember them, not in the way you did at first. The film stutters and goes blank in places. It stops completely—a still photograph in which the clothing looks dated.
“I remember every moment,” she said. “It was the thing in my life. I remember it the way I remember my daughters being born. Maybe even more.”
On the three-minute ride to Holy Angels, no one spoke. The silence inside the cab was so charged it seemed to buzz. My father, whom Renee and the others called “Cap,” was in the front seat with the driver; Renee and Moory Tillett sat facing Tom McAvoy and Schmitty, who sat sitting backward—all of them trying to relax by breathing out but rigid with knowing that dozens of kids were at the destination and that the engine that would lay the pipe and deliver the water was still minutes away. Renee quietly finished dressing, pulling on her Nomex hood and fastening the clasps on her turnout coat. Cap said nothing. He didn’t push the red button on the truck that played the Superman theme. He seemed only to thoughtfully regard the blurred glittering of lighted Christmas decorations. Against her better judgment, Renee started to have personal thoughts: This was her first true rescue fire. Working in Chester meant a great many medicals, including the frequent fliers who made lukewarm suicide attempts every Saturday night, or grossly overweight people who fell off the sofa and had to be hoisted back on with the big black rubber sling they all called “the whale tarp.” There were some property-damage fires: Renee said Cap made the veterans dummy certificates for the grace under pressure they showed at the Great Dumpster Fire of 2006. “I started thinking about the last time I saw you, pouting because you were nearly twelve and didn’t think you needed a babysitter anymore. You’d just gotten your hair cut in that horrible shag thing that looked like old pictures of Joan Jett …”
“And you let me drink some of your beer,” I said, remembering.
“I would never have done that, Sicily,” she said. But she had.
Trying not to get caught up in looking at the building, because it was my father’s job to assess it, Renee jumped down carefully from the truck—always carefully, because she would be no good if she rolled an ankle. She followed Jamie at a brisk walk toward the single open door (you never ran; only in movies did they run). They passed a few children who were already crying and choking, sitting or lying down on the snow, some bloodied, a few barefoot—children they ignored, because the circle driveway in front of the chapel would momentarily be filled with paramedic vans
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