'You don't have to say anything that you didn't already say in those letters. On the track that day you raced the St. Clement's kids, we talked about how who you are should always be more important than what you are. But there is a balance we all need to find, and it appears you're in the process of finding it. So' — he reached across and shook her hand — 'congratulations.'
'Hey, thanks, Terry. Thanks for hanging in there with me.'
'Anything else?'
'Yeah, just one. Are you going to finish the rest of that sundae?'
Nearly airborne with excitement, Natalie managed to make it through the Whole Foods Market. When it happened, she had chosen not to tell her mother that she had been suspended from school. Sooner or later, though, especially as graduation time approached, she knew she was going to have to say something. Now, thanks to the dean, and Doug, and Terry, and whoever else had stepped in to speak on her behalf, that wouldn't be the case.
Best of all was that what she had told Terry was the absolute truth. She had written the letters taking complete ownership of her actions without any consideration that things would change for her externally. During their second-year course on addiction medicine, her class had been required to attend at least two AA meetings and to read in detail about the famous twelve steps — the tools for changing the person in various programs who found it necessary to drink, or drug, or overeat, or gamble, or sleep around. The eighth of those steps had to do with making a list of those the addict had harmed by word or deed. The ninth required making amends to those people without any adherent agenda or expectation of forgiveness. Perhaps, she was thinking now, it might be time for her to expand her list — beginning with her mother.
A detour and subsequent four-block tie-up made the drive to Dorchester twice as long as usual. Natalie noted proudly that her profanities, traditionally X-rated in all traffic situations, would barely have made PG.
Who is this woman, and what have you done with the real Natalie Reyes?
Humming softly, she pulled up in front of Hermina's house and looped two plastic bags of groceries around each wrist, then set them down and retrieved the key from beneath the planter on the front porch. She turned to the front door, and at that moment smelled smoke and noticed that gray-black wisps were floating out from beneath the door.
'Oh, Jesus,' she muttered, plunging the key into the lock and grasping the ornate doorknob, which was hot to the touch.
'Fire!' she screamed to everyone and no one in particular. 'Fire! Call 911!'
She slipped her hand under her sweatshirt to hold the knob, and turned the key. Then she lowered her shoulder and slammed it against the heavy door with all her might.
CHAPTER 15
The people have always some champion whom they set over themselves and
nurse into greatness.
The front door flew inward, and Natalie plunged ahead into a wall of black smoke and heat. The thought flashed through her mind that somewhere she had heard that it wasn't wise to open the door to a fire because the conflagration would be worsened, but she really had no choice. Her mother and her niece were inside.
The heat was bearable, but the smoke grew more intense with every step, stinging her eyes, nose, and lung. Halfway down the hallway to the kitchen, sputtering and coughing, she was forced to pull her sweatshirt over her mouth and nose and drop to her hands and knees. To her left, the living room was filling with smoke, and the flowered paper on the wall by the kitchen was smoldering, but there was no sign that the fire had started there. The real trouble was ahead of her.
'Mom!' she screamed as she reached the kitchen. 'Mom, can you hear me?'
The curtains on the windows were ablaze, as was the wall behind them, the wall adjacent to the living room, the oak table, and parts of the floor. Acrid smoke, lit eerily by the flames, was swirling through the room. Tongues of fire seemed to be shooting across the ceiling, and flickering up from an area of floor by the table.
'Mom?…Jenny?'
Natalie inched her way toward the bedrooms. The fire had to have started here, she was thinking, her mind forming a vivid image of Hermina, nodding off at the table, hunched over the Times crossword puzzle, a pencil in one hand, a glowing Winston in the other. But where was she? The heat was intense now, and Natalie began worrying about the gas stove. There were pilots going all the time without flame finding its way backward into the pipes, and she had never heard of a massive explosion from a stove unless unlit gas was actually leaking into the room. The pipes to the stove must offer some protection, she decided. It really didn't matter. She wasn't leaving until she found her mother and Jenny.
The heat and swirling smoke were building. Natalie dropped to her elbows to get more relief from both. Now, in addition, there was noise — a crescendo of snapping wood, falling plaster, and hissing flame. She was squinting ahead, peering through nearly closed eyes, when she spotted her mother lying facedown, no more than five feet away. She was wearing a housecoat and no shoes, and was lying motionless in the doorway that led to the bedrooms. Jenny! Unless Hermina had become disoriented, she had to have been trying to get to her granddaughter.
Operating off a surge of adrenaline, Natalie grabbed her mother by the ankles, stood up as high as she could tolerate, and began hauling her, six inches at a time, back into the kitchen. The air was significantly hotter than it had been just a minute or so before. Breathing it was like standing in front of an open furnace. There was no movement from her mother — no reaction to being dragged, facedown, across the floor. Natalie fought the urge to check for signs of life. Maybe a heart attack had precipitated all of this. Instead, she pushed backward some more. She had to get Hermina out of the house, then get back inside for Jenny.
The back door, just beyond the blazing table, was engulfed in a sheet of fire. There was absolutely no way out except back down the hallway to the front door. Had anyone called the fire department? Smoke must be billowing out of that door by now. Would anyone be out there waiting to help?
Twice Natalie's hands slipped and she fell backward, gagging and coughing, trying to clear her throat and chest. Each time, she regained her composure and her grip and dragged her mother another few feet. She was nearing the open front door, when Ramon Santiago, the seventy-year-old upstairs tenant, appeared at her elbow, trying to help as much as he was able.
'Be careful…Ramon,' Natalie sputtered, knowing that the man had arthritis and some sort of heart problem as well. 'I don't…want you…getting hurt.'
'Is she alive?'
'I…don't know.'
If anything, Ramon was slowing down her progress to the door. Finally, he let go.
'I think people have called the fire department.'
'Go be…sure!'
'It was her cigarettes, wasn't it.'
'Ramon, go…get the…fire department!'
'Okay, okay.'
He turned and ran off just as Natalie reached the porch. She was coughing nonstop now and gasping for breath. The burning in her chest was intense. There were several neighbors on the front walk. Only one of them, a fifty-year-old man, who she knew wasn't working because of some sort of illness or injury, was young enough to be of much assistance.
'Help me!' she cried, now wondering what she would do if, in fact, her mother wasn't breathing — trust a neighbor to do effective CPR and go back in after Jenny, or pray the girl was at school, and tend to things with Hermina?
