Ashes of Fiery Weather Read Free Page A

got sent to the Glory Devlins. I did my time, he said. Norah assumed he made a few phone calls to make it happen. She never asked. It wasn’t her business.
    Delia sat in the blue easy chair, Sean’s chair, and Nathaniel sat beside her on the ottoman. Her face was turned away. Nathaniel was leaning forward and speaking, too softly for Norah to hear.
    She moved away without disturbing them.
    Need anything? You’re all right? He was, I know. Thank you, yes. He was.
    She saw a tall man with dark blond hair standing by the front windows, and she took two steps toward him, ready to shout “Where have you been?” before she realized it was Keith Powell, the company chauffeur, the one who’d written the song about women firefighters. He’d sung it at the picnic last year. Norah recalled only two lines:
    Â 
We used to sleep without any covers,
    Can’t now in case they become our lovers.
    Â 
    She’d laughed with a little bit of guilt, but she couldn’t for the life of her understand why any woman would want to be a fireman. Eileen was out of her head.
    She watched Eileen navigate the rooms. The men stopped talking as she came near, and most looked away.
    Back in 1977, when women were allowed to take the test for the FDNY for the first time, and Eileen decided to do it, Sean laughed and said no way in hell would she pass the physical. Indeed, not a single woman had.
    One of the other women who failed, Brenda Berkman, also happened to be a lawyer, and she filed a lawsuit,
Berkman et al. v. FDNY.
Eileen was informed by mail that she was one of the “et als.” She’d said in amazement that suing never would have occurred to her. None of the men imagined the FDNY would lose the lawsuit.
    But the judge ruled that the current physical test was unfair and that the department had to design a new one that actually tested the skills used on the job. That is, a test that didn’t rely almost entirely on upper-body strength. Bullshit, Sean said. How the fuck could firefighting not require upper-body strength?
    Eileen and fifty-two other women passed the new test.
    Yeah, Sean said, and all the guys said, because they made it easier, not better. If the women had passed the same physical as the men, fine. Let them on. But they didn’t. They passed
the soft test.
    Eileen had graduated from the fire academy last year, a full five years after she first applied. So did eleven other women.
    Norah tried to slip past Grace Grady with a quick nod, but Grace put a hand on Norah’s shoulder, her pretty green eyes lit with sympathy. Norah barely stopped herself from slapping her hand away. Grace was the girl at school who was lovely without trying, and you’d hate her for it if she weren’t so nice.
    It was Grace who’d taken charge of setting up the house this morning. If the power went out, Grace would have candles and extra batteries for each flashlight. She’d probably never used her sleeve to wipe her kids’ noses, and she’d surely never had to pull the Halloween decorations off the windows because she’d run out of candy. Norah bet that on the nights her husband worked, Grace still cooked meatloaf or chicken for her three boys, not hot dogs or grilled cheese the way Norah did.
    Grace had a small stack of dirty paper plates in one hand.
    â€œNorah, don’t forget we’re right up the street. Kev said to let you know that he already takes Danny to baseball practice and he’d be happy to bring Aidan along too. Danny said he didn’t mind losing out on playing first base because it was Aidan . . . And Brian’s my soccer player. He said he’d teach Brendan a few tricks. Whatever you need.”
    That’s just what we need, Norah thought. Football tricks for my four-year-old. Not soccer but football. All her years in the States and she still turned things Irish in her mind. She nodded, and Grace pulled her hand