The Stars Are Fire

“A scattering of a people from their homeland. Displaced.”

She nods. The Jews. She has seen the movie reels. Horrifying and unimaginable.

She glances out the window. The snow is still falling. Will her children be taught about the Jews at school?

“But what about you?” he asks.

Grace tells him about her father, the secretarial course, meeting Gene at the small college to which they both commuted, and marrying him before they’d started their second year. She doesn’t tell the doctor that when she met Gene she thought him handsome and serious, in contrast to the boys she’d been meeting at parties, and she took that seriousness for depth of character. She doesn’t tell him that they married when Grace discovered she was pregnant and that Gene began to shake with either anger or great happiness. This is good, this is what I’ve always wanted, she told herself. And if it wasn’t as romantic or as heedless as she had once hoped for, it was fine.

“You mind if I smoke?” the doctor asks.

“Not at all.”

He offers her one, and she takes it. He crosses his legs and hangs an arm over the chair. He looks casual and very long. “Tell me more about your husband.”

“He’s a surveyor on the Turnpike project. His mother died recently. I expected him to mourn, but I didn’t expect the silence.” She takes a pull on the cigarette. “I used to count up the number of words he said to me in a given day. Sometimes it was only two. When I was a girl, I always thought I’d marry the strong, silent type. But what a bore, really.”

“You have friends?” he asks.

“I used to have a very good friend. But after the fire, she and her husband and children went to live in Nova Scotia.”

“There you go, the diaspora. Why so far?”

“They have family there. Rosie was wonderful. She made me happy every day.” She pauses. “Nearly everyone in Hunts Beach is now homeless. Many are destitute.”

“There’ll be no charge for tonight.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” she’s quick to say. “I’ll pay. Of course, I’ll pay. You can’t very well start a practice without the patients paying.”

“I’m going to set up a sliding scale. When I’ve assessed the general income level of the patients, I’ll determine my fees.”

“Is that legal?”

“It’s time-honored.”

“You’ll have a bookkeeping mess,” she says.

“You know bookkeeping?”

“I do. And I’ll pay the standard rate because you just saved my daughter’s life.”

“You saved your daughter’s life by getting her here. Seizures can be very dangerous.”

Grace remembers the awful moment in Gladys’s house.

“Let’s just say she’s a lucky girl,” he offers.

“Will she really be all right?”

“We’ll see in the morning, but I think so.”


In the morning, Claire’s cheeks are bright red, her tongue white, her throat raw, and she has a rash over her chest and arms. All the symptoms point to scarlet fever, Dr. Lighthart explains. “Any children around her have it?” he asks as the sun rises through the window.

“None that I can think of,” Grace answers.

“It can be serious, and it spreads easily. You have another child at home.”

“Yes.”

“Can you put Claire in a room by herself? She has to be quarantined. You know what that entails?”

Grace thinks about the arrangements, the three of them in the attic. Tom will have to sleep with his grandmother. “Claire and I can sleep together in one room.”

“I’d like to keep her here for twenty-four hours, but I’m going to have to put you both in an isolation room. The receptionist and a nurse will be in this morning. I’ll leave a note on the front desk as to where you are, as well as the diagnosis.”


The nurse, Amy, has Claire fill out a card requiring name, address, phone number, blood type, previous illnesses, both for her and for Claire. Grace can do the name and her previous illnesses—measles, chicken pox, tonsils out—but the address and phone number are not her own. She wonders how much money she has in her purse and if she can pay the doctor in full today so that he needn’t bill her.

Amy offers Grace a gown, bathrobe, and slippers, none of which fit her well. Her legs are bare from above her knees to her ankles, which would be fine if she were the patient. Not fine as a regular woman. The slippers are small and insubstantial, but she can hardly put her good heels on with the gown and robe.

Claire frets, cries, and coughs most of the morning, which Grace knows is a good sign. Her child isn’t listless. According to the doctor, Claire likely has a terrible sore throat and a headache. Grace tries to explain to her daughter that she’s sick and will get better soon, but time means nothing to a young child. An hour, two days, four days. It hurts now. That’s all she knows.

An hour, two days, four days. It’s all Grace knows, too.


Barbara, the receptionist, never makes it in, having skidded into a tree early in the morning. This according to Amy, who gives Claire a cool sponge bath. “I keep telling her, come in later than usual on an icy or snowy morning. Give the plows a chance. But her husband, Burt, tells her that it’s best to be the first car on the road—less danger of hitting anyone else if you skid out. Guess he forgot about trees. Burt’s an idiot. He knows all about drilling for wells, but hasn’t an iota of common sense. Strange for a man, don’t you think? And Barbara, she does what he tells her. I hope she’s not hurt, but I’ve got my hands full now. I have to keep checking the waiting room because there’s no one there to tell us someone needs attention.”

“Don’t bother with us,” Grace says. “I can handle everything myself.”

“You can probably take her temperature regularly, but you can’t do the injections.”

“Injections?”

“Yes, she’s due at six tonight.”

“Of the antibiotic?”

Amy looks at her as if Grace, too, might be dim.

“For ten days,” Amy explains.

“But Dr. Lighthart said the symptoms should subside in five days.”

“That’s true, but you have to do the complete course with antibiotics or else the illness could come back, sometimes in a more virulent form. When the doctor sends you away, he’ll give you a prescription for an oral fluid she can take by the spoonful.”


When Claire finally falls asleep, Grace climbs onto the adult-size cot and pulls up the sheets. She turns to her side to be able to keep an eye on her daughter. She has to do better by her children; she can’t live on the kindness of others indefinitely. She’s made good progress in her driving, but what she really needs is a job in a village or a city in which she can walk to work, get a babysitter, and do her shopping on foot. With her mother’s help, until she can get a paycheck, she might just be able to swing a one-bedroom apartment in a city. But which city? Biddeford? Portland? Portsmouth? Her thinking stops there as she begins to drift off. Her mind fills with images of scintillating snowfields and someone, a child, in the distance. She strains to hear but can’t.



Music



Thirty-eight days after the fire, and Grace has lived a lifetime. Claire is outside, Gladys pulling her on a sled along a path, while Grace’s mother, glad that her daughter has emerged from quarantine, seems chirpy on this snow-covered winter day. “I think he’s just about ready to walk,” Marjorie says of Tom. “All the time I had him, he was holding on between the hassocks and the side tables and the chairs.”

“I feel as though I’ve been away for a very long time.”

“When I think of what you’ve been through—well I may have been mad at you briefly here and there—but you can’t imagine the admiration I have for you.”

Anita Shreve's books