The Stars Are Fire



Grace, back in the sitting room, is startled by a door slamming. When she looks up, Judith is standing before her, wiping her hands on a towel.

“I won’t be returning,” she says.

Grace stands. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

“I worked him hard, I’ll admit that. You probably heard the shouting. And for my troubles, I got a glob of spit down the front of my uniform.”

Grace wants to apologize for her husband, to explain.

“You seem a nice person. But your husband— There’s something wrong with him. And I mean more than his burns.”

“I’m sorry this has happened to you.”

“I don’t mind telling you that I don’t like leaving you alone with him.”

“I’ll be fine,” Grace says, gathering herself. “He was just furious with me for getting a nurse behind his back.”

The nurse peers at Grace. “Are you aware of how crazy that is? Most men in his situation want to get better.”

“Men have pride.”

“I’ve seen pride and stubbornness, yes I have. This is something different.”


When Grace goes in to see Gene, she finds a subdued husband. “I don’t need anything,” he says in a quiet voice.


The next afternoon, Grace arrives home with a secondhand record player that the salesman in the music store turned on for her so that she could listen to a Mozart record. He didn’t need to talk up the quality; Grace could hear it for herself. He helped her select music from Chopin and Brahms, from Beethoven and Bach. Nearly giddy with her purchases, she asks her mother to bring the kids downstairs. Grace plugs in the machine, puts a record on the spindle, and lets the music of Chopin fill the house, a grand salute to her mother and Claire and Tom as they make their way down the staircase. Grace beams at them. “I’ve bought a record player. We’ll have music now.”

“It’s beautiful,” her mother says, putting her hands to her cheeks. Claire hears the music as her cue to start dancing. Tom holds on to the coffee table and shakes his hips and dips his knees, trying to imitate his sister, which makes Grace and her mother laugh. Marjorie asks Grace to dance. The pair hold hands, and Grace remembers the silly joy of dancing for Aidan. Because neither she nor her mother really knows any steps to this sort of music, they make up their own movements, sometimes following rhythm, more often moving too fast for the stately composer. They meet in the center, smiling, and Grace twirls her mother around and spins her out, only to have her roll back again.

“WHAT IS GOING ON?”

Grace, her mother, and the children stop short as if they had been shot. A pianist, oblivious to the disruption, plays on.

“What’s that?” Gene asks, pointing a finger at the machine.

Because the children are present, Grace holds her sarcasm in check. “I bought a record player,” she says.

“You bought a record player knowing how I hate loud sounds, knowing that I have a constant headache, knowing that I need silence at all times?”

“Could you hear it?” Grace asks, not so innocently.

“Could I hear it?” He performs a truncated roll of his head to indicate what an idiotic question that is. Claire and Tom gravitate to their grandmother, who gently leads them into the kitchen.

“The children need music,” Grace says in as calm a voice as she can manage.

“Did you have music when you were growing up?”

“There’s a thing called progress,” she says. “There’s another thing called beauty. There’s a third thing called fun. And believe it or not, there’s such a thing in the world as a choice.”

“Not in my house,” he says. “Get rid of it.”

Grace sticks her hands in the pockets of her dress. “You get rid of it,” she says.

“You know very well I can’t get into a car and drive it back to wherever it came from.”

“Then break it for all I care.”


Marjorie confides to Grace that she isn’t feeling well.

“Is it your stomach?” the daughter asks, feeling her mother’s forehead with the back of her hand.

“Not sure yet. I’m achy all over. And tired.”

“Of course you’re tired.”

“I don’t want to give it to the children.”

“The children will be fine. Just go up and rest.”

As she watches her mother climb the stairs, Grace is aware of Claire and Tom touching her clothes, as if now she must be activities director. She closes her eyes but can’t think of a single game they used to play together. Has she lost the part of her brain that functioned on automatic? “Shall we go up to the nursery and see what’s there?” she asks in an overly cheery voice.

Claire shakes her head. Grace kneels down to be at her level. “Say the word.”

“No,” says Claire.

“Why?”

“Boring.”

“We could color,” suggests Grace.

“Boring.”

“We could cook.”

“Boring.”

“I know! How about we go upstairs and jump up and down on my bed?”

“Yes!” cries Claire as she heads for the stairs. Grace follows more slowly behind Tom since he insists now on doing everything “byself.” When Tom and she enter the bedroom, Claire is already bouncing high, her hair leaving her head. She falls deliberately on her bum and pops right up again.

My little gymnast, Grace thinks. She takes off her shoes and climbs onto the bed. Mindful of the chandelier, she jumps in rhythm with Claire, trying not to tip over Tom, who can’t keep his balance on the constantly moving surface. Grace feels gleeful at the thought of the subversive activity she’s invented. Exhausted, she quits before Claire, but even Claire winds down.

“Yay for us!” Claire says, breathless.


The playing on the bed annoys Gene. Infuriates him.

“That’s my mother’s bed.”

“We were only fooling around.”

“What mother lets her kids jump on the bed?”

“I do. Did.”

“If you ruin the springs, you won’t have a bed left. Goddamnit, Grace. What’s got into you?”

Grace pauses, studies her husband’s face. “What’s gone out of me is a better question.”


In quiet moments Grace understands that Gene went to the fire to perform his civic duty. He was all but killed in the blaze. He’s suffered enough pain to last a hundred men a lifetime. He’s so disfigured he doesn’t want to leave the house. If he’s true to his word and no longer participates in his physical therapy, he will become a bedridden invalid.

Who would want that kind of life?


If you love a man, Grace thinks, you might be willing to do anything for him. And if she loved Gene, she might touch him on his good side, say soothing or funny words. She would stay in his room every free minute that she had, perhaps even installing a cot so that she could sleep beside him. She would cajole him into more and more physical therapy and would praise him for every small accomplishment. She would kiss the good side of his face and, if he wanted her to, find a plastic surgeon who might be able to improve his appearance. She would sell all the jewelry so that he and she were set for life, able to be companions and, one day, lovers again. She would take him for walks outside in the spring. They would sit together under the cherry tree she knows is about to bloom, and they would hold hands and laugh.

She is thinking of Aidan.


Time passes so slowly that Grace hates to wake up. Every moment longer that she sleeps is a minute she won’t have to fill. There are so many of them in a single day. When she was with Aidan, she was unaware of time. When she worked for Dr. Lighthart, she was so busy she was often surprised to look up and discover that it was already five-thirty in the afternoon. Now it seems as if it takes days to get to five-thirty, never mind eight o’clock, when she can reasonably go to bed.


Grace can’t read anymore, can’t even finish a magazine article at the kitchen table. Her concentration is shot. She no longer reads to Gene, who doesn’t seem to miss it.

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