Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [28]
“Your eggs will get cold,” she says.
“I always leave hungry when I leave without you, baby,” I say.
“Well, eat your eggs, and at least your stomach won’t bother you,” she retorts.
God, is there anything in this world that time doesn’t cheat you out of at least once? How many times have I wished for another hour, or even thirty minutes? And how many fires have I fought in freezing cold or exhausting heat, wishing each minute that another hour would pass?
“It’s three-fifteen,” Pat says. “You’d better hurry if you want to get to the firehouse by five.”
She pours a cup of tea, and sits across from me. She looks at me with her sharp, sensitive eyes, and bites the inside of her lower lip, a habit she has when there is something on her mind. Her gaze is fixed on me as I start the omelette, but she says nothing. I continue to eat, and still nothing. Finally, I finish the eggs, and put some sugar in my tea. As I stir the tea, I say, “All right, Patricia Ann, stop biting the lip and let it out.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
Every time there is something important for us to talk about, Pat insists that it is not really important.
“You know what I mean,” I answer. “When you look at me, and bite your lip, there is always something to say.”
“I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, really. I was just wondering if you feel all right, if you should really go back to work.”
“I feel fine, sweetheart. Cross my heart. If I had known you were concerned I would have brought you a note from the doctor.”
“Don’t be funny, Dennis. I was talking to your mother the other day…”
“So that’s it!” I interrupt her.
“Yes that’s it, and she’s right! How many years are you going to work in the South Bronx? I never worried half as much when you used to work in Queens, at least then you came home to me with some life in your body. But, now you come home dead tired—if you come home at all, if you’re not tied up at some hospital getting stitched, or X-rayed, or burns patched. Even in Viet Nam they send the soldiers home after a year, but you’ve been in Engine 82 over five years.”
I can see that she is genuinely upset, and her concern surprises me because she has never mentioned it before. Every fireman’s wife worries about her husband, but up until now Pat had her anxiety under control. Her face begins to contract, and it looks as though years of suppressed worry are about to surface. I have to reassure her, comfort her. I realize, however, that there is little I can say to her that will calm her fears. How many years? I have never thought about it. Is it time to transfer to a clean-upper-middle-class-white neighborhood, where the only false alarms transmitted are those caused by European visitors mistaking the alarm box for a mail box? Where there are no abandoned buildings or abandoned cars to ignite? How many years? Am I working in the South Bronx because of some abstract moral commitment, a belief that poor people must have professional protection from fire and that it’s my obligation to protect them? Like crime and disease, fire victimizes the poor most. Am I crusading? Or am I just doing a job?
I reach over the table and grasp her hand. “Listen baby,” I say, “I wish you wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve told you before that if a fireman is going to get hurt, or even killed, it happens just as easily, just as quickly, in Queens or Staten Island as it does in the South Bronx. Okay, so I come home tired once in a while, but I’m still a young guy. I can take it. Have you ever heard me complain about the work?”
“That’s not what I mean, Dennis,” she says imploringly. “I just don’t know why you want to work down there when you could get a job at the local high school, five minutes away from home. You could work from nine until three. You would be home for Christmas for a change, and you could have the whole summer off every year. Not only that, but you would make more money teaching. I don’t even care that much about the money. It just doesn’t make any sense to me!”
I feel defenseless, stripped naked, because