Blue Smoke

Crying for his father as he ran after the car, shaking his fists.
    “Let’s go home, baby,” Gib murmured.
    Reena walked home with her hand in her father’s. She could still hear the terrible screams as Joey ran hopelessly after his.
    N ews spread. It was a fire of its own with hot pockets and trapped heat that exploded when it hit air. Outrage, an incendiary fuse, carried the flames through the neighborhood, into homes and shops, along the sidewalk and into the parks.
    The curtains on the Pastorelli house stayed tightly shut, as if the thin material were a shield.
    It seemed to Reena her own house was never closed. Neighbors streamed in with their covered dishes, their support and their gossip.
    Did you know he couldn’t make bail?
    She didn’t even go to Mass on Sunday.
    Mike at the Sunoco station sold him the gas!
    My cousin the lawyer said they could charge him with attempted murder.
    In addition to the gossip and the speculation was the oft repeated statement: I knew that man was trouble.
    Poppi and Nuni came back, driving their Winnebago all the way from Bar Harbor, Maine. They parked it in Uncle Sal’s driveway in Bel Air because he was the oldest and had the biggest house.
    They all went down to Sirico’s to look, the uncles, some of the cousins and aunts. It looked like a parade, except there were no costumes, no music. Some of the neighbors came out, too, but they stayed back out of respect.

    Poppi was old, but he was robust. It was the word Reena had heard most to describe him. His hair was white as a cloud, and so was his thick mustache. He had a big wide belly and big wide shoulders. He liked to wear golf shirts with the alligator on the pocket. Today’s was red.
    Beside him, Nuni looked tiny, and hid her eyes behind sunglasses.
    There was a lot of talk, in both English and Italian. The Italian was mostly from Uncle Sal. Mama said he liked to think he was more Italian than manicotti.
    She saw Uncle Larry—he was only Lorenzo when someone was teasing him—step over to lay his hand on Mama’s shoulder, and how she lifted her hand to his. He was the quiet one, Uncle Larry, and the youngest of the uncles.
    Uncle Gio turned and stared holes through the closed curtains of the Pastorelli house. He was the hothead, and she heard him mutter something in Italian that sounded like a swear. Or a threat. But Uncle Paul—Paolo—shook his head. He was the serious one.
    For a long time, Poppi said nothing at all. Reena wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering when his hair wasn’t white and his belly not so big, and he and Nuni had made pizza and put the first dollar in a frame for the wall?
    Maybe he remembered how they’d lived upstairs before Mama was born, or how once the mayor of Baltimore had come to eat there. Or when Uncle Larry had broken a glass and cut his hand, and Dr. Trivani had stopped eating his eggplant Parmesan to take him to his office down the street and stitch it up.
    He and Nuni told lots of stories about the old days. She liked to listen to them, even when she’d heard them before. So he must remember them.
    She wiggled through the cousins and aunts to put her hand in his. “I’m sorry, Poppi.”
    His fingers squeezed hers, then to her surprise, he pushed one of the barricades aside. Her heart beat fast and quick as he led her up the steps. She could see through the tape, the burned black wood, the puddles of dirty water. The tray of one of the high chairs had melted into a strangeshape. There were scorching marks everywhere, and the floor had bubbled up where it hadn’t burned away.
    To her amazement she saw a spray can embedded in a wall as if it had been shot out of a cannon. There were no cheerful colors left, no bottles with candle wax dripped down the sides, no pretty pictures on the wall drawn by her mother’s hand.
    “I see ghosts here, Catarina. Good ones. Fire doesn’t scare ghosts away. Gibson?” When he turned, her father stepped through the opening in the barricade. “You have your insurance?”
    “Yes. They’ve been down to look. There won’t be a problem with it.”
    “You want to use the insurance money to rebuild?”
    “There’s no question of that. We may be able to get in and get started as soon as tomorrow.”
    “How do you want to begin?”
    Uncle Sal started to speak—because he always had an opinion—but Poppi lifted a finger. He was the only one who could, according to Reena’s mother, make Uncle Sal swallow words. “Gibson and