My alarm clock woke me up. Startled, I slammed my fist down on the snooze button, but the sound persisted. I hit the snooze button again, but the damn thing wouldn’t turn off.
I hit my alarm over and over again, trying to get it to snooze, but it turns out it wasn’t my alarm clock sounding off. It was the fire alarm.
It was unusually cold in Miami on January 9th, 2001, somewhere in the 40s, which is why the heater was on. This was an older house, and the heater would set off the fire alarm for some reason. So when I realized the fire alarm was going off, I did what I always did: find Stephen and get him to turn it off.
The clock blinked. I flipped the covers off and groggily marched to my parent's bedroom on the other side of the house, where I knew Stephen would be sleeping. He’d get home from work around 6 am, hang out with my mom for a while as she got ready for work, consume an entire pot of Cuban coffee, and then crash until about 3 pm.
“Stephen! Stephen, the fire alarm is going off,” I yelled as I made my way to the bedroom door. The man snored like a rusty tractor in an airplane hangar. I’m sure the fire alarm sound couldn’t compete. I knocked on the door. “Stephen, the alarm!” Nothing. So I turned the knob and opened the door to see the bed and the curtains engulfed in flames.
I didn’t even really process what I was seeing. I looked at my hand, realizing the doorknob wasn’t even hot.
“Stephen?!!!!” I yelled. But he didn’t answer.
I was ten the first time I met Stephen. I was standing on my tippy toes, looking through a peephole.
Stephen was a white Jewish man who grew up and still lived in Hialeah, the most predominantly Cuban neighborhood in all of Miami. He’d only ever picked up a few words of Spanish and a deep, deep love of Cuban coffee. He was very tall with a big round belly and skinny everywhere else.
“Your date is here, mom!! He looks…weird,”
The blind date went well because Stephen started showing up more regularly. He worked 5 to 9 on the railroad, and my mom worked in finance from 8-4 and attended FIU to get her Master’s at night.
They only saw each other on weekends, which worked well for me. I’m an only child to a single mom. If you know. You know.
My mom had divorced my biological dad three years prior, and I had seen my mom go out with a few guys, but none of them really stuck around. She’s always had horrible luck with men, and my dad was no exception. I figured Stephen was just another flash in the pan like the rest of them, so I didn’t invest too much time or energy in him. He did end up sticking around though, and it took me a while to settle into the idea of this man, this third party, being a part of my mom and I’s little unit.
Our relationship started like most step-parent/step-kid relationships do…slow, timid, and gentle so as not to upset the fragile awkwardness of the whole thing. He took his time, never pushed, and let me dress him up in ridiculous outfits. The more humiliating the better, in my mind. I did what I could to make him scram but he wouldn’t budge.
I was on the fence about Stephen for a while, but I had to admit that I did like how he treated my mom. My fondness for him grew because of who he was to her. The first time I remember warming up to him, in terms of who he was to me, he had picked me up from school or a friend’s house and taken me to Burger King for some Whoppers. He asked me questions and genuinely tried to get to know me. I appreciated him for that.
Stephen was the only “dad-like” figure I’d ever really known. He gave me piggyback rides. He taught me how to drive in my high school's parking lot. He attended my plays, dance competitions, and both of my graduations.
He was nice to me, not just tolerant, which was my general experience with the men in my mom’s life, including my father. I had grown to really love Stephen at this point, though our relationship would always have its ups and downs, mostly because we were always secretly fighting for the attention of the same woman, my mom.
He really LOVED her. He did anything and everything for her. They were good to each other and for each other. For example, my mom has a fear of getting lost while driving, so Stephen would drive her—the night before—to wherever she had to go the next day to show her exactly what route to take. And she would watch endless hours of football, even learn the rules, and get into the game for him. (A loving gesture I’m still trying to achieve in my own relationship. But ugh, sports, there are so many, it’s hard!)
They’d both had horrendous first marriages, so neither of them was eager to tie the knot.
But ten years after they met, they bought a house while I was in college. No more apartments. An actual house and the home my mom deserved.
Two years after that, they said “I do.” in our new house. I was the Maid of Honor and cried as I gave a speech about how happy I was that my mom had someone who was finally worthy of her. She had a companion who loved her— to grow old with—and I was delighted.
And now, two years later, I’m standing in their bedroom doorway, screaming Stephen’s name.
No answer.
Because the doorknob wasn’t hot I knew the fire hadn’t been going for long. Where was he? Didn’t he hear the alarm? Maybe he’s hiding in the bathroom? The heat from the fire threatened and I ran to the kitchen phone and called 911 as I made my way out of the house. I saw Stephen’s truck in the driveway, so I knew he was home, but I hadn’t seen him in the room.
“Ma’am, is there anyone else in the house?” the 9-11 operator kept repeating.
My mind raced.
Where was Stephen?
Was he in the garage?
Was he mowing the lawn out back?
“I don’t know. I see my stepfather’s truck in the driveway, but I don’t know where he is!”
I had made my way across the street to my neighbor’s lawn and saw the windows in my parent's bedroom breaking.
“OMG, I think my stepfather is in the bedroom and trying to get out through the window! He’s breaking the windows!” I screamed into the phone.
As I tried to run towards the house to help him out, my neighbor Henry, an older, stocky, German fella, held me back.
“No, you can’t go in there!” he said.
“But Stephen is in there, and he’s trying to get out!”
Minutes passed that seemed like hours, and the fire trucks started to pull up.
One of the firefighters escorted me inside my neightbor’s house and tried to ask me questions. I was in shock. Confused. My only concern was Stephen. Where was Stephen?
“It’s OK, we’re going to go get him, stay here,” he said.
I don’t know how long I was sitting in their house when the firefighter returned. This time, his head sunk low.
“I’m sorry, we found a body inside…they didn’t make it.”
The air went out of the room. My head was underwater. “What?”
The deafening ping in my ear was overtaken by the guttural wail that clawed its way through my chest.
“I LEFT HIM!!!!”
I left him inside. I didn’t help pull him out. I didn’t go back. He died because I didn’t help get him out. I ran outside for some air and watched the house Stephen, and my mom worked so hard for, the home they made for each other and for us, crackle and burn from within. I left him. I just left him. That thought in loop in my head as I watched.
And then it hit me…I have to tell my mom.
I’m the person who has to tell my person that their person is gone.
How? How would I tell her that the man and the house she loved were both…gone?
Through sobs, I dialed my mom’s work number. “Hello? Honey, what’s wrong? What happened?” she said with concern.
“Mom, you have to come home. There was a fire, and Stephen…died.”
I went numb.
My mom got there as the news trucks arrived. A firefighter escorted us back to to our neighbors’.
“It’s better if you don’t see,” he said.
But we did end up seeing them pull the body bag out of the charred remains of our home on the 7 o’clock news that night. The last and lasting image of our Stephen, the one the firefighter was kind enough to try to shield us from, was playing repeatedly on the local news.
“He was complaining his arm hurt this morning, and I tried to get him to go to the doctor, but you know how Stephen is…was…he said it was nothing and not to worry. I should’ve taken him…I should’ve made him go,” my mom muttered to herself as we watched his body getting rolled into the ambulance on the TV. I didn’t know then what she was talking about.
It took them a while to give us the results of the autopsy. And for all those days, I’d replay the events of that morning, trying to make sense of what had happened. For weeks and weeks, I carried the guilt of my stepfather’s death around with me like a tumor—a malignance set out to destroy me. He was breaking the windows, he was alive, and he died because I left him in there. I was sure of it.
Stephen died of a heart attack while smoking a cigarette in bed. “It was quick, he didn’t suffer,” “He was dead before the fire started,” they told us.
Apparently, the windows breaking had been from the rage of the fire, not Stephen’s frenzied attempt to escape as I had imagined over and over again in detail.
It’s been over two decades since we lost Stephen. But every January 9th I think of him. I remember his laugh, how his breath always smelled of coffee and cigarettes and how he’d always joke about coming back to haunt me and pull my toes while I slept when he died.
He never did do that…
My mom spread some of his ashes over their favorite beach in Marco Island. The rest she keeps in an urn on her nightstand.
I kiss the sky when I see a CSX train and can’t stand the sound of fire alarms.
“Everything happens for a reason,” they say.
But I’m not quite sure it does.
Rest in peace, Stephen. 🤍
beautiful.
Thank you for sharing this. It's gorgeous and shows love that flows in so many directions for all of you.