The door closed, and he was alone. He looked around for a
magazine, but apparently these folks didn’t encourage creature comforts. God
forbid he should start liking the place too much. He stared at a shapeless
brown water stain on the wall, cracked his knuckles and drummed his heels on
the floor while visions of death and dismemberment danced through his head. He
glanced at his watch. Three minutes had passed since he’d last looked at it, a
year ago. How would he ever explain to Danny that he, Rob MacKenzie, was
solely responsible for the death of Danny’s wife?
He looked out the dirty window. Across the street, the torn
canopy above the entrance to Florian’s Mortuary hung limply, untouched by any
earthly breezes. Was it an omen?
Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
He shouldn’t
have let her come. He should have told Danny what was going on. He should
have—
The door opened, and he shot to his feet and looked at his watch
in bewilderment. He’d never attended an abortion before, but he was pretty
sure it took more than five minutes. Casey came out alone, still looking
terrified, but some of the color had returned to her face. And he knew. “You
didn’t do it,” he said.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t go through with it.”
Relief washed over him in a gargantuan wave. “You did the right
thing, babe,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Easy for you to say. Danny’ll have a coronary.”
He
folded her into his arms. “Danny,” he said, “will get over it.”
***
She decided to tell him about the baby after dinner. There was
no sense in procrastinating. Somehow, she would make Danny see that her
pregnancy wasn’t the disaster it seemed. Maybe it was even a blessing in
disguise. Maybe the birth of a child would revitalize their flagging marriage.
When seven-thirty rolled around and he didn’t show, she wasn’t
concerned. Occasionally, when the Montpelier was hit particularly hard, Emile
would ask Danny to stay late. With finances as tight as they were, Danny never
turned down a chance to make extra money. She ate alone, setting aside a plate
in case he came in hungry. Rob came in at nine-thirty, showered, and went
directly to bed. At ten-twenty, when Danny still hadn’t come home, worry began
to gnaw at her. She dialed the Montpelier and asked for the dining room.
To her relief, it was Leon who answered. But her relief was
short-lived. “He got fired,” Leon drawled. “Smack in the middle of dinner.
Called Emile a flaming fag, ripped off his bow tie and stomped out. Best
entertainment most of these slick dudes have seen all year.”
At midnight, she went to bed, but sleep eluded her. Instead, she
watched the hands of the clock turn with agonizing slowness. It wasn’t until daylight
that she heard Danny’s key in the lock, and she began to tremble from a
combination of relief and fury.
He stumbled into the bedroom, his clothes rumpled, the stench of
alcohol ripe on his breath. Slumping heavily on the edge of the bed, he
pressed his face into his palms. “I got fired,” he said.
“I heard.” She struggled with conflicting urges: to comfort him
in her arms, to pummel him with her fists. Not sure which urge was stronger,
she said, “Where the hell have you been all night?”
“Around.”
In disbelief, she said, “I’ve been lying here awake for six hours,
and you’ve been
around
? Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”
“You should know better than to worry. If I survived Nam, I can
survive the streets of New York.”
Her fertile imagination, as she lay awake, had pictured in vivid
detail every conceivable horror that could have befallen him: kidnapping,
arrest, mugging, hit-and-run. She’d pictured him maimed in a gutter, dead at
the bottom of the East River. A white-hot fury enveloped her. “How stupid of
me,” she snapped. “I forgot you were invincible.”
Avoiding her eyes, he lit a cigarette and began pacing the
bedroom. “I warned you when you married me,” he said, “that I wasn’t
perfect.” He took a long drag on the cigarette and blew out the smoke. “I
don’t know why you should be so surprised.”
“This goes way beyond imperfection, Danny. Try irresponsible,
immature, and callous, just for starters.”
The smoke rose in a lazy arc above his head as he stopped in front
of the dresser and busied himself lining up her perfume bottles with military
precision. “I shouldn’t have married you,” he said. “It was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m damn poor husband material.” He picked up her bottle
of Charlie, uncapped it, and took a whiff. “I’m no good for you,” he said,
replacing the cap. “I’ll just drag you down into the mud.” He lined the
bottle up with the others. “I’ve thought it all through,” he said to the
wall. “I think you should go home. Back where you belong.”
“What’s going on, Danny?” she said. “What’s really happening
here?”
“It’s not working,” he said. “I’ve tried. Christ knows, I’ve
tried. But I’m not cut out for marriage.”
“What are you saying? That you want a divorce?”
He walked to the window and leaned his forehead against the
glass. “Yes,” he said.
Fighting panic, she said, “I won’t give it to you! I’ll fight you
every damn step of the way!”
He hunched his shoulders. “Can’t you get it through your head,”
he said hoarsely, “what I’m trying to tell you? I can’t be what you want me to
be.”
“I don’t care,” she said, close to hysteria. “I want you anyway.”
He whirled from the window and shouted, “Even if I can’t stay out
of other women’s beds?”
Her body went numb very slowly. It began in the tips of her fingers
and her toes, worked its way up her arms and her legs, settling somewhere in
the region of her heart. “How many?” she whispered.
“Just one,” he said miserably. “Just once.”
She’d never known she could feel such hatred for another human
being. “You son of a bitch,” she said.
On her knees on the bathroom floor, she retched again and again
while Danny pounded on the locked door. “Damn it, Casey,” he said, “let me
in.”
She flushed the toilet and staggered to her feet, caught sight of
her reflection in the mirror. She was twenty-two years old and looked
thirty-five. She splashed cold water on her face, while outside the door
Danny pleaded with her. “Let me in, baby. Please. I have to explain to you.”
She opened the door so suddenly he nearly fell through it. For a
stunned moment, they stared at each other, she and this stranger, this man
she’d thought she knew. Dully, she said, “Why?”
“It didn’t mean a goddamn thing. You have to believe me.” He ran
a hand through his hair. “It happened. It’s over. It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me!” she screamed, realizing she sounded like a
fishwife, but incapable of controlling herself. Danny shot a glance over his
shoulder at Rob, still asleep on the couch. “To hell with him,” she said bitterly.
“He knows all about it, anyway. We have no secrets, do we, darling? Did you
tell him all the juicy details?”
“Damn it, Casey, it wasn’t like that! I told him because I didn’t
know where else to turn!”
“I guess that’s what friends are for, isn’t it? To listen to the
details of each other’s little peccadilloes.”
“If it’s any comfort to you, he threatened to kill me if I ever
told you.”
Rob sat up and rubbed his eyes, and Casey glared at him. Running a
hand through his hair, he said to no one in particular, “I think I’ll wander
out to the kitchen and stand guard over the knives.”
“Good plan,” she said, and stalked back to the bedroom with Danny
at her heels. At the bedroom door, she wheeled on him. “Get out of my sight,”
she said. “You make me sick.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“To work, darling. One of us has to remain gainfully employed.”
He ignored her gibe. “You can’t go to work,” he said. “You
haven’t slept all night.”
She flung open the closet door. “Watch me.”
“I suppose you think this has been easy on me?” he said, pacing
the tiny bedroom. “Feeling like slime and not knowing how to make it better?”
She pulled a blouse from its hanger. “Spare me,” she said, and
yanked the blouse over her head.
“We have to talk.”
“Do you really think I could talk to you right now?” she said.
“Right now, I want to kill you. I want to plunge a sharp knife into your
black, adulterous heart.”
“Look,” he said, “I know you’re upset. I don’t blame you. But
later, after you’ve had time to cool off, we need to sit down and discuss this
like two rational adults.”
Casey pulled a skirt from the closet and stepped into it. “That
would be difficult, wouldn’t it, darling? Since only one of us is either
rational or an adult.” And she slammed the bedroom door in his face.
She swept past Rob, hunched over a cup of coffee at the kitchen
counter, one hand slowly massaging his temple. He met her accusing gaze.
“Hey,” he said, and held out both hands, palms up. “I’m just an innocent
bystander.”
Casey yanked open the refrigerator door and took out a carton of
milk, filled a glass and lifted it to her mouth. The milk tasted as though it
was on the verge of turning, and she had difficulty swallowing. It threatened
to come back up, and she had to choke it back down.
The first pain struck, low in her belly, as she was returning the
milk to the refrigerator. She gasped and clutched at the door handle. Rob
stopped massaging his temple. “Hey,” he said. “Are you all right?”
Before she could answer, she was doubled over by a second pain,
stronger than the first. Her legs wobbled beneath her as something wet began
to trickle between her thighs. She looked at Rob in bewilderment. “I think
I’m bleeding,” she said, and slithered to the floor.
He caught her before she landed. Bellowing for Danny, he eased
her into a sitting position, picked up the phone and began dialing frantically
as she sat bowlegged on the floor and stupidly watched the blood seeping
through her skirt and puddling on the linoleum between her knees.
Danny took one look at her and all the color left his face.
“Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Christ.”
“—having a miscarriage,” Rob said into the phone. “About ten,
eleven weeks along. Jesus Christ, step on it, will you? She’s losing blood
like crazy.”
“Miscarriage?” Danny looked as though he’d been struck between
the eyes with a fence post. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Rob hung up the phone. “Idiot,” he said. “She’s losing your
baby.”
***
At the hospital, they took her away from him. When they wheeled
her off down the maze of corridors, it took two orderlies and a security guard
to hold him back. “Let go of me, goddamn it!” Danny roared. “That’s my wife!”
“Sir,” one of the orderlies said, “you can’t go with her.”
“You’re not big enough to stop me!”
“Either you cool it,” the security guard said, “or I cuff you and
call the boys in blue to cart your ass out of here. That what you want? Think
that’ll help your old lady any?”
Danny glared at that steely stare, and then, abruptly, all the
starch left him. “Shit,” he said, and closed his eyes. “Oh, shit.”
“You gonna behave now?”
Quietly, he said, “I’ll behave.”
The two orderlies released him cautiously. “Listen,” one of them
said, “get yourself a cuppa coffee, park your ass in the waitin’ area, and
wait. When there’s any news, you’ll hear.”
The coffee tasted like battery acid. He tossed it in the trash
and sat with his face in his hands. All that blood. Jesus, all that blood.
He’d seen it before, in Nam, guys bleeding to death before they could get
help. He tried to remember the prayers the sisters had drummed into his head,
but it had been too long since he’d held a rosary. “Christ,” he said aloud.
“Please don’t let her die.”
“Mr. Fiore? We need you to sign this release.”
He looked stupidly at the woman in white who was holding a
clipboard and pen out to him. “It’s a standard surgical release form,” she
said, shoving the pen into his hand. “Sign and date here.”
He signed the form and she was gone before he could ask any
questions. He paced the windowless room, six steps across ugly gray tile and
six steps back, in a desperate attempt to ward off the terror. It didn’t
work. His bowels were knotted and his legs felt like overcooked spaghetti. He
dropped heavily to an orange plastic chair and ran his fingers through his
hair. He couldn’t lose her. Not now. Not ever.
A half-hour passed with interminable slowness. An hour. He
questioned someone at the nurse’s station down the corridor. “No news yet,” he
was told. “She must still be in surgery.”
He returned to the tiny waiting room to contemplate life without
Casey. If she died, everything in him that was human would die with her.