“Casey? This is Mark Johnson. Is Danny there with you?”
She was still fuzzy-headed from lack of sleep. She sat up,
groggy, and drew the long hair back from her face with one arm. “He’s right
here,” she said. “What is it?”
“I’d rather talk to Danny,” he said. “Can you put him on?”
She finally came wide awake. “Mark?” she said sharply. “What’s
wrong?”
At the other end of the phone, he hesitated. “I’m so sorry,
honey,” he said. “We lost Katie this morning.”
Three weeks after she and Danny buried their daughter, Casey flew
to New York to join Rob. It was for the best. She and Danny both needed space
to deal with their grief, and work was the only outlet that would distance her
from Katie’s death. She threw herself into her work, pushing Rob mercilessly
by day. By night, she dragged him around to the clubs of Manhattan, desperate
for something, anything, to take the edge off her grief. Never much of a
drinker, she grew glassy-eyed and nauseous with only two or three shots of
liquor, but she belted them down with gusto, and Rob kept his mouth shut
because he understood the demons that drove her.
For six weeks, Casey walked around in an alcoholic stupor. Each
morning, her head roared and her legs quibbled about going to work, but she and
Rob still managed to put out some of the best material they’d ever written.
She knew that people were talking behind her back. Some admired her stoicism.
Others called her cold and unfeeling. Nobody in New York saw her sorrow.
Nobody saw her cry. Nobody knew that when they’d lost Katie, she and Danny had
also lost each other.
Only once during the entire time she was in New York did she speak
to Danny, and then the conversation was stilted and pointless. At the end of
two months, she and Rob finally wrapped up the project. She stayed around
until the loose ends were tied up, until Rothman had approved the material and
she’d bidden him and his cronies farewell. And then she packed the lone
suitcase she’d brought with her to New York, got on a plane, and went home to
find out if she was still married.
At home, things weren’t any better. Night after night, she lay
alone in their king-size bed while Danny sat at the piano for hours, abusing
the keyboard with dark, tormented music, pounding out Tchaikovsky, Beethoven,
Mozart, until she wanted to scream. He’d long since given up on sleeping, for
every time he tried, the nightmares woke him, and he refused her comfort,
instead lying stiff and unreachable beside her. Nothing Casey could say would
convince him that he wasn’t responsible for Katie’s death, and his grief,
compounded by guilt, was agonizing to watch.
Katie’s room stayed just as she’d left it. Neither of them
ventured near. The pain was still too new, and Casey was far too brittle to
subject herself to that kind of torture. So the door remained closed, and they
pretended it had always been that way, pretended that nothing was wrong,
pretended that their marriage wasn’t disintegrating right before their eyes.
But as time went by, Casey recognized the truth, could see it as
clearly as if it were encased in crystal, could hear it in the music he played,
night after night after night. Like two comets speeding through space, they
were on a collision course with impending disaster, and she was helpless to do
anything but watch, and wait, and hope their marriage survived the impact.
The play went into production, and Rothman called them back to New
York to iron out a few wrinkles in the score. That took several weeks, and
when Rob flew back to L.A., she stayed behind in New York alone, to walk the
streets and ponder the disaster that had become her life. Her career had
reached unprecedented heights, but her personal life was a shambles, and she
was afraid that this time, she and Danny weren’t going to make it.
She flew into LAX on a sticky summer afternoon. Smog hung low
over the city, exposing the tarnished underbelly of the city of angels, glamour
capital of the world. Traffic was snarled everywhere, and the trip from the
airport took twice as long as it should have. When she drove through her front
gate, her mouth thinned. Danny’s Ferrari was missing from the garage, and she
wondered just where he was, and with whom.
When she unlocked the door, the phone was ringing. She nudged the
door shut behind her and set down her suitcase. The answering machine kicked
in, and a perky young voice said, “Mr. Fiore, this is Marilyn from Dr. Vogel’s
office. The doctor’s been called out of town unexpectedly, and we need to
reschedule tomorrow’s appointment.”
Dr. Vogel?
Who the hell was Dr. Vogel? Casey picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said.
“Oh, hello. Is this Mrs. Fiore?”
“Yes.”
“I’m really sorry for the inconvenience, Mrs. Fiore, but Dr. Vogel
had a family emergency and he won’t be able to keep his appointment with your
husband tomorrow. Can he come in at ten on Tuesday instead?”
“I wasn’t aware that Danny had a doctor’s appointment.” She
paused, trying to tamp down the fear that nowadays was never far from the
surface. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh, sure, we always do a routine checkup six weeks after
surgery. You know, to make sure everything’s healing properly. And to run a
sperm count.”
Sperm count?
Her legs began to tremble, and she set down the purse she was
still holding. “What surgery?” she said.
For the first time, the voice at the other end hesitated.
“Naturally, I assumed you knew.”
Tersely, she said, “Feel free to enlighten me.”
And the voice said, “Your husband had a vasectomy six weeks ago.”
***
Most of what was in the house belonged to Danny.
Casey spent a couple of hours packing her clothes and the few
personal items that mattered to her. She loaded up her BMW, then went back
inside and made herself a grilled cheese sandwich. It tasted like sawdust, but
she forced it, by sheer will, to stay in her stomach. With mechanical motions,
she loaded the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and then she opened the door to
Katie’s room for the last time.
Katie’s pink ruffled pajamas still hung over the bed post, and her
beloved Pooh bear lay alone in the center of the bed. Casey picked up the
scruffy yellow bear and cradled him to her breast. She took a last look
around, then raised her chin and marched to the door, resolutely shutting it
behind her. She stuffed the Pooh bear, all she had left of her daughter, into
her overnight bag, and sat down on the couch to wait for her husband.
It was nearly ten o’clock when he came home, moving cautiously,
smelling of liquor. Even half drunk, he moved with graceful, sinuous
elegance. At thirty-five, he was still the handsomest man she’d ever known.
When he saw her sitting in the dark, he stopped and looked at her quizzically.
“What’s all that stuff in the car?” he said.
She squared her jaw, her shoulders. “I’m leaving you,” she said.
He blinked, wobbled a little on unsteady feet. And snorted.
“What in hell are you talking about?”
A swirl of emotions roiled around inside her. Love. Hatred.
Grief. Fury. Bewilderment. “After everything I’ve been through,” she said,
“I can’t believe you could do this to me.”
To his credit, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He snapped on
a lamp, and in the sudden brightness, his face blurred. “I’d hoped,” he said,
“that you wouldn’t find out.”
“The doctor’s office called,” she said curtly, “to reschedule your
appointment. I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might find it a bit
odd, the inability to ever conceive again?”
He sighed deeply and sat on the arm of the couch. “Before you go
off half-cocked,” he said, “just listen to me.”
Betrayal was a hard, sharp pain in her chest. “I don’t want to
listen to you, Danny. I’m through listening to you.”
“I’ve gone through hell these last few months,” he said. “I’ve
watched you go through hell. It’s all but destroyed our marriage.”
“No,” she said bitterly. “It’s you who’s destroyed our marriage.”
“For Christ’s sake, Casey, think about it.” He scooped the long
hair back from his face with the fingers of both hands. “Do you want to go
through something like this again? I can’t even bear to think about the
possibility. It would kill both of us. Think about what it would be like,
having another baby. The hell we’d go through every time he bumped his head or
fell off his bike. Can’t you see that I did it to save us both from more
pain? I did it because I love you.”
In disbelief, she said, “You took away any hope I might have of
ever conceiving another child. You didn’t bother to consult me, just made the
decision for both of us. And you expect me to believe you did it because you
love
me?” She buried her face in her hands, rubbed her tired eyes. “Lord, Danny,”
she said, “I believe you’ve gone off the deep end.”
“You know damn well I love you.”
How could he look so earnest when her heart was a leaden weight,
lodged hard against her breastbone? “I don’t care any more,” she said.
“Bullshit! Look me in the face. Look me in the face and tell me
you don’t love me any more.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, Danny,” she said
sadly. “This has nothing to do with love.”
“It has everything to do with love!”
“No,” she said. “It has to do with trust. And the simple truth
is that I can’t trust you any longer.”
“So that’s it?” he said in utter disbelief. “You’re throwing away
twelve years just like that?”
“Right now,” she said, “I’m so angry, I can’t even look at you. I
can’t stand the sight of you.”
“Christ, Casey,” he said, “I love you!”
She looked at him through tears. “I know,” she said. “I love
you, too. But it’s not enough any more.”
She drove aimlessly for a couple of hours, uncertain of what to
do, where to go. She’d been so propelled by fury that she hadn’t thought
beyond getting in the car and driving as far away from Danny Fiore as she could
possibly get. She passed one seedy motel after another, but eventually,
inevitably, she found herself pulling into Rob’s driveway.
It took him a while to answer the door. Dressed in nothing but a
pair of gray sweat pants, he combed a hand through his tangled hair while his
startled gaze took in her overnight bag, her slumped shoulders, her puffy
eyes. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey yourself.” Not quite successful at hiding the tremor in her
voice, she said, “I realize it’s the middle of the night, but do you think an
old friend could borrow your couch?” She hesitated. “And maybe your
shoulder?”
He opened the door wider, and she stepped past him and into the
living room. In the middle of the floor, a pair of black high heel pumps had
been carelessly discarded, and her face went red-hot. “You have company,” she
said.
“I, uh....yeah.”
“I’m sorry. I never thought. I should have called first. Just
go on back to your lady friend and forget I was here. I’ll go to a hotel.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Fiore. If you need a place to stay,
you’ll stay here.”
“What about your date?”
“Not a problem.” He switched on the lamp and she stood rocking
from one foot to the other as he bent and picked up the black pumps. “Make us
some tea,” he said. “I’ll find something a little stronger to go with it.”
His mouth thinned. “You look like you could use it.”
Casey busied herself making tea, trying to ignore the murmur of
voices from the bedroom. Rob returned, wearing a wrinkled gray sweatshirt that
matched his pants. He opened a corner cupboard and took out a bottle of Jack
Daniel’s. “I’m sorry,” Casey said, pouring hot water over a matched set of
Lipton’s finest. “The last thing I wanted was to interfere with your sex
life.”
He uncapped the bottle and poured a shot into her cup, another
into his. “Stop worrying,” he said. “The only thing you interfered with was
my sleep.”
She took a sip of tea and grimaced at the taste. “What did you
tell your lady friend?”
“The truth. That I had a friend with a domestic problem.”
She leaned over the kitchen counter, holding her teacup in both
hands. “Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?” she said, examining the intricate design
of red and white roses that circled the cup. “I’ve lived in this burg for six
years, and you’re the only person I know well enough to impose on at one
o’clock in the morning.”
He took a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies from the cupboard. “I’d be
crushed,” he said, “if you imposed on anyone else.” With his free hand, he
picked up his teacup. “Couch?” he said.
“Couch.”
They settled at opposite ends. He opened the bag and handed her a
cookie. She set her teacup on the arm of the couch and snapped the cookie in
two. With a calmness she was far from feeling, she said, “I’ve left him.”
He studied the cookie in his hand. “Permanently?” he said.