He grinned. “You’re too touchy. And I’m unstoppable. Give me a
hot shower and a home-cooked meal, and I always get my second wind.”
They had agreed when they got married that they wouldn’t allow
their marriage to interfere with Danny’s career, and Casey knew she should be
grateful that the band had steady work. Not for anything would she admit to
him that she was lonely and restless. Not for anything would she admit that it
was Trish’s letters, her sister Colleen’s occasional phone calls, that saved
her from succumbing to the isolation. He would think she was unhappy with
their marriage, and nothing could have been farther from the truth.
She lived for those early breakfasts and quiet dinners when they
faced each other across the table. She lived for Sundays, for those languid
hours of lovemaking when he would drive her to the brink of insanity and let
her hover there in exquisite agony before plunging with her over the edge. She
lived to wake up beside him each morning and to fall asleep in his arms each
night. The hours they spent together were perfection. It was the time they spent
apart that was the problem.
But she didn’t tell him that. Instead, she smiled and said, “You
get your shower, and I’ll get dinner.”
The next morning, while Danny slept late, she breakfasted on black
coffee and a croissant, then set out down the back side of the Hill to
Haymarket, where she spent an inordinate amount of time choosing from the vast
assortment of produce. After trading good-natured insults with the merchants
who now recognized her as a regular, she skipped over to the North End and bought
from the butchers there, doing her best to ignore the bloody rabbit pelts that
hung in their shop windows.
Since she was already in the neighborhood, she ended her excursion
with a visit to Danny’s grandmother. While Mrs. Fiore brewed tea, Casey sat on
an overstuffed armchair in the gloomy parlor. The bulky furniture was
upholstered in a drab maroon that time had faded to a dull brown. Yellowed
lace curtains kept the sun at bay, and a small Philco television rested atop a
mahogany table.
On a matching table beside her, nestled in amongst a thriving
community of African violets, was a framed photo of a young woman. Casey
picked it up and was studying it when Mrs. Fiore returned with the tea. The
girl in the picture was pretty, with lively, dark eyes and the devil himself in
her smile. “Danny’s mother?” she said.
The old woman’s face darkened. “My Annamaria Teresa. He don’t
tell you nothing about his mama?”
Casey set the photo back down. “Only that she died when he was
five years old. I got the impression he doesn’t remember much.”
“He remember. He just don’ want to.”
Surprised, she asked, “Why wouldn’t he want to remember?”
Mrs. Fiore pursed her lips and expelled a long breath. “Danny
never let nobody get close until you come along,” she said. “Oh, he has women,
plenty of women, from the time he’s fourteen or fifteen. He come home smelling
of them. What girl gonna resist that face? But he never bring no girl home to
Nonna until you,
carissima
. You good for him. You take care of him,
make him feel a little less alone. He don’t tell you this stuff, so I tell
you, because I think maybe this help you understand your man a little better,
no?”
“Yes,” she said, and picked up her cup of tea. “Of course.”
“My Anna is a beautiful girl. A face like the Madonna. But she is
wild. Smoking, drinking, swearing. Wearing too much makeup and running with a
bad crowd. She come home at thirteen, hair all messed up, lipstick smeared,
tell me she been at the movies. Hah! When she’s fifteen, some sailor give her
more than she bargain for, and she end up with Danny.”
“Good God,” Casey said, appalled. “She was only fifteen when he
was born?”
“Jus’ a little girl. And she try, but like I say, she is just a
little girl. She run around with men, leave Danny here with me. Sometimes
two, three days before she come back for the baby. And she love him to pieces,
but she love the men more. Every time she meet a new man, he don’ want no
little baby, some other man’s bastard. So Danny come home to Nonna. Before he
is four years old, Anna, she move that boy six or seven times. Is no life for
a baby, and I tell her so. But she get mad and stop speaking to me. She take
Danny away, and for six months I don’ even see him.”
Mrs. Fiore sipped her tea, her dark eyes watery. “Then she come
home,” the old woman continued, “all smiling. She got a new man, and I never
see her like this before. She tells me, ‘Mama, he is not like the others.
This one love me. He gonna take me to California’. She promise Danny she be back
for him real soon, and she get in this man’s car and they drive away. And that
little boy, five years old, he sit right here in front of this window, day
after day, waiting for his mama to come back for him. And he never cry, just
sit here, waiting. Only his mama never come back. After a while, he stops
waiting. He tells everybody his mama dead, and he never speaks of her again.”
Casey’s teacup rattled in its saucer. “Are you telling me,” she
said, “that Anna isn’t dead?”
The old woman shrugged. “She jus’ never come back. For a long
time, I worry about Danny, because he is so much like his mama. When he go to
the Army, I pray every night to the Blessed Virgin that he don’t come home to
me in a box. And the Blessed Virgin is kind. But when he come home, he is
different. He pace the floor and smoke cigarettes instead of sleeping. He
drink whiskey instead of beer. And he don’ talk to me. Just like that little
boy five years old, he is holding all the bad inside, where nobody can see it.
And then, like a miracle, he finds you,
carissima
. A good girl, like a
fresh wind blowing in his life. And he love you, like he love nobody since his
mama went away. I think maybe all these years, he is still waiting. Only now,
he is waiting for you.”
Casey stared at her in disbelief. Wet her lips. “He lied to me,”
she said.
“Yes. He lie to you. But you must understand that underneath
the man is still that little boy five years old, waiting for his mama to come
home. This trust, it is not easy for Danny. It takes time. I tell you all
this not to hurt you, but to help you understand why he do what he do.” Mrs.
Fiore leaned forward, reached out a wrinkled hand and clasped Casey’s. “A wise
woman,
carissima
, would see the truth behind the lie and understand.”
She patted Casey’s hand. “Now be a good girl and drink your tea before it is
cold.”
As
soon as etiquette allowed, Casey escaped. Trudging home up the backside of
Beacon Hill, she weighed her options. She loved Danny Fiore with a depth of
emotion that had been beyond her comprehension until he walked into her life.
A part of her was devastated by the knowledge that he’d lied to her. Another,
conflicting part of her ached for that five-year-old boy who had sat by the
window, day after day, waiting in vain for his mother to return.
She
remembered what he’d said to her shortly after they met.
It’s all a front.
Inside, I’m a quivering mass of Jell-O
. At the time, she’d thought he was
joking, but she realized now that he was telling the truth. He might not have
realized it at the time, but she could see it clearly. And she understood
instantly what old Mrs. Fiore had been trying to tell her. For all Danny’s
flash and bravado, beneath the facade, that vulnerable little boy still dwelt.
Of the two of them, she was the strong one.
What
was it she’d said to Rob just yesterday? That she and Danny fit because their
opposing strengths and weaknesses complemented each other. Like Adam with his
missing rib, neither of them was complete without the other. If that was
really true, then she had one very special gift she could share with Danny:
her strength. She could wrap it around him, absorb the shocks perpetrated by
the outside world, insulate that vulnerable little boy from further pain.
That
night, they made love with a tenderness that brought tears to her eyes. Each
time Danny loved her, there was a sweet communion between them that exceeded
anything in her previous experience. She lost herself in him, lost track of
the boundaries between them, lost all worlds except the private one they
created together.
Afterward,
she cradled his head to her breast and closed her eyes as her fingers drew
formless patterns in the baby-fine hair at his temples.
“I’d
give it all up for you,” he said. “I’d put on a tie and sit at a desk all day
if it was what you wanted.”
Horrified,
she said, “I’d never ask you to do that. It would crush your spirit.”
“I
love you that much,” he said. “I’ll never let anything come between us.
Nothing and nobody.”
She
rocked him slowly, the way she would have rocked a newborn babe. “Of course
not,” she whispered. “We’re charmed. Nothing can ever hurt us.”
And
they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.
***
They were camped for the night.
After three days of hacking their way through impenetrable jungle,
waiting for the VC to come out of hiding and blow their heads off, his nerves
were stretched so tight he could have sliced the thick, muddy night with them.
The stench of fear hung ripe on the air. Nights were always the worst, because
you couldn’t tell what was out there. Death could be a hundred yards away,
behind a tangled thicket, or watching from the trees. The little bastards were
like cats; they hid in the trees, watching. Waiting.
Beside him, Bailey blew on his fingers. “Man, I hate this mud. I
thought the jungle was supposed to be hot.”
“It’s the rainy season.”
“Always got all the answers, don’t you, Fiore?”
He took a quick, mocking bow and cradled his rifle closer. When
Chuck spoke behind him, he jumped. “Dan, do you believe in God?”
“Sure, kid,” he said. “He’s running around out there in the rain,
disguised as a gook.”
Bailey smothered a laugh. There was a moment of silence. Then
Chuck whispered, “They’re out there tonight. Can’t you feel it?”
Danny sucked in his breath. Chuck, the skinny Jewish kid from
Brooklyn, at nineteen, light-years younger than Danny’s cynical twenty, had put
it into words, words they had been sidestepping. Danny fondled his M-16.
Friend, mistress, protector, its existence was so much a part of him now that
his action was automatic and unconscious.
Bailey said, “The kid’s right. It’s too damn quiet.”
“They’re waiting,” Chuck said.
“For Chrissakes, Silverstein, will you shut up?”
“Scared, Fiore?” Bailey taunted.
“Of course not. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than up
to my ass in mud, waiting for some slant-eyed bastard to turn me into
hamburger.”
At the first staccato rifle report, he reacted on instinct. As he
dove for the ground, Chuck Silverstein was jerked off his feet and tumbled like
a rag doll onto the grass. Beside him, Bailey, too, dove for cover. “Christ,”
Bailey said, “it’s a fucking sniper.”
“Stay with me!” Danny barked, and began crawling on his belly,
seeking cover in the thick undergrowth. But the night was as black as he
imagined hell must be, and he was hopelessly lost. He knew with a sudden
clarity that he was going to die. He was twenty goddamn years old and he was
going to die here in this rotten jungle in a rich man’s war that he’d wanted no
part of.
There was more fire, and then, behind him, a sharp grunt followed
by a slow sighing, like a snake slithering through the grass. “Bailey!” he
whispered. “Are you still with me?”
Bailey didn’t answer. The rifle fire began again, and he couldn’t
figure out where it was coming from. The night sounds of the jungle confused
him. Where the hell was Bailey? Why hadn’t he answered? Suddenly, it became
imperative that he go back and find him.
Belly dragging in the mud, he began inching his way backward. He’d
gone just a few feet when he bumped up against an immovable object. He reached
out a hand to touch it, and his hand came back sticky. “Shit,” he said. “Oh,
shit.”
He was quietly sick, there in the mud. Behind him, all was
stillness. He didn’t have time to mourn. That would come later. Right now,
the only thing that mattered was getting out alive. He began inching forward
again, through a pool of Bailey’s blood and his own puke. After an eternity,
he reached the shelter of the trees. Panting, his heart hammering, he hauled
himself to his feet.
And came face to face with Charlie.
The enemy. Four feet tall. Beardless. His face devoid of
expression, that damned Oriental inscrutability. He was about twelve years
old.
His rifle in his hand, his finger on the trigger, Danny froze.
He couldn’t do it.
The kid raised his rifle in slow motion. With a strange
detachment, Danny saw that it was American-made. The home of the free and the
brave, amen.