My Heart Can't Tell You No (36 page)

July 1984

It wasn’t only Maddie’s mind that had been otherwise occupied as Joe parked in the hospital parking lot. Sarah’s concern for her brother showed as she got out and nearly closed the door on Maddie.

“
Mom
!” Maddie complained.

“Sorry,” Sarah laughed. “You were so quiet back there I forgot you were along. Get out on Joey’s side.”

Maddie awkwardly slid across the seat, but, when she put her feet outside, Joe remained in the driver’s seat. “Well?! Are you going to get out, or just sit there with your feet planted on the ground?”

“I’ll think about it. Right now I’m taking in the view, just like that guy over there,” he said low enough so Sarah couldn’t hear.

“What are you . . . .” Maddie glanced out the door at the construction worker who was looking at her, then down at her crisp, business-like dress to see it had inched up her thighs on her slide across the seat. “Well, you can sit there and let him look, or get up so I can get out and fix it.”

“I don’t mind if he looks. It’s when he thinks he’s going to touch—that’s different. In the meantime I can look just as much as the next guy.”

“Are you two coming along, or are you going to sit there showing off your legs all day?” Sarah asked, standing at the rear of the car.

Joe was out of the car in an instant, pulling the seat forward and taking Maddie’s hand to assist her even as his eyes laughed down at her. “You tell her, Mom. I tried to tell her, but she just pulled her dress up higher.”

“Well you can put
your
eyes back in your head too, Joey. If you want to ogle my daughter, do it sometime when I’m not waiting outside in ninety-five degree weather.”

Maddie got out of the car, smiling snidely as she fixed her dress in full view of the construction worker. “
Ha-ha
!”

She walked to the rear of the car to join her mother, then started for the entrance about fifty yards away. Joe hadn’t joined them, making her look over her shoulder to see him walking about ten feet behind them. He flashed his charming smile after moving his gaze up from her backside. She knew exactly what he was looking at as he stayed so far behind them, so she waited at the door for him, allowing him go ahead of her, with her mother, before she joined them.

More people had gathered by the time the elevator reached the basement, forcing the three of them to move to the rear after Maddie pressed the button for the appropriate floor. The crowd packed the small mobile room, and Joe didn’t hesitate to pull Maddie back against him and hold his arms around her while they traveled upward.

“You can let go now,” Maddie grumbled after the doors closed and they were alone again, on their way to the top floor.

“That’s okay, I don’t mind.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, his returning glance stealing her breath. Why did he have to be so damn handsome? The doors opened and Maddie took a quick step out, bumping into a man dressed in green; a doctor of some sort. She looked up at him—he was very tall. Those brown eyes and black hair looked familiar to her as the man smiled down at her; then she remembered he was the surgeon who had operated on her mother, but before she could say anything Joe had his hand on her waist, ushering her out of the elevator.

“Hello, Mrs. Green. Hello, Sarah.”

Maddie gave an acknowledging smile to the doctor, but Joe kept moving with her. “Hello, Doctor.”

“Hello, Dr. Renner.” Sarah joined them outside the elevator, then started down the hall toward Lew’s room.

“Who was that?” Joe’s voice was low as he and Maddie walked behind Sarah.

“Mom’s surgeon.” She tried to remove his hand as they walked down the hall, but his fingers held her securely.

“I wonder if he remembers
all
his patient’s daughters.”

“Probably not,” Sarah said over her shoulder as she walked into Lew’s room. “Just the ones who hit him when he tries to remove respirators from their mothers.”

“You hit him?” Joe asked Maddie with amazement.

“Only a little,” Maddie said, still trying to remove his hands. “It was reflex. Dammit, Joe, would you let go of me?!” She pulled away quickly, not noticing until the last minute that they were at Lew’s doorway; she stumbled a few steps into the room.

“Je-sus Christ! Is that any way to visit someone in the hospital?!” Lew asked as he watched them.

“Only when you’re the patient, Lew.” Joe smiled at him.

“Ain’t you two married yet?” Lew asked.

Maddie looked over at him. Any other person, she would have told straight where to go. But Lew’s smile told her that he was teasing. She simply moved to the far wall and sat in the chair. Lew was the only one in the room. The other bed was empty.

“No. But you’d swear they were,” Sarah told him as she took the chair closest to the bed. “They haven’t stopped fighting since before we left the house.”

“They haven’t stopped fighting since Joe cornered her on the dike when she was fourteen.”

“He didn’t have me cornered,” Maddie answered as Joe came over by her, sitting on the window sill just behind and next to her. “He took me off the Tarzan rope and told me to put my shirt back on—that my
flab
was showing.”

Her comment brought an immediate burst of laughter from Joe. “You’re nuts! There wasn’t any flab to show—just a lot of . . . .” Joe hesitated, his eyes going immediately to Sarah before dropping back to Maddie.

“Premature curves,” Lew finished for him.

“Is that why . . . You saw my . . . You stood there watching my . . . God, I was only fourteen years old! That’s sick!” Maddie turned away from him and crossed her legs, all these years she had thought it was her stomach that was showing. God, she felt so naive.

“You’re the one who was showing that crowd of guys everything you had. I only tried to tell ya. Sick or not, I only saw what I couldn’t avoid seeing. Could I help it if you weren’t flat-chested for your age?”

“That’s telling her, Joe,” Lew said, then looked at Sarah. “You say this has been going on the whole time you rode up here? I would have made them stop the car and get the hell out, then drove up myself.”

“I think I would have if I could still trust myself to drive.”

“I was just thinking about you. I was remembering that birthday when me and Gert came out. What is it now? Five years ago?”

“Three and a half,” Maddie said numbly. That birthday would stay forever in her memory.

December 17, 1980

It was Sarah Baker’s fifty-third birthday, and her children had planned a small birthday get-together. Maddie watched as her mother and Lew were deep in conversation, giving her that warm feeling she always felt when she saw them together. She glanced to where Bob stood close to Tom. He had brought his own beer to the party, because her brothers rarely drank and her father had stopped drinking alcohol completely. Bob was working on his fifth can; a time for celebrating, he had told her. Jackie was on his grandmother’s lap, listening to her conversation with Lew with a mystical expression covering his face. Maddie knew he was enjoying the story as much as she had as a child. When she looked back to Bob, he was moving closer to the girl Tom had brought to the party. She was a pretty girl, maybe a year younger than Maddie, and very nice, but tension was spreading across the girl’s face. Bob was getting out of hand.

Maddie thought back to that night she had found Bob with the neighbor girl, and then later when she returned from the football game with Jackie, how he got onto his knees and begged her to stay with him. It was only her knowledge that what had happened was as much her fault as his that kept her there. Would she have returned if she had actually left him; she didn’t know. But she hadn’t left and within a month he was going out during the evenings, not coming back until after midnight. It was Jackie who was missing him most and seeing the pain in her child’s eyes as he watched Bob leave had made any love she had for Bob rapidly disappear.

“Come on, Bob. I think it’s time we went home.” Maddie approached her husband.

“
Now
?” He didn’t even look at her.

“Now. I don’t feel very well,” she lied.

She made her apologies to her mother and the others, then got coats for the three of them. She followed Bob outside and strapped Jackie in the seatbelt in the back seat then watched as Bob got behind the steering wheel.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Maddie asked doubtfully.

“Get in the car. It’s cold,” he said simply.

They rode with only the radio playing a song that wasn’t to Maddie’s taste as the country roads disappeared behind them. When they reached the highway Maddie glanced in the back seat to see that Jackie had fallen asleep. She turned off the radio and looked over at her husband.

“Next time, I think you should try controlling yourself. I don’t think Tom will put up with it, no matter how long you’ve been friends,” Maddie lectured.

“Control myself? I’ve controlled myself for four years. Maybe tonight I should lose some control. It’s about time, don’t you think?” he asked lightly.

“Not on that girl back there.”

“She’s not a girl, Maddie. I asked. She’s twenty. Not jail-bait anymore.”

“Bob, don’t go after her. I don’t want you to hurt Tom. He’s been your friend for years, don’t destroy it.”

“You don’t want me to hurt Tom,” he almost laughed. “I know it wouldn’t hurt you. You could care less.”

Maddie sighed and looked back to the road. “You’ve had too much to drink again.”

“Do you know what I do when I’m with them? Do you know what they do with me?” His tone was making her angry.

“Shut up, Bob.”

His hand flew across the seat, striking the side of her face before she could see it coming.

“Don’t ever tell me to shut up,” he barked.

She couldn’t believe what he had done.
Goddamn
it
! She thought she might have deserved some of what she had received the day she returned from the flood, but she hadn’t done anything this time. “What the hell did you do that for?!”

“That’s right. I forgot. Forgive me, Princess Madelyn. You aren’t accustomed to such brutality.”

She stopped herself from telling him to shut up again. He was drunk and she didn’t know what he was capable of anymore.

“No. I’m not.” Her voice was cold.

“Ya know, maybe I would have stopped going out nights if you had the decency to act like it bothered you. But you couldn’t even pretend to care.”

“I care, Bob. You’re hurting Jackie by not being home anymore,” she told him, then saw the oncoming headlights. “
Look
out
!”

He swerved back onto his side of the road. “Jackie cares.
You
don’t. I’ll explain to him that I have to work. He’ll understand.”

“He’s only a boy—he won’t understand. You’re leaving him an orphan just as much as your own father left you.”