Coming Home (10 page)

Danny opened his mouth to argue, then clamped it abruptly shut. 
“Shit,” he said. 

She was right, of course.  Casey was always right.  It was one of
the things he loved most about her, that unshakable, infallible judgment.  He
let out a hard breath and lay there staring at the ceiling, torn between his
innate sense of fairness and the roiling terror that clutched him low in the
belly at the thought that anything might ever happen to her.  While he
understood intellectually that she was right, that still didn’t mean he had to
like it.

A subtle shift in the balance of their relationship was happening
right in front of his eyes.  The backbone of steel that he’d always suspected
his wife of possessing had just been displayed in living, breathing
Technicolor.  The woman he’d married had asserted her independence, and if he
wanted to hold onto her, he would have to swallow his pride—and his fears—and let
her have her way. 

Even if it killed him.

***

In the end, they compromised.   Danny agreed to keep his fears to
himself, and Casey agreed to keep him continually apprised of her comings and
goings.  It wasn’t a flawless arrangement, and not the one Danny would have
chosen, but it was better than nothing.

But they missed having dinner together every night.  One Thursday
evening, he showed up at the hospital with two corned beef sandwiches in a
paper bag.  After that, they became a fixture in the hospital cafeteria three
nights a week.  They would find a table in a quiet corner, and each night he
would bring her something different to eat while they filled each other in on
the day’s events.

The job at St. Peter’s opened new horizons for her.  She had so
much love to give, and the children there needed it so badly.  She took care of
their needs, read stories to them, rocked them to sleep in her arms.  She
experienced the joys and heartbreaks of motherhood vicariously, because she
couldn’t experience them firsthand.

Not until their life stabilized could she and Danny even think
about having children.  Not until Danny had achieved some measure of the
success he was working so hard to attain.  It was a given, something she’d
understood from the beginning, and if at times it was a bitter pill to swallow,
she reminded herself how impossible it would be to have a child, given their
current lifestyle.

And she poured out all her pent-up motherlove on the children at
St. Peter’s.

***

It was Rob’s idea to cut a record.

Danny was skeptical.  “Unless you have some powerful connections,”
he said, “that’s a good way to lose your shirt.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”  Rob leaned back and rested a
bony ankle on his knee.  “We rent studio time, press five hundred discs, and
split the cost.  We try to recoup our investment by selling ‘em at our gigs. 
And we push the local stations for airplay.  What could be simpler?”

Dryly, Danny said, “Robbing the Bank of Boston in broad daylight?”

“You can’t think of it as a profit-making venture.  We’d be doing
it for exposure, not for money.”

He had hit Danny’s weak spot, and they both knew it.  Danny
considered his suggestion.  “How would we push it with the radio stations?” he
said.  “I don’t have time to do promo work.”

“I do,” Casey said, and both men looked at her in surprise. 
“Well,” she argued, “why not?  I’m as involved as any of you.  It’s my music
you’re playing.”

“She has a point,” Rob said.

Danny looked skeptical.  “You don’t know anything about
publicity.”

“How hard can it be?”

So they hired an out-of-work sax player and obtained the free
services of a rhythm guitarist who owed Travis a favor, and they went into the
studio and made a record.  They used one of Casey and Rob’s driving rockers,
Heart
of Darkness
, as the A side, backing it with a cover of
Woman, Woman
,
a ballad made popular a few years earlier by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. 
Two inherently different songs, each showing a different facet of Danny’s
potent vocal talent.

Weeks later, when the boxes of white-jacketed black vinyl 45’s
finally arrived, Casey opened the first box and, with a reverence bordering on
awe, withdrew a gleaming disc from its protective cover.  She turned it over in
her hands, studied each shiny groove, each minute imperfection in its surface. 
Heart thundering, she read the fine print beneath the title: 
Fiore/MacKenzie
. 
In that instant, the six-inch slab of vinyl she held in her hands became more
than just a demo record cut by the boys in the band.  The disc held her words,
her music.  She had crossed some invisible border between the hopeful and the
determined, the amateur and the professional.

She had become a songwriter.

Casey Bradley Fiore had found a new love.

His name was Benito Patricio Juarez, but everybody just called him
Benny.  Benny had a full head of shining black curls, dark eyes set deep in an
angel’s face, and a seductive smile that could soften the heart of the hardest
woman.  He also had acute lymphocytic leukemia.

He was four years old, and the light of her life.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been warned.  The nurses, the other
aides, the doctors had warned her not to get emotionally involved with the
patients.  “They’ll break your heart,” she’d heard more than once.  But how
could she not love Benny, who never complained, but always had a wide smile for
everyone?  She tried not to play favorites, but it was useless.  Benny was
special, and she was head over heels in love with him.  She brought him gifts: 
a coloring book and crayons, a bright green stuffed aardvark, a wall poster of
his personal hero, Spiderman.

Benny’s prognosis wasn’t good.  The doctors had already attempted
unsuccessful radiation treatments.  The next step would be chemotherapy.  Long
before she’d come to work at St. Peter’s, Casey had been acquainted with
chemotherapy and its side effects.  She had watched helplessly as her mother
grew weak and wretchedly sick, unable to keep anything down, wasting away to a
skeleton and losing all her lustrous black hair.  Since coming to St. Peter’s
and seeing numerous children subjected to the ravages of chemo, Casey had begun
to question how a supposedly benevolent team of doctors could put a small child
through such torture.  There had to be other, less caustic options.

But it wasn’t her job to question.  Her job was to see to the
comfort and cleanliness of the children on the cancer ward.  No more and no
less.  The doctors, those white-coated gods whose pronouncements could mean the
difference between life and death, were the decision-makers.  She was nothing
more than a part-time aide whose only training had come from nursing her mother
through terminal cancer.  She had no ties to Benny, except those of one heart
to another, and Benny’s mother, a slatternly woman of twenty with a sixth-grade
education and limited comprehension of what was happening to her son, had given
the doctors
carte blanche
in his treatment.

“Stay out of it,” Danny warned her.  “You stick your nose in where
it doesn’t belong, and I guarantee that you won’t be thanked.”

“But his mother doesn’t understand.  Nobody’s told her that she
has alternatives.”

“And she won’t appreciate you telling her.  Sweetheart, listen to
me.  If there’s one thing these people have left, it’s their pride.  You can’t
just step in and take it away from them.  You don’t have the right.”

“But, Danny, he’s just a baby.  How can the doctors put him
through that and still sleep at night?”

“They’re just doing their job.  They’ve taken an oath to do
everything in their power to cure him.”

“But at what cost?”

He didn’t answer.  There really wasn’t an answer.

***

The letter arrived on a bright and breezy morning.  The mailman
was filling the boxes in the entryway when Casey returned from the corner
store.  “Good morning, Phil!” she greeted him.  “How’s your wife today?”

“Feeling much better, thanks.  Lousy time of year to get the flu.”

“There’s no good time of year to get the flu.  Give her my best.”

“I’ll do that.  Here you go.”  He handed her a stack of mail,
topped by a lilac-colored envelope.  “Got a special one for you today.”

Even without a return address, there was no mistaking her sister’s
girly handwriting in garish purple ink.  Eager for news from home, she let
herself into her apartment, dropped the rest of the mail on the kitchen table,
and tore open the envelope.

Dear Casey,

This isn’t the kind of news I wanted to give you over the phone,
so I thought I should write instead.  It will probably come as a shock, but
Jesse and I are getting married in three weeks.  I know you’re probably
thinking that I’m too young, but I’m ready for this.  I love Jesse, and he
loves me.  Once we’re married, he’ll be moving in here.  It seemed ridiculous
for us to take an apartment when Dad has this huge house sitting virtually empty. 
Dad is thrilled that we’ll be staying with him.  He’s always thought of Jesse
as a son.  Before you ask about school, I took a double load this term so I
could graduate a year early.  So I’ll be free to stay home and keep house for
Dad and Jesse.  Since you left, I’ve been learning to cook, and the good news
is that Jesse’s been eating my cooking for months, and he’s still willing to
marry me.  So I must be doing something right. 

I have a favor to ask.  Would it be all right with you if I wore
Mama’s wedding dress?  I know that by rights, as the eldest daughter, it’s
yours.  But since you’re already married, I thought that maybe you wouldn’t
care if I wore it instead.  It would mean so much to me, to have a piece of
Mama with me on my wedding day.

There is one other thing, and I’m not sure how you’ll take this. 
But I’m hoping you’ll understand, and be happy for us.  You’re probably
wondering why we’re rushing, why we didn’t just get engaged and wait for a year
or two.  We would have done that, but circumstances made it difficult.  You
see, I’m sort of pregnant.  The pregnancy wasn’t planned, believe me.  I never expected
to be settling down and starting a family at seventeen, but once the initial
shock wore off, I was excited.  We’re both excited.  This baby may have been a
surprise, but he (or she) will definitely be loved.

I hope and pray that you’ll give us your blessing.

Colleen

Somewhere in the process of reading her sister’s letter—possibly upon
reaching that loaded word,
pregnant
—Casey’s expanding dismay morphed
into something darker, something fierce and brutal, something with sharp teeth
that sank into her throat and strangled her breathing.  She held the piece of lilac-scented
stationery in her hands, staring at it until the words blurred in front of her
eyes.  She didn’t realize she was crying until a fat tear landed on the paper
and smudged her sister’s name.

The tears took her by surprise.  As a pragmatic person, she’d
always taken what life handed her and dealt with it.  She made decisions and
followed through without regrets.  Tears were not generally part of her
repertoire.

Yet here they were, these damning and betraying tears, clouding
her vision and coloring her perspective, even as she recognized that fierce and
brutal thing holding her in its grip as jealousy.  How was it possible that she
could be jealous of her sister?  There was nothing romantic about having a baby
at seventeen.  Nor did she begrudge her sister the man Colleen was about to
marry.  She’d had her chance with Jesse, and she’d walked away with her head
held high.  Even though she thought this impending marriage between two
mismatched souls was a dreadful mistake that would rapidly unravel, still she
wished them happiness.  And if Colleen and Jesse were able to find even a
fraction of the happiness she’d discovered with Danny, their union might actually
survive.  There was nothing to be jealous of.  Her own life was fulfilling.  Satisfying. 
She was married to a man she adored.  She had her songwriting, and her job at
the hospital.  She had good friends, a renewed relationship with her brother, a
small but charming Beacon Hill apartment she’d decorated herself.  She had the
city of Boston sprawled at her feet, and a future that was wide open.  Her life
was charmed.

Yet that thing with teeth latched onto her every time she saw a
mother walking with a baby in a stroller.  It took a sharp bite out of her
heart each time she noticed a pregnant woman on the crowded sidewalks of
downtown Boston, or watched a child chasing squirrels on the Common.  It sank
even deeper into her every time she walked onto the children’s ward at the
hospital.

And now this.  Was this some kind of test?  Because if it was, she
feared she had failed it dismally.