Coming Home (9 page)

***

Boston Common was blanketed with snow.   On Tremont Street, bumper-to-bumper
traffic crept from traffic light to traffic light, spraying slush on those
pedestrians brave enough to attempt crossing.  Every few blocks, a
tired-looking Santa stood next to a black pot, ringing a brass bell.  It was
the season of love, the season of giving, the season when short-tempered
shoppers gave new meaning to the word rudeness as they mowed each other down in
a mad race to reach the bargain table.

Casey forged her way through the crowds clotting the sidewalk,
carrying the chopsticks and the paper parasol she’d picked up in a dusty little
shop in Chinatown.  She’d spent an exhausting half-hour worming through the
crush of shoppers in Filene’s Basement, only to find that they’d just sold the
last of the watches that Danny had been dropping hints about for weeks.  She’d
been disappointed, but even the sour temper of the salesgirl hadn’t dampened
her spirits.  She loved Christmas, loved the crass commercialism, the hokey
carols that permeated the air, the colored glass and the bright lights and the
tinsel.

The lights strung in the leafless branches of the trees on the
Common winked on as she climbed the incline from Park Street Church to Beacon
Street.  She stopped at the bakery on the corner and bought a loaf of French
bread.  Tonight was one of Danny’s rare evenings at home, and she had planned a
special dinner that would also be a celebration, for she had news she couldn’t
wait to share with him.

The apartment was freezing.  Casey stashed her purchases in her
bedroom closet and tried to remember where Danny had left the hammer.  After a
brief search, she found it in the kitchen drawer.  She carried it to the
bedroom, gave the radiator valve a couple of good raps.  The resultant hiss was
reassuring.  Rubbing her hands together for warmth, Casey returned the hammer
to its rightful place in the closet beneath the stairs, stopping to plug in the
Christmas tree before starting supper.

She sang along with Eric Clapton while she peeled potatoes.  After
she put them on to boil, she marched into the bathroom and dumped the hamper
upside down on the floor and began sorting laundry.  Danny found her there,
standing in a pile of towels and underwear, attempting to sweet-talk the
reluctant Maytag into beginning its spin cycle.  “Hi, beautiful,” he said, bending
for a kiss.

“Lord, this thing is temperamental.  Hi,” she added distractedly,
her ears attuned to that tiny click of the dial that meant the cycle was about
to kick in.  The washer clicked, then lumbered into painful life, creaking and
groaning as the tub began to spin.  “By George,” she said, “I think I’ve got
it.”  She stood on tiptoe then to kiss him.  “The radiator was off again.”

“I’ll look at it tonight.  What’s for dinner?”

“It’s a surprise.”

He raised his eyebrows.  “What if I don’t like it?”

“You’ll like it.  Besides,” she added saucily, “you get me for
dessert.”  Arms wound around his neck, she lay her head against his chest and
closed her eyes.  “Danny,” she said, “something wonderful happened today.”

He kissed the top of her head.  “What?”

“I got a job.”

He went stiff in her arms.  “A job?” he said.  “I didn’t know you
were looking for a job.”

“We need the money.  And I can only kill so much time washing
dishes and scrubbing the toilet.”

“What kind of job?”

“Working as a nurse’s aide in the children’s wing at St. Peter’s
Hospital.  About half the children there are terminally ill.  They’re so brave,
they just break your heart.”

When he didn’t respond, she continued blithely.  “I’ll be working
second shift, so I won’t always be here for supper, but it’s only three days a
week.  That’s all they could give me right now.”

“St. Peter’s,” he said.  “That’s in Roxbury.  Have you lost your
mind?”

The tone of his voice finally registered, and she glanced up in
surprise. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“I don’t suppose it occurred to you that you might have consulted
with me first?”

She raised an eyebrow.  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “it
didn’t.  Since when do I have to consult with you before I make a decision?”

“For Christ’s sake, Casey, use your brain.  Are you trying to get
your throat slit?”

“I know Roxbury’s a tough neighborhood, but—”

He slammed a fist down on the washer.  “You don’t know shit!  I
grew up here, and I wouldn’t venture onto the streets of Roxbury after dark
unless I was carrying a loaded AK-47!”

She gaped at him in astonishment, unable to reconcile this
stranger with the soft-spoken man she’d married.  He looked like Danny, his
voice was Danny’s, but the words he was speaking were the words of a stranger. 
“I can’t believe you’re carrying on like this,” she said.  “Over something so
small.”

“I want you to go to the phone right now and call that place and
tell them you’ve changed your mind.”

White-hot fury shot through her.  “Over my dead body!”

“Damn it, Casey, that’s what I’m trying to prevent!”

“I think we’d better get one thing straight,” she said.  “This is
the twentieth century.  I may be your wife, but I am not, nor will I ever be,
your property.  I’ll work where I want, with or without your permission.”

“That’s odd,” he said, “because I seem to remember something in
the marriage vows about obeying.”

“Words put there hundreds of years ago by male supremacists who
regarded women as chattel!”

“I will not allow you to work after dark in Roxbury.  Period.”

“You can just go to hell, then, because you can’t stop me.  As a
matter of fact—”  She kicked at the pile of laundry.  “—you can start washing
your own underwear!”

“I can do better than that.  If this is what marriage is going to
be like, I don’t want any part of it!”

She tried to breathe around the sudden obstruction in her throat. 
“Just what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we might as well call it quits right now and get
it over with!”  He untangled one of her brassieres from his shoe, threw it at
her, and stalked from the room.

She dropped the brassiere and followed him, catching him by the
arm and yanking him around.  “Where do you think you’re going?”

He jerked free from her grasp.  “Out.”

She narrowed her eyes.  “You’re walking out in the middle of a
fight?”

“The fight,” he said, “is over.  And so is the marriage.”

“Fine with me, then.  Get out, and don’t bother coming back!”

“Don’t worry!  I don’t plan to!”

He slammed the door so hard the picture on the wall shuddered. 
Casey walked to it woodenly and steadied it, and then she went to the kitchen
stove and turned off the burners, methodically, one by one.

She tried to pinpoint the exact moment when Danny had stopped
loving her, but she was too numb to think clearly.  She should have known it
wouldn’t last.  She should have realized that marrying Danny would be like
caging a wild bird.  Now she was paying for her stupidity.  The love of her
life had just walked out the door, and her marriage was over almost before it
had begun.

***

His anger lasted for exactly twenty-three minutes.  That was how
long it took him to realize that she didn’t love him any more.

If she loved him, she would have understood that he was only
trying to protect her.  If she loved him, she would have realized that all
other women had ceased to exist from the instant he first lay eyes on her, and
he was terrified of losing her.  Goddamn stupid woman.

He stared morosely into his empty beer bottle and wondered what to
do now.  Scowling at the miniature Christmas tree that sat at one end of the
bar, he signaled the barkeep for a refill.  That was another thing.  He hated
the goddamn Christmas lights she strung all over the house like she was
building a landing pad for UFO’s.  He hated Christmas carols and he hated
tinsel and he hated goddamn reindeer.

He took his bottle with him to the pay phone.  Fishing in his
pocket, he came up with a dime and dropped it into the slot.  Travis deserved
what he was about to get.  After all, Trav was at least partially responsible
for the collapse of his life;  he was the one who’d introduced them.

Travis answered on the second ring, and Danny set down his beer. 
Without preamble, he said, “I’ve lost her.”

There was a moment of silence.  Then, “Dan?  Is that you?”

Bleakly, he said, “I’ve lost her, Trav.”

“Lost who?”

“My wife.  Your sister.”  He took a swig of beer and stared
mournfully at the blinking lights on the Christmas tree.  “It’s over.”

“Are you drunk, Fiore?”

“Not yet,” he said, “but I have high hopes.”

“You and Casey had a fight?”

“She doesn’t love me any more.”

Trav’s snort could be heard clearly over the telephone wires. 
“Fiore, you’re full of shit.”

He set down his bottle of beer.  “She threw me out and told me not
to come back.”

Travis sighed.  “I ought to knock both your heads together.  Where
the hell are you?”

He picked up a pretzel from the bowl on the end of the bar and bit
into it.  “The Blue Goose.”

“Stay where you are, bonehead.  I’ll be there in a few minutes.” 
Trav’s voice softened.  “We’ll talk about it.”

It was 11:43 p.m. when he finally let himself into the apartment. 
He took off his shoes and tiptoed into the kitchen.  The potatoes sat on the
stove untouched, a starchy, congealed mess.  He scraped the ruined dinner into
the rubbish and put the pans in the sink to soak, then tried to find something
else to do, something else to keep him from facing her, but there was nothing
left.  The woman he’d married was a compulsive housekeeper.

He tiptoed into the bedroom.  She was stretched out face-down on
the bed, but the rigid lines of her body told him she wasn’t asleep.  He
undressed in the dark and crawled beneath the covers, lying stiffly on his side
of the bed, taking care not to let any part of his body touch hers.  The
radiator valve was stuck open, and the bedroom felt like a sauna.  He rolled
onto his left side, then his right, flipped his pillow and pressed his face to
the cool side, shoved aside the bedcovers with one leg.

In the darkness, she said, “I’ll have my things packed in the
morning.”

He swallowed hard.  When he spoke, his voice sounded like it had
at thirteen, uncertain of where it would finally end up.  “I’ll leave,” he
said.

Softly, she said, “Whatever you want.”

He thought her voice sounded suspiciously shaky, but she’d turned
her back to him, so he couldn’t see her face.  He reached out a tentative
fingertip.  When it made contact with the bare flesh of her shoulder, she
flinched as though she’d been burned.

“No,” he said, his heart thudding.  “It’s not what I want.”

Silence.  Then, softly, “What do you want?”

“I want you to forgive me for being an asshole.”

“Fool,” she said, turning to him.  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

Then they were in each other’s arms and he was kissing her cheek,
her eyelids, the tip of her nose.  “You’re my lifeline,” he said.  “If anything
happened to you, I wouldn’t want to go on living.”

“Danny,” she said, “you can’t protect me by locking me up in the
house.  You have to trust me.  You have to accept that I have a life of my own,
and it doesn’t always revolve around you.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot.  I have better taste than to fall in love
with an idiot.”

His heart rate had slowed nearly to normal.  “If you ever leave
me,” he vowed, “I’ll come after you and drag you back.”

“Are you kidding?  You’d have to change the locks to keep me out. 
I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for the duration.”

He kissed her bare shoulder, her collarbone, the swell of one
breast.  She walked her fingertips up his chest, past his Adam’s apple, pausing
at the sensitive spot just behind his ear.  “Daniel Fiore,” she whispered
fiercely, “I love you.”

With a tenderness that still astonished him, a tenderness he’d
never known until Casey entered his life, he said, “And I love you, Mrs.
Fiore.”

“But I’m not quitting the job.”

He stiffened.  “You know how I feel about it.”

“I know,” she said, and touched his face tenderly.  “But I’m not
quitting.”  She sat up, pulled the bedding snugly around her shoulders, and
studied him somberly.  “You have to understand, Danny.  There’s a whole world
out there, a world I never saw until you introduced me to it.  I need to find
out where I fit into that world.”

“You fit right here,” he said, wondering why he sounded so
defensive.  “By my side.”

“Yes,” she said.  “And you fit right here by my side.  But it
would never occur to me to demand that you curtail your activities to suit me. 
You told me once that nobody had a right to tell me what to think or do.  Yet
here you are, trying to do that very thing.”