Days Like This (4 page)

“You guys will do fine,” Rose
said.  “Casey’s a whiz with kids of all ages, and you’re still a kid yourself. 
Jesse and I will do anything we can to help you through this.  Between the two
of us, we have an encyclopedic knowledge of teenagers.  If there’s anything we
don’t know, Trish will.  If Paige gets out of hand, just send her to Trish for
a day or two.  She’ll whip the kid into shape.”

Trish was Jesse’s sister, married
for more than two decades to Casey’s oldest brother, Bill.  Trish was
kind-hearted and wise, and the nearest thing Casey had to a big sister.  But at
times, her sister-in-law could be bossy and overbearing, and a little too
interested in other people’s lives.  Sometimes, behind her back—and Bill’s—she
was known as the Drill Sergeant.

Rob grinned, then sobered.  “I
know.  It’s just—hell, I don’t even know what to say to her.  The kid just lost
her mother.  She’s bound to be fragile right now.  No matter what I do, I can’t
make that go away.”

“She’s not expecting you to,
hon.  She’s old enough to know her mother isn’t coming back.  Casey will
probably be better at helping her with that, anyway.  She’s been there.  She
understands.  And kids are remarkably adaptable.  You’d be amazed by what they
can survive.  Just don’t push her too hard.  Let her adjust to you in her own
way and her own time.”

“We’ll be fine,” Casey said.  “The
three of us will get through it together.”

“If you need us,” Rose said, “call. 
Any time, day or night.”

Rob stood and hugged his sister. 
“Thanks.  And I really am sorry for losing it.  None of this is your fault.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said, “but
you’re still my baby brother and I still love you.  Even when I want to
strangle you.”

“Touching,” Casey said.  “So
touching, the two of you, when you’re not trying to kill each other.”

“Look,” Rose said to Casey, “I
didn’t mean to imply that you’d done anything wrong, taking Danny back after
the separation.  It’s just that Rob was in such bad shape afterward, and—”

“Rose,” Jesse said quietly, “zip
it.”

“Oh, hell.  Fine.”  And she
zipped it.

The bathroom door opened, and his
goddess of a wife stepped into the room, dressed in her blue silk robe and
carrying an open bottle of wine.  She closed the door silently, then leaned
against it, while on the tinny-sounding clock radio, the Delfonics sang
La-La-La-La-La
. 
Green eyes met green eyes and shared a wordless conversation.  She untied the
belt to her robe, shrugged it off, and let it fall to the floor.  Naked, she
crossed the room and handed him the wine bottle.  She leaned over the tub,
gravity exerting its pull on those perfect breasts she always insisted were too
small, and trailed slender fingers through the bath water. 

Satisfied that she wasn’t about
to be scalded, she braced a hand on the rim of the massive claw foot tub,
stepped over the edge, and lowered herself to her knees between his
outstretched thighs.  Eyes locked with his, she gave him one of those Mona Lisa
smiles and leaned in to kiss him.  Then she turned around and lowered herself
to a sitting position, settling between his thighs.  He wrapped an arm around
her, pulled her close, her back silky-smooth against his chest.  She rested her
head against his shoulder and he cupped her breast and leaned back against the
tub, sliding them both lower until the hot water reached her chin. 

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Wine, please.”

He handed the bottle to her.  She
raised it and took a slug, then passed it back to him.  He took a drink and propped
the butt of the bottle against the rim of the tub.  And sighed.  “I’m so sorry
about the meltdown.  It was not my finest hour.”

“Shush.”  She reached up, found
the back of his neck, and began rubbing it, the way she knew he liked.  He
closed his eyes and shut up.  He’d violated their unspoken agreement to leave
all negativity on the other side of that door.  In their bedroom, they talked
about anything and everything.  But the tub was sacred and inviolable.  This
was the place they came for comfort, for connection, for healing.  For
re-centering.  Not for rehashing what had brought them here.

“This is nice,” she said.

He nibbled her shoulder.  “You’re
nice.”

“It reminds me of Paris.”

They’d spent three months in
Paris, the honeymoon of all honeymoons, staying in a shabby little rental flat
in the 3rd arrondissement with outdated plumbing and the deepest bathtub he’d
ever seen.  How many hours had they passed in that tub, drinking cheap French
wine and eating baguettes smeared with country butter, while the pipes clanked
and thudded and spewed water that was sometimes icy, sometimes scalding?

He raised the wine bottle, took
another sip, and said, “We’ll always have Paris.”

“Funny boy.  Unhand that bottle,
son.”

“Lush.”

“You’ve made me what I am today.” 
She took a sip of wine.  “I could’ve just stayed there forever, you know.”

“
In vino veritas
?”

“In Paris, idiot.”

He nuzzled the back of her head,
inhaled the scent of woman and faintly floral shampoo.  “Maybe we can retire
there.  A couple of grizzled old ex-pats, living on faded memories of youth and
glory.”

“
Grizzled?
  Speak for
yourself, my friend.  I intend to be a fabulously gorgeous and well-preserved
woman of a certain age.  Think Zsa Zsa Gabor or Barbara Cartland.  With
snow-white hair tinted pale pink.”  She handed the bottle back to him.  “I’ll
be known across the Continent as the glamorous
vielle américaine
.  The
one with the grizzled husband.”

“And my Zsa Zsa will open her own
little
patisserie
, where she’ll introduce all of Europe to the pleasures
of genuine Maine whoopie pies.”

“But of course,
dahlink
. 
And you’ll sit cross-legged and barefoot on a street corner with your guitar,
and you’ll take off the little black beret you wear to cover your bald spot—”

“Hey!”

“—and you’ll play beautiful tunes
for the tourists, who’ll toss coins into the beret so you can buy your next
bottle of wine.  Because, you see, by this time, we’ll both be winos—”

“We’re already winos.”

“Stop interrupting.  And when we
get bored and need a change of scenery, we’ll hop on a jet and fly home to
visit our grandkids.”

“Grandkids?”

“Lots and lots of grandkids.”

“I like that part of the story.”

“Me, too.”

She let out a sigh of
contentment.  He adjusted their fit, stretched out a leg and, with his toes,
turned on the hot water.  “Not too much more,” she said.  “We’re already
lapping at the edges.  I don’t want to drown.”

“I won’t let you drown.”

“You haven’t yet, have you?  Not
in two decades.”

“You came close a couple of
times.”  He turned the water back off, eased them both a little higher. 
Slowly, so he wouldn’t flood the place.  “But I always pulled you back to
shore.”

“My hero.”

“Am I your hero?”

“You are.  More wine.”

“I’m not too sure about me,” he
said, giving her the bottle, “but you’re definitely a lush.”

“See what you’ve done to me?  I
may need a twelve-step program.”

He let out a soft snort of
laughter at the idea of his straight-laced wife needing substance abuse
intervention. 

“There.  I made you laugh. 
Mission accomplished.”

He tightened his arms around
her.  “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

“Indubitably.”

“Indubitably?  You do like your
sixty-thousand-dollar words, don’t you, Fiore?”

“Are you having trouble keeping
up, MacKenzie?  Should I get you a dictionary?”

“Witch.”

“I’m just trying to be helpful. 
Accommodating the handicapped.”

“Woman, you are
so
going
to pay for that later.”

“But not right now.”

“Nope.  Not right now.”

She turned on one hip, her
movement sending a soapy wave sloshing over the rounded edge of the tub.  It
hit the floor with a splash.  “Oops,” she said.

“Watch it.  We’ll have water
dripping all over the dining room table.”

“We have plenty of money.  We can
buy a new table.”

“You get too much water on these
old floorboards and we’re apt to end up in the middle of that table.  Tub and all.”

She pressed her cheek to his neck
and wound an arm around him.  “We can’t be having that, can we?”

He set the wine bottle on the
floor, wrapped both arms around her, closed his eyes and smiled.  “Nope.  We
can’t be having that.”

Lesley Gore was singing now.  “Have
you ever actually listened to the words of this song?” she said.  “I’ve always
liked Lesley Gore.  But who on earth wrote these dreadful, misogynistic lyrics?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

“It’s okay that he’s cheating,
because she knows that deep down, he really loves her?  And she’s sure he’ll
come around one of these days?  Good God.”

“That was the Sixties, babe.  It’s
a whole new world now.”

“We must be talking the Brill
Building.  In that era, everything that didn’t come out of Detroit came out of
the Brill Building.  But which of our oh-so-talented predecessors is
responsible for this travesty?”

“I’ll buy you the record.  We’ll
read the fine print together.  Then we’ll know.”

“Whoever it was, it seems they
had a skewed view of love and life.  Good thing you didn’t share their
viewpoint when we started writing together.  I would’ve very quickly disabused
you of such a ridiculous notion.”

“Not to mention after we got
married.”

“That goes without saying.”

“I’m nobody’s fool.  I know just
how sharp you keep that filleting knife.”

“It’s a very effective tool, isn’t
it?”

“Hush now,” he said.  “Just
cuddle.”

“How lucky am I, to marry a guy
who actually likes to cuddle?”

“Wait a minute.  Am I missing
something?  Men don’t like to cuddle?”

“Not in my experience.  Which,
admittedly, isn’t vast, but to my understanding, enjoyment of cuddling is not
among the top traits of most manly men.”

“I guess I never got the memo. 
Better keep it to ourselves, then.  Wouldn’t want to destroy my studly
reputation.  The last thing I need is for anyone to think I’m not a manly man.”

She shifted position again,
rising to her knees and sending another gush of water over the side of the
tub.  Took his face in her hands and kissed him.  “Trust me.  There’s no
question in anybody’s mind about your manliness.”

He reached up and cupped a wet,
soapy breast.  “Good to know.”

The dream began the way it always
did. 

They were in the BMW, snow
falling around them so thick and fast it nearly obscured visibility.  They were
bickering, the way married couples do in stressful situations, and he was
trying to keep the car on the road and still put some miles behind them.  When
she told him he was driving too fast for the conditions, he asked her if she
wanted to drive.  That shut her up.  The car slipped, lost traction, and began
to skid.  Her heart slammed into her throat.  He steered into the skid and
brought it back under control.  And she said, “I swear to God, Danny, if you
kill us, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“I’m not going to kill us,” he
said.  “I’m not going to crash and burn.  I’m going to be right there beside
you in your dotage.”

Then, from out of nowhere, there
it was, the tanker truck, lying on its side, blocking the highway directly in
front of them.  It all happened so quickly, yet at the same time she could feel
it unfurling in slow motion, like a movie where the director wanted you to
experience a potent, gradual build-up of terror.  He pumped the brakes and they
began to spin, at first slowly, then faster and faster.  Just before they
reached the truck, he pulled out of the spin and they tore through the snow bank
instead, came out the other side, and she thought,
We made it.  We’re okay
. 

Then they started falling,
rolling, side to side and end over end, small objects catapulting like crazed pinballs
around them.  She screamed his name and reached out into nothingness, unable to
find him in the confusion, and it really was true that your life flashed before
your eyes, because she saw it all so clearly, saw everything she’d done wrong
in her life, everything she’d done right, saw all the people she’d loved, even
those who had already passed on:  Mama, and Grandma and Grandpa Bradley, and
then there was Katie, her Katydid, gazing solemnly at her with Danny’s blue
eyes, the color of a summer sky, and she understood she was going to die, and she
didn’t mind dying, because dying meant she’d be with Katie again. 

They slammed hard against a
boulder and came to a creaking, shuddering halt.  Something hit her in the face,
and the world went black.  And cold.  So cold that at first, she thought she really
had died. Until something soft and wet and insistent kissed her cheek, and she forced
her eyelids open, licked a flake of snow from her bottom lip. 

The windshield was shattered,
broken glass everywhere, snowflakes falling cottony and silent all around her. 
A thin layer of smoke hovered on the air, and she panicked until she realized
it was powder from the deployed airbags.  In the distance, she heard voices
shouting.  She turned her head and gazed impassively at the hideous Thing that had
been her husband. 
Blood.
  So much blood, it mingled with the snowflakes
drifting through the open windshield and ran in crystalline rivulets down his
face.  Blood trickled from his nose, from his mouth, from the massive chest
wound where the steering column had impaled him.  Instantly, she knew he was
gone, knew the man she’d loved for her entire adult life was no longer in
there, knew there was nothing left of him but this broken, bloody shell.