The Side of the Angels (29 page)

Only in the car did I stop to reflect on what a hack I'd become.

Here I was, thinking about pleasing the “client” with a shower invitation design for a wedding that was going to blast the hopes of Louise, my cousin and best friend. How far would I go? Would I someday find myself getting all excited about an idea for rifle-shaped gift totes for some state NRA convention?

“I'm so glad you've gotten in” were Kate's words as I reached the strike office at 9
P.M.
They did not suggest happy welcome so much as desperation.

“What's up? How did the gala go?”

“Oh, that was fine. Wonderful. But now Tony's thrown out his knee. He's flat on his back at his motel.”

“That's all we need right now. How did he do it?”

“Changing a flat tire on Suzanne's car.”

“How manly of him.”

“You know the woman, Nicky. She doesn't weigh enough to change the lug nut on a tricycle, let alone jack up a Volvo in the middle of a rainstorm off I-95.”

“She has Triple A membership and a cell phone, right? I've told him and told him to see a doctor about that knee. Now look.”

“Okay, wifey,” said Kate.

“Just tell me the rest.”

“The hospital issued a letter begging striking nurses to return now to the patients who so desperately need us, as they put it, and promising no repercussions on their mothers' graves. Then Winslow went on the six o'clock news tonight and said that the hospital would, and I
quote, ‘hold out a day longer than forever' rather than agree to the union's demands.”

It was Finchley and Crouse, all right. They specialized in this one-two punch, this Victorian father act: first tender reproach, then stern warnings.

“It's just trash talk, Kate. Standard operating procedure.”

“Maybe, but Tony thinks we need to get a press release out about how saddened we are to see this attitude on the hospital's part, since it doesn't show a spirit of good-faith bargaining and a commitment to patients' welfare. You'll have to write it now and run it by his motel. He wants it out first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Fine.”

Suzanne was probably there with him, putting cool washcloths on his forehead.

“There's more,” said Kate. “Last night, someone smashed three of the back windows of the office.”

“That could have been anyone. That could have been kids.”

“Yeah, I know. And speaking of kids, Eric broke the copier taking pictures of his butt and now we're taking all our copying to that place down the street until ours is fixed. The repair guy's coming in tomor-row.”

Perhaps Winslow was paying Eric as a double agent.

“Kate, can't we tell his mom not to bring him anymore?”

“Do
you
want to tell Mary that? She looks as if she's barely hanging on. She parks him here when she's working per diem at Mercy, over in Shelby Falls.”

“Maybe we could just tie him up and leave him in the janitor's closet.”

“You love the little darling, Nicky. Admit it.”

“How do you cope with him, Kate? How do you do it?”

“I just say over and over to myself, he's only a child, he's only a child.”

The Narragansett was a little better than the usual dumps Tony stayed in, but not much. It didn't actually smell of mold, as some of his digs
had, and his room wasn't next to the ice machine or the coin laundry, and the stairs up to the second level were carpeted instead of cement, but that was about it, as far as any extra touches went.

I'd tried to talk Kate into dropping off the press release, but she'd firmly refused.

“Mike made dinner an hour ago, and his food isn't so terrific even when it's piping hot,” she said. “And besides, I think the sight of you will perk Tony up. One way or another.”

The desk clerk at the Narragansett was loathe to answer the bell that said, “Ring for immediate service.” It was only on my third vigorous attempt that he emerged from a back room in a cloud of frying onions. He disclosed Tony's room number with a readiness that made me feel a little uneasy. I didn't like the idea that just anybody—say, operatives from Finchley and Crouch bent on giving him a black eye—could have this information for the asking.

Although anyone who wanted to locate Tony could have trailed him from the strains of Glen Campbell floating down the corridor. Tony liked true country music, not what he called “this new Hollywood style stuff.” During my time with him I'd memorized the words to “Galveston,” “Kentucky Rain,” and, my personal favorite, that George Strait classic “Amarillo by Morning.” Tony also liked to sing along to Johnny Rivers's greatest hits, and would belt out “Mountain of Love” and “Secret Agent Man” in the shower.

“Door's open,” he yelled at my knock.

“Are you crazy, leaving that door unlocked, Tony? Are you waiting for the hospital to send you a dozen roses?”

“I've had twenty people in and out today. I can't get up every time.”

“Was one of those people a doctor?”

He was lying on the bed, eight or nine flat, lumpy motel pillows heaped around him, propping his back and leg up.

“This is just the same old thing, Nicky. I don't need a doctor.”

“As I recall, your doctor told you that you should take it easy on that knee and that if it went out on you again, you were supposed to get yourself to an orthopedist.”

“I don't know any orthopedists up here.”

“You work with a hundred nurses, Tony. I think there's a shot that one of them knows an orthopedist.”

He grunted to indicate he didn't want to talk about it anymore. Men are like that. A man won't call a doctor unless he is firmly convinced that his life or his potency is endangered. Perhaps men believe that the very act of picking up a phone to request a medical appointment is somehow registered in the collective unconscious of males all over the planet, who then send killer waves of derision and ridicule back upon the unfortunate coward who can't grit his teeth through a bursting appendix or migrating kidney stone. It's the same way about parking. A woman parking on a crowded city street will be satisfied if her vehicle winds up a foot or less from the curb. Men are engaged in some invisible, continuous contest in which nothing less than the Platonic ideal of parking is acceptable. I can't count how many times, when I was seeing Tony, I sat shivering in his underheated Cutlass while he inched back and forth, refining an already dazzling parking job.

“I don't have time for medical appointments, Nicky. And I didn't ask you here to be some kind of angel of mercy. I just want to see the press release and then you can go.”

“I'll give it to you when I'm good and ready. I'm sure you'll love it. Now you answer a few questions. Has Kate looked at your knee? Has anyone looked at your knee?”

“Kate took a look at it.”

“And what did she say?”

“None of your business.”

He lunged for the press release but I held it away from him without effort. It was great to have him at my mercy. I was healthy, vigorous, and strong, and he was a wreck of a man dependent on my talents. It made me feel like Jane Eyre at the end of the book, when Rochester has lost his sight and she finally gets an equal relationship with him. On the other hand, a part of me hated to see him in pain. During my first winter with Tony he had bronchitis once, and I stayed up night after night into the small hours, unable to sleep because his breathing was so labored that I was afraid he'd stop breathing altogether. The shush of a vaporizer and the smell of Vicks ointment still reminded me vividly of him.

“Kate said to see a doctor, you fool. And what were you doing, changing a flat tire? Is there anything more guaranteed to throw your knee out?

“I'd promised to take Suzanne to Les Chauffroix that night and she was late getting back from an interview in Boston. She called to tell me what held her up, and of course I offered to come get her.”

Les Chauffroix was the best French restaurant in Providence. When we'd been together, we'd eaten in places where you did better not to examine the silverware too closely.

“Why didn't she handle the flat and then call you? She had to know you'd rush out, like the fool you are.”

“Maybe because she likes having a man around who will do things for her. Unlike some women, who know all about cars because they were born with a monkey wrench in their hands.”

“Not that again. Get over it.”

When we'd first moved in together, Tony had been dismayed at the extent of my competence in areas he'd clearly thought were going to be his bailiwick. I could snake a drain while he was still footling around with opening the cap to the Liquid Plumbr. I knew how to rig the coin laundry in our building to take Canadian quarters. When my mother's gutters needed cleaning, I didn't wait for Tony to come home for the weekend or my brothers to get a free hour or two; I could climb a ladder as well as the next guy, while Tony had a terrible head for heights.

His masculine pride had been especially humiliated when, on our way back from a weekend in Ocean City, we'd had car trouble and stopped at a mechanic's off Route 50. The mechanic said, “What seems to be the problem?” Tony had thought it was the radiator, but I'd been convinced it was the fuel injection line, and had said so. And had been right. Tony sulked all the way from Annapolis to Connecticut Ave.

He pulled himself up on the pile of pillows in an attempt to speak from a more dignified position, but because they were made of cheap, flattened foam rubber, he only succeeded in sliding down a few more inches.

“It's nice to be appreciated, Nicky. It's nice to have a woman say
you're her hero instead of saying, ‘Did you know your spark plugs are shot?' “

“What did you think, Tony? My father, my brother, and my cousin. All mechanics. Did you think I didn't know my way around a car engine?”

“Would it have hurt you, once in your life, to sit back and let someone else take the lead?”

“I'm letting you do that on this strike. And boy, you've got 'em on the ropes, don't you?”

This was a low blow. But I was furious that Tony would put his knee at risk just to prevent Suzanne from getting a snag in her twenty-dollar stockings.

“Just give me the damn press release.”

I handed it to him, and roamed around the room while he read it, slashing away with a pen his brother had given him six years earlier, the clear plastic one filled with Austin's Amber Ale.

“Have you eaten yet, Tony?”

“I'll put something in the microwave.”

“No, you won't. You can barely make it to the bathroom. I'm ordering you a pizza and waiting here until it comes.”

“Don't trouble yourself,” said Tony.

Tony traveled with his microwave, circa 1984. When he got an assignment, he loaded it in the trunk of his car and plugged it in wherever he landed, heating beef stew from a container late at night, irradiating frozen macaroni and cheese for breakfast. All food cooked in this contraption tasted sour and denatured, but Tony was so damn cheap that he wouldn't order room service. Or even stay in a place that offered room service.

I looked up Cangellosi's Pepperoni Palace in the Winsack Yellow Pages and ordered his favorite: black olives, green olives, and sausage.

“Here. I made my changes. You can go now.”

“I believe I said I was staying until your food arrived. By the way, I'm not changing the press release, Tony. It's perfect.”

“We sound too holier-than-thou.”

“We sound like good, suffering Catholic women. If anyone can get that tone right, I can.”

“Yeah, you can phone your mother for inspiration.”

But he didn't argue, which meant he must truly be in pain.

I had to feel sorry for him, laid up in these dismal settings. There was nothing nautical or lightheartedly beachy about the Narragansett. The machine-quilted bedspread was a sour burnt orange with loose threads sticking up all over it. The bathroom counter was some sort of sawdust composite with fake wood-grained contact paper smacked on top. There was a chandelier of sorts, a plastic eight-armed contraption painted to resemble pewter, with “candlestick” lightbulb holders.

I sat down beside him.

“This quote from Clare is poetry, Tony. I almost cried writing it.

Don't make me change it.”

“Do you ever listen to me anyway?”

“Sometimes.”

I leaned over so that my hair brushed his cheek for an instant.

“Your hair is in my face.”

“It's nice, isn't it. You always liked red hair, you told me that once.”

He sighed, and tucked a strand back into my hair clasp.

“Nicky, you rushed off before I could talk to you the other night.”

“You seemed to be otherwise occupied. Suzanne must be a full-time job on her own without your having to try to be nice to me. Should I say, a tad nicer.”

“You don't seem angry now.”

“I'm trying to soften you up so that I can talk you into printing more bumper stickers.”

“How was home? Are you going to give your Limey another chance?”

He said this lightly.

“Why should you care, Tony?”

“I care because you never gave
me
a second chance.”

“
You
never asked for another chance.”

“You made it very damn clear you'd never give me one.”

“You know, Tony, I've been beating up on myself for years that I did that to you. That I walked out on you. But I'm getting sick of being the only villain in this story.”

“
You
left, dammit. I didn't.”

“Not physically. But you never gave me one signal that you'd be willing to change a single detail of your life for me.”

“I moved in with you.”

“What an honor. You moved in, and my place just became the new place that you left on Monday mornings.”