Begin Again: Short stories from the heart (14 page)

Even Christine, a professional woman, childless, husbandless, traipsed around in sweatpants and sweatshirts.
Why? What was wrong with her?
With all of these women?
No wonder more than half of all marriages failed. What man would want to come home every night to a woman
who dressed like a man? And then served him macaroni and cheese out of a box or worse, pizza from the delivery boy? Gloria tapped out a Vicodin, popped it in her mouth and swallowed.

When Charles came home at night she made sure she was dressed accordingly—Chanel pantsuit, Claiborne dress, Blass pants and blouse. When Charles came home she served him Chateaubriand or veal scaloppini with new red potatoes drizzled with butter and sprinkled with chives.

When Charles came home… tonight…

Four days a month wasn’t so bad; it was actually quite tolerable. She took a healthy sip of coffee, then another. Some women’s husbands were gone for weeks at a time or at least every week, even had apartments in other cities across the country, and only spent Saturdays and Sundays at home. Not Charles. Her husband was gone four days a month—ninety-six hours and then he was home, sleeping right beside her in their four-poster king size bed.

Gloria smiled. He’d be here by seven as usual. And of course, Christine would come, and that ridiculous fool Charles called a brother. Harry Blacksworth was nothing but a
drunk
living off of his family’s good name. But Charles insisted Harry be invited and damn that man, Harry always came. He had gall coming to their home, laughing, talking to Charles as though he deserved to be there, as though
nothing
had happened. Sometimes she wanted to just open her mouth and let the words fall out in one screaming jumble, let Charles know the truth about his little brother, Harry. But she wouldn’t, she’d never tell. And Harry Blacksworth knew that.

***

Gloria again

Januarys in Chicago were bleak, the mornings marred by the previous night’s swell of ice or snow. Years ago, she’d welcomed the wet darkness with its cold harsh winds, thought it would be the perfect test for what was to come when she moved to London… Now the mornings brought pain to her back, the arthritis tightest during damp weather like a fist gnarled around her vertebra, squeezing. Still, she preferred dark winter months to summer’s brilliance. There was too much symbolism in the white light, too many lost possibilities.

She’d suffered her first miscarriage three months before her first anniversary, during a scorching July fourth weekend. Fireworks split the sky as splotches of bright red stained her white shorts, doubling her over in cramped spasms. The doctor said she’d barely been pregnant. Eight months later she lost another child, this one five months along, much more than barely pregnant. It was August eighth
,,
she’d just stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel when the pain ripped through her uterus, buckling her knees, slumping her to the floor. She gripped her belly with one hand and clamped the other low, trying desperately to stop the blood that oozed between her legs. So much blood, too much for the baby, a boy she named Charles
Edwin. They buried him in St. Thomas’s Cemetery two days after Gloria was discharged from the hospital with a new pint of blood flowing through her veins and a prescription for Valium.

There was another barely pregnant loss the next year which kept her in bed three months afterward, too listless to comb her hair or shower, or even eat. What was the point? But eventually Charles coaxed her into seeing a doctor who prescribed more Valium and life was once again
back
on a steady, slightly tilted track.

And then, just after her fourth anniversary, a horrible time when she wondered if there would be a fifth, she found herself pregnant with Christine.

Living could be such a difficult proposition. Thank God for pills to smooth out the rough spots, blend the hours like an artist dipping his brush in water and smearing it on a canvas dotted with paint. Everything ran together—the beginning, the end, the edges, the middle—it was all the same, all even, all tolerable.

Gloria stared at the white tablet in her hand. Life really was an ugly undertaking, stripped naked with bruises and scars that could make even the most adventurous individual reconsider the trek unless he chose an easier route, a way to get through it, or maybe around it, whether it be with another person, a pill, a bottle, even a charge card could suffice at times. She popped the pills in her mouth, took a sip of Crown Royal.

She was doing quite well considering the circumstances, had made it through the calling hours, the service, the small gathering after the funeral, the hundreds of bodies hugging her, shaking her hand, kissing her cheek, mouthing the same words,
So sorry, Charles was such a wonderful man. We’ll all miss him,
over and over. She’d pasted the half-smile on her face, forced herself to reply,
Yes
, we’ll all miss him,
and Harry, standing in the background, watching her. She fished another Vicodin from the bottle, swallowed it,
noticed
there was only a third of a bottle left. She’d have to call Roger, talk to him about upping the dose, the damn stuff just didn’t work like it used to. Of course, he’d tell her that wasn’t a good idea, that’s what he’d said when she’d been on Percodan. He’d said she should consider alternative therapy in conjunction with the pills—acupuncture, bio-feedback, massage. But in the end he’d pulled out his prescription pad and written her name on it. He’d do the same now, tonight actually, when she saw him and Astrid for dinner.

And tomorrow she was meeting with Beverly and Rita to start planning the Women’s Auxiliary Spring Fashion Show. They’d thought she wouldn’t be interested in chairing the program this year, that she might need time alone; to recover, reorganize, regroup.
Oh, God
, if they only knew.

Charles was dead. How was she to move forward? Thirty-one years together wiped out with a single phone call. What did women do when the other half of their existence was brutally erased?

What would she do?

Christine was all she had now and she was leaving for the Catskills in two days. Gloria supposed it was her daughter’s way of dealing with her grief; going to the last place her father had been, perhaps even locating the spot where his car had flipped and he’d taken his last breaths. Why would a person torture herself like that? The knowing should be enough without the details. Details killed people’s
souls,
drove them mad. It was better not to know, not to ask question after question, prying apart truth from lie. It was better just to accept.

And ignore the details.

***

For those who have read
A Family Affair
, I am including an alternate ending. If you’ve not read it, please stop here!!
A Family Affair
was initially intended for a broader general fiction audience and there was not as much concentration on the romance between Christine and Nick. What happened to Lily in this version was a wake-up call to embrace life, forgive, and live forward. But in the end, I just couldn’t do it, so turned Lily into a living symbol of hope and unconditional love.

Alternate ending to A Family Affair

“Okay, Lily.” Mr. Lipton handed her the reins. “Now you go twice around by yourself and I’ll watch. Just remember what we went over. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good luck. You can do it.”

She eased the horse into the ring, talking to her as they walked. “Isn’t this so much fun, Jenny? What do you think? Huh? I think
it’s
fun.” They moved along the path, the sun beating down on them. “Do you like the sun, Jenny? Do you get too hot?” She giggled. “Do you ever get a bath?” They made the first round and started on the second. “Does that thing hurt your mouth? I won’t pull too hard, okay? Is that better?” She leaned forward a little, whispered, “You know, my sister had a horse that looked like you. Her name was Lady Annabelle and she won ribbons.
Lots of them.
Did you ever win a ribbon, Jenny? Huh?” She patted a patch of fur. “We could win ribbons, I
bet,
me and you. What do you think?”
Pat, pat,
pat
.
She glanced at the white fence in front of her. “Maybe if Mr. Lipton saw you jump he’d let you be my horse and we could win ribbons together.
Blue’s first place.”
They were almost halfway around; the stretch of field past the white fence was green and soft-looking. “We could win lots of ribbons. Do you want to win a ribbon, Jenny? Do you want to be my horse?”

They
could
win lots of ribbons like Christine and Lady Annabelle. Mr. Lipton just had to see that Jenny could jump.

“Let’s jump, Jenny. Let’s jump!” Lily kicked the animal’s sides hard like she’d seen cowboys do in the movies when they wanted to get their horses to run. Jenny’s Promise let out a yelp and took off straight for the fence, fast, faster. “Go, girl!” Lily leaned in low, clutched her arms around the horse’s neck like Christine had told her to do.

She didn’t hear the screams behind her; there was nothing but the sound of hooves beating against the ground, the feel of the wind on her face, the rhythmic speed of Jenny’s Promise’s body, moving and rising, high, higher, lifting them over the fence in one perfect jump.

We did it! We did it!

Lily’s eyes were squeezed shut, a smile on her face when the horse landed, stumbled, threw her to the ground in one quick jerk. Jenny’s Promise recovered, tore across the field, stopping several hundred feet away where she lowered her head and began grazing. Mr. Lipton was the first to reach Lily, the first to notice the unnatural bend to her neck as she lay face down in the moss-green pasture, the riding hat several feet in front of her. He swore under his breath and made the sign of the cross, then knelt and gently eased her onto her back. A trickle of blood escaped her full lips but Lily Eleanor Desantro, age fourteen, was still smiling, even in death.

***

Harry flipped through a client file, made a few notes. He’d done a little preventative maintenance, made some suggestions, that was it. It was Christine’s client and she wasn’t in any shape to deal with it, so he had.

He still couldn’t believe the girl was dead. Fourteen years old, first time on a horse and the damn animal takes off, jumps the fence. It was a shame, a damn shame. Harry had gone to the funeral, saddest hour he’d spent in a long time, even worse than Charlie’s funeral. And that picture of the girl would be embedded in his brain forever; a 10x13 glossy propped in the center of the coffin’s satin folds. She’d been wearing a riding outfit, sitting on a white horse, smiling like there was no tomorrow.
Christ.
The kid hadn’t even lived.

Lily Desantro sure had a lot of people who cared about her. The church had been packed and the house,
hell
, you had to squeeze one cheek at a time to get through the doorway. If he died, he could only count on Chrissie to be there, maybe Greta. Everybody told him about Charlie, how they missed him, what a great person he was . . . how Harry resembled him.

The second he looked into Miriam Desantro’s hazel eyes, heard her soft voice, he knew why Charlie had fallen for her. She was a genuine piece of humanity, sincere, gracious, kind of like Greta in a way and not bad to look at either. The son wasn’t the son of a bitch Harry thought he might be. Maybe the girl’s death changed him or maybe being with Chrissie had. Or hell, maybe he’d been more bluster than anything else. If Harry’s mother had been sleeping with a married man for fourteen years
and
had a kid with her, he doubted he’d be rolling out the red carpet when the guy died. Either way, Harry liked the guy. He wasn’t a Connor Pendleton, thank God.
Actually, he was civilized and quiet which was better than running at the mouth all night. Chrissie said he’d had a full beard but shaved it the morning after the girl died because she’d never liked it, said it was
too scratchy
.

Why was it that people waited until somebody died to honor his wishes? As if the dead person cares then? It happened all the time, somebody dies, somebody runs out and does what the dead person’s been begging him to do for months, years, maybe even decades. It’s all wasted effort at that point, the only good it serves is to soothe somebody’s conscience.

Even so, this Nate Desantro was a decent guy and if not cutting his mountain-man beard was the worst thing he ever did to his sister then he was okay. Chrissie seemed to think so, she hardly left his side and he was glued pretty tight to her, too. Harry hadn’t missed the part where she offered to stay at Nate’s to ‘give you a place at Miriam’s.’ Did she think old Uncle Harry was stupid? He laughed. Good for her, sometimes the only thing you could count on in this miserable world was a little body warmth.
The knock on the door yanked him from his thoughts. “Come in.”

It was Chrissie, arms loaded with a stack of files. She looked pale, thinner. In the two weeks since they’d been back he’d hardly seen her. She’d been holed up at home doing paperwork or God knew what, or buried in her office. “Hi, Uncle Harry, can I come in?”

“Hey, Chrissie girl.
You and the cleaning lady are the only ones brave enough to step foot in here. Come on in.” She closed the door behind her, set the files on one of the chairs next to his desk and sat in the other. “What’s this?” He pointed to the files.