Coming Home (42 page)

Casey toyed with her pasta, nibbled at her veal, less interested
in her dinner than in watching Danny.  He ate left-handed with a grace that was
too elegant to be anything but natural.  He had the most beautiful hands she’d
ever seen, their movements precise and exquisite, their gestures eloquent.  He
set down his fork.  “You’re not eating,” he said.

She shrugged.  “I guess I wasn’t really hungry.”

He picked up his fork, cut off a small bite of veal, and carried
it to her mouth.  Casey looked into those blue eyes, so intent, so solemn, and
felt something turn over deep in the pit of her stomach.  She opened her mouth
and slowly took the veal between her lips.  Chewed and swallowed, and he cut
off a second piece and fed it to her.

Beneath the table, his knee touched hers, and a shock ran clear
through her.  Those blue eyes held hers, his intent clearly written in them. 
In response, she caught his wrist in her hand and guided the next bite of veal
to her mouth.  Without a word, he set down his fork and signaled for the check.

Moments later, they were back outside in the mild spring evening. 
On Hanover Street, they passed restaurant after restaurant, light spilling out
through plate glass windows, loud talk and hearty laughter mixed with the clink
of glass and cutlery floating out the open doors.  For Casey, it was all a
blur; in the three blocks to her apartment, her feet didn’t touch the ground
even once.

They didn’t bother with the lights.  Off came the tweed jacket,
the silk blouse, their clothes forming a pool of expensive fabric on the floor
beside her bed.  It didn’t matter that they had differences, or that they
hadn’t talked them out.  It didn’t matter that neither of them knew what would
come after tonight.  None of those things made one iota of difference.  None of
them ever really had.

This was what mattered, this touching of flesh against flesh, this
fierce giving and taking, this exquisite merging that brought them together,
again and again and again.  Everything else had always been secondary.  In the
darkness, they found each other and melded with a fluid oneness that left them
breathless.  With a soft cry of gladness, she locked her legs around his hips,
drawing him deeper into her.

And they took each other home.

***

“It never grows old.”

His head was resting on her belly, her fingers wandering aimlessly
through the silk of his hair.  “What?” she said, half asleep.  “What never
grows old?”

“The way I feel about you.”

In the moonlight, her fingers found his face.  “Oh, Danny,” she
said in despair.  “Why are we so terrible at being married?”

“You’re not terrible at it.  I am.”

“It would be so easy, if only I didn’t love you so much.”

He was silent for a long time.  “I’ve changed,” he said at last. 
“I went off the deep end for a while.  But I got myself straightened out.  I
got help.  And there’s so much I have to tell you.”

Quietly, she said, “Where do we go from here?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

She sat up and wrapped the blanket around her.  “I don’t think you
have any idea,” she said, “what it was like for me, living with you.  You
swallowed me up, Danny.  You ate me alive.”

“If you were so unhappy,” he said, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wasn’t unhappy.  That’s the point.  I wasn’t anything.  I had
no identity except as your wife.  I look back at that person, and I realize I
don’t much like her.  In the last year, I’ve begun to discover me.  And I’m not
about to give up me.  Not even for you.”

“I see,” he said.

“I’m not blaming you,” she said.  “You were honest with me from
the start.  I guess I just wasn’t listening closely enough.  Or maybe I was too
dazzled to hear.  For twelve years, we lived on your terms.  We got caught up
in it and it just snowballed.  But I can’t live life on those terms any more.”

“Do you want a divorce?”

“I don’t think you ever understood just how much I loved you. 
From the first time I saw you walk across my kitchen floor, you were the whole
world to me.  The only thing that mattered.  No,” she said, “I don’t want a
divorce.”

“What do you want?” he said.

“I want to go back.  Back to the way it was in the early days. 
But we can’t do that.”

He cleared his throat.  “What if we tried living on your terms?”

“Do you really think it would work?”

“Why don’t you tell me what your terms are.  Then I’ll answer your
question.”

She studied the wall absently.  “We stopped talking, Danny.  That
was our biggest mistake.  My biggest mistake, because I let you withdraw from
me.  I tried to give you the space I thought you needed.  It was the wrong
thing to do.”

“When Katie died,” he said, “I went to pieces.  I couldn’t handle
it.  She was the only pure, sweet thing in my entire life, and I couldn’t bear to
lose her.”

“I was furious with you for such a long time.”

“And I was afraid I’d driven you away forever.”  He paused.  “Is
it too late to ask you to give me another chance?”

She considered it.  “I’ll give it another try,” she said, “but
only if you’ll agree to marriage counseling.  I don’t think we’ll make it
without help.  And I won’t live in California.  You’ll have to move back to the
East Coast.”

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

“I won’t climb back on the merry-go-round, Danny.  I got too dizzy.”

“We could look for a house in the country,” he said, “near your
father.”

“There’ll be no more tries,” she warned him.  “I can’t keep
letting you break my heart.  I’m getting too old for it.  If we blow this one,
Danny, it’ll be for good.”

“I’ve grown up,” he said.  He looped his arms around her shoulders
and pulled her tight.  “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

***

He used the shower first in the morning.  While Casey showered, he
made a cup of instant coffee, lit a cigarette, and carried them into her workroom
to take a look at what she’d been doing.  The rampant disorder told him she was
in the middle of a major project.  Meticulously neat in every other area of her
life, it was only in her work that Casey allowed creative chaos to reign. 
Danny sat down in the middle of the mess and drew a sheet of manuscript paper
across the table top.  Sipping his coffee, he studied it.  The handwriting was
Casey’s, but it didn’t take him long to recognize the work as Rob’s.  Subtle
nuances identified it as his:  brief phrasings and key changes, the use of
certain diminished or augmented chords.  He heard her footsteps in the
doorway.  “You didn’t tell me you and Rob were working together,” he said.

“You didn’t ask.”

He turned to look at her, and did a double-take.  His wife was
wearing Nike running shoes, blue silk athletic shorts, and a matching warm-up
jacket.  Headphones dangled around her neck, the other end plugged into a
Walkman clipped to her waist.  While he stared in stupefaction, she bent at the
waist and did half a dozen toe touches.  “What the hell are you doing?” he
said.

“Running.  I’m up to six miles a day.”

“
Running
?”  He tried to comprehend, but it was too
incredible.  Imagining her threading her way through downtown Boston’s rush
hour traffic, he said in alarm, “Where the devil do you jog around here?”

“The Esplanade.  Up one side of the river to the Harvard Bridge,
then back down the other side.  Want to join me?”

The very idea gave him indigestion.  “Thanks,” he said dryly, “but
I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.”

“That’s too bad.  It’s more fun with a partner.  Rob runs with me
whenever he’s in town.”

The picture of Rob MacKenzie’s lanky shanks in running shorts only
made his indigestion worse.  Casey bent and brushed her lips across his.  “I’ll
see you in an hour,” she said, and adjusted her headphones.  “I’ll bring you a
napoleon from Mike’s.” And she was gone, leaving him to wonder if he’d awakened
in the twilight zone.

He was still knee-deep in her work forty-five minutes later when
footsteps clattered up the stairs and a key turned in the lock.  “You’re back
early,” he said, shoving aside his cold coffee.  “Did you remember my
napoleon?”

Silence.  Then footsteps approached the doorway and a voice that
was definitely not his wife’s said, “Danny?”

He spun the swivel chair in stunned amazement.  “Wiz?” he said.

“Hot damn,” Rob said, and they greeted each other with grins and
handshakes and a brief, eloquent hug.  “You’re the last person I expected to
see here.”

“That makes two of us,” he said.  “Come on out to the kitchen. 
I’ll throw together a pot of coffee.”

He put the kettle on to heat and began opening cupboard doors in
search of coffee cups.  “Left side,” Rob said, “over the stove.”

He found the cups just where Rob had said they’d be.  Dryly, he
said, “You’ve obviously spent some time here.”

Rob was standing at the kitchen window, looking out.  “Yeah,” he
said without turning.  “I guess I have.”

Danny studied his back.  There was something odd about the set of
his shoulders.  But before the thought could take concrete form, Rob turned
away from the window.  “Does this mean you and Casey are back together?” he
said.

The kettle whistled, and Danny turned off the stove.  “It looks
that way,” he said.

Rob opened the refrigerator.  From behind the door, he said, “Just
don’t hurt her, Dan.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”  Rob took out a quart of milk and closed the
refrigerator door.  “If you hurt her again,” he said, “I’ll rip your throat
out.”

“Christ,” he said, “some things never change, do they?  You’re
still on her side.”

“Wrong.  I’m not taking sides.”  Rob uncapped the milk bottle and
poured milk into his coffee.  “Damn it, Danny, I love you like a brother.  But
it kills me to see what you do to her.  The woman thinks you’re God.”  He
recapped the bottle and looked Danny square in the eye.  “Do you have any idea
how lucky you are?  If any woman ever looked at me the way Casey looks at you,
I’d die a happy man.”

“I love her,” he said, hating the defensiveness he heard in his
own voice.  “You know that.”

“Yeah, Dan, I think you really do.  Just be careful with her,
okay?  I don’t want to have to pick up the pieces again.  Every time it
happens, the cracks get a little bigger and a little harder to glue back
together.”

Before he could respond, the hall door opened and Casey
breathlessly called from the foyer.  “Danny?  I’m home.”

He cleared his throat.  “In the kitchen,” he said. 

“Mike’s was out of napoleons,” she bubbled, “so I brought you a
couple of creme puffs instead.  I’m going in to take another shower.  I’m all—” 
She stepped into the kitchen, saw Rob, and stopped.  “Oh,” she said in an odd
little voice.  “You’re back.”

Eyes averted, Rob spooned sugar into his coffee.  “I flew in about
six last night,” he said, stirring.  He licked the spoon and dropped it in the
sink.  “I spent the night with my folks.”

Danny looked curiously from one to the other, wondering just what
the hell was going on here.  Casey set the bakery bag down on the table and
unclipped her Walkman.  To Rob she said briskly, “Did you get your business
taken care of?”

Still not looking at her, Rob took a sip of coffee.  “Yeah,” he
said.

“Then you’re ready to get back to work?”

Rob turned, cup in hand, and leaned his lanky frame against the
counter.  “That’s why I’m here,” he said crisply.

The tension in the room was thicker than smoke in a pool hall. 
There may have been three people present, but only two of them were speaking
the same language, and Danny was odd man out.  He narrowed his eyes, looked at
them more closely.  He and Casey had been separated for nearly a year.  Could
it be possible that during the course of those months, she’d had something
going with Rob?

The notion was absurd.  Casey and Rob had a dogged and complex
relationship, one he hadn’t always understood, but as far as Danny could tell,
there was nothing remotely sexual about it.  Yet the possibility, once
implanted in his brain, refused to go away.  It explained so many things.  Like
why Rob had read him the riot act.  Why he’d known exactly what was where in
the kitchen cabinets.  Why he’d let himself into Casey’s apartment with his own
key.

He felt as if he’d been kicked hard in the stomach.  His lungs
closed up, refused to function, and suddenly his only desire was for fresh
air.  “I have to go,” he said abruptly.  “To check out of the hotel.  Pick up
my clothes.”

They both looked at him oddly.  “You’re leaving?” Casey said.

 “I’ll be back in an hour.”

She followed him to the door.  Caught him by the arm.  “Danny?”
she said.  “Are you all right?”

He cleared his throat.  “I’m fine.”  He bent and brushed his lips
across hers.  Hesitated before pulling her into his arms and kissing her with
desperate intensity.  “I love you,” he whispered.  “Christ, I love you so
much.”  And left her standing there in the hall, gaping after him in stunned
amazement.