Garden of Lies (19 page)

salty taste on her tongue.

“Mmm. I could eat you up.” She nuzzled his neck, whispering in his ear, “But what would I do

when there was nothing left of you?”

“Rose.” Brian sat up abruptly, sheets and blankets tumbling away. The cold air rushed in.

“There’s something ... I should have told you before we ...” He turned, his profile silhouetted

against the window. “Jesus, I hate this. I wish to God there was some way to make it easier.”

[104] Rose shivered, crossing her arms over her stomach, holding her elbows. Something was

wrong. Yes, she’d felt it. Back when Brian was making love to her even. So fierce, hurting her

almost in his urgency.

“Brian, what? What is it?” She sat up, clutching the sheet to her, feeling a need to protect

herself against the bad thing she felt coming.

“I should have told you before we—it’s just that, God, when I saw you all I could think of was

holding you close to me, getting you in here.”

She cut loose in a nervous laugh. “I know. Every altar boy’s wet dream, isn’t it? A nice

Catholic girl. I think it’s something they put in the holy water, some kind of aphrodisiac. They

ought to bottle it instead of perfume. Eau de Vatican. Do you think the Pope would endorse it?” If

she kept talking, she wouldn’t have to hear him. “God, do you remember those terrible attacks of

conscience I used to get? I know how martyrs must have felt wearing hair shirts.”

“Rose. My draft number. It came up.”

His words fell like a wrecker’s ball crashing into a stone wall. Her ears rang with the impact.

“That’s impossible.” But even while she said it, her muscles were cramping, and cold fingers

walked up her spine.

“It happened.”

“No!” The ringing had become a wild, clanging alarm inside her skull. “Just tell them. It’s a

mistake. Somebody punched the wrong computer button. You don’t have to go. You’re deferred.

They can’t take you. My God, Brian, Vic Lucchesi
died
in Vietnam. And poor Buddy ...” She

couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Not everyone . -. .,” he started to say, but she covered her ears with her fists.

“No.
No.
Not you. Not
you,
Brian.”

She could hear her voice rising, turning shrill. But it seemed to be coming from outside her, an

ambulance siren in the street.

“Rose, don’t make it worse.” He tried to draw her into his arms, but she resisted, holding

herself stiff, afraid somehow that if she gave in to him she would be accepting this terrible thing.

“They can’t make you.” She forced herself to speak quietly, whispering almost. “You’re

deferred.”

[105] “No, Rose, listen. I got the notice to go in for my physical last week. I didn’t see any

point in telling you, not right away. You know, if it turned out I had a heart murmur or

something, and they decided not to take me. But I got word today. One-A. I’m to report for Basic

next week at Fort Dix.”

A terrible white static rilled Rose’s head. Then, as if tuning into a nightmare broadcast of the

six o’clock news, she saw Brian lying in a rice paddy, blood staining his fatigues, spreading in

crimson circles over the scummy surface of the water. No. Oh dear God, no.

She shut out the dreadful image.

But she couldn’t shut off the cold seeping through her, as if her heart were pumping ice water

instead of blood.

And this was real, not just some awful daydream.

Brian was going to Vietnam. To be shot at, maybe wounded or even killed.

“NO!” Rose shot out of bed.

“Rose—” Brian swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, holding his arms out to her,

supplicating.

But she wouldn’t go to him.
Damn him. He probably wants this. Big fucking hero.

“Canada,” she pleaded. “Remember Rory Walker? He went to Canada. Montreal, I think. Or

maybe it was Toronto. You could go too. Start over. I’d come with you.”

Brian let his arms fall limp at his sides. His shadow stretched across the woven grass mat she

was standing on, reaching over her like a dark premonition of death. She was shivering, all out of

control, feeling as if she’d come down with a high fever. And she felt a hot pressure behind her

eyes, a hammering in her temples.

“Rory’s in limbo,” he said quietly. “He can’t come back, not even to visit his family. He’d be

arrested.”

“There are other ways. Conscientious objector.”

“Rose, you know Pop. It would kill him. He made the landing at Anzio, fought all the way up

to the Alps. My grandfather served in World War I, wounded in Verdun. I remember Grandpa

had this velvet box tucked in the back of his top dresser drawer.” Brian’s voice turned soft. “He

never showed me what was in it until one day, when I was maybe eleven, he caught me and Kirk

playing soldiers in the vacant lot behind his store. Then he took us inside, [106] and showed us.

His Bronze Star. He said maybe we were old enough now to understand what it meant. To him,

anyway. He said people who thought war was all about being a hero and getting medals had bed

ticking for brains. Fighting, he said, was real bad, but something that had to be done, like putting

out a fire before it got out of control. Nothing to get puffed up about. You just did what had to be

done.”

“You’re not your grandfather,” Rose shot back desperately. “It’s a different war. No one even

knows why we’re fighting it.”

Brian raised his eyes, and she couldn’t help but see the light in them now, clear and shining.

“Maybe not. But a lot of guys are being sent over anyway. Guys we both grew up with. Vic and

Buddy and Gus Shaw.
That
means something. I’m not sure what. But one thing I do know is that

if I duck out, it just means it’ll be someone else’s number they’ll pull. Someone else who maybe

gets burned while I should’ve been there putting out the fire.” He paused. “I’ve thought a lot

about it. Even before this. I didn’t tell you how guilty I felt about being deferred year after year

because I knew it would upset you. But now ...”

She thought of John Wayne in
The Green Berets.
A lot of talk about honor and duty, but the

reality was, his guys really loved shooting off their guns. But Brian? No, he meant every word.

God, she should have known.

A memory crept in, one she had totally forgotten. Fifth grade, Brian coming out of school, the

back of his hands red and puffy, striped with welts. Brother Joseph had given him half a dozen

whacks with a ruler.

“Why, Brian?” she’d asked, as shocked and hurt as if she’d been struck as well. “What did you

do to make him hit you?”

“Nothing,” he’d said with a shrug. Oh, how nonchalant he’d been! “It was Dooley. He broke a

window in the rectory. It was an accident, but he’s up to his eyeballs in hot water with Brother

Joseph already. He would’ve gotten ten times as many.”

Oh, Brian. I would go in your place if I could,
Rose thought.
Because if anything happens to

you, I’ll die too.

Rose sank down, the woven jute cutting into her knees. The cramp in her belly was worse. She

felt bruised all over, as if she’d been beaten up.

How foolish she’d been, worrying that God would take Brian away from her.

[107] No, this was Brian’s own doing. He was choosing this as surely as if he’d gone down to

the recruiting center and enlisted.

He was leaving her.

Anger erupted in her. Rose sprang to her feet, and grabbed the first thing before her—a jar full

of pennies sitting atop the dresser. She hurled it against the wall. A jingling crash. Pennies

sprayed everywhere, spanging off the furniture, rolling along the floor.

“YOU SONOFABITCH! IF YOU GET YOURSELF KILLED OVER THERE I’LL NEVER

FORGIVE YOU!”

Something was burning her eyes, her face. Tears like acid, scalding, wounding.

“I don’t care who goes in your place!” she sobbed. “I don’t care who gets killed. I only care

about you. Oh God. My stomach. It hurts. I hate you. Bri. Do you hear me.
I hate you for doing

this
.”

Then his arms were around her, holding her, keeping her from flying apart. Grounding her.

Warming her.

Mother of God, what was she
saying?
Of course he wouldn’t die. Of course. She clutched him,

weeping.

“Don’t cry, Rose.” His voice was shaking, and she felt something wet against her neck. Tears.

Brian’s tears. “I know a year is a long time, and I’ll miss you. Christ, I miss you so much already

it hurts. But I’ll be okay. I promise.”

Rose clung to him harder, feeling as if her heart had been torn out, just this great aching hole in

her chest.

How am I going to bear it?
she wondered.
The waiting. From one letter to the next. Not

knowing if he’s all right. If he’s wounded, or worse, if he’s
—

She drew away from him, lifting her face to meet his fine gray eyes. The exquisite pain of her

love cutting through her like glass.

“Don’t promise, Brian. Promises get broken. Just come back. That’s all. Just come back to

me.”

Chapter 4

“Dr. Mitchell. ER. Stat. Dr. Mitchell ...”

Rachel hurried along Five West, through the swinging steel doors that led to the Labor and

Delivery Ward. She glanced up at the clock above the glass-enclosed nurses’ station. Six-thirty-

five. Late for morning rounds. Damn. That’s all she needed today, of all days.

She felt groggy, sluggish, despite two cups of coffee on an empty stomach, and the frantic dash

from her apartment in the icy rain. But at the thought of seeing David any moment now, her heart

began to pound, and her hand slipped into the front pocket of her white doctor’s coat.

She fingered the slip of paper.

Rachel could see it in her mind, the sheet of pink flimsy from the lab, with its faint carbon

type: PREGNANCY, POSITIVE.

Even now, twelve hours old, those words seemed to burn her fingers, and send her head

reeling.

Okay, God, Destiny, whoever you are you’ve had your laugh. Now what?

She had stayed up most of last night asking herself that, and now was no closer to an answer.

All her life Mama had told her things looked better in the morning, but this morning Rachel

thought they just might look worse.

Grace Bishop, she realized, was giving her the eye, and she felt like she’d been caught chewing

gum in the first grade. Grace had been head nurse on L and D probably back before Rachel was

born, and took flak from no one. She was planted squarely in the corridor outside the nurses’

station, arms folded across a bosom the size of a janitor’s drum. She unfolded her arms to glance

pointedly at the industrial-size wristwatch strapped to her coffee-colored wrist. Each [109]

movement radiating her disapproval of every female intern who’d ever walked onto her floor.

Rachel, the youngest by far at twenty-five—having graduated high school a year ahead of her

classmates, and crammed eight years of college and med school into seven—felt even younger, a

child late for kindergarten with the teacher looming over her.

“Rounds have already started,” she said with her clipped Jamaican accent. “You’d best get a

move on.”

Rachel gave her a stiff nod, and thought with bitter amusement of that “Laugh-in” gag, Dan

Rowan getting slapped and saying, “Thanks, I needed that.”

Rachel then looked at herself through Grace’s eyes. The same rumpled khakis she’d had on

yesterday, a coffee stain on the lapel of her white coat. Her hair caught back in a frazzled braid,

her face—under the merciless high noon of the fluorescent ceiling lights—ghastly pale and

hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.

For once, she couldn’t blame Grace for looking askance. Suddenly the old semi-hysterical urge

to giggle crept into her, along with the absurd impulse to say to Grace,
Don’t worry, I’m

qualified, all right. Who better to treat a woman in labor than a pregnant doctor?

But no time to lose her cool now. She broke into a half-trot down the long green corridor

toward Ward One, her heartbeat seeming to keep time with the slapping of her Adidas shoes on

the linoleum tiles, while she imagined herself breaking the news to David.

Sorry I’m late. ...
She pulls him aside and then whispers,
And by the way, I’m pregnant.

No, not quite. Maybe okay for “Laugh-in.” But not for real life.

David, I know it’s not what we planned ... but we’ll make it work somehow. ...

Hadn’t she seen that in a movie? Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. Fade into sunset with couple

tenderly embracing.
Darling, I love you, and that’s all that matters.

“Crap,” she swore under her breath, stepping out of the way as a gurney pushed by a harried

orderly careened past, and at the same time berating herself for the tears that pricked behind her

eyes.

Grow up, why don’t you? He never promised you a damn thing, and
[110]
now you want it all.

Valentines and violins, a box of cigars, plus the handsome doctor vowing to do the Right Thing

by the girl he loves.

Except who’s to say what the Right Thing is these days? A hundred years ago, even ten, a

hasty shotgun wedding. Now there were choices. Options.

You could have an abortion.