Walk on Water (36 page)

.

THIRTY-THREE

I
rushed to the door and threw it open. Luke was standing there—
standing—
clutching the door frame to hold himself up, sweat pouring down his angry face.

“Goddammit, Rachel!” he swore at me. “Why won’t you answer your fucking phone!”

“How- how—” I started.

His legs giving way, Luke began to crumble, and I reached out to catch him. His weight took us both down to together, and we fell inside the doorway. Luke lay on top of me, pinning me to the floor. How had he gotten up here? But then I remembered that Christina was at his house, and I furiously began wrestling to get from under him. Fighting me, he held my shoulders down as I kicked to get my legs free.

“Listen to me!” he yelled. “It’s not what you think.”

“Get off me!” I shouted back. “Go back to your wife!”

“Ex-wife,” he retorted keeping my shoulders on the floor. “She’s not my wife.”

“Christina will always be your wife!” I charged writhing wildly against him.

“Rachel, you’ve got to lis—”

Gasping, Luke abruptly let go of me, rolling over onto his back, reaching for his violently shaking legs, his face contorted in pain.

“Luke!” I cried. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Straighten my legs,” he said through clenched teeth.

Finally disentangling my own legs from his, I knelt beside him.

“The belt,” he told me. “Take the belt off.”

Frantically I tugged at the leather belt that he had apparently strapped around his legs, binding them together. Then I tried to lay his legs straight, but the muscle spasms kept them jerking. His left knee pulled up suddenly, bending and twisting the leg.

“Fuck!” Luke swore again under his breath, clawing at the carpet. “Goddammit!”

Frightened, I tried to pull the leg straight again, but it wouldn’t budge. Luke’s legs were so thin. If I pulled it too hard would I hurt him? I had never seen the spasms be this bad before. Abruptly the left knee collapsed and fell to the side. Now I could straighten the leg out next to the right one, which had stiffened like a board. Luke had draped his arm over his eyes. Not knowing what else to do, I began gently rubbing his twitching limbs, massaging the contracting muscles through the gabardine fabric of his trousers, mindful of his leg bag, and praying that the contractions would stop.

When they finally did, Luke’s breathing eased too, but for a time he lay there staring up at the ceiling while I kept massaging his legs. The cold air from outside blew in through the open door, and I shivered. Luke was drenched. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. He must be freezing. I went to close the door and came back to him kneeling down beside him again.

“Luke?” I asked. “Are you okay? I’ll get you some wa—”

I started to get up, but he grabbed my wrist, yanking me back down next to him.

“Listen to me,” he ordered.

“Luke,” I said once again pulling vainly against him to free myself. “You’re hurting me!”

“You will listen. Christina showed up last night. I didn’t know she was coming. There’s some kind of reunion thing with some of her high school friends. There was a mix-up with her hotel. She needed a place to stay,” he paused to catch his breath. “Both her parents are dead, Rachel. I’m the closest thing she’s got to family in Dallas. What was I supposed to do? She’s the mother of my kids—”

“She’s your wife,” I hotly interrupted his excuses.

Did he actually think I would buy the
I-didn’t-know-she-was-coming
line? How convenient that Christina’s high school reunion would be the same week that I was out of town. Yes, I was a fool, but I wasn’t an idiot.

“Nothing happened, Rachel, I swear to you.” His grip was vice-like. “There is nothing between us. Look at your eyes,” he said exasperated. “There’s nothing for you to cry about. A friggin’ coincidence for God’s sake.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said bitterly.

“You have to.”

“No! I don’t. I believed you before—”

“I love you, Rachel. Don’t you know that?”

What difference did that make?

“So?” I replied coldly. “I’ve heard it all before, Luke. But you married Christina—” My voice broke brining new tears. “Now let me go.”

“Oh God, Rachel,” he pleaded, clutching my wrist. “I had to. You don’t understand. I had no choice.”

“Yes you did!” I charged, now trying to pry his strong fingers loose from around my wrist. “It’s always your choice. Whatever Luke wants. And you don’t want me. You never wanted me.”

“That’s not true!” he argued, tightening his grip.

Shaking my head vehemently, I wiped at my tears with my free hand.

“There’s never been anybody but you,” he said.

“That’s a lie!” I shot back. “I was your bridesmaid, remember?”

“That was the lie, Rachel. My marriage to Christina.”

“Keep your speeches, Luke.”

“And that’s how it started.”

Unexpectedly he released my wrist and I nearly toppled over. Yet even though I was free now, I stayed on the floor instead of getting up. There was silence. Luke’s suit slacks were dirty and there was a ragged tear in the expensive gabardine. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, and his hands were scraped, in some places deep enough to show blood. Had he really crawled up the stairs?

“How what started, Luke?” I now asked quietly.

“The lie,” he replied wearily.

“What are you talking about?”

Grimacing, Luke slowly sat up, first resting on his elbows, before dragging himself across the floor, so that he could lean his back against the wall. There were scuff marks on his polished shoes.

“My chair’s downstairs,” he said. “You mind getting it for me?”

“Luke—”

“Please, Rachel. I feel kinda naked without it.”

The wheelchair was light and easy for me to pull up the steps, easier than it must have been for Luke to get himself to my door. He worked out all the time and used his standing frame to preserve his bone density, but how could he stand up? When I brought the chair inside, Luke thanked me as I parked it where he could reach it.

“If you’re going to throw me out,” he said looking up at me. “I’ll need a minute or two. I pretty much shot my wad getting up here.”

Yet he had done it. To come to me.

“I’m not throwing you out,” I said closing the front door.

“I guess that’s something,” he replied. “I’ll take that glass of water now. No ice.”

I quickly brought him a glass.

“Thanks,” he said taking it from me and gulping the water down. “I like your place,” he told me, reaching up to give me back the empty glass. “The stairs are a bitch but—”

“How did you do it?” I asked setting the empty glass on the counter. “Get up here, I mean.”

“Basically I crawled. That’s right. You, Rachel Marie Cunningham forced a man to crawl to you.”

And not just any man. I sat back down on the floor but kept my distance. T-T came to me, nudging me insistently in the back.

“It wasn’t necessary, Luke,” I said, pulling the cat into my lap.

“Yes, it was,” he disagreed. “Seems all your phones are out of order.” He nodded in the direction of T-T. “So is this the man of the house?”

“He thinks so,” I said not addressing the phone comment. I stroked T-T’s head and he began to purr. “May I present Tony-the-Tiger.”

“Come to check out the competition, I guess. Well Mr. T,” Luke addressed the cat. “Now that I’ve penetrated your tower fortress I intend to give you a run for your money.”

To be the man of my house? Yeah, right,
I thought. While the lovely Christina awaited him. Even if he had left her for me today, twenty years ago he had left me for her. In either case, it was always Luke doing the leaving. Luke calling the shots regardless of the height of the rim.

“Before,” I began. “What did you mean, that was how the lie started?”

Luke sighed. Perhaps I really should let the past go, but I obviously wasn’t good at doing that, so I petted T-T, and watched Luke, and I waited. I was after all very good at holding on.

“Do you recall the last time you told me to
keep
my speeches?” Luke asked when he spoke again.

“No,” I answered dishonestly, shaking my head.

A small wry smile flitted across Luke’s lips.

“Well I do,” he said. “You were telling me that men are all the same. Selfish. Irresponsible. Not to be trusted. How a man’s
mistake
is a woman’s
problem
.”

“Are you talking about when I thought I was pregnant?” I asked.

“Give that lady a prize,” replied Luke sardonically, pointing at me.

For remembering? Or for telling the truth?

“But I wasn’t pregnant,” I said defensively. “So what’s that go to do with anything?”

“You remember asking me if I ever get angry?”

“‘Ninety-two times a day’, you said. And then you move on.”

“Because I learned my lesson, Rachel. Being right can still get you the wrong results.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That time,” he explained. “When you thought you were pregnant, and you completely cut me out of it, I was so angry with you. You hurt me. I mean you really hurt me.”

“Because I said don’t make speeches?” I returned sharply. “I was just saying that I didn’t expect anything from you.”

“No. You were saying more than that. You were saying you didn’t trust me. That I would just walk out on you and our baby. The way your father did. I couldn’t believe it. You were my best friend. You knew me. How could you think that about me? But all right, since you did, I’d show you. I’d be that kind of man, and Christina just happened to be conveniently located at the time.

“It didn’t mean anything. I was using her to get back at you. It was the perfect set-up,” Luke smiled darkly. “She was so willing and you were so friggin’ jealous. You couldn’t see how crazy I was about you. Everybody else did, Christina too, and she jumped at her chance. But I was going to teach you a lesson. I’d let you find out about it. You’d cry. I’d confess to a moment of weakness. Then we’d both say we were sorry and have the best make-up sex since Adam and Eve. And man, did I have a
speech
for you. MLK material. You would have married me over it.”

I shivered again. The central heat clicked on and the warm air touched the back of my neck.

“Except Christina really did get pregnant,” Luke continued, absently rubbing his left thigh. “You know me, I have never liked condoms.”

So it had been a
shotgun wedding
? Christina’s father demanding what Big Daddy had not. I supposed that was the way rich people resolved this kind of situation, assuming they were
pro-life
. At the time Mr. Sterling had been a state senator. Family honor was everything.

“So she made you marry her?” I asked.

“No. Christina didn’t,” he answered. “She couldn’t make me give you up.”

Then it definitely had been Betty Sterling. She must have been so relieved if Luke was right about her suspecting that we were lovers. I could imagine her arguments. The Sterling name. Mr. Sterling’s political career. Her social status with her friends. The way Mommy and I were incapable of fitting in at their Christmas parties. Christina would have been the
right
girl even if it was for the wrong reasons.

“So it was your mother then,” I concluded. “She made—”

“It was you, Rachel,” Luke said. “You made me marry Christina.”

I stared at him, my hand still on T-T’s smooth coat. Because I had hurt his feelings?
No!
That was stupid, and Luke wasn’t a stupid man. He was not going to blame me. I had spent two decades doing that.

“I couldn’t let you be right about me being that kind of man,” he continued. “Ever since I’ve known you, there’s been this thing you’ve carried around about your father, about him abandoning you and your mother. It’s like a part of you that won’t heal. It’s always sore and tender. You blame him, and you blame your mother, but what’s worse, I think, is that you blame yourself. I didn’t want that for my own kid. But Rachel,” he sighed. “What I really couldn’t be was that kind of man to you. That’s why I had no choice. I had to marry Christina and be there to raise my kid. I did it because of you.”

I was frozen, my mouth dry and wordless again. I was only able to stare into Luke’s dark eyes. Ignored T-T jumped out of my lap. It really was my fault? But I hadn’t done anything wrong and would probably do the same thing again. The trend line made no sense. The trajectory was weird. Peter, Mommy, Christina, Luke Jr. The formula didn’t work.

“For awhile, at first,” he continued. “I figured Christina would leave me. She knew I wasn’t in love with her. If we broke up then I still would have done the right thing. It just didn’t work out. Luke Jr. would know that. You too. I’d be able to come back to you with a clean conscience. And I wouldn’t have let you down. But Christina liked our situation. Turns out, I’m not a bad husband and a pretty good father. She didn’t leave. Before I knew it we had four kids. And in the meantime you had married Robert. So that was it. I’d never see you again.”

So did that make Christina the
consolation prize
? He might as well be telling me that two plus two equaled seven.

“You should have told me the truth, Luke,” I finally said.

“Everything happened so fast, Rachel,” he replied.

“You made me be your bridesmaid.”

“Nobody put a gun to your head. You had to know that Christina knew about us. And she’s okay, but she’s not that noble. Nobody is. Except maybe you. She wasn’t asking you as a peace-offering. She was rubbing your face in it. Mine too, I guess. Maybe Mother had a hand in it. I used to wonder why you did it. If maybe you knew what had happened and you were punishing me. You smiled through the whole thing. I kept thinking, does she really hate me that much? Why did you go along with it, Rachel? Why’d you put us through that?”

“Me?” I demanded.

“Yes, you. I screwed up. I was stuck. But you, you had a choice.”

“I thought it was what you wanted. Christina said—”

“How could you think that? I wanted you.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me that, Luke?”

“I did. For years. You just refused to believe it.”