Moments In Time

by Mariah Stewart

  “What about Rick and Caroline?”

  “Caroline can drive herself home. Or she can sleep over, too. She can sleep in Lucy’s room. Rick can sleep in the guest room. Or they can sleep together. I really don’t care.” J.D. raised an amused eyebrow and followed her into the dining room to say good night to their guests.

  “Mommy, Uncle Rick is here,” a giggling Jesse announced as he rode into the breakfast room upon Rick’s shoulders the following morning. “We found him, me and Tyler found him, and we pounced on him.”

  “At ten minutes to six, I might add,” Rick laughed.

  “Boys,” Maggie began her admonishment, “what have I told you about waking people up when they’re sleeping.”

  “I didn’t mind.” Rick slung Jesse to the floor. “I got to play swamp thing with my favorite little guys.”

  “My turn,” Tyler demanded, holding his arms up so that Rick could boost him skyward.

  “Where’s the new baby?” Rick asked, trying to sip coffee from a cup while parading Tyler around the room.

  “She’s been back to sleep since about five.” Maggie began the breakfast preparations. “But don’t worry, she’ll be up again before too long and you’ll get to see her.”

  “I see Caro’s car is gone,” J.D. observed.

  “She left around, let’s see, it must have been close to four… There you go, little buddy, you can have another ride later.” Rick plopped Tyler into his chair.

  “Four? What on earth were you doing all that time?” Maggie removed a carton of eggs from the refrigerator.

  “We don’t want eggs,” Jesse protested. “We want pancakes.”

  “Jesse, Mommy hates to make pancakes.” Maggie made a face.

  “I’ll do it,” J.D. volunteered. “You sit and have your coffee.”

  Maggie kissed him on the cheek. “You’re a good father, J.D.”

  Then, as the two little boys began a duel with their spoons, Maggie suggested, “Why don’t you guys go out on the swings until your pancakes are ready? We’ll call you as soon as they’re done.”

  She closed the back door and leaned upon it after the two tiny tornadoes had passed through it.

  “Now for ten minutes of peace,” she laughed, then said pointedly to Rick, “so, you were about to tell me what you and Caroline had been doing till four a.m.”

  “Talking,” he told her.

  “What about?” She sat down at the table across from him.

  “Everything,” Rick poured himself a glass of orange juice. “My work, her work. We traded our tales of woe… the plans we’d each dreamed up as children to escape from where we were…”

  “Rick, I can understand why you’d have wanted to run away,” J.D. said as he measured pancake mix into a large pottery bowl, “but I thought Caroline had come from a nice, solid family.”

  “She did,” Maggie interjected. “She grew up on a farm in Iowa. Her family raised beef cattle.”

  “Doesn’t sound so terrible,” J.D. commented.

  “Every spring her father would let her raise a calf for the county fair,” Maggie explained, “and after the fair, the calf would be sold along with the others for slaughter. She couldn’t stand it… She told me once that she picked Penn out of all the schools she’d applied to because it was the farthest from Iowa. She still can’t bring herself to eat beef or veal in any form. To this day, the very thought of it makes her physically sick.”

  “I guess that explains why we always have chicken or fish when she’s here,” observed J.D. wryly.

  “And we talked about that son-of-a-bitch ex-boyfriend of hers. I’d give a king’s ransom for the privilege of pounding that bugger senseless,” Rick said as his face darkened, “for what he did to her.”

  “You mean David?” Maggie asked.

  “Whatever his name was.” Rick frowned. “Thank God she had you to comfort her.”

  “I don’t know how much comfort I was,” Maggie told him, “since Lucy was born very shortly after Caroline had the… Did she tell you everything?”

  “About the abortion?” He nodded glumly. “Yes, she told me. She cried for almost an hour last night. Broke my heart… She’s so wonderful, such a sensitive and sweet woman… She’s having a terrible time forgiving herself.”

  “Well, let’s hope the future holds some happiness for her,” J.D. said.

  “I would like to think so.” Rick looked pensive. “I’d like to think that maybe someday… after we’ve both sorted out our own sorrows, maybe someday when things are less complicated, when I’ve gotten Lindy straightened out—”

  “Is that likely?” Maggie asked bluntly.

  “Who knows?” he sighed, pulling a restless hand through his hair. “But I have to stick it out with her.”

  “That could take forever,” Maggie said quietly.

  “That may be, but I cannot abandon her.” He rested his chin in the palm of his hand. “I got her into this. I have to pull her out.”

  “That could be a very long and unhappy road for you, Rick,” J.D. reminded him.

  “How happy do you think Lindy is right now?” asked Rick cynically.

  “Where is she?” Maggie rose to set plates upon the table.

  “Well, she should be at my apartment, hopefully making her best effort to kick her habit. I have someone there with her, a hypnotist who helped me.”

  “Where have you been all these months?” J.D. asked. “We’ve been really worried. No one seemed to know.”

  “No one did,” Rick admitted, “I was in Scotland. A tiny crossroads hamlet outside of Edinburgh. That’s what he— the hypnotist—insisted upon. That I get out of London and go someplace where no one could find me until the treatment had been successfully completed.”

  “Do you think it will work for Lindy?” Maggie felt some surge of hope. After all, it had obviously worked for Rick.

  “I don’t truthfully know if she really wants to go off the heroin. But I did get her to agree to try.” He paused, then continued. “Lindy had been staying with someone else for a few months. When that little novelty wore off and she wanted to come back to the apartment, I agreed, on the condition that she straighten out.”

  “You mean she was staying with another man?”

  “Yes.”

  Although her actions were never logical, this behavior of Lindy’s visibly upset Maggie. While it had been accepted that Rick and Lindy were never in love, each had seemed to give the other what they needed. There had been a time, early on, when Maggie thought they seemed to stabilize each other. It had been no secret that Rick had always had other women. And it would have been no surprise to learn Lindy had been seeing someone else from time to time. But for her to leave Rick and drift off for a few months with another man was out of character. Rick had been the only man Lindy had ever tolerated on a long-term basis. She had once said that apart from Maggie, Rick was the only real friend she’d ever had.

  A few days after Rick had left to go to California, Maggie mentioned to J.D. that she thought Lindy’s behavior more than a bit curious and wondered who this new man was, what their relationship was like. J.D. had merely shrugged and had offered no comment at all.

  He could not bring himself to tell her that the “relationship” was little more than a barter between Lindy and her supplier. The dealer was more than happy to keep Lindy supplied with heroin in exchange for sex. At first, he had furnished her with what she needed free of charge, but after a few weeks, he cashed in. The fact that Lindy was so gorgeous was a real incentive, and the fact that she had been Rick Daily’s lady for the past few years made it even better.

  After a month or so the creep started getting a bit rough with Lindy, and about two weeks ago, she had showed up at Rick’s apartment, battered and sick. Rick let her stay, of course, but only after she agreed to give up the stuff. She had a rough time of it, Rick had said, and he had called in the hypnotist who’d worked with him to try to straighten her out.

  Rick told the story to J.D. late one nigh
t after Maggie had gone to bed. He didn’t want her to know, he’d told J.D., not ever, that Lindy had, in effect, prostituted herself for the sake of her habit. Rick’s guilt ran deep for having been the one who started her on the heroin in the first place, and he was having a harder time dealing with her addiction and its repercussions than he had had with his own. The sense of responsibility he felt for her would lead them all down a very twisted path over the next several years.

  20

  THEY ARE THE ODDEST PAIR, HILARY REFLECTED, both perched like plaster mannequins on the edge of that sofa, she devoid of any expression, and he in obvious despair, both red-eyed and pale. He looks the worst of the two—whatever has happened between them must have been his doing. Though he doesn't look guilty, just sad. He’s been tough, though, I'll give him that. Hasn’t missed a beat all night.

  She’s been a snippy little shit when she’s condescended to say a word or two. Snippy and unpleasant and distracted, as if she couldn’t wait to get out of here, as if this is all a waste of her precious time. Now what, Hilary’s eyes narrowed, is at the bottom of all this? I simply can't get a handle on them.

  “One of your best-selling early albums from the eighties was Shadows on the Moon. What made that recording so special for you?” Hilary had glanced at her notes, having decided to attempt to ease back into a relaxed atmosphere again before she nailed Borders on Narood. She gave in on the Daily issue but would not back down on Narood. She’d invested better than an hour in these two, and they were boring her silly. She would lull him to sleep, then hit him hard.

  “Well,” he was saying, “that was the first album I’d recorded one hundred percent solo, you know, playing all the instruments myself, doing the background vocals…”

  “Now how could you do all that alone?” she asked him coyly.

  “It was quite simple, actually, given all the new equipment.”

  “I thought somehow that Rick Daily worked on that album with you.” She frowned, looking at her notes.

  “Only on one song,” J.D. pointed out, wryly pondering the irony that he, J.D., recognized as a great vocalist, acclaimed as a songwriter, never once in his career had a hit record on which Rick had not backed him on guitar. The only cut from the album under discussion to reach number one status had been the title track—the only one Rick had played on.

  “Well, he’d certainly been a busy boy that year,” Hilary commented, “after having recorded that album that was so big—”

  “Daily Blues,” J.D. said, nodding, “won every conceivable award that year and is still looked upon as his best work ever. It was a phenomenal collection of music, no question about it.”

  My guess is that she's the weaker of the two, Hilary mused. She’ll break first, though she’s been off someplace most of the night, that's been plain. Odd how she rallied though, when Narood’s name came up. And there’s something there about her and Daily that she’s guarding with her life, but what?

  “Had Rick been inspired, do you think, by his impending fatherhood?” Hilary addressed Maggie directly.

  “I don’t know,” she half whispered, the unexpected query kick-starting the knot in her stomach.

  As difficult as it was to think back on it all when she was alone, now, under the heat of the lights, she was suddenly suffocating. Those days had taught her that no one can really understand the devastating effects of addiction until they have loved an addict. It had been a terrible lesson to learn.

  * * * * *

  Five months had passed since Rick had stopped unexpectantly at the Borders’ home. The next time he appeared at their door, it was with a much subdued Lindy in tow. Maggie cried tears of joy to see her again, then was struck dumb to discover Lindy was seven months’ pregnant.

  “So how do you feel, about the baby, I mean?” Maggie asked when they were finally alone.

  “I don’t want it, Maggie. If I’d found out about it sooner than I had, it would have been gone, believe me,” she said flatly. “But I was almost six months when I realized it, and it was too late to do anything about it.”

  “Well, how does Rick feel?”

  “He knows there’s a very good chance it isn’t his. Then again,” she said, shrugging, “it could be.”

  Maggie studied the lines that had appeared in her friend’s face since she’d last seen her. A pain grew inside her as she pondered Lindy’s dilemma.

  “Rick’s been so good, Maggie,” she said slowly. “He wants me to marry him—can you imagine? He doesn’t love me and he knows I don’t love him and he doesn’t even know if he’s the father. But he wants to marry me.”

  “Why?” Maggie heard herself ask.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because he never had a father or a mother, and he feels sorry for the baby. Maybe he thinks it’s his and he doesn’t want his own child to grow up alone like he did. Maybe he feels responsible for me somehow. I don’t know.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him no. The best compromise we could come to was to agree to have his name shown on the birth certificate as the father instead of ‘unknown.’ ”

  “That’s pretty big of him,” Maggie commented.

  “That’s an understatement. I wish I could be in love with him, Maggie. I really do. But I’m not. The best I can say is that if I could ever love anyone, it would be him. He has spent more time and more money and gone through more aggravation trying to hold my head above water this past year or so…” She paused and shook her head slowly. “You just don’t know.”

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  “No. If you knew how bad things had gotten, you’d never speak to me again.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Maggie protested.

  “No, it’s not. I was in way over my head. A lot of stuff happened that, well, that’s better left alone. It’s been a long, dark tunnel, Maggie, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be out of it.”

  “Why do you say that? You’re not still using, are you?”

  “No, Rick would kill me. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to. Right now I have to get through this and have this baby, and then… I don’t know what then.”

  “Maybe you’ll change your mind after it’s born.”

  “That’s a nice thought, Maggie, but unlikely. I never wanted a child, never. I have absolutely no maternal feelings, no emotional attachment to it. I wish it hadn’t happened, but I have to see it through. For two cents I’d…” The flat detached voice had sent a chill up Maggie’s spine.

  “You’d what?”

  Lindy did not reply.

  “You’d what, Lindy?” Maggie repeated and found herself growing frightened.

  Lindy broke down and wept uncontrollably. Maggie let her cry, sensing that the tears had been a long time coming, that the fear and despondency behind them needed to be released.

  “Just for your peace of mind,” she said when the tidal . wave began to recede, “just so that you know, I tried to want this baby, thinking maybe it would give purpose to my life, a direction. I mean, I haven’t even been working the past few years. I’ve lived off Rick like a parasite. And I haven’t even been able to love him for it. But there’s something in me, Maggie… All the things I tried to tell myself about this baby aren’t real and never will be. It would have been better if I’d been able to have an abortion. That’s the solemn truth. I wish I could be different, but I’m not. I wish I could love it, but I know I won’t.” Lindy looked up at Maggie, pleading, “Please don’t hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Maggie said softly. “I don’t always understand you, but I could never hate you. We’ve been friends for too long, Lindy. And you know I’ll help you in any way I can. If you want to come and stay here with the baby after it’s born, you’re welcome to.”

  “Thanks, Maggie. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.”

  “If it gets to be too much for you, bring him or her here,” Maggie offered.

  “You mean just plunk it on your doorstep?”


  “If that’s necessary, yes.”

  “You’re still the best person I’ve ever known, Maggie. It helps knowing I could do that. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a possibility.”

  “Wait and see how you feel after the baby’s born. You might surprise yourself.”

  They heard Rick and J.D. in the hallway, heard their laughter as they walked through the kitchen and into the sunroom.

  “Mags, you’ve got to listen to this,” J.D. was saying. “Wait till you hear.”

  “What is it? What have you two been up to?”

  “We were down at the studio, fooling around, and listen to what Rick added here.” J.D. was plugging a tape recorder into an outlet. “Wait till you hear how great this sounds.”

  The tape began, the master for “Shadows on the Moon,” which J.D. had recorded in his small stable-studio over the past four weeks. Rick had recorded over J.D.’s original tape, and the sweet, sad notes from Rick’s guitar seemed to be weeping, a dramatic underscore to the vocals:

  “I feel the darkness closing in on me.

  Is it just a shadow on the moon?

  Light is fading, sun is slipping away,

  Night always comes too soon.

  No promise made can’t be broken,

  Every dawn fades into the day.

  The seasons so quickly pass by us,

  Is there anything ever can stay?

  So bring me your love and dream me a dream

  And make me believe it won’t die,

  And I’ll sing you a song to hold in your heart

  Till the silent shadows pass by.”

  “Well,” he said, turning off the recorder, “what do you think, Maggie?”

  “Rick, you’re the only person I know who can make a guitar actually cry like that,” she said. “It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”

  “I think it sounds morbid,” Lindy mumbled.

  “Why do you say that?” Maggie asked.

  “I don’t know, it just sounds so… hopeless. But I like it. I like it a lot. It is beautiful, J.D.”

  Rick sat beside her. “Legs,” he said quietly, “nothing is ever hopeless.”