The stove was new-ish. Knowing Freddy, he’d either bought it at a scratch-and-dent sale, or it had conveniently fallen off the back of a truck somewhere in Jersey. The refrigerator, one of those old round-shouldered things with a latch handle you pulled to open, sat silent. When she lived here, it had hummed and buzzed and sometimes clacked and hammered. Circa 1940, it had a minuscule, boxy freezer compartment tucked in the upper-right corner. She’d kept it stocked with fudge ripple ice cream, store brand, the only luxury she was willing to pay for. Late at night, while her husband and the rest of the world slept, she and Rob would sit at her old wooden kitchen table, eating ice cream and playing around with chords on his guitar.
She touched the refrigerator’s shiny chrome handle. It was smooth and cool. Hard to believe it was still here, after all these years. They made them to last in those days. The thought came unbidden. Like her, the refrigerator had weathered a multitude of seasons and survived them.
The bedroom was more difficult, for she had no idea what would be waiting behind that door. She pushed it, and it opened with a squawk of protest. The room was dark, its lone window on the back side of the building, oblivious to the afternoon sun. There was barely enough room for a full-size bed in here. She and Danny hadn’t minded. They’d been young and in love, and despite his six-foot-four, 190-pound frame, they’d never felt confined or cramped. This was where she’d slept with him, where they’d conceived a baby that had never drawn breath, where he’d admitted to sleeping with another woman.
She knew all these things intellectually, but couldn’t connect to them emotionally. She’d expected to find pieces of her heart shattered all over the floor. But this was just another empty, dusty room with holes in the painted plaster and a closet door with a broken hinge.
How was she supposed to feel about that? There should have been a flood of emotion, painful memories assaulting her. Resentment, fury. Instead, there was nothing. It was as though the events that had shaped her life had happened to somebody else. Watching them unfold in her mind, like images on a television screen, she could feel empathy for that hapless young woman who’d lost her baby, whose husband had cheated on her.
But she couldn’t feel her pain.
Numbly, she moved on to the bathroom. Nothing had changed here. The same cracked mirror over the sink, the same tired blue floor tiles, the same stained porcelain fixtures. Behind the toilet, almost hidden in a nest of dust bunnies, lay the corpse of a cockroach. Dry, long dead, a lone reminder of the past, a welcome home of sorts. She fought back hysteria, unsure whether to laugh or cry; after everything that had happened to her here, it was the damn cockroach that got to her.
That and the sunlight filtering through the maple tree outside the kitchen window. It spilled through the dirty windowpane and lay in dappled patterns on the counter. She’d always loved the way the afternoon light illuminated her kitchen. In summer, filtered by greenery, it was soft and golden-green and comforting. In winter, it poured in between bare branches like a river of lava, setting fire to the kitchen and raising the temperature of the room, for just a while, above its customary fifty degrees.
As she stood in the kitchen, a long-forgotten memory drifted past. A hot summer night, the Fourth of July. The two of them, she and Rob, sitting on the back fire escape, drinking warm beer, as heat lightning flashed in the distant sky and firecrackers went off all around the city. There’d been magic in the air that night, and she struggled to remember why Danny hadn’t been with them. Had he been working? Sleeping? She had no idea. Odd, that the clearest, the warmest, the most vivid memories she had of this place all included Rob. And almost none of them included Danny.
The first tear spilled and rolled, landing with a plop on those black-and-white kitchen tiles. What now? She’d been so certain, so sure that coming back here, where she’d lost that first baby, where her cheating husband had stolen away her trust and her innocence, would bring the answers she so badly needed. But it hadn’t. It was clear that the ghosts she’d hoped to find didn’t exist. The answers she’d sought would not be found here.
Devastated, she slumped to the dusty floor and, knees bent and back braced against the wall, she wept. Not for the young woman she’d been, the one who’d suffered so many losses. Not for the lost babies, although she’d loved them, every one.
Instead, she wept for the strong and confident woman who’d lost her strength and her way, the woman who, like Little Bo Peep with her sheep, didn’t know where to find them. Rocking like a child, she sobbed for the woman she was meant to be, and for the woman she’d accidentally turned into. Sobbed and shuddered because she couldn’t find a way to meld the two together and become whole again.
Heedless of her pain, time continued on. The sun’s position changed, and the afternoon light marched across dirty floor tiles. Eventually, inevitably, the crying ended. She stood on wobbly legs, brushed the dirt from her pants, and went into the bathroom to check the damage.
It was bad. Really bad. Her eyes were red and puffy, and mascara streamed down her cheeks in matching rivers of black. Casey propped her purse on the edge of the bathroom sink, took out a fistful of tissues, and turned on the water. It ran rusty at first, then cleared. She wet the tissues and cleaned up the mess she’d made of her face. Rob would take one look at her and demand to know why she’d been crying. As if he thought she could explain her own madness.
Shuddering, she checked the mirror a final time. This was as good as it was going to get. At least the black streaks were gone. She tossed the ruined tissues in the toilet and flushed them. Gathering her dignity around her like a warm, comforting cloak, she went back to the living room and closed the windows. Picked up the key she’d left on the kitchen counter. Took a last look at the place she’d once called home.
Then went back downstairs to return the key to Freddy.
* * *
When she opened the door to their apartment, Rob was pacing the living room, his hair a mess, as though he’d been running his fingers through it, over and over and over. He stopped, wheeled on her, and said, “Where the hell have you been all afternoon?”
“What?”
“I’ve been calling and calling, and you didn’t answer your phone!”
“My—” Baffled, she opened her purse and took out the cell phone, noted its blank screen. She pushed a button, then another, but there was no response. “The battery must have died. Why? What’s wrong?” Panic shot through her. “Is Emma—”
“Emma’s fine. And I don’t know what’s wrong. Maybe you’d like to tell me!”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“I know,” he said. “About what happened the other day. With the little girl.”
She turned and stared at Paige, betrayal a hard pain in her chest. “You told him?”
“I’m sorry,” Paige said. “You scared me. I love you. I was worried about you.”
“Don’t blame her. I bullied it out of her. Why would you hide something like that from me?”
She turned her attention back to her husband. “Maybe because I knew you’d react the way you’re reacting!”
“Where were you this afternoon?”
Casey straightened her spine and raised her chin. “If you really have to know, I was at the apartment.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Apartment?” he said. “What apartment?”
“Freddy’s goddamn apartment!”
“Freddy’s—Freddy Wong?”
“Do you know any other Freddy?”
“You went back there? I don’t understand. Why on God’s green earth would you go back there?”
“Because! Because I was looking for something. I thought maybe I’d find it there!” She paused, took a hard, sharp breath. Said softly, “I didn’t.”
And all the anger drained out of him. She could actually see it dissolving, flowing away from him like a red river of pain. “Shit,” he said, and took two giant steps across the room and folded her into his arms. “What
the hell were you thinking?”
She clung to him, shook her head, unable to articulate her jumbled emotions. Pain, anger, disappointment. Crushing disappointment. “Just hold me,” she said.
“We have to talk about this, babe. We have to talk about a lot of things.”
“Later. I can’t do it now.”
His hand came up to stroke her hair. “Fine. But not much later, okay?”
She nodded, raised her head, saw the clock on the wall and realized what time it was. “Why are you home so early?”
“I came home to talk to you.” Catching a loose strand of hair that had broken free from her braid, he tucked it behind her ear. “But it looks like we have bigger fish to fry than the little minnows I was planning on.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He caught her chin in his hand and studied her face. His beautiful green eyes were pained, and it broke her heart to know that she was the one who’d put that pain there. “We’re in this together,” he said. “We’ll fix this together.”
Her eyes welled with tears, and a single teardrop broke free and spilled from the corner of her eye. “I don’t think we can,” she said. “I don’t think we can fix it.”
Rob
He hung his toothbrush in its holder and studied his reflection in the bathroom mirror. The ravages of age were beginning to march across his face. He still wondered, every time he looked into a mirror, what Casey could possibly see in him. He’d never been much to look at, but with age, it was getting worse. All those wrinkles. These days, when he looked into the mirror, it was his father who stared back at him. The first time it had happened, he’d thought he was hallucinating. Until it happened again. And yet again. Now, he just accepted it. Just as he accepted the growing understanding that life didn’t go on forever. Time was a fickle mistress who ravaged your body and your mind, lied through her teeth, then left a trail of laughter behind her when she moved on.
In the end, what did any of it mean? What was the significance of all those moments that made up this thing called a life? Lying in the dark with his wife, naked skin pressed to naked skin, giving love, receiving it in return; the innocence of his children’s laughter, filling his heart with joy; the immeasurable sweetness of his fingers drawing magic, against all odds, from the strings of his guitar. What did all of these things mean? How did they fit together? Were they jigsaw pieces with smooth, perfect edges? Or were they a tangle of misfitted fragments that only peripherally touched each other’s boundaries?
He’d never given much thought to any of this. Rob MacKenzie had always been a simple man, not given to introspection. But lately, these questions, and others like them, circled his head like vultures circling a carcass. And he had a growing suspicion that it was his carcass they were circling. He wasn’t sure how he’d arrived at this particular time and place. Wasn’t sure if the emotions that left him choking at random moments were more lies from that fickle bitch, Time, or if he’d really taken a wrong turn somewhere.
And if he had taken a wrong turn, was it too late to backtrack and change course?
He switched off the light, went barefoot to the bedroom, peeled off his clothes and got into bed. In the darkness, he found her, and drew her into his arms. They adjusted their fit for maximum body contact, sinking into each other’s warmth. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
They lay in silence, broken only by the sound of breathing. This was home, in a way nothing else had ever been or would ever be. He’d had two great loves in his life. One was his music, the love that had chosen him at the age of nine. The other was this woman, the woman he’d fallen in love with while she was still married to his best friend, the woman who was slowly becoming unwound as he watched helplessly from the sidelines.
“You want to talk about it?” he said.
“No. But I probably should.”
“We’re all alone now. Just you and me. You can tell me anything.”
“I know.” In the darkness, her voice was very small.
“What happened? With the little girl?”
“I don’t know. She was just there, walking along in front of us, part of the crowd. At first, I didn’t pay any attention to her. But gradually, I realized that she had hair like Katie’s. All those curls, that beautiful blond bounce that Katie’s hair had. And she was the same age, even wore the same brand of clothes I used to put Katie in. She was even built like Katie—those little tanned arms and legs—and something happened inside me. I can’t explain it. I knew better. I’m not crazy, damn it! I knew she wasn’t my daughter. Katie’s been dead for eight years. And I knew that even if Katie wasn’t dead, she’d be thirteen years old now. She wouldn’t look anything like that little girl. But my heart started pumping, and—I don’t know. It was like there was this crazy person inside me that had to see her just one more time before she went away forever. For a couple of minutes, some part of me really believed that she’d have Katie’s face. And—I’m so ashamed of this—I left Emma with Paige and chased after her. Just ran blindly after her, right through an intersection, with cars squealing all around me like some crazy cops-and-robbers movie. I could have been killed. And for what? When I caught up to her, she turned around and looked at me, and—” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “I’m not crazy, Rob. I’m not! But the way her mother glared at me, she clearly thought I was unhinged.”
“You’re not unhinged.” He no longer knew whether or not those words were true, but she needed to hear them, and he’d spent his entire adult life putting her needs ahead of his own. It was an ingrained habit, one that wasn’t likely to change anytime between now and death.
“But what if I am? What if I really am losing my mind? What I did…that’s not normal behavior. No matter how you look at it, there’s nothing normal about chasing after a strange kid on the street because she looks just like your dead daughter. The daughter, I might add, who’s been dead for eight years.”
“You know what Phoenix said to me? You can’t put a time limit on grief. That kid’s smarter than he looks.”
“And you like him a lot more than you let on.”
“He’s growing on me.” He drew her closer, gave her cheek a tender kiss and found it damp. His heart sank. “What about today?” he said. “The apartment? I thought you were doing better. The last couple of days, you’ve been more like yourself. And this morning…” He trailed off, not sure that asking wouldn’t make things worse.
“I know. I thought so, too. And this morning was lovely. But—”
“But sex is never the answer.”
“Sometimes it is. Just not this time. But I can’t think of a pleasanter way to search.”
In spite of the gravity of the situation, he laughed. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you, and I’ll love you until I draw my last breath. And I don’t care if you’re crazy. I hope you realize that I wouldn’t love you any less if you were.”
“Thank you.”
“I just thought it needed to be said. So tell me why you thought you’d find some kind of an answer in that hellhole.”
She let out a soft sigh. “Everything that I am today,” she said slowly, choosing her words carefully, “is filtered through the lens of what happened to me there. It was an odd, turbulent time in my life. It’s where I lost that first baby. It’s where…other things happened. I understand exactly how Dorothy felt after she came back from Oz. Some of it was scary and terrible, but some of it was beautiful. I just thought that, since living there marked me so deeply, going back might help to open up some of those closed doors inside me. It was probably a stupid idea.”
“It wasn’t stupid. But—” He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. He’d brought it up before, but that was in anger. This time, he was serious. “I think you need to see someone.”
“A shrink.”
“Some kind of therapist, yes.”
“But I’m not crazy. Damn it, Rob, do you really think I�
��m that crazy?”
“Of course not. And you know as well as I do that seeing a therapist doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It did us a world of good when we went with Paige.”
“That was different. We were learning how to parent a teenager with behavioral problems.”
“And she was grieving the loss of her mother.”
“I’m not ready. Not yet. I still think I can find the answer myself. It’s out there somewhere. I just haven’t looked in the right place yet.”
“You’re playing Russian roulette with your life. Is staying an independent cuss who refuses to accept help worth the possibility of losing yourself forever? I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Maybe not physically.”
“See. You do think I’ve gone around the bend.”
“I think you have some serious issues that need to be addressed by a mental health professional. Because it’s in your best interest. And because I wouldn’t survive losing you.”
“I won’t live my life making decisions based on fear. I can’t do that.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Then stop pushing me. If the time comes when I think I need help, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, let me try to work this out on my own.”
It wasn’t the answer he wanted. But it was the only one he was going to get until she was ready to admit that she needed help. If they were both lucky, he’d manage to survive her temporary insanity without falling off the edge of the earth himself.
* * *
He spent the morning waffling. It wasn’t like him; generally, he made a decision and then took action, and he wasn’t shy about acting on his impulses. But this wasn’t about him; this was about Casey, and making this call felt a lot like tattling. If he did this, and she found out, she’d probably fillet him and serve him for dinner. But there was also the little matter of love, and in Rob MacKenzie’s book, love trumped fear of retribution every time. He was deeply in love with his wife, and he was losing her in little bits and pieces. The combination of those two truths was terrifying, far more terrifying than his fear of Casey’s anger. He’d faced that before and survived. If he had to, he could face it again.
The Miles Between Us Page 21
