by Ann Warner
“Yeah. Matter of fact, I do.”
The sudden surge of anger shocked Alan. Then the anger ebbed, as swiftly as it had come, leaving him exhausted. “Could be you’re right.”
“Then do something, man. See a shrink. Talk it out.” Charles sounded as ragged as Alan felt.
Alan closed his eyes and turned his head away. Talk. Elaine had been pushing it as well. As if that were the magic formula. But if they couldn’t understand how impossible it was for him, there was no way he could explain.
Charles was silent for the rest of the inning. Then he sat back, stretched slightly, and spoke without looking at Alan. “You got a plan?”
“I still have a year. Contract runs through next May.”
“You think they’ll change their minds?”
“Nope.”
“So, what happens next May?”
Unable to speak, Alan shrugged.
“And you don’t want to discuss it.”
“You got it.”
As always, Charles seemed to know when he’d pushed far enough.
~ ~ ~
Alan had just walked into the house Saturday morning, filthy and exhausted from spending the night with a colicky mare, when the phone rang. He picked it up, and when he heard Kathy say hello, his heart began to race. Thank God. It was going to be all right, after all. They could work something out. Figure out how to be friends again.
It took him a moment to sort out what she was saying—not that she planned to come out for a ride or that she wanted to see him. But that Delia was critically ill. In intensive care at Children’s.
Dread hit his gut, nauseating him. He closed his eyes, but the memories were still there. . . Delia holding out her hand to give Arriba a carrot and giggling because it tickled; hugging a new foal, so excited it bubbled out of her in laughter; lying still as death, her smile erased, her voice stilled.
It can’t be real. I can’t bear it if it’s real.
The phone beeped in his ear, demanding to be hung up. He stared at it with no memory of the conversation after Kathy’s first words. Had he even responded?
He fumbled with the phone, dropping it to the floor. As he bent to pick it up, the nausea hit in earnest, and he barely made it to the bathroom. Afterward, he sat on the floor, his whole body shaking as if he were freezing, and with that cold came the memory of the way he’d felt immediately after losing Meg. He’d been nauseated then too. And in so much pain, he didn’t believe he would survive it. Hadn’t wanted to survive it.
The memory of that day slipped back, as insidious as a flame blackening the edges of a piece of paper before becoming a conflagration. He had to stop it. Couldn’t go through it again. He pushed the images and memories frantically away, Meg somehow entangled with Delia.
Think of something, anything. The colicky mare, riding Sonoro, training a fractious foal. He focused on the coolness of the tile, the smell of his clothes, the rasp of his breath, the sour taste of vomit in his throat. Gradually, he pulled himself back from the brink.
After a while, he forced himself to get up and strip off his clothes. Then he stood under the hot shower until the water ran cold, trying to wash it all away—the pain, the fear, the helplessness.
Not succeeding.
~ ~ ~
When he got back to Denver after that weekend, Alan lay on his bed, staring at Meg’s picture. Remembering the day he lost her. Remembering his last sight of her, so unlike herself, so utterly and emphatically still, the gold of her hair darkened. Remembering how he vowed he would never let himself care enough for somebody to hurt that way again.
But he’d screwed up. Twice over. And now, thinking about Kathy and Delia, he felt. . . something he didn’t want to name.
The memories of the past months, and the sad, restless feelings they evoked, stuck like burrs he couldn’t shake off. Kathy grinning at him after he spilled the beer. Laughing as she missed a tennis ball. Standing in his mother’s kitchen, her hair shining like the copper pans in the late afternoon slant of sunlight.
He’d chosen loneliness over the possibility of pain, yet pain had come anyway.
Elaine insisted talk would help. But most women seemed willing to delve into their psyches with the abandon of a flea-market treasure hunt. For him, it was the worst possible trespass. Better to let the problem lie, walk around it, do something physical in order to stop thinking about it. Not dredge it up and examine it in minute detail. Examination only made it that much more difficult to go on.
He stared at Meg’s picture, remembering the trial and error that had taught him what worked best to keep the memories locked up.
In the beginning he hadn’t been able to manage it. Every waking hour, Meg’s absence was a heavy weight that slowed and muted word and act.
Simple things, like cooking a meal, answering the phone, shaving, took all his energy. If it hadn’t been for Charles, he wouldn’t have made it. Charles, showing up at random times, opening blinds, turning on lights, heating up soup and watching him while he ate it. Charles insisting he go to a ball game. Charles pushing back when Alan told him to get lost.
When the fall term at DSU had started, Alan began teaching, emerging from his apartment as if from a long convalescence. Gradually the students and the teaching began to distract some of his thoughts. Weekends at the ranch with the horses, his parents, Cormac helped as well. As did hard physical labor. All of it more effective than talk.
But what about now? With Delia critically ill, Kathy slipping beyond his reach, and his position at DSU ending.
Was silence courage? Or cowardice?
~ ~ ~
Alan called the hospital at least twice a day. An impersonal voice would say only that Delia Garibaldi was still in critical condition.
He called Grace and Frank, but all he ever got was an answering machine. He finally left a message, saying he was thinking about them.
He knew where Grace and Frank were. With Delia. And he could see them if he drove to the hospital and waited outside the ICU until they came out. But what good would that do? It wouldn’t help Delia. And Grace and Frank didn’t need the awkward words he’d be able to string together.
Even as he made excuses, he knew they were weak. Knew with the clarity of self-knowledge that was Meg’s best and worst gift to him what the real problem was. He couldn’t face either the reality of Delia’s sickness, or the possibility he might run into Kathy at the hospital. Even though he missed Kathy and wanted to see her. Wanted back what they’d had—that easy, undemanding camaraderie. But that was something that was probably no longer possible.
Best then not to see her at all.
Kathy, one kind of pain, Delia another. He tried to pray for the little girl, but the part of him that believed in a loving God had shattered when Meg died. In spite of that, an incoherent, useless, Please. Please don’t do this. Please don’t let her die, played continuously in his thoughts, and accompanied everything he did.
He moved through the days automatically, finishing up his classes for the year, relocating to the ranch for the summer, cleaning stalls, exercising horses, readying equipment for the summer trips to regional fairs.
And always it was right there, the fear that the next time he called the hospital, the voice would say Delia had died. Or maybe they wouldn’t even tell him that.
He carried that burden of worry and guilt alone, knowing if he told his parents, it would put in motion a persistent and unrelenting concern. Sickness, birth, death meant food. The ranchers’ way. His mother would cook and insist he take the food to the Garibaldis.
He shuddered, remembering the casseroles covering the table and kitchen counters and filling every cubic inch of refrigerator and freezer space after Meg’s death. He’d no more been able to eat any of it than he could fly.
Eventually, he could take it no longer—the Garibaldis’ silence and the refusal of the hospital to give him any information. He drove back to Denver on a Monday morning, determined to sit in the ICU waiting room, until
someone told him what was going on.
~ ~ ~
Alan startled to the feel of a hand on his shoulder. Frank. Looking years older than the last time Alan saw him. The other man slumped into the chair across from Alan.
“How. . . ” It was all Alan managed. His throat was so dry the word came out parched and cracked.
“We turned the corner. Yesterday.”
“Thank God.”
“Yeah.” Frank looked at him with bloodshot eyes. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“Sure. Good.”
The two of them went to the cafeteria, and Alan sat, mostly silent, while Frank described what the previous weeks had been like.
“Is there anything you need me to help you with?”
Frank shook his head. “Mostly we’re living at the hospital.”
“You’ll let me know when she’s well enough for me to see her?”
“Probably won’t be for a while yet. Guess I better get back.” Frank stood and extended his hand to Alan. “Thanks for coming. That’s the important thing. To know you’re thinking about us. Appreciate it.”
~ ~ ~
Alan accompanied his parents and four of the TapDancer horses to the fair in Pueblo. After they arrived and settled the horses, they went to dinner, and Alan, knowing he could no longer put it off, told them he’d been denied tenure.
His mother, looking troubled, touched his arm without speaking.
“Shows they don’t know a thing about how to run that place.” His father’s voice was gruff. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“I’ll have next year to find another position. Hopefully, I’ll find something in Denver or maybe the Springs.”
“Oh.” His mother’s face clouded over in sudden comprehension. “But that would be terrible, if you had to move. We love having you at the ranch so much.”
“More than love having you. You’re a big help.” His father cleared his throat. “Matter of fact, we could use you full-time, if you’ve got any interest.” He held up a hand to stop Alan’s response. “Nope. Don’t want an answer now. You got a year to think. Just let me know.”
“Thanks.” The word was raspy and uneven, and it wasn’t enough, but it was all he could manage.
It overwhelmed him, their support and love. Offering whatever was in their power in order to spare him more distress.
But what he couldn’t tell them was the distress from the tenure decision was a pinprick compared to his worry about Delia and his sorrow over how things had ended with Kathy.
Chapter Eighteen
Kathy was running on the jogging path that circled Cheesman Park when a man ran up alongside her. She glanced over at him feeling uneasy, then relaxed when she saw who it was.
“Thought it might be you,” the man said. “Not many people have hair that color. It’s good to see you again.”
“Do we know each other?” Actually, she’d known immediately who he was. The Greg-look-alike district attorney she seemed doomed to run into whenever she had a relationship end.
He was wearing a T-shirt from an Ironman competition in Penticton, wherever that was. Not only a show-off with that T-shirt, but gay? That was Cheesman’s reputation anyway—as a place gays hooked up—although Kathy had never personally observed it. But maybe that was because she didn’t go to the park after dark.
“You did it again. Charles Larimore. We played tennis, last fall. You run here often?”
“Occasionally.” Actually, she ran in Cheesman almost every day, because it was handy and the jogging track was compressed dirt instead of pavement, and its reputation, if anything, made it seem safer.
“Funny, I haven’t seen you before.”
“Yeah. Funny.” She kept her tone ironic, not wanting to encourage him. But actually, it wasn’t funny, it was odd he chose to run here.
“I’ve got five miles to go,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”
Not if I see you first.
He pulled away, moving at twice her pace.
Over the next two weeks, she did see him, several times. He always caught up to her, never the other way around, and he always slowed down to talk to her a minute or two before pulling away.
He usually managed to make her laugh, and underlying the humor, she learned he had a sharp intelligence. Gradually, she stopped feeling uncomfortable at the thought of seeing him, and just as gradually, he began spending longer intervals with her before picking up his pace.
She eventually began to look forward to seeing him, and even felt a tiny pulse of disappointment when she didn’t. But when he asked her out, she said, no thanks.
The second time he asked and she declined, he put out a hand and signaled her before he stepped off the path. She followed.
“What is it?” she said, thinking he had a cramp.
“You telling me no because you really don’t want to go out with me, or are you seeing someone?”
“Seems to me I recall something about a girlfriend.”
He looked at her for a moment before starting to grin. “Seems to me someone was prevaricating when she acted like she didn’t remember me.”
Kathy felt the blush warming her cheeks, but she hoped Charles wouldn’t notice. She bent over, hands on her thighs, taking deep breaths as a further distraction.
Charles reached out and lifted her chin. “You really did a job on my self-confidence.” He sounded serious, but his eyes were full of mischief. “Nice to have it back.”
“About the girlfriend.” She moved so his hand no longer touched her.
Charles looked abruptly sober. “I no longer have her.”
“And why is that?” Not that she cared. Exchanging a few words with him two or three times a week was one thing, actually going out with him was a whole other thing. One she wasn’t yet ready for.
“Irreconcilable differences.”
His serious look stopped her from saying that wasn’t much of an explanation.
“Just to set the record straight,” he said. “I enjoy talking to you. I thought it would be pleasant to share a meal and more talk. No strings.” He took a couple of deep breaths examining her while he did it. “I’ll keep my hands to myself. Promise.”
What he was offering, she could handle it, couldn’t she? In fact, going out with him might be just the thing to take her mind off her current troubles. Worth a try at least.
“Okay,” she said.
He grinned. “Lucky you agreed. I was about ready to change tactics.”
“To what?”
“Better I keep them to myself. I might still need them.”
An hour later, giving them both time to shower and change, he picked her up at the Costellos. He suggested a microbrewery on Larimer street where they shared a pizza and a pitcher of beer as they exchanged the usual get-acquainted litany: careers, schools, birthplaces, family make-up, hobbies.
She found Charles’s personality was so different from Greg’s that gradually the physical resemblance ceased to bother her.
When, true to his word, he didn’t even attempt to kiss her goodnight, Kathy decided it was okay she’d accepted the invitation, and probably okay to accept another.
~ ~ ~
The day Delia woke up, Kathy had come, as usual, for her after-work visit. Already, the shimmer of summer pollution was stretching over the eastern plains, and the mountains, hazed with blue, carried only warm weather apostrophes of snow.
“Tía Kathy.” Delia’s voice was a thread, and she appeared as fragile as paper-thin glass, but the smile was all Delia.
“Hello, baby. You sure gave us a scare.” Kathy took Delia’s hand in hers.
Delia frowned, shaking her head as tears welled out of her eyes. “I can’t hear you.”
Shocked, Kathy looked at Grace.
With tired eyes Grace looked across the bed at Kathy. “It’s the antibiotic they used. It saved her life, but it damaged her ears.”
As Grace’s meaning sank in, Kathy’s stomach cramped. �
��Is it permanent? The damage?”
“There are things, maybe later, that can help, but. . . ”
Dizzy, Kathy leaned against the bed, looking down at the little girl with the bright eyes and enchanting smile.
It wasn’t fair. Delia had already lost the tips of two fingers and four toes to the infection. Wasn’t that enough of a price for her life?
It was what Emily had faced. A sick child. The long days and nights of worry.
And years of difficulty afterward.
Chapter Nineteen
Excerpt from the diaries of Emily Kowalski
1937
Jess moves Bobby to a cot in the kitchen before he leaves for work every day, but I fancy Bobby would enjoy going outside. I saw a picture of an apparatus called an invalid chair in the Sears catalog, and I pointed it out to Jess. He said it was too expensive, and besides, it was too big for Bobby. He was gruff, and it upset me.
Then last weekend, after a long spell in his workshop he brought me a chair he’d made for Bobby. It is very clever. He used the wheels from the baby buggy, and the chair part is the perfect size. I made cushions so it will be soft, and yesterday we tried it for the first time.
When Jess put Bobby in the chair, I watched him carefully, and I swear his eyes sparkled. He is aware, I know he is. Just because he can’t walk or talk, it doesn’t mean he no longer thinks or feels.
I have started reading to Bobby. He loved to be read to before he got sick. Today, he moved his arm, just a little, and seemed to point to one of the books. Jess doesn’t believe me, at least not yet, but he is home so little.
We are both trying to find ways to deal with what has happened. For Jess, it means working long, hard hours. For me, it is taking care of Bobby and trying to convince my heart that someday my life can be as it once was, even though I know that’s impossible.