Days Like This

by Laurie Breton

  And saw the view.

  It grabbed him by the heart and squeezed, the same way a wailing saxophone could make his chest tighten and send shivers running down his spine. High on a hill, he could see for miles and miles, just like that old song by the Who. Dark evergreen forests. Mountains as far as the eye could see. The landscape dotted with bodies of water whose names he would probably never know. God’s country.

  From the far side of the car, Paige circled around and stood beside him, following his gaze. “Wow,” she said.

  “Yeah. Wow.”

  His daughter crossed her arms. Still looking at the view, she said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Ask away.”

  “Did you love my mother?”

  The unexpected question drove a knife through his gut. He leaned against the side of the Porsche. Propping his elbows on the roof, he said, “That was all such a long time ago—”

  “Stop waffling. It’s not brain surgery. It’s a simple yes or no answer.”

  Was it that simple? The wind lifted a strand of her hair and blew it into her face, that beautiful face that displayed a vulnerability she couldn’t quite hide beneath the hard, brusque exterior mask she wore to face the world. He couldn’t lie to the kid. She’d been lied to all her life. Right now, he and Casey were all the stability she had.

  “I liked her a lot,” he said. “But I think that if I’d loved her...if I’d really, truly loved her…I would’ve taken her with me when I left for New York.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s about what I thought.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s not the answer you were looking for.”

  She kicked at the gravel beneath her feet. “Hey, you were honest. You could have lied to spare my feelings. You didn’t.”

  “Right.” He wondered why that didn’t make him feel any better.

  “So...I guess you probably had a lot of girlfriends over the years.”

  Girlfriends. That was one way of putting it. There’d always been women, but especially during those hazy days following his second divorce, when he’d wandered, adrift, for far too long. A silent, solitary wraith, tall and lean and needy, beer bottle in hand, wending his way through the crowded bars of L.A., some kind of dark emptiness burning inside his gut. Beautiful faces coming at him from out of the crowd, plastic smiles, eager eyes. Hours spent cruising the winding roads of Laurel Canyon, windows open and the top down, scent of eucalyptus heavy on the night breeze as some random blonde in the passenger seat threw her head back and let the wind muss her perfect hair. Sometimes, if the night and the woman were right and the emptiness was crowding him, he’d take the Porsche out onto the freeway, open her up, and let her run. He never thought about dying. The speed, the danger, were a rush. So was the sex. Exciting, yet at the same time unfulfilling. There’d been a lot of women, so many women he’d lost track. And things he’d never told Casey. Things he would never tell her about that dark and directionless time in his life.

  He hadn’t understood what drove him. Not then, not until years later. It hadn’t been about driving too fast, drinking too much, sleeping with too many women. It wasn’t sex he’d been looking for; it was connection. He was looking to fill that emptiness inside him, searching for that slender, golden thread of connection—the connection he had with Danny’s wife—in another woman.

  Of course, he hadn’t found it. That wasn’t the kind of thing you could replicate. Back then, he hadn’t understood the concept of soul mates. Hell, he wasn’t sure he understood it even now, at the ripe old age of thirty-seven. But if the concept was real, if soul mates truly existed, then he’d met his when he was twenty years old. She just happened to be married to another man.

  “You still in there somewhere, dude?”

  He glanced over at his daughter, studied her face, the innocence that belied her streetwise attitude, and felt something tug at his heart. “Don’t call me dude,” he said.

  “This time,” she said, studying him keenly, “you went so far away I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t a hard question, but I bet there’s a lulu of an answer.”

  What was it about this kid that made it impossible to lie to her? “Before Casey,” he said, “yes. I had a lot of girlfriends.”

  “Casey doesn’t strike me as the type who’d much like that.”

  “She doesn’t. She says I was looking for love in all the wrong places. Like the song.”

  “Um…what song?”

  “Johnny Lee?” She shook her head. “Urban Cowboy?” Another negative. “Travolta and a mechanical bull?” She shrugged. “Jesus, kid,” he said, “we really have to work on updating your pop culture references.”

  Casey

  She woke feeling like roadkill, irritable and exhausted, with a major headache and an upset stomach. It felt like the worst kind of hangover, which would have made sense if she’d gotten drunk last night. But she hadn’t. Casey stumbled to the kitchen, still in her robe, teeth unbrushed, her hair a mess. The smell of frying bacon hit her full in the face, and her stomach lurched. Standing over the stove, Rob said, “I’m having a few people over this afternoon to jam.”

  When she didn’t respond, he raised his head and looked at her. “You look like shit,” he said.

  She glared at him through bleary eyes. “Thank you so much, Dr. MacKenzie.”

  “Seriously.” He touched her cheek, her forehead. “You don’t feel feverish, but you look awful.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just a migraine. Stop fussing over me.”

  “You don’t get migraines.”

  “There has to be a first time, doesn’t there?” She crossed the room, took a mug from the cupboard, and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “I wish you’d see a doctor. Something’s not right. You’ve been sick ever since I got home, and lately all you do is sleep. Are you sure you don’t have mono?”

  Fighting the urge to heave the coffee mug at his head, she said through gritted teeth, “I. Am. Fine.”

  “Why are you so goddamn stubborn?”

  “For God’s sake, MacKenzie, will you stop hovering over me and just leave me the hell alone?” She slammed her mug on the counter, sloshing hot coffee over the rim. “I am going back to bed, and the first person who has the audacity to come near me will suffer the consequences!”

  She slept for another four hours, awoke to bright overhead sunlight and a digital clock that read 12:36 p.m. Her headache was gone, and her stomach seemed to have righted itself. She got up, showered and dressed, and chalked it up to some 24-hour bug.

  Downstairs, the house was silent, the only sound that of the ticking clock. Ravenous, she made herself a ham sandwich, washed it down with a glass of milk, then went looking for Rob. She found him in the barn, in his studio, hunched over his unplugged Stratocaster, making notations with a stubby pencil on a sheet of music paper. Walking up behind him, she lay both hands on his shoulders and said, “Hey.”

  He stiffened. Let out a breath. And hunched lower over his work.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and kissed the top of his head. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m not sure why I’ve been so grumpy lately.”

  Still not speaking, he plinked a couple of notes on the guitar, erased the mark he’d just made, swiped away the eraser dust, and penciled in a correction.

  “Oh, for the love of God. Is this the way you intend to play it? Well, fine. If you ever decide you want to speak to me again, I’ll be at your sister’s house.”

  And she slammed the door behind her for emphasis.

  ***

  Rose was painting in the wonderful, sunlit studio over the garage that Jesse had set up for her when they got married. Casey sat on a wooden rocker, watching her sister-in-law slap acrylics onto an oversized canvas. “So,” Rose said, “where’s my little brother? The two of you are usually joined at the hip.”

  Casey rolled her eyes. “It’s probably better if we’re not in the same
room right now.”

  Rose turned away from the canvas to look at her. “Are you two fighting?”

  “Not exactly.” She picked up a tube of yellow paint that had inexplicably migrated to the wrong side of the room. “He’s in one of his moods. I woke up feeling terrible this morning. I hadn’t slept well, I had a headache, and I was tired and dragged out. He started hovering, like a mother hen. He does that sometimes, and it makes me crazy. I snapped at him, and apparently I wounded his delicate sensibilities. I went back to bed for a couple of hours, and when I got up and tried to apologize, he got the way he gets—”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “—and I wasn’t in the mood for it, so I left and came over here, where the company is a little more agreeable.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s that stupid jackass MacKenzie temper. He’ll get over it.”

  “Oh, I know. He always does. But when he gets that way, it’s definitely better if we’re in separate places until he cools off.”

  “I’m just a little surprised. Every time I see the two of you, you’re wrapped so tight around each other that I wonder if I should go find a fire extinguisher in case you spontaneously combust.”

  She sighed. And said in resignation, “My name is Casey, and I’m an addict.”

  Rose’s brow furrowed. “Have I missed something?”

  “Not that kind of addict. A MacKenzie addict. That man should come with a warning label.”

  “Oh,” Rose said. “I see.”

  Casey sat up straighter. Clasped her hands and said, “I don’t think you do. May I speak frankly?”

  “I thought we were speaking frankly. But feel free to elaborate. As long as you’re not about to go into any of the intimate details of your sex life with my brother, we should be just fine.”

  “It’s nothing like that. It’s just that something happened recently, and I really need a girlfriend to talk this over with. Somebody who might possibly understand.”

  “Talk away, girlfriend. I’m all ears.”

  “This will probably sound crazy to you, but bear with me. I’ve just recently realized that I’m in love with my husband. Totally, completely, utterly, madly in love.”

  A single beat passed before Rose said, “Come again?”

  “See, I knew you’d think I was nuts.”

  “I don’t think you’re nuts, but I also don’t get what you’re talking about. Maybe you can translate it into some kind of English that I can understand. Because I thought you were already in love with him.”

  “I was. I am. But it wasn’t like this. Not at first. Or…maybe it was, and I was just in denial. For a long, long time.” Her sister-in-law was looking at her as though she were speaking Swahili. And maybe she was. Struggling to find the right words, she said, “I’m going to use a musical metaphor, because what else do I know anything about? When we got married, the way I felt about him…or at least the way I thought I felt about him, was like a sweet, tender love song, played in three or four chords on an acoustic guitar. But I’ve come to realize it wasn’t that at all. Because underneath that tender love song, there’s this symphony, with screaming electric guitars and a full orchestra, with strings and horns, and—” She glanced up at Rose, who still looked bewildered. “You’re not getting it, are you?”

  “Not really. I’m sorry.”

  “I had no idea I felt this way. I don’t know when it started, or how long it’s been going on. Years. Since before Danny died. Maybe even before Katie died. Years. I was in denial for all that time. Maybe it was like he said to me: abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe that’s what made me realize the truth. I don’t know. I just know that one afternoon while he was away, it suddenly hit me, and I realized that somewhere along the line, what I felt for him had turned into this.”

  “This,” Rose said. “This what?”

  She waved her arms wide. “This gargantuan thing. The kind of thing where your heart feels like it’s going to just burst free from your chest. The kind of thing where, when he walks into the room, your throat closes up and your mouth goes dry and your palms get sweaty. And you start shaking all over, and you just sort of melt. And you can’t breathe, or even formulate a coherent thought. And God forbid you should try to speak, because nothing would come out even if you tried. And you develop this peculiar kind of tunnel vision, where everything and everybody else just fades away, and he’s the only thing you can see, and you just want to jump him like a starving lioness and rip his clothes off and feast on him, and—am I making myself clear?”

  Dryly, Rose said, “I think I’m starting to get the picture.”

  “I’m thirty-five years old, Rose. I’m a grown woman who should be acting with some level of decorum. But I am so far gone that I don’t care anymore. I’ve never felt so high in my life. It’s just that…I’m also a little confused. A lot, if we’re being honest. I married my best friend. My sweet, wonderful, kind and supportive best friend. And, damn it, he wasn’t supposed to turn into this raging sex god!”

  At a sound in the doorway, she looked up and into her brother-in-law’s eyes. She flushed from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. Rose glanced at her husband, frowned and shook her head no, and without a word, Jesse turned and disappeared out the door and back down the stairs.

  “Nice,” Casey said.

  “It’s okay. I’m sure he must have heard the words raging sex god before. Somewhere.”

  “I’m really having trouble with this. I’m all afloat. I don’t know who I am any more. Or who he is. Or which way is up, and I feel so vulnerable, in a way I’ve never felt before.”

  “You’re afraid? Of loving my little brother?”

  “Does the term abject terror mean anything to you?”

  “I don’t get it. Where’s the down side to all of this?”

  “When I married Danny,” she said, “I was so in love with him. He made me feel alive, in a way I’d never felt alive before. And I just closed my eyes and jumped in, feet first, without ever looking back. It was wonderful, and it was terrible, and I was so wrapped up in him that I lost myself. It took me a dozen years to realize what I’d done to myself, and then I had to fight so hard to reclaim any sense of self. To find out who I was. To regain self-respect. And now—” She paused. “Now, I’m deathly afraid of making the same damn-fool mistake with another man. And losing myself again.”

  “Honey, you’re not the same person you were then. You’re older, and stronger, and smarter. And you’ve got yourself a really good guy, and I’m not saying that just because he’s my brother. I mean—” Rose shrugged. “I’m not saying that Danny wasn’t a good guy. But I will say—and please don’t take this the wrong way—I never saw you look at Danny the way you look at my brother.”

  “I know. And it scares the bejesus out of me.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “The way I feel about him…it’s so damn big that I don’t know where to put it. If I lost myself so completely with Danny, how am I going to survive something this much bigger without disappearing like I did before?”

  “Frankly, I don’t understand how this could come as a surprise to you. I’ve been watching you and Rob for two decades. You light up like Times Square at New Year’s every time he walks into the room. You always have.”

  Casey clamped her mouth shut. Took a breath. “I was horrible to him this morning. No wonder he’s mad at me. I’ve just been so angry lately. I thought it was because I wasn’t dealing well with him being gone. But he’s been back for two weeks now, and I’m still so irritable that I can barely live with myself.”

  Rose turned back to her canvas and began applying paint. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were pregnant. Eddie used to call me Hurricane Rose because the mood swings were so bad. Without any warning, I’d go from sweet and loving to Lizzie Borden. Ax in hand, ready to chop off heads.”

  Casey looked at Rose’s back, opened her mouth, closed it again.

  Rose paused, turned to look at her,
saw the expression on her face. “Hon? You don’t suppose—”

  Irritation. Mood swings. Exhaustion. Morning sickness. Tender breasts. She tried to remember the date of her last period, but she’d always been irregular. She would have to check her calendar. But she didn’t need to check it to know she was overdue. Way overdue. Because her last period had been sometime in August, before Rob left.

  More than two months ago.

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  ***

  She didn’t recognize half the cars in her driveway. Mikey’s old F-150 was there, flanked by a maroon Subaru wagon, a blue Ford Ranger, and a rusty brown Volkswagen Rabbit. Who were these people, and how had her husband found them? She knew that musicians had some kind of radar that made them gravitate toward each other, but he’d only lived here for eighteen months. She supposed it had something to do with the fact that he was naturally gregarious, but it still surprised her when she realized how many people Rob MacKenzie knew in this tiny backwater town after being here for such a short time.

  The moment she stepped out of the car, she heard the music. Loud, crashing, classic rock. It was a good thing they didn’t have close neighbors, because this would probably go on all evening and into the night. She’d learned nearly two decades ago that once a musician picked up his instrument, putting it down again was next to impossible. Back in the day, when she and Danny were newlyweds living in a third-floor walk-up apartment in a faded brownstone on the back side of Beacon Hill, the jam sessions would go on until dawn. She’d get out of work at midnight and catch a taxi home, and if it was a warm summer night and the windows were open, she could hear the music when she stepped out of the cab: Danny on the piano and Rob on the guitar, and sometimes Travis playing bass, and whoever else they’d dragged home playing whatever instrument they’d brought with them.

  The only reason they hadn’t been evicted was because their downstairs neighbor was a twenty-three-year-old stoner named Woofy, who, as likely as not, was right there playing along with them. She never knew his real name, or what he did for a living, although she suspected it had something to do with the jungle of greenery he grew under fluorescent lighting in a converted closet in the back bedroom of his apartment. The boys used to sneak down there sometimes and smoke with him. They thought they were getting away with something, but it was impossible to not know what they were doing; Danny would come to bed reeking of it.