Dancing on Broken Glass

by Ka Hancock

  “I did,” he said. “I know the timing was bad, but I meant to do it. There was nothing I could do—no strength in me to stop it.”

  I stared at him. Something about this too-quick reply suddenly didn’t ring true. It was too smooth, too practiced. As I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t just his words. I was so stupid! It was that I had never sensed Death anywhere near Mickey. If the love of my life had intended to die, I had no doubt that I would have known! He’d overdosed, but she had offered me no premonition, no warning. If she had, I’d never have gone to Hawaii.

  I pulled my hands from Mickey’s and folded them in my lap, but I didn’t let go of his eyes. I searched his bristled, tired, incredibly tormented face. “Something’s wrong. You’re lying to me.”

  “What?”

  “You’re lying to me, Mickey, and I want to know why. I don’t know what you were doing that night, but I don’t think you were trying to die. What kind of game is this?”

  Mickey coughed up a sigh. “You can believe me or not, Lucy. But it is what it is.”

  “No, it’s not. What about the baby?”

  A sob broke in Mickey’s throat, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. His shoulders heaved, and I could see his desperation. “I love the baby,” he rasped. “And I hate her. But without you . . .” He dropped his forehead into his palms. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter! I can’t do it!”

  “Mickey, you don’t have a choice.”

  “Stop it, Lucy! You’re not hearing me. I do have a choice. I used it the other night.”

  I stood up. Mickey was crumpled and sagging and as tortured as I had ever seen him. I let his words play themselves out again in my head, and as they did, my breath caught. I was such an idiot! Now that I was really looking, I could see it written plainly on his face. How could I have missed it?

  A rational man hid in the corner of Mickey’s insanity. His entire responsibility was to keep Mickey pointed in the right direction even as crazy tugged at him. He didn’t always win, but this man—this voice—was the last thing Mickey let go of when he fell, and the first thing he reached for when he came back. Mickey listened to him. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to follow the bread crumbs.

  Something about this crash felt different. There had never been a woman before, which should have been my first clue. And this one used in plain sight? Where they would easily be found? Why? Slowly it came together, and I gasped with understanding.

  “Lucy?”

  I shook my head as the pieces fell into place. Mickey’s actions that night with the woman had been deliberate, even calculated. But suicidal? I, like everyone else, had mutely accepted what I’d seen because to the naked eye it looked like a legitimate attempt to end his life. My husband had placed himself in the role of exactly what he was—the grieving, frightened, bipolar-ravaged cripple. He’d set the perfect scene to demonstrate his complete lack of judgment. He’d picked the perfect actress to add light and dimension to his performance. And he’d done it all to relieve himself of a responsibility he couldn’t fathom.

  “Lucy?”

  “Don’t talk, Mickey.” I was so stupid! I’d been so focused on my own decline that I’d completely missed how desperate my husband actually was. I’d seen his despair, but I’d completely underestimated it. So, Mickey had driven his message home with an overdose.

  “I have to go, Mickey.”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “Away from what you’ve done.”

  His whole demeanor slackened further, liquefied from beneath, and he slumped against the wall.

  “You faked this,” I hissed. “You involved yourself with her so you could overdose, so you could almost, but not quite, die. All so you could show the world that you can’t be trusted with the baby. It’s about the baby, right? You faked this for her?”

  He looked at me and didn’t deny it.

  “You broke your promise!”

  “What promise?”

  “Mickey will never pretend to not be in control!”

  Shock and humiliation filled his eyes.

  “Deny it, Michael.”

  “I had to!”

  “You had to? Grow up, Mickey! You’re forty-three years old!” I nearly shouted, then checked myself. The roommate hadn’t stirred, but I lowered my voice anyway. “I can’t do a damn thing about what’s happening to me; I’m sick. But you . . . We have a baby girl on the way and this—this—is your best effort? Staging a Broadway play? You don’t deserve her. And I sure as hell deserve better.” I turned to leave but he grabbed my hand.

  “I’ll ruin her, dammit! Don’t you get it? She deserves better. She needs more than I am. I know what it’s like to grow up with a deranged parent. I won’t do that to her! We—we—could have given her what she needs. But I can’t do it alone.”

  His words hit me like a bullet, and I fought not to cry. With a shaky voice I said, “You’re not your mother! And if you don’t know that by now, then you are nuts!” I roughly wiped at my tears. “I picked you, Mickey. I picked you because I believed in you, and I’ve never regretted it. Never! Your daughter needs you!”

  Mickey tugged on my hand. “Please, hear me! I’m no different than you, Lucy. You’re sacrificing your life for her, and I’m doing the same thing.”

  Appalled, I leveled my gaze at him. “It’s not the same at all. I would do anything, anything to stay here, to hold her, to teach her, to kiss her face and be amazed by her every single day of my life. You’d rather manipulate everyone around you, so you can leave her. Don’t insult me. We are not the same.” I burned my eyes into Mickey for a long time, then I pulled my hand free.

  The last thing I heard as I walked down the hall was him calling my name, but I didn’t turn around. I didn’t stop when Peony asked me how it went. I kept walking and was almost to my car before I broke down completely under the weight of it all. I must have cried out a pint of tears before I decided there was only one place I could go. Gleason. My cell was dead, but I decided to risk it anyway, driving to Deep River hoping against hope that he was still at his office. He was just pulling out. I slammed on the brakes and laid on my horn and probably scared him to death, but he stopped. It was still pouring, and the short run to his car soaked me to the skin.

  “Lucy! What are you doing?” he called through the open passenger window.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Well, get in. Get in. What’s happened?”

  “He faked it!” I barked. “Mickey’s pretending to be nuts so he doesn’t have to—”

  “Slow down, Lucy,” Gleason said, taking off his jacket and laying it across my shoulders. “Start at the beginning.”

  I told him everything Mickey had said. About our fight, and his pretending to be insane because he didn’t think he could live without me. How I’d yelled, and that when Mickey said we were the same, I walked out. Gleason never interrupted. He listened and nodded and looked sad at everything I said. When I stopped talking, he patted my hand. “Feel better?”

  He was rumpled and his thin hair was plastered to his wet head, and his expression was as concerned as a parent’s. “I shouldn’t have gone to see him.” I rubbed my forehead. “It was awful! Mickey’s been selfish before, but he’s never been this selfish.”

  “He’s afraid to lose you. He almost lost you before, and he’s scared.”

  “This isn’t about me, it’s about the baby.”

  “Lucy, he can’t see past losing you to the baby. She’s an idea, but she’s not real. She’s certainly not as real to him as she is to you. The threat of losing you trumps everything.”

  “So what? He gets a pass for this elaborate . . . orchestration?”

  “You think he got away with something, Lucy? He didn’t. Let’s not forget his grand manipulation nearly stopped his heart. That’s a bit far to go to prove a point, don’t you think? He’s sick, Lucy. Whatever he’s done, however he’s rationalized it, it’s all been influenced by his illness. You seem to have f
orgotten that.”

  I sighed and dropped my head into my hands. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ve just never seen this side of him before.” I rubbed my temples, losing steam. Finally I looked up. “Gleason, do you think he’s too sick? Is he really too damaged to be a father?”

  “Too damaged? No. Not in my opinion. But too convinced that he’s too damaged? Possibly. And that seems to be the bigger problem right now.” Gleason turned more toward me, no easy feat in the small car. “He made a sane point in an insane way.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Ride it out, Lucy. Just like always. He made a big production of saying he wants better for his daughter than what he had, and he doesn’t know he’s capable of giving her that.”

  “So he is capable? I’m not crazy?”

  Gleason thought about this. “I think Mickey is capable of being capable. But it’s more complicated than that. Right now, his illness and his fear, his anger and you being sick, are all manifesting in irrational thoughts that have led to this behavior.”

  I sighed shakily. “I guess I forgot that’s how it works.”

  Gleason smiled a grim smile. “Taking yourself to the brink of death to make a point is about as irrational as it gets. But take heart, Lucy. Mickey’s still in there somewhere, at the eye of this storm. We’ve just got to clear the crazy, then we’ll see what we’ve got.”

  For a long time I stared at the gray sky and the rain pelting the windshield. “I was so mean to him,” I said softly.

  Gleason squeezed my hand. “He probably deserved it. But go back and fix it, Lucy. Your time is too precious to waste it hurting each other.”

  I nodded as new tears filled my eyes.

  Gleason tugged on my hand. “For what it’s worth, Lucy, I happen to think Mickey will rise to this occasion. That’s not a professional opinion, but it’s what I’m rooting for.”

  I looked at the one person on the planet who knew my husband best. “Tell me the truth; do you think I’ll get to see it? Or do you think Mickey will have to lose me first?”

  Gleason Webb frowned for an agonizingly long moment, then squeezed my hand again. “I think he’ll have to lose you, Lucy. He won’t know what he can do without you until he’s without you.”

  I broke down then and Gleason, bless his heart, just let me. No platitudes, just a fatherly hand on my shoulder while I let it all out.

  After that, I drove around for a long time with a terrible pain in my chest. What was I doing? What had I done to my husband? He could have died because of me! Just do it! Have the abortion! I shouted—my own voice a screeching echo in my car. Just do it! You’re killing him! I gasped. No! No! I started to hyperventilate and had to pull over and roll my window down, feel the rain. I leaned my head against the steering wheel. An abortion wouldn’t help me, but it didn’t matter; I still couldn’t do it. The messenger had been real, so had the message; aborting our daughter would not save my life. I knew it again, as I’d known it then: ultimately, I would not survive this. But that didn’t really answer the hard question—when?

  I drove back to the hospital and walked back to Mickey’s room. He was sitting at the foot of his bed and looked stricken. He stood up and took a tentative step toward me. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he said, his eyes swollen with tears.

  I shook my head. “I’ve made this impossible for you.”

  “It’s impossible for both of us.”

  I walked over to him and slipped my arms around his waist. “Mickey, because the future is so full of unknowns,” I whispered, “can we just not look at it right now? Can we just grow our daughter and love each other one day at a time?”

  Mickey kissed my forehead but didn’t say anything. He just held me as tight as he could over the baby that was between us.

  I headed home in the rain wishing Mickey could have come home with me. I just wanted to sit on the couch with him and hold hands, lean my head on his shoulder. Maybe in a few days. I sighed as I turned onto my street and down through the lacy tunnel of ancient hardwoods whose branches met in the sky above the road. In four or five weeks, this street would be awash in fallen leaves the colors of topaz and rubies and old parchment. Then, just before Halloween, maybe a bit later, Harry and Mickey and Drew Murphy and Treig Dunleavy would dump the leaves into Treig’s garden by the truckload. The little kids would be in the way as always, playing more than helping. Once their dads had yelled at them for the last time to get out of the leaves, Treig would ceremoniously light a match. As the flames roared, we’d sit around with bowls of chili and hot rolls and cider and watch the bonfire. I’d loved it since I was little. I loved smelling the smoke in my clothes long after we’d all gone home.

  Surely Mickey would be better in four or five weeks. He’d dress warmly, in deer-hunter flannel and those funny gloves with the fingers cut off. I’d laugh at him as he tossed kids into the leaves. In a few years, he’d toss his own daughter into that same soft mound. She’d be bundled up and giggling, bright excited eyes, little red cheeks. I could see them as clearly as I could see my own house in front of me.

  As I pulled into my drive, a white streak of lightning cracked the sky, and I made a halfhearted dash to the front porch. I was soaked before I got there. While rummaging for my keys, I heard a car honking and turned to see my sister pull into my driveway waving madly. Lily jumped out and ran across my lawn, her head ducked against the downpour, her leather bag flying behind her like a wing.

  “Lucy!” she shouted. “You’re home.” She threw her arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re back. How are you?” She pulled away to look me over, then once more folded me in her arms. Thunder boomed overhead, and a second later, lightning cracked another jagged bolt through the murky sky. “Let’s get inside,” I shouted over the torrent. “I’ll make some tea.”

  A few minutes later, the storm raging, the two of us sat sipping herbal tea in front of my kitchen window.

  “So, Lu, how was it? How was Hawaii?” Lily asked, leaning on her elbows.

  “It was gorgeous. It wasn’t any fun without Mickey, but it was beautiful. I slept like the dead, and I even went to Pearl Harbor.”

  Lily smiled sadly. “Pretty sobering, huh?”

  “So sobering.”

  She reached over and took my hand. “How are you feeling . . . really?”

  “It’s been a long day, but I feel good.”

  Lily looked for the lie in my eyes, but gave up. “So, have you seen Mickey yet?”

  “I went to Edgemont first thing.”

  “What did you think?”

  I shrugged, not wanting to go into it again. “He’s better than the last time I saw him.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s true.” Lily shook her head. “You are too good. Does he know how lucky he is?”

  “Oh, yeah, we talk about it all the time.”

  “Well, I’ve been telling him all week. And so has Jan.”

  “Thank you for keeping an eye on him. That’s so sweet.”

  Lily chucked my chin. “He’s my brother, isn’t he? Of course we’ve kept an eye on him. Ron goes every morning and gets him in the shower, and we both visit after work.”

  I was dumbstruck.

  “What did you think? That we’d just forget him in there while you were gone?” Lily asked incredulously.

  “I don’t know what I thought. I’ve never left him before. You guys are awesome,” I said, truly touched. I thought of Muriel’s heartfelt but eerie patron saint, and the card on Mickey’s nightstand from the Dunleavys. “Just awesome.”

  “Did you know Priss went to see Mickey last night?”

  “What?” I gaped. “Are you serious?”

  “I ran into Lainy Withers at Mosley’s. She said she dropped some cookies off for Mickey and Priscilla was there, so Lainy didn’t stay.”

  My eyes began to sting. “Did you see her, Lil? Did she call you?”

  “No. She must have just driven in and back. Maybe she came in to see Nathan.”

  “Mickey didn�
��t say a word about it.” I got up to turn the heat on. Before I sat back down, Lily placed both hands on my belly and bent to kiss it. “How’s junior?” she said without a warble.

  “To tell you the truth, she’s a little abusive,” I chuckled. “She’s quite the kicker.”

  Lily smiled up at me with such tenderness in her face.

  I sat down, and for a moment we just watched the rain. When the furnace groaned for the first time in months, the smell of a new season filled my house. I knew it was just dust, but the smell somehow always signified the official end of summer—and the beginning of school. As if reading my thoughts, Lily said, “You’re not really going back to work are you?”

  “Monday morning.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Are you sure you’ve thought this through? Shouldn’t you just rest?”

  “No.”

  “But, Lucy . . .”

  “But nothing, Lil. I can’t just sit around and wait.”

  When sadness crept into Lily’s eyes, I reached for her hand and she gave it to me. For a long time neither of us said anything, just watched the water pelt the window. Then Lily turned to me and smiled through her worry. “I don’t know if I ever thanked you for being with Mom. You know, for helping her when she was so sick.”

  “What?”

  “You took such good care of her. You did it all, Lucy. I was at school. Priss had just taken that job in Boston. You did everything and I never even said thank you.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Mom lately. Did I ever tell you that one of the last things she told me, the night she died, was that there was nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Oh, Lucy.”

  “I can still hear those words in my head.”

  Lily’s eyes watered. “I’ll never forget when you called me, Lucy. I can still hear your voice, calm and steady, in charge. You were seventeen, and you said, ‘Lil, honey’—you called me honey—‘I have some bad news.’ And then you told me Mom was dead and you were coming to get me. You were the strong one. You’ve always been the strong one.”