by Robyn Carr
“Did you read Out of Africa?” he finally asked her.
“Years ago. Way before anyone considered a movie.”
“Me, too. It was Holden Caulfield’s favorite book, remember? I read The Catcher in the Rye with my little brother Tommy’s class. Then I read Out of Africa. This part wasn’t in the movie, anyway. There’s a place in the book where she tells about the veldt-sores you can get in Africa. If you’re not careful, the sores will heal on the outside, but inside they get worse; they get infected and runny and full of poison. The only way you can get rid of them is to open them up, dig them out at the roots, leave them open on top until they get the proper scabs and scars.”
He brushed off his cheek.
“You don’t just get them in Africa,” Chris said.
“Don’t call your aunt yet,” he said. “Please.”
“It might be better if I called her right away.”
“Please,” he said again.
“Look—”
“There’s plenty of room here. There’s no hurry.”
“But—”
“You need a place for them. For you. For now.”
“It’s not mine, though. It’s hard to—”
“You wouldn’t exactly be taking charity, Chrissie. This works as well for me as for you.”
“Mike, what’s happening here?”
“Stay awhile. Just awhile. I gotta get a scab on this, so I can scar. I’m way behind. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I waited too long.”
“Oh, jeez,” she said through a sigh.
“Maybe I can grout the veldt-sores. If I can’t, it’s not your fault.”
“What if staying here only makes new ones?” she asked him.
“No. I don’t see that happening.”
“Just what the heck is happening?”
“Nothing bad, I don’t think. Big Mike calls things like this ‘unconscious plans’—when you do something that looks to the whole world like it’s crazy as hell and totally coincidental and you don’t think it ran through your brain for one second first, but unconsciously you knew all along you were going to do it. Like I wasn’t looking to help out anyone, for a family to move in here—there have been lots of burned-out families over the years—and I didn’t know I was going to offer you a place to stay even when the shelters were full, and I sure as hell didn’t know I’d ask you to hang around longer than you have to, but—” He stopped and shrugged. “But Ma says Big Mike is full of it.”
A huff of air escaped Chris—it was almost laughter.
“I don’t talk about my feelings very well,” he apologized.
“You’re doing fine.”
“If things had been different, if I’d met you at the zoo, I’d just do something normal, like ask you out to dinner or offer to take you and the kids to a movie.”
“You would?”
“But it isn’t that way. You got burned out. You need a place to stay. Feels like it oughta be this way, like this is the natural order. That’s all. I haven’t brought a lot of food into this house before. I don’t have to be quiet when I get up early. No one messes anything up; it’s pretty quiet all the time. And it has one or two advantages for you and the kids, too.”
“But—”
“Not just the kids,” he added in such a way that she thought he felt he should be completely honest.
“Oh.”
“I’m not making a pass,” he said.
“This is crazy,” she said, leaning an elbow on her knee and cupping her chin in her hand.
“Yeah, the whole world is crazy. Your ex left you when you were pregnant. Your only family hates you. Your house burned down. And some lunatic wants you to hang around awhile because…”
She waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, she prompted, “Because why?”
“Because, why not?”
“Look,” she said, taken aback a bit. What kind of reason was “why not?” “You’ve been very generous, you seem like a nice guy, but really, Mike, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, and—”
“This is crazy, Chrissie, but I’m not. I’m pretty safe. I mean, I pulled you out of a burning house, for Pete’s sake. You want some references? Want to meet my mother?”
“I just want to know what you’re after.”
“An extension. Of tonight. It was a fun night, huh?” He grinned, proud of himself.
He had a contagious smile that made you smile back even when you didn’t have a smile ready. It had been a nice evening. She had even had the fleeting thought that she liked him, desired him, felt comfortable and secure for the first time in a very long time. What she had not had was the slightest notion of this kind of invitation.
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all I have the guts to ask for.”
“You’re making me nervous,” she said.
“Don’t overthink it. Men say more daring things than that in singles’ bars, right?” Again he grinned. He knew. She knew. He knew she knew he knew. “Won’t hurt anything if we’re friends.”
“How long?” she asked him.
“How about Christmas? It isn’t very far away. It could be fun, huh? For the kids, anyway. Maybe for me and you, too.”
“Christmas?” she asked doubtfully.
“Shelters and places like that, well, they’re sometimes…pretty dangerous. Dirty, a lot of unsavory types hanging around…people get hurt. It wouldn’t be a good idea. Really. If you don’t like the idea of staying here, you should call your old-maid aunt who hates your guts. I think it would be lousy for you to go to Chicago because then we wouldn’t find out if we like each other—all of us, I mean—but all things considered, it would be no fun at all to visit you at one of those awful shelters.”
“Christmas?”
“It might be nice for the kids to know where they’re going to be for a while. To have something to look forward to.”
“I find this a little scary,” she admitted.
“No scarier than sleeping in your car.”
“True. But—” She couldn’t think of any buts. Even though she hadn’t expected him to ask her to stay, she had known almost instantly why he had done so. Because he missed his family, because he wanted his home to be less lonely, because Carrie reminded him of his daughter…because he was attracted to Chris.
“But you understand.” He looked at her with easy, unbrooding eyes, relaxed, trusting eyes. She’d have to be nuts herself not to understand that they’d started something. “Don’t you?”
“Are you going back to your mom and dad’s?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, sitting forward and reaching for his shoes.
“You don’t have to.” He stopped. “If you’d prefer, I understand, but it’s your house.” She curled her feet under herself. “If what you’re looking for is some noise, it’ll break loose at about seven.”
He leaned back, leaving his shoes where they were. “Thanks. Sure you don’t mind?”
She shook her head. “I’d just like you to remember that this is temporary.”
“I know.”
“Don’t get yourself all caught up in it.”
Too late. “I won’t.”
“I appreciate the generosity.”
“I appreciate it, too. Your part, I mean. I understand why this would make you a little nervous. You probably don’t trust men.”
“Not a lot, no.”
“Well, that’s understandable. It’ll be all right.”
“Roommates. This is really astonishing.”
“Probably nothing like this ever happened before,” he said.
“Never.”
“That hide-a-bed is okay? Comfortable?” He lifted one eyebrow.
“Perfectly,” she said.
“I could take it. Or—”
“Don’t even think it,” she said.
This time his eyes sparkled with the grin. He was feeling a lot better. “Come on, Chrissie. You can’t make me not think it.”
She threw a cou
ch pillow at him. And, in spite of herself, she laughed at him. Or at herself—it was hard to tell which. After all, she’d been thinking the same thing almost since she met him. It just scared her, that was all. But not enough to run for her life.
It was the middle of the night, and Mattie Cavanaugh was sitting up on the edge of her bed. She reached toward the bedside table.
“If you touch that phone,” Big Mike said, “I will break your arm.”
“Shouldn’t we know he wasn’t in a bad accident?” she asked.
“No, and I don’t care if you don’t sleep for a month. You leave the boy alone. He had a hard time of it. Some things his mama can’t take care of.”
“But we don’t know this woman, this divorcée.”
“Both arms,” Big Mike said. “I’ll break both arms.”
“I hope he’s all right, is all. I hope he’s all right.”
“He ain’t been all right for ten years now. Lie down. Come on, here,” he said, pulling her back into his arms. “If we’re going to be awake thinking about what Little Mike’s doing, maybe we should fool around, eh?”
“Fool around? How can I fool around with some old man when all I can think about is my son, maybe lying in a ditch somewhere?”
Big Mike laughed and kissed Mattie’s cheek. “That isn’t what you’re thinking about, Mattie Cavanaugh. The priest is gonna get an earful at confession, eh? Nosy old woman. Come here. Closer.” He was quiet for a long time. “It ain’t the woman worries me so much as that dog, Creeps. That dog’s gonna maybe take Little Mike’s toe off.”
Chapter 5
Chris had pulled out the sofa bed at 10:00 p.m. She left her door ajar to listen for the kids, although they always slept soundly. She had left the desk lamp on, propped Moby Dick on her knees and trained her eyes on the page. But not a word of it soaked into her brain.
She could hear the sound of the television downstairs. Also, she heard him make two trips into the kitchen and slam the refrigerator door once. She heard water in the sink, lights clicking on and off and, finally, at eleven, the squeaking of the stairs. What in the world have I gotten myself into? she asked herself.
She heard his shower running. She had never heard of a man showering before bed. Unless…Just what was he cleaning up for? She heard a blow dryer. So his wet hair wouldn’t soak the pillow? His mattress creaked softly, his light clicked off, and before very long she heard the purr of a soft snore that hit an occasional snag and tripped into a brief snort. Her shoulders began to ache from the tension of listening.
Chris’s imagination always worked best late at night. For someone who was struggling to make it alone, she was the last person who should be alone. Night noises always grew into monsters; melodramas unfolded in her mind at the slightest provocation. Once the sun came up she was remarkably sane. It was, however, nearly midnight before she began to realize that as long as she could hear him snoring, he wasn’t tiptoeing down the hall toward her sofa bed. What kind of guy wanted to have kids—someone else’s kids—in his house? No, no, surely not that kind of guy! He seemed like a nice, normal fella—pretty good-looking, too. Just what unusual habits had prevented his remarriage?
At one she put down the book, of which she had read four paragraphs, and turned off the light. She got out of bed and peeked down the hall. He had pulled his door too, but it was ajar a few inches, which was why she could hear him snoring. She got back into bed, but her neck was stiff and her nerves were taut. What if he was crazy? If she and the children suddenly disappeared, would Mr. Iverson, or Mike Cavanaugh’s Irish mother, demand an investigation?
At about two, rather bored with the rapist, pedophile, murderer fantasies, she began to indulge another kind. He was a nice guy, a decent and friendly man who’d had his share of troubles but had not been destroyed by them. Only wounded. Chris had not had to listen to him long before she could actually feel his desire to heal himself. He had accomplished a feat that Chris still felt was slightly out of her reach—he was managing on his own—but it hadn’t made him whole. He hadn’t asked that much of her, she reflected, and a small part of her was even relieved to not be the only needy one.
She wanted to drift off to sleep, but his presence down the hall overwhelmed her. It was so long since she had shared her space with anyone but the kids. All she could think about was him—what he wanted from her and what he’d done with the past ten years. Why hadn’t he found a fire victim with two little kids five years ago? Would his “unconscious plan” have fallen into place with someone else in similar circumstances?
At three Chris tried putting her pillow at the foot of the bed. Steve had never read to Carrie. He’d rarely held her. He wasn’t at the hospital when she was born, and he only visited twice; he said he was in the middle of a deal. He didn’t care what they named their daughter; Carrie was fine, he said. A person’s name for a whole life…fine. After he had been missing for quite some time her lawyer finally found him in Dallas, living, she was told, very modestly. Struggling. Staying with acquaintances, friends. Driving a borrowed car. Wearing last year’s clothes.
“What about my money?” she had asked the lawyer.
“He doesn’t seem to have it anymore.”
“But it was mine!” she had exclaimed.
“Did you have a prenuptial agreement, Chris? An account number somewhere? Anything? We could sue him, but you should be aware of the cost, and the consequences of losing…or of finding out there’s nothing left anyway. So, Chris, did you do anything to protect yourself?” the lawyer had asked her.
The lawyer had then asked Steve if he would contest the divorce.
“Absolutely not,” had been his answer. “Chris deserves better than me,” the lawyer reported Steve as saying.
What a generous bastard he was.
“And the custody of the two children?”
“Two?” he had countered.
“Since you don’t want to sue him for support,” the lawyer had said to Chris, “I imagine it doesn’t matter that he questions the paternity of the second child.”
Oh, hell no, why would a little thing like that matter?
She turned her head. Her pillow had become somewhat damp from remembering. If she hadn’t been used the first time around—lulled away from her home, tricked into betraying her own family, abandoned and humiliated—then maybe she would walk down that hall and curl up against that strength and power and comfort, just as her kids had. Because they weren’t the only ones who needed to feel some of that. And they weren’t the only ones who missed having a man around. Life was very big. Everyone needed a top and a bottom, a right and a left, a masculine and a feminine, a full circle that connects. Wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, if she hadn’t been so thoroughly educated in the perils of trust?
At three-thirty she noticed that Mike wasn’t snoring, but she had decided he wasn’t dangerous a couple of hours earlier, so she wasn’t worried that he was sneaking down the hall. She hadn’t stayed only because it was safe and comfortable for the kids, and she hadn’t been afraid of him for one minute, not really. After those few hours of wild sleeplessness she had finally remembered that the only person she was frightened of was herself.
She fell into a jerking sleep, every muscle taut from insomnia, her brain throbbing from vacillating between the idea of reintroducing sex into her barren life and running away with her kids before she became tempted.
Morning had been around awhile when Chris awoke. She heard her kids talking quietly, and she sat up with a start. Her back was sore, and her head ached. An insomnia hangover. By the time she had fallen asleep she must have been in a double pretzel position. She rubbed her eyes; they were swollen from crying. She tried to smooth her wavy hair and reached for her jeans to pull them on. Then she heard his voice. He was up taking care of her kids. This was going too far.
Distracted, she failed to glance into the bathroom mirror to see how the night had worn on her. She immediately began looking for the kids. She could hear their voices c
oming from his bedroom. She stood at the door, listening.
“Do you shave your legs, too?” she heard Carrie ask him.
“Women shave their legs. Not men.”
“Why?”
“No telling. Want shaving cream on your legs?”
“Yes. Then you’ll shave them?”
“Nope, we’re just practicing today. You have to be older.”
“Kyle? Carrie?” Chris called, not entering his bedroom. “What are you doing in there?”
“Mommy, come and see us shaving.”
“Shabing. Vrooom,” Kyle added.
She thought about it for a second. “Mike? Can I come in?”
“Well,” he said, dragging the word out, “I don’t know if you should, but—”
She shot into the room. What had she expected? That he would be naked? She shook her head at them. Carrie sat on the closed toilet seat with shaving cream on her legs; Kyle sat on the sink beside where Mike stood shaving. They had their own bladeless razors to scrape shaving cream off themselves, and slop it into the sink. They smiled at her, all three of them. Mike met her eyes in the mirror.
“What are you kids doing?” she asked, looking at the biggest kid of all.
“Got anything you want shaved?” he asked. He turned around to face her, and his brows drew together a little. “Didn’t you sleep well?”
She peeked around his shoulder to look in the mirror. Ugh. It must have been a worse night than she remembered. How did you apologize for waking up ugly?
“I’ve never slept on that bed,” he remarked, turning back to the sink. “Is it terrible? Maybe I should take it. Or try the couch downstairs. Or maybe one of the kids, being pretty light, would be able to—”
“It wasn’t the bed,” she said, feeling stupid. “It was one of those nights, you know, when you’re being chased all night long and wake up exhausted.” And then she made a decision that the next time she heard rapists and murderers in the night, they were just going to have to get her in her sleep; she wasn’t waiting for them anymore. It wasn’t the first time she had resolved this, but maybe from now on she could make it stick.