by Robyn Carr
He unlocked the door. They might still be asleep; it wasn’t even seven.
But Chris unfolded herself from the couch, already dressed. Her eyes didn’t look a whole lot better than his. She picked up the tabloid that lay on the coffee table and carried it toward him, her lips parted as she was about to speak. She was going to tell him the whole thing. But he didn’t want to hear it right now. He didn’t care about anything now. She was there.
“Come here,” he said, opening his arms, so relieved he was afraid he was going to shout. “Come here and fall on me. I didn’t sleep all night.”
“Me, either,” she said, and a sniffle came. “There’s so much to tell you.”
“You’re here. Tell me later. There’s lots of time.”
“You saw this, then?”
“Oh, yeah. Kind of hard to miss. And they told me you quit Iverson’s.”
“But you didn’t call here?”
“You said you wouldn’t surprise me. I had to believe you.”
“How could you believe me? Especially after all this?”
“You maybe left a few things out, but you haven’t lied to me. I would know.”
“Oh, Mike. Oh, hold me. Please.”
Which he was glad to do. Ah, that was relief. To believe and find that you were right. “Any of it true?” he asked.
“Some of it,” she said. “Like the part about me being dead. That part’s probably true. I’m probably just watching this film in purgatory.”
He laughed at her. He squeezed her tighter. “Naw. If purgatory felt this good, there wouldn’t be any Catholics.”
Chapter 8
Firefighters do not think in rainbow shades of many possibilities but in simple light and dark. Hot and cold. Perhaps good and evil. Chris began to understand that Mike Cavanaugh lived in a yes-or-no world that he laboriously kept neat and uncomplicated. It began to make perfect sense to her, the way he thought, even if she didn’t think that way herself.
Firefighters don’t stand around the outside of a burning building and draw straws to see who goes in, who climbs up on the roof, or who drives the rig. Everyone has a job; he does it. They are decisive, with practiced instincts about safety and danger. They do dangerous things that no one else would dare, but they know it and they know how. They are men and women of skill and strength. They never overthink things.
On the Saturday morning after the tabloid story broke, they curled up on the sofa with cups of hot coffee, talking until the kids woke up. He heard the whole long story about Chris’s marriage, lawsuit, divorce and Aunt Flo’s desire to come to Sacramento if Chris would not go immediately to Chicago.
“I told her I was staying here for a while, that the children are safe and comfortable here. She doesn’t understand, of course, because the kids would be safe and comfortable in her house, but—”
“Did you tell her why you were staying?” he asked.
“Because the kids—”
“Did you tell her you love me?”
She looked at him for a long time. “In the past,” she explained, “I haven’t used the best judgment based on that emotion. My instincts, which I’m only just beginning to trust, say we’re safe here. It isn’t very logical, and it probably isn’t fair to you, but if you still want us to stay a little while—”
He was either acting on instincts that told him he was safe, or he was using his skill and expertise to enter a danger zone. “I want you to stay.”
“Aunt Flo wants to fly out, see me, make sure I’m all right. She’s a pretty forceful person, Aunt Flo, and—”
“Chris, if you want to be here and I want you here, old Aunt Flo will just have to live with it. All that other stuff, about your instincts and your judgment, well, I think you ought to take your time with that.”
“Well, she’ll come here, then. Monday.”
He shrugged. “I can’t blame her. She’s family. She’s worried about you. We’ll manage.”
“My family, Mike, is nothing like your family.”
“That’s a relief,” he said with a laugh. “I have the weekend off,” he said. “Why don’t we take the kids to the cabin? It’s nice and cold in the mountains. It’s snowing. It’s quiet. Monday, huh?”
But no more running away or disappearing. That was another thing about firemen. Maybe they didn’t borrow trouble, but they liked to face the fire, not have it hiding in a basement or behind a closed door. Sometimes it came at them from above or behind or beneath. When they walked or crawled into a smoky, stinging, blinding problem, they liked to know where it was. So he suggested to Chris that she call Aunt Flo and tell her that she was going to the cabin, that she would be away from the phone, and give Mrs. Cavanaugh’s phone number in case there was any emergency. And find out when, on Monday, Aunt Florence should be picked up at the airport.
Then they drove for two and a half hours to the mountains, to a place called Pembroke Pines, just north of Lake Tahoe. At Mike’s cabin in the woods they could talk and play and worry in peace.
Mike swung Kyle up onto the back of the mare. “Hold on here,” he told him, placing the boy’s hands on the saddle horn. “Hold on, now.”
Chris held the reins of Carrie’s horse. Mike’s nearest neighbors, the Christiansons, had loaned him the horses. Mike and Chris walked together, leading the small, gentle mares on which the children were perched. Cheeks trailed along, barking and snarling. They trudged down a sloppy dirt road in the Saturday afternoon sunshine, talking more like old friends than new lovers.
“Big Mike once saw that movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. My dad gets an idea about something and makes it into a whole philosophy. Hurray for Hollywood, huh?”
“I liked the movie, too,” Chris said.
“So that was how he handled us. Every single problem, from the fumbled pass during high school football to death and despair. ‘So, Little Mike, what one thing would you go back and change, huh? What one thing that you could do would make it all turn out different?’ And I would say, ‘Well, I woulda studied for the test, that’s what.’ ‘There you go,’ he’d say.”
“I should have paid more attention to the movie,” Chris said.
“So, Chrissie, what one thing would you go back and change?”
“Ah! What wouldn’t I change!”
“Your lousy ex? Wouldn’t have married him, huh?”
“Starting there…”
“No Carrie and no Kyle. See, that’s how this little game works. You go ahead and change something in your past, and you remove a big hunk of your future. That’s the trick. You have to be real careful what pains you’re going to trade for what pleasures. This is not as simple as it sounds.”
“So what about you? What did Big Mike tell you?”
Mike laughed. “Oh, he had me so mad I thought I might deck him. Big Mike hasn’t always been a little old man, you know. Even ten years ago I couldn’t beat him arm wrestling. Yeah, he put me on the spot with Joanie’s death. ‘So what would you change? Never having met her? Never having married her? Never having Shelly…for even a little while?’ For a long time I believed that would have been easier, better. Then I decided that if I could change anything, maybe I would have gotten up at night and changed the baby’s diapers more. Or maybe I would have fought with Joanie about money just a little bit less. Maybe I wouldn’t have asked her to join the Catholic church just so Ma would relax about the whole thing. But I don’t know. I try to think, would that have made losing them feel any different? Easier? Harder?”
“And what about this?” she asked, taking his hand. “Starting to wish you hadn’t been on duty that night my house burned down?”
“Oh, heck no. No, I really needed this. It shook things into place. I’m thirty-six. I had a bad deal, and I gotta get past that. I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time. And before that I’d been with some without really being with them, you know?”
“Terrible waste,” she said.
“In case you’re interested, I feel like a big dope about it
now. I was afraid of what I wanted from life. I want a lot, Chrissie. I want a family again.”
“Whoa, boy,” she said, shivering.
“You get worried when people tell you what they want, don’t you?”
“If I think they want it from me, I do.”
“No, that isn’t it, I bet. You want it, too, and it scares you half to death. That’s just what was happening to me. For ten years. I wanted a family again, but what if I tried to get one, got it and lost it again? After about ten years you decide to either play the hand you’re dealt or stay out of the game.”
“So,” she said, “you’re getting back in the game?”
“Me? I shouldn’t have tried so hard to be alone. So, now that I remember, I’m not giving up on it again.”
“I don’t think you should.”
“You’re my first choice,” he said, grinning at her. But he did not ask her to make him any promises. “Just having you around has been real good for me. It’s like waking up.”
“But will it always be good?”
“Chrissie, you’d make a great Catholic, no kidding. You borrow more trouble than Ma does. Never thought I’d meet a woman who could compete with Ma for worry and guilt.”
The cabin, one open room with a large hearth and shallow loft, was equipped only with the necessities. But while the wind blew outside, the fire was hot. All four of them had to use sleeping bags in the central room. The loft wasn’t a good place for the kids to be alone, in case they woke up in the night and began to wander. And downstairs alone, with a fire that had to burn all night, was an even worse idea.
“Why didn’t you tell me the whole thing right off?” he asked her late in the night while the kids slept nearby.
“Because it’s so shocking,” she said. “People find the whole thing just plain incomprehensible. I told a couple of friends I met after Steve was gone, trying it out. The first thing they can’t understand is why I didn’t go after Steve, have him at least put in jail. People think you can do that, no sweat. You can’t. He’d lost community property—proving he did it on purpose or stole it might have been impossible. Next, they wondered, if I had this rich aunt, why I didn’t just call her right away. Say, ‘Send a few bucks, you can afford it.’ But a few bucks wasn’t the thing I needed most. Pretty soon people look at you strangely, like you’ve made it all up. I began to feel weird, like a fraud or something, so I stopped telling anyone, which made me a real impostor. I might have had acquaintances but fewer and fewer real friends. With real friends you share personal things about your life. And my life was becoming more and more impossible to believe.”
“But you decided to call Aunt Flo. Before the newspaper story,” he pointed out.
“I wanted to call her because of the Cavanaughs. I had family once—very different from yours in a lot of ways, but tight, close, intimate family. Once Flo and I were very, very dear to each other—we were like best friends, in a way. There had been lots of other friends in my life, too—friends from high school and college—but I lost touch with some once I married Steve and moved, and the rest after the divorce because I was so embarrassed about how stupid I had been. When things settle down, I should probably try to get in touch with some of them.
“But first I have to deal with Flo. We didn’t start to butt heads until my parents died and she took over as my parent. She began telling me what to do, what to feel, I guess because she felt responsible for me. Probably half the reason I married Steve in the first place was because Flo told me I couldn’t.
“But I’m not really like you were. I’m not afraid of what I want. I’m more afraid I want all the wrong things. I’m afraid that I really and truly lack judgment. That I am really and truly incompetent.”
“All you lack is confidence. It’ll come back. Give it time.”
“We’re not talking about climbing back on a horse here, Mike. We’re talking about lives and futures. Mine. Theirs.”
“Ours.”
“Don’t,” she said.
“You can hurt yourself more than one way, Chrissie. You can hurt yourself by making a wrong choice and loving some creep who just wants to use you, or you can hurt yourself by not loving someone who would be good for you.”
Loving or not loving, she thought, was something she seemed to have no control over. But she had to try to have control over her life. “I’m not too worried about what’s going to happen to me,” she told him, “because I’m going to take my time and not rush into anything. But I would hate myself forever if I somehow hurt you…or them.” She glanced at her children.
“One of the first things I noticed, Chrissie, is that you take good care of them. You’re a good mother. That doesn’t sound incompetent to me. I think,” he said, pausing to kiss her nose, “you can be trusted with human life. I’m not worried about what you’ll do to me.”
“When Aunt Florence comes, Mike, would you like me to go stay with her at the hotel, or stay with you?”
“I would like you to stay where you want to be. But remember that your aunt has been through a lot, Chrissie, and you have to be careful with her. She’s your family, and you gotta be careful with your family. You be nice to her, be gentle. But you can also tell her that you’re a grown-up woman, a mother yourself, and you have to be where you have to be.”
“She said almost the same thing about you.”
“Oh?”
“She said, ‘Oh, Chris, you just tell that nice man that you’re very grateful for everything and that you’ll call him, even visit.’”
Mike frowned his dangerous frown. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “even if Aunt Florence turns out to be a real bitch, we can handle it.”
Yeah, Mike could probably handle just about anything, she decided as she tried to fall asleep.
She had always been attracted to independence and mastery. Her father, her lousy ex-husband, even Aunt Flo. Mike was like them all in many ways.
The next morning Mike wandered off, returning with firewood. Later, Chris heard a noise behind the cabin and found him repairing the pump. He puttered quietly, but when there was something to talk about, he opened up. It was all right when they didn’t talk, too. One of the things that Chris learned was the kind of quiet she could have with intimacy. She had never had that in her marriage.
Mike took the kids for a nice long walk after breakfast while Chris cleaned up the dishes and rolled sleeping bags. They held on to his hands and toddled off, asking a million questions as they went out the door.
This was why she didn’t leave. Not because she had any illusions about happily ever after, but because she was briefly visiting with her desires, the ones she was afraid were stupid and impossible.
For a short time she could indulge the fantasy of having a man for herself and for her kids. A man with enough love and caring to embrace a family. That was what she had thought she saw in Steve, but what she had seen was a lot of energy, not a lot of love. She had been too young and filled with grief to know it.
She had given her kids plenty of love and nurturing, even though she had been bereft herself, but they had lacked some vital things. A happy mother, for starters. She worried about that a lot; what had they learned from her loneliness? Were there hidden emotional scars that would hinder them later, making it tough for them to form critical relationships? Would they not know how to make a family of their own because in their formative years all they had seen was their mother’s tired, frustrated struggle? The absence of a father figure? Deprived of the sight of adults touching each other, showing easy and natural affection that came of love? What about a smile on their mother’s face because a good man had made love to her?
There was no kidding herself, after making love with Mike she had felt different—relieved, soothed, fulfilled. And when a woman felt good, she mothered better. Did they pick up on these things?
And Mike provided. It wasn’t just the things he provided, like cable TV or the new jackets, boots and mittens they had needed to go to the mountains
. It was also the zone of calmness, sanity. His trust and confidence. She could see that they sat differently on his big lap, more secure because of his size and self-possession. They had hungered for a father, and for now they had a big fireman to show them what it might be like.
She wanted a life like the one they were pretending. To cook while he worked and to surprise him with something special. Or to not cook and have him complain. She wanted to be there to talk about the fires with him and take a casserole to Mattie and Big Mike’s. She wanted to take her kids to the park, be a room mother, buy a chair she didn’t need and argue over the expense, complain about the way he never wiped out the sink, and make love regularly. Then she wanted to work on her books and maybe have another baby. And be up through the night and nag that he took her for granted and have him say he was sorry and never would again.
She wanted a stupid, happy 1950s marriage that was fraught with give-and-take and pleasure and trouble, and sensible women did not want that anymore! Especially women who had jumped into that bonfire and been badly burned. She did not make any sense to herself.
He hadn’t asked her to stay forever. She hoped he wouldn’t too soon, but she knew he was sneaking up on that. She felt it. The fact that she would be tempted only made it worse. But she couldn’t stand to think about leaving him, either. She was in love with him. And she knew it. If only she could have a little time to think.
But Flo was coming. Better think fast, Chris.
Late on Sunday night, when they were back in Sacramento and getting into bed, he asked her, “What time are you picking her up?”
“Noon.”
“Bringing her here?”
“No, I made a reservation at the Red Lion.”
“I’ll be at work. Till Tuesday morning.”
“The kids and I will spend the afternoon and evening with her, but we’re coming back here, if that’s all right.”
“Stop acting like I’m going to change my mind. Old Aunt Flo doesn’t worry me nearly as much as she worries you.”