Marriage by Contract

by Sandra Steffen

  She shook her head and allowed him to lead her away from the room she’d so lovingly prepared for the child she’d so desperately wanted.

  At 4:00 a.m. he finally talked her into lying down. “Not to sleep,” he said, his voice becoming coaxing and soft. “But you need to rest. We both do.”

  He placed her suitcase on the floor and slipped her shoes off her feet. Together, they lay down on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling, not talking, not touching, not sleeping. Waiting for morning.

  The distant hoot of an owl carried through the darkness. Beth listened, straining to hear an answering call. As the minutes ticked slowly by, the events of the past twenty-four hours played through her mind. She stared at the dark ceiling, her eyes burning from weariness and from her earlier tears. Beside her, Tony’s breathing became deep and even.

  She knew he’d wake up if she needed to talk to him. But her grief was beyond words. He’d asked her not to go. So she’d stayed. And she wasn’t sorry. She didn’t know how she would have gotten through this long, bleak night alone. She’d stayed, but nothing had been settled between them. She knew the day of reckoning couldn’t be postponed forever. But it could wait. At least until morning came.

  The clock ticked. The wind moaned through the branches of the bare cottonwood trees. In the meadow, the lonely owl called again. Some place farther away, another owl answered. And Beth’s eyes finally drifted closed.

  * * *

  Waaa-waaaa.

  Beth tried to open her eyes, but she was so tired and her eyelids were so heavy.

  The cry came again. It was Christopher’s cry. But it sounded muffled, as if it was coming from someplace far away.

  “I’m coming, Christopher. I’m coming.” Her feet hit the floor in the same instant her eyes opened. She was halfway across the hall before she remembered.

  Christopher was gone.

  But his night-light was on. Hope sprang to her chest. Maybe he was back. Maybe he’d never gone. Maybe it had all been a horrible nightmare.

  One look at the empty crib, the missing mobile and the open drawers squashed her hopes where she stood. Christopher was gone. It was a nightmare. But it was real.

  Tony, who must have come into the room while she’d been asleep, looked up from the miniature baseball glove in his hand. His face looked haggard, his eyes as ravaged as hers.

  “I heard Christopher,” she whispered. “He was crying.”

  “It was a dream, Beth.”

  She wanted to shout that he was wrong. But she couldn’t have heard Christopher, because Christopher wasn’t there.

  She trudged to the crib, where she ran her hand along the rail, burying her fingers in an airy blanket Jenna had brought weeks ago. “What time is it?”

  “Almost five in the morning.”

  The night would soon be over. In an hour, or two, they would call their families, and Gib, and Jenna. And somehow they’d get through the day, the week, the rest of their lives.

  Bringing the blanket to her face, she whispered, “What if he’s really crying, Tony? What if he’s scared? We’re all he knows. What if he needs us?”

  Tony stared into the nothingness beyond the dark window. The house was quiet. Eerily quiet. He remembered how terrified, how utterly incapable he’d felt when he’d been faced with Christopher’s wails. As the days, weeks, months had passed, the sound of the baby’s cries had changed along with the way Tony felt about them. They’d become a beautiful symphony, surprisingly robust, achingly sweet. Painfully short.

  What if Christopher was crying? Beth had asked. What if he needed them?

  Tony shook his head. He had no answer.

  * * *

  Annie saw the door open, but the only thing she could hear was Christopher’s wails so close to her ear. Cora trudged in looking tired and older than ever. Her overalls were tattered and torn, her complexion was ruddy, her steel gray hair sticking out in every direction. Annie had never been more relieved to see anybody in her life.

  “He’s still goin’ at it, huh?”

  Annie nodded, so tired she could hardly hold her eyes open.

  “He’s got good lungs, I’ll give him that. He’s makin’ my cats howl.”

  Jiggling Christopher, Annie paced to the opposite end of the small room. “Sorry. I know how much you love your cats.”

  “Don’t you be sorry. Those cats will curl up in a patch of sunshine tomorrow and sleep the day away. The little one still won’t eat?”

  Annie shook her head. Christopher wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t burp, he wouldn’t sleep. He wasn’t wet. She’d checked a hundred times. She tried to pull him closer, but he arched his little back and screamed all the louder. “Do you think he has colic, Cora?”

  Cora narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “My Willie had colic. The cry was different. I don’t think this baby’s sick. He’s mad as a wet hornet, that’s what he is. But he’ll get over it. Don’cha worry. He just has to get used to you, that’s all.”

  Humming a tune that was lost to everyone else, she ambled stiffly out of the room.

  Left on her own, Annie felt more afraid than she’d ever been in her life, and she’d been scared plenty. “Don’t cry. Please?” she said in Christopher’s ear. “I worked so hard to fix this place up for us. See? I mended that torn shade. Looks almost as good as new, doesn’t it?”

  Although Christopher took a shuddering breath, he was obviously unimpressed, because he cried all the harder. Trying not to cry herself, she told him how she’d washed and scrubbed the floor until her arms ached and the skin on her hands had been raw.

  “The place might not be gleaming, but it’s clean, and it doesn’t smell bad anymore. I rearranged the furniture, what there is of it. I even put some dried flowers from Cora’s garden in a Coke bottle on the table underneath the window. See?” she said, her voice shaking. “Don’t they look pretty?”

  She showed him her baseball cap, and told him all about his Aunt Christie, who would have been sixteen next month. She even took an old photo out of her wallet. She tried not to let her hands shake as she propped him up so he could see.

  Staring at the blurry snapshot, Christopher started to relax. Little by little, he stopped crying. She turned him around so she could look into his face. His eyes were red, but he looked up at her, and she swore her heart melted.

  “Hi, there. Do you remember me? You used to kick me so hard in the middle of the night you woke me out of a sound sleep. I’m your mama, and I’m gonna take care of you from now on.”

  He turned his head as if searching the sparse room for something familiar. Or someone. He stiffened, a moment’s panic passing through his eyes. His face turned red, his arms flailed, his whole body shaking with the renewed strength of his cries.

  Annie walked with him. She tried jiggling him, she tried swaying him to and fro. When she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she lay down with him on the narrow bed in the corner.

  “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you, Christopher, I promise,” she whispered. “I love you so. Won’cha please love me back?”

  Christopher cried on.

  Tears rolled down both sides of her face, wetting her hair. Her chest ached from the effort to hold in her sobs. Eventually, the baby stilled, finally falling into a fretful sleep.

  Cora was right, she thought, her eyes drifting closed. Christopher just had to get used to his real mama, that’s all. Everything would to be all right. Once morning came.

  * * *

  Christopher had been gone for twelve hours when Tony called his family. Vince, Elena and Grandma Rosa were the first to arrive, casseroles in their hands, their hearts on their sleeves. Elena kissed Beth’s cheek, Grandma Rosa muttering something in Italian before setting off toward the kitchen.

  Elena stood next to her husband, seemingly at a loss for words. Watching his aging mother disappear into the kitchen, Vince slowly shook his head. “Eating is probably the last thing on your minds right now, but it’s life’s most bas
ic routines that get us through times like these. Life’s most basic routines, and the people who care about you.”

  Beth thought her tears would have run dry by now, but fresh ones spilled onto her lashes. Vincent Petrocelli was a man of few words, and he didn’t waste them on flowery phrases. He said what he felt, then moved on to let someone else do the talking. Beth felt honored to have known him, to have had the opportunity to be his daughter-in-law, if only for a few short months.

  She wasn’t sure why her gaze went to Tony. She only knew that looking at him made her feel even more sad. His head was turned slightly, as if he was listening to whatever his mother and father were saying. Of course, there was no telling what he was really thinking; he wasn’t an easy man to read. But he was hurting. She could see it around his eyes and in the deep grooves beside his mouth. He missed Christopher every bit as much as she did.

  Fresh tears threatened to fall. She could have attributed them to the lump that formed in her throat every time her thoughts came close to Christopher. But she knew there was more to this ache than that.

  She loved Christopher. The memory of him made her feel like crying and smiling at the same time. It made her heart hurt, because her time with him had been so sweet and so fleeting. This ache in her heart was even bigger than the loss of the baby she loved. It included the loss of the man she loved, the loss of the idyllic dream she’d been living these past few months. The loss of everything she wanted and needed.

  As she blinked away tears, her vision cleared. She wasn’t certain how long Tony had been looking at her. She only knew it required every ounce of strength she possessed to send him a wavering smile before pulling her gaze away so she could answer the door.

  Tony was vaguely aware that his mother had headed for the kitchen to see if Grandma Rosa needed any help, and that his father had mumbled something about making himself useful someplace else. Tony couldn’t seem to move, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Beth.

  She greeted Teddy and Gina and their four kids, accepting their tears and their condolences. She was wearing pale yellow slacks and a simple white blouse, the fabric fluttering slightly when she bent down to speak to Gina’s second oldest. Beth was exhausted, with good reason, but she was achingly beautiful even now, as pliant as a willow switch, and just as strong.

  Out of the blue, little Julie wrapped her pudgy arms around Beth’s neck. Beth happened to glance at Tony, the expression in her eyes holding him spellbound. Before he could figure out what it was he saw, she turned away. He felt the lack of her gaze all the way from across the room.

  Tony answered the door when Nick and Carmelina and their active brood arrived. After that, someone else took over. By noon, the house was noisy, food was being set out and parents were bustling after their kids who had forgotten their solemn reason for coming and were taking turns sliding down the banister.

  Christopher had been gone for eighteen hours when Beth’s family arrived. Although their hands didn’t contain casseroles and their hearts weren’t on their sleeves, their eyes held worry and sadness. Tony realized that they loved Beth very deeply and wanted to ease her pain.

  Beth. He’d lost track of how many times his thoughts had strayed to her. He’d found her looking at him several times throughout the day, but he couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d touched him, or since she’d done more than cast him a wavering smile from the other side of the room. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something important was staring him right in the face.

  Gib and Jenna arrived together, of all things, when Christopher had been gone for twenty-three hours. Jenna went straight to Beth, and Gib, who’d been Tony’s best friend for most of his life, seemed to understand that Tony wasn’t up to making conversation and moved on to speak with Janet and MacKenzie and their son Chaz.

  Tony appreciated everything everyone was trying to do, but the noise level was getting to him. He needed a minute to himself. He tried the kitchen first. Not only were his mother and two of his sisters there, but Nick and Frank were there, too, making themselves useful, they said, fixing his leaky faucet. The living room wasn’t much better, but at least the low drone of the boxing match coming from the television in the corner kept the men who had gathered there from noticing when he took to the stairs.

  He stopped in the doorway to Christopher’s room first. As he ran a hand over his tired eyes, memories washed over him. He pictured Christopher kicking his feet and flailing his arms, grinning as Beth changed his diaper and talked to the baby in that lilting voice she always reserved for him.

  She’d really come alive when she’d mothered that baby.

  He remembered standing in this very doorway while she waltzed Christopher around the room. He’d never forget the look on her face when she’d turned and found him watching.

  There it was again, that nagging sensation in the back of Tony’s mind.

  He strolled across the hall and on into the room he’d shared with Beth these past two months. The room was empty, the bed made, Beth’s sighs and murmurs only memories now. If she’d come alive as a mother in Christopher’s room, she’d come alive as a woman here.

  A sound, this one real, drew his attention to the doorway. Gib looked at him, quietly on alert. “Sorry to intrude. I know how much you like your privacy, but they were talking about sending up the troops. I offered to come, instead.”

  Tony nodded and Gib ambled in. “Were you surprised to see me show up with Jenna?”

  A shrug found its way to Tony’s shoulders. “The last I knew, Jenna was boycotting anyone carrying the Y chromosome. The two of you seem to be hitting it off pretty good.”

  It was Gib’s turn to run a hand through his hair and sigh. “Actually, Jenna and I seem to be stuck between heart-to-heart conversations and the bedroom.”

  Tony took a long, hard look at his friend. “I thought you only dated tall women.”

  “Jenna makes me feel tall. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, but for months I’ve been feeling as if I’ve been treading water in a shark-infested ocean. Suddenly, it’s as if someone has thrown me a lifeboat. Wouldn’t you know a Gypsy would be holding the rope?”

  Although it hurt, Tony smiled for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours.

  “You know,” Gib said, striding to the window. “I once surprised a counterintelligence guerrilla from behind. Yet Jenna anticipates my every move. I think I’m in love. Now, what are we going to do about you?”

  Tony followed the course of Gib’s stare, straight to the suitcase Beth had been packing last night. “I’m a lost cause.”

  “Then, Beth’s really leaving?”

  If Tony hadn’t been standing directly in front of a chair, he would have sunk all the way to the floor. He ran a hand through his hair, down his forehead, across his eyes, all the way down to his chin where his palm rasped over twenty-four hours’ worth of stubble. “She’s hurting, Gib.”

  “Losing Christopher has been hard on her.”

  “Yes, but she’s been hurting for weeks. It’s my fault.”

  Gibson Malone had spent his formative years in combat and covert action. He could read an enemy’s eyes and a prisoner’s reaction to the simplest of questions. Taking in the room that had once been purely masculine but now held feminine touches, he said, “What are you going to do about it?”

  Tony’s chin jerked up, his eyes going from Gib to Beth’s suitcase and back again. As he slowly came alive, an idea took hold in his mind. What was he going to do? Something he should have done months ago.

  “Gib?”

  “Yeah, buddy?”

  “Would you have one of my sisters come up here?”

  “Sure. Do you care which one?”

  “No. Any one of them will do.”

  Gib nodded, then sauntered out of the room, his limp little more than a distant memory. A couple of minutes later, Tony’s youngest sister strode in. “Gib said you wanted to talk to me about something.”

  Tony spoke without looking u
p. “Come on in, Andreanna. There’s something I want to tell you. And when I’m through, I want you to pass it on quietly to the rest of the family. And then I’d appreciate it if you’d all leave so Beth and I can be alone.”

  Andreanna gasped. “Tony, you’re not dying or anything, are you?”

  Tony shook his head. “I’m pretty sure I’d have to feel better to die.”

  Andreanna sank to the bed, her brown eyes round with concern. Tony rested his forearms on his knees, his arms crossed at the wrists, his fingers loosely folded. “There’s something I should have told you months ago, but I didn’t know how….”

  His sister leaned closer. Sometime during the telling, she placed one hand on his forearm, the other low on her abdomen where her second child was growing. She asked a question now and then, but for the most part, she listened. When Tony was finished, she wiped her eyes and went to do as her brother had asked.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Beth took in the empty kitchen in one sweeping glance. Dishes had been put away, towels had been folded, counters wiped off. Someone had even taken care of the little shirts and sleepers she’d dropped on the table early yesterday evening. When Christopher had still been here. She closed her eyes against the jagged thought, wondering if she would ever stop measuring time in relation to how long Christopher had been gone.

  Of its own volition, her gaze strayed to the window that overlooked the driveway. Tony was walking the last straggling members of his family to their van. Frank and Maria’s three little girls had arrived in their Sunday best. Now the bows in their hair were askew, the sashes on their dresses undone, their voices slightly whiny as they pulled on their mother’s and father’s hands. Tony swung the youngest high over his head. Settling her in the crook of his left arm, he followed the rest of the family to the minivan parked next to the quaint little bench facing the side yard. Frank opened the door, then reached for his youngest daughter. While the other two children climbed inside, Maria rose up on tiptoe and kissed Tony’s cheek.