Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  He plucked absently at the guitar strings. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  She arranged the sandwiches on a couple of plates and handed one to him. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Why does Danny call you Wiz?”

  He took a bite of the sandwich, chewed and swallowed. “The first time Danny heard me play, he called me a guitar wizard.” Rob shrugged his bony shoulders. “The name just stuck.”

  “I see. And are you a wizard?”

  “Hell, no. I’m just an ordinary guy who sleeps with his guitar.”

  After lunch, while she cleared up, he picked away at a dank, bluesy melody. “That’s pretty,” she said. “I’ve never heard it before. What is it?”

  “You’ve never heard it before because I just wrote it this morning.”

  Eagerly, she said, “Does it have words?”

  “Not yet. I thought you might like to take a shot at it.”

  “Me?” she asked, inordinately pleased. “You want me to write the lyrics?”

  “Yeah, you,” he said. “Why not?”

  Hours later, Danny found them huddled over his old upright piano. He turned on the overhead light and Casey blinked, trying to focus. “Hello, darling,” she said. “What are you doing home so early?”

  Danny eyed the papers scattered about the room, the overflowing ashtray beside Rob, the empty Coke bottles. “I’m not early,” he said. “You were sitting here in the dark.” He dropped his jacket on a chair and stood behind her, his hands creating a pleasant warmth on her shoulders. “What the devil are you two doing?”

  Rob’s long, bony fingers ran a quick riff on the keyboard. “I asked Casey to add some lyrics to a tune I wrote,” he said. “We ended up rewriting the whole thing.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  Casey played it, singing harmony with Rob. When they finished, there was a moment of silence. “Christ,” Danny said, “that’s good.” He leaned forward, hands still on her shoulders, studying the music. “Let me hear it again.”

  Before the song was half-through, he was singing with them. She exchanged a glance with Rob, and he shot her a quick wink.

  Danny squeezed onto the piano bench between them and wrapped an arm around her waist. “How soon can we work it into the act?”

  Rob flexed long, slender fingers. “We could run it by Jake and Travis at rehearsal on Sunday.”

  Danny’s eyebrows drew together. “Not soon enough,” he said. “I want them to hear it tonight.”

  “It’s not going anywhere, Dan. Sunday’s only two days away.”

  “Tonight,” he repeated, and Rob shrugged amiably. Satisfied, Danny turned her in his arms and kissed her. “Since we have company,” he said, “and I can’t have my way with you, how about some dinner? We have to be at Martucci’s in a couple of hours.”

  She brushed her knuckles briefly across his cheek. “You’re working too hard,” she said. “You’ll kill yourself, working two jobs.”

  “You mean I haven’t told you my philosophy?”

  She eyed him skeptically. “What philosophy?”

  “Live hard and fast,” he said, “and die young enough to leave a good-looking corpse.”

  A cold draft trickled down her spine and spread into her extremities. “Stop it,” she said. “Don’t talk that way. It gives me the willies.”

  He grinned. “You’re too touchy. And I’m unstoppable. Give me a hot shower and a home-cooked meal, and I always get my second wind.”

  They had agreed when they got married that they wouldn’t allow their marriage to interfere with Danny’s career, and Casey knew she should be grateful that the band had steady work. Not for anything would she admit to him that she was lonely and restless. Not for anything would she admit that it was Trish’s letters, her sister Colleen’s occasional phone calls, that saved her from succumbing to the isolation. He would think she was unhappy with their marriage, and nothing could have been farther from the truth.

  She lived for those early breakfasts and quiet dinners when they faced each other across the table. She lived for Sundays, for those languid hours of lovemaking when he would drive her to the brink of insanity and let her hover there in exquisite agony before plunging with her over the edge. She lived to wake up beside him each morning and to fall asleep in his arms each night. The hours they spent together were perfection. It was the time they spent apart that was the problem.

  But she didn’t tell him that. Instead, she smiled and said, “You get your shower, and I’ll get dinner.”

  The next morning, while Danny slept late, she breakfasted on black coffee and a croissant, then set out down the back side of the Hill to Haymarket, where she spent an inordinate amount of time choosing from the vast assortment of produce. After trading good-natured insults with the merchants who now recognized her as a regular, she skipped over to the North End and bought from the butchers there, doing her best to ignore the bloody rabbit pelts that hung in their shop windows.

  Since she was already in the neighborhood, she ended her excursion with a visit to Danny’s grandmother. While Mrs. Fiore brewed tea, Casey sat on an overstuffed armchair in the gloomy parlor. The bulky furniture was upholstered in a drab maroon that time had faded to a dull brown. Yellowed lace curtains kept the sun at bay, and a small Philco television rested atop a mahogany table.

  On a matching table beside her, nestled in amongst a thriving community of African violets, was a framed photo of a young woman. Casey picked it up and was studying it when Mrs. Fiore returned with the tea. The girl in the picture was pretty, with lively, dark eyes and the devil himself in her smile. “Danny’s mother?” she said.

  The old woman’s face darkened. “My Annamaria Teresa. He don’t tell you nothing about his mama?”

  Casey set the photo back down. “Only that she died when he was five years old. I got the impression he doesn’t remember much.”

  “He remember. He just don’ want to.”

  Surprised, she asked, “Why wouldn’t he want to remember?”

  Mrs. Fiore pursed her lips and expelled a long breath. “Danny never let nobody get close until you come along,” she said. “Oh, he has women, plenty of women, from the time he’s fourteen or fifteen. He come home smelling of them. What girl gonna resist that face? But he never bring no girl home to Nonna until you, carissima. You good for him. You take care of him, make him feel a little less alone. He don’t tell you this stuff, so I tell you, because I think maybe this help you understand your man a little better, no?”

  “Yes,” she said, and picked up her cup of tea. “Of course.”

  “My Anna is a beautiful girl. A face like the Madonna. But she is wild. Smoking, drinking, swearing. Wearing too much makeup and running with a bad crowd. She come home at thirteen, hair all messed up, lipstick smeared, tell me she been at the movies. Hah! When she’s fifteen, some sailor give her more than she bargain for, and she end up with Danny.”

  “Good God,” Casey said, appalled. “She was only fifteen when he was born?”

  “Jus’ a little girl. And she try, but like I say, she is just a little girl. She run around with men, leave Danny here with me. Sometimes two, three days before she come back for the baby. And she love him to pieces, but she love the men more. Every time she meet a new man, he don’ want no little baby, some other man’s bastard. So Danny come home to Nonna. Before he is four years old, Anna, she move that boy six or seven times. Is no life for a baby, and I tell her so. But she get mad and stop speaking to me. She take Danny away, and for six months I don’ even see him.”

  Mrs. Fiore sipped her tea, her dark eyes watery. “Then she come home,” the old woman continued, “all smiling. She got a new man, and I never see her like this before. She tells me, ‘Mama, he is not like the others. This one love me. He gonna take me to California’. She promise Danny she be back for him real soon, and she get in this man’s car and they drive away. And that little boy, five years old,
he sit right here in front of this window, day after day, waiting for his mama to come back for him. And he never cry, just sit here, waiting. Only his mama never come back. After a while, he stops waiting. He tells everybody his mama dead, and he never speaks of her again.”

  Casey’s teacup rattled in its saucer. “Are you telling me,” she said, “that Anna isn’t dead?”

  The old woman shrugged. “She jus’ never come back. For a long time, I worry about Danny, because he is so much like his mama. When he go to the Army, I pray every night to the Blessed Virgin that he don’t come home to me in a box. And the Blessed Virgin is kind. But when he come home, he is different. He pace the floor and smoke cigarettes instead of sleeping. He drink whiskey instead of beer. And he don’ talk to me. Just like that little boy five years old, he is holding all the bad inside, where nobody can see it. And then, like a miracle, he finds you, carissima. A good girl, like a fresh wind blowing in his life. And he love you, like he love nobody since his mama went away. I think maybe all these years, he is still waiting. Only now, he is waiting for you.”

  Casey stared at her in disbelief. Wet her lips. “He lied to me,” she said.

  “Yes. He lie to you. But you must understand that underneath the man is still that little boy five years old, waiting for his mama to come home. This trust, it is not easy for Danny. It takes time. I tell you all this not to hurt you, but to help you understand why he do what he do.” Mrs. Fiore leaned forward, reached out a wrinkled hand and clasped Casey’s. “A wise woman, carissima, would see the truth behind the lie and understand.” She patted Casey’s hand. “Now be a good girl and drink your tea before it is cold.”

  As soon as etiquette allowed, Casey escaped. Trudging home up the backside of Beacon Hill, she weighed her options. She loved Danny Fiore with a depth of emotion that had been beyond her comprehension until he walked into her life. A part of her was devastated by the knowledge that he’d lied to her. Another, conflicting part of her ached for that five-year-old boy who had sat by the window, day after day, waiting in vain for his mother to return.

  She remembered what he’d said to her shortly after they met. It’s all a front. Inside, I’m a quivering mass of Jell-O. At the time, she’d thought he was joking, but she realized now that he was telling the truth. He might not have realized it at the time, but she could see it clearly. And she understood instantly what old Mrs. Fiore had been trying to tell her. For all Danny’s flash and bravado, beneath the facade, that vulnerable little boy still dwelt. Of the two of them, she was the strong one.

  What was it she’d said to Rob just yesterday? That she and Danny fit because their opposing strengths and weaknesses complemented each other. Like Adam with his missing rib, neither of them was complete without the other. If that was really true, then she had one very special gift she could share with Danny: her strength. She could wrap it around him, absorb the shocks perpetrated by the outside world, insulate that vulnerable little boy from further pain.

  That night, they made love with a tenderness that brought tears to her eyes. Each time Danny loved her, there was a sweet communion between them that exceeded anything in her previous experience. She lost herself in him, lost track of the boundaries between them, lost all worlds except the private one they created together.

  Afterward, she cradled his head to her breast and closed her eyes as her fingers drew formless patterns in the baby-fine hair at his temples.

  “I’d give it all up for you,” he said. “I’d put on a tie and sit at a desk all day if it was what you wanted.”

  Horrified, she said, “I’d never ask you to do that. It would crush your spirit.”

  “I love you that much,” he said. “I’ll never let anything come between us. Nothing and nobody.”

  She rocked him slowly, the way she would have rocked a newborn babe. “Of course not,” she whispered. “We’re charmed. Nothing can ever hurt us.”

  And they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms.

  ***

  They were camped for the night.

  After three days of hacking their way through impenetrable jungle, waiting for the VC to come out of hiding and blow their heads off, his nerves were stretched so tight he could have sliced the thick, muddy night with them. The stench of fear hung ripe on the air. Nights were always the worst, because you couldn’t tell what was out there. Death could be a hundred yards away, behind a tangled thicket, or watching from the trees. The little bastards were like cats; they hid in the trees, watching. Waiting.

  Beside him, Bailey blew on his fingers. “Man, I hate this mud. I thought the jungle was supposed to be hot.”

  “It’s the rainy season.”

  “Always got all the answers, don’t you, Fiore?”

  He took a quick, mocking bow and cradled his rifle closer. When Chuck spoke behind him, he jumped. “Dan, do you believe in God?”

  “Sure, kid,” he said. “He’s running around out there in the rain, disguised as a gook.”

  Bailey smothered a laugh. There was a moment of silence. Then Chuck whispered, “They’re out there tonight. Can’t you feel it?”

  Danny sucked in his breath. Chuck, the skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn, at nineteen, light-years younger than Danny’s cynical twenty, had put it into words, words they had been sidestepping. Danny fondled his M-16. Friend, mistress, protector, its existence was so much a part of him now that his action was automatic and unconscious.

  Bailey said, “The kid’s right. It’s too damn quiet.”

  “They’re waiting,” Chuck said.

  “For Chrissakes, Silverstein, will you shut up?”

  “Scared, Fiore?” Bailey taunted.

  “Of course not. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than up to my ass in mud, waiting for some slant-eyed bastard to turn me into hamburger.”

  At the first staccato rifle report, he reacted on instinct. As he dove for the ground, Chuck Silverstein was jerked off his feet and tumbled like a rag doll onto the grass. Beside him, Bailey, too, dove for cover. “Christ,” Bailey said, “it’s a fucking sniper.”

  “Stay with me!” Danny barked, and began crawling on his belly, seeking cover in the thick undergrowth. But the night was as black as he imagined hell must be, and he was hopelessly lost. He knew with a sudden clarity that he was going to die. He was twenty goddamn years old and he was going to die here in this rotten jungle in a rich man’s war that he’d wanted no part of.

  There was more fire, and then, behind him, a sharp grunt followed by a slow sighing, like a snake slithering through the grass. “Bailey!” he whispered. “Are you still with me?”

  Bailey didn’t answer. The rifle fire began again, and he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. The night sounds of the jungle confused him. Where the hell was Bailey? Why hadn’t he answered? Suddenly, it became imperative that he go back and find him.

  Belly dragging in the mud, he began inching his way backward. He’d gone just a few feet when he bumped up against an immovable object. He reached out a hand to touch it, and his hand came back sticky. “Shit,” he said. “Oh, shit.”

  He was quietly sick, there in the mud. Behind him, all was stillness. He didn’t have time to mourn. That would come later. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting out alive. He began inching forward again, through a pool of Bailey’s blood and his own puke. After an eternity, he reached the shelter of the trees. Panting, his heart hammering, he hauled himself to his feet.

  And came face to face with Charlie.

  The enemy. Four feet tall. Beardless. His face devoid of expression, that damned Oriental inscrutability. He was about twelve years old.

  His rifle in his hand, his finger on the trigger, Danny froze.

  He couldn’t do it.

  The kid raised his rifle in slow motion. With a strange detachment, Danny saw that it was American-made. The home of the free and the brave, amen.

  He pulled the trigger.

  ***

  “Danny, wake up!
” She shook him with brute force. His side of the bed was saturated with sweat, and he was still making those godawful choked sobbing sounds deep in his throat.

  He awoke with a jolt, stiffened, dropped back weakly onto the bed. Covering his eyes with a forearm, he turned away from her and curled into a fetal position, trembling violently.

  She touched his shoulder. When he didn’t resist, she drew him into her arms and comforted him the only way she knew. His heart was slamming against his chest with such force that she feared it would explode. “Danny?” she whispered in terror.

  In a ragged voice, he said, “It’ll run its course.”

  She held him in silent desperation for what seemed hours, until his trembling subsided and his heart rate returned to normal. He pulled away from her then and sat on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands. “So,” he said, “now you know my dirty little secret.”

  She squeezed his shoulder. “How long have you been having these nightmares?”

  Elbows braced on his knees, he ran his fingers through his hair. “Ever since I came back from Nam. I should have warned you, but I’m gutless. I didn’t know how you’d react.”

  Softly, she said, “It must have been terrible.”

  His bark of laughter was brittle. “A real picnic.”

  “Have you talked to anyone about this?”

  Suspiciously, he asked, “Like who?”

  “Like a doctor.”

  “Forget it! I don’t need any asshole in a white coat telling me I’m psychotic!”

  “For God’s sake, Danny, you’re not psychotic. You went through hell over there—”

  “Hell,” he said bitterly, “would have been a vacation.”

  “Sweetheart, you wouldn’t be normal if it didn’t affect you somehow.”

  He got up from the bed, padded barefoot to the dresser, and lit a cigarette. “When I first came back,” he said softly, “I’d be walking down the street and hear a car backfire, and I’d hit the ground. Every time I heard leaves rustling or a twig snapping, I’d freak. I was a wreck.”