Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  “And now,” she said gently, “you’re all better.”

  “I’ve learned to live with it. If you can’t—” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “We’re in this together, remember? For better or for worse.”

  “In sickness and in health,” he said dryly, and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Yeah. I remember.”

  “Danny, you’re not sick.”

  “It’s not something I’m proud of,” he said. “I don’t know too many guys who wake up crying and shaking in the middle of the night. I’m also not proud of what I did there.”

  “What you did there was survive.”

  “And by what fucked-up cosmic plan did I end up surviving? I think the lucky ones were the guys who didn’t make it back.”

  “Don’t you dare talk like that!” she snapped. “Whatever happened there, it’s over. You have to let go of it!”

  “You don’t understand. You can’t begin to imagine the things I saw, the things I did. Christ, Casey, I have to live with the monster that’s inside me.”

  “Then talk to me about it. Hold me in your arms and tell me.”

  “I can’t. You wouldn’t understand. You’d hate me.”

  Furious, she said, “How can you believe it would make one iota of difference in the way I feel about you?”

  “I’m a killer,” he said bitterly, “a goddamn trained killer. That’s who you’re sleeping beside at night. And the worst thing—” He rubbed his forehead slowly. “The worst thing,” he said quietly, “is that there was a part of me that liked it.”

  chapter six

  She learned early that musicians have difficulty putting down their instruments when the gig is over. And Danny had a way of drawing people to him, so their apartment became a sort of after-hours club, a continuous jam session that must have given the neighbors apoplexy. As a songwriter, she found the company intellectually stimulating and the music exciting. As the lady of the house, it drove her crazy. More than one Saturday morning, she stumbled out of bed to find someone she’d never laid eyes on before, some bewhiskered and bedraggled guitar player, asleep on the couch. Or eating a bowl of Cheerios at her kitchen table. They left behind empty beer bottles and full ashtrays, water rings on her tabletops and chair arms, discarded pizza boxes and bare cupboards.

  Since Danny seemed to thrive on the chaos, she bit her tongue, cleaned up the mess, and kept her misgivings to herself. Since she was the one in charge of the checkbook, he remained blissfully unaware of the havoc this lifestyle wrought on their finances. It was Rob MacKenzie who brought up the subject, one Friday evening as she was standing before an empty refrigerator, balefully surveying its contents. Peering over her shoulder, he said, “Hey, kiddo, it looks like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is bare.”

  “Yes,” she said grimly. “And don’t spread the word too far, but Mother Hubbard’s checkbook is looking pretty bare, too.”

  “I’m not surprised. Half the time you’re feeding six people on a budget designed for two.”

  “Milk,” she said in disbelief. “You have to love the irony. I grew up on a dairy farm, and now I don’t have enough money to buy a gallon of milk.”

  He squared his jaw. “Get your jacket,” he said. “We’re going to the store.”

  “Rob,” she said in horror, “I can’t take money from you!”

  “Maybe you’d rather starve?”

  “We won’t starve. We’ll get by.”

  “Oh?” he said. “You have a cow tied up in the back yard?”

  “Don’t tease me, MacKenzie.”

  “Jesus, Casey, it’s only a few bucks. Don’t make a federal case out of it. You can pay me back next week.”

  Casey looked at him, then back at her empty refrigerator. Silently counted the days until payday. And wilted. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “You can loan me a few dollars. On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That we don’t tell Danny.”

  Although she was careful to buy only the barest essentials, they still filled two grocery bags. She and Rob distributed the contents in her kitchen cupboards, then gazed ruefully at her pathetic collection of canned pasta and tuna fish. “My mom has a great recipe for tuna noodle casserole,” he said.

  They shared a grin. “Hey,” she said softly. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, yourself. Next time you need something, ask.”

  The whole affair left a sour taste in her mouth, even though she paid him back the minute Danny’s check was cashed on Friday. So she was horrified when, a couple of weeks later, she found a crisp new twenty-dollar bill tucked into her jewelry box. She knew Danny hadn’t put it there. The last time she’d checked, he’d had four dollars to his name. And she’d be willing to bet the entire twenty that in all the time they’d been married, Danny had never even lifted the cover of that jewelry box. It was somebody else who had put it there, and she knew precisely who that somebody was.

  That evening, she dragged Rob off to the bathroom, shut and locked the door, and then leaned against it. She pulled the twenty from her pocket, unfolded it, and held it up for him to see. “What is this?” she said.

  He wrinkled his forehead. “I could be wrong,” he said, “but it looks to me like a twenty-dollar bill.” And he flashed his most ingenuous smile, the one that always brought out the recessive mommy gene in even the hardest of women.

  She folded her arms across her chest, determined not to be sucked in by that boyish charm. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me about it?”

  “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “it won’t buy as much as it would five years ago.”

  She bit her lip. “Anything you’d like to tell me,” she clarified, “about how it ended up in my jewelry box.”

  He sighed. “Look,” he said, crossing his arms in unconscious imitation of her. “I’m living at home, paying my mom fifteen bucks a week for board. I don’t have any other expenses. You guys are having a hard time making ends meet. You’re paying too much for rent—”

  “How do you know that?” she demanded.

  “You live on Beacon Hill,” he said. “The whole damn neighborhood’s overpriced. People raid your refrigerator day and night. Hell, I eat more meals here than I do at home. I should be paying board to you instead of my mom.”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “Rob,” she said, “I know you mean well, but you can’t do this.”

  He squared that stubborn jaw. “Why?”

  “Because! Because it’s—”

  They were interrupted by a knock on the bathroom door. “Just a minute!” she snapped. And whispered, “Because it’s not the way things are done!”

  “Says who?” he whispered back.

  “I don’t know!” she said. “Whoever made up the rules.”

  “So you plan to spend the rest of your life being a sheep? I’m really disappointed in you, Fiore. I thought you knew how to think for yourself.”

  His words stung, at least in part because they struck a nerve. She had always followed the rules. It was what she’d been taught from infancy. The rules were there to keep life orderly, to prevent chaos and anarchy. It had never occurred to her to question their validity. But now, here stood Rob MacKenzie, daring to suggest that maybe, if she bent one of those rules a bit, the sky wouldn’t tumble down on her head.

  “Look,” she told him, “I come from a long line of staid Baptists. We don’t know how to break the rules. That ability was bred out of us generations ago.” She smiled ruefully. “Along with our sense of humor.”

  “So I should just stand by and watch you starve?”

  “It’s not your responsibility to subsidize us.”

  “It’s not a subsidy,” he said, “it’s a gift.”

  In exasperation, she said, “You are the most impossible man I’ve ever met.”

  He grinned. “I’m Irish,” he said. “So sue me.”

  Giving up, she tucked the twenty back into her pocket. “We will not discuss this issue again. Is that un
derstood?”

  He saluted. “Loud and clear.”

  And they never did. But after that, whenever starvation loomed, she would find money tucked into secret places. Sometimes just a few crumpled bills stuffed into her purse; sometimes a twenty in her bureau drawer, or two fives in her jewelry box. She never caught him at it, and after a time, she stopped trying. But she kept a running tally, because somehow, someday, she would pay back every penny.

  As summer moved into fall, she and Rob spent several afternoons a week writing songs together. As he jokingly told her, “We make beautiful music together,” and he wasn’t far from the truth. But her woeful ignorance of the technical aspects of music kept getting in her way. Finally one day, she threw down her pencil in frustration. “I can hear it in my head,” she said. “Why can’t I put it on paper?”

  “Because you don’t have the skills you need to make the transition.”

  “How can I get them?”

  He looked pensive. “I could teach you.”

  “I couldn’t ask you to give me that much of your time.”

  “We could call it an investment.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his bony ankles. “I’ll get my payback when we win our first Grammy.”

  Her laughter was rueful. “That’ll be the day.”

  But in the end, she recognized that if they were to continue to work together, she needed to know what she was doing on a more technical level. She couldn’t continue indefinitely to let Rob carry her.

  Rob MacKenzie was a patient teacher with a vast wealth of knowledge upon which to draw and the willingness to share with her everything he had ever learned about music. What started as a crash course in music theory grew into months of intensive tutelage. They studied chord progressions and intervalic relationships, structure and tempo and style. They stripped other people’s songs down to the bare bones and then reassembled them to see what made them work. Over the months, he transfused knowledge to her as if by an invisible bloodline. Along the way, he taught her a healthy respect for the great blues musicians of the past and present, from Robert Johnson to Billie Holiday to B.B. King. He played their music for her, traced for her the genealogy of the music she heard on the radio every day.

  In the process, she learned a great deal about Rob himself. He had picked up his first guitar at the age of nine. After that, he’d had but one love in his life. At seventeen, he’d been admitted to Berklee on a full scholarship, and during his tenure there, he’d soaked up knowledge like a sponge. At nineteen, he and Berklee had parted amicably when he’d left to pursue a career as a working musician. He was tired of waiting, eager to jump in headfirst.

  Rob became her mentor, her best friend. It was a euphoric experience, seeing something she’d worked hard to create come alive in the hands of a group of talented musicians. The music germinated somewhere deep inside her, but she tailored it to Danny. She knew his possibilities, knew his limitations, knew his strengths and weaknesses as a vocalist, and she worked with Rob to write the songs which would best showcase his talents. Those afternoons became her lifeline, for during those few hours each week she lived and breathed music.

  ***

  Boston Common was blanketed with snow. On Tremont Street, bumper-to-bumper traffic crept from traffic light to traffic light, spraying slush on those pedestrians brave enough to attempt crossing. Every few blocks, a tired-looking Santa stood next to a black pot, ringing a brass bell. It was the season of love, the season of giving, the season when short-tempered shoppers gave new meaning to the word rudeness as they mowed each other down in a mad race to reach the bargain table.

  Casey forged her way through the crowds clotting the sidewalk, carrying the chopsticks and the paper parasol she’d picked up in a dusty little shop in Chinatown. She’d spent an exhausting half-hour worming through the crush of shoppers in Filene’s Basement, only to find that they’d just sold the last of the watches that Danny had been dropping hints about for weeks. She’d been disappointed, but even the sour temper of the salesgirl hadn’t dampened her spirits. She loved Christmas, loved the crass commercialism, the hokey carols that permeated the air, the colored glass and the bright lights and the tinsel.

  The lights strung in the leafless branches of the trees on the Common winked on as she climbed the incline from Park Street Church to Beacon Street. She stopped at the bakery on the corner and bought a loaf of French bread. Tonight was one of Danny’s rare evenings at home, and she had planned a special dinner that would also be a celebration, for she had news she couldn’t wait to share with him.

  The apartment was freezing. Casey stashed her purchases in her bedroom closet and tried to remember where Danny had left the hammer. After a brief search, she found it in the kitchen drawer. She carried it to the bedroom, gave the radiator valve a couple of good raps. The resultant hiss was reassuring. Rubbing her hands together for warmth, Casey returned the hammer to its rightful place in the closet beneath the stairs, stopping to plug in the Christmas tree before starting supper.

  She sang along with Eric Clapton while she peeled potatoes. After she put them on to boil, she marched into the bathroom and dumped the hamper upside down on the floor and began sorting laundry. Danny found her there, standing in a pile of towels and underwear, attempting to sweet-talk the reluctant Maytag into beginning its spin cycle. “Hi, beautiful,” he said, bending for a kiss.

  “Lord, this thing is temperamental. Hi,” she added distractedly, her ears attuned to that tiny click of the dial that meant the cycle was about to kick in. The washer clicked, then lumbered into painful life, creaking and groaning as the tub began to spin. “By George,” she said, “I think I’ve got it.” She stood on tiptoe then to kiss him. “The radiator was off again.”

  “I’ll look at it tonight. What’s for dinner?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “What if I don’t like it?”

  “You’ll like it. Besides,” she added saucily, “you get me for dessert.” Arms wound around his neck, she lay her head against his chest and closed her eyes. “Danny,” she said, “something wonderful happened today.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “What?”

  “I got a job.”

  He went stiff in her arms. “A job?” he said. “I didn’t know you were looking for a job.”

  “We need the money. And I can only kill so much time washing dishes and scrubbing the toilet.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Working as a nurse’s aide in the children’s wing at St. Peter’s Hospital. About half the children there are terminally ill. They’re so brave, they just break your heart.”

  When he didn’t respond, she continued blithely. “I’ll be working second shift, so I won’t always be here for supper, but it’s only three days a week. That’s all they could give me right now.”

  “St. Peter’s,” he said. “That’s in Roxbury. Have you lost your mind?”

  The tone of his voice finally registered, and she glanced up in surprise. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that you might have consulted with me first?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “it didn’t. Since when do I have to consult with you before I make a decision?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Casey, use your brain. Are you trying to get your throat slit?”

  “I know Roxbury’s a tough neighborhood, but—”

  He slammed a fist down on the washer. “You don’t know shit! I grew up here, and I wouldn’t venture onto the streets of Roxbury after dark unless I was carrying a loaded AK-47!”

  She gaped at him in astonishment, unable to reconcile this stranger with the soft-spoken man she’d married. He looked like Danny, his voice was Danny’s, but the words he was speaking were the words of a stranger. “I can’t believe you’re carrying on like this,” she said. “Over something so small.”

  “I want you to go to the phone right now and call that place
and tell them you’ve changed your mind.”

  White-hot fury shot through her. “Over my dead body!”

  “Damn it, Casey, that’s what I’m trying to prevent!”

  “I think we’d better get one thing straight,” she said. “This is the twentieth century. I may be your wife, but I am not, nor will I ever be, your property. I’ll work where I want, with or without your permission.”

  “That’s odd,” he said, “because I seem to remember something in the marriage vows about obeying.”

  “Words put there hundreds of years ago by male supremacists who regarded women as chattel!”

  “I will not allow you to work after dark in Roxbury. Period.”

  “You can just go to hell, then, because you can’t stop me. As a matter of fact—” She kicked at the pile of laundry. “—you can start washing your own underwear!”

  “I can do better than that. If this is what marriage is going to be like, I don’t want any part of it!”

  She tried to breathe around the sudden obstruction in her throat. “Just what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that we might as well call it quits right now and get it over with!” He untangled one of her brassieres from his shoe, threw it at her, and stalked from the room.

  She dropped the brassiere and followed him, catching him by the arm and yanking him around. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  He jerked free from her grasp. “Out.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re walking out in the middle of a fight?”

  “The fight,” he said, “is over. And so is the marriage.”

  “Fine with me, then. Get out, and don’t bother coming back!”

  “Don’t worry! I don’t plan to!”

  He slammed the door so hard the picture on the wall shuddered. Casey walked to it woodenly and steadied it, and then she went to the kitchen stove and turned off the burners, methodically, one by one.

  She tried to pinpoint the exact moment when Danny had stopped loving her, but she was too numb to think clearly. She should have known it wouldn’t last. She should have realized that marrying Danny would be like caging a wild bird. Now she was paying for her stupidity. The love of her life had just walked out the door, and her marriage was over almost before it had begun.