Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  She was a teacher, and this was her classroom. She didn’t mind at all spending hours alone here.

  A knock at her open classroom door drew her eyes from her gradebook. “Hi, Roz.” Rosalind Mills was the fifth-grade teacher, with the classroom next door. “Good day?”

  “Not bad. That Raymond is such a little animal, though. He is going to be the death of me, or me of him, but we both survived the day.”

  Mo felt her smile go stiff. She liked Roz, who’d been teaching for seven years and had taken Mo under her wing. She was funny, and nice, and by most evidence Mo had seen, a good teacher. But Raymond Adams, and his little sister, Tarana, who was in Mo’s class, were the only black children in this school, and sometimes Roz said things about them that made Mo uncomfortable. In fact, a few teachers said things that made her uncomfortable. One or two said things that downright shocked her, coming from the mouth of a teacher of children.

  Mo was especially uncomfortable because it wasn’t normally her way not to speak up. When somebody was being an arse, she said so. But she’d been teaching only two weeks. Everyone around her was an experienced teacher, they all knew that Mr. Ivanovic had hired her without considering anyone else for third grade, and Mo thought she’d be Public Enemy Number One if she came off the starting block challenging teachers with so much more seniority than she. This was her dream job, and she wanted every chance to keep hold of the dream.

  So she said nothing, didn’t rock the boat, and hated herself for it.

  But she made an extra effort to find opportunities to be kind to Raymond Adams. Being kind to Tarana, in her own classroom, took no effort at all.

  “Betty, Jane, and I are going to Arlene’s for pie and coffee on the way home. You wanna come?” Roz asked.

  “Thanks, but I have to finish this and then get home.” Brian’s shift started at seven in the morning and ended at five in the evening, with breaks only if there was time between jobs. If Mo was home by five, she could have dinner underway when he came in and headed for the shower.

  “Leave it till later. You’ll go crazy if you try to do everything here at school. I grade in front of the TV at night, after the kids are in bed.”

  Mo’s smile felt like it would break in half now. “Thanks, but I like it better this way.”

  Roz gave her a look Mo recognized. She’d seen it on girls all through middle school and high school, and even on a few girls at OU. It said she was weird, not conforming to expectations, and the looker was judging her as either snobbish or maladjusted. An outlier, one way or another.

  She’d tried many times in her life to make a true friend, and had never once succeeded. Acquaintances, yes. People who were friendly, naturally. But not one true friend. Maybe she simply wasn’t capable of having, or being, a good friend.

  She didn’t do what friends expected. She didn’t want what friends offered.

  But she had Brian, and her family, and his family, and the family they would make together. What else could she possibly need?

  “Okay. Well, if you change your mind …”

  “Thanks. Have fun!” she said and returned her attention to her work.

  ~oOo~

  Faye set a box of saltines on the table and went to pour Mo a glass of ginger ale. “How late are you?”

  “Five days.” Mo took a cracker and nipped carefully at it. Her belly tumbled unhappily. She’d had one period about a week after they’d started trying, but it looked like she wouldn’t have another.

  “Does he know?” Faye nodded toward the window as she asked. Brian, Lenny, and the kids were playing in the yard. They were supposed to be raking the October leaves, but things had descended into hijinks.

  Faye and Mo were supposed to be making supper, but Mo had unwrapped the raw chicken and been instantly and emphatically ill.

  Mo chuckled. “He’s been tracking it as closely as I have. He’s unhappy he can’t take me to the doctor tomorrow, but his boss wouldn’t give him the time off.”

  “That makes me so mad. I wish he’d quit that awful job and find something better.”

  “There’s no better work right now. He’s looked and looked.”

  It was a terrible job, and Brian’s shoulders seemed to slump a little lower every week he stayed at it. Mo hated to see what it was doing to him.

  The work itself was fine. He was a mechanic and enjoyed having his hands in engine guts. But Mr. Essert was a mean old man who enjoyed making his few employees miserable and holding a firing over their heads for every smallest step outside his narrow lines. He was forever hiring somebody new, because men walked off the job regularly—sometimes in the middle of a repair.

  Brian, however, could be viciously stubborn, and he saw himself now in a battle of wills with the old man. He wouldn’t quit no matter what, even if he had the opportunity.

  And he did. They could live on her salary—not luxuriously, but well enough. Mo had suggested it exactly once, and only once.

  Brian was not interested in pursuing the topic. To put it mildly.

  “I know,” Faye said. “This economy is terrible. Lenny’s even worried about his job, and he’s been at the oilfield goin’ on twenty years. And he’s union, for Pete’s sake. I think that’s why he’s been talking about retiring when he hits his twenty and buying a motel. Like that’s gonna make things easier, someway. Yeah, sure.” She shook off a frown that had formed. “But I don’t want to talk about money. I want to talk babies. This is so exciting! All three of us at once!”

  As she set the glass of soda on the table near Mo, Faye eased herself into a chair. She was five months pregnant, and this fourth baby had begun to show early. She looked as pregnant now as she did a month before Kristy was born.

  Maggie was pregnant, too—three months along. Though Mo hadn’t yet had a test, she was now sure she was expecting as well—the signs were the same as before—and she, too, was delighted at the thought the family would have three babies born within months of each other. She wanted to be a mother so badly sometimes she could almost feel an ache in her empty belly. With every new baby that happened around her, her need grew.

  But she was also afraid to hope. She’d been pregnant eighteen weeks the first time. Long enough to fall deeply in love. Long enough to drop into an abyss of grief when it ended.

  This time, however, everything was right. She had Brian, and a home with him. She had a job she loved. Now was the time. Everything was right. Everything would be all right this time.

  ~oOo~

  Brian’s beautiful rough hand covered Mo’s bare belly. At eight weeks, she wasn’t showing yet at all, but she loved the way his hand went there again and again—when he came up behind her to hold her, when they were nestled together on the sofa, lying in bed like this, any time he could be close to her, his hand went to their tiny child. She wasn’t sure he realized how often it happened, how naturally his instinct was drawn to fatherhood and the protection of his family, but she noticed. Oh, she noticed.

  “How’re you feelin’ this morning?” he asked. His voice was rocky and coarse, full of cigarettes and sleep. Sunday mornings were their only mornings to laze in bed and have this cozy peace. Outside, the neighbor’s dog barked, and the bare trees shook in a gusty wind that rattled the windows and occasionally sent a howl through their drafty little house, but none of that could touch this peaceful warmth.

  “Not too bad, so far.” She’d been sick the first time, but it was twice as bad this time. One of the teachers had told her that morning sickness was a sign that the baby was healthy. It was probably an old wives’ tale, but she hoped it was one based in truth. If so, she’d happily vomit every day for the next thirty-two weeks.

  But just now, she felt fine, cuddled up under the quilts with her handsome, loving man on a blustery, grey November day. She’d stopped attending Mass with the family when Brian had come home, so they had nothing to do but what they wanted to do, and what Mo wanted to do was this.

  She sighed happily and tucked her head more t
ightly under his bearded chin. She didn’t mind the beard so much this time. It had come in fuller, and he kept it trimmed so it wasn’t just a scraggly bush covering up his face.

  His hand moved on her belly, rubbing gentle circles. “We’re going to need a better house soon.”

  “Not terribly soon. We can put the crib in that corner, so we don’t need to move until the baby’s ready for a real bed. That’ll be a couple years, at least. And by then we’ll be set to buy.”

  “You’ve got everything figured out.”

  “I like to think about it. I like to plan.”

  He chuckled softly but didn’t say more. They settled into peaceful silence.

  “I hope I’m a good dad,” he said on a quiet breath, after a while.

  “You will be. You’re a good man, and you’re grand with Paul and Jamie and Kristy.”

  “I’m not always so grand with you.”

  It was true. On days when Essert had been especially nasty, or evenings Mo had to stay longer at school and he came home to a dark house, Brian could be glowery and sharply impatient—sometimes, when he’d had more than usual to drink, the things he might say, or the tone with which he might say them, bordered on unkind. But she understood the weight he labored under, knew he didn’t mean to be hurtful, and thus didn’t hold it against him. She understood him. Who he was, what he needed, why he needed it. She simply gave him his space until he came looking for her.

  Now, Mo knew, Brian was thinking specifically about the previous afternoon. He’d come home as usual for Saturdays, around one, and Mo hadn’t been home. She’d told him that morning that Aunt Bridie and Maggie were taking her to lunch and to do some shopping for Maggie’s baby, but he either hadn’t heard her or had figured she’d be home in time for him.

  He’d shouted at her the moment she’d stepped across the threshold, at just past one-thirty, demanding to know where she’d been. When she’d shouted right back, he’d stormed out of the house and roared off on his bike. Two hours later, he’d been home, reeking of whiskey and the Camels she’d asked him not to smoke in their tiny house. Mo had been reading in the living room, and she’d stayed put, keeping her focus on her novel, until he’d sat beside her and apologized.

  “You won’t take your moods out on our children,” she said now, playing the night before through her memory.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you will love them enough to give them your best.”

  He was quiet, and Mo was, too, thinking through the words she’d just said, and the meaning she hadn’t intended.

  When Brian had been still for a long while, scarcely seeming to breathe, Mo rose onto her elbow—the room spun a wee bit but settled quickly—and, facing him, said more. “I know you love me with all you have, Brian. I know it in the very core of my soul. You love me enough to trust me with your worst. That’s what this love is. Best and worst, the love is the same. I love every part of you, even the parts that hurt. And I love you enough to trust you with my worst, too.”

  “You don’t have any worst, Irish.”

  “Sure I do. I left you alone all those months in the war.” All those letters she hadn’t written, all those words he’d needed, she’d denied him.

  Staring into her eyes, his brow drawn in tight, Brian cupped her face in his wonderful, hard-worked hands. Their tough palms pressed against her cheeks.

  Often, she thought of all the things these hands had done, and the things they’d held to do them. Weapons. Automotive tools. The controls on his Harley. Even themselves, making fists in more brawls than she could count.

  These hands knew hard work and hard death—a hard life—and bore the scars and calluses of it all.

  But they also held his nephews and niece with adoring care. They offered comfort to his sister and support to his brother-in-law. His handshake was strong; Uncle Dave called it honorable.

  And these hands held her. From the moment they’d met, his every touch of her body had been loving. Every touch gentle, or, if not gentle, then rough with a fiery desire they shared.

  Yes, there were shadows inside him, and returning to fight again in a terrible war hadn’t brightened what was dim in his mind, or in his soul, wherever the shadows lurked. If he was broken, perhaps he always would be. There was a need inside him he hadn’t found a way yet to fill.

  But it didn’t matter. He was a good man. A strong man. A loving man. Her man.

  Their children would know his worth and feel his love.

  Mo reached up and pulled her man’s head down to hers.

  Today, they would stay in bed and not let the world in.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1972

  When Brian pulled his truck in front of the house, after the twenty-mile drive home from Essert’s, his hands still ached from the goddamn relentless cold. The weather had been nothing but wind and freezing rain all day, and the only heat in the service bay was a ridiculously overtaxed electric space heater.

  Working on engines with hands petrifying into Ice Age fossils was a kind of hell he hadn’t imagined before. On days like this, with Essert sitting warm and snarly in the office, doling out abuse and orders while he spat juice into that disgusting mug, Brian thought even factory work would have been better.

  He cut the engine, and the radio cut with it. Janis stopped singing.

  The shitty weather had slowed his drive, taken him twice as long, but Mo wasn’t home. He glared through the windshield and the January gloom at the empty driveway. Where in Jesus’ sweet hell was his wife?

  Goddamn, but he hated coming home to a dark, quiet house. There was nothing to do in there, nothing to keep his mind busy, so every creak was somebody coming up behind him, every shadow was somebody lying in wait. Those old ghosts made him feel like a fucking pussy, scared of his own house, so his mind went out looking for real things to worry about.

  They always landed on Mo—where she was, if she was safe, who she was with, if she was staying away on purpose, if he was making her happy, if he was keeping her safe, if he was satisfying her. If he was losing her.

  If she left him alone long enough, that cycle of worries made him feel like a pussy, too, so his mind turned it around and turned worry into anger.

  He knew it, felt it happen, hated himself for it, but couldn’t stop it.

  Sitting right here, with his hands aching like they were seventy years old and not just shy of thirty-two, Brian felt the anger coming on already. He stubbed out his Camel in the dash ashtray with enough force to make its plastic frame complain.

  Where the fuck was his wife?

  ~oOo~

  In the front room, he turned on the overhead light and the lamps on either side of the sofa, and flipped on the television, before he had his coat off. The three main channels were playing local Oklahoma City news, and he still couldn’t abide television news or the chance he might see a report from the war, so he flipped to the UHF channel, where a rerun of Leave It to Beaver was on.

  A hard blast of wind slammed the front windows, pattering pinpricks of ice against the glass and sending a howl through the house. The windows rattling their frames were like distant machine-gun fire.

  Fucking drafty piece of shit shack they lived in.

  Trying not to focus on the dark hole that was the doorway to their bedroom and the insignificant remainder of their home, he yanked his coat off and hooked it on the rack beside the front door.

  Before he went into the bedroom, he reached in and flipped the switch for the overhead. Jesus, he was too damn old to be afraid of the dark.

  The bedroom eased him a little. He liked this room best of all. It was where most of his happiest moments with Mo happened—and not just the sex. This was where they were most at peace together, curled in bed talking, or simply holding each other, or, yes, fucking gently or wildly. Fucking often.

  It was also the prettiest room. Their new bed, Mo’s pretty white dresser and desk from Dave and Bridie’s place, his old chest of drawers from when he
was a kid, now painted white to match hers. Mo always made the bed, always nestled that weird-looking State Fair dog he’d won her into the center of the pillows.

  He toed off his boots and pushed them into the closet. Then, flipping on the hall light, going all the way to the kitchen to hit that overhead, too, and retracing a few steps, to the bathroom, Brian went in to hose the misery of his workday off him.

  He sure as hell hoped Mo was home when he got out.

  ~oOo~

  She was not.

  Now it was nearing six o’clock, and Brian’s worries were growing teeth. He went to the phone on the kitchen wall and called Bridie.

  When she answered, he was too caught in his own head to bother with the niceties.

  “Where’s Mo?” he asked.

  He heard a ladylike and obviously rhetorical clearing of a throat. “Hello, Brian.”

  Trying to keep the snarl he felt on his face out of his voice, he gave her what she wanted. “Hi. Do you know where my wife is?”

  “I would imagine she’s at school, love.”

  “It’s fuckin’ six o’clock. School ends at three.”

  “Don’t curse at me, Brian Delaney.”

  “Sorry.” He wasn’t, but he was very fucking used to giving people what they wanted whether he wanted to or not. It was his whole fucking life these days, bending over and taking it.

  “Isn’t she directing the winter play?” Bridie finally answered his question.

  He stood there as the tumblers fell into place. Of course. That fucking school didn’t take enough of her attention, she didn’t give it enough of her time, she’d now also taken on the winter play. Tonight was the ‘dress rehearsal.’ Like a grade school play was so important it needed a fucking ‘dress rehearsal.’