Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  She was fucking pregnant. She should be taking care of their baby, spending time at home, with him. Not taking time from her family for all those strangers’ kids.

  “Okay,” he said and hung up.

  The phone rang again in seconds. He knew it would be Bridie, and he knew she meant to yell at him for his attitude, but he couldn’t walk away and risk the chance it was Mo.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s Bridie. Brian, love, why don’t you come over. Dinner’s on soon, when Dave gets home. Leave a note for Mo and join us.”

  Dave and Bridie lived very close, less than a mile away. Brian didn’t want to be alone, but he didn’t want to be in the middle of company, either. He wanted Mo. Only her.

  But her aunt’s care filed off an edge of his splintering mood, and he was able to draw a breath. “No, thanks. Sorry I swore, Bridie.” This time, he meant it.

  ~oOo~

  She got home at seven-forty. The sweep of the Bel Air’s headlights as she pulled onto the driveway settled his legitimate worry, at least.

  But by then, he was four and a half beers in, sprawled on the sagging sofa, glaring at My Three Sons on the television without watching it. He’d reached that poisonous stage where he thrummed with anger but understood that it wasn’t Mo’s fault. She’d done nothing except have a full life. It was him, he was being a pussy and a jackass, and he hated himself. So he turned it all inward.

  Stewing in his own toxic soup, he didn’t look away from the television when she came through the front door. He’d wanted to see her all day, she was right there, finally home, and he couldn’t make his head turn.

  “Hi, love,” she said, and his jaw wouldn’t unclench.

  He could sense her, knew she stood there in her coat and the cute hat and matching gloves Faye had knitted her for Christmas, with her school bag on her shoulder. He wanted her so fucking badly. His beautiful wife, her belly swelling sexily with their child, home at last. All day he’d wanted her with him, and she was right there.

  But he was frozen in place.

  She sighed, and in the corner of his eye Brian saw her understand his mood, give up, and carry on. She took off her coat and things, hung them up, set her school bag on the floor by the rack. Without another word, she came into the living room, nearly to him, but she only picked up the plate from the sandwich he’d made himself, and carried it away.

  Brian drank down the rest of his fifth beer and stared without seeing at the flickering screen.

  ~oOo~

  She was in bed when he came into the bedroom. All the lights were off but the one at his side of the bed, and she was turned to face the wall. As he shed his clothes and slid in beside her, she didn’t move, and Brian thought she was asleep.

  But as soon as he turned out his lamp and faced the dark, she rolled to him. He opened his arms, and she settled into the place she belonged—inside his arms, next to his heart.

  He kissed the top of her head and buried his nose in her silky, sweet-smelling hair. “I’m sorry, Irish.”

  “Shhh, love. It’s okay.”

  ~oOo~

  D came awake bolt upright and gasping, reaching desperately for his M16. It wasn’t in his hands, and he flailed all around, searching. God, the screaming. Who was hit? Somebody was hit bad, but he couldn’t see, and couldn’t find his gun in the muck.

  Not muck—it was soft. Dry. He was dry.

  The right world came back, and Brian realized he was home, in bed. Safe.

  But no—the screaming was real.

  Mo! He spun to her side of the bed, but even in the dark he could see she wasn’t there. What? But he could hear her screaming, she was screaming. Was he still asleep?

  Finally, he woke fully, and his confusion cleared. Her screams were close, and echoed oddly. She was in the bathroom.

  He leapt up and bolted out of the bedroom. The bathroom door was closed, but he didn’t slow down, barely bothered to turn the knob, slammed it open.

  His military senses took in the sight at a glance. She was standing beside the open toilet and just screaming. Staring into the bowl and screaming, her face twisted in horror. Spatters of blood on the white tiles of the floor. A pool of blood at her feet. Stripes of it on her ankles, showing beneath the hem of her long flannel nightgown.

  “Mo?”

  She turned and faced him directly, and in the pure, wrenching horror that warped her face, he knew. Then he ran the few steps to the toilet and saw.

  In the bowl, at the bottom, under water tinged pink and swirled red, was something about the size of his palm. Two tiny legs and two tiny arms. Two tiny hands, the fingers curled like fists. Nothing else looked remoted human, but there was no doubt what it was.

  Their baby. In the toilet.

  His first impulse, rising from some black corner of denial in his mind, was to flush it away. He dropped the lid and reached to do just that.

  “NO!” Mo shrieked and shoved him so hard she knocked him off balance, and he slammed into the side of the sink. The pain in his hip brought him some clarity, and as he watched his wife throw the lid up and drop to her knees, plunging her hands into the water, Brian began to understand what he needed to do.

  She was bleeding. More now that she’d landed on her knees. Her nightgown was soaking with blood.

  He grabbed a towel off the rack and helped his grief-crazed wife swaddle the drowned corpse of their half-formed child. Then he picked Mo up and carried her out of the room. They had to get to the hospital.

  ~oOo~

  Brian grabbed the clock and shut the alarm off. As he fumbled it back to the nightstand and worked himself up to wakefulness, he sensed that Mo’s side of the bed was empty. Indeed, he could hear her puttering around in the kitchen.

  He got up and, hitching his flannel pajama bottoms on his hips, grabbed his undershirt off the floor by the bed and yanked it on as he walked to the kitchen.

  She was dressed for school, in a plaid skirt, wool sweater, and pantyhose. Her feet were still in her pink slippers, but her hair and makeup were done. Standing at the counter, she prepared their lunches. The coffee pot was plugged in and percolating.

  She’d lost the baby just more than a week earlier. Despite her makeup, her complexion was still pale, her expression drawn with weary sorrow. Over the hellish past week, she’d said maybe a hundred words in all.

  “What’re you doin’, Irish?”

  “Making your lunch. I thought you’d like the rest of that ham Aunt Bridie brought over.” Her voice sounded almost normal. Quiet and flat, but closer to normal.

  Bridie, Maggie, and Faye had taken turns caring for them, making sure there was hot food, and staying with Mo, at the hospital and then at home, while he was at work, because fucking Essert wouldn’t give him more than one goddamn day off—and that without pay—to comfort his wife and do his own grieving.

  He could not get the sight of his child at the bottom of the toilet from his mind.

  At the hospital, they’d whisked her and the towel holding their child away from him, left him alone until he called his family and hers and had been soon surrounded by the people who loved them. When he’d been allowed to see her, a few hours later, she’d been eerily calm. Not tranquil, but inert. She’d answered questions but had asked none.

  Brian had asked many, but no one at the hospital had been willing to be more than vague, spouting platitudes about how this was for the best, this baby wasn’t meant to be, but there was no reason they couldn’t try again in as soon as six or eight weeks. This hospital and doctor were different from the military versions she’d had the first time, while he was away, and they didn’t have her records, so they were dismissive of the first miscarriage, promising that two events didn’t suggest a pattern.

  Mo had been patted and petted and called ‘honey,’ and ‘dear,’ by a multitude of strangers, and she’d stared stoically at them all.

  Grieving, frightened for Mo, furious at the condescension of the doctors and nurses, he’d finally chased down
her doctor and demanded more answers, making it clear that he was willing to do violence to get them. The doctor had told him two things and then asked what good it would do for Mo to know either.

  Their child had been a girl, and she had been growing without a brain. Only the most rudimentary central nervous system, which had kept her alive inside Mo for all these weeks. The baby had been doomed from the start.

  There was no good for Mo in knowing that, so Brian had nodded, released the doctor, and kept those sad secrets to himself, suffered the knowledge alone.

  He went to her now and put his hand over her arm. She paused in the act of spreading mustard over a piece of bread. “What’re you doin’, Irish?” he asked again.

  “I’m going back to work.”

  “No.”

  Her eyes flashed defiance. “Aye.”

  “You’re still bleeding. The doctor said to take two weeks to heal. You need to stay home this week.”

  “And do what? Sit in bed and be empty?” She shook his hand off. “There’s still some of Faye’s apple pie left. I’ll put a slice in your lunch.”

  He grabbed her arm with more insistence. “Maureen! You’re not going to work! You need to heal!”

  At his words and sharp, insistent tone, she went still. Then she carefully set the knife down, put the slice of bread on the top of his sandwich, and folded the wax paper around it, all while he held on.

  She didn’t speak until she’d set the wrapped sandwich in his lunchbox, on top of another just like it. Then she wrenched her arm free, turned, and faced him straight on.

  Her expression was bleak and rigid, formed on her too-pale face like it was carved in alabaster. But her eyes were full of frantic, frigid anger. “I am going to work. I am not going to sit alone and feel sorry for myself. That’s your game, Brian, not mine.”

  The words hit him like a punch, and his breath stopped. She’d spoken with such venom. He could be a real asshole, he knew, especially when he was drunk, and he’d no doubt said things just as harsh to her.

  But she had never said anything like it to him, and no words uttered with such a nasty bite. He’d never have expected her to have such a thing loaded and ready to fire. All her patience with him, all the ways she accepted his darkness, his moods, his gloom—was it all just a veneer covering a deep well of resentment?

  Defensive anger rose up to meet her attack, and he forced himself to swallow it back—it would only recede enough to keep his mouth closed, however. Not enough to cover the hurt.

  He gave her a terse nod, conceding the fight, and walked away before his inner jackass opened his mouth.

  ~oOo~

  Two weeks after Mo went back to work, just as she was beginning to ease back into a more normal frame of mood and mind, Faye gave birth to her fourth child.

  They knew it was coming, of course. Both Faye and Maggie were pregnant, were farther along than Mo had been, and were having healthy, normal pregnancies.

  Expecting it was not the same as being ready for it, however.

  When Brian got the call, he went to stay, according to their standing plan, with the older kids, so they’d be cared for in the evenings and overnight. Their next door neighbor would take Kristy and Jamie while Brian was at work and Paul was at school.

  Mo had intended to come with him, until their lives had taken a tumble. He hated to leave her, but it was late in the evening, Lenny had to be with Faye, and they were waiting for him to get there so they could head to the hospital. So Brian took Mo to her aunt and uncle’s, and then he went to take care of his nephews and niece for a few days, until Faye came home with little Jeffrey.

  It broke his heart to hold that tiny bundle of healthy, fat baby boy, when the memory of his own child still lurked near the front of his mind, but he thought it might have destroyed him if Faye had had a little girl, so he clutched that small mercy.

  And he couldn’t seem to give the baby back. He sat in the living room with Jeffrey sleeping in the crook of his arm, swaddled in a fluffy blue blanket with silken trim, and he stared at his perfect face.

  The doorbell rang, and Paul leapt up from the floor in front of the television. “I’ll get it!” he shouted, and the baby twitched but didn’t wake.

  Lenny stormed up from the hallway. “Paul Leonard Kemper—your mother is resting! Inside voice!”

  “Sorry, Dad,” Paul whispered and answered the door. “Aunt Mo!”

  “Hi, love.”

  Jamie jumped up from the floor and ran into the hall, too. “Aunt Mo!”

  “Jamie! There’s a good lad!” She sounded almost like herself.

  Brian almost stood, but the baby was sleeping, and no one was close enough to hand him off to. He stayed where he was and watched the doorway into the hall. He listened keenly to a softly spoken exchange between his wife and his brother-in-law.

  “Hello, Len,” Mo said.

  “Aw, Mo. Honey,” Lenny answered. “Thank you. I’m glad to see you. How are you?”

  “I’m well. How’s Faye?”

  “She’s good. Tired and sore, but good. Taking a nap right now with Kristy. Here, let me get your coat. Paul, take this and set it on the table, please.”

  As Brian watched, Paul ran by the doorway with a wrapped package—baby blue paper and a dark blue bow. She’d gone shopping for a baby gift? He hoped like hell Bridie had been with her.

  Then Mo was at the doorway. She stood in its frame and considered him, sitting here with a newborn in his arms. She didn’t move.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” her said, feeling guilty and sad and proud. So fucking proud of her.

  Damn, but his woman was strong. Not even a month after she’d lost her own baby, their second child lost, and in such a terrible way, still raw from the shock and sorrow, she had, alone, come willingly into a home celebrating a healthy birth. Paul and Jamie were just behind her, still clamoring for her attention, and she offered her hands for them to hold.

  “Are you okay?” Brian asked, knowing the answer.

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t have to be here, sweetheart.”

  “I do. That’s our new nephew.”

  He nodded.

  With Paul and Jamie still holding her hands, she came into the living room. The boys were quickly distracted by the television, and then she was alone, standing beside the sofa, looking down at the baby.

  Lenny stood in the doorway, a sentry over the scene.

  “He’s beautiful,” she breathed.

  Brian nodded. “He is.”

  “His name is Jeffrey Brian Kemper,” Lenny said from the doorway.

  And that was the first Brian had heard of the baby’s full name. He looked at Lenny. “You named him for me?”

  Lenny nodded. “We did.” Then, with a gentle, teasing laugh, he added, “Don’t swell up too much. Paul’s named for me, Jamie for your dad. We were runnin’ out of men in the family to name him after.”

  Brian laughed and cleared the emotion from his throat.

  Mo sat beside him, her eyes fixed on the baby. Brian was afraid to ask if she wanted to hold him, and she didn’t ask if she could, so they sat there together as they were.

  Then Mo put her hand on the little bald head. She brushed shaking fingers over his fresh new skin.

  It wasn’t until a drop hit the light blue blanket and beaded up on the fabric that Brian realized she was silently crying.

  “I love you, Mo Delaney,” he whispered. “We’ll be okay.”

  She nodded and rested her head on his shoulder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mo woke snuggled in a sunbeam. A crisp breeze wisped through the couple inches of open window—a breeze only a sunny Sunday morning in mid-March could bring, the kind that whispered the last lash of winter and the first swirl of spring and carried birdsong on its crests. The kind that came when the alarm hadn’t been set and sleep could end when it was over.

  In that gentle, promising warmth and ease, she took a deep, slow breath, let it fill her as she stre
tched, and allowed her mind to wake.

  Since her second miscarriage, two months ago, she’d had to hold her mind tightly closed on waking, and prepare herself. It had become a reflex needing no conscious choice, a thing she’d developed of necessity, after days and days of waking as if the world were normal, having one bright moment of feeling normal, and then the truth crashing into her chest with the force of a mule kick.

  That sight of her baby, her child, sitting at the bottom of the toilet, an image as bright and as dark as if it were still happening.

  She’d woken that awful night thinking she’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with her. There had been no real pain, not like the first time. She’d felt the need for the toilet, and, half-asleep, had stumbled in to use it. Not until it was happening had she known anything was wrong.

  Two months later, that night was a vivid imprint on the very front of her brain, and the first clear thought or sight of every waking.

  The first miscarriage had broken her heart, but this second one might have broken her mind.

  No one, not her family, not her doctor, not even Brian, could understand. They wanted her to heal. They talked of trying again. They’d already forgotten the tiny baby she’d lifted from bloody toilet water and carried to the hospital in a used bath towel.

  She’d never seen him or her again. A nurse had taken the towel from her and she’d never seen her child again. She knew nothing, not even if she’d had a daughter or a son. Not why it had happened, what she had done wrong. Only that ‘it wasn’t meant to be.’

  But it had been. She had held her child. She’d seen her child’s arms and legs. Wee feet, fragile fists. She’d seen her child. Her child had been.

  Her family wanted her to heal, so she had healed. She loved baby Jeffy and waited with hopeful anticipation for Maggie’s first child. She’d even set her hand on Maggie’s belly and made herself smile when the baby had kicked her palm.