They’d got so far as to start really feeling each other out about politics—not just women’s rights but the war, and the economy, and the crook in the White House. Watergate was taking over every television news report and most of every day’s front page.
Topic after topic had them in total accord, or close enough to it. Now, they sat at the table and chopped vegetables. They’d moved on to the really serious topics, and had been discussing the virtues of their men’s physiology. Mo picked up a very robust zucchini as a point of reference, and Joanna picked up an eggplant in response.
Mo goggled at the huge piece of produce. “Bloody hell! What do you use for lube? 10W-40?”
They both doubled over in the kind of shared hilarity that only drunkenness or real friendship can generate.
As Mo sat up again, she felt a twinge in her belly. Not a pain, really, but a cramp. If she were on her period, she’d think nothing of it.
But she was not on her period. She was ten weeks into her third pregnancy. Her miscarriages had happened much later than this, but she took no comfort in that. She panicked at once but tried to hide it.
“Oh, excuse me a mo. I need the bathroom,” she said in the lightest tone she could manage and with, she hoped, something like a smile.
But Joanna frowned a bit. “You okay?”
“Sure. Carry on. I’ll be right back.”
When she stood, she felt a stronger cramp. An actual pain.
Oh God.
She hurried to the bathroom with as much cool as she could muster and tore her jeans and underwear down the second she had the door closed.
She was bleeding.
Oh God! Oh no! Please, please, please no!
It wasn’t a lot of blood. Not like before. Maybe this was nothing. Maybe this was normal.
But it wasn’t normal, was it? Mo knew in her bones, in her soul, in her belly that it wasn’t normal.
Well, maybe, at least, it wasn’t too late. Maybe something could be done.
Silently chanting a desperate prayer, Mo tried to think what to do. Brian was out of reach until they got back from their ride. Aunt Bridie and the rest of the family had gone into the City for a day at the zoo. Faye and Lenny lived in the City now, forty minutes away. Dane was with Brian, so she couldn’t send Joanna away.
Joanna. She was Mo’s only help.
Breathing in as deeply as she could, holding off panic with both hands, she wiped herself up, flushed the tissues away, pulled up her pants, washed her hands, and went back to the kitchen.
Joanna smiled as she came in, but the expression shifted to worry when she saw Mo’s face. “Maureen? What’s wrong?”
“I think I might be having a miscarriage.” Mo marveled at her level tone. While she prayed and begged in a silent chant in her mind, something automatic, unhuman, had taken over her body.
“Oh no! Honey! What can I do?”
“I need to go to the hospital, but I don’t want to drive myself.”
“Where are your keys? Let’s go! Do we need to call your doctor?”
“I don’t want to take the time. The hospital will call him. My keys are in my purse.”
Joanna closed Mo in her arms and started to lead her to the door.
“Wait.” Mo stopped. “I need to leave Brian a note.”
She stopped at the little chalkboard they used for a grocery list and used the heel of her hand to wipe away what was written there:
Dish soap
Endust
B’s mustard
And then paused, unable to find the words she needed. Finally, she wrote:
Bleeding. Went to hospital. With J.
Scared.
Standing at her side, Joanna took her into her arms again. “Oh, honey. Let’s go.”
~oOo~
It was over by the time Brian arrived.
Mo hated him a little for that.
He promised never to leave her, but he’d been missing for most of the losses she’d experienced since knowing him. Brian always managed to be a factor in the calculus of her grief.
She lay on a narrow gurney in the emergency ward, closed in among flimsy curtains, listening to the bustle and chime of a Saturday in the ER, and waited for a procedure room to open up so the doctor could take what was left of her pregnancy out of her. Joanna had hardly left her side, only stepping beyond the drawn curtain when the ER doctor had set Mo’s legs in stirrups.
They’d met only a few hours earlier, but right now, this woman was Mo’s best friend. Mo hadn’t cried—she was too numb with sorrow and too weary of loss to express any emotion whatsoever—but Joanna had sat beside her and held her hand and not tried to offer any comfort at all but her presence. She’d asked once if Mo wanted to be alone, and when Mo had shaken her head, Joanna had sat down and stayed put. She’d understood what Mo needed.
This woman might in fact be more than a momentary best friend.
The curtain rustled, and Brian found the opening and came through. His face was a mask of worry and regret, and Mo discovered she couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want his worry, or his regret, or his care, all of which was too fucking late. She was empty. In every sense of the word.
“God, sweetheart,” he said.
Mo turned her head from him and stared at the wall.
“Dane’s in the waiting room, Jo,” Brian said.
Joanna took the hint. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she said and gave Mo’s hand a squeeze before she let it go. “Let me know if you need anything, honey. You, too, D,” she said as she walked away.
Joanna called him D, because Dane called him D. As Collie and John did. To his war buddies, he was still the soldier.
Her husband was two men. Brian, who loved her. And D, who left her.
Brian came to her now and picked up her hand. “Ah, Irish. I’m so sorry.”
Mo stared at the wall.
~oOo~
It was summer, and Mo had nothing to do. So she did nothing.
Even after she was healed, physically, from the miscarriage, she stayed in bed most days. Generally, by the time Brian got home from work, she’d managed to put on shorts and a top and put something like a meal together, but that was the bulk of her daily activity. Occasionally, she accomplished some laundry. Once, she tried to go to the market, but lost interest before she’d got there. Maggie had been bringing groceries over for a few weeks now.
After dinner, Mo cleaned the dishes and went back to bed, where she might read a Barbara Cartland novel or a magazine, or just lie on her back and stare at the ceiling until sleep arrived.
She and Brian ate together, but they didn’t do much talking. For a week or two, he tried, and then he stopped. Now they shared life in near silence. Each night, when she walked away and went to bed, he went out to the garage and worked on his old bike. He came in late, showered and came to bed, and they slept side by side but not together.
Each day, she was just a little more angry with him.
It wasn’t wholly reasonable, or even rational, she knew. The miscarriage wasn’t his fault. In fact, they knew for a fact now that it was absolutely her fault, that they all were. She had an ‘incompetent cervix,’ which couldn’t stay closed against the weight of a pregnancy.
She’d been carrying twins this time, so her cervix had given out all the faster.
Incompetent. Her body was incompetent.
She’d failed at being a mother because she was incompetent.
She hated herself for that. But it was Brian she turned her silent anger on. Brian who’d left her alone again and again. Who was leaving her alone even now, avoiding her silence and his guilt. Avoiding the giant hole between them.
Mo lay in bed and listened to the sound of his power tools in the garage, and the undulations of night sounds, of crickets and locusts, that filled each pause in his work.
She loved him. She always would, for her whole life. But if he left her right now, she wasn’t sure she’d feel it.
~oOo~
Mo fi
nished drying the pot, put it in the cupboard, and hung the dish towel on its hook. The kitchen tidy and dinner over, she meant to wash her face and get in bed to finish her book. Brian had walked off without a word after he’d finished his meal. She assumed he was outside, though she didn’t hear sounds of his work from the garage.
But when she turned, he was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and their little hall, leaning against the frame with his arms folded, watching her.
She stopped and waited, her eyes on his.
“We need to talk, sweetheart.”
“Okay. About what?”
“You know what. Us. What’s goin’ on with you, with us.”
She didn’t answer, or look away.
He came to her and put his hand around her arm. Her skin shrank up beneath his touch, and she pulled away from him.
Deep hurt moved across his face, through his eyes, but all he said was, “Will you come sit?”
She sat. He sat across from her.
And then he said the worst thing she could imagine--beyond her imagining.
“I saw the doc on my lunch break today. I’m getting a vasectomy next week. I made the appointment while I was there, and Hoff gave me a few days off.”
If she hadn’t been sitting, shock might have knocked her over. “What? No!”
“We have to stop this, sweetheart. Look what it’s doing to us. To you. It’s killin’ me to see you hurtin’ like this.”
This. It. He was talking about their children. And her pain. She scoffed. “Ach, poor laddie. It must be so terrible for you to watch.”
“Jesus, Mo. That’s not what I meant—I’m worried about you. I love you.”
“Then listen to me.” Sitting back in the chair, she crossed her arms. “Don’t you dare do somethin’ like that, Brian Delaney. Don’t you dare.”
“I am listening. I also listened to the doctor at the hospital. I heard what he said. Did you? This isn’t in the cards for us, sweetheart.”
“There’s a procedure. They can sew me shut the next time I get pregnant.” She’d been too numb and dazed to catch all the details, but of that she was sure. They could keep her incompetent cervix closed.
“Did you hear him describe the risks, especially because you miscarry when you do? Hemorrhage, Mo. And all kinds of other things I didn’t understand. You could die.”
She could die driving to school every day. She could slip and fall in the bath. Anybody could die any time. “I don’t care. It’s worth the risk.”
“Not to me, it’s not. If you want a baby so bad, we can adopt.” He leaned close and held out his hand, wanting her to take it. She didn’t. “We’re both orphans, sweetheart. We know better than most that family doesn’t have to be like a postcard to be good. We could give an orphaned baby a home.”
The thought had occurred to her. The doctor had suggested it. And Mo could think of no good reason why she shouldn’t consider it. Except she simply couldn’t. She wanted a baby of her own. A baby with blue eyes and a serious brow. Maybe a chin with a wee cleft. A wee Irish lovely that would be the best of them both.
She wanted her own baby. She wanted her body not to fail her. She wanted to be competent.
“No. I want my own baby.”
“I’m getting the vasectomy, Mo. Period. I will not risk losing you. I will not get you pregnant again. And I’m gonna make damn sure that’s true.”
Her heart and mind filled with as much panic as she’d ever felt, the same kind of panic she’d felt each time she’d stared at a bloody mess that had been her own child. She set her hands on the table and stood, leaning close, letting him see the full potency of her outrage.
“Let me be absolutely clear. If you do it, you will already have lost me, Brian. Or no—you will have left me. Yet again. And I won’t be surprised, will I? Leaving me is what you’re best at.”
He rocked back as if she’d punched him. His face went slack with the shock of the blow.
Good.
“If you do this terrible thing, if you leave me like this, I’ll not be here waiting for you.” Mo walked from the kitchen, demanding that her legs carry her steadily. She picked her handbag up from her dresser and left the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Brian didn’t have the vasectomy.
But Mo still wouldn’t see him.
Certain, despite her fury, that he was right, he’d kept hold of the appointment until the last minute, trying to work out how he’d make Mo see reason, how he’d force her to understand that they didn’t need a baby to be happy, that they most certainly didn’t need a baby they’d made themselves to be happy.
But she wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t acknowledge his existence in any way.
A couple days after she’d stormed out, she’d sneaked into their house while he was at work and packed bags. He’d come home to find half of her missing from their home. She hadn’t moved completely out, but she’d taken all her toiletries, and plenty of summer clothes. She meant to stay away for a while, if not forever.
Then, since she was stubbornly refusing to come home, using Bridie and Maggie as her mouthpieces, he’d seriously considered getting snipped and telling her he hadn’t. She was giving him plenty of time to heal up without her any the wiser. Could he lie about something like that? Could he hold that lie for the rest of his life?
To save Mo? To save them? Absolutely.
But the evidence suggested that Mo got pregnant practically the moment she decided she wanted to be. They started trying, and she caught a baby. Like clockwork. Getting a pregnancy wasn’t the problem, keeping it was.
She was not a stupid woman. If suddenly she stopped being able to get pregnant at all, especially after this blowup, she’d be suspicious. Once she was suspicious, she’d dig until she knew. And then they’d be over anyway.
So Brian didn’t have the vasectomy.
But Mo still wouldn’t see him.
Three weeks had passed, and she was still with the Quinns, still refusing his calls, still hiding when he went to the house. He hadn’t gotten the fucking vasectomy, but she was leaving him anyway.
He was going out of his mind.
~oOo~
Brian stormed up to the Quinns’ front door and leaned on the bell, then pounded with both fists on the wood. “MO! MAUREEN DELANEY! GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE! ENOUGH OF THIS!” He kicked the door with his steel-toed Red Wing boot, and the wood cracked.
He peered through the windows, but the sheers were drawn and the house was dark.
He didn’t care. They were probably all hiding in there, keeping his wife from him, conspiring to drive him insane.
He kicked the door again. “MO, GODDAMMIT! YOU ARE MY FUCKING WIFE!”
“Brian!” Bridie’s voice came from behind him, and he spun around. “Enough, lad!”
She was standing on the driveway, with two-year-old Annette on her hip. The baby’s ginger pigtails were wet. She wore a little yellow bathing suit, and she was soaking Bridie’s shorts and top. They’d been in the back, playing in the kiddie pool, apparently.
None of that mattered to him. Bridie had stood between him and Mo for weeks now. Bridie, Maggie, and Roger, too. Even Robby. The whole goddamn family. He didn’t give a fuck if he was disrupting Bridie’s day now.
Annette’s eyes were round and worried, fixed on him. That mattered to him. That girl loved him, and it broke his heart a little to see her afraid.
He forced himself to speak calmly. “I want to see my wife, Bridie. Now. You have to get out of my way now. No more of this bullshit.”
“Watch your tongue around the little one, young man. And Mo isn’t here right now, is she? Do you see her car?”
She indicated the driveway, and he looked. Only Bridie’s Buick station wagon was parked on the driveway, and there were no other cars in sight. This was a house with a lot of drivers—Bridie, Robby, Maggie, Roger, and now Mo—and three cars among them, but only the Buick was around. “Where is she? Where is ever
ybody?”
“Roger and Robby are at work. Maggie and Mo are at the doctor. Today, it’s just me and the wee lovely right here. And now you.”
“Mo’s at the doctor? Is she hurt? Is she okay?”
“No, no one’s hurt. As for okay, well, that’s a complicated question of late, isn’t it?” Bridie held out her hand. “Come ‘round back with me, Brian. We’ll talk while Annie plays.”
It was the closest anyone had let him get to Mo in weeks; even the promise of talk was a boon he couldn’t refuse. Brian went to Mo’s aunt and took her hand.
They went around the house, through the little gate, and into the back yard, which was strewn with the brightly colored chaos of a child at summer play. Bridie put Annette in the pool, and she immediately grabbed a pink bucket and scooped up water to dump on her head.
Bridie and Brian sat in webbed lawn chairs nearby. Just this simple chance to get some insight, to maybe get Bridie on his side and enlist her help in bringing Mo back to him, calmed him considerably.
“What’s going on at the doctor? Is it Maggie? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, love.” Bridie cleared her throat. “She’s pregnant. Mo took her to her obstetrician appointment.”
A sour, painful laugh burst from Brian’s chest. Mo was surrounded by fertile women growing their families on a schedule that seemed designed to deepen and prolong her own pain. “Jesus Christ.”
“She was already pregnant when Mo lost hers. They told no one at first, so the focus would be on Mo’s happiness. Then they kept it quiet after she lost the babies, to try not to add to her pain, but now Maggie’s started showing. She’s four months along now, and they had to say.”
Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning Page 32