“That’s how …” He let the words die, because he wasn’t sure how to say that Mo would have been that pregnant now, and he wasn’t sure if he should say it at all. They would have had their babies at the same time.
Mo had been carrying twins this time. She’d now lost four children.
“I know,” Bridie said and reached over to squeeze his hand. “I know, love.”
“Why would Mo take her to the doctor? Why would she do that to herself?”
“You’d have to ask her that.”
Brian slammed his hands to his head and raked his fingers harshly through his long hair. “Goddammit, Bridie! I can’t ask her if she won’t talk to me. I didn’t get the damn vasectomy! I didn’t do it! Why won’t she come home?”
“I’ll ask you again to watch your tongue around Annie.”
Brian could only manage to growl at that. His swearing was the least of anyone’s problems just now.
“The … vasectomy”—she whispered it like it was a word dirtier than any other Brian had uttered—"was a terrible thing to take steps toward without talking to her. But it’s not that keeping her away from you, Brian. It’s not that causing her so much hurt.”
He dropped his hands and stared at Bridie, trying to hone his focus enough to understand what the fuck that meant. “What? Then what?”
“Mima!” Annette called from the pool. “Look I do!”
Bridie and Brian both turned and watched the baby flop onto her belly in the middle of her little inflatable pool and thrash her arms and legs in the two inches of water as if she were swimming.
“Well, look at you, lovey! What a good wee swimmer you are!”
“Yeah! I wimmin’!”
Brian smiled. His cheeks felt stiff; he hadn’t had cause to smile in weeks. And then he thought of Mo hiding out here, surrounded by Annie’s toddler antics, and Maggie’s blooming pregnancy, all things Mo couldn’t have, and wondered why in the holy living fuck she preferred to be here than home with him where she belonged.
“Help me, Bridie. I don’t know what’s wrong, if it’s not what I thought it was.”
Bridie watched her granddaughter playing in the pool for a bit before she answered. “You know, when Mo’s parents died, she was home alone. They’d gone out and left her home. She was twelve, and plenty old enough to tend herself, of course. But then they wrecked and died. She was alone all through the night and well into the next day, until the police came to tell her her ma and da were dead. Then they scared up a neighbor, an old lady who lived below them, and put Mo in her charge.”
“I never knew that. I knew her parents died when she was twelve, and she came to live with you, but that’s about all she’s said.” In fact, she talked little of her mother and father. Bridie and Dave were the only parents Brian knew or knew of in any real sense.
“She’s never told me, either. Or anyone, so far’s I know. She never, ever speaks of it. What I know I heard from the neighbor lady. When Mo was twelve, her parents went away and never came back. For two weeks thereafter, she stayed with a neighbor. When word got to us, we acted fast as we could to bring her over, but Robby was just small then, and we couldn’t afford to close the shop and trek back to Belfast for the funeral or to sort things. We arranged for Mo to come to us, and we were ready to welcome her with wide arms. But we were strangers to her. She stood alone at her parents’ graves, surrounded by neighbors and friends of her parents, yet completely alone.”
“Christ.”
Bridie nodded sadly. “She was a twisty knot of rage and grief when she came to us. We didn’t know how to help her, or handle her, but in time, she sorted herself on her own. But I don’t think Mo has ever fully healed from the pain she felt when she was alone in the world at the tender age of twelve. Our girl still feels alone in the world.”
“She doesn’t! She’s not! She knows I love her. She has you and Maggie and everybody. She has Faye and Lenny and their kids, too. She’s surrounded by people who love her.”
“Aye, she is. And yet the losses of late—the wee babes, and Dave”—Bridie’s voice broke, but she swallowed and carried on—”and you, Brian, going off to war and leaving her behind. She feels such losses alone, I think. Even when others share them, she feels them alone. She takes care of what needs taking care of. She stands strong for the people around her. She overcomes her own sorrows. But she feels them alone.” Now Bridie turned and gave Brian her full attention. “I think she’d like not to be alone anymore. I think she needs to be able to lean, and she needs to lean on you. But she can’t trust you’ll be there.”
If Bridie had suddenly sliced open his chest and dug in to squeeze his heart, she couldn’t have hurt him more. “I am here. I will always be here for her.”
He’d been out on the road with Dane, having a great afternoon, when she’d had this last miscarriage. He’d arrived too late to help her through anything but the aftermath. But he knew damn well she didn’t want him stuck to her side every minute of every day. So how could he be there for her when she needed him, if he couldn’t be sure when she would? “I don’t know what to do, Bridie.”
“I’m trying to tell you, Brian. What’s going on with our Mo, it’s not about you so much. You’re part of it, aye. But you’re only part. This is Mo, who needs so badly to be strong, feeling weak. She wants to make a family, and she can’t. She’s failing, and she’s furious with herself. She feels weak, and she needs help, but she can’t trust it.
“Me, you mean. She can’t trust me.”
“Perhaps. More than once, you’ve not been with her when she needed to lean, Brian. That’s a simple fact. Sometimes, that’s been beyond your control, but other times, it’s been your choice.”
“That’s not fair, Bridie.”
“Perhaps. But nor is life.”
“How do I fix this? How do I make her trust me?”
“You show her that you’re not leaving her. You listen to her. And you respect her wishes. The woman you married was born to be a mother. Lord, she mothers everyone. She even mothered me in the weeks after Dave passed, when I could hardly make a clear thought through my sadness. She took care of all that money mess. She set aside her own grief and took care of everything. And look at the job she chose—she spends her days mothering other people’s children. When you tell her you don’t want children with her, that’s an abandonment as great as any other.”
“I didn’t tell her I didn’t want children. I told her it wasn’t worth losing her. She could die if we keep trying, Bridie. That’s so much more important than a baby. Mo is everything. She is all I need. I can’t risk her.”
“I understand. But Brian, Mo needs more. As much as she loves you, that love is not enough. She’s had a hole in her since she was twelve years old, and one love is not enough to fill it. Not even the love she has for you.”
~oOo~
He wasn’t enough for her.
He’d gone three weeks without her—and more than that if he added in the weeks right after the miscarriage, before she’d run, when she wandered through their little house like a robot. When it was all tallied up, they’d been broken for almost two months. And he was broken, too, barely hanging on to the frailest thread of sanity. Just enough to keep working, to remember to eat, to get his ass home and drink himself unconscious so he didn’t feel the absence in their bed every night.
The summer was winding down, and she was no doubt getting ready for her next school year. He loved to watch her prepare for her new students—all the bright colors of her markers and folders, her crisp new gradebook. The pretty name signs she made for each student, the little welcome bags she put together, the letters she wrote their parents.
The woman you married was born to be a mother, Brian.
One love isn’t enough for her.
He wasn’t enough for her. She was staying away, shunning him, because he wasn’t enough.
She needed a baby, her own baby, and there was nothing he could do to ensure she had one.
; Bridie wanted him to be patient, to wait for Mo to see her own way home, but he was falling apart. From the day he’d taken her to see 2001 at the Derrickland Drive-In, Mo had been everything he needed. She’d kept him whole. She’d kept him human.
Now she was gone, and he couldn’t give her what she needed to come home.
~oOo~
An icy wash of water hit his face, and Brian sputtered to consciousness and leapt up, ready to fight. He swung wildly with one hand, trying to grab for his rifle with the other—and then he saw, through foggy eyes, that he was in his own living room. Two familiar, but unexpected, faces swirled before him.
He blinked until he could see well enough. “Collie? Dane? The fuck?” His face and t-shirt were soaked, and the noisy window AC unit felt like it was turning the water to ice. “How’d you get in here?”
“You didn’t lock the door, asshole,” Collie answered. “You’re layin’ here in your skivvies, dead to the world, and any bastard could’ve come in and fucked you up. Goddamn, D.”
Brian raked his hair out of his face and looked around. The television was on, showing Saturday-morning cartoons. He tried to put his comprehension back in order. He’d come home from the Quinns, without seeing Mo, reeling from everything Bridie had said. He should have gone back to work for the afternoon, but he’d come home and called in sick for the rest of the day.
Then he’d begun to drink.
That was what he remembered. He did not remember inviting Collie and Dane over.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?”
“Rescuin’ you,” Dane said.
“Huh?”
“It’s Saturday,” Collie said. “You’re a sad sack bastard who’s spent long enough feeling sorry for yourself. So we’re ridin’ today. Get a shower—you stink. We’ll put on coffee. And then we’re riding. We’re meetin’ John at Stooge’s. Let’s get your sorry ass movin’.”
Brian turned to Dane. “If we’re meeting at Stooge’s, why the fuck are you all the way out here?” Stooge’s was a bar in Dane’s own town—more than a hundred miles away. His cousin owned the place.
His friend’s eyes slid sideways for a second, and then came back. The definition of shifty.
“What the hell, Dane?”
“I brought Jo out. Dropped her off with—”
Brian had Dane by the shirt, up against the wall, before he could finish. “With Mo? You saw my woman? You working against me now?”
“No! Shit, D!”
Collie’s ham-sized hands slammed onto Brian’s shoulders. “Easy, D. Easy. Back off.”
Brian didn’t back off, but he didn’t do more than hold Dane in place. “Did you see her?”
“No, brother. No. I dropped Jo off. That’s it. I’m on your side. You want me to keep them apart, I will.”
The energy seeped from his muscles, and he let Dane go. Fuck, his head hurt. Almost as much as his heart.
“No. If she needs a friend, she should have one. But shit. She won’t even look at me. Everything’s fallin’ apart, and I can’t do nothing to stop it.”
Collie gave Brian’s shoulders a squeeze. “Come on, D. Wash up. Let’s ride. Blow the shit outta your head for a while.”
~oOo~
His actual life was falling apart around him, and a hundred-mile ride wasn’t going to fix that, but it was a good day for a ride anyway. Hot and clear. They stayed on side roads, rode abreast every chance they could, raced a few clear straightaways, and by the time they pulled up alongside John’s shiny new Ironhead, Brian felt at least like he could think straight.
It was still early, not even noon yet, and Stooge’s hadn’t had its doors open long. John hadn’t gone in yet. He sat sidewise on his bike and watched them park, and, after a quick greeting of back slaps and manly hugs, they all went in together.
Dane’s cousin, Stu, nodded as they clomped in and tucked their shades away, and he started pulling pints off the tap for them right away. “Y’all looking for food, too? Delia’ll have the grill up in a few.”
Dane cast a look around at the group; they all gave some kind of positive reaction. “Yeah, Stu. Burgers and rings all around, I guess.”
They took the table they usually took here, near the pool tables, away from, but with clear view of, the front door.
Brian nodded at John as they settled in. “Where’s your kutte?” John was a member of the Poison Cobras MC; he and Brian had first met a few years back, at another hole-in-the-wall biker bar, when Brian had taken Mo out for a long ride.
Seemed like more than a lifetime ago.
“The Cobras are no more, sad to say.”
“What happened?” Dane asked.
John shrugged. “Just sorta fell apart. Guys weren’t riding regular anymore, nobody was paying up their dues. Then the landlord sold the building we used as a clubhouse, and the new owner kicked us out, and we all decided the time had come, y’know?” He laughed and grabbed handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table. “I ride more with you assholes lately than I was with the club, anyway.”
“For the best,” Collie said. Then Stu brought over their beers, and Collie turned his attention to him. “You gonna sit with us and bend your arm, Stu?”
“If I start drinkin’ before noon, Delia’ll have me sleepin’ in the kennel with the hounds for a week. But later, yeah.”
He went back to work, and John turned to Collie. “For the best? Why?”
“Poison Cobras is a stupid goddamn name, my friend.”
“It really is,” Brian chuckled. The simple humor felt good, almost cleansing, and he leaned into it, until Dane and Collie were hooting with him.
“Hey—I came up with that name. It’s not stupid. Cobras are dangerous fuckers.”
“All cobras are venomous, brother,” Brian said, his humor settling. “It’s like calling yourself the Legless Snakes.” Collie and Dane chuckled again.
John frowned and hunkered defensively over his brew. “It’s not anything like that. It’s stressing how dangerous we are. Poison Cobras. Two things that can fuck you up.”
“No, just one thing,” Dane said, and everybody but John laughed again.
“What would you name a motorcycle club, smartasses?”
Brian looked to Dane, and then Collie. They all shrugged. “I don’t know, man,” Brian said. “But it wouldn’t be redundant. Or legless. It would be something that said we could really fuck people up, and we knew how words worked, too.”
John flipped them double birds. “Assholes.”
~oOo~
The ride had been good. Sitting with his friends over huge burgers and cheap beers was good. But after a couple hours, Brian was restless again. The beers hadn’t mellowed him out. They’d returned his maudlin desperation instead.
His life was falling apart. He was losing Mo, had already lost Mo. Without her, he was nothing. Not even human.
He wasn’t enough for her. There was nothing he could do to change that.
Suddenly, he couldn’t sit here anymore. He needed to get back out on the road, away from his thoughts, away from this fucking terror seeping into his consciousness.
He was losing everything.
Without Mo, who needed more than he could offer, he was nothing.
“You okay, D?” Dane asked.
Brian realized he’d been staring at the scratched table without seeing it, or hearing the crosstalk going on around him.
“You know what, my brothers,” he said, putting as much cool in his voice as he could muster. “I need to get back on the road.”
“Well, hold up. Let’s settle up and ride on, then.”
Brian put his hand on Dane’s arm to stop him. “Nah, man. I need to ride alone right now. And you’re gonna need to get back to Jo soon enough. There’s nothin’ I gotta get back for.” He stood up, pulled out his wallet, and dropped some bills on the table.
Collie stood. “I don’t like you goin’ off on your own, D. Not the way you’ve been.”
“I’m fine. I don’t wan
t company.”
He turned and headed for the door.
“D!” Dane caught up to him and grabbed his arm.
Brian turned and shoved him back. “I said I don’t want fuckin’ company. Back off.”
Dane backed off.
Brian went to his bike and rode. He had no idea where he was headed, or what he had in mind to do when he got there.
All he knew was without Mo, there was no fucking point to anything.
~oOo~
He got on the highway and rode east. Normally, he preferred smaller roads, with less traffic and a more interesting ride, but now, he felt the need to hurry. Whether he was fleeing or chasing something, he couldn’t say. He was just hurrying.
But the gaping, endless emptiness of a life without Mo wouldn’t leave him.
He wasn’t enough for her. She needed more than he could give her. Every time she’d needed him, he’d failed her. He’d been missing, or he’d been insufficient, but every time, a failure.
She had saved his fucking life, she had singlehandedly pulled him, heart and soul, from the monstrous murk of war, and he couldn’t even manage to offer her a place to lean when she was weary.
He didn’t know how long he’d been riding or where he even was. He wasn’t paying attention to the traffic around him or the signposts that would orient him. The sun was behind him, and his shadow raced on ahead, long and thin. He watched that dark ghost, and the macadam rolling through it, and kept riding.
An overpass emerged on the horizon, and Brian watched it grow as he neared it.
The road curved slightly as the overpass arrived, but Brian couldn’t find the will to turn the wheel—until the last second, and he skidded on the shoulder and got back on the road.
Had he been aiming at the concrete wall of the overpass?
Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning Page 33