Next To You (35 page)

‘You shouldered a lot.’ Will said.

‘Alex shouldered more. I pushed everyone away, but he understood. We’d been friends since we were in our twenties. He introduced me to Drew. Alex tried to hold me up and console me. He told me he loved me, said he’d take care of me, offered me comfort and I took it.’

‘It’s understandable.’

‘I suppose. I know now it wasn’t really an affair, it was an escape. It was about trying to find solace from what was happening, even if it was for five minutes. We were all over each other trying to blot it out. Any chance we got, any time we had alone when his mother came over to sit with Drew for an hour, or when Jamie was there, we fucked. Alex and I fucked like rats while his dying brother was in the next room. Drew cried and moaned night and day, I was nearly six months pregnant and Alex and I were screwing to drown out the sound. Then I started bleeding.’

She buried her face in the crook of William’s arm and moaned. She waited for the tears to come, for their hot rush to release the tightness in her throat, but she’d cried so much about Drew and the baby in the past that her body—or her mind—had detached from weeping as a response. All she could do was groan.

‘Caroline. Caroline, hush now,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘Don’t think about it anymore. Don’t tell me anymore.’ He slipped his hands down her back.

Caroline moaned again, and withdrew from his arms. ‘I want to finish this. Let me get it out. Please.’

He nodded. ‘All right.’

She shoved hair from her face. ‘For two days I wouldn’t let anyone touch the baby. We stayed in a little room—me and the baby I never gave a name to—and I wouldn’t let anyone touch him. Newborn dead babies don’t really have much of a smell. They don’t have that baby perfume or that sweet milky scent. Did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘It’s because they haven’t lived long enough to feed, or breathed enough air to acquire that smell of a person. That’s one thing I can’t ever forget. I can get through a day without a painful memory of Drew. I can have no recollection of trying to kill myself, but I can’t block out that my child had no smell. It was Alex who convinced me to let them take my son away so we could bury him near my parents.’ Caroline swallowed a few times, trying to slow down the words that wanted rush from her gullet.

Will rubbed his chin. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, searching for something better to say, to soothe her, but everything that came to mind was inadequate.

She ran her tongue across her bottom lip. ‘I know I was in a kind of shock. Everything was such a mess; there was so much to do. I couldn’t sleep—at all. I was given a prescription for sedatives after the baby died. I was depressed. I was anxious. I was angry. I believed Drew had smashed my dad’s car into that cement truck on purpose so we wouldn’t have a baby, and I hated him for it. I said that to people who came to visit. I said Drew wanted the baby dead and I hated him. I hated him, and I wanted him to die. And the thing was, Drew withered in front of us. He looked like one of those poor souls in a concentration camp and we couldn’t do anything but look at him. We just kept on looking and … waiting, and he kept wailing.’ She pulled her feet from his ankles and sat up.

Grabbing the pillows, Will adjusted the cushions so they could both sit against the headboard.

She gave a hollow laugh. ‘Alex loved him,’ she said. ‘I loved him. Oh, my God, I loved him. Understand that, William. I loved my husband, and it cut me to the bone because I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t died too. I hated myself for living. I hated myself for thinking Drew had crashed the car on purpose. I hated myself for needing Alex. I hated myself for losing the baby. I hated myself for not being able to take the burden on my own, especially since Drew was aware of everything. He knew. He may have lost his sight and motor function, but he was aware.’ She laughed again, the sound empty, meaningless.

He settled against the pillows.

Caroline drew up her knees and locked her hands around them. ‘It’s weird,’ she said, looking out through the paned glass again, ‘how when someone is so incapacitated you start to think they can’t hear you, but Drew heard everything. People said all sorts of things in front of him. We didn’t have to tell him what happened. He knew my parents were dead, he knew the baby died, he knew Alex and I turned to each other for comfort. I could see it in his eyes; his vision may have been impaired, but Drew saw
everything
. He started to make the same noise over and over again. I realized he wasn’t just babbling, he was saying something.’ Caroline screwed her eyes shut, and waited for the sound, the sound that had kept her awake, that given her nightmares, that made her withdraw from herself and the rest of the world, but the sound didn’t come.

She couldn’t hear it anymore.

At all.

She opened her eyes, released her knees, and looked at William.

‘What did he say, Caroline?’

She gave an absurd laugh. ‘
Please
. Drew said
please
. Every time he wailed he said,
please
. I told Alex, but he said I imagined it. The stress made me imagine it. He said the horrible ordeal I survived made me want to believe it, except I listened to Drew all day, every day, and it was clear. He said
please
, and I told him I understood. I knew what he wanted. I told Alex what Drew wanted, but he didn’t believe me or didn’t want to believe me. Drew said it all the time, in every cry, with every moan. It was a weedy sound, the kind a sick child makes. I heard it all the time. All the time.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t hear it anymore.’

Will took her hand.

‘After that, the rest of me sort of fell away. I heard that sound, but it was as if I stood in the aisle at the cinema, watching myself on an IMAX screen. It was me, but not me, and I didn’t feel anything. All sorts of disjointed things went through my head. My memory of stuff is disorganized. I remember Alex yelling at me, saying I was stupid for trying to kill myself, but I don’t remember trying to kill myself. I don’t remember taking a handful of sleeping pills. What I do remember is that the clock in the kitchen needed a new battery. I remember thinking about Mandy Patinkin in
The Princess Bride
, and then walking around the house yelling,
Hello! My name is Caroline Reginaldi, you killed my brother, prepare to die!
I remember how angry that made Alex. I remember making Drew chicken soup with rice and putting it in the blender. I remember watching a Meryl Streep movie where she had terminal cancer, and thinking how easy the movie made it seem to do, but I don’t remember mixing my sleeping tablets with the chicken soup and liquid morphine, or feeding it to Drew.’

Will nodded to himself. ‘That’s why you told me it was easy.’

‘Mm-hm.’ ‘There were police reports, lots of legal mumbo jumbo, and a few psychological interviews before my lawyer pled diminished capacity in exigent circumstances, or something like that. I don’t remember the arraignment. I was sentenced, without a trial, to sixteen months in a psychiatric hospital. My mother-in-law went wild, but my father-in-law understood. Alex was very supportive, very understanding—until I said I didn’t want to see him ever again, and had him banned from visiting.’

Caroline sighed. ‘I suppose you never know what you’re capable of when you love someone, the things you do because of love. I think I did it for him. It wasn’t for me. That’s how I settle my mind. I know I did it for Drew. I did what he wanted, what he asked me to do because I loved him. I can’t make it better for anyone else, and there’s no way I can compensate Alex for ending his brother’s life, but now you know why his anger is justified.’

Caroline looked exhausted. There was nothing Will could do to relieve the anguish of her past, except perhaps to point out that she had surmounted the ordeal and found a way to live with it, but she already knew that.

Still, he wanted to say something. He put a hand to her cheek and slipped into his role of legal advisor. ‘It’s a difficult issue, like assisted suicide, and it doesn’t seem to be addressed enough. Sometimes when some injury has been committed, a client or a hospital patient sues for malpractice, and often the only thing people really want is an apology. They don’t really want the money, or restitution or punishment, they only want someone to say
I’m sorry
. Caroline, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to ease your distress or soothe your heart. I can’t think of any way to take care of this for you.’

Caroline placed her hand over the top of his, her smile tentative and hopeful. ‘Maybe you could stay here and let me be your sock monkey for a little while.’

***

When Will woke the following morning, he was alone with Batman snuggled into the crook of his bent knees. The dog’s head rested on his thigh.

The masked face watched him wake up.

‘
Badda dadda dadda dada da, Batman
!’ Will rubbed the dog’s ears and waited for Caroline to come back to bed. When she didn’t, he frowned, climbed from the covers and pulled on his pants. One sock had come off overnight and was probably somewhere in the bedclothes. He pulled off his remaining sock and tossed it on top of his shirt and jacket.

‘Caroline?’ He called out as he left the bedroom, heading for the kitchen, expecting to find her there. Only she wasn’t. His fearful panic dissipated when he heard the washing machine in the kitchen pantry spinning a load of clothes.

Batman wandered past, pausing to yawn and stretch his front paws before he slipped out his dog door.

Barefoot, Will opened the French door and followed the dog outside into the nippy air. Sunshine bathed the terrace and Caroline’s clothesline, which was filled with a week’s worth of his business shirts pinned upside-down. The boxer shorts he’d left out on his line the day before were pinned beside her panties in neat rows, his socks hung in pairs next to hers.

Seeing his socks cued his brain into noticing his feet were freezing on the cold tiles. He went back inside, through her apartment, and across to his. Will went back to his kitchen, and that’s where she was, wearing her rosebud bathrobe. Her back to him, she ironed a light green shirt that wasn’t hers.

‘Good morning, William,’ she said without turning around.

Will moved behind her, pulling her against his bare chest, arms around her waist, nose nuzzling into her neck. ‘What
are
you doing?’

‘Ironing your shirt.’

‘I can see that. Why?’

‘I’ve missed ironing.’

‘You’re a funny little thing. I missed having you in bed, and you missed ironing. So why are you doing my laundry? Didn’t you have enough of your own things to wash and iron?’

‘I guess I’m playing house.’

‘You’re playing house? Is that like playing doctor?’

Caroline put her arms over the top of his and her head against his chest. ‘I’ve missed having a man’s shirt to iron. I’ve missed watching a man shave and having the smell of aftershave linger in the air. I’ve missed seeing a man’s clothes laying about the bedroom, and I’ve missed having a man share my bed. I’m playing house with your things and mine, washing them together and hanging them side-by-side on the clothesline. I really loved waking up with your head on my pillow this morning. I really loved finding you beside me in the middle of the night. I had to get up before you did so I wouldn’t wake up alone after you went home, and I don’t want to stop playing house quite yet.’

‘Thanksgiving is next week. You gonna cook us a turkey?’

With a laugh, she slipped from his embrace and switched off the iron. She took the shirt from the ironing board, slipped it on a hanger, and carried it through the dining room to his bedroom closet.

Will followed her.

She hung up his shirt, turned, and said, ‘Can I make you breakfast?’

‘You ironed and now you want to cook. You really are taking this June Cleaver thing seriously, aren’t you? Well, then, you should know, I send out my shirts to be pressed, I generally put away my clothes, I shave in the shower, and if it suits you I’ll be right beside you when you wake up tomorrow morning.’

‘My bed or yours?’

Will took her hand and sat her on the edge of his bed. There was an ideal answer to that question. The perfect way to take care of everything was in clear, sharp focus. ‘How about ours?’

‘Ours?’

He sat beside her. ‘I confessed some time ago how much I liked sleeping with you. You are the little sock monkey I had when I was four. I’d ask you to move in with me to save us the silly traveling from bed to bed every night. I know next door’s not
that
far to go, but if we got married we could knock out a couple of walls between the apartments. The bedrooms wouldn’t be any bigger and we’d still have to decide whose bed we like the best, but imagine how huge the kitchen would be.’

‘William?’ Caroline rose, and stared at him.

‘It was pretty bad, wasn’t it? Let me try it again.’

‘Oh, my God, you aren’t kneeling, are you? You’re just crouching to get a better look at me because you aren’t wearing your contacts, right?’

‘What’s your middle name?’

‘My middle name?’

‘Yes.’

‘Caroline.’

‘Your middle name is Caroline? What’s your first name?’

‘Josephine. I was named after my father.’

‘Well, what do you know, so was I.’

‘I never knew your father was my father.’

‘Very funny. Dad was William too, but everyone called him Bill. That’s why I’m Will …’ He shook his head. ‘Hey, wait a minute, misdirecting attention is
my
trick, and you broke my cadence. Blush all you want to, be as shy and nervous as you can, because I’m not getting up until I’m done here. I love you. Life’s become extraordinary with you around and I figure a life together would be even more remarkable. I love you, Josephine Caroline Reginaldi Jones. Marry me.’

Caroline pulled him forward and kissed him, feverishly, her hands at the back of his head.

‘I hope that means
yes
,’ Will said.

Her mouth brushed against his ear, a chill shot along his spine, and tenderness evaporated. His intention to do this slow and gentle struck against flint and a tiny spark burst into a conflagration. Everything crackled and sizzled, and he opened his mouth under hers. Caroline kissed him, burning him everywhere her tongue slipped, everyplace she touched with her lips, everywhere her fingers ran, across the front of his chest, through his hair, along the waistband of his pants. She buried her lips in his neck, leaving grazing, scorching kisses that made him gasp out loud. He said, ‘I should probably get you a ring. Would you like a ring? I know your dad gave you all kinds of jewelry, but what would you like me to give you?’