The First Time (27 page)

“Thank you,” Mattie told the driver, handing him his fare along with a handsome tip. She pushed open the car door and swung her feet around. But Mattie’s feet refused to find the ground, and her knees buckled under her, sending her flying facedown into the layer of fine snow at the side of her driveway.

The driver was instantly at Mattie’s side, picking her up, dusting her off. “Missus, you all right? What happened to you?”

“I’m sorry,” Mattie apologized, unable to stand without his assistance. Dear God, what was happening to her? “I must have had too much to drink.” Yes, that was it, she told herself. Too much champagne. Champagne and sex—a deadly combination. Especially when you weren’t used to it.

“Good thing you not sick in my car.” Yuri Popovitch helped Mattie up the steps to the front door, waited while she fished in her purse for her keys.

“Would you mind—” She handed the keys to the driver.

Yuri opened the door, returned Mattie’s keys to her outstretched hand. “You okay, Missus? You can manage now?”

“I should be fine. Thank you very much.” Mattie grabbed the door handle as he released her. She watched him run down the steps to his cab, then drive
off without looking back. I should be fine, she repeated silently. “But I’m not,” she acknowledged out loud, as her body collapsed to the floor. “Jake!” she called out. No answer. Who was she kidding? Her husband wasn’t home. “Kim!” she called, receiving a similar response.

Kim must have gone to bed early, Mattie thought, forced to crawl on her belly across the needlepoint rug to the kitchen. “Goddamn it,” she cried, sliding across the ceramic tiles to the breakfast table, pulling off her coat, leaving it in a discarded heap on the floor as she used the back of one of the chairs to pull herself up. Sobbing and cursing, exhausted by her efforts, she collapsed into the chair. “Goddamn it. What’s happening to me?”

You know exactly what’s happening to you
, her tearful reflection in the sliding glass door told her.

“No,” Mattie insisted. “Not now. Not yet.”

You have something called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
, she heard Lisa say, her friend’s image appearing in the glass next to Mattie’s.

“Sounds serious.”

It is
.

“How long do I have?”

A year. Maybe two, even three
.

Mattie closed her eyes, wiping Lisa’s image from her mind. But the voices continued, like a TV set whose picture tube is on the fritz, the screen suddenly blank, the sound remaining strong and clear.

“And what happens to me during that year or two or three?” Mattie heard herself ask even as she covered her ears with her hands.

As the disease progresses, you’ll lose the ability to walk. You’ll be in a wheelchair Your hands will be rendered useless. Your body will start contorting in on itself
.

“I’ll be a prisoner of my own body,” Mattie acknowledged, withdrawing her hands from her ears and opening her eyes, staring into the darkness of her backyard, her heart pounding against her chest, as if trying to get out while there was still time. “I’m dying,” she said, forcing herself to her feet, pushing her legs toward the glass door, unlocking it and sliding it open, stepping slowly, carefully, onto the balcony. The cold night air quickly wrapped itself across her shoulders like an old sweater as she stared toward the pool, hidden beneath its protective winter cover. Would she ever swim again? Unlikely, she thought. “I’m dying,” she repeated, the words no easier to digest or understand, despite their repetition. “But not yet. Not until I’ve see Paris.”

Mattie laughed, forcing her legs forward until she was leaning against the railing. Paris was three months away. She could probably function well enough till then. She’d had these episodes before. They came and went, although each episode lasted longer, left her weaker. But after Paris, then what? Almost half a year would have passed since Lisa delivered her devastating diagnosis. Six months of the little time she had left would already be gone. What of the next six months? Could she sit helplessly by and watch as her nerve cells collapsed around her, until she could no longer speak or eat or breathe without choking? Could she do that?

Did she have a choice?

We always have a choice, Mattie thought. She didn’t have to wait around for the ravages of the disease to
claim her. She could take matters into her own hands while her hands still worked. She didn’t have a gun, so shooting herself was out of the question, and she doubted she’d have the strength and accuracy a knife would demand, even now. Hanging was too complicated, and throwing herself down a flight of stairs too uncertain of success.

“I could drown,” she said simply, her mind floating beneath the ugly green cover. Open the pool a few weeks early. Wait till everyone was out of the house and go for a little swim, disappear under the water quickly, quietly, with a minimum of fuss.

Except that Kim might find her, Mattie realized in horror. She couldn’t risk that. No matter what, Kim had to be protected.

She’d have to find another way.

Mattie pushed herself away from the railing, teetering precariously on legs that were only now beginning to regain their bearings. She stepped back into the kitchen and slowly made her way across the room. “I’m going to die,” she repeated in wonder, crossing the front hall to the stairs. “I have a year. Maybe more.” Her hand reached for the banister, came to rest on an unfamiliar brown leather jacket.

Mattie examined the jacket. It was a man’s jacket, she determined quickly, although it didn’t look like anything Jake would wear. Was it Kim’s? Had she borrowed it from one of the boys at school?

The jacket became too heavy for Mattie’s hands to hold, and it slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. “Maybe less than a year,” Mattie whispered, tears filling her eyes as she slowly mounted the stairs.

Less than a year.

Mattie reached the top of the stairs, resting on the landing for several seconds. The door to Jake’s room was open, as was the door to Kim’s bedroom. That was unusual, Mattie thought, knowing Kim liked to sleep with her door closed. Was it possible Kim had disobeyed them and gone out after all?

“Kim?” Mattie called gently, approaching the open door to Kim’s room, peering inside.

The room was dark, but even in the darkness, Mattie could see that Kim had done some serious straightening up. Poor thing, Mattie thought. She must be exhausted. That’s why she went to bed so early. That’s why she didn’t hear me call. That’s why she forgot to close the door.

Mattie inched her way into the room. She wanted to give her daughter a kiss good night, the way she used to when Kim was a little girl. Her sweet, beautiful baby, Mattie thought, approaching the bundle hidden beneath the heavy comforter, pulling it aside, about to kiss her daughter’s forehead, when the bundle beside Kim suddenly moved.

And then all hell broke loose.

Mattie was screaming. Kim was screaming. The boy, whoever he was, was tearing madly around the room, gathering up his clothes, shouting his apologies as he ran from the room and down the stairs.

“How could you do this?” Mattie was yelling, hearing the front door slam.

“You think we fell asleep on purpose?” Kim yelled in return. “How could you embarrass me like that?”

Mattie stared at her defiant daughter, still a month
shy of her sixteenth birthday. My baby, she thought, with a bewildered shake of her head. Mattie wanted to grab Kim and shake her, but could she really yell at her daughter for doing the same thing she’d been doing herself? Surely the fact Kim was only fifteen years old was offset by her mother’s adultery. “I can’t deal with this now,” Mattie said, retreating to the safety of her own room, hearing the door to Kim’s bedroom slam shut behind her.

Mattie lowered herself to the side of her bed, stared numbly into space. Quite a night, she thought, falling back against the headboard. “And it’s not over yet.” She reached for the phone, pressing in the numbers she’d committed to memory, listening as the phone rang, once, twice, three times before being picked up.

“Hello?” The voice was raspy, familiar.

“Is this Honey Novak?” Mattie asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“This is Mattie Hart,” Mattie said calmly, trying to picture the woman’s face, hearing her sharp intake of breath. “I’d like to speak to my husband.”

L
ess than an hour later, Mattie heard the low rumble of the garage door as it opened and closed. She climbed slowly out of her chair in the living room, pushing one foot in front of the other with studied precision, her heart bouncing so erratically in her chest she was afraid it might burst clear through. Like that creature from
Alien
, she thought, deciding this was as good a term to describe her as any. Her body had been invaded by some mysterious force beyond her control or understanding. It was causing her to behave in ways totally foreign to her personality. What was she if not some strange creature, alien even to herself? “Stay calm,” she cautioned herself, inching her way toward the front door, running a still-trembling hand through her just-washed hair before burying it deep inside the pocket of her powder blue housecoat. “This is not the time for unnecessary histrionics.”

Oh, no?
a little voice asked.
You’re cheating on your husband; your husband is cheating on you; you discovered your fifteen-year-old daughter in bed with some boy you’ve never even met Not to mention the fact you’re dying. Can you think of a better time for histrionics?

Mattie reached the front hall at the same moment Jake’s key turned in the lock. She took a deep breath, then another as Jake pushed open the front door, the wind howling dramatically behind him, gusts of freshly falling snow swirling around his head. A suitably grand entrance, Mattie thought, watching him.

At first Jake didn’t see her standing there. His head was down, as if he were still braving the elements, and he was preoccupied with ridding his boots of the snow he’d acquired between the car and the foyer. It was only after he’d removed his boots and shrugged off his coat that he realized she was standing there. “That’s quite a storm picking up out there,” he said, hanging his coat in the closet and shaking the snow from his hair. “Lucky I had some boots in the car.” He paused, looked directly into Mattie’s eyes for the first time since walking through the door. Enough small talk, his eyes said. “Are you all right? Has something happened?”

“I’m fine,” Mattie said.

Confusion brought Jake’s eyebrows together at the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand. On the phone, you said I had to get home right away. You made it sound pretty urgent. Is something wrong?”

“You mean besides the fact I’m dying and you’re fucking other women?”

There was a second’s silence.

She’d gone too far, Mattie thought, holding her breath.

“Besides that,” Jake said.

And suddenly they were laughing. A few nervous giggles that grew into great big whoops of glee, propelled by shock, driven by tension, effortlessly bridging the distance between them. They laughed with utter and complete abandon, until their sides ached and their insides threatened to explode, until they could barely catch their breath. They laughed so hard they temporarily forgot that she was dying and he was fucking other women.

And then she remembered, and he remembered, and the laughing stopped.

“I’m sorry,” Mattie said.

“What have you got to be sorry about?”

“About calling you at your girlfriend’s house. About ruining your evening.”

Jake had the good grace to look embarrassed. He shuffled from one foot to the other, looked uneasily from side to side. “How did you know where to find me?”

“It wasn’t exactly the puzzle of the century.” Mattie smiled. Were men really as simple as Roy Crawford claimed? “Did you really think I didn’t know where you were going?”

“I guess I was trying not to think,” Jake admitted after a pause. “Looks like I should be the one apologizing to you.”

“What’s the point of an apology if you’re not really sorry?”

Jake nodded, a sudden hardness appearing in his eyes, as if he’d just realized he’d been summoned home
from his mistress’s apartment in the middle of a budding blizzard for no discernible reason. “What’s this about, Mattie?” he asked, bringing them back to the topic at hand, impatience replacing the concern in his voice, obliterating whatever traces of laughter remained.

“Maybe we should sit down.” Mattie motioned toward the living room.

“Can’t you just spit it out? I’m really tired. If it’s nothing urgent—”

“Kim’s having sex,” Mattie blurted out. Was that really what she wanted to talk to him about?

“What?” Jake’s eyes shot to the stairs.

“Not right now,” Mattie qualified, afraid he was about to bound up the steps and confront their daughter right then and there. “Before.”

“Before? Before when?”

“When I got home.” Why was she talking about this now? This wasn’t what she’d brought him home to discuss. “I walked in on her.”

“You walked in on her having sex?”

“No, thank God.” Too late to turn back now, she thought. “They were already finished. They were asleep.” She watched Jake trying to digest this latest piece of information, to make sense of what he was hearing.

“Who’s they?”

“Kim and—whoever.” Mattie pictured a tall, good-looking, and unquestionably naked young man hopping around on one foot, struggling to pull up his jeans. “I don’t know his name. We weren’t exactly formally introduced.”

Jake began pacing back and forth in front of Mattie,
his frustration filling the small front hall. “I don’t understand. What’s gotten into her lately? She smokes dope in a public place. She has sex practically under our noses. What’s she thinking, for God’s sake?”

“I’m not sure she’s thinking very clearly about anything at this point.”

“Does she want to get AIDS? Does she want to get pregnant? Does she want to—” He stopped abruptly.

“End up like us?” Mattie asked, finishing his sentence for him.