“When are you going back to school?”
“Day after tomorrow. I have to leave early.”
“Try to get him on the phone tomorrow and if he doesn’t answer, go over there. I’m sure he could use a friend right now.”
We talk for a while and I lose myself in the conversation, happy to be able to speak to my children face-to- face. They were such an intimate part of my life for so long, and now I’m lucky to see them thirty days a year. I marvel at their intelligence, their outlook, their honesty and maturity, and I’m humbled to think I played a part in creating them.
Around eleven, Lilly stretches her slender arms toward the ceiling and lets out a yawn.
“I’m tired,” she says. “I hear my bed calling.” She gets up, kisses me on the cheek, and wanders out of the room. Jack follows her lead, and a couple of minutes later Caroline and I find ourselves alone.
“Something’s bothering you,” Caroline says.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I know you.”
So much for the mystery in our relationship. When I was younger, there were things I didn’t tell her. I’d rationalize by telling myself she didn’t need to know, probably didn’t want to know; that she was somehow better off staying clear of the deepest recesses of my mind. But she’d broken through a few years earlier, and now, at only forty-three years old, I feel almost naked in her presence, as though she can see everything. I believe she only makes inquiries to test my honesty.
“It keeps running through my mind,” I say.
“What? Ray?”
“It was surreal. It happened so fast. I keep thinking I should have gotten to him quicker, but after he fired the first shot, I froze for a split second.”
“There you go again,” Caroline says, “blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have changed.”
“I keep seeing the back of his head explode.”
The image of Ray’s suicide has now been added to the long list of digital clips in my subconscious mind. I’ve rerun the scene a hundred times in the past few days.
Caroline stands and walks around the table. She puts her arms around me and pulls me close.
“I thought about you today at the funeral,” I whisper. “About the cancer, about what it would have been like if you hadn’t-”
“Shhh,” Caroline says, putting a finger to my lips. “I told you when I was diagnosed that I wasn’t going to leave you. I meant it.”
The touch of her finger is soothing, and I close my eyes and kiss her hand.
“We need to clean it,” she says.
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, I’m sitting on the edge of our bed. Caroline is on her back. She’s removed her shirt to reveal the mangled mess that was once a breast. The surgeon who attempted to reconstruct the breast originally transplanted a flap of skin and fat from Caroline’s abdomen. She was in surgery for twelve hours. It seemed to work, but as soon as she began her radiation treatments, the flap began to develop large, open wounds. They leaked constantly and gradually enlarged. Then the flap began to shrink.
The surgeon explained that the radiation was destroying the tissue in the flap. Fat necrosis, he called it. Three months later, he took her back into surgery, this time removing a large portion of muscle from her back and moving it to the breast site. The result of that surgery was a staph infection that nearly killed her. When she finally recovered from the staph, a large blister began to rise on the edge of the new flap. It, too, developed into a large, open wound.
The responsibility for cleaning the wound has fallen to me. Caroline lies back and closes her eyes while I pull on a pair of latex gloves. I remove the bandage and reach into the wound carefully-it’s about the circumference of a quarter on the surface-and begin to pull out a long, thin strip of medicated gauze tape that I’d packed into the wound earlier in the day. The tape is slimy, covered with a mixture of blood and dead fat that smells like rotten eggs. I place it in a small trash bag that I’ll carry outside when we’re finished.
Each time we do this I ask her whether she’s okay, and each time her answer is running down her cheeks. I reach over and pull a tissue out of a box on the mini- trauma center I’ve set up next to the bed and wipe the tears away.
“Just a few more minutes, baby.”
I irrigate the wound with sterile sodium chloride and then unwrap a long, cotton-tipped applicator and dip it into a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water. I insert the applicator into the wound and begin to swab. The applicator reaches a full four inches beneath the skin.
“It’s getting smaller, Caroline. It really is.”
At its worst, the hole beneath the skin was as large as my fist. It’s healing now, but the progress is painfully slow. I finish swabbing, pack it with fresh gauze tape, and fashion a new bandage out of gauze pads. I tape the bandage in place and rub Caroline’s forehead.
“Are you ready?”
She nods, and I begin the difficult task of massaging the reconstructed breast, or at least what’s left of it, with my fingertips. The tissue around the scars left by the incisions is as hard as packed clay. The massage is necessary, the doctor says, to try to soften the tissue and improve the range of motion of Caroline’s left arm, which she can no longer lift above her head. She winces several times but doesn’t complain. This is the worst part of it for me, knowing that I’m inflicting pain on her, but the doctor says it has to be done and she refuses to do it herself.
After several minutes of massage, I stop and put away the supplies.
“All done. Can I get you anything?”
Caroline gets up and heads toward the bathroom. I remove my clothes, hang them in the closet, put on a pair of pajama bottoms, and crawl into bed. Caroline comes in a few minutes later and turns out the light. I retreat into the comfort of my wife’s arms and stay there deep into the night.
12
I’m out of bed early the next morning. It’s Monday, and I want to get to the gym by six and get in a decent workout before I go back to the grind. It always makes me feel sharper and fresher, helps me to better cope with the insanity I deal with on a daily basis.
As I back out of the garage, I see an unfamiliar car parked in the yard off the driveway. It’s a white Honda Civic, an old one that’s beginning to be consumed by rust. I get out of my pickup and look inside the car, but there’s nothing that tells me who the owner might be.
I walk around the house and see nothing out of place. I walk back into the house and go upstairs. Lilly’s sound asleep, and I don’t see any of her friends crashed on the floor or anywhere else. I head downstairs to Jack’s room and as soon as I get to the bottom step, I know who owns the car. Tommy Miller is on the couch, fast asleep. The car outside is symbolic of the family’s financial collapse. The last time I saw Tommy, he was driving a new Jeep. I creep back up the stairs and head off to the gym.
A couple of hours later, I’m standing in the doorway of my boss’s office. Lee Mooney has just returned from yet another of his frequent weeklong vacations, one he decided to take immediately after the conference he attended in Charleston. Between the vacations and the time he spends at conferences and seminars, he’s out of the office at least two and a half months a year.
I find it difficult to look Mooney in the eye these days because I’ve come to know he isn’t what he seems to be. Not long ago, I sent his nephew-a fellow prosecutor named Alexander Dunn-to prison for extorting money from gamblers. Alexander said Mooney was involved. I believed him, but I couldn’t prove it.
Then there’s the progressive alcoholism. I’ve seen Mooney drink himself into stupors at two office functions in the past six months, and I smell the lingering odor of vodka on him often. There are persistent rumors that his marriage is failing. I’m certain he stands to lose a great deal if his wealthy wife divorces him, but his lechery has
