“Joey,” he said, stepping in beside two frantic EMTs. “Hey, buddy, it’s me. Can you hear me?”
Joey’s eyes fluttered. There was blood everywhere, more blood than Rourke had ever seen, dark as an oil slick, mingling with the rain.
“You know him?” one of the EMTs asked. The look on the guy’s face told Rourke to brace himself for the worst.
“Yeah,” Rourke said, reaching for…there was no place to touch. There were tubes and blood everywhere. “Damn, Joey, look at you.”
His mouth twitched. “Rourke. Man, I…sorry.”
“Hey, don’t worry.” Rourke spoke over the swarming EMTs. He felt sick, but somehow managed to smile. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “You’re doing good, Joe. These guys are going to help you.”
There was some ineffable quality to Joey’s smile, a glow, almost; clearly Joey knew he wasn’t doing good at all.
“Tell her…” His eyes rolled back.
“Joey—”
He focused again. Moved his mouth but no sound came out. His eyes rolled back again.
“She knows, buddy. I swear, I…” Something changed. A shudder went through Joey. “Dammit,” Rourke yelled. “Do something. Can’t you fucking do something?”
* * *
Jenny was startled by a knock at the door a little before 9:00 p.m. Gram had just settled in front of the TV, and Jenny was wearing her soft but ugly pajamas. She grabbed a sweater, feeling a bit sheepish. It was only nine o’clock at night and here she was in her pajamas, like an old maid. Other people her age went down to the Whistle Stop Tavern for drinks on a night like this, or they were tucking in their kids. She suspected she was the only one in Avalon who was in her pj’s, sipping a mug of chamomile tea and getting ready to watch a rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with her grandmother.
Hugging the sweater around her, she opened the door. There stood Rourke, his cap tucked under his arm, standing with shoulders squared and face forward in a formal military stance. Her heart stumbled.
“Rourke?”
He stepped inside, and she saw something she had never seen before—he was about to break down. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes red-rimmed. His hands were shaking. He was shaking all over. “It’s Joey,” he said.
“Joey? But he’s in Washington, D.C. At Walter Reed. I was going to visit him next weekend—”
“He was discharged.” Rourke cleared his throat. “He was on his way back to see you and there was an accident.”
Her mind leaped to a place of hope—this was another false alarm. It had happened once and could happen again. Somebody had passed on wrong information. If she could just shut her eyes and believe that, everything would be all right. But her eyes, traitors to hope, stayed open and saw the truth spattered in blood on Rourke’s uniform, even on his skin, under his fingernails. He’d clearly made an attempt to clean up; she could see the comb furrows, smell the fresh soap, but it didn’t matter. This time, Joey was gone.
She started to sink, her knees suddenly liquid. Rourke grabbed her arms, propping her up. He was talking to her, and he looked like a different person, someone who had been damaged almost as badly as Joey. She could see his lips moving as he explained what had happened. She could even hear his words: Joey had jumped on the first train to New York and then out of the city, the express to Kingston. The ink was still wet on his discharge papers. At Kingston, he’d rented a car to drive the rest of the way to Avalon. He wanted to surprise her.
Surprise.
Food for Thought
BY JENNY MAJESKY
Mourning Meal
Whenever a cherished friend passed away, the family would call my grandmother because she was a genius at putting together a menu for a crowd on short notice. The centerpiece of the meal was, of course, the funeral hot dish—a savory mixture baked in a roasting pan that resembled a small bathtub. Here is a version for a smaller crowd. It doesn’t cure sadness, but it’s said to comfort an aching heart.
AMERICAN LEGION FUNERAL HOT DISH
1 pound ground beef
½ onion, chopped
1 cup frozen sliced carrots
1 cup frozen cauliflower
1 cup frozen chopped broccoli
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
3-4 stalks celery, chopped
2 tablespoons soy sauce
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 12-ounce bag chow mein noodles
Preheat oven to 325°F. Fry hamburger and onion in large cast-iron pan, breaking hamburger up into small pieces. Drain and place in large baking pan. Mix vegetables, soups, celery, soy sauce and pepper, then combine with meat in pan. Fold in ⅔ of chow mein noodles (8 ounces), cover and bake for about an hour. Sprinkle remaining chow mein noodles on top. Put cover back on and bake another 15 minutes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The wind had stopped and the snow drifted straight down in big flakes, wrapping the lodge in a cushion of silence. Jenny pulled the cuffs of her sweater down over her hands to warm them. “I do want to know, Rourke,” she said. “I do want to know what you’re thinking.”
He shook his head. “Not important. Are you all right, Jen?”
She nodded. “Is it strange that I’m not crying hysterically?”
“No. She was gone for a long time.”
“I feel…relieved in a way. At least I know. When you first told me about her, it was like something cold and tight unraveled. Now I know why—it’s because I don’t have to be angry anymore. I spent years being angry at her, thinking she simply didn’t love me enough to come back. When in reality she was trying to save the family business, and she was desperately unhappy but doing the best she could, and something terrible happened to her. I should have loved her all along instead of being angry and resentful. It makes me wish…” She didn’t quite know how to finish the thought. “It makes me wish I’d spent my emotions differently.”
“Or not at all,” he muttered.
And that, of course, was the
