“It’s the same as Adair’s,” I managed to say.
“Yes, I know… He insisted I wear it. To signify that we are brothers, or some such nonsense. I did it only to end his badgering.”
Touching my thumb to the tattoo, I felt a coldness ripple through me; that Adair had put his mark on Jonathan signified something, but I could not figure out what that might be. I wanted to beg him not to go away with Adair, to disobey him… but I knew the inevitable outcome of that folly. So I said nothing and lay awake a long time listening to the steady, peaceful rhythm of Jonathan’s breathing, unable to shake the premonition that our time together was coming to an end.
FORTY-TWO
Luke wakes to the sound of human misery. He is disoriented, as he always is when waking from a nap, and his first thought is that he has overslept and is late for his shift at the hospital. It isn’t until he nearly knocks the alarm clock-never mind that it’s not ringing-off the nightstand with a wild grope that he realizes he’s in a hotel and there is only one person with him, and that person is crying.
The door to the bathroom is closed. Luke knocks gently and, when there is no answer, pushes the door back. Lanny sits hunched in the bathtub, fully clothed. When she looks over her shoulder at him, Luke sees that her eye makeup is streaked down her face in black daggers, like a frightening clown in a movie.
“Hey, you okay?” he asks, reaching for her hand. “What are you doing in here?”
She lets him help her out of the bathtub. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” He leads her to the bed and lets her curl up in his arms like a child. “I’m sorry… I’m just starting… to realize…,” she says in ragged bursts between sobs.
“That he’s gone,” Luke finishes for her so she can continue crying. It makes sense; up until now she has been concentrating on getting away, not being discovered. Now the escape is behind her, the adrenaline subsides, and she remembers how she got here, that she now has to deal with the fact that the most important person in her life is gone.
He thinks of the many times he walked past someone crying in the hall at the hospital, someone who had just been given bad news, a woman hiding her face in her hands and a man standing beside her, numb and struggling. Luke cannot count the times he’s stepped out of the operating room, pulling off his gloves and mask, shaking his head as he walks to the waiting spouse, stony in the face of her stubborn expectation of good news. He learned to build a wall between himself and the patients and the next of kin; you couldn’t let yourself be drawn into their pain. You could nod your head and share their sorrow, but only for a moment. If you tried to take on their burdens, you wouldn’t last a year on the hospital floor.
This girl shaking in his arms, her sorrow is endless. She will fall in her pit of grief for a long time, tumbling down with no way to stop. He supposes there is a formula for how long it takes for the pain to lift, but it’s probably tied to how long you’ve known the deceased. Of course, there is no relief coming for her. How long will it take for Lanny to tolerate the daily pain of Jonathan’s absence, let alone live with the fact that she was the one who dispatched him? People have become unhinged over less, carried away by sadness. There’s no guarantee of surviving something like this.
He’s going to help her. He has to. He thinks he’s uniquely equipped for this situation. With his training (“Mrs. Parker? We did everything we could for your son, but I’m afraid…”) he hopes her sorrow will shed off him like water off Teflon.
She’s eased up on her crying and is rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Better?” Luke asks, lifting her chin. “Want to go out and get some air?” She nods.
Within fifteen minutes they’re walking hand in hand into the dusky horizon. Lanny has scrubbed her face clean. She leans into Luke’s arm like a girl in love, but on her face is the saddest smile the world has ever seen.
“How about a drink?” he asks. They step off the street into a dark bar and he orders scotch neat for both of them. “I’ll be able to drink you under the table,” she warns him and they clink glasses as though they are celebrating. And sure enough, after one shot, Luke feels the warmth that comes at the beginning of drunkenness, but Lanny has had three shots and has only a half-tipsy smile.
“There’s something I want to ask you. It’s about-him,” he says, as though by not speaking the name, the question will hurt less. “After everything he put you through, how could you keep loving him? It doesn’t sound like he deserved you…”
She picks up her empty shot glass by the rim, like a chess piece. “I could make all kinds of excuses, like how that’s the way it was back then, that wives expected their men to fool around. Or that it was just the kind of man Jonathan was and I had to accept it. But that’s not the real reason… I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve always wanted him to love me the way I loved him. He did love me, I know he did. Just not the way I wanted him to.
“And it’s not so different for a lot of people I’ve known. One partner doesn’t love the other enough to stop drinking, or gambling, or running around with other women. One is the giver and one is the taker. The giver wishes the taker would stop.”
“But the taker never changes,” Luke says, though he wonders if this is always the case.
“Sometimes the giver has to let go, but sometimes you don’t. You can’t. I couldn’t give up on Jonathan. I seemed to be able to forgive him anything.”
Luke sees the ocean well up in her eyes and tries to distract her. “What about Adair? From what you’ve said, it seems that he could have been in love with you…?”
“His love is like the love fire has for wood.” She laughs ruefully. “He confused me for a while, I’ll give you that. One minute he was charming me, the next minute he’d humiliate me. It was all games and tricks with him. I think… he just wanted to see if he could make me love him. Because, I think, no one had ever loved him.” She becomes still, hands knotted in her lap, and the glassy surface of her eyes ruptures. “Look what you’ve done… I’m going to start crying again. I don’t want to cry in public. I don’t want to embarrass you. Let’s go back to the hotel room. We can smoke some pot.”
Luke’s face lights up, remembering the big plastic bag, the resinous high. “I’m prepared to smoke that entire bag with you, if that’s what it takes to cheer you up.”
“My hero,” she says as she tucks her arm under his. They weave up the street toward the hotel, a brisk wind slapping their faces. Luke wishes he could give Lanny a shot of morphine to dull her pain. He’d give her a tranquilizer injection to bring her peace daily, if he could. He clears his mind with a shake of his head. He feels like he’d do anything to make her happy again, but he doesn’t want to become the valet to her misery.
“What was it about me… will you tell me the truth? Am I unworthy of being loved?” she blurts out once they are in bed.
Her question takes Luke aback. “I can’t tell you why Jonathan didn’t love you back, but for what it’s worth, I think he made a huge mistake.” Jonathan was an idiot; only a fool would squander such devotion, Luke thinks.
Her look at him is disbelieving, but she smiles. And then she falls asleep. He pulls her against him, wrapping his arms around her sylphlike body, gathering up her elegantly splayed limbs. He can’t recall feeling like this, except for that miserable time in the pizza parlor with his daughters, when he wanted to bundle them into his rental car and take them back to Maine. He knows he made the right choice by not giving in to his sadness then- the girls are better off with their mother-but he will be haunted forever by the act of driving away from them. Only a fool squanders such love.
And Lanny. He is willing to do anything to protect this vulnerable woman, to fix her. He wishes he could draw the poison out of her, like a leech with blood. He would take it on himself if he could, but knows all he can do is be with her.
