“Sometimes you do.”
I consider this, consider all the ways I could’ve greeted him differently tonight. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I do manufacture trouble, like the housewives I once criticized for drumming up drama in order to alleviate the monotony of their days. Maybe there is a void in my life, one that I’m relying on him to fill. Maybe he really did simply have a craving for Italian food tonight.
“C’mon, Tess. Make up with me,” he says, sliding off his pajama bottoms, pulling up my T-shirt, but not bothering to take it off. He kisses me hard on the mouth as he moves inside me, offering penance. I kiss him back just as urgently, my heart beating fast, my legs wrapping tight around him. All the while, I tell myself that I’m doing it because I love him. Not because I want to prove anything to him.
Yet, moments later, after I let go, and feel him doing the same, I hear myself whispering, See, Nick? See that? It’s working. It’s working.
18
Valerie
Valerie watches Charlie intently coloring inside the lines of a jack-o’-lantern, alternating between an orange crayon for the pumpkin and a green for the stern, using careful, steady strokes. It is a boring project for a child his age, requiring no creativity whatsoever, but Charlie seems to understand that it is good for his hand and takes the assignment from his occupational therapist seriously.
She says his name as he draws a black cat in the background, exaggerating each whisker with long strokes. He ignores her, now staring at his drawing from several different angles, moving the paper rather than his head.
She says his name again, wanting only to ask what he wants for lunch. He finally looks up, but says nothing, making her wonder what kind of mood he’s in. It has been a few days since his surgery, and although she is more accustomed to the mask covering his face, she is not yet used to the way it obscures his expressions, making it harder to tell what he’s thinking.
“I’m not Charlie,” he finally says, his voice low, scratchy, theatrical.
“Who are you then?” she says, playing along.
“An Imperial stormtrooper,” he replies ominously, sounding as much like a grown man as a six-year-old can.
Valerie smiles. She silently puts it on the list of benchmarks—first solid food, first walk around the halls, first joke at his own expense.
“I don’t even need a Halloween costume,” he says as Nick walks in.
Valerie feels her own face light up and is sure Charlie’s does, too. Never mind that they both know why he is here—to assess the graft and remove any accumulating fluid with a needle. The procedure is less painful than it looks, both because of the morphine Charlie’s still receiving intravenously and because nerves have not yet attached to the graft—but it is still not a pleasant one. Yet Nick manages to distract them both, as if the procedure is an ancillary part of his visit.
“Why’s that, buddy?” Nick asks. “Why don’t you need a costume?”
“ ‘Cause I’m already wearing a mask,” Charlie says, his voice a high soprano again.
Nick chuckles and says, “You got a point there.”
“I can be a stormtrooper or a mummy.”
“I’d go stormtrooper if I were you,” Nick says. “And I’ll be Darth Vader.”
You cannot hide forever, Luke, Valerie thinks. And then, I am your father. The only two Star Wars quotes she knows by heart, other than May the force be with you.
“You have a Darth Vader costume?” Charlie asks him, reaching under his mask to scratch along his hairline.
“No. But I’m sure I could find one . . . Or, we could just pretend,” Nick says, raising an imaginary weapon.
“Yeah. We could pretend.”
Valerie feels a warm glow watching Nick and Charlie grin at one another, until Charlie’s voice grows earnest and he asks, “Are you coming to the party?” He is referring to the Halloween party in the rec center downstairs; all the patients and their families are invited to attend. Of course, she and Charlie plan to go, along with Jason and Rosemary.
“Oh, honey. Nick has two kids—I’m sure he’s taking them trickor-treating,” Valerie says quickly, as she unpackages the Spider-Man costume that Jason picked up at Target yesterday, the only one he could find that fit her two criteria—no horror connotation and a mask that would cover Charlie’s own mask.
“I’ll be there,” Nick says. “What time does it start?”
“Four o’clock,” she says reluctantly, giving him a look that she hopes conveys gratitude but also makes clear that this is above and beyond his duties as their surgeon.
She turns to him, her voice becoming soft. “Really, Nick,” she says. “You don’t have to . . .”