CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sharon bent over the spindly wheel of her van and sighed. She shouldn't have done that. Now he was confused and sad, and worse off than before. She had known that coming out here two days in a row would be hard on her, but she hadn't realized that it would be hard on him, too.
She had forgotten, temporarily, how easily Dad was bewildered. Now he was in there, frightened and puzzled because as far as he was concerned he had lost a whole week of his life. She hadn't meant to mix him up. It had just seemed like a good way to get out of the house and still accomplish something vaguely worthwhile.
Al and his damned ridiculous obsessive-compulsive fixation with neatness! If he'd just come home like a normal man, shucking his clothes and reaching for a beer or making straight for the bed, then there wouldn't have been any problem. They could have had a nice night of creative sex, and in the morning she would've straightened things up a bit. Heck, if he'd even had the decency to come home when he was expected instead of a day early, then she could have done a little damage control!
Waking up to find him gone had been a disappointment, too. Sharon was one of those ladies who woke up in a romantic mood, and she'd been celibate for twelve days, too! The only thing to do had been to feed the dog and head out to visit Dad before she did something she and Al would both regret.
Sharon didn't like to think she was the kind of woman who would actually act on her promiscuous impulses. She didn't like to even think of them as promiscuous impulses. They were more… transient fantasies. The truth was, though, that fidelity was an art, and not one in which she had had much practice in recent years. She wasn't what one would call "loose", but these last ten months with Al had been the longest stretch she had gone with one man and one man only in the last two decades. It was starting to get boring.
Not the sex. The sex was great—if and when they had it. But with the craziness at the secret project, and the neighbor's kid with his appendix and now the trip to Washington, their impassioned-encounter-to-calendar-day ratio was getting dangerously low. The whole point of getting married was for mutual help, companionship and entertainment. Companionship they were all right for, but she couldn't help Al with his work and he wouldn't let her help with his health, and now the entertainment, too, was less than frequent. Last night's little performance had been the most recent in a never-ending string of annoyances that was starting to wear away at her patience.
She drummed on the wheel, trying to make up her mind whether she should go back in and try to make it right with her father, or whether there were any good parties going down on a Monday night in mid-January, or whether she should just go home and see if Al wanted to get roaring drunk—or failing that, get roaring drunk all by herself.
Going back inside wasn't an option. Sharon knew that would only make things worse. And he would start talking about Mom again, and she couldn't stand that. None of this would be so bad if he wouldn't talk about Mom. Didn't he understand that they all missed her and it just made things worse to talk about her?
He didn't, of course, and that was the problem.
Sharon sighed. She wasn't cut out for this. She was born to have fun. Both the Quinn kids had been: Sharon to have sparkling, fanciful and imaginative fun, and Rich to have loud, boisterous, down-to-earth fun. Somehow her brother had held on to his birthright, and she was the one married to a traumatized war vet with a screwed up shoulder, living in a trailer park full of sick children and incredibly impoverished immigrants, and visiting the parent who grew more incoherent each week. Rich thought that he was doing his part, taking Dad on the holidays and paying for his care. He didn't realize that there was more to it than that, and she didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise. Why should they both be miserable about something neither of them could help?
At least the worries over Esteban Penja were over, she reflected. It had been so hard on Al, worrying about the child and laboring frantically at the project. Maybe now he could start eating properly again. She hadn't really been awake last night, but she thought he looked thinner than ever. It wasn't right for a man pushing fifty to be so thin. They should have a little extra flesh here and there. Daddy had started to lose weight when he was about Al's age. The year Rich had started middle school Sharon had come home for Thanksgiving to find that Dad had shed fifteen pounds since August, and look what had happened to him. Two decades later he didn't even know what day it was.
A shiver of fear coursed up Sharon's spine and she started the puttering German engine. She'd go home, and whether or not Al wanted to get roaring drunk she was going to make sure he got a decent meal.
The miles slipped away beneath her, and soon the lights of Wickenburg stained the desert sky. When she reached the trailer park and saw the windows of her residence darkened, she frowned. He had gone off to his stupid Project, running himself ragged after staying up all night cleaning the house! The stupid man was going to kill himself!
She gathered up her purse and marched inside. No Chester came running to greet her, which was annoying. She had actually fallen in love with the little fur-ball. Her wee, fuzzy baby. Sharon tossed keys and handbag on the table and kicked off her shoes. She had tied her hair back today, and paused to fumble with the knot in the chiffon scarf, shaking loose her generous mane of curls.
Faint snoring told her that she had misjudged. Al was home, and fast asleep. Cautiously, she moved on stocking feet into the bedroom, allowing her eyes to adjust. He was lying in the middle of the bed, pillows forgotten, curled into an almost fetal position. Chester lay curled up against his chest, and Al had his right arm crooked around the dog in the way that one would hold a teddy bear. His dark hair was damp with sweat, and his pale face smoothed of its lines of anxiety and care. He looked almost like a little boy napping with his little pet.
Sharon drew nearer and slid onto the bed, bending over Al and kissing his forehead. He moaned softly.
"Beth…" he whispered.
The spell was broken. Sharon frowned in annoyance. "Not so much," she said. "Wake up, you big lump. I'll bet you skipped supper, didn't you?"
Al's eyes opened, and Sharon was surprised to see how red and bloodshot they were. He frowned in confusion, then scowled. "Wadda you want?" he asked thickly.
"I wanted to know if you'd like to have a little welcome-home party," Sharon said, stroking his chest with her index finger. She could smell the whiskey on his breath. "But it looks like you have a head start."
Al's eyebrow arced in annoyance and he sat up, disturbing Chester. The terrier trotted across the mattress to snuffle Sharon's hand fondly. "So what? It's my whiskey."
"So nothing. Come on and I'll make you some supper."
"I'm not hungry."
She studied his face: the deep grooves of worry, the shadows under his reddened eyes, and the painful emotion he was trying to hide. "Baby?" she said softly, reaching out to stroke his cheek. "Baby, what's wrong?"
For an instant the mask of stern control melted and the agony was laid bare. Sharon knew that look. It was the look of someone whose world was collapsing. It was the look Daddy had worn the morning Mom hadn't awakened. The one and only time he had really understood that she was dead. Instinctively she opened her arms and gathered Al into them. He let out a shuddering exhalation and buried his face against her bosom.
Then abruptly he straightened, pulling out of her arms and scowling grimly. "I've got some bad news," he said coldly, getting to his feet and wrapping his bathrobe over his shorts-clad body. "I'll fix us a couple of vodka espressos and tell you about it."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWWMWMWMWMWMSharon stared numbly at the inky, alcohol-laced coffee. "Cancer?" she whispered.
Al nodded. "Leukemia," he said, his voice unyielding. "He starts chemotherapy next week."
Sharon knocked back half the drink. "Oh, God," she breathed. "Does Celestina know?"
"Of course she knows!" Al said harshly. "How the hell was I s'posta keep something like that from her? Although," he added, his voice suddenly scarcely above a whisper; "I don't know if she really understands."
"I'm sure she does," Sharon said. "She speaks English really well—"
"No, I mean I don't think she understands how serious it is!" Al snapped. "She thinks they can just wave a magic scalpel and make it all better, the way they did with his goddamn appendix! Damn it, Sharon, that boy could die!"
"Is that what the doctor said?" Sharon asked.
"Months, she said. Months after diagnosis."
"Surely she meant if it's untreated," she reasoned.
"How the hell do I know?" Al demanded, draining his shot glass and going for the gin. "She said months."
"He starts chemotherapy next week, you said," prompted Sharon, trying to turn him away from his anger. "Are we…" She bit her lip. He wasn't going to take kindly to that.
And he didn't. "Of course we are—I am!" he cried. "Damn you, woman, you think I'm just going to let him—I can't just let him… Damn it!" Al slammed the bottle down on the counter and took a long swallow from the water tumbler he had filled. "Money! All you ever think about! Money!"
Sharon got wrathfully to her feet. "It isn't all I think about!" she cried. "You think I don't care about Esteban?"
"You called him a monster!" Al said, his voice slurring as his inebriated anger mounted. "Names: everyone calls him names! Dummy, monkey-face, retard! Names and names and more names! Why can't you people just leave him alone! Just leave her alone! LEAVE HER ALONE!"
"I've never called him any such thing!" Sharon said. "All little boys are monsters, I said, and it's got nothing to do with Downs syndrome! Don't you dare accuse me of using words like that, Albert Calavicci, 'cause I—"
"I said leave him alone!" roared Al, stumbling forward. Sharon backed up instinctively as he threw his head back into another long quaff of the liquor. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about! Du mai! Du mai, chó dè!"
Spewing obscenities in a strange language, he took another unsteady step forward. Sharon had seen him drunk before, but never this angry in his cups. A thrill of fear coursed through her, but she wasn't about to show weakness in the face of this furious creature. She thrust out her chin and shouted right back.
"You dirty rummy!" she taunted. "Aren't you even sober enough to speak English?"
"I'll show you English, you stupid cow!" he bellowed, throwing the glass so it shattered against the wall. Chester, who had come out after them, ran with a yelp from the room. "You with your horrible smutty paintings and your filthy dishes and your damned niece—"
"Leave Clara alone!" Sharon shrieked. "Whatever it was you did to her to make her so disgusted with you—what am I saying? You don't even have to try! I'm disgusted with you, you foul-mouthed, slobbering drunk, and let me tell you I've slept with some real trash in my time! Never one quite like you though, you lecherous, dirty-minded, vitriolic, stinking, egotistical, patchwork-backed dwarf!"
Al lunged forward with a thick exclamation of rage. She cringed as he reached out to grab her, but his hands were quivering and his fingers shook. "You don't know—you can't know—" he grunted, his voice loud and blurred, his breath reeking of liquor and expensive Arabica coffee.
"Oh, I know more than you think!" Sharon shrieked, tossing her head so that wild tendrils of hair smacked his cheek. The drunken man stiffened in shock. "I know all about it, you pathetic alcoholic basket case! You think just 'cause you did some hard time for your country that that gives you the right to judge the rest of u—"
All at once her words were cut off in violent suction. There was pain on her lips, on her teeth… and suddenly she realized that it wasn't pain at all, but excruciating pleasure. Al had pulled her into the most involved, sudden and ravenous kiss she had ever experienced. When they parted for air she stared at him, her eyes wide. He stared back, the brown of his irises almost black against the veins standing out in the corneas. A sound, part snarl, part gasp and part whimper, welled up in his throat.
"I need…" he grunted, pulling her to him and sucking at her mouth again. "I need…"
"Yes!" Sharon gasped, her lips tingling and her hips already grinding against his. "Yes, baby, oh, yes!"
