CHAPTER FORTY
All the long drive home, Mikey sat in silence, clutching the photograph as if it would disappear if he didn't keep it in a death-grip. That suited Dirk just fine. He loved his little guy, and would do anything and everything to keep him happy. He had heard people say that fatherhood meant sacrifices, but he had never really believed it until now. Today he had done something because Mikey wanted it. Because it was a dream Mikey deserved to have realized. Even though it had been bitterly hard to face that man again, knowing all that he did, even though this might destroy his marriage, Dirk had done it because it was right that Mikey be allowed to be a little kid. All kids had to have a hero, and it was a dad's job to bring that hero to life. For his own father, that had meant endless journeys to the movie theater to catch the latest Humphrey Boggart film. Dirk would have been happier if Mikey had fixed on a movie star, too, or some sports hero. Heck, even Nixon would have been an improvement. But no, Mikey had become enamored of "Commander Al", Mommy's ex-husband, the undead specter who was never going to stop haunting the Simon household.
Dirk told himself fiercely that there could be no regretting what he'd done. If seeing that picture and hearing Mikey's story sent Liz running straight into Calavicci's arms, then that had to be so. Even if she took the boys—oh, God, surely he couldn't have done anything to deserve losing his boys!—Dirk promised himself he wouldn't regret taking Mikey to meet the astronauts. Even if he became an absentee father (but no court would deny him visitation rights! He hadn't done anything wrong!) at least Mikey would remember forever the day his dad had made this dream come true. Wouldn't he?
When they reached the house, Mikey went charging inside. Liz was waiting by the door, her hands on her hips.
"Now are you going to tell me where you took my son?" she demanded.
Dirk felt his throat close with pain and terror. He hadn't told her because he'd been afraid that then she would want to come. How would she react when she found out who had passed so near to her doorstep? He shook his head. "Mikey'll tell you," he said hoarsely. From the living room, he could hear the boy chattering enthusiastically to his brother.
Liz gave him a look of thinly-veiled anger, and brushed past him to find her son. Dirk stood for a moment, frozen, until an exclamation of "Mommy! Mom! I met Commander Al! I met Commander Al!" rang out. Unable to stay to hear the rest, Dirk moved down the hallway to the bedroom where Dougie was already asleep.
He stood over the crib, his hands clenching the side as he stared down at his little baby boy. Doug had his thumb in his mouth, and was slumbering serenely, blissfully unaware that his father had just done something he had vowed never to do, and given Michael leave to display a photograph of the man his mother would never forget. Dirk leaned forward, hanging his head over the sleeping child. He couldn't go out there and face Liz, listening as Mikey sang the praises of her first husband. Calavicci's generous gesture and extravagant gift spoke of a truly altruistic and selfless nature that made Dirk feel like more of a heel than ever; how would it look to Liz?
He heard the sounds of the bedtime ritual in the hallway, Mikey still jabbering elatedly to his mother and brother. Now and then Elizabeth's beautiful voice filtered through, filled with pleasure and delight. Listening to their happy chatter, Dirk felt a fist closing on his heart. Alone and forgotten, he stood there, living his worst nightmare. The nightmare in which Lizzy left him and went running back to the man she had finally come to accept as dead, only to have him resurface in glory after five years of marriage.
A single hot tear ran down the side of his face and landed on Dougie's cheek.
"He's still holding the rock." The sweet voice that embodied Dirk's very reason for existence floated up behind him. "I finally convinced him to let me put the picture on the dresser. We'll have to get a frame for it, or he'll love it to ribbons in no time."
"Right," Dirk said flatly. "I'll pick one up first thing in the morning."
"That was wonderful, what you did for Mikey," Liz continued, coming closer. "He's going to be talking about it for months. I can't believe Al gave him a moon rock."
It took every ounce of courage Dirk possessed, but he said it. "Yeah, well, Calavicci's a great guy."
Gentle hands found his shoulders, and the fragrance of her breath caressed his ear. "So are you," she murmured.
Dirk stiffened. "You still love him?"
Liz kissed him on the neck. "I… I loved him very much," she said, faltering only a little. "But I love you, and I love our boys. This is my life, Dirk. I'm happy here. I just wish I knew Al was happy where he was."
Dirk thought about the extravagant smile and the never-ending wellspring of humor. He turned in Lizzy's arms, twining his around her waist. "I've never seen such a happy officer," he confided. "He's got a good life."
The sigh of joy that she freed from her throat made him want to weep with relief. "I'm so glad," Liz murmured, kissing him. "I'm so glad."
It was the kiss that did it. And the kids were in bed. Dirk drew her closer to him, running a suggestive hand up her back.
"What do you say, Lizzy?" he cooed. "You think these boys could use a sister?"
MWMWMWMWMWMWMMWMWMWMWMWMElsa had no idea what to do with the summons her attorney had drawn up, so she went into the den and left it on Al's pillow. It seemed a terribly impersonal way to go about it, and a cruel homecoming for a returning hero, but on the other hand, this was a divorce, and not meant to be intimate or kind. The thought of "her husband, the returning hero" filled Elsa with indignation and disgust.
Her two weeks at Mission Control had been filled with badly camouflaged references to the state of her marriage. Though still a secret from the outside world, it was a well-known fact throughout NASA. Everyone seemed to side with Al. They all thought Elsa should do her wifely duty and run to his arms, that she should don a twill suit and a pillbox hat and wave graciously to the populous gathered to worship him. That she should wriggle into some sleazy cocktail dress and hang upon his arm at reception after reception… the man who had been caught in the act of shacking up with a blonde, and greeted one of his prostitutes from space!
Well, they would be sorely disappointed. She had not even mentioned Al, much less praised him, since the end of the LEM crisis. And as soon as ever she could she would drop him like the loathsome worm that he was. She had already engaged an attorney and set a date for the preliminary arraignment. It was the announcement of this that she now set on the pillow.
She looked around the den, once a sanctuary in which Al had watched his ball games and read his books. Now it looked like a corner of a refugee shelter, in which some displaced wretch was trying to construct a semblance of normalcy. Al had made up the sofa as a bed, with a fitted sheet around the cushions and the covers tucked in neatly and impeccably. The television set served as a shelf, with his crisply pressed trousers in two stacks on top of it. He kept his socks and undergarments in the drawer of the end table. And he had nailed a shower curtain rod to the east and west walls near the back of the windowless room, which served the purpose of a closet, holding the tidy, carefully sorted row of shirts and his summer dress uniform.
The sight angered her. There was a perfectly good bedroom across the hall from her upstairs. There was no reason he could not sleep there. Once again he was trying to make her feel guilty, striking out with emotional warfare because he was incapable of fighting in any other way. Well, it would not work. If he wanted to be wretched and uncomfortable, let him. No one had suffered anything in his four months of obstinacy but himself.
She left the room, closing the door behind her. He wouldn't win her over with remorse!
Regardless of her anger, Elsa had secretly been following the coverage of the celebratory tour. As disgusted as she was by the fuss being tossed up over what should have been just one more routine trip to the moon, and as much as she hated the posturing, lecherous mission commander, she could not deny that Al played his part very well. Very well indeed. He was never without a quotable utterance. His smile was unflappable. In his dress blues he was dark and handsome. Even in the broadcast of the parade in New York, when from his posture in the open car and the haggard lines at the corners of his mouth Elsa could tell he was in a great deal of discomfort (probably half frozen, without a coat as he was), he had kept a radiant grin on his face.
Her favorite photo, though, was the one from Life, showing him and Admiral Holloway, the Chief of Naval Operations, saluting one another. By rights Al should have looked like a drowned rat. He had fallen into the sea, he was soaked to the skin and unshod, his hair wild and tousled. Yet there was such dignity in his stance and in his stoic expression. His bare feet were aligned beautifully, and his hand raised to his temple in a crisp gesture of honor and respect. Even had he been naked and filthy, instead of just wet, he would have cut an impressive figure.
Elsa pushed the thought from her mind in annoyance. He wasn't worth the air he breathed, and she was going to divorce him.
He wouldn't be back for a couple of days yet. Troubled by the emptiness of the vast house, Elsa went to her room to change, digging into the front of her blouse for Andrew's dog tags, which she wore continuously now. She would head into Orlando, maybe see a movie. There was a new one she had been meaning to see: a film about the breaking of the Watergate scandal. One of the reporters was played by Robert Redford.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMThere was no denying it: Al Calavicci was sick.
In space, he had tried to write it off as the after-effects of oxygen deprivation. After splashdown he'd been pretty sure he'd just sucked in a little sea water. Then he'd told himself that it was nothing more than a cold that had settled in his chest.
Now, standing on his lawn with his luggage on the sidewalk, his arms folded over his abdomen to brace himself against the force and the pain of a violent coughing jag, he had to admit that he'd caught a real doozie. He could feel the phlegm popping and bubbling in his bronchia, but no matter how hard he coughed he couldn't clear it out—though occasionally he did bring up gobs of thick, unmistakably green goo. This latest stage had started just after they'd arrived in Texas for a repeat of the performances in New York and North Dakota. It had been a bitter disappointment, since Al had really wanted to believe it was the weather that was causing the cough.
His lungs burned now whenever he tried to breathe. His ribs and diaphragm ached constantly from the endless hacking. His throat was raw and dry. His head was sore and strangely light. Adding insult to injury, he was still cold.
At last the fit passed and he was able to draw shallow, painful breaths. He picked up his bags cautiously, wary of triggering another episode. He made his way to the door, leaning wearily against the wall as he dug in his jacket pocket for the house key. Once inside, with the door safely bolted behind him, he stumbled through the darkness to the den. He slept here so as to avoid disturbing Elsa when he awoke with nightmares. The last thing she needed was reminders of how unstable her estranged husband was.
Al sighed as he set down his bags. There was laundry to be done, and he really should eat something—nothing had passed his lips since he'd pecked listlessly at yesterday's supper—but he was far too tired. A thick, gurgling cough bubbled up into his windpipe and he scrubbed at his watery eyes.
The worst thing about being sick was remembering other times, some when he was cared for, some when he was not. The year he turned four he had spent three weeks in bed with pertussis. He didn't remember that bout with whooping cough very clearly, except that he hadn't had anything to do, and wasn't allowed out of the room, lest he should infect the baby. He had a dim recollection of the copy of Tom Sawyer from which Momma had read once daily. Bored and sick and miserable, he had taken the book into bed with him and stared and stared at the little black markings on the page. Slowly the words of the well-known tale had started to come back to him, and before he knew it he was equating the words to the markings. He must have read the book four times during those long weeks.
In the orphanage, when you were sick, the sisters brought you to the infirmary, where you had a bed all to yourself. The mattresses were thicker than those on the cots in the dormitories, and the blankets warmer. The sisters would fuss over you and bathe your face, and bring you orange juice to drink and grapes to eat. Sometimes Al had thought that the best times were when you were sick.
The first year he and Beth had been married, he had come down with some kind of nasty stomach bug that had got him out of sea duty for the better part of a fortnight. During the days of crisis Beth had been his own personal nurse, bathing his head and holding him while he puked his guts out. When he moved into convalescence, they had spent the whole of their days in bed… together…
Al wished Beth was here now as he wrestled with his clothing, which was clinging to his body and making him feel absolutely filthy. Like that time when he'd been bowled over by malaria… raving with delirium, shaking with fever. He'd been almost as cold under the steaming jungle sun as he was now in the muggy darkness of his Florida home. Sobbing and begging for water, the laughter of the V.C. adding a nightmarish quality to his pyretic hallucinations…
He was dimly aware that his thoughts were muddled, flitting in and out, circling fruitlessly around one another. He should shower. He was sweaty and filthy, vile. Anyway, a shower would warm him up, and the hot steam was the only thing that would ease the torture of the coughs. But he was exhausted beyond all telling, and wouldn't be able to make it to the bathroom, much less actually wash…
With a shudder that brought on another heavy cough, Al fell towards the sofa. There was a stiff envelope on his pillow. He brushed it away in annoyance. His sore head sank into the softness, and he forced his quivering body under the blankets. It was so cold in here. Damn it, it was so cold in here.
Shivering violently, he drew the covers around himself like a cocoon, and coughed wretchedly as his leaden eyes fell closed and his body succumbed to the sleep it so desperately needed.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMElsa left the movie early. That nurse at Balboa Hospital all those years ago had told her the truth: Andrew had had a smile just like Robert Redford's. Dark eyes and dark hair and olive skin, but the smile… the smile was the same. The political posturing and journalistic maneuvering, too, had struck too close to home tonight, and so she could not even lose herself in the plot.
Thinking about Andrew as she drove the Ferrari home filled her with unbearable sorrow. The thought of her love, her only love, dying in despair and agony, with only strangers to help him… that thought was intolerable. She should have been there, to care for him, to give him water when he called for it, to speak to him, to help him hold on, be strong…
Her face was wet with tears as she pulled up to the curb and ascended to the house. She missed him. She loved him. She wanted him. Anyone else… anyone else would always be second-best. Her road would lead always back to that cottage by the sea, and the arms of the only man she would ever really love.
She moved in the darkness past the parlor and the den, and into the kitchen. There was a bottle of Italian wine in the refrigerator. She loved Italian wine: two years had been sufficient to forge that affinity. She poured herself a glass, swirling it and admiring it by the dim light of the streetlamps filtering through the windows. As she took her first sip her heart skipped a beat.
There was a sound.
She froze. Had someone broken into the house?
The sound rang out again. Coughing. A thick, wet, painful cough. Elsa held her breath as the fit continued. The noise was coming from the den.
Setting down the wine, she moved in that direction, warily switching on the hallway light as she went. She paused at the closed door of Al's makeshift bedroom. There was no doubt where the sound was coming from now. Carefully, carefully she opened the door. A sliver of light expanded into a rectangle, illuminating the sofa and the figure huddled upon it. His face was paper-white, save for two brilliant spots of fever, one on each cheek. He was shivering as the paroxysms shook him, and Elsa could hear painful wheezes and miserable attempts to breathe through the coughing. One hand worked on the blankets, clenching and un-clenching desperately. Al turned his head away from the light and mumbled something miserably, still asleep.
Elsa regarded him for a moment, unconscious and helpless and obviously ill. Another cough was followed by a tormented gurgle that failed to obtain sufficient air for its victim. No others followed, because the bare chest with the still-too-prominent ribs began to spasm as Al's body struggled to draw in the oxygen it needed to function. Then there was a strangled gasp, and he lay still again, his waxy lips forming alien syllables.
"Nuoc," he sobbed deliriously. "Nuoc, dông tù. Dông tù, Titi, dông tù nuoc…"
There was another pitiful cough, and a moan of despair. Then he buried his face against the back of the sofa and subsisted into febrile trembling.
On the floor was the envelope from her attorney, unopened. Casually cast aside. Hardening her heart against the picture of wretchedness before her, Elsa turned her back and closed the door to the den. She had no compassion for him tonight. He deserved none.