Note: A huge thank you to the costume mistress for this chapter!
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Al scrubbed his face with his hands. "Pull yourself together, Calavicci," he muttered, glancing at Celestina, who was brewing up some of her carefully hoarded coffee for him. He had been awake for half an hour—long enough to fall out of bed, puke his guts out in the closet-sized bathroom, and relive what had happened last night.
Parts of it were, mercifully, blurred. He couldn't remember much after closing the bedroom door. The crux of the matter was painfully clear, though. Sharon and Juan…
His head sent up fresh, throbbing waves of agony. This was a whole new kind of hangover. He needed a drink, but there was no way in hell he was going back to that trailer to face that woman and her…
And her lover. A voice in the back of his head taunted him: Admit it, Calavicci. Your wife has a lover.
Last night he had been numb with shock and liquor. Now he could feel his anger, and it was consuming him. How long had she been lying to him? Juan had been bunking at their place for months. Three nights a week Al was up at Starbright. They could have been carrying on this affair since… God, since February! The lying, cheating deceitful hussy! Bawling him out 'cause he didn't tell her about his surgery until after the fact, crabbing about the way he ran the house, complaining about taking care of Stevie, and all the while shacking up with that—
Stevie. Al turned swiftly to look at the child slumbering behind him. The motion was far too abrupt for his sore head, and he had to fight a spinning wave of nausea. Somebody needed to invent an alcohol that didn't give you a hangover.
Stevie was sleeping peacefully, one arm crooked around his stuffed Chester. Waking up with the boy's arms around his neck, Al had for one wonderful moment been transported back to the cramped tenement flat in Little Italy, with Trudy next to him and Pop and Momma still asleep on the other side of the thin wall. Then the horror of reality had come flooding back and he had scrambled backwards out of the bed in consternation. He had been lying next to the child all night, sniffling and snorting and breathing infectious air all over the dangerously ill child. How could he have let Celestina lie him down next to her son? How could he have let her take him into her trailer at all? He should have resisted. One night outdoors wouldn't have killed him.
He shivered involuntarily, his bare legs coming out in goose bumps. It would have been a miserable night, but it wouldn't have killed him.
Al had awakened to find his injuries cleaned, and oft-laundered cotton rags wrapped around his shredded hands. Celestina and her big heart had saved him a lot of trouble there. He knew how wounds, even surface wounds, festered if you left them untended. He owed her more than just the night's lodgings. And in repayment, he was probably going to kill her baby.
The coffee was ready, and she brought it to him, feeling his forehead with the experienced hand of a mother. "You feel better today?" she asked.
"I will," Al grunted, taking a swallow of the bitter beverage and flinching.
Celestina drew her chair close to him and folded her hands in her lap. Her large, dark eyes fixed upon him, filled with genuine concern. "Why you outside without clothes?" she asked. "How you get hurt? Where Señora Calavicci?"
Al rubbed at his aching head. Where the hell did he start with this one? How could he tell her what her tool of a brother-in-law was up to with his wife? How could he even admit that he'd lost Sharon?
"I… I had a little accident on the bike," he said. "That's how come I'm all scratched up. And Sharon… she's… well…" He shrugged. "I got locked out," he concluded lamely.
Celestina's brow furrowed, as if she was trying to muddle through an insoluble puzzle. Then she lowered her eyes. "She was angry? Because you have been drinking?" she queried.
Al felt a hot flush of shame igniting his cheeks. "That's me," he said. "A no-good drunk."
Celestina stiffened, squaring her shoulders and jutting her chin in defiance. "You not no good!" she cried. "You are great man, kind man. You not no good! I tell her—"
She started towards the door. Al caught her by the arm. "No!" he exclaimed. Celestina turned. "No," Al said, more quietly. "Sharon and me… we've gotta settle it ourselves."
Celestina nodded slightly, but her expression was still fiercely protective. "I talk to Juan," she said. "He should not let her lock you out without your clothes in the cold night. He should stand by good Señor Calavicci who has done so much for Esteban."
Al wanted to crawl into a hole and die from despair. She had no idea and he couldn't possibly tell her. For some reason she had latched onto him and become his fervent protector. He remembered the day of Stevie's operation, and how when she saw his scars she had uttered sincere but foolish threats against the hands that had caused them. He could see the same indignation in her eyes now. He took another draught of coffee and gripped her hand.
"Celestina, just leave it," he said. "Sometimes married people fight. Don't worry about it."
"You talk to her and make it right," she said with confidence. "She forgive you. It is not so bad, to drink. Carlos even would drink a little."
Oh, sure, because he was really the one who needed forgiving, here!
The frightening thought occurred to Al that maybe he was. The instinct was to blame the one who cheated, but wasn't the one who had driven her too it as much if not more to blame? He hadn't been much of a husband. God knew, he had never had what she wanted. He'd brought her to live in this mobile slum. He'd asked her to make do with a dwelling that didn't even have a bathtub. He'd taken a free-spirited artist and forced on her the schedule of a military wife. He dragged her into his obligation to Stevie—an obligation that had grown larger and larger as the months passed. He had never communicated with her. He had gone off and forgot to call, more than once. He hadn't really listened to her. He hadn't supported her art the way he should have. After dragging her to the Project Christmas party, he had actually bawled her out for dancing with other men. At the end of the day, he hadn't even been able to offer her financial security. He was a terrible husband. Was it any surprise she'd sought comfort in the arms of another man when he had left her alone half the time and been dead of exhaustion on the rare nights he was home?
He was beginning to understand. Sharon's affair was a judgment on him. It was his just dessert for the way he had never really been there for her. All her worries about her family, all her personal travails she had had to face alone, because he was too wrapped up in his own problems to care. Just like Pop had never been there for Momma, he had never been there for Sharon. At least this time there were no kids to hurt.
Thoughts of divorcing her as an adulteress fled. That wasn't fair. That implied that she was the only one at fault.
Al scrubbed his face with his hands. "I better go and try to make it right," he said wearily.
"I go with you," Celestina volunteered.
"No!" Al said, much more sharply than he had meant to. He softened his tone as fright took hold of Celestina's face. "No, I gotta go by myself."
He tried to get to his feet, but his left ankle was swollen and as he tried to put his weight on it he swayed. Celestina caught him with a capable grip.
"You are hurt," she repeated for what had to be the fiftieth time, easing him back onto the chair.
"I'm fine," Al said gruffly. "I just need to stop trying to rely on that foot." He looked down at the inflamed joint, and abruptly his state of undress occurred to him and he colored again. He couldn't go traipsing around the neighborhood like this. Questions of modesty aside, he didn't want to advertise his injuries—neither the ones sustained in the street last night, nor those that had long ago faded into memory and scar tissue.
Working up the courage to face Sharon was going to require a whole lot of effort.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWWMJuan had cleaned up the kitchen, Sharon noticed when she emerged from the bedroom. All signs of Al's destructive rampage were gone. She had lain in bed for hours, wrestling with herself and trying to reconcile the pleasure Juan's company gave her with the pain Al's hurt and anger was causing her. She just wanted to be happy, and she had that with Juan, but she couldn't be content while she had the image of Al, half-dressed and bleeding, staring at them in shock and mute fury, burned into her mind.
She didn't want to hurt him. She hadn't set out to hurt him. Or had she? It was so hard to remember. Certainly she had been very angry that night. She had been sure he was cheating, or terrified that he had stripped his gears and was going crazy like Dad. The jumble of frantic emotion had somehow turned to sexual passion. It had just… happened. She hadn't tried to strike out against her husband. She had just needed some way to work out her frustrations, and Juan had been there, ready to fill the void.
He was sitting on the sofa now, with a newspaper spread on the carpet, over which he was oiling his boots. Sharon stood watching him for a minute.
"What now?" she asked.
He looked up. "What do you mean?"
"What do we do now?" Sharon repeated.
Juan shrugged. "What do you want to do?"
Sharon looked at him helplessly. "I just… I don't know," she said.
"Are you happy with him?" Juan pressed, focusing on his work again. "Is this the life that you wanted?"
"No," Sharon admitted softly. Chester padded through the room, sniffing the floor as he disappeared into her studio. A deeper truth surfaced. "I don't know what kind of life I want. I just wish that whatever kind of life it was, I didn't have to worry. Not about Dad, not about Esteban, not about Al. I don't want to worry about money. I don't want to worry about what people think. I don't want to worry about anything. I've been worrying for ten years, and I'm sick of it. I'm so sick of it, baby."
She sat down next to him and laid her head on his shoulder. He set down his boot on the paper and wiped his hands on his jeans before wrapping his arm around her.
"You could come away with me," he said. "The job is almost done. I could have the boss pay me off tomorrow and we could leave."
"Leave?" Sharon whispered. "Where will we go?"
Juan shrugged. "Doesn't matter," he said. "We go where we want to. We stop when we're tired. We eat when we're hungry. We sleep together whenever we feel like it. No worries. No troubles."
Sharon closed her eyes. It was a nice dream. Nice? It was a heavenly dream. If only it was as simple as that. "I can't," she said. "Who'll look after Esteban? Who'll visit Dad? I've got those paintings in the gallery at city hall right now, and if somebody likes them I have to be here, and Al… you know, he really can't take care of himself. Can't or won't. And—"
Juan kissed her into silence. "Sharon," he said; "if you spend your whole life worrying about what you should be doing, you'll never do anything worthwhile."
She laughed hollowly. "That's some advice, Mahareshi," she said. "You really think I should take advice from you? I'm old enough to be your mother."
He kissed her again. "But you're not my mother," he murmured.
She giggled a little and burrowed her fingers into his long hair. Who wouldn't love a man like him?
The doorbell rang, and her blood turned to ice.
"Al," she breathed, stiffening with dread.
Chester came rocketing out of the studio, barking eagerly. Juan nudged Sharon so that she stood.
"Tell him what you want," he said. "Whatever it is. Don't think about me. Don't think about him. Think about you. Do what's right for you."
She swallowed hard and nodded once, aware in some deep recess of her mind that she was consenting to something she would be unable to recant. Once she started to do what was right for herself, where would it end? Once upon a time she had been really good at it. She'd married Heinrich because it had been right for her at the time. She had divorced him for the same reason. College, art, everything had been for herself until Dad got sick. After that Sharon Quinn had begun to matter less and less, until in the months before her breakdown over Al's glowing plastic she had been nothing but a robot, working and worrying herself into an early grave.
The bell rang again, and Chester's barking grew more excited. No doubt who it was. Who else would it be? Sharon smoothed her well-teased hair and opened the door.
On the other side of the screen stood Al. Sharon stared. His torn and disheveled, sweat-soaked uniform shirt was finger-pressed within an inch of its life and buttoned as meticulously as if for parade. He had slicked his hair down with water and tried to make his unshaven face look respectable. His eyes were bloodshot from the previous night's drinking binge, and puffy from the cold he was obviously still suffering. His bare feet had been traded in for Celestina's sandals, which actually were a remarkably good fit. What made him look truly bizarre, however, were the pants.
They were black, the kind worn by mariachi bands. The braid running down the outside of each leg was thick and extravagant, in bright shades of pink and blue. The garment was at least six sizes too big for Al, and had obviously been made for a man more Juan's height. They rumpled around Al's feet, and he had enough of the waistband bunched into his right hand to make a matching set of trousers for Esteban. The effect was that of a gruesome experiment in which Victor Frankenstein had combined the torso of a Naval officer who'd been marooned on the planet of the asphalt with the legs of a Mexican midget. Sharon couldn't help the guffaw that welled up in her throat.
Al gritted his teeth. "Yeah, I know," he growled. "The Great Dictator meets the banditos from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Celestina had her old man's wedding gear kicking around. Now let me in so I can put on some real clothes."
Sharon shook her head. "We need to talk about this, Al," she said.
"What's to talk about?" he asked.
"Al…"
He shook his head. There was something strangely like defeat in his eyes. "I just want a hot shower and some clothes. Then I'll move up to Starbright. You mind still taking Stevie on Tuesdays and Thursdays?"
This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to rant and rail and try to fight for her, not give her up and ask if she was willing to take the kid on Tuesdays and Thursdays! It was like he didn't care…
The words were out before she could think about them. "I want a divorce!" she cried.
Al stiffened as if he had been slapped. "What?"
She couldn't take it back. She wouldn't take it back. Why should she take it back?
"I want a divorce," she said defiantly. "You can use the van for one day. Get all of your stuff the hell out of this trailer. On Monday you'd better get yourself an attorney, because that's what I'll be doing!"
Al stared at her for a moment, then blinked rapidly as he composed himself. "Okay," he said softly. "Okay, so you're divorcing me. What about Stevie?"
"What about him?" Sharon cried. "He's not our kid!"
"It's important," Al said. From the look in his eye, Sharon could tell that this was the single most important issue. Any questions of their marriage were secondary. She couldn't say whether that was admirable or loathsome.
"I'll take him Tuesdays and Thursdays," she said hoarsely.
"Good," Al said flatly. "Now, would you please get—"
Not letting him finish, Sharon fled into the house, making straight for her studio. She closed the door behind her. She seized up a primed canvas and expressed her turmoil and desolation in the only way she could.
When she emerged four hours later, Al was gone. So was his clothing, his personal possessions, the contents of the liquor cabinet, and the dog.
Juan kissed her.
"I'm proud of you, darling," he said.
Sharon was glad that he was proud of her, because she certainly wasn't proud of herself.