Sarah comes in through the mudroom door in a black tank top and ragged cutoffs, her bright hair sparked with gold and copper. Greg knows she'll hug him, there's no way to avoid her, so he lets her throttle him. Actually her embrace is gentle, and he secretly enjoys the affection in her touch, but of course he won't let her know. She's smart enough to figure it out on her own anyway.
"Lunch," he reminds her. She lets go and steps back, looks him over, her sea-green eyes bright with amusement and just a little hint of concern. She doesn't say anything though, just goes over to the fridge to pull out sandwich ingredients. He follows her, and savors the sense of home he always feels when he comes here. Roz's apartment has slowly become as much his as it is hers now, but this is the first household in which he was made welcome no matter what he said or did, something no one's ever offered him before. It's a good feeling, one he still mistrusts to some extent, but accepts as the inevitable consequence of prolonged proximity to other people.
"Roast beef?" Sarah says. "Horseradish cheddar? I can make two sandwiches if Roz is coming over to spend some time with you."
"Stop fishing," he says, and steals a slice of cheese.
"What do you mean?"
He doesn't want to explain, but if he won't take the hint she'll give him a hard time. "She's been too busy to stop by," he says quietly. Sarah glances at him but says nothing. This annoys him even more than if she'd gone into full busybody mode. "What, no words of wisdom, Mother Mary?" He watches as she puts the completed sandwiches, wrapped in waxed paper, in a blue lunch tote she keeps for him.
"I'm not going to say let it be," she says, and gives him a slight smile. The concern is still there, but . . . She's giving us a chance to work it out ourselves, he realizes. So he pushes a little harder because he doesn't want to work things out, he wants her to take care of it for him and make the difficulties go away. It occurs to him there are times when he misses Wilson, and this is one of them.
"Some shrink you are." He starts with a light jab, pulls his punch a bit to keep her off-guard.
"If you and Roz are having trouble talking . . ." Sarah takes some cookies out of the big jar on the counter.
"I wouldn't say it's trouble exactly." He snags the jar and extracts several cookies. "Trouble means you're actually trying to talk."
"Ah, silent treatment." Sarah puts the cookies into a bag and adds them to the tote. "Who started not talking first?"
"Does it matter?" He munches a cookie, enjoys the chewy oats and sweet raisins.
"Yes." Sarah tucks some fruit into the tote.
"Y'know, it's really not true what they say about apples and doctors."
"Apples aren't in season. I put in two bananas and some blueberries. Who stopped speaking first?"
He rolls his eyes. "She did."
"Why?" Sarah sends him a keen glance. He reads it clearly: don't mess around by lying to me.
"I was just being myself. That's what your profession advocates, free expression. You know, open, honest communication."
"Gregory." She says it mildly, but it's clearly a return punch in their sparring match.
"Uh oh," he says, doing his best to sound fearful. "I'se in trouble now."
Sarah puts two bottles of water in the tote, zips the top shut and sets it aside. "You're not in trouble. Stop acting like I'm gonna tan your fanny with a belt. My name is not John House." She folds her arms and looks at him, her gaze keen now. "But he sure is haunting you."
That's a sucker punch if he ever saw one. Greg glares at her. "Is not."
"Is too. How long do you plan to keep testing everyone in your life because of him and all the other jerks who hurt you?" She tilts her head and watches him. He braces himself; here comes the lecture. But she says nothing more.
"Testing," he says after a few moments of silence. "Explain."
"I know you, son." To his eternal surprise the deep affection she holds for him shines in her quiet voice. "You think you have to push it till it breaks, shove people to their limits until they lose it and take their anger out on you. Then you can say 'see, I told you so.'" She tilts her head a little and gives him a slight smile. "It isn't surprising you'd keep that as your fallback position. You had a tough childhood and most of the people you've loved in the past haven't done right by you, sure enough. That doesn't mean you let those losers keep controlling you."
"Cheap psychobabble," he accuses, aware his palms are sweaty.
"It's the damn truth and you know it, or you wouldn't look so worried."
"So you're saying your family doesn't have a hold on you. I call bullshit." He stuffs the last of the cookie into his mouth, though he's not sure he'll keep it down the way his gut clenches at the moment. "You were a mess when you got that letter about your mother."
"Well of course I was," she says without hesitation. "Since then I've written to my oldest brother and my cousin about what happened. We got things straightened out."
"Sure you did," he says, though he knows it's not a lie; she wouldn't. Given the conversation, that qualifies as high irony.
"But we aren't talkin' about me," Sarah says. "The way I see it, you have a choice. You can do what you've always done, and you'll get the same result you always get. Or you can choose something different."
"I have," he snaps. "I live here now, I'm married and I'm starting up a clinic. How much more different can things be?"
Sarah shakes her head. "Those are outer changes. They're good ones, I'm not sayin' they aren't. You've worked hard to get where you are, and I'm proud of you." Her warmth touches him through the chill of his apprehension. "But there comes a point for every child of abuse and rejection when they have to decide one simple thing: do I stay in the past where I have to believe everyone's gonna hurt me sooner or later? Or do I move forward and take a chance, trust someone without putting them through a thousand rounds of boot camp first?"
"Yeah, easy-peasy." He grabs the tote. "Thanks for the free advice. I'll give it all the consideration it deserves. Which is none, by the way."
"Greg." That one soft word stops him in mid-flight. "This is important. It's what you've been working toward all this time, what you'll work on for the rest of your life. I'm not sayin' it'll ever be easy, because simple things never are. But take it from me, it's worth it."
"Why?" He can't stop the question, though he can hear the anger and bitterness in his voice and winces away from it. "Why is it worth it?"
Sarah doesn't answer him. Instead she turns her head to look out the back door, which stands open to the morning breeze. Just past the box elder tree, Greg can see Gene in the garden, settled into an old wooden chair, his long legs stretched out, head tipped back to the morning sun. One hand rests on the chair Sarah used.
"Finding your dream, claiming it, that's always worth whatever it takes," she says, so quietly he can barely hear her. "Don't cheat yourself out of the chance at heaven."
"Heaven. That's bullshit, some stupid myth people cling to when they have nothing else," he scoffs. Sarah swings her head around. She gives him a long, thoughtful look.
"There is a heaven," she says. "It's what you make inside your own mind and heart with that dream you hold. Sometimes you get lucky and find someone to share it with, like you and I did. Don't push that away, son. You might not ever get another chance."
With that she turns from him and goes out the back door. On the way she grabs her battered black Stetson. But she doesn't put it on her head; instead, when she reaches Gene, she places it with care over his face, then gives a squeak of laughter when he sits up, takes the hat and plants it on Sarah's head. He grabs her with gentle hands and hauls her down. She sits on his knee and slips her arms around him, accepts his kiss and gives him one of her own. When it ends he says something and she laughs, full and sweet. He laughs with her, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze.
Greg limps out of the kitchen, and doesn't look back.
Several hours later, it's break time at work and he's claimed one of the shabby recliners for a quick snack and a few levels of Crash Test Dummies. When someone comes in he doesn't look up.
"Hey." Roz stands in the office doorway. She's not in her work clothes, though there's a streak of dirt on her face; her stance is uncertain, as if she's poised for flight. Greg says nothing, just looks at her. She makes a little gesture with her hand. "I thought . . . we could talk."
"You mean right now?" He glances at the clock. "I still have an hour to go and I'm swamped."
Roz doesn't speak for a moment. Then she nods. "Okay. See you at home." And she's gone.
He catches up to her outside the front doors. "You're supposed to argue with me," he says, and hopes the lame joke will get her to respond. To his surprise, when she swings around to face him her expression is one of utter frustration.
"I don't want to argue. All we do is argue. What I want is to know what happened after we came home from Italy. It doesn't matter what I do. You—" She stops.
"Continue," he says, intrigued by this display.
"You married me," she says. "But now I don't know why." With that she walks away, head down, shoulders hunched. Greg stares at her.
"Hey!" he says loudly. She doesn't stop. He considers going after her but by the time he reaches her parking spot she'd be long gone, and he knows she's not in the mood to wait for him.
"Have to cut out early," he says a few minutes later, in Wirth's office. Diane looks up from her paperwork.
"If it's okay with Sandesh it's okay with me," she says. "You all right?"
"'m fine," he mumbles, and heads out to find Singh.
It's half an hour later when he pulls into the driveway. Roz's truck is parked on the street as usual, and the front door's open to let fresh air in through the screen; he can hear the radio, tuned to some country station. That's a smack in the face to him—she knows he hates country.
When he comes in, he finds her in the kitchen. She stands at the counter and places long thin pieces of beef on the chopping board. As he watches, she puts strips of bacon, bread crumbs mixed with egg, shredded cheese and fresh chopped basil on the meat, then rolls up each piece and ties them closed with string. As she places them in a hot skillet to brown he says "I came home early too."
"Why'd you bother?" To his dismay he can hear tears in her quiet voice.
"Maybe I wanted to see what you're making for supper."
"Bracciole and pasta," she says. She still won't look at him. "Good enough, or are you going out?"
He stares at the floor and softly thumps his cane a few times, letting it slip through his fingers. "Good enough," he says. "Tell me why you're home so early."
"I jammed a wire under my fingernail and it pissed me off," she says, and he knows that's a lie, at least about why she's angry.
"Let me see," he says, and moves to her. She doesn't turn, just puts her arm out behind her. Sure enough, when he takes off the band-aid there's a bruise and blood under her nail, and the flesh is red and swollen. As he does so he becomes aware of the song on the radio. "Just to see you smile/I'd do anything that you wanted me to . . ." He ignores the music and examines her injury without any special gentleness. "You need to soak this." She nods and takes her hand away. For some reason her actions annoy him. "I mean it," he snaps. "You could get an infection."
"It's no big deal."
"Big enough to get you home for the afternoon for once," he throws at her.
"It was the last straw." She turns the rolls with a pair of tongs.
"And I'm a whole bale's worth, no doubt."
"No!" Roz faces him, and he's dismayed by the tear streaks on her cheeks. "That's not what I said!"
"Oh come on," Greg says. "Just admit you've had it with me."
She stares at him. "You're an idiot," she says finally, and wipes at the tears in her eyes before she turns back to her cooking.
They eat supper in silence, the radio the only sound in the quiet house. Afterward he settles on the couch with a beer and a Phillies game on the tv. As the first inning starts, Roz goes past him in her jumpsuit with toolbox in hand; the screen door slaps shut behind her. A few moments later her truck starts up and she's gone.
He doesn't hear her come home. When he gets up in the morning it's to find her asleep on the couch, still in her jumpsuit. He leaves her there and goes to work, and does his best to feel nothing at all.