Brick by Brick (23 page)

“Shut up!” The lightning bolt between James’s brows was so deep it could have been stamped.

“What?”

“I don’t want it.”

“I want you to have it. Please, take it. For me?”

“Not for anybody.”

“Hey, come on, it’s something you can really use. It’s a good truck. Yours is falling apart.”

“I like my truck.”

“You’ll like this one better. Come look at it.”

“I don’t want your big fancy truck.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, James, it’s a gift.”

“What part of ‘I don’t want it’ don’t you get?”

“I can’t believe this. I was a kid when Stuart gave me a carton of cigarettes for my birthday. Who gives a fourteen-year-old Winstons? But I knew to at least pretend to be grateful.”

“Because it kept you from getting your ass beat.”

“Because that’s the right thing to do. Jesus, don’t you have a grandmother or something who gives you ugly shirts?”

He had my sister, but I knew to keep quiet.

“You say fucking ‘thank you,’” Gage said, “even if you give it away the first chance you get.”

“That’s family and a goddamned shirt. This is a truck. I don’t need it, and I don’t want it.”

“Tough shit. It’s yours.” He glared at James. “You may control what time we eat and which side I sleep on, and you own the remote control. Hell, you decide when I get to fucking come! But a gift is one thing you can’t control. Live with it.”

“Take it back.”

“Is it because it’s expensive? James, I love you. It doesn’t matter what it cost. I can buy you anything you want. I’m happy to.”

“Why don’t you just shit a pile of steaming cash and rub my nose in it?” My husband’s face had gone a dull red.

“Goddamn it!” Gage’s hands balled in fists, and he bounced on his toes. Was he going to hit James? He wouldn’t!

“Stop it!
Stop
!” I hadn’t shrieked like that in years.

No reaction from either of them.

“Where the fuck do you get off, telling me to take back a gift? Or is this what you get off on? You don’t just control me. That’s not enough. You want to control how I spend my own fucking money. Is that it? Christ, it is. You gotta be in complete control or you’re not a man.”

Lips clamped shut in an angry line, James puffed through his nose like a locomotive. His coloring had progressed to an ugly purplish hue.

Gage had flushed deeply pink, and a vein in his forehead throbbed visibly. Equal rage. “That’s it, isn’t it? Turning it down makes you a bigger man. You just don’t have the balls to let me control anything.”

James put one calloused hand on Gage’s chest and pushed, using all the muscle he’d built in many years of lifting bricks. Gage stumbled backward two steps before regaining his balance enough to throw a punch.

As an actor, Gage had won a few carefully choreographed fights, but the reality was that the blow hurt his fist more than James’s jaw.

“Fuck!” Gage cradled his injured hand, shook it hard, then cradled it again, while James looked on with an amused sneer.

James hadn’t been in a fight since seventh grade, his first day at the new school in Arizona. He simply looked like he could pound a person into jelly, with those thick forearms and that cool, quiet assessment of the other guy.

Gage spent hours at the gym and ate with care, but his muscle was camera ready rather than capable. He didn’t stand a chance.

James shoved Gage again, at the shoulder, hard enough to spin him off his feet entirely. He landed on his butt, hard.

“If you had balls enough to be a real man,” Gage said from the floor, his voice breaking like a teenager’s, “you’d see I’m a man too.”

“Fuck you,” James said, adding a sarcastic, “man.” He stepped over Gage.

“Yeah, fuck me. A
man
wouldn’t want to!”

Gage hadn’t yet gotten up when glass crashed in the dining room, immediately followed by the kitchen door slammed so hard it shook the windows. The truck wheezed, then sputtered to life.

“Damn. Damn! I should try to catch him!” Gage said.

“No, don’t. He’ll go to the gym, work it off, and come home ready to talk in an hour or so.” Or go drink beer and come home reeking and horny.

“He’s not going to drive like a maniac?”

“Not in that truck.”

He rubbed his rear through the seat of his suit trousers. “I guess we should go see what broke.”

Chapter Thirty-One

James must have bumped the dining table in his haste to leave. “The Lundgrens” ice bucket lay on its side, a cornucopia of ice. Water flooded the table, and the wine bottle had rolled as far as the glass cake stand, cracked off its base. A white-frosted avalanche, the birthday cake had skated far enough to knock over two of Grandma Felluca’s crystal flutes. They lay in sparkling shards.

My eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, man. What a mess. Don’t be mad at him, okay? It’s my fault. I should have backed down. Look, we’ll go out tomorrow, find a new cake thing and some new goblets, anything you want. Most expensive thing in the store.”

“You can’t fix everything with money.” I felt dull, almost numb with the loss. “I don’t want new crystal. These were really old when Grandma Felluca brought them from Italy.”

Gage seemed to deflate. “Oh. Maybe eBay?”

I don’t know why, but that made the tears flow. I turned my face away.

Gage pulled me to his chest. “I’m so sorry, Natalie, so sorry. I fucked up an important day, in every way I could, and I still don’t quite see how; plus I can’t fix anything. I’m sorry. What a fuckup. I can’t even buy a birthday present.”

I pulled away, sniffed, and wiped my eyes. “You should have told me. It’s partly the money you spent, but it’s mostly the truck.” Being careful of glass shards, I scooped ice cubes into the bucket.

“It’s a good truck, top-of-the-line.”

“That old truck is the only symbol he’s got of his dad’s approval.” I put the wine back on ice. We’d drink it later, I supposed. When James came back.

Not with cake, though. I picked up the good china plates and the silver dessert forks I’d polished. “The story goes, Daniel and James didn’t get along even when they were kids.”

“That’s his twin, right?”

“Yeah, older by about six minutes. They’re nothing alike, though, not in looks or temperament or anything else. Their dad bullied them into competing constantly, and James was a disappointment.” I carried the dishes into the kitchen and returned for the surviving flute.

Gage carefully picked up pieces of glass from the shattered ones, dropping them onto a section of newspaper.

“When the family moved here, they both had a fresh start. Daniel used his to become a high-achiever student-leader type. James refused to compete anymore, although I hear he was as big a discipline problem as Daniel was a big deal. Maybe still competing for attention?”

“Yeah.” Gage nodded his understanding.

“So now Mr. Bedwell’s got a reason to be disappointed. One of those self-fulfilling prophecies? He was more disappointed that James wouldn’t go to college. Disappointed that he left Tucson and went to work for Uncle Olin in St. Cloud. Disappointed that he bought this old fixer-upper instead of a new tract house. Disappointed in the girl he married, both times.”

“Both times?”

“Alice from Dallas was first. It didn’t last six months.”

“Which disappointed his dad, right?”

“Right. Not as disappointed as when he married an Eye-tie the second time.” I gave a small bow.

Gage offered the ghost of a grin.

“And disappointed that I didn’t start popping out grandchildren like Eye-ties are supposed to. Meanwhile, Daniel’s got his MBA, a good job, a trophy wife, and two perfect children who are already overbooked even though they can’t read yet.”

“Man. Maybe it’s good not to have a dad around. What should I do, just pick up the cake in the wet tablecloth?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I explained the rest as we folded, cold water and crumbs clotting on our palms and raining on our shoes. “Way before he met me, James stopped comparing himself to anybody and just lived the life he wanted to.” I didn’t think Daniel had grown up enough to do that. He took obvious pleasure in one-upping James whenever they were together. James usually drank too much at family gatherings. At least he became sullen and too quiet instead of arguing.

“That’s good. He does all right, obviously.” Gage gestured to the house.

“Don’t you ever let him know I told you this, because I’m not supposed to know. He took out a second mortgage, when he’d gone through the money he sets aside for the lean times. Construction’s always boom or bust, but it’s been bust for too long, in this economy.”

“He needs that big job to come through.”

“Right, at Rincon. He thinks the little jobs he’s doing there are a sort of audition. Anyway, he has a work ethic, same as Daniel, and he’s as smart as Daniel, easy. James called home the day he got the company incorporation papers. He didn’t even talk to his father, but after dinner, that’s who drove up in that truck. It had a few dings and scrapes, but he’d had BEDWELL MASONRY, INC. stenciled on it. He never said it, but he was obviously so proud of James, that one time.”

“I wish I’d known.”

“I wish you’d told me what you were planning. Give me the tablecloth. I’ll empty the cake into the trash.”

“Careful, there’s tiny slivers of glass all over it. Don’t brush it with your hand.”

I didn’t. After dumping the cake, candles and all, I took the tablecloth straight to the washer and put it in alone, with a double rinse. When I got back, Gage was on his hands and knees, sponging water from the dining room carpet and squeezing it into a plastic bucket. “I did the table first. I think I got all the water out of the rug that I can,” he said. “And one little cut.”

“Let me see.”

He held up his hand. A drop of blood, no more, marred the base of his thumb. “It’s nothing. I got the glass out.”

“Wash it with soap anyway.”

“Okay. Ah, Natalie? I need a huge favor.”

“What?”

“I need to be left alone, to figure out what to say when he comes back. And to be left alone when he does, to say it, and work things out between us.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten. “You expect me to just go out?”

“You don’t have to go anywhere. Just watch TV, or read, and leave us be. We’ll come to you when we’ve made up. Please?”

“Are you sure that’s the way to go?”

“I’m sure I need to learn how to fix my own messes, not have you bail me out. I have a big sister, and you’re not her. So please, leave me alone, then leave us alone, okay?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Promise.”

“All right, already. I promise. You happy?”

“No. But thank you.”

In the bedroom, I kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed. I opened my book and looked at the words, but I couldn’t comprehend them.

Neither one of the men had shown a hint of backing down. What if they couldn’t work it out? If they’d been more equally matched, they’d have fought. Maybe they still would. I supposed it was good that James was stronger. The fight, if there was one, would be over quickly, the right man the victor.

Ridiculous. There was no right man. They’d both behaved abominably. A fight would be more of the same.

If they hadn’t reached some sort of truce by tomorrow, I’d call Rowan. Between us, we could force them to be civil, to make apologies, to talk and maybe even to listen.

Would that be enough? I didn’t think so. James had been at his most stubborn pig-headedness and not had the courtesy to explain, but Gage had been just as bad. Some of the things they’d said were awful. James and Gage might forgive one another, but I doubted either would forget.

Would we ever again play here in this too-big bed with Gage? Sleep nestled with the ease of longtime lovers? Any certainty I’d had dissolved.

That was depressing, and so distracting I crept back into the living room, where I heard Gage pacing and muttering. How mad would he be if I reneged on my promise and suggested what to say and how to act?

No, he was right. I shouldn’t intercede on his behalf or he’d never learn how to deal with James. I should just accept that this first time would be the hardest and let him handle it.

The truck finally crunched up the driveway. Its door slammed shut with the squealing hinge and hollow metal clank unique to old trucks. Gage stopped talking to himself. I envisioned him waiting, nervous and hopeful, and wished I could see. For a long moment the house was as silent as it often was before we met him; then the back door opened.

“Hi,” Gage said.

“Where’s Natalie?” James didn’t sound upset.

“Somewhere, with a book. I asked her to leave us alone until we worked through this.”

“I’m worried that we can’t.”

“Me too. I kept getting these flashes, scared the hell out of me. The next person at the door wouldn’t be you but a cop, telling us there’d been an accident, and I’d never get to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Drama queen.”

“Natalie explained about your dad and the truck.”

“I saw it. Big fucker.”

I moved one edge of the drapes. A huge truck stood parked on the street in front of the house.

“I got the crew cab. Tell me what you want me to do with it, and it’s done. I could sell it. Trade it. Donate it to any charity you want. Whatever you say.”

“Nothing’s that easy.”

“Of course not. It wasn’t just the truck. I said some terrible shit that I didn’t mean, because I was mad about you not wanting the truck. I just didn’t know. Which doesn’t excuse what I said. I’m really sorry.”

“You don’t get to act like that, say you’re sorry, and everything’s fine.”

“I know.”

“How are you going to convince me you’re really sorry?”

“Like this.”

“No.”

What did Gage mean? I stared hard at the edge of the kitchen doorway, willing my vision to turn the corner.

“I had time to think, and now I’m asking, perfectly calmly. It’ll work.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute.

“You sure?” James said.

“Come on, man; I hit you. That was really stupid. I lost my temper, and I’m so sorry. And embarrassed.”