Next To You (19 page)

‘Eight months ago.’

She was cold all over. ‘Is that what you’ve wanted to tell me all this time?’

‘Yes. I wasn’t sure if you knew.’ He handed her the shoe. ‘He left a bequest to you in his will. The lawyer needs to contact you about it. I don’t know your address or phone number.’

Caroline stared at him, not wanting to believe, but believing. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about your father,’ she muttered, and moved between the boy and his mother to grab her shoe. Hobbling, she took off the other slingback. Strings of blood twined around her shin and ankle. She trudged off barefoot, leaving him standing in the street with the lady, the boy and the book she hadn’t finished reading.

Frigid desolation seeped in, rattling her bones as she walked. William made jokes about how he’d been feeling old. She understood that feeling now. The news that Gus has died kicked her into feeble, prehistorically decrepit, strung with cobwebs like the old lady in
Great Expectations
.

Only yesterday, Uncle Reg had called Gus a ‘poor bastard,’ and he’d meant that in a kind way, because her father-in-law had always been a kind-hearted man. While Drew was dying, her relationship with Gus had remained close, even affectionate, but his hateful, pyroclastic wife incinerated him into a pall of smoke not unlike the cancerous cloud constantly encircling her head.

Caroline saw Gus fade, saw him grow thin. He’d called her and wrote to her a few times. There had been the clandestine visits he’d made while she was at Linden Oaks, the times he’d come with her uncle. Gus had tried to give her money and joked that they could take off together. Then, four months before her release, he’d stopped visiting, stopped calling, stopped writing. Uncle Reg had no explanation; he said Gus stopped calling him too.

Now she knew why.

Hollow, she let herself into the building’s small foyer and ignored the mail poking out of the top of her postbox. She opened the internal staircase door and limped upstairs, knee throbbing.

William’s door was ajar. She heard him singing about ‘Sundown’ creeping around on the back stairs. She heard Batman too, scratching and whining on the other side of the door she couldn’t get open. She wrestled with the lock, her stiff, clammy hands unable to turn key.

‘I thought I heard you come upstairs.’

He was so quiet. Always so quiet. She stopped fumbling with the lock and exhaled.

‘Caroline?’ he said. ‘What happened to your stocking?’ His voice was deep and soft, and she turned to him. William looked her up and down, from the stocking wilted around her ankle, her leg smeared with blood, to her frozen face. ‘Ouch. Having a bad day, huh? How about we clean that up?’

Batman yipped and scratched on the other side of the door. Caroline ignored him. She took a single step forward and rested her cheek on William’s wide chest. She slipped her arms inside his jacket, clutched his waist, and held on to the one solid thing she knew would keep her buoyant.

Will didn’t hesitate. His fingers moved over her hair and down her back, and he swayed gently as he held her. She was cold. Her face, her back, her hands all pressed that cold through his shirt. They stood that way for a few minutes, not speaking until her popsicle hands warmed against his body. ‘Come on, let’s go inside,’ he said.

The keys were in the lock where she’d left them. Will unlocked the door and pushed it open. Batman rushed out, his head lowered, ears flattened, growling, baring his teeth.

‘What’s wrong with you? Get inside, Batman!’ Caroline grumbled.

The dog ran inside, spinning in anxious circles, whimpering and yawning.

Will chuckled softly. ‘Dogs are the best barometers for moods, aren’t they? I think he knew you were hurt before I did. He was out on the terrace going a little berserk. He kept going in and out of your apartment, barking like mad. I guess that’s how I knew something was up and came out here. Where’s your antiseptic?’

‘It’s okay, William. I can do it.’

‘But you’re going to let me do it, aren’t you?’

‘Okay. The stuff’s in the bathroom.’

‘Which one?’

‘The bedroom.’

Will followed her down the hallway, through the dining room, into her bedroom. They moved around the edge of her double bed. The wedding picture he saw once in the living room sat on the bedside table. Shitty Alex smiled out at them from the silver frame. Will wanted to accidentally knock the photo off the nightstand.

And step on it.

Instead, he went into the bathroom after her, and switched on the overhead light. A sunny glare bounced off the white tiles, the brightness washing out features in the room. Instantly, his vision diminished and he squinted in discomfort, his hand covering his eyes. ‘Caroline, it’s too bright in here for me to see.’

‘You put on the heat lamps.’ She reached around him, flipped off the twin suns, and turned on the smaller, less painful, less vision-interfering row of soft lights above the pedestal sink.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and he waited for his sight to return to normal. ‘Antiseptic?’

She sat on the toilet lid. ‘The stuff’s in the cabinet above the sink.’

Will opened the mirrored medicine chest, found a box of bandages, cotton balls, and a nearly empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide. ‘I’ve got more of this in my medicine cabinet if we need it. How did you bang your knee?’ He found a clean pink towel hanging on a rail beside the sink. Once he’d moistened the towel with water, he handed her peroxide and crouched down to wipe her knee with the damp cloth.

‘Alex … Alex was …’

‘Alex did this?’ Will like to think he was a master at keeping emotions in check. He rarely lost his temper or raised his voice, but this injury, an injury caused by a violent not quite yet ex-husband, raised a spiny kind of provocation that twisted in his gut. A sharp blast of disgust escaped through his nose. ‘Did he do this to you?’

‘No. I fell.’

‘You fell?’
Isn’t that the excuse you typically hear to cover abuse? I ran into the door, I tripped and fell. Damn him.

‘He told me my father-in-law had died. He died. Gus is dead and I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I loved Gus. He was a good man. I was so upset I almost walked out into traffic. If Alex hadn’t grabbed me … Poor Gus.’ Tears ballooned in her eyes and she swiped hard, angrily, at the ones that sat on her lower lashes.

‘Alex.’ Will felt absolutely useless. He wanted to point out all the reasons she should not be with Alex. He wanted to ask her if she had ever read or even looked at the all the pamphlets on domestic abuse he’d been shoving in her mailbox. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t healthy to hold on. He wanted to tell her to give up and start over again because she deserved better, more, something extraordinary instead of the humiliation and malicious torment that kept her chained to a scraggly post of sinewy flesh that passed for a man.

But he didn’t.

She was distressed enough, and didn’t need to hear a presentation of dire facts when she was already upset. Will suppressed his ire, cloaked it behind his expert equanimity, and said, ‘Would you like me to call your uncle?’ He put his hand on her shoulder.

Nose red, but dry-eyed, Caroline looked at him. ‘I’m so glad you live next door.’

‘Me too. Shall I call Reg?’ He lifted his hand and rose.

‘No. He and Gus got pretty chummy after my parents died. I wonder why he didn’t tell me.’

‘Maybe he didn’t know either.’

‘Maybe he didn’t.’

She took the cloth from him, wiped her face, and moved to sit on the side of the bathtub. She began to pull off her stockings. The right elasticized stocking came off easily because it was bunched up around her ankle. The left stocking wasn’t so cooperative. Fine nylon fibers were caked with coagulated blood and embedded in her skin. Caroline hissed through her teeth as she pulled at them, ‘That fucking hurts.’

Will took a seat on the toilet lid as she swore. Was it immoral to punish someone like Alex with the same kind of abuse he meted out?

She ran water from the bathtub faucet over her knee, rinsing away the messiest, stickiest bits, yet the nylon threads remained implanted in her flesh. ‘The nylon’s still stuck in there,’ she said. ‘Can you help me? There are tweezers in the cabinet if you need them, which I think you will.’ She stood inside the bath and hitched up her dress, resting her foot on the edge of the tub.

Will got the tweezers and tried to help. He put on his glasses. He was as gentle as possible. His fingers brushed along the warm skin of her knee and thigh, but quite suddenly, the caged animal aggression that had mustered over Alex turned into something much more pleasant, and wholly inappropriate.

He lifted his hands away.

‘I’ve got to be honest here,’ he said. ‘I’m no good at this. My eyes don’t work well at this distance. I can’t see this way. I can’t really discern the fine image to pull threads out.’ He wasn’t lying. He lacked visual acuity at close range, even with reading glasses, because he couldn’t focus this close. If he’d cocked his head and looked slightly sideways, like when he was reading, what he was gazing at would come into view, the way graphs or columns of numbers did when he moved them around. He couldn’t exactly turn Caroline the way he did a book or newspaper. He couldn’t possibly pull the threads from her skin.

Instead, he smiled at her gently, said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and yanked the nylon down in one clean jerk.

She let out a yelp, and Batman tore into the bathroom. The dog launched himself into Will’s calves, biting the back of his pants, nipping his ankles.

Twenty minutes later, Will canceled dinner with Yvonne.

Thirty minutes later, the opening credits of the Tom Hanks feature
The Green Mile
began to play on his TV screen. Will’s jacket lay draped over the arm of the couch, his shoes on the rug where Batman laid curled up. Will took his seat on the L-shaped sofa, stretching out his legs. The icepack crinkled on Caroline’s knee when she moved to lean against his shoulder.

‘Did you ever read this book?’ he said, thinking he needed an icepack to alleviate the scorched fury that remained in his chest.

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you like it?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I don’t mind reading Stephen King, but I like this movie more than the book. Usually it’s the other way around. This time, I think because of Tom Hanks, I prefer the movie.’

Will took some popcorn and then passed her the bowl. ‘Tom’s always so good, isn’t he? Even in his early TV days on
Bosom Buddies
, and early movies like
Bachelor Party
, you could see he was going to be amazing in a Henry Fonda-Jimmy Stewart way.’

‘I think Tom is sort of like the modern day version of Jimmy Stewart.’ Caroline grabbed a handful of popcorn. ‘He’s the believable everyman faced with dour situations, like in
Castaway,
or protecting his child in
The Road to Perdition
. Kevin Costner is kind of like that too sometimes. He plays the stand up kind of guy in love his wife, like in the
Untouchables
and
Field of Dreams.
He has all this integrity, a very Tom Hanks trait, except Kevin always got the sex scenes that poor Tom never did.’

‘Tom and Bonnie Hunt do it in this movie.’

‘Yes, okay, we hear them, but we don’t get to see Tom in action. We don’t see naked Tom like we see naked Kevin.’ She crunched a few kernels and said, ‘We never get Hanks’ ass. Tom never really makes out with Meg Ryan, not even in
Joe Versus the Volcano.
He’s not allowed to get with any of his female co-stars on screen. But you put Kevin Costner in the same role instead of Tom, he’d say something sincere and
Bull Durham-ish
about kissing for three days, there’d be a shot of perfectly toned Costner ass while he controls his desire and satisfies his girlfriend first.’

‘Isn’t that what real men do?’

She launched a piece of popcorn at him. He caught it in his mouth and took another handful from the bowl on her lap.

Laughing, she said, ‘Even with that kind of Costner sexual consideration, I prefer Tom. I saw this interview once where Pierce Brosnan was talking about James Bond, saying women would choose to sleep with James Bond instead of Tom Hanks, but you know what? If I had to choose, out of the three of them, Tom, Kevin, or James Bond, I’d go for Tom. I like that ordinary, realistic, average quality he has. I find that comfort in his own skin quality very sexy.’

‘I think Mr. Hanks would be thrilled to know you’d like to sleep with him.’

Mouth pursed, Caroline looked at him, one eye narrowed. ‘Is this where you tell me you know Tom Hanks from your porno movie-making days??’

‘Well …’ Will raised an eyebrow. ‘No, but I wrote him a letter when he was making
The Da Vinci Code
.’

She snorted. ‘Oh, Frosty, you’re hilarious.’

‘Did you know I’m also comfortable in my own skin?’

‘That’s because it fits you so well.’

‘Mm-hm, all over like a big white glove.’

‘Why did you write to Tom Hanks?’

‘What’s the last movie you can recall seeing where there’s an albino character?’

‘Well, there was that seventies porno movie my friend of mine did …’

He threw popcorn at her. The dog gobbled it as soon as it rolled off the sofa.

‘I guess,’ she said, ‘I’d say that Goldie Hawn/Chevy Chase movie
Foul Play
and …
The Da Vinci Code
. Tom was in
The Da Vinci Code
.’

‘
The Da Vinci Code
,’ he nodded, and grabbed more popcorn. ‘A dissemination of all sorts of myths and a fine example of how the stereotype is perpetuated. In either of those movies, were my kind portrayed as a James Bond type or even in an appropriately Tom Hanks or Kevin Costner everyman fashion?’

‘No. The albinos were the bad guys.’

The popcorn paused at his lips, his frown deep. ‘That’s what they do. We all have red eyes that glow with evil, pasty skin that looks dead, and we’re constantly trying to kill someone. We’re
always
the bad guys.’

‘The albino cop in
The Heat
was a good guy.’

‘Okay, we’re
usually
always the bad guy.’

‘And you’re always the good guy, William.’