The Healing (10 page)

She was one of the lucky ones on a chaise lounge. Mike had made sure of that. He also made sure his chair was close by. Close enough so that every once in a while he could reach out and rub Karen's foot. Or wink at her when one of their favorite songs came through the stereo speaker positioned by the open sliding door.

It was a particularly relaxing night because there weren't even any children running back and forth. Lori was staying with Karen's parents, and Vinny's girls were spending the week with their cousins at the Jersey shore. The Messina kids were already old enough to stay home on their own, especially since they were only a few houses away, and they only came over when their parents told them to.

“I don't want it to end,” Vinny said. He was the one still munching on the chips, apparently not bothered that his gut was rolling over his belt. “I'm feeling a little like a teenager tonight.”

Lisa snorted. “Well, you sure don't look like one.”

Vinny was good-natured about it. “Watch it or I'll dare everyone to go skinny-dipping. Like we used to out in Rockaway. Remember, Mike?”

Skinny-dipping?

Mike glanced at Karen. His sunburned shoulders lifted in a guilty shrug. He had never told her about skinny-dipping at Rockaway.

Karen shot a look at Lisa. Anything was possible after one too many Buds, and she didn't want any naked men in her pool. “Oh, God,” she said. “He'll get us arrested in our own backyard.”

“Don't worry, Kar,” Lisa replied. “Vinny's not getting up any time soon.”

Vinny chuckled and looked adoringly at his beer bottle. “She's right. I'm a little too comfy at the moment to consider diving into cold water.”

Karen heaved a sigh of relief.

“Good thing, too,” Lisa said, maintaining the good humor. “Why is it that the ones who should be wearing the most clothes are always the ones who are too willing to strut their stuff? Like at the nudie beaches. All you see are people who shouldn't even be in bathing suits, much less parading around with everything hanging out. And I mean hanging.”

“What are you trying to say?” Vinny asked.

“I'm not
trying
to say anything,” Lisa replied. “I'm saying it outright. It should've been the Eleventh Commandment. Thou shalt not skinny-dip or subject thy fellow human beings to the sight of ungainly flesh.”

A chorus of laughter shook the patio. Karen felt like she was watching some comical tennis match as the banter bounced between the Bovinos.

“You don't like my flesh?” Vinny said, stoking his wife's resilient wit.

Even in the fading light, Karen could follow Lisa's gaze to Vinny's distended stomach. “I'm not sure it should be on public display, Vin.”

This time Vinny joined the raucous laughter.

Karen couldn't resist a glance at her husband. He was leaning forward on his knees, looking like he owned the world. Or at least his small corner of it. Karen couldn't make jokes about Mike's appearance. She couldn't complain that he was clueless. She couldn't even make fun of his gut. The only beer belly he had was a six-pack of attractive abs. “So when did
you
skinny-dip at Rockaway?” Karen asked him.

Now it was the guys who broke into a taunting chorus. Mike feigned innocence. “Oh, way before I met you, babe.”

Karen rose from the chaise lounge to start clearing away the empty plates. “A shark should've bit your—”

Mike bolted from his chair and scooped Karen off her feet before she could finish her sentence. He made a quick dash for the edge of the pool, carrying her as if she were a light load of laundry, and threatened to drop her into the shimmering water. She screamed and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Michael Francis Donnelly! Don't you dare!” She hugged his neck tighter. “If I go in, you're coming in with me!”

He threw his head back and laughed at the darkening sky. Karen realized how ridiculous she sounded. Mike could whip her off his neck like a scarf if he wanted to. But he didn't. Instead, he kissed her affectionately on the nose and put her back on her feet. But it wasn't over. Mike didn't realize he was leaving himself open to an ambush.

Vinny, who had claimed he didn't want to get off his chair, seized the perfect opportunity to push Mike into the pool. One easy shove, and Mike hit the water with a spew of hard consonants.

Karen gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth to hide her shock. And her amusement.

“Man overboard!” Vinny said, plucking a child's inner tube from the deck post to throw in after his friend. It hit Mike in the head just as he broke the surface. “Where's that lifeguard when you need him?”

“He needed a shower anyway,” Joe said, adding to the fun.

Janice was quick with a comeback. “You
all
need a shower!”

Mike shot out of the water and back onto the deck in one seismic explosion, and Karen scurried out of the way. Vinny couldn't escape fast enough, and the two men started wrestling. It was a dangerously heavy contention for who was going to end up in the pool. Karen actually got a little nervous, but Lisa quickly put it in perspective.

“Look at them,” she said. “Godzilla versus King Kong.”

The ladies huddled closer to the house. “Who wins? The ape or the dinosaur?” Janice asked.

They giggled. Karen knew she had had too many beers. Watching Mike wrestle—soaking wet, veins popping, muscles straining—was starting to turn her on.

Richie and Joe couldn't sit back and see Vinny get away with what he'd done, so they helped Mike throw him into the pool. The ladies cheered.

Mike sauntered toward them, the water still dripping from his face. Karen marveled at how much he still looked like the guy who stole her heart at Founders Landing. He stepped right up to the women and shook his hair out like a wet dog, spraying them and causing them to dart in different directions. “Didn't want you to feel left out,” he said, just before going into the house with a rascally grin.

Ten minutes later, Mike came back out wearing Karen's flowered beach sarong, and his head was wrapped in a terry-cloth turban. She was the first to spot him and let out a little shriek. His friends laughed until tears came to their eyes. He danced between them like Carmen Miranda and sang along to the radio.

“Will you please take that off?” Karen asked, wiping her tears of laughter away. “You'll stretch it out.”

His masculine body was exploding out of the little garment. “Give me a dollar,” he said, bumping his hip against hers and then grabbing Richie for a whirling dance around the patio. Richie played right along.

Someone produced a dollar. Karen didn't know who; she only knew that no comedy club on earth could make her laugh harder than the people who were gathered on her patio that night. No hunk at Chippendale's could have put on a better show getting out of a beach sarong.

And no human being could make her feel the way Mike Donnelly made her feel. He filled her life with love and laughter every day.

She was still the luckiest girl in the world.

chapter twelve

June 2004

Karen usually found it relaxing to curl up with a good book in the rocking chair on the porch, especially since moving out to Southold, but this night she couldn't concentrate. Fatigue and anxiety clouded her brain, and the words on the page were just focal points with no meaning. It was almost midnight, and Lori wasn't home. She hadn't answered her cell phone all day, and Karen didn't have a good feeling about it. Considering the state Lori had been in when she left the house, it was all too likely she'd had a major setback. And if Karen started thinking about all the possibilities that existed for Lori to regress into self-destructive behavior, she would have lost her mind.

Earlier in the evening, Karen had telephoned Lori's job and found out she had the day off. She phoned Lori's friends, at least the ones she knew, but nobody had seen her. By ten o'clock, Karen started calling everyone she knew in town to put out a personal all-points bulletin on her daughter. She called the hospital and the police station to make sure no accidents or injuries had been reported and asked the police to keep their eyes peeled for a silver 1999 Honda Civic. Finally, around eleven, Karen called Lori's friends back and begged them to go out and look for her.

In a normal set of circumstances, parents would be able to get in their cars and hunt down their own children. But Karen was trapped. She didn't want to leave Mike by himself, so she had to rely on others to search for Lori.

Nervous energy was all that was keeping Karen awake as midnight approached, and every two minutes she got up from the rocking chair and paced the porch floor, waiting for headlights in the driveway. It had been an emotional day, and it was far from over. Mike was in the living room, trying to distract himself with mindless late-night television, but Karen couldn't console him. Not even at a time like this. Her brief journey into the past had weakened her defenses, and she felt too vulnerable.

It was easy to gaze at Mike while he was sleeping and embrace him with her memory. That afternoon, as she stood at Mike's bedside, her thoughts once again went back to the summer they'd first met. Gazing at him with those visions so fresh in her mind, it was as if she had awakened after a long, fitful sleep. She studied his every feature, still handsome despite the strain of catastrophic illness, and realized she hadn't really looked at him in the last six months. But while he was asleep, it was so much easier to look at him and remember the virile man he once was. Karen could almost make believe he wasn't sick. She could pretend the only difference between the man lying on the sofa bed and the lifeguard who had taken her breath away was the graying hair at his temples.

On the other hand, while Mike was awake and distressed, Karen feared she was of little use to him. So she stayed on the porch and didn't dare open another sealed crypt—their common heartache over Lori. Karen could only handle one crisis at a time.

By midnight there was still no sign of their daughter. She didn't know what else to do.

“Karen!” Mike called from the living room.

His voice startled her, and she scrambled off the chair for the hundredth time. “Yeah?”

“Go look for her.”

Karen peered at Mike from the doorway. Her mind raced. “I can't leave you here.”

“Yes, you can,” he said. “Take the van and go find her.”

“But what if she comes back and I'm not here?” Karen asked. She had thought of so many different scenarios. “What if you get a phone call—and—she needs us?”

Mike's face hardened stubbornly. Karen knew he would have thrown himself in front of a train to make sure his daughter was safe. “I'll call you on your cell.”

Karen blinked at him, undecided.
At least he's not falling apart,
she thought. Somehow his concern for Lori was breathing life into his old self. “I don't know, Mike.”

His eyes locked into hers. He didn't have to say a word. Karen knew he was thinking about the night they had almost lost her.

It was exactly two years ago.

June 2002

The Friday evening commute was always a test of patience and civility. It was a stormy night, but that didn't discourage the weekenders from migrating in droves out to Long Island. The train was packed, and after getting soaked on her walk to Penn Station, Karen had to stand up for the duration of the ride home to Massapequa. In her bulging briefcase, which was sitting on the floor between her feet, were two four-hundred-page manuscripts that she had to read over the weekend. All she needed to top off the day was to get to the parking lot and find her car had a flat tire.

But it didn't, so she threw her umbrella and heavy briefcase into the backseat of her blue Jetta and made her way home through the wall of rain. Pulling into the driveway of the neatly tended split-level on Walnut Street, Karen saw another familiar car parked in the glare of the outside light. The sporty black Acura belonged to Lori's new boyfriend, Nick Pappas, an eighteen-year-old boy who'd just graduated from her school and worked as a waiter at a local restaurant.

Karen liked Nick, not only because he had shimmering dark eyes, an easy smile, and an honest, engaging personality, but also because he was a positive influence on Lori and came into her life when she was in most need of a reliable grounding rod.

Lori had started drinking when she was fourteen, and for the next two years she was caught in a cycle of experimental drug use, severe mood swings, and psychiatric care. Twice she even ended up in the hospital because she had slipped into a psychotic depression and became a threat to herself. Then Nick asked her to his senior prom, and Lori went from feeling like a loser to feeling like the stars had aligned in her life. Suddenly she was sober, responsible, and focused on everything good and wholesome. The only thorn in her side was her father's unrelenting scrutiny of Nick and any unsavory intentions he might be harboring toward his daughter.

But that was okay. That was how it was supposed to be.

Karen didn't bother putting her umbrella up as she got out of her car in the driveway. She just made a dash for the front door. Once inside, she breathed a sigh of relief and dropped her briefcase onto the hallway tiles. It landed with a heavy thud. Kicking off her shoes, Karen looked into the living room and saw a sight that made her want to laugh. Mike was sitting in his recliner like an emperor on his throne, his two walking canes leaning against the upholstery like scepters. There was a characteristic glint of mischief and fervor in his eyes that contradicted his relaxed posture. Sitting across from him on the very edge of the sofa was Nick, totally intimidated by his girlfriend's father but trying very hard to appear mature and at ease. His good manners and amenable nature were rising to the challenge, but his bouncing knee betrayed his discomfort. Karen also spied a flicker of relief in those puppy eyes when she arrived on the scene. She was a buffer between the fierce watchdog and an unwanted guest who was eyeing the roast beef.

“Hey, babe,” Mike said.

Karen could have sworn he winked at her. So with one look she gave him an entire lecture on how he shouldn't be bullying their daughter's boyfriend. “Hi.”

“Hello, Mrs. Donnelly,” Nick offered politely.

“How are you, Nick?”

His eyes were pleading with her to get him out of there. “Fine, thanks.”

“Where's Lori?” Karen asked.

“She's upstairs changing,” he said. “I got the night off, so we're going to dinner.”

Karen glanced back at her husband, and his eyebrows did a little jump.
Get a load of this guy,
he was saying. “It's pretty nasty out there,” she said. “Where are you going?”

“
Le Jardin
.” Nick pronounced the name of the restaurant with the proper French inflection.

Karen wished he hadn't, because Mike's eyes narrowed cynically. She could read her husband's mind.
Don't try to impress me, kid. I know what you're after.

Luckily, Lori came trotting down the stairs before Nick saw her father glaring at him. “Hi, Ma!” she said cheerfully, and kissed Karen's cheek. She was clad in a skimpy summer dress that was designed for anorexics, dancers, and models . . . not for young women with too much flesh and bone.

Mike's glare intensified. Karen could read his mind as he examined their daughter's choice of attire. But he didn't come out and say that all Lori needed was a feather boa and stiletto heels to complete the costume. He simply said, “Karen?”

This was Karen's cue to say what needed to be said. She had learned to handle situations like this with maternal diplomacy. If Mike said it, Lori would think her father was displeased with her and get upset.

“It's pouring outside, Lori,” Karen said, donning her kid gloves. “Are you sure you want to wear that? If you get wet, you'll be cold in the restaurant.”

Lori was in such a good mood, she took her mother's advice without a second thought and went back upstairs to change. Again. Nick sat back down on the sofa, but it was quite apparent he was suppressing a groan.

“So, Nick,” Mike said. “Can you read the menu at
Le Jardin
and order everything in French?”

Karen was painfully aware her husband was mocking the poor kid, and she was sure the kid knew it. But Nick's courtesy was resilient. “No, everything on the menu is explained in fine-print English,” he replied.

“Good thing,” Mike said. His face curled into his familiar smirk because Karen was now glowering at him.

Karen dumped the pot of white clam sauce onto the linguine she had just drained. Behind her, Mike hooked one of his canes onto the back of a kitchen chair and then curled his free arm around his wife's waist.

“Don't even try,” she said. “You were a beast.”

“I'm sorry,” he replied. “I can't help myself.”

“Don't you see Nick Pappas is the best thing that could've happened to your daughter?”

Mike tucked his head into the slope of Karen's neck in a taunting plea for forgiveness. “I know. I just can't help it.”

She tossed the pasta vigorously, but Mike stayed glued to her. “I thought I was going to have to send you to your room,” she said.

“And spank me?”

Karen couldn't respond playfully by pushing him away because he would have lost his balance. So she warned him, “Go sit down or you'll be wearing your dinner.”

Chuckling to himself, Mike shuffled over to the table and sat in his chair. It was the one closest to the doorway—the one facing Karen as she prepared the meal. He kept her company whenever she was busy in the kitchen, doing what he could to help in spite of his wobbles and tremors.

Karen uncorked a bottle of cabernet and poured the wine into two goblets. She only poured a small taste into Mike's glass because he couldn't tolerate alcohol. “Nick is one of the nicest young men I've ever met,” she said. “And he treats Lori like royalty. Why do you insist on making him squirm?”