Grinning, Dan held the door open as Charlie came through,
juggling his duffel, lacrosse stick, helmet, and an ice
cream cone. Dan's grin faded as he saw Lisa had already
arrived and was glaring at Casey. Stopping for ice cream
had made them a little bit late.
Lisa shot a swift, disapproving glance in their direction
and turned back to Casey. "You're his father, Casey. Do
you see me delegating my parenting duties?"
Casey blinked. "You mean, like having a nanny?" He
clenched his jaw, then took a deep breath. "No, it's fine
that Charlie has a nanny. It's good, because we're both
busy people, and we want to make sure he's taken care of."
He slowed his speech with an obvious effort. "I had an
interview this evening-- it was a timing issue. It came up
at the last minute and there was
no other time it could
be done. Yes, I could have called one of the other parents
to drop Charlie off here, but I didn't know when I'd be
home."
"And so you thought
Dan should--"
"Rather than leave him by himself until I was through
working?! Damn right I did!"
Dan nudged Charlie's shoulder. "Come on, Charlie, let's go
get your stuff," he said quietly.
Lisa turned around. Her eyes fixed on Dan's face, she
said, "Go get your things from your room, Charlie. And
clean the ice cream off your face."
Charlie glanced uncertainly at his father's face, at Dan,
and back to his mother, before hurrying to his room.
Dan glared back at Lisa, determined not to give an inch.
"Lisa, I know we don't get along, but I am perfectly
qualified to pick up a kid from lacrosse practice and bring
him home."
Ignoring Dan, Lisa turned back to Casey. "Charlie's nanny
is a trained professional, with references and years of
experience caring for children.
When I can't be with him
myself," she continued, "I make sure he's in capable,
safe hands." She looked back at Dan. "Do you really
think, with your family history, that you're the kind of
person I want influencing my son?"
The color drained from Dan's face. He opened his mouth.
Before he could say anything, Casey snapped, "Lisa! That
is
not--"
"It's bad enough that he's an influence whenever Charlie
comes into your office, Casey. If you're going to bring him
into the place that, several days out of every week, you
want Charlie to call home ..."
Lisa glanced at her watch without finishing the sentence.
"Charlie!" she called. "How long will it take you to get
your things together?"
"He's already all packed, Lisa," Casey said.
Barely has a chance to get un
packed. "Several days a
week," my ass. Dan's thought went unspoken.
Lisa shook her head, then went to knock on Charlie's door.
Her voice light now, she asked, "You ready to go,
sweetheart?"
Charlie emerged from his room, his face solemn. "Okay,
let's go," Lisa said. She smiled at him. "We'll get the
ice cream off at home, hm?"
"Okay," Charlie said quietly.
With a hand on his shoulder, Lisa steered Charlie to the
door. "Bye, Dad," he said as he passed.
Casey knelt down to hug him. "So long, champ. See you
Wednesday."
"Yeah." Charlie glanced back at Dan on his way out; Dan
put on a smile for him and raised his hand, but didn't
wave.
The apartment was silent for a moment after they'd gone.
"Whoa," Dan said a little ironically.
"Sorry about that," Casey mumbled.
"Tell me, Case,
is there a right side of the bed for Lisa
to get up on in the morning?"
Casey closed his eyes. "Just ... leave it be."
Dan shook his head. "No, I have to wonder ... why on
earth
did you marry someone who's so deliberately malicious?"
Casey scratched his chest, then walked past Dan into the
kitchen. "She wasn't always like that."
"Well, that just begs the question, what the fuck changed
her that she thinks
that kind of thing is okay? Huh?
What great wrong did you visit upon her that she's allowed
to treat you like shit? What'd you do, run one of her
relatives through a wood-chopper or something?"
Casey slammed a cabinet door shut. "Dan. Leave it."
Dan raised his hands. "I'm leaving it. For now."
Dan stretched underneath the bedspread, watching as Casey
took out his contacts and turned off the lamp. He moved in
close as Casey settled under the covers. "So what
was
Lisa like back when you got married?" he asked quietly.
Casey sighed. "I'm tired, Dan."
"Me too," Dan replied. "But--"
"If I offered you a thousand dollars, would you drop it?"
Casey asked dully. "I need to sleep."
"Me too," Dan repeated. "But I won't be able to until you
talk to me." He propped his head up on his hand and looked
at Casey.
Casey tilted his head against the pillow to get a better
look at Dan's face in the darkness. "I could fix you some
warm milk."
"Case."
Casey sighed again. "What about a backrub, then?"
Dan paused. "Devious."
Casey smiled and kissed him slowly. "But so good ..." he
said, kissing him again.
"Mmmmph." Dan pulled away. "I won't forget this," he said
as he turned to his other side.
"I know you won't," Casey said as he began to knead at
Dan's shoulder through his thin T-shirt. "I have magic
fingers. No one forgets my backrubs. I have a bit of a
reputation, you know."
Dan didn't respond to Casey's attempt to change the
subject. "So," he murmured after a moment, "does this mean
I'll be seeing less of Charlie now?"
Casey stopped his ministrations on Dan's shoulder for a
moment, then continued. "Dan." His voice was reproving.
Dan shifted against him. "Well, I just thought maybe--"
"Dan, Charlie adores you. You're the grown-up he knows he
can be a kid around. And when you talk with him, you make
him feel like an equal. I think you're one of the best
influences he could have."
Dan's muscles relaxed slightly under his hand. "... Okay."
"And besides, Lisa said what she did because she knew it
would scare you.
She'd never actually -- do anything."
Dan let out a long breath. "How can you know that, Case?"
Casey continued to rub, letting his thumb dig into the
muscle at the base of Dan's neck. "Because she wants
what's best for Charlie too. I do know her, Dan. And,
yeah, I guess she can't stand me, and she even has her
reasons. But she loves Charlie, and she knows how Charlie
feels about you."
Neither spoke for a moment. "What changed, Casey?" Dan
asked softly. "She couldn't have been like this when you
married her."
Casey moved closer to Dan, resting his forehead against the
back of Dan's head, his hand still gripping Dan's shoulder.
He inhaled slowly, feeling Dan's hair tickle his nose.
"No. She wasn't."
Dan reached over his shoulder to twist his fingers into
Casey's. "You ever going to tell me what happened?" He
let the silence stretch on, then eventually rolled back
over to face Casey and stroked his arm gently.
Casey cleared his throat softly and shrugged one shoulder.
"I didn't really date a lot in high school. Nobody did,
you know -- we went around in bunches, and paired off some,
but nothing really serious. Lutheran community, you know.
So getting to college was really -- freeing. Met lots of
new people. We all started out as a big group, you know,
like in high school, but once you paired off once, you were
sort of done. Or, I guess, a lot of people were.
"Which was a little weird for me, because I didn't know
what I wanted yet. I didn't want ..." Casey sighed. "I
didn't want to be paired off right away. So I let myself
fall in with a couple of people, and lost my
virginity ... and I like to think he didn't know it was my
first time, but, anyway ..." he shrugged. "I got to know
Dana, because she was at least as fanatical about sports as
I was, and her best friend was Lisa.
"And Lisa and I ... we got really serious, very quickly, but
that's I mean, she was smart and funny--really sharp wit-
-and beautiful, of course. And she knew how to have fun.
It was college. And we were like all college kids -- on-
again, off-again, but there was ... never really anyone else
for either of us. And that, combined with the fact that
she and Dana were so close, I never really would have
thought of actually acting on that ... attraction I'd always
felt for Dana. Until, then ..."
Dan gently brushed his thumb over Casey's eyebrow and let
him continue. "I just ... well, I did feel like I was
awfully young to be that serious about someone. But any of
the times we broke up, it wasn't for real. It just got to
be a pattern, something to do after we got tired of going
to the usual hangouts on Saturday nights and sneaking sex
around our roommates. And then when we got tired of being
broken-up, we'd go back to dating and ..." Casey cleared his
throat. "... fucking. And I thought I could have more than
that with someone. At the time, I thought it might be
Dana. We already did spend a lot of time together,
and ... well, there were sparks.
"But then just when I'd decided I was going to do it, for
real this time --at least she said it first. We Have To
Talk." He gave a shallow, mirthless laugh. "God, it
sounds so stupid and trite, but it really was ominous. So
I never got a chance ... I was sure she knew that I'd been
interested in Dana. And Dana's never been exactly
subtle ..." Dan chuckled faintly in agreement. "So I
thought maybe that's what she was bringing up. She wanted
to break up with me to preserve her friendship with Dana.
Or she wanted to cause an ugly scene over it, which kind of
would have been justified ... I don't know. But ..."
Dan still did not speak. Casey finally swallowed and
continued. "This was right before graduation, so we had to
plan fast. She--" he took a deep breath. "We hadn't
thought there was any reason to use ... it was still the mid-
80s; no one in our circle knew anything about AIDS. She
said she was on the Pill ... And I'm sure she was, but
there's that 2%, or whatever ... And she would have only had
to have forgotten it one day ...
"So anyway, that was that. Wasn't what either of us had
planned, but I mean, it wasn't that I didn't love her.
We were very happy together, except when we weren't. Huh.
Obviously. But really, she was smart and witty and
charming and, well ... funnily, all those things you don't
want her to be now when you get into an argument with her."
Dan's brow was furrowed. "And this was the year you
graduated from college?" he asked softly.
Casey nodded. "... Yeah. And it was still tense sometimes.
Because Lisa
had known that I'd been ready to break up
with her. That standing in front of her in her dorm room,
before she told me, I'd been ready to end it with her. And
to start seeing Dana. At least, that's when Lisa and Dana
stopped being best friends. We had some ... discussions,
about being trapped, and about responsibility ... But, still.
We were young. It was scary, but it was pretty exciting
too. In our best moments, we were sure we could make it
work.
"So we couldn't tell our families, obviously, why we were
really in such a hurry. But we graduated, and the wedding
was two months later, and it wasn't much more than a month
after that --" His voice finally broke, just briefly, and
he sniffled, once. "Just in time for my birthday," he
said, with a bitter smile in his voice.
Dan's arms tightened around him. "... Casey?"
Casey sniffled again. "So, yeah, we got married, when I
didn't really want to ... when I'm sure neither of us really
wanted to ... because we wanted to do the right thing for
this ...
child we'd created ... but then all of a sudden
that was gone and we were still there. Together.
"But we convinced ourselves this was better ... we were kids
ourselves, we didn't have jobs, or a place to live where we
could have a family, really ... "
Dan made a small sound and brushed his fingers through his
hair. "Oh,
Casey ... "
"So what could we do? We
got jobs, and became adults,
and life went on.
And not a lot was different, except the stakes were higher.
We fought some, like we had in college, but we couldn't
just wait until we were ready to get together again ...
And ... underneath it ... Lisa knew that I hadn't really chosen
to be with her. And that always colored every fight we
had. And that always colored every fight we had. What did
it mean when I chose to work late -- where Dana was
working? What did it mean when I chose to work late or go
out with
you? Or, later, when I ..." Casey took a deep
breath. "What did it mean when I turned down the offer for
Late Night?" Dan tightened his hand around Casey's.
Casey continued. "Then one time she said she didn't know
why I'd married her. She said it was obvious I didn't care
about
her, and she implied very neatly that she was
surprised I
had done the Right Thing, instead of just
handing her the money for an abortion. And I told her I
did care. And that ..." There was a catch in Casey's voice,
and he continued in a whisper, "I was heartbroken when we
lost the baby." He paused while Dan waited for him,
rubbing the small of his back. "We both thought that we
wouldn't be so unhappy if things had ... if the baby had been
all right. So not long after that, we decided to try
again."
"Charlie?" Dan whispered.
Casey's voice softened as it always did when he talked
about his son.
"Charlie. And -- well, the rest you know. We both just
loved him so much ..." He paused. "But he couldn't make us
love each other."
"I had no idea, Case."
Casey pulled back a little, rolling onto his back. "I
know. Nobody does. It's -- obviously we don't talk about
it." He smiled a little wryly. "Usually it doesn't come
up."
Dan slowly rubbed Casey's belly through his shirt until
Casey stilled his hand. "Danny."
"Hmm?"
"Can we go to sleep now?"
Dan raised Casey's hand and kissed it. "Yeah." He lay
down next to Casey and curled himself around his body. He
didn't go to sleep for a long time.
Comments always
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