Breakdown (20 page)

“Yes, it would be nice if Michael could be here.”

“
He
wouldn’t think so,” Rob said, jerking a thumb at Chris.

“What the hell—?” Chris said.

Damn, I thought Rob had got over me.
Pauline tried to keep her anger in control, tried to treat Rob as if he were still her patient.

“Maybe you’ve had a little too much to drink, Rob.” She was relieved to see a couple of men edging closer, Malcolm and Walt, whom she could count on to help if necessary. Rob rarely got violent, but he was bigger than Chris, his bravado propped up with too much beer. And she didn’t know how Chris would react to this sort of situation.

She felt Chris brush against her as he slid off the stool behind her, so she stood too. Rob backed up a few paces. The crowd had moved away, leaving a clear area around them with the bar at Pauline’s and Chris’s backs.

“Did Michael know he was sending you a bed warmer?” Rob said to Pauline. “Or are you shagging this skinny behind his back?”

“Rob, what’s wrong with you? Why would you say such a thing?”

“Push off,” Chris said.

“Why don’t you push off?” Rob sounded angrier now, more than just drunk. “I live here. I belong here. You don’t.”

“Give it a rest, Rob,” someone in the crowd said.

“I’ll go when I’m ready,” Chris said.

“Maybe I’ll make you go sooner.” Rob stepped closer.

“There’ll be no fighting in my place,” Harry put in sternly from behind the counter. “Someone take Rob out back and cool him down.”

Malcolm and Walt edged forward. Rob brought fists up and set his feet in a warning stance. “Back off!” He turned to Chris. “Let’s go, Price.”

Chris put his hands on Pauline’s shoulders and pushed her to the side. “Get back,” he said to her, keeping his eyes on Rob.

“Don’t fight him,” Pauline said as she stepped away. Chris shook his head a little, but the look on his face belied that. His whole demeanor had changed; he was relaxed, light on his feet, his hands not quite fists, but ready.

A few people tried to talk Rob down, but he ignored them, teeth bared as he glared at Chris.

“Outside,” Chris said.

“Sure,” Rob replied. He started to turn, then lashed out.

Pauline gasped as Chris moved. He stepped into the blow, deflecting with one arm. He twisted his body and got Rob in a choke hold. Rob gurgled as Chris kicked his legs out from under him and dropped him to the floor. The whole thing ended in seconds with Chris kneeling on Rob’s back, gripping Rob’s hair with one hand and wrenching Rob’s arm back with the other. Rob groaned.

“Holy shit,” someone said into the sudden quiet.

“Next time I will fight you,” Chris said, thumping Rob’s face against the floor once, “and you’ll be worse off than you are now. Do you understand?”

Rob nodded as best he was able.

Chris leaned close to Rob’s ear. “Don’t fuck with me.” He thumped Rob’s head once more, then released him and stood. Rob stayed on the floor. No one else moved. Chris turned for the vestibule.

“Good job,” someone said, to a round of soft agreements. Chris didn’t seem to hear them.

Pauline went after Chris. He had grabbed his coat and was already out the front door. She had to get into her wellies and jacket. Outside, it had stopped snowing. She hurried to catch him.

“Wait!”

Chris turned his head back. He didn’t stop, but he slowed as he zipped his coat.

“That was brilliant,” Pauline said as she reached him.

Chris hunched his shoulders and shoved his hands into his pockets. He strode on without acknowledging her.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

For a few moments Pauline thought he wasn’t going to speak to her at all, then he stopped abruptly and turned to face her.

“If he’d done that in London, he might be dead now.”

Pauline’s stomach turned over. She tried to keep her voice calm. “You’d have killed him?”

“No, not me,” Chris said, running a hand through his hair. He took a few steps in a small space, as if to release tension. He pulled his knit cap out of his pocket and put it on. “Stupid drunks who pick fights don’t last long. If you want to survive in this world, you need more brains than that. And if you’ve got enough brains, you learn how to fight.”

“We’ve all got on fine without knowing—”

“This isn’t London!” Chris cut her off, rounding on her, stepping closer. “This isn’t Portsmouth, or Halifax, or New York. You people have no idea. What the hell does it matter who might be screwing who? It’s not like you have to worry that someone might kill you today!”

“Chris, calm down. Come on, walk with me. Talk if you want to.” Pauline started up the road into the darkness toward home. She heard him behind her, and the beam of a torch came on and lit the path they had made through the snow on the way down. Pauline remembered the black torch she’d seen on the chair in the spare room on the day Chris arrived.

She thought they might make it to the house in silence, but when she reached the wall, Chris said her name. She turned to face him.

“I wouldn’t kill anyone,” he said, his voice strained, barely above a whisper. “I wouldn’t hurt
anyone
. Please believe me.”

“I know. Of course I believe you.”

He lurched to the wall with a groan, put both hands on it, leaned over. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Pauline waited while he panted, then moved closer. She put a hand on his back. He was shaking. He handed her the torch.

“What happened in London?” she asked him.

“No, I can’t—”

“Okay.” Pauline moved her hand in circles until his breathing evened out. “You’re okay.”

Chris pushed away from the wall, away from her hand. He paced again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see that coming. I should have—”

“What?”

“I should have handled it differently.”

“I think you handled it brilliantly.”

“Do you think that will be the end of it? I don’t. I’ve ticked him off.”

“Rob can be—um—unstable at times. Especially if he’s drunk. However much of this he remembers, he’ll likely ignore. I think you made your point. He can’t beat you. I don’t think you have to worry about it happening again.”

“You know him pretty well, do you?”

“He was my patient, for a while. He used to be on medication. No medications now. We try to make allowances for him.”

“Is he Michael’s friend?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Then why does he care about—”

“Whether we’re a couple?”

“That’s a nice way to put it, yes.”

Pauline paused. “I had to stop working with him. He’d fixated on me. He started having—um...”

“Fantasies?”

“Unhealthy expectations.”

“He fell in love with you?”

“No, he fixated on his therapist.”

“Which was you.”

“It could have been anyone. It happened to be me. Someone was listening to him, taking him seriously, caring about him. He twisted that into something it wasn’t. There’s a technical term for it: transference. In a more professional setting I could have worked through it with him. But our meeting places were too casual. It would have worked better in an office.”

“Huh,” Chris said.

Pauline held the torch pointing down into the snow. It reflected just enough light to see his face. “I couldn’t be his doctor anymore under those circumstances.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“It happens. Female patients fall for male doctors. Sometimes men fall for their male doctor, and women for their female doctor.”

“Huh.”

“It’s important to keep a distance.”

“So, having your patient living in the same house probably isn’t a good idea.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Distance. Got it.”

“Right...” Pauline said faintly.

Chris turned and headed for the house without another word. Pauline followed, slipping a bit in the snow.

Someone for Me
(excerpt)
(C. Price, 1997)

Somewhere
There’s someone for me
Who can she be?
Is she waiting for me?

Somehow
We’ll find each other,
And wonder whether
We go together.

CHAPTER 17

C
hris waited at the front of the school yard. In a few minutes, a group of kids burst out of the doors and hurried toward the gate. Some of them eyed him warily as they passed.

“Chris!” Wes called. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see your teacher, actually,” Chris said.

“About me?”

“No, not about you. Is she inside?”

“Down the hall on the right,” Wes said and headed off toward town.

Most of the doors in the hallway were closed. He peeked in the one open door and saw Freddie sitting at a desk. He knocked softly.

She looked up and smiled. “Oh, hello. What brings you here?”

“I thought I might owe you another apology?”

She shifted some papers, fiddled with her pen, and turned her chair toward him. “No, not at all.”

“I should have walked you home. I was about to go after you—”

“I heard about what happened with Rob Warren.”

Chris leaned against the doorframe. “Yes, that.”

“I wish I could have seen it. He’s an ass.”

“Pauline says he can’t help it.”

“Yes, she can see it as a medical issue, but some of us find it hard to be so charitable.” She swiveled the chair back and forth a little.

“This may be not be my business...” Chris started, and she looked up at him. “Pauline told me about your husband. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s hard to talk about. But I don’t expect people to walk on eggshells around me.”

“You don’t wear a ring.”

She shook her head. “I realized I was too attached to it. Am I still married to him because I wear the ring? No. He’s dead. I’m not married anymore. Simple as that.”

Chris couldn’t quite feel the doorframe against his arm or the floor under his feet. Some part of his brain wailed in alarm. He couldn’t speak. Freddie looked him up and down.

“I still love him. I always will. But he wouldn’t expect me to shrivel up and die with him. I wished that, for a while. I hoped I’d die. Does this sound familiar, Chris? I’ll bet it does.”

Part of him wanted to tell her to stop. Part of him wanted her to go on. She watched him, her face neutral, matter-of-fact.

“Why are you here?” she asked him.

“To talk about the playing field.”

“That’s just an excuse.”

“Do you think you know?”

“I’m not sure, actually. Couple of possibilities.”

Freddie stood, dropped her pen onto the desk, and took the few steps to Chris. She came too close, but Chris resisted the urge to step back. She put her hands on his hips, tilted her head back, looked into his eyes.

“Now’s your chance,” she whispered.

A hundred footballs careened about in Chris’s stomach. His lungs had stopped working. How long before he suffocated? How long would she wait? Would kissing her make this whole thing better or worse? This had to be a no-win situation.

“Well, I think that answers that,” Freddie said and stepped away.

“I don’t know what—” Chris started.

Freddie gave a little smile. “What you want? I know you don’t. Someday, you’ll figure it out. I really don’t think I’m it. That’s okay, because I’m not willing to get left behind, and at some point you’ll be leaving.”

All Chris could say to that was, “Yes.”

“Poor you,” she said, and Chris heard real sympathy in her voice, not sarcasm. “You’re in for a rough ride, if my hunch is correct.”

Women.
Chris shook his head and managed to breathe normally.

“So, now we’ve got all that out of the way. Friends?” She stuck out her hand.

Chris took it. “You’re willing to put up with me?”

“Oh, I’m going to put you to work, strong man. Come look at the state of our playing field.”

* * *

Chris went into Petersfield in late February for his blood test. He hardly hesitated when he filled in the lines on the form for “place of residence.” He sat in the waiting room with an assortment of nervous-looking people, all of them as far from each other as possible, each one heaving a sigh of relief when the girl stepped out holding a green card and called their name. He wondered what he’d do if his test came up positive. How often did that happen? He’d never seen it. He didn’t feel particularly nervous. Why was everyone else? The whole thing was a sham anyway, a game to make people feel like the government was doing something to keep them safe. He could be negative today and positive next week, but his card wouldn’t reflect that.

The girl came out with a green card and called his name.

“Ta, love,” he said to her as he plucked it from her fingers.

He had time before he had to be back at the van, so he wandered the market. It had shrunk considerably since Christmas. Stallholders huddled next to fire barrels or sat in their stalls wrapped in blankets. Chris looked over the seed packets that heralded the coming of spring, but Pauline and Marie picked out the seeds for the garden. He saw a football in one booth, but since Freddie had discovered a stash of all sorts of balls in a bin in the basement of the school, he passed it by.

Chris realized there was nothing he really needed. He bought a meat pie to eat on the way back to Breton.

In the evenings, Chris and George talked endlessly about plans for spring plowing, harrowing, and planting. Chris had never realized how much preparation was needed, how much work was involved. George drew up charts with weather contingencies. On their twice-weekly pub trips on bath nights they made plans with other men in the town for labor sharing. Chris volunteered for various jobs. He pushed aside the thought that he had planned to leave for Bath in the spring.

During the first week of March, Pauline brought it up. Their talks in the study had dwindled to once a week. Chris did not tell her things that made her go silent. He did not talk about London or the dark days in the States before he reached Saint Crispin’s. He didn’t tell her about Portsmouth. He talked about the band, life on the road, being accosted by screaming fans outside hotels. It was as if he was talking about a different person, not himself, and it made her laugh. That was better than making her cry. It was good to hear her laugh.