The First Time (18 page)

“It was a mutual decision,” Jake explained.

“You decided what, exactly?”

“That I should come home,” he said.

“Home,” Mattie repeated. “You’re saying you expect to move back here?”

“I’m saying I
want
to move back here.”

“And why is that?” The sinking feeling in the pit of Mattie’s stomach told her she already knew the answer. He wanted to come back home, not because he loved her, not because he realized he’d made a terrible mistake, not because he wanted to be her husband, not even because his girlfriend had kicked him out, but because he believed she was dying. “This marriage doesn’t need a second opinion, Jake,” Mattie told him angrily. “It’s over, finished, dead and buried. Nothing’s changed since you left.”

“Everything’s changed.”

“Oh, really? Do you love me?”

“Mattie—”

“Do you know that in over fifteen years of marriage, you never once told me you loved me? Are you trying to tell me that’s changed?”

Jake said nothing. What could he say?

“I’ll make this easy for you, Jake. You don’t love me.”

“You don’t love
me
,” he countered.

“So, what are we arguing about? We’re in agreement. There’s no reason for you to come back.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Jake said simply.

“According to whom?”

“We both know it’s the right decision.”

“And you made this decision when, exactly?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for several days now. It finally crystallized for me this morning.”

“I see. And your girlfriend? When did it crystallize for her?”

Jake ran his fingers through his dark hair, sank down into the soft cushions of the sofa behind him. “Mattie, none of this is relevant.”

“You’re not in court now, counselor. I’m the judge here, and I find it very relevant. I direct you to answer the question.”

Jake looked away, pretended to stare at Ken Davis’s impressionistic rendering of a quiet street corner, the sun glowing pink through leafy summer trees. “We talked it over this morning. She agrees with me.”

“Agrees with you about what?”

“That I should be here, with you and Kim.”

“Your girlfriend thinks you should be home with your wife and daughter. How enlightened of her. And what is she going to be doing while you’re here with your wife and child?”

Jake shook his head, lifted his hands into the air, as if to say he didn’t know, as if to suggest it was no longer any of his concern.

“What did you tell her, Jake? I think I have the right to know,” Mattie continued when he didn’t answer.

“She knows the situation,” Jake said finally.

“She thinks I’m dying.” Mattie resumed her pacing back and forth in front of her husband, like a caged tiger, angry and ready to strike. “So, what, she’s planning to wait me out, is that it? She figures she can hold on for a year or two, providing I don’t drag it out too long?”

“She understands that I need to be here.”

“Yes, she’s very understanding. I can see that. And what? You’ll keep seeing her on the side? Is that the plan? That way she gets to be noble and enlightened and understanding and a slut all at the same time.”

“For God’s sake, Mattie—”

“What’s her name, by the way?”

Mattie saw a slight flicker in Jake’s eyes, recognized it as a sign of indecision. Should he tell her or shouldn’t he? Would it do any good? Would it advance his cause? What would she do with this information? Could she use it against him?

“Honey,” he answered softly.

For an instant, Mattie thought he was talking to her. She felt her body sway toward him, her heart quicken, her defenses dissolve.

“Honey Novak.”

“What?”

“Her name is Honey Novak,” he repeated, as Mattie’s body swayed to a stop.

“Honey,” she said. “Isn’t that sweet. Pardon the pun,” she added, then laughed, a short, manic burst of energy. She was such a fool. One moment of imagined
tenderness and she was ready to concede, give in, give up, agree to anything. “Is that her real name?”

“Apparently it was a childhood nickname that stuck,” Jake said.

“How appropriate. Honey stuck because Honey’s sticky.” Once again, Mattie heard herself laugh, the sound sharper, more brittle, than the time before. “Honey’s sticky,” she said again, trying to stop the laugh from growing, metastasizing, spreading its poison. But it was as if the laugh existed quite apart from her, as if some alien life form had seized control of her body, and was using her lungs and her mouth to push forth its evil message. She couldn’t stop it. She was its captive audience. “Oh God,” she cried. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” And then she was gasping, gasping for air, gasping for breath, except that there was no air, she couldn’t breathe. An alien force was laughing and gasping and coughing and choking the life right out of her body.

Instantly Jake was on his feet, surrounding her with his arms, holding her, until Mattie felt the awful sounds start to die in her throat, the coughing shudder to a halt, and her breathing gradually return to normal. Immediately she pulled out of her husband’s arms, took a deep breath, then another, wiped the tears away from her eyes, swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. How long before her hands stopped working? she wondered, panic building inside the pit of her stomach. How long before she was no longer able to wipe away her own tears? Mattie walked over to the piano in the far corner of the room, slammed her hand down hard against the keys. A discordant fistful of sharps and flats
shot into the air, howling their protest, like a wolf in the night. “Damn it,” Mattie cried. “Goddamn it to hell.”

For a moment nobody moved; nobody spoke. Then, “Can I get you anything?” Jake asked, his voice steady, although the color had drained from his face.

Mattie shook her head, afraid to speak. If she spoke, she’d have to acknowledge what they both already knew: that the test results were conclusive, that she was dying, that Jake was right—everything had changed. “I’m going to Paris in April,” she said finally.

“That’s good.” The calmness of Jake’s voice was betrayed by the bewilderment in his eyes. “I’ll come with you.”

“You’ll come with me?”

“I’ve never been to Paris.”

“You never wanted to go. You never had the time,” Mattie reminded him.

“I’ll make time.”

“Because I’m dying,” Mattie said quietly, a statement, not a question.

“Please let me help you, Mattie.”

“How can you help me?” Mattie looked at her husband of almost sixteen years. “How can anybody help me?”

“Let me come home,” he said.

Mattie sat alone on her living room sofa, slumped down in the same space Jake had occupied earlier, trying to make sense of the afternoon, of the last several weeks, of the last sixteen years, hell, she might as well make that the last thirty-six years while she was at it. She pushed her hair away from her face, wiped away
what appeared to be a never-ending supply of tears.

Her eyes drifted toward the sun-dappled street of Ken Davis’s large oil painting, on the wall to the right of the piano. It was a street much like the one she grew up on, Mattie realized, although this was the first time she’d made the conscious connection. Immediately, she saw a towheaded child of eight come skipping along that sun-filled street, on her way home from Lisa’s house, eager to get home in time for lunch. Her father was taking her to the Art Institute. There was a major exhibition of impressionist paintings he wanted to show her. He’d talked of little else for weeks. Today was the big day.

Except where was his car? His car wasn’t in the driveway, and it had been there when she went out this morning, just down the street, less than half a block away, to visit Lisa. And now her father’s car wasn’t there, although maybe he had to go out for a few minutes, to pick up something for lunch, and he’d be right back. There was no need to worry. Her father would be back in plenty of time.

Except that, of course, he didn’t come back. He never came back. Her mother explained that her father had run off with some whore from his office, and although Mattie didn’t understand what her mother meant by “whore,” she knew it meant her father wasn’t going to be back in time to take her to the Art Institute.

In the weeks immediately following her father’s desertion, Mattie sat by her mother’s side as her mother systematically erased any trace of Richard Gill from the house, disposing of his clothes in boxes she sent to the Salvation Army, burning whatever papers
and documents he’d left behind, cutting his face out of each and every family photograph, so that after a while it was as if he’d never existed at all. Pretty soon, Mattie noticed her mother stopped looking at her as well. “Whenever I look at you, I see your father,” her mother explained testily, shooing Mattie away, busying herself with her new puppy. And so, every day when Mattie came home from school, she raced to the photo albums to make sure she hadn’t been decapitated, that she was still there, her child’s smile assuring her that eventually everything would work out for the best.

It didn’t. No matter how hard she tried or how desperately she prayed, nothing brought her father back or made her mother love her. Not the grades she received, not the scholarships she won. Nothing she accomplished accomplished anything.

And what exactly had she accomplished? Mattie thought now, extricating herself from the painting on the far wall, pushing herself off the sofa, shuffling toward the kitchen in her tatty plaid slippers. She’d exchanged one loveless home for another, devoted sixteen years to a man who’d left her for a whore of his own.

In the end, her life came down to three little words—she was dying. She chuckled, suddenly afraid. Afraid of the sound of my own laughter, Mattie realized sadly. An increasing occurrence.

Of course, there was still an outside chance the doctors were wrong. Perhaps if she saw another specialist, agreed to undergo more tests, went off to Mexico in search of a cure, she’d find someone who could give her a different prognosis, she’d find the happy ending
she’d been searching for all her life. Except that there were no happy endings. There was no cure. There was only a drug called Riluzole. And all it offered was a few extra months. Mattie shuffled across the kitchen and lifted the bottle of pills from the counter.

“If I take them,” Mattie said out loud, returning the bottle of pills to the white tile countertop, unopened.

How would her mother react to the news? Mattie wondered, tempted to pick up the phone right now and call her. Would her mother immediately start cutting her face out of the family photographs, or would she begin slowly with Mattie’s feet, moving on to her arms and torso later, mimicking the course of the disease, so that eventually, only Mattie’s head remained?

A father without a face. A daughter without a body. A mother without a clue. Some family.

And now Jake wanted to come home, to be a part of her life for however much of her life remained. He said it was because he wanted to do the right thing. But was it the right thing? And for whom?

“You’ll need someone to drive you places,” he’d argued, appealing to Mattie’s practical side when all other approaches failed.

“I can drive.”

“You can’t drive. What if you have another accident? What if you kill someone, for God’s sake?”

“Kim will have her license in a few months. She can drive me.”

“Don’t you think Kim will have enough to deal with?”

It was that question, startling in its simplicity, that
forced Mattie’s capitulation. How could she ask Kim to be her sole means of emotional support, to pick her up when she fell down, to pick up after her when she was no longer able to pick up after herself, to pick up the pieces of their broken lives without breaking herself? Her beautiful little girl, Mattie thought, sweet little Miss Grundy. How would her daughter survive without her? “How can I tell you I’m leaving you?” she asked out loud, hearing the key turn in the lock.

“Mom?” Kim called from the front hall, the door opening and closing in one continuous arc. “What’s the matter?” she asked, as Mattie appeared in the kitchen doorway. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

Mattie opened her mouth to speak, but was distracted by the sound of a car pulling into the driveway.

Kim swiveled around, looked out the small window near the top of the front door. “It’s Daddy,” Kim said, clearly confused as she turned back to face her mother. “What’s he doing here?”

D
o you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do.”

“Please state your name and address.”

“Leo Butler. One-forty-seven State Street, Chicago.”

“You may be seated.”

Jake watched from his seat at the defense table as Leo Butler, a balding and well-dressed man of sixty-two, withdrew his hand from the Bible and lowered himself carefully into his chair. Even sitting, he remained an imposing figure, his six-and-a-half-foot frame squeezed uncomfortably inside the small witness box, his shoulders broad beneath his brown cashmere jacket, his neck thick, his hands big and rough despite well-manicured nails. You can take the man off the football team, Jake thought to himself, but it
wasn’t so easy to take the football away from the man. Not when the man in question was Leo Butler, former college running back, who’d inherited his father’s massive clothing empire at age twenty-five, only to run it almost into the ground ten years later. He’d been rescued by his wife Nora, who’d saved her husband’s ass shortly after their wedding thirty-one years ago, only to shoot him in the back on the eve of their divorce.

Jake smiled at the small, fine-boned, white-haired woman beside him at the defense table, her hands neatly folded in the lap of her gray silk dress, the pronounced blue veins on the backs of her hands competing with the blinding array of diamonds on her fingers. “I paid for the damn things,” she’d told Jake at their first interview. “Why shouldn’t I wear them?” Clearly not as delicate as she looked, Jake understood then, as now. Tough on the inside, delicate on the out—the perfect combination for a defendant in an attempted murder trial, where stamina was as important as appearance, and appearance often as important as evidence. Jake knew that a jury often ignored what it heard in favor of what it saw. And wasn’t one of the first things they taught you in law school that the
appearance
of justice being served was at least as important as justice itself?