Chapter Thirty

“You’re going to have to be clumsy every ten minutes to keep him happy.”

“I don’t see that as much of a problem.” Rick says this without irony. He’s infernally clumsy, and he still hasn’t, after all this time, figured out that he has only one hand. He keeps instinctively reaching with his absent right hand, frustrating himself and his occupational therapists. Relearning how to do everything with the wrong hand has been difficult. He still fears soup, although forking the pieces of meat that Francesca has kindly precut for him has become easier if he thinks of the British fashion of left-handed eating and tips his fork with tines down. He doesn’t say so, but Rick longs to be able to cut up his own meat. What a simple lost talent. His missing fingers itch to take up the knife and slice off a big thick piece of ham from a picnic shoulder. Sometimes he thinks he misses being able to do that more than getting up out of this chair and walking out the door. But not as much as feeling the smooth surface of a baseball, reading its individual personality in the stitching, the weight of it balanced tenderly in the palm of his hand before he settles it into position for a curve or a sinker or a fastball.

No amount of success with a fork in his left hand can compensate him.

*   *   *

Even with the windows closed, Rick hears the sound of sawing and hammering. Keller is building him a ramp so that it will be easier to get from the house to the hospital. Keller doesn’t say exactly that; he just says it’ll be handy, a quick slide right to the door of the car. No more teeth-jarring thumping down steps, no more humiliating reminders of his helplessness. Keller thinks that if it’s easier to leave the house, Rick will. Except that he can’t think of any place he might be taken other than the hospital. No other reason to struggle to get into the car. No place he wants to go.

“What do you think of this?” Francesca twirls into the room like a debutante. She’s wearing a new dress, very fitted at the waist, and a lot longer than the dresses she wore before he went to war. The sleeves are a little puffy, trimmed with a white band. It’s a blue-and-white print. She looks very pleased with herself, and it’s so nice to see a genuine smile on her face.

“Very nice. You’ve been shopping?” Lately, with Keller there, Francesca has been going off almost every day, and she doesn’t always tell him where she’s going. It’s like she’s slipping out, a teenage girl secretly meeting a boy on the corner, hoping her parents don’t notice that she’s gone.

“No, silly. I made it.” She gathers up the skirt, examines the hemstitching, tut-tuts. “See, I’m uneven here.”

“It looks very nice, and you could have fooled me. Looks like something you’d pick up at Jordan Marsh.”

Francesca twirls again, obviously enjoying the swish of a full skirt. Her trajectory puts her beside him and she plants a kiss on the good side of his face. “Keller’s almost done with the ramp. What say we get out of here tonight and get some dinner out?”

“And then what? Go dancing?”

“If you’d like.” She doesn’t hear his sarcasm, or she’s ignoring it.

“No. I don’t think I’m ready for that. For going out.”

“Rick. This isn’t good for you. It’s time to—”

“Time to what, Francesca? Time to do what, exactly?” He turns his face away from her.

“Time to get on with your life. You’re doing much better. I know what your occupational therapist told you. He told you that you need to get out, and you do.”

“He’s not the one who will be subjected to the pity stares.” There, he’s said it. The festering notion that he will be unable to abide being looked at with pity. He doesn’t want the pity of those who came back from the war whole, or the “there but for the grace of God” pity of those who never went, to the curious stares of the rude and the innocent fear of monsters in the eyes of children.

“That’s in your head, Rick. Yes, people may give you a look; that’s natural. But they understand and maybe even admire you.” She touches his unblemished cheek with her hand. “I admire you.”

“Please don’t.” Even Rick doesn’t know if he means that she shouldn’t say any more or that she should stop touching him. Her touch is a taunt, a reminder of his other disability.

“Okay. So, I’ll just go change and get lunch started.” Francesca has gotten so good at keeping her voice modulated. She never lets him see her hurt or mad or frustrated. She tips the door half-closed on her way out.

Rick puts his face in his hand, so sorry, so very sorry for being the man he has become.

A cold, wet nose pokes through his fingers. Pax seems intent on spreading Rick’s fingers wide enough that he can then give him a consoling lick on the nose. Rick leans his forehead against the dog’s brow. “Pax, what would I do without you?”

Pax has nothing to say about that. He settles beside Rick, gives his front paws a freshening up.

One of Rick’s slippers has come off. He’s just noticed. “Pax, pickitup.” He points to the footwear. Pax seems overjoyed to perform this small request and retrieves the slipper as if it were a rabbit dashing away. No Labrador had ever retrieved something as exuberantly or as gently. Now all he has to do is teach the dog how to put it on his foot. Rick takes the slipper out of the dog’s mouth and praises him, as Keller instructed, with a scratch on the chest. It seems such a little recognition of the vast service the dog performs, but Pax seems pleased. It’s true that the dog seemed to come to life as Keller was teaching him to pick up the things that Rick knocked to the floor, that his canine enthusiasm for learning is unbounded. He’s a dog with a brain, and one that revels in performing his tasks. How did that happen? Before, Rick had a hard time getting him not to pull on the leash. Francesca could barely control him. All that energy had been funneled into the war machine and out had come this obedient, talented dog. But Pax’s attachment to Keller is still jarring, still capable of creating a spurt of jealousy that makes Rick have to turn his face away from this guy who has proved to be such a godsend. Pax will spend all day with him in this room, but if Keller comes to walk him, the dog literally leaps up with joy. A kid going out for recess couldn’t show more excitement. Is it the exercise or the time with his other master that incites it?

And yet, although Rick knows that the dog sleeps in the garage with Keller, if he wakes in the night, he finds the dog with him, as if he’s been there all along.

*   *   *

As has become their habit at lunchtime, the three of them cram into Rick’s room. Francesca has changed out of her new dress and is back in her workaday housedress. She moves the rolling over-bed table into the middle of the room to accommodate Rick’s wheelchair and two kitchen chairs, and places a plate of egg salad sandwiches on it so that they can all reach.

Keller comes in with a bandage around his left forefinger. “Stupid mistake. Thought my finger was a nail.”

Lucky for him he has his right hand and it doesn’t impair his ability to eat his sandwich.

“Any requests for dinner?” Francesca touches up the edge of a sandwich with her finger and puts it in Rick’s hand. As she licks the extra mayo from her finger, an image of her in bed flashes through Rick’s mind, until he slams the lid on it.

“I have an idea. You suggested going out, so why don’t you and Keller go?”

“No. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Keller is shaking his head as if the idea is apostasy. He is adhering to some protocol of his own invention.

“It’s fine. You two both need a break. Go get some fried clams. Bring some back for me.”

“What if…”

Rick puts his half-eaten sandwich down, takes Francesca’s hand. “Nothing is going to happen for the hour it may take you to eat dinner. You’re not leaving me in danger. Besides, I have Pax. He’ll keep me company.”

Francesca and Keller look at each other with almost the same expression of skepticism. Or, is it something else, a nervous shyness? Like two adolescents. Two wallflowers suddenly forced to dance? Rick realizes that he has no idea what kind of relationship these two have with each other. She speaks of him only in terms of how much he’s helping. Keller never speaks of Francesca except to say she’s in the kitchen or running an errand. It’s obvious to him now, the way they seem to exist only on the periphery of each other. Coworkers, not companions. He doesn’t know why that bothers him. It seems like they should be better friends than that. It means that Keller may yet be an imposition on Francesca even while he’s giving her enough freedom to go get her hair done.

“I mean it. You both deserve a break.”

Keller slips a crust to Pax. “I could do with a clam plate. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten clams.”

“We’d only be gone a little while.”

Rick can’t tell if Francesca says that like a decision, or if she’s trying to convince herself he can be left alone even for an hour. Has he become that much of a child that he can’t be left? Life has become such an if/then equation. If they had had a baby before he went to war, would he then have come back infantilized? If he had died, would she then have been able to move on with her life instead of being trapped here with him? If he had come back whole, would the unspoken fact of their earlier failure to conceive been finally addressed? Maybe, if there had been no war, they would have conceived. It’s a stretch to blame God for not giving them a child when they’d had the opportunity, but sometimes Rick does. And then he thinks that it’s probably for the best. How would Francesca have coped with an active child’s needs and those of a needy husband?

Keller points to the remaining half sandwich. “Anyone?”

“I can make more; I have more egg salad made up.” Francesca looks ready to jump out of her chair.

“No. I’m done.” Rick sets his unfinished half back on his plate.

Keller finishes the sandwich in two bites. He starts to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand but stops himself and uses his napkin. “I should get back to work.” He grabs the back of the extra kitchen chair and leaves Francesca and Rick alone.

Pax looks after Keller but remains where he is, at Rick’s side, patiently waiting for another crust. Rick hands him the rest of his sandwich.

“I think that maybe it’s a good night for lamb chops. The butcher has them on special.”

“Francesca, go out. Take Keller and go out.

“Rick, I feel a little awkward about…”

“It’s not a date, Fran, it’s a little break from cooking.”

There is a faint tinge to her pale cheeks, not quite a blush, not quite embarrassment. It’s as if she’s been thinking about Keller and has been called out on it. Either she’s uncomfortable with him or she’s not. “All right. You’re right.” She stands up, gathers the plates into a stack. “But just be sure I’d rather be going out with you and that I’m going to keep pestering you until you say yes.”

“I need time, Francesca. I need more time.”

“You can have all the time you need, but you have to promise me that you’ll try.” She drops a kiss on the top of his head. “Promise?”

“Yes.” The word has the sooty taste of a lie.