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Slumped against the back door of his cab, Del stared at his phone and debated calling Dana again. He had tried three times since this morning. This wasn’t unusual anymore. Since June they’d often gone two or three days without talking. He didn’t even leave messages now. She could see he called. When she felt like it, she’d try him back.
Changing planes in Chicago he had reached Milo, who was camping for the weekend up in the mountains with some friends. Gwen was working at the bar. No one was expecting him because he shouldn’t have been home.
He ordered the cabbie to stop in front of a florist three blocks from their condo, emerging five minutes later with a bouquet of long-stem red roses. Cradling the flowers in his left hand, he rang the doorbell and stood back to wait, his oversized gear bag and carryon digging into his shoulder as he strained to hear Dana’s approaching footsteps. Was that her voice? Who was she talking to? No one, he realized. It came from next door. He lowered his pack and fished into the side pocket for his keys.
The usually spotless apartment looked more like a bachelor pad. There were dirty dishes stacked in the sink and a week’s worth of newspapers piled on the island separating the dining nook from the kitchen. The Boston fern she’d received as a housewarming gift from her old roommate had browned in its pot on the buffet cabinet. Del dropped the roses on the table and leaned his bag against the back of the couch. Down the hall their unmade bed was strewn with clothes and a damp bath towel.
He scrawled a quick note and left it on the table. “Dana, I’m back. Long story. Gone to the corner for a sub. Back soon.” It was still there when he returned forty minutes later toting a foot-long sandwich and a bottle of Gatorade. He ate half the sandwich leaning over the sink, then re-bagged the rest and tossed it in the refrigerator.
Where was she? Even she wouldn’t work over Labor Day weekend, would she? He rang her office and hung up on her voice mail, then tried her cell again. “Hey it’s me. I’ve got a little surprise for you. Give me a call when you get this, ’kay?” That last part shouldn’t have come out like a question. “Call me now, woman,” is what he meant, but that wouldn’t go over well.
He hauled his gear bag into their bedroom and unpacked, dumping most of his clothes into the laundry basket in the closet and stashing the few remaining clean items in the drawers of his dresser. When he was done, he undressed and took a long, hot shower, steaming away the thin layer of funk that had accumulated on his cross-country journey. Towel wrapped around his waist, he stared into the foggy mirror, flicking his fingers through his hair, just long enough now to lie down when combed. Maybe a little dab of mousse? Del popped open the medicine cabinet and scanned the shelves, abandoning his quest when his eyes landed on the pill bottles lined up like soldiers on the bottom rack. Zolpidem. Duloxetine. Paroxetine. The first two had been refilled only last week. The paroxetine, half full, was dated April 6. What were they and why hadn’t she said anything?
Gwen would know. She’d been on everything at some point. The top drawer in her bathroom vanity barely opened, it was jammed so tight with orange bottles, most still partially full, forsaken in favor of newer, better drugs.
The pills rattled in his pocket as he drove north on Highway 99, past the adult video shops and low-rent motels, past the auto yard surrounded by razor-topped fencing, past the self-storage units and convenience marts, past Green Lake, never getting any further from either of the catastrophes elbowing each other for priority in his mind. Just beyond the topless club he turned into Woody’s. Gwen’s Firebird was nosed up against the side of the building, wedged between Cyndy’s Mustang and some kind of milk truck or old delivery van.
She had worked here off and on through three different owners and five name changes. The most recent had brought a threat of a lawsuit from Universal Studios, forcing the alteration of the knockoff woodpecker painted on the exterior wall facing the street. It now looked more like a cross between a blue jay and an angry seagull. At some point someone had added a massive erection in black marker. The appendage proved so popular similar units eventually sprouted up on most of the smaller logos painted inside. The free-standing, flat-roofed building had been painted half a dozen different colors that Del could remember. It was now a dirty beige. One of four bars within two blocks, Woody’s shared few customers with its neighbors, each of whom lured a different drinker to this stretch of the highway. Gwen’s clientele came to watch sports, play darts, tell boob jokes, and bitch about the government.
Most of the booths along the walls were occupied by middle-aged men whose heads were cocked up toward the flat screens showing the Mariners game. A dozen guys cheered and clapped at the end of the horseshoe-shaped bar that protruded into the middle of the room. Through a gap, Del spotted Gwen’s auburn coils dangling down in front of her face. She jerked her head up to great applause, her puckered lips a deep, cherry red. A tube of lipstick poked up from between her breasts, held together from behind by Cyndy’s cupped hands. Cyndy rang a brass bell mounted above the bar, then slid an empty pitcher along the counter. When she pulled it back it contained a handful of bills.
Am I really this desperate, Del thought as he watched the men disperse back to their tables. I’ve come here for help?
“Good lord, look what the wind blew in,” Gwen cackled when she noticed him.
Del nodded toward the quiet end of the horseshoe. “Are you busy?”
“Oh, no. What’d you do now?” Her smile was playful, but sincere. “Cyndy, hon, can you get us a beer?”
Resting his elbow on the bar and his back against the wall, Del watched his mother’s lover draw him a pint from the tap. Cyndy set it on a napkin and patted him on the hand.
“I need your help with something.” Del withdrew the pills from his pocket and set them on the bar. “What are these?”
Gwen picked up the first bottle and squinted at the label. “Zolpidem. That’s generic Ambien. It’s a sedative. Sleep medicine. This one here is like Cymbalta. You’ve probably seen the commercials. It’s an antidepressant. So’s this one. Generic Paxil. Didn’t do much for me. Must not have worked for her either, if she moved up to the other.”
“Why does she have these?” Del asked.
“Why does anyone take anything? To cope.”
Why hadn’t Dana said anything? When had she decided she needed to be medicated? Would she be on them if he’d somehow been a better husband? Del tilted his head back and took a long sip from his beer. On the television above the bar he caught the words “suspended indefinitely” crawling into the bottom left corner of the screen.
“Oh, fuck me,” he muttered.
“It’s not so horrible.” Gwen pushed the bottles back across the bar. “Millions of people are on them.”
“Not that. Up there.” He pointed at the TV.
“Where?”
“On the crawler. That was me. I know it.”
“I didn’t see it. What did you do? Out with it.”
“I didn’t get called up. Some other guys did, last night. So I got pissed off and left. And—”
“Whoa. There you are, there you are.” Gwen fumbled under the counter for the remote and aimed it at the set above.
“Tanner has been suspended indefinitely by the Twins after missing a drug test earlier today in Rochester, where he spent the majority of the season. Last year’s American League Rookie of the Year admitted using testosterone and human growth hormone earlier this summer and has been linked to a steroid dealer in South Florida, where the Twins hold training camp. It has been a fast and furious fall from grace for Tanner, who hit twenty-seven home runs last season, but managed just two this spring before being sent down. On the field, the Twins dropped the second game of their set with Toronto, pushing their losing streak to four.”
“Kill it.” Del lifted his glass to his lips. The beer hit the roof of his mouth and pooled in the back before washing down his throat. He took another sip, this time a little bigger. Then another.
“Slow it down there, cowboy,” Gwen laughed. “You’re getting a little out of your league.”
Staring at her over the rim, he drained the rest of the glass. “I’ll have another, please, Gwen.”
“Gimme your keys.”
Del reached into his pocket and dropped his key ring on the counter. From the other side he dug out his phone. There were three missed calls from Dana. And one from Sam Nightengale, who had a bloodhound’s nose for misery. As he set it on the bar it rang again.
“Del?” Dana asked. “Is that you? Are you home now?”
“Let me check.”
“What? Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you for forty minutes. When did you get home?”
“Four o’clock. Something like that. I can’t remember exactly. Check your phone. I called.”
“What’s all that noise? Are you out somewhere?”
“I’m at Woody’s. With Gwen. Catching up on the day’s headlines.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh, Jesus. Stay right there. I’ll come get you.”
He was on his fourth pint when she arrived. The individual voices he’d been able to pick out behind him earlier had by now swirled into one general din. He didn’t hear Dana until he felt her hand on his shoulder and her breath in his ear.
“I thought you weren’t coming home until Tuesday. What happened?”
“Change in plans.”
“He went AWOL,” Gwen chuckled. “He really stepped in it this time.”
“Tell me she’s joking,” Dana said.
Del shook his head.
“You staying, hon?” Gwen asked. “You want a beer?”
“Yeah, she’s staying,” Del said. “We’re all staying. It’s early yet. Get her a beer. I’ll have another, too, please, Gwen.”
“You’re not even half through that one yet. Good lord, you hold your booze worse than I play baseball.”
Dana set her purse down on the bar and took the stool next to Del. Her sweatshirt, one of his old ones, bunched slightly in the middle as she settled onto her seat. Her cheeks were as full as he could remember, going back to their college days. All the weight she’d shed during their hiatus had returned, possibly with interest.
“What the hell’s going on?” she asked.
“I was kind of hoping you could tell me.” He corralled the three pill bottles in his palm and slid them down the counter toward her.
Dana’s eyes and mouth widened as she grabbed at her prescriptions. “What are you doing with those?”
“What are you doing with them?”
“My doctor prescribed them.”
She stared at the bar as she spoke, knuckles whitening around the plastic bottles. Her eyes glassed over, indifferent to the glow of the television playing off their pale blue hearts. It wasn’t anger or even indignation Del read in her trembling face. It was something he’d never seen in her before. He’d humiliated her. Stripped her naked as sure as if he’d torn her sweatshirt and jeans off right there in front of the entire bar. He’d spilled a secret that wasn’t his to spill. One she had—perhaps justifiably—chosen not to trust him with.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought them. I just figured Gwen would know what they were.”
“You could have asked me.”
“I should have. I’m sorry.”
“You have no idea how hard it’s been for me this summer.” Her eyelids, scrunched tight, met in a moist blur of charcoal-colored makeup. “I felt so alone. I cried myself to sleep so many nights.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.”
Del buried his face in her hair and locked his arms around her chest. Had he really been so self-absorbed that he’d missed all this? He’d initially chalked her mood swings up to their failure to conceive, something of a sore subject for them both considering the blame he’d weathered over the winter. At some point he’d given up trying to figure her out. It was less mentally taxing to simply write it off as chronic PMS. Instead of empathizing he’d hung up the phone many nights muttering to himself about her lack of compassion for his struggles. Never once had he considered she might be depressed. Legitimately clinically depressed. So down she sought professional help for a condition she hadn’t felt secure discussing with her own husband.
“I’m so sorry, Dana.” His abdomen tightened, triggering contractions that rose up through his chest and into his reddening face. He felt the wetness of his own tears in her hair and snuffled in a vain attempt to prevent his nose from running there as well. “I feel like such a dick. I wasn’t there for you. I let you down.”
Her body moved against his. A shrug or a nod, maybe. She certainly wasn’t shaking her head no.
“You won’t be alone anymore,” he said. “I promise.”
Dana clutched at his arm, still cinched around her torso. Through his shirtsleeve he could feel her nails digging into his biceps, clawing at his flesh. Holding on as if she’d lose him should she loosen her grip.
“I’m gonna quit.”
She stiffened and pushed herself just far enough back to look him in the face. “What?”
“I’ll go back to school and finish up. Or maybe Milo can get me on as a bridge tender. It’s a good, steady job. Be a lot more peaceful anyway.”
“You would be so miserable.”
“Not as miserable as if I lost you again.”