Fire and Rain

  “His eyes have a milky sort of look to them. And they don’t track.”

  “And they don’t see.”

  “No. And you know he can’t hear, either, right?”

  “Does he look… I mean, the rest of him. How… normal does he look?”

  Chris hesitated again. “Carmen, why don’t we have this conversation in person instead of—”

  “No. Please, Chris. Tell me.”

  Chris sighed. “He looks much closer to normal than you’d expect, but he’s not. And his facial expressions aren’t what you’d usually see in a boy his age. I guess that’s something you learn socially, and he’s never had the chance.”

  She began to cry and hoped he couldn’t tell. “What is his life like? Is he in terrible pain?”

  “Carmen…”

  “Please, Chris.”

  “I don’t know if he’s in pain. He cries a lot, but there’s no way to know why. He gets angry and throws little tantrums, but when I visit him, he lets me hold him and rock him, and sometimes he gets very calm.”

  She covered the mouthpiece of the phone to take in a shaky breath.

  “Do you want me to come up there?”

  “No.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you all this over the phone. Are you depressed? I mean, things are looking up for you, Carmen. Keep that in mind, okay? Don’t dwell on—”

  “I’m all right,” she interrupted him. He was afraid she would try to hurt herself again. She could hear the fear in his voice. The guilt. “I just wanted to know about Dustin.”

  “I have a lot of pictures of him, and you’re welcome to look at them. With or without me. Whatever’s easier for—”

  “No.” She didn’t want to see pictures. The image of Dustin forming in her head was torture enough. “I can’t do that.”

  “All right. Are you on your way back to San Diego now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Call me when you get in, okay? Let me know you made it safely.”

  34

  CHRIS STOPPED THREE TIMES on the way to the Children’s Home. The first time was when Jeff asked him to pull off the freeway so he could get a better look at a dry, cracked lake bed and the gaunt cows feeding on the barely existent grass at its rim. Then, as they were about to get back onto the freeway, Jeff spotted a stalled car on the ramp and ordered Chris to pull up behind it.

  Chris watched while Jeff calmed the panicky teenaged boy at the wheel, peered under the hood and worked his usual magic on whatever he found there. In minutes, he had the car purring.

  The third stop—the only one they had planned—was at an auto parts store in a strip mall on the northern outskirts of San Diego. The store was the closest outlet for some specialized equipment Jeff needed in the warehouse. Chris had suggested they drive to San Diego together, as long as Jeff didn’t mind waiting while he paid his usual Saturday visit to Dustin.

  Once in the parking lot of the strip mall, Jeff eyed the customers walking in and out of the auto parts store and shook his head.

  “Would you mind going in for me?” he asked. He pulled a pen from the pocket of his red-and-brown Hawaiian print shirt and a scrap of paper from his briefcase. “I’ll write down what I need. It’s sort of an unconventional assortment of goods. I’d rather not have to deal with anyone’s questions.”

  “Fine.” Chris watched him make out the list, which covered both sides of the paper. Jeff handed it to him, and Chris shook his head as he read it. “If it hadn’t been for that experiment, Cabrio, I’d think you were off your rocker.” The list ranged from racing spark plugs and oil coolers to a hubcap.

  “I’ll be in there.” Jeff pointed halfway down the strip to Caprice and Company, a chain of stores known for their silky and sexy lingerie. There was a time when Chris had depended on that store—he knew he could buy Carmen anything within its walls, and she would love it.

  But Jeff in Caprice and Company? Something for Mia, no doubt.

  It took him half an hour and a few glib explanations to the sales people before Chris managed to collect the items Jeff had requested. By the time he emerged from the store, Jeff was already in the car. He opened the back door to put in his three bags of purchases and saw the gift box wrapped in green paper lying on the seat.

  “How’d it go?” Jeff asked.

  “Got it all.”

  “Great.” Jeff sounded relieved.

  Chris got in behind the wheel. “The check-out guy thought I was pretty strange, but other than that it was no problem.”

  “Thanks for taking care of it.”

  Chris turned the key in the ignition and pointed into the back seat. “For Mia?” he asked.

  Jeff smiled. “Who else?”

  Chris didn’t know what more to say on that subject. He had been surprised at first to realize that Jeff and Mia were something more than friends. Yet after he thought about it—and after spending some time with them, singing and laughing on his cottage porch at Sugarbush—he knew their attraction to one another made sense. Both of them were creative and imaginative, both of them saw people in a way others didn’t. He could picture them together easily now, and he envied their closeness.

  When they were a mile or so from the Children’s Home, Chris began wondering if he should ask Jeff to wait outside while he saw Dustin.

  After a few minutes of silence, Jeff said, “Why don’t you tell me about your son?”

  Chris feigned a look of surprise, as though he hadn’t been thinking of his son at all. How did Jeff always seem to know what was going on in his head? “Would you like to meet him?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. But… I guess I’d better prepare you.” He rubbed his palms on the steering wheel. “It might shock you to see him.” He glanced at Jeff, then drew in a breath and blew it out. “He got really sick shortly after he was born,” he said. “They expected him to die. He didn’t, but he was left with severe brain damage, as well as a lot of other physical problems. He’s deaf and blind. He can’t speak and he doesn’t have much control over any part of his body.”

  Silence filled the car again, and Chris felt his description of his son hanging in the air between himself and Jeff.

  Finally, Jeff spoke. “This may be way too personal a question,” he said, “but Rick said that Carmen never visits him. I thought maybe Dustin was your son from a previous marriage or—”

  “No, no,” Chris interrupted. “Dustin is definitely Carmen’s son.”

  Jeff shook his head. “No offense, Chris, but I can’t picture Carmen as a mother to anyone.”

  Chris chewed his lower lip as he took the exit to the Children’s Home. He understood Jeff’s lack of sympathy toward Carmen. Still, he felt compelled to try to soften his reaction to her. “You’ve got Carmen figured wrong,” he said.

  Jeff made a sharp sound of disgust. “Why are you always so quick to defend her? From what I’ve heard, she treated you pretty shabbily.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rick said she wanted a divorce as soon as she found out you couldn’t play ball any longer.”

  Chris bristled. “Rick Smythe doesn’t know shit about my life.” He pulled into the parking lot of the Children’s Home and turned off the ignition. The air in the car quickly heated. He looked toward the small, park-like side yard of the home and pointed to a bench. “Let’s sit there a while,” he said. “I’d rather you heard the facts from me than a bunch of crap from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  Jeff stared at him. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”

  Chris opened his car door. “I know that,” he said, “but it’s time. It’s way past time for me to talk about it.”

  The heat of the day weighed heavily on him as he walked across the parking lot with Jeff at his side. He had told no one, save Carmen’s psychiatrist and Dustin’s primary physician, what he was about to tell Jeff, and he knew it was more than a desire to defend Carmen that made him want to pour out the story now.
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  They sat at opposite ends of the bench, and Chris was grateful for the shade provided by the fig tree behind them.

  He started slowly, not looking at Jeff, but keeping his eyes locked on the other side of Mission Valley, far in the distance. He told him about injuring his arm. “I had trouble accepting… I just couldn’t accept how serious it was, that it might mean the end of my career. Baseball was my life. It was all I ever wanted to do, and I was flying high back then. I was really peaking.”

  “I remember.”

  “Carmen was on top, too, although it had been a struggle for her to get there. It was more than the usual climb up the career ladder.” He described how Carmen’s Mexican parents had sent her to live with her aunt and uncle in California, how the aunt and uncle had raised her to be a good wife and mother, despite Carmen’s academic excellence and desire for a career. “It caused nothing but conflict in her family, and her relatives eventually wrote her off because of it.”

  “That’s what she meant by loss, I guess,” Jeff said.

  “What?” Chris looked at him, not following.

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “Well, anyhow, Carmen wanted a career, but she also wanted a family. We both wanted kids. She could have pulled it off, too, I think, having both motherhood and a demanding career.” Chris was quiet a moment, remembering Carmen’s indefatigable energy and drive.

  “But?…” Jeff prompted.

  “We’d been married a couple of years when she got pregnant,” Chris continued. “Everything seemed great, and she announced it on her show and to the press. In the fourth month, though, she miscarried and sank into this all-consuming depression. It was hormonal, her doctor said. Postpartum depression, she called it, even though Carmen had only been pregnant a few months.” Chris closed his eyes at the memory of his suddenly unreachable wife. “I’d never seen anything like it. She’d spend hours staring into space. She wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t talk to me. She finally snapped out of it, but it took months. She wanted to try again, which we did. I figured it couldn’t happen twice. Anyway, she got pregnant pretty quickly. She was supposed to take it real easy—no stress, no exertion. Then my father died. He and Carmen were close. She miscarried again, this time after five months.”

  “And she got depressed again?”

  “Big time.” Chris sighed. “It was terrible, and frustrating as hell because there was nothing I could do to pull her out of it. Even medication didn’t help, and she couldn’t work for a few months.”

  A woman pushing a stroller walked past their bench. The child in the stroller was probably Dustin’s age, four or five, but his arms and legs were withered, and his neck was bent at such an awkward angle that Chris couldn’t see his face at all. The woman smiled at them. Chris waited until she was out of earshot before he began speaking again.

  “So, she eventually got better. I was ready to forget about having kids at that point, but once she was back on her feet, she started talking about it again. She was constantly visiting her friends who had children. She loved kids.” He looked at Jeff. “It’s a side to her you haven’t seen.”

  “You’re right.” Jeff sounded unmoved and somewhat disbelieving. “I haven’t.”

  “Then she got pregnant with Dustin.”

  “Was he born prematurely? Was that the problem?”

  Chris drew another long breath. “No. And Carmen was good as gold. She followed her doctor’s orders to a T, and Dustin was born one day shy of his due date.” He pictured Dustin inside the home behind them, alone in his room, alone as he always was and always would be, no matter how many people were around him. “No,” he said, “the blame for what’s wrong with him lies entirely on my shoulders.”

  “What do you mean?” Jeff asked.

  Chris struggled with where to begin. “You know, I was pretty wild before I met Carmen.”

  “Well, yeah, you had a bit of a reputation.”

  “But once I met Carmen, I put all of that behind me. She always came first. I was faithful to her, on the road and off.”

  Jeff nodded.

  “But the arm thing got me down. I couldn’t let anyone know how bad it was. I didn’t want to be told I couldn’t play, and I didn’t want to worry Carmen. I was thirty-five years old, for Christ’s sake. Ancient. Other guys my age were already rolling along in their careers. I had a degree in physical education, but I couldn’t imagine teaching after what I’d been used to. I was really down, but I pretended everything was fine for Carmen’s sake. Her doctor was saying, ‘no stress,’ and my career was turning to garbage.” Chris rubbed a hand over his forehead. Even in the shade, it was too damn hot. “So anyhow,” he continued, “early that season I went on a road trip. It was obvious to everyone that I was having trouble, but I still wouldn’t give in. I worked with a physical therapist, and I got out there on the mound even though my shoulder felt like it had a hatchet in it. We hit a major losing streak, and it looked like I was the cause of it, which”—he laughed, without mirth—”in retrospect, I know I was. I’d get booed when I’d go out to pitch. That had never happened to me before.”

  “I remember reading about that in the papers.”

  “I was hoping Carmen wasn’t following the news. I’d call her from the road and tell her I was fine. I’d fabricate all kinds of reasons for why we were losing. She was about seven months along and doing well, but she was on bed rest, and her doctor had told her to read only books with happy endings and to watch nothing but sit-coms on TV.”

  Jeff laughed.

  “The final blow came when we got back to San Diego, and I got booed at a home game. They even threw stuff at me.” Chris’s hands tightened into fists at the memory. “I was used to respect—God, I was used to adulation—and suddenly they were treating me like a pile of manure.” He shook his head. “I can see now that I just didn’t know when it was time to bow out gracefully, to call it a day and walk away with some dignity left. Anyhow, that was one of the shittiest nights of my life. Even my buddies wouldn’t talk to me. All I could think about was how much I wanted to talk to Carmen, but I knew I couldn’t lay my problems on her without risking another miscarriage. I got as far as calling her from a phone booth in the stadium, but in the end… well, you know how it is. I kept it to myself and felt even worse when I hung up the phone.” He paused, his hands clenching the edge of the wooden bench. “There was this woman waiting for me,” he said. “I knew her. Actually, about two thirds of the team knew her better than I did, if you know what I mean.” He glanced at Jeff, who nodded, his face sober.

  “She used to follow us around during the season,” he continued. “She always seemed to have a thing for me, but I had no interest whatsoever in her. Until that night, anyhow.”

  Jeff studied him for a moment. “You slept with her?”

  Chris nodded. “When I left the phone booth, she put her arm through mine and said, ‘They’re never going to be able to replace you, Chris,’ and I thought… well, I guess I didn’t think at all. I just took what she was offering as a way to make myself feel better. The next morning, it was all over the papers about my miserable final performance in the stadium. And Carmen was great.” She had told him to hold his head high, that she didn’t care if he played pro ball or pumped gas, and those words had meant more to him than he’d been able to express. “She didn’t know what I’d done, though, and—I swear this is the truth—I put it out of my mind. I felt like I’d been given a second chance. We forgot about baseball for a while and focused on the baby and the future. In a way, those last two months of her pregnancy were some of the best times of our marriage.”

  Jeff was quiet, but as Chris kept his eyes riveted on the other side of Mission Valley, he felt acceptance rather than condemnation in the silence.

  Finally, he drew in a breath and turned to Jeff. “Did you know you could have herpes but not have any symptoms?”

  Jeff frowned. “Yeah, I’ve heard that, but… Oh, no.” He literally recoiled, leaning away from Chris on the bench
.

  “Oh, yes. One of my teammates who knew I’d slept with Cory—that was the woman’s name—told me he thought he’d gotten herpes from her the previous year. I was worried at first, but when I didn’t develop any symptoms, I thought I’d lucked out. But I did have it, and I passed it on to Carmen, who also had no symptoms, and she passed it on to Dustin. If we’d known she was infected, she could have had a C-section and Dustin would have been all right. Or at least he could have been treated right after he was born. But we didn’t know until his symptoms started, and then it was too late.”

  Jeff hesitated. “God, Chris… I’m sorry,” he said, his voice subdued. Chris could barely hear him.

  “Carmen was already slipping into that postpartum depression again, but at least this time she had a beautiful baby to think about. Once Dusty was diagnosed, though, and my part in his condition was out in the open, she completely shut down. She told me to leave the house; she couldn’t stand the sight of me. I got an apartment and called one of her cousins to come stay with her.” Chris groaned. “That was a mistake. The cousin took decent care of her physically—at that point Carmen wasn’t even eating or getting dressed in the morning, and the cousin was a drill sergeant. But she’d tell Carmen that Dustin’s condition was her punishment for going against her role as a female.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Wish I were. That’s the way her entire family thought. As far as I know, Carmen never told any of them the truth.”

  “What about psychiatric help?”

  Chris shrugged. “I tried getting her to go, but she wouldn’t listen to anything I said. One day, her cousin called me to say that Carmen had locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out. I went flying over there and had to take the door off the hinges. She was unconscious, in the tub, blood everywhere.”

  Jeff’s eyes widened. “She cut her wrists?”

  He nodded. “And one ankle. I think she would have opened every vein in her body if she hadn’t lost consciousness first.”