Read Online Stop Here by Beverly Gologorsky - Free Book Online Page B

She touches his shoulder. “I bought salts and bubble bath for you. I’ll fill the bath for you. You’ll feel refreshed. Then we’ll have some wine. What do you think?”
    â€œToo tired. I’ll watch TV in bed.”
    She sees herself walk past him out the door.
    â€œI need to say a few things. Come in the kitchen. Just for a minute. I’ll make you a steak. You can eat it now or later.”
    She pours wine for both of them. “Sit, Bruce. I can’t talk with you standing there like someone’s outside waiting for you.”
    He slips into the armchair and watches her warily. She sits across from him. His curly black hair peppered with gray flattened now from the ridiculous cap he wears, though it’s no longer winter. All of her sons have his large, round eyes and long lashes. Always a strapping guy, the kind who could pick up a woman and carry her over the threshold without losing a breath, and he did. Not anymore, though. She wonders if recalling the good times or the better times or just the times when he wasn’t the way he is now would be helpful.
    He drains the glass in two long gulps, and she refills it. “Just today I had an image of you with your strong arms pushing the stuff that bothers you into a carton. After so many years, the carton splits apart. The stuff floats around looking for a new hideout but it can’t find one. I think it’s what’s happening to you, to us, Bruce.” Okay, it’s not what she actually thought, but the bear-in-the-cave thing won’t work for him.
    He looks interested. He puts down the glass and seems to be figuring out something to say. She doesn’t want to pressure him, so she goes to the stove and turns the potatoes, only the sound of spitting grease. She waits a beat, then returns to the table. “I was also remembering some of your war stories. They were horrible, particularly . . . and there must be many you never told me. Not that I want to hear them, god help me, but I was thinking . . . if you could vent to . . .” She’s taking a chance here, trying to get him to open up when he doesn’t want to. The last time she did that, after 9 / 11 , he mumbled, why bother, said it was the beginning of the end anyway. “Bruce, what do you think about what I’m saying?”
    â€œWhy do you care?”
    She tells herself let him go to bed. She can’t. “Bruce, I care, and I’m waiting for an answer.”
    â€œMichael’s carrying forty pounds, plodding through the mud, afraid of any noise in the trees. He’s only nineteen. He doesn’t want to die.” He leans toward her, breathing hard, his face tense, eyes wide, the tendons swelling in his neck. A cold hand squeezes her gut. It’s himself he sees slogging through the mud, being pursued, his old demons creeping up his back and what can she say to prove it.
    â€œOur son is nineteen, yes, Bruce, but he’s in the desert, not the jungle. It was you in the jungle.”
    He gazes at her but lord knows what he’s remembering. “Yesterday, a helicopter was shot down. It was on the news. Everyone killed.” Then, scraping back the chair, he walks out slowly.
    Once Ricky brought home a stray dog that kept growling at them. Why keep a dog that might bite the children? She called the animal shelter and asked for someone to come get it. When the man arrived, the dog stopped growling. He knew it was over.
    She turns off the oven and takes the pot of potatoes to the sink. She carries her wineglass to the bathroom. Starts the bathwater, shakes in a cup of salts, adds the bubble stuff, and waits for it to fill. Heat dampens her face, the aroma gardenias, she thinks. Someone brought home flowers for one of her birthdays. Was it her thirty-sixth? Bruce ordered a gigantic cake and Ricky insisted on putting all the candles on it. “Make a wish,” they all shouted, even solemn Michael. What did she wish for?