Chapter 23
23
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Ximena asked, waving her whole hand in front of Tom’s wincing face. Nearly a dozen people surrounded them in an anxious semicircle.
The rain had slightly slackened, but everyone was uncomfortable outside, Tom probably most of all, as he still lay on his back in the mud and dead leaves of the front lawn. Rose had put his head in her lap as she knelt behind him, but Ximena was the recent graduate of a pediatric first aid course and used that credential to insist that he not be moved until they figured out whether he’d broken his neck in the fall.
If he hadn’t, Rose was ready to do it for him. Watching him fall, catch himself on the gutter, and then slide painfully down the rainspout had probably taken ten years off her life. He’d scraped the skin off both forearms and given himself a large abrasion on one cheek, and he still hadn’t gotten to his feet. Her heart was still in her throat.
“Five fingers,” Tom said, the first thing he’d said since I’m sorry . “Which is always too many.”
“What day is today?” Ximena said.
“Oh come on, I never know that one,” Tom said.
“Guess.”
“I think it’s Friday.”
“It is Friday,” she said, sounding relieved. “I think he’s okay.”
“I feel okay,” Tom confirmed. “But I don’t know who you are.”
“What?” said Ximena, eyes rounding.
“Obama’s the president, Evita ’s on Broadway, and we just got married,” Tom said, trying to look back at Rose. “Who are these other people?”
Rose wanted to strangle him, but her hands moved to gently smooth his wet hair out of his face instead. When he’d hit the addition roof, he’d bounced .
What was she supposed to do with this aching, painful tenderness she felt for him? She knew how to love him and not have him, because she’d done that for years, but how was she ever supposed to put away this fierce need to care for him? How did she put it back away if she lost him again?
“Tomasz Antoni Wilczewski, are you trying to make jokes right now?” she demanded.
Tom shut his eyes again. “It was worth a try,” he said.
He took a deep breath and flexed his stomach to sit up. When he pulled up his knees, he yelped and fell back.
“I think I tweaked my knee on the roof,” he muttered, clutching at his leg.
Rose groaned. He had rehearsal in two weeks . She was going to kill him. She was going to take care of him and then she was going to kill him.
“Boyd, put him in my car,” she said. “I’ll take him to the hospital.”
Boyd, who had gotten off the roof as adeptly as might be expected of someone who’d done his own stunts in Meteor Man 2 and 3 , nodded obediently and slung one dinner plate–sized hand under Tom’s shoulders.
“Wait, wait, not the hospital,” Tom said, holding on to Boyd with one hand and Rose with the other. “Just help me get inside.”
He balanced wildly on his good leg.
“Someone needs to look at your knee,” Rose said.
“I can see it. It’s still attached.”
“What if something’s broken?” Rose said, putting her shoulder underneath his arm to steady him. “And someone needs to clean out these scrapes.”
“I’ll go if it still hurts tomorrow,” Tom said stubbornly. “And I’ll wash everything with soap.”
“Go to the hospital, you lunatic,” Ximena said. Rose tried to pull him toward her rental car, and he dug in his heels.
Tom scrunched up his face, lips tight and pale. “I can’t remember if I have health insurance right now,” he admitted.
“How can you not know if you have health insurance?” Rose asked before she could stop herself. Her internal filter wasn’t working well under strain.
“How many weeks were you under contract last year?” Ximena asked. “You might still have insurance.”
“I, ah, can’t exactly math right now? I’ll check tomorrow.”
Rose could tell he was trying to play it off casually, but his mouth was tight with pain, and he wasn’t putting any weight on his right leg.
“We’re going anyway,” Rose said. “You fell off my goddamn roof. I’ll pay.”
“I’m not going to sue you—”
Rose shushed him violently, holding her hand in the air.
“We’re going!” she shouted, loud enough that several of the girls who’d surrounded them to make sympathetic noises and take photographs of Tom’s prone form stumbled back.
She crushed all other objections and enlisted Boyd’s aid in putting Tom into the passenger seat of the car.
The rain had slackened a bit, but the roads were still dark and wet and littered with tree branches when she backed slowly out of the inn’s gravel drive. Both of them were breathing hard, Tom probably in pain, Rose because adrenaline and fear and anger were still running through her system. She turned off the radio, then pulled onto the main road, keeping their speed to a crawl. It took all her effort not to chew Tom out for his carelessness with himself, and she was able to avoid that only because she could tell from his face that he was having an absolutely terrible time. Only one Rosie indeed—how many of him did he think there were?
“I’m sorry I screwed everything up, Rosie,” Tom said again when she didn’t speak.
She didn’t trust herself not to cry or otherwise deviate from the important goal of getting Tom’s knee tended to as quickly as possible, so she just squeezed the steering wheel harder. He was always sorry about the exact wrong things.
Tom swallowed. The seconds crawled on as she drove down-island toward the hospital.
“You know,” he said in a forcibly casual voice, “if you really want me to have health insurance, we could just get married again.”
Rose laughed against her best efforts and swiped at her eyes with the side of her hand. Tom fractionally relaxed once he saw his joke had landed, and that instinctively relaxed her too.
“Would that solve the issue of you doing things that are going to get you killed?” she asked, satisfied with how calm she sounded.
“Maybe I’d feel less of a need to impress you,” he offered.
“I am impressed when I see you onstage,” she said. “I am worried right now. You need…a lot of things. You can’t live like this.”
“So that’s a yes, then?”
Rose laughed again, even if the noise was strangled. “You asshole. It would serve you right if I said yes.”
“Serve me right?”
“Sure. Let me ruin your life again. Let’s get married again.”
“Why’s it ruined? I’d get your benefits package and move into your nice apartment, you’ll probably file my taxes for me, plus, you know, I’d get you —and all you get is a fifty percent stake in my PlayStation 4 and some free theater tickets. I’d get the better end of the deal.”
The windward side of the island was deserted this season, and the headlights of the car were the only source of illumination for the wet branches and brown fields flanking the narrow road. Rose stopped at a stop sign and paused long enough to sneak a look at Tom, whose face was still more drawn than his words would suggest.
“If you wanted to get married again, you’d have gotten married again,” she said carefully, wishing the thought didn’t hurt. “It’s one of those things that, you know, I’m willing to compromise on—”
“I do want to get married again.”
“Oh, come on. You were going out with people like Boyd Kellagher because you were in the market for a life partner?”
“I was barely looking for a brunch with Boyd. But no, I’m serious. We can get married again. I think it would be a little awkward to make a big thing of it, the second go-round, but we could do something nice at city hall—”
“Don’t tease me about it,” she warned him, chest throbbing. “This is hard for me. I’m not judging you for what you want, but you could at least be honest about it.”
“You didn’t get married again. And you wanted to. Still want to.”
Rose looked back at the empty road. Going on dozens of dates with strangers from the Internet, putting on lipstick and going out after work when all she wanted to do was watch something brainless on TV, breaking up with nice men—Good people! Men she liked!—when she realized they didn’t want kids or didn’t believe in forever. She’d tried. She was sure Tom hadn’t even tried. Adrian had once let it slip that Tom’s relationships turned over like the dairy case at the supermarket.
“Did you think you would?” she asked.
Tom exhaled through his nose. “No,” he admitted.
Lips pressed together, Rose nodded. That’s what she’d thought.
“But, babe, we already got married,” he said. “I didn’t think I could get married to someone else.”
“What?” Rose asked, shooting him a startled look out of the corner of her eye. “Wait. You don’t mean in, like, a Catholic way?”
Tom paused. “I guess?” he said.
Rose snorted. “Is that what you tell people when you don’t want to commit? Oh, sorry, I can’t, I’m Catholic?”
“I am Catholic. So are you. Remember the priest at our wedding?”
“You’re not that Catholic. You never went to mass.” Rose retorted, because she had all the receipts on this. “I went to mass more than you, and I went, just, when someone made me .”
Tom sighed heavily and spread his fingers in concession. “Okay, okay, so I don’t mean in a Catholic way. It’s more that—”
She had to keep her eyes on the road as they approached the outskirts of Oak Bluffs, because now there was traffic, but she could feel him looking at her. She couldn’t turn her head to look at him though, or she’d lose it.
“What,” she said.
“I took vows. I said I’d love and honor you. And I knew what I was doing, and I knew what I meant. I said for all the days of my life, and I meant it. That’s it.”
“Tom,” she said, like a warning. It was getting harder to drive.
“No, Rosie, listen. I meant it. I know I haven’t always lived up to my vows, not when we were living together, even, or in the ten years since, but I always thought I should. I couldn’t make those promises to someone else, because I already made them to you, and I meant it. I’m going to love you all the days of my life.”
He said it very fiercely, as though someone were going to come into the car and dispute it. But what could she say? Don’t? Please don’t love me? She would never have told him that, because what else had she been chasing all these years? No, love me , please. Just do it in a way she might notice. Do it in a way that mattered. Say it and make me believe it.
“You are—you’re off the hook though,” she said, aware that her voice sounded watery. “You don’t have to. I’m not going to hold you to it. You’re not stuck with me. You don’t have to want the things I want just because you made a promise when you were twenty-two.”
Tom leaned all the way across the center console so that his arm just brushed hers. She felt the big shape of his body next to hers without being able to see it, somehow sensing it through the noise of their hearts beating too fast. He put a hand on her arm for lack of any other part of her to hold onto.
“I don’t want you to let me off the hook for once. I want to stop screwing up. I don’t want to be the person I was when I was twenty-two. I want to be the guy you thought I was.”
She pulled off the road into the nearest parking lot, a deserted Cronig’s.
“I can’t drive like this,” she said, eyes welling up.
“I’m not in a hurry,” Tom said, even though his knee had to be killing him.
Once the car was in park, and the engine was shut off, she swung her head to check that there was nobody nearby, then lifted the hem of her skirt to wipe off her eyes, flashing Tom and Vineyard Haven both. She leaned over the steering wheel with her face covered by the loose fabric.
Actors had to cry onstage sometimes. Tom could cry onstage on command, like the excellent actor he was. Rose still didn’t want anyone to see her cry. She didn’t want to be a person who cried a lot, but arranging her life so that nothing made her cry had never worked, and it wasn’t working now.
Tom grunted, got his good leg braced, then twisted around to grab her purse out of the back seat. He fished inside for the tissues he knew she’d have stashed there and passed her the packet without comment on her tears.
When she’d wiped mascara away, he reached for the crumpled tissue, but instead she grabbed his hand. She held on as hard as she could, fingers folded over his much larger ones.
I want that too. I want that so much. I want that for you, and for me, and, more than anything, for us.
They sat there in the dark for a long time, watching the red brake lights of the cars smear light on the wet roads as they spun past.
Tom’s phone vibrated ten minutes later, and he fished it out of his pocket. He scanned his texts.
“Ximena checked with my manager. I have health insurance through next Thursday,” he said with a note of triumph.
Rose took a deep breath. “Great. We’ll go to the hospital. See if you can get some shots while we’re at it.”
She turned on the car and put it in reverse, but before she could back out into the road, Tom put his hand on her arm again.
“I’m sorry about tonight,” he said earnestly. “I swear it won’t be this bad once we’re back in New York. I take the subway, I listen to my manager, and I show up for rehearsal. This kind of thing doesn’t happen—well, too often.”
Another painful laugh forced its way from her chest. “You nearly got hit by a bus the night we met. I knew you were like this when I married you.”
“Yeah,” Tom said softly. “I know. But this had to wear on you.”
She covered the brake long enough to look at him earnestly. “It didn’t. It really didn’t. I just wanted—I just missed you.” She exhaled, long and tired. “I knew about everything else. Everything you don’t like about yourself. And everything I didn’t like about my life—I expected that too. I just thought I’d get you in exchange. It would have been worth it if I had you, but in the end I didn’t feel like I did. I didn’t think I should have to miss you all the time.”
A complicated expression tilted the corners of Tom’s full mouth and tight eyes. A little bit of surprise, a little more grief.
“Well,” he said thickly, shifting in his seat so that he could stretch his injured leg out longer, “you could have had me at any time. But anyway, here I am.”
···
The night was still and humid by the time Tom was discharged. They made their way slowly back to the car; his badly sprained knee had stiffened after the long wait in the emergency room, and now he had a brace and a cane. Not a handsome cane, a sexy cane, as he’d requested of the unamused rehabilitation specialist, but the aluminum kind with a big handle and a black rubber tip.
“This play is going to be such a train wreck,” he said as Rose helped him into the passenger seat. “It was one thing when it was just Ximena on the prowl at nine months pregnant. Now I have to convince the audience that I’m a dewy-eyed twenty-year-old virgin in orthoses.”
“I bet the Times will call it a remarkable comment on the intersection of disability and desire,” Rose said, buckling him in.
“They’re only going to review it if Ximena goes into labor onstage,” Tom said sourly. “And then it will be in the Styles section and focus on maternity wear trends. Maybe Sara Holdren will throw us a bone if we’re lucky.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back against the headrest, face creased with discomfort.
Rose gently rubbed his thigh, worried for him. “Do you want to go back inside and see if you can get something stronger than Advil?”
“No. I want to go home,” Tom said.
She paused with her hand on his leg, since she didn’t think he was really talking about the inn. He was talking about her apartment, probably, a place he’d never been to. Or their studio in the East Village, which she’d vacated as soon as the lease was up.
“I think we missed the last ferry,” she said, which was true but also cowardly. She winced and tried to do better. “You have been so brave. Do you want to go back to the inn to be fussed over by a dozen teenage girls and also me?”
“I guess that’s as good as it gets for tonight,” he said.
The roads were deserted as they made their way back up-island, but when they got to the inn’s gravel drive, they found it blocked by a news van.
“What now?” Tom asked, squinting at the flood lights that had been aimed at the roof, where three men who were not Boyd were industriously nailing down tarps and patches.
Ximena, who had been waiting in a rocking chair on the porch, stood up when she saw Rose approach.
“What’s happening?” Rose asked, gesturing at the news truck and the construction. Nothing went on in West Tisbury after seven p.m., especially not in March.
“So, Boyd and I put out a video about what happened. On all our official accounts. The local news picked it up, and an actual roofer came over and said they’d handle the project for the claim limits plus some promo,” she said, pointing over her head. “But could you have Tom look like he’s on the verge of death when he comes through here? Exaggerations about how close he was to dying may have been made.”
Rose, who had been taking hard lessons in composure for several weeks now, managed to absorb these facts without demonstrating surprise or concern.
“Where is Boyd?” she asked. “You didn’t let him get back on the roof, did you?”
Ximena shook her head. “He’s filming videos about the work that still needs to be done here. If it worked for roofers, seems like maybe we could get a real A/V specialist to wire the basement?”
“Would you be willing to go get him?” Rose asked. “I need his help to get Tom up the stairs.”
“How is Tom?” Ximena asked.
“Grumpy,” Rose informed her. “But he’ll live.”
When she went back to the car, Rose found that Tom had managed to get himself out, and he was gazing up at the late-night construction with a bemused expression on his face.
“Are those real roofers?” he asked.
“I think so,” she replied.
Tom paused, expression shuttered. “And are they going to fix the whole roof?”
“Apparently it was your dying wish,” Rose said.
They both looked up and regarded the roofers as they worked to render the inn waterproof for the first time in months.
“I really thought I could do something for you out here,” Tom repeated glumly.
Rose rubbed his back through his shirt. She didn’t care, but she didn’t think he wanted to hear that right now. “You know, I only asked you for help. I didn’t have anyone else to ask. And everyone else who came out is because of you. So, you know, in a way, everything they’ve done…that’s because of you too.”
“Huh,” said Tom. After a moment, he slung a heavy arm over Rose’s shoulders. When she peeked back up at him, his face was spreading into a weary grin. “I guess I did do it then.”
“You did what?”
“The roof. I told you. I said I’d get the roof fixed, and I did.” He beamed at her.
Rose giggled and elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “ You did?”
“I did! Look, the roof’s getting fixed, and you thought I’d flaked out again. But I got Boyd’s weirdos to do it. Say you were wrong.”
“Of course. This was part of the master plan. You lured Boyd out onto the roof, then fell off it just so that you could appeal to the sympathies of the hardworking roofers of West Tisbury,” she said, helpless to resist mirroring Tom’s smile.
“Don’t question my methods, just my results,” he said, tipping his head back and laughing. “But if I’m ever actually dying, I’m telling you now that I don’t want a roof. I want hard drugs and sexual favors.”
“I’ll see what my cat tranquilizer guy can do,” Rose said, going up on her tiptoes to kiss the smirk off Tom’s face before Boyd and the inn crowd could approach. He rubbed the tip of his nose into her cheek, and she squeaked in a less than dignified way.
Boyd’s expression was sheepish as he came over to support Tom’s arm, and he seemed to anticipate being yelled at. He probably deserved to be yelled at. Tom had Rose, at least, but who kept Boyd from acts of Florida Man peril?
Tom looked up at the roof a last time, then reached out to pull the other man into a hug. Tom had recovered from enough of his Florida Man socialization that he didn’t cut it off with any performative back slapping and arm punching. He gave Boyd a real hug, hard and earnest, and then he patted him on the chest.
“Thanks, bud,” Tom said, to the dramatic sighs of nearby teenage girls. But he was sincere. “I mean it. Thank you for this.”
Boyd didn’t smile in any of his movies that Rose had ever seen, but he smiled then. “You’re welcome,” he said.
The whole crowd flowed into the inn and then up the main staircase.
They were completely booked. The fangirls were stacked up two and three to a room and filled the third-floor bunk room as well. Ximena, Boyd, and Tom had each been assigned a queen bedroom, and Rose had the suite. The inn was completely full for the first time since Rose was a small child, and the hallway rang with a dull background roar of female chatter, phone notifications, and hammering from the roof.
It was a wonderful din, Rose thought. She’d lived in New York for the past decade; she couldn’t sleep if it was too quiet. All these noises were good noises.
Tom and Boyd made it to the landing, and Tom considered the long hallway of doors. The single room where he’d been sleeping. The suite.
“Drag my suitcase into the suite,” he told Boyd, taking a first laborious step down the hall.
Rose made a small noise, not quite an objection, more a note of surprise.
Tom swung his head back toward her.
“Nope,” he said, though Rose hadn’t even finished thinking it through. “We’re done with that. Not one more night.”
The calm determination on his face wasn’t an expression Rose was very familiar with. The features were familiar: the steady brown eyes, the straight bold line of his lips. But Tom never put his foot down on anything. He was never totally sure he was right. Except now he was.
Let’s talk about it , she nearly said. But hadn’t they already talked about it? She’d told him she got tired of missing him.
Rose had noted the occasional electric sensation in her brain of remembering something she had almost forgotten. Some memory about to be overwritten, some last item on the grocery list as she approached the checkout station. Wait, hold on a minute. I almost missed this.
“I can get him from here,” she told Boyd, putting her hand on Tom’s elbow.
As though she’d planned it all from the beginning, she guided Tom into the suite. She put his cane against the free nightstand and helped him strip down to his boxers. She collected the rest of his things from the other room. People were watching as she carried his suitcase down the hall, but not with a lot of surprise. They’d known this was where Tom belonged even before Rose had, and they’d been right then too.