A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [120]
The last time they made love she had told him that she loved him. He didn’t know if he loved her, because he didn’t know what love was. If it was an ecstasy that stayed with him every minute of every day, then it surely wasn’t love. What he felt most with Delores was contentment. He didn’t have to consider every word before he spoke. When she called he was glad to hear her voice. Now when the doorbell rang his chest didn’t tighten with dread. But when he was alone he hardly ever thought of her. Love, he suspected, was the ache that came with thoughts of Jilly Cross.
“Does Dennis know you cut your hand?”
“No. He doesn’t even know I got fired from the Market.”
“Gordon!”
“I figured I’d tell him as soon as I found a new job.”
“You have to tell him. You can’t start keeping things from him.”
“Why? He doesn’t tell me everything he does,” he said, startled by this mix of anger and guilt. Talking about the affair made him feel disloyal to his brother, Lisa, and Jilly, and resentful. He had been drawn into their private lives before he’d had a chance to settle into his own. The affair lay between him and Dennis like an invisible wall. He didn’t know what to do but felt sure he should be doing something.
“Dennis just wants to help. He wants to be close to you, Gordon, that’s all. Every trip up there he’d always be saying how wonderful it was going to be when you could all finally be a family again.”
“Dr. Loomis knows you’re here,” the receptionist said. “It shouldn’t be too much longer. He said to go wait in his office.”
“I can wait here,” he said before she could get up. “This is fine. I’ll just sit here and wait.” The last thing he wanted was to disrupt the office routine, but he was desperate. He had to borrow fifty dollars. The electric company’s second notice had thrown him into a panic. It was bad enough eating at Delores’s almost every night this past week, but it was humiliating to show up empty-handed.
The only job he’d been able to get was with a moving company. Thinking his palm had healed, he had worked two days only to have the cut reopen. Blood dripped onto the white-tiled foyer of a house, horrifying the new home owner. “What if he’s got AIDS?” she fumed, pointing down at Gordon. He was on his knees, scrubbing the stained grout and trying to keep paper towels rolled around his hand.
“What about my kids? My baby’s crawling now.”
The foreman’s boot nudged him. “You got AIDS?”
“No.”
The foreman gave him cab fare and sent him home until “the damn thing heals.”
Determined to get the job back, he did everything with one hand. Twelve fifty an hour was good money, and the men had liked him. There hadn’t been anything he couldn’t lift. He sniffed at his hand again. It still ached, and this morning there had been a funny odor from the bandage. The surgical tape and gauze were expensive, so he had been changing the dressing only every few days.
“The chairs in the doctor’s office are a lot more comfortable than those.”
“Oh, I’m comfortable. These chairs are fine.” He patted the wooden arms. “They’re very good, very comfortable.”
“Well . . .” She sighed. “He should be right out.” She returned to her keyboard.
He kept glancing over the magazine at her. Maybe Dennis had broken up with Jilly and this was his new girlfriend. Older, she wasn’t nearly as pretty as Jilly or as classy. She was chewing gum with her front teeth. Her hair was brassy and ragged, not soft and perfectly neat as Jilly’s. An odd pang of jealousy rose in his chest. Why did he feel so agitated? Did he want his brother to still be seeing Jilly? The door opened. An older man arrived and sat across from him. Moments later a nurse led out a gray-haired woman whose mouth was stuffed with bloody gauze packs. The man got up and put his arm around her, asking if she was all right as they left.
“Gordo.”
He followed Dennis into his office. The furniture was massive, with dark, burled surfaces inlaid with bands of golden wood. The blinds were closed and the lampshades were black. Gordon had to squint to see his brother on the other side