Home Late

My hand shook so bad I couldn’t turn the key. Couldn’t even get it in the lock. The boys would be asleep. I hoped Mel was, too. I hadn’t thought of an explanation yet. The gym bag was a ton of bricks on my shoulder.

The breeze hit my back and I shivered. I blinked sweat from my eyes, checked over my shoulder to see the dark street. Took ten slow breaths. My hands steadied a bit.

It would be ok. It will be ok. I did it for her.

I tried the key again. Somehow the lock clicked open. Then the door swung back and I saw Mel’s face framed by her black hair and the porch light. The key hit the ground with a shrill metallic ring.

“You going to tell me you’ve been playing basketball with Chris for eight hours?” she said. She didn’t sound the least bit tired.

“Honey, I’m sorry,” I said. Not all eight, no. But it had been a way to pass time until dark and drive the ringing out of our ears. Even if I didn’t make a single shot. “I should’ve given you a heads up.”

“Why’d you have your location turned off?”

“My phone died.” It was true, or halfway at least, but my voice didn’t even convince myself. Thank God she never had time to watch the news. “That’s why I couldn’t call.”

“Chris’s phone doesn’t work?”

“Sorry, Mel. Got caught up and didn’t think about it.” I tried to step inside, leaning in to kiss her, but she wasn’t having any of it. She pulled her face back and blocked my foot with her own.

“It’s one in the morning. Jake finished his sculpture today and waited up three hours to show you.”

“Sorry, Mel.”

“I wasn’t the one who went to bed and cried into my pillow.”

There definitely weren’t tears in her eyes. Just fire. “I’ll ask him about it first thing tomorrow. Isaac okay?”

“Not the point.”

“Can I come in?”

She didn’t say anything, but she did step back. I couldn’t see her face anymore. That was almost worse. I bent to pick up the key from the porch and realized my arms were shaking now. I kept my eyes down when I stood. That was a problem, because when I tried to step past her, the gym bag caught on the doorframe. I felt the pull on my shoulder and all of a sudden couldn’t breathe. I turned my head, unhooked the bag, dropped the key again, and prayed Mel couldn’t see my shivering fingers while being certain that she could.

The whole process only took a few seconds. Felt like years though. To tell the truth, it felt like a decade had passed since that morning. I was sure I had crow’s feet splaying out from my eyes and hair growing in my ears.

“Leave the bag in the laundry room,” Mel said. “I’ll do the wash in the morning.” Her voice sounded a little softer now – only a little. Don’t let your guard down yet.

“It’s just my shoes and the ball,” I said. I didn’t want her laundering the stuff in the bag. “I didn’t change. Wanted to hurry home to my sweet wife.” I forced a laugh. Mel did not.

“Then drop what you’ve got on in there. Don’t you come to bed covered in sweat.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I left my clothes on the washer like she said, then hid the bag in our recycling bin in the garage. We never recycled. I’d have to move the bag tomorrow though.

Mel had her lamp on and a book in her lap when I went through our room to the shower. We didn’t speak. In the bathroom, I thought the hot water would release all the knots tying up my shoulder blades. It didn’t. But when that water hit my face, I broke. I don’t know how much I cried but my chest and shoulders heaved up and down like they hadn’t ever before. I knew why Chris and I did it. For her. That part was easy. What I asked myself in the shower was what to do now. Chris’s plan, all those schematics in that little notebook of his – nowhere did he say anything about what came after. How we kept going. How we explained it. I was a crap liar, and Mel knew me. Thank God it was dark.

Her lamp was off when I got into bed. Even though she was turned away towards the wall, I knew she was awake by her breathing, shallower and more intentional than when she was asleep. I reached out and started rubbing her shoulder the way she likes. “Mel?”

No answer.

“How much did the doc say that procedure for your dad would be again? I know it was experimental.”

She brushed my hand off her shoulder. “Not right now.”

“Mel, I’m serious. What was it? Eighteen thousand?”

“And some change. Doesn’t matter if it was 18 or 50, we can’t afford either. Go to bed.”

I took a deep breath. Well, several. It took a lot to work up the guts. “What if we could?” I tried to sound casual but my throat was so tight I wondered how I didn’t choke.

“John. Go to bed.”

“But what if we could?”

I heard the sheets and felt her turn under my hand. Her voice was clearer now – annoyed, marked by embers. “You meet a leprechaun today? He lead you to a pot of gold?”

This explanation hadn’t been in Chris’s notebook. If it had, I might’ve had time to realize how ludicrous it was. But it came to me in the shower. “We didn’t just play basketball.”

The bed shifted as she pushed herself up on one arm. I immediately wanted to rewind this conversation. Record something else over it. Instead, I said, “I didn’t tell you because I know how much you hate it, but Chris had this idea – well, Chris had this idea to try our hands at the Lucky Palace, that casino over off the highway.”

“Where’d the gambling money come from?”

“We started with a few rounds of Blackjack and somehow ended up at the roulette table, and” – here it was – “well, I guess I got lucky. Real lucky.”

She didn't respond.

“I won twenty grand, Mel.”

She shoved me away and dropped her head into her pillow. “Don’t joke with me. Not about Dad, and not at 2 a.m.”

“I’m serious, Mel. I don’t know how. Favor of God or something.” I felt proper bad about that last bit. I doubt He had anything to do with it. “He’s going to be ok. He’s going to get that operation and be just fine.”

I sensed more than saw her relax. Just a little. I pulled her close, and she started to cry. We laid that way until she fell asleep, my arms around her, my mind trying to figure out how to pay for a surgery with the $20,000 in cash hidden in our recycling bin and what to do with the gun buried underneath it.