“I’m just trying to do my shopping,” Pam said.
“Like a good little mob wife,” Jardine said. “He probably has you clipping coupons by now, because, what I hear, it’s not going so well for the home team here. What I’m saying is you have options.”
He handed her his card. “Call me, we can work something out. You’re a Connecticut girl, you don’t belong in Rhode Island.”
She didn’t answer, but she stuck the card in the back of her purse. Now she says to Danny, “Maybe because if I leave him, all this has been about nothing.”
Danny recalls the first moment he saw her, walking out of the ocean. So beautiful, so golden.
Not so much now.
He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it has been all about nothing.
“How much coke are you doing?” he asks.
“Too much.”
“Maybe you should get some help.”
“What?” Pam asks. “Go with Cassie to those awful meetings? No thanks. Anyway, I’m cutting down. What, Danny, you don’t think I own a mirror, I don’t know what I look like?”
Danny don’t go down to the beach much.
He usually only goes down to bring his old man the groceries, maybe go for a quick dunk. The jaunts are guilty breaks from the pain of Terri’s illness. Sometimes he stops by Dave’s Dock for a quick chowder, or Aunt Betty’s for clam cakes, shaking them in the brown paper bag to coat them with salt and vinegar—maybe he grabs a beer at the Blue Door.
Then he hurries home ashamed that he’s had some enjoyment.
One day he asks Marty, “Why do you really think Peter pretends that the Blacks killed Sal?”
“Think about it,” Marty says. “Peter and Sal hated each other—sooner or later, Sal was going to make his move. So Liam did him a favor.”
“You think the war is over?”
“It’s never over,” Marty says. “The tide comes in, the tide goes out. You go through war, you go through peace. You enjoy the peace while it lasts, you try to survive the war. That’s all you can do.”
Danny figures that’s about right.
He drives back to Providence and sees John at the Gloc.
The old man asks, “How’s my daughter doing?”
“Come see for yourself,” Danny says. Because John hasn’t come over once since Terri was diagnosed. “I know she’d love to see you.”
“I don’t want to disturb her rest.”
“She’s not contagious, John.”
John’s eyes get watery. “It’s just so hard, you know, Danny.”
Harder on her, Danny thinks. And fuck you, John, you weak, selfish old prick. “Yeah, well . . . I know she’d love to see you.”
Catherine, she comes over almost too much, bringing casseroles—which do help a lot, Danny has to admit—and clean laundry, but she bugs the shit out of Terri.
And Danny.
“Can’t you make her eat, Danny?” she asks.
“She just throws it up, Catherine.”
“But she has to eat,” Catherine says. “She’s wasting away, poor thing. It’s those goddamn chemicals. I swear they’re worse than the cancer.”
Cassie comes around a lot, too, but she’s pitch-perfect with her sister, hanging out watching TV, playing with Ian, just shooting the shit. She’s usually there when Danny comes home, and he appreciates her.
She makes Terri laugh—“I don’t know, sis, lying there with a needle in your arm full of socially sanctioned drugs? I’m kind of jealous.”
As good as she is with Terri, she’s that good with the baby—holding him, feeding, bathing him with a gentle humor that calms the anxious boy.
“You ever think about having one of your own?” Danny asks her one time.
Cassie shakes her head. “Not for me.”
“You’re so good at it.”
“Not for me.”
He lets it go.
Ian’s first birthday arrives.
It’s a big deal and Terri wants to have a party, but Danny isn’t so sure. “Do you feel up to it?”
“No,” Terri says. “But how many of his birthdays am I going to have?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Danny says.
“I want my son to have a birthday party.”
“He’s one,” Danny says. “He won’t know.”
“I’ll know,” Terri says.
That settles it.
Terri wants to have it at their place, which makes no freakin’ sense because it’s so small and she invites the entire family. So Danny goes out and buys a Carvel’s, a bunch of cold cuts, some bread, beer, wine, and soda for Cassie.