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 shecould 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 theemergency 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 theTimeswill 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 truebut also cowardly. She winced and tried to do better. “You have beensobrave. 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.”
