Photographs Ch. 11

The problems began in his senior year of college when Danny started to receiving acceptances for medical schools. Danny understood the importance of applying to a number of schools, but planned only to go to UCLA. He would never leave Christie.

Christie gave hints. Then one evening she let it all out.

"Danny, do you want children of your own?" she asked while they were eating dinner.

"Nope," he said, slicing his steak. He had cooked, so the meal was simple.

"You sure?"

"Yep."

"But..."

"Why don't you get pregnant and I can help you raise it? There are sperm donors."

She pressed her lips together, but didn't say anything. She scored one for Danny, because he knew that was something she wanted to do.

"What about falling in love?" she asked. "Have you ever thought about meeting someone, a stranger, and it being love at first sight?"

He eyed her for a second. "You tired of me?"

"No, of course not," she said quickly. "It's just there are experiences you've never had."

"You've never had them, either. You've never had a planned pregnancy with a husband. You've never dated anyone you wanted to date. Have you fallen in love with someone at first sight?"

"No. I haven't." It was true. And now that she'd had Danny, she probably never would.

She decided to be blunt. "Danny, you need a normal life. Someday you're going to look back and regret all you didn't have because you were tied to me."

"I need you, Christie." He pointed his fork at her plate. "You're not eating, and I slaved over this meal. You always skip meals when you're upset over something. Cook them. Don't eat them."

"Danny, I want you to go away for medical school. We need to break this off so you can lead a normal life."

He slowly put down his knife and fork and stared at her. "You don't mean that."

"I do. I've known this had to happen since the first night we slept together."

"But you love me. How can you say these things?"

"It's because I love you. I want you to be happy and content with your life, and you won't be in the long run if we continue to live like this. It's best if we break it off now. And you going away to medical school would be a good way to do it."

"I am happy and content with my life. I was so happy I could burst, until about sixty seconds ago." He stood, leaving his plate half full of food. "We're not having this discussion," he said angrily. "We're staying together."

######

That night he made love to her frantically, hands gripping her fiercely, driving into her hard. It hurt a little, but she welcomed the pain as a kind of penance for what she did to him and would continue to do. Afterward, Danny held Christie in an almost crushing hold. His kisses were passionate, desperate.

"You belong to me," he said again and again. "You're mine."

She shivered. It was what Steve used to say, but his fingers had dug into her flesh when he said it, leaving bruises. Danny was more gentle even in his current desperation.

"Danny--"

"Listen. I belong to you, too. I'm yours. This is not about two people having sex. It never was." He squeezed her in his death grip again. "I'm yours, and I know that if I left it would destroy you. Admit it. Admit that it would hurt you if I left."

She held back a sigh, and her silence was her answer. It was going to tear her apart, but she was determined.

"I endured twenty years with a sadist," she said quietly, "and it didn't destroy me. I lived through that relationship because I never gave up my determination to survive."

"Admit it!"

She finally said, "It will be extremely painful, but in the end you will have a full, happy life, and that will make it worthwhile to me."

"Gah! When are you going to stop sacrificing yourself for the sake of others? It drives me crazy. You're like the strongest person I know, except when it comes to your own needs." He let go of her and rolled onto his back. She hadn't seen him so emotional since the day Steve beat her in the entryway. "If you can't see to your own self," he said more calmly, "then know that this is not what I wish. I think what you're trying to do would kill me. And what really pisses me off is you're not even considering my side of this. You think that because you're the mother, you must know best. I'll tell you something, Christie. You're not my mother anymore."

She ignored this. "You're very young still. You'll come to see what I mean in time. Just think, Danny, of all the lies and deception we already have to do. Someday the family is going to start to ask when you're going to get married. Think how they'll look at you if you live with your mother for the rest of your life."

"I don't care! I wouldn't be living with them. I'd be with you!" He got out of bed and stood over her. He gave a big sigh. "You're wrong, Christie. I just hope I can convince you of that before you ruin everything. You're going to ruin your own life, not just mine."

Christie sat up to sit at the edge of the bed and turned on the light. The sudden sight of him, naked and beautiful in the glow of the lamplight, took her breath away as it sometimes did. She felt a prickling at the back of her eyes. She squeezed them shut hard for a second to fight it. When she opened them she said, "My hopes were destroyed when I was fifteen. What I want no longer matters. I'm only thinking of what's best for you."

"You matter, Christie!" He took her by the shoulders, so frustrated he wanted to shake her. He felt a flush of shame at the panicked look in her eyes, remembering the way Steve treated her. He clutched her to him, both to reassure her and so he wouldn't have to see it.

"We have a few weeks before I have to respond," he said quietly. "We'll think of something. Now let's lie down. I really need you right now."

#####

Christie and Danny argued intermittently over the next several weeks. The make-up sex became less and less frequent until they hardly made love at all. Their final fight came on the day Danny could no longer put off his reply to Stanford and still keep his place. He had already replied to UCLA, although he didn't tell Christie that. They were both hard-headed and stubborn, but Christie held all the power. She refrained from using it until there was no other choice.

"I'm not going," Danny said for the zillionth time, and the fifth time that morning alone. They were both late for work because of arguing.

"Then I'm kicking you out of the nest, Danny. Go find someplace else to live. Go find some other way to put yourself through medical school."

"You really mean that?"

"Yes."

He simply stood there for a long minute, then said quietly, "Then I'm going to Stanford. Not because of the money. I don't want your money. It's because I don't want to be anywhere near you."

Then he went to the fax machine to send his forms to Stanford and afterward packed his bags.

#####

Christie stayed at home until Danny left, standing by an upstairs window and waiting. Far too quickly she saw him stride out of the house with his bags in his hands. He paused as he opened his car door and looked back at the house. He saw her, she knew, but he simply drove away.

She had done it, she thought. She had spoiled the best thing she had ever had in a life full of trials and disappointments. She did not cry; she was too numb. It was a hollow victory.

######

Danny spent that night, and the remaining few weeks of the school year, camped out on the sofa at a basketball buddy's house. Danny meant it when he said he couldn't be anywhere near Christie. If he remained in the same city with her, he didn't trust himself not to beg, and he was far too angry to allow that to happen. For now, he wanted no relationship with his mother if he couldn't have the one he wanted. Maybe, he hoped, if they spent some time apart it would be painful enough for her to take him back. He never realized how, even growing up with Steve, his mother had sheltered him from grief and disappointments. Meghan's betrayal had been tempered by his own realization that he was better off without her. Breaking up with her had been a relief.

But this... Something shattered inside him when he walked out that door. His even temper frayed until he turned into a broody, angry man whose best friend was a six-pack. Danny drank every night once his studying was done. It was the only way he could sleep without her.

He sent Christie an invitation to his college graduation, he felt he owed her that, but they did not speak. Still, he scanned the crowd of thousands for half an hour until he saw her, and he automatically turned toward her direction when the dean handed him his diploma, hoping to see a look of pride on her face. She smiled and cried at the same time, and he didn't know what that meant.

The very next day he parked on her street and waited until he saw her car drive away. Then he stole into his own home and packed everything that would fit in his car -- the car Christie gave him -- and left for the Bay Area.

#####

Danny had money saved from the odd jobs he worked in college. Until he arrived in Bay Area, though, he had no idea of the value of the things Christie had provided for him: housing, food, utilities. He paid for his own gas, maintenance, and car insurance, but even most of his clothing had been purchased by his mother. When he realized he would be living in one of the most expensive areas in the nation, he knew he would have to significantly alter his standard of living. His nest egg would last no more than four months. Three when he accounted for the cost of textbooks. His greatest expense, tuition, he had taken care of before he left LA. He would be in hock to his eyeballs when he graduated, but he could go to school.

First investing in a first aid and CPR course, he found a job as an orderly.

"You push the gurneys slowly." His new trainer, Pedro, had taken Danny under his wing from the first day.

"Faster," said the elderly man in the gurney..

"Where you need to go so fast?" Pedro asked him.

"I'm going home?" he said hopefully.

"No one likes it here," Danny said. Despite wanting to be a doctor, he didn't much like hospitals. They reminded him of those awful days after Steve had tried to beat Christie to death.

"Slowly, Daniel," Pedro said. He pronounced it Dahn-ee-ell. "These people, they have surgical sutures, broken bones. They're in a lot of pain. No fast corners, no bumps. Slowly. Now here, where the old building meets the new one, there's a big bump. Careful."

Danny got it, maybe better than Pedro knew. The people now in his care were like the broken birds he'd nursed as a boy.

He yawned and shook his head to clear it. Even with three beers, it had been hard to sleep. He never slept anymore. His noisy roommates didn't help. He wondered where he could score some sleeping pills without having to explain the situation to a doctor.

"Up late?" Pedro asked.

"My roommates party a lot."

"You don't?"

"Not really."

"How much you paying?"

"Eight hundred, plus another hundred for utilities."

"For a room? Shit, man, you're being robbed. Where is this place?" Pedro stopped to push an elevator button.

"Palo Alto."

"No wonder. It's not East Palo Alto?"

"No, why?" The elevator doors opened and Danny pushed the gurney over the threshold as carefully as he could.

"You're not from around here, are you?" Pedro pushed the 'up' button.

"No. I'm from LA."

"What're you doing up here?"

"I'm going to Stanford in the fall. That's why I got a room in Palo Alto."

Pedro looked at him speculatively. "What're you studying?"

"Medicine."

"You should live we me," Pedro said quickly. "I have a two-bedroom in Sunnyvale. Four-fifty, plus half the utilities. Usually about another hundred. That's all." He grinned. "I need a roommate."

The elevator doors slid open and they pushed the gurney into the hallway. Danny had liked Pedro immediately, but it sounded to good to be true. "You don't know anything about me," he said carefully. "And what's this place like if it's so cheap?"

#####

The place turned out to be a converted storefront that was probably illegal, but Danny didn't care. Only price mattered, and Pedro turned out to be a good friend and a neat-freak.

"Hey, man," he would say, "not in the living room," and Danny would know he'd left something lying around. This happened daily for the first few weeks until Danny learned. Even his mother hadn't been that bad, and she kept her house cleaner than an operating room.

When he had thoughts like that he would growl in frustration.

Christie was in his head, in his veins, and he needed a distraction. Wanting her consumed him at night until he tossed and turned, sweating and fevered in his bed. At last he would rise, get a drink or a Xanax, and hope it would erase the memories for a while.

Thinking about it one night in July, after his third beer, he got tired of being holed up in his room. Pedro had guests over, and although they tried to socialize with him, and Pedro encouraged it, he seldom felt like entertaining company.

"Where you going?" Pedro asked him.

He held up his basketball, tried to spin it on one finger and ended up dropping it. The remains of a six-pack in his other hand slipped when he reached for the ball, and he nearly dropped that as well. One of the guys on the sofa handed him the ball.

"'Cross the street. Park," he said when he had everything together again.

"It's closed, hermano," Pedro said.

"Then the courts'll be free," he replied and slipped out the door.

"Your friend seems kind of drunk," he heard as it closed behind him.

The courts were free, but also near completely dark, street lights the only illumination. Danny could hit almost any basket in near darkness, or at least the backboard. His first shot missed. Entirely.

"Shit," he said, staring off into the night where his ball had disappeared. He stomped off onto the lawn, searching for the ball, and swearing loudly. "Shit! fuck!" It took a while, but he found the ball under a bush and returned to the court, swiping an open beer bottle on the way. He chugged half of it and set the bottle down on the free throw line. The next shot hit the backboard, deflected at an odd angle, and he had to run to catch it. He fumbled the ball and managed to send it shooting out onto the grass again.

"God damn it!" Life is about futility, he thought. Have a skill, and you lose it. Love a woman, and you lose her. It took eight tries and lots of loud swearing to get the ball through the hoop. Danny had consumed his fifth beer by then. He drank them down like water, wanting to be oblivious. It took a lot of beer to get a man Danny's size shitfaced, but he succeeded. Four more failed shots, the last beer. Danny was a quiet man, and normally a quiet drunk, but something snapped inside him. After the last missed basket, he dropped down onto the grass, fell over on his side and started to scream. All the ache he hadn't acknowledged for so many weeks came ripping from the place he hid it and he felt like he might die. He certainly wanted to.

Danny didn't see the flashing lights, but Pedro did. Having heard the screams, he was already out the door, and he arrived at the same time as the cops. He knelt by Danny's side.

"Man, do I need to put a leash on you?" he asked calmly. By then Danny's screams had diminished to wracking sobs. "Come on, let's go home." He reached for his arm, but Danny, now grown to his full height of 6'6", was nine inches taller and nearly 100 pounds heavier. Pedro's friends helped lift Danny to his feet.

"Why?" Danny said. "Why'd she do this to me?"

Thankfully, the cops weren't interested in arresting a large, drunk, and distraught young man, and they had another call while Pedro and his friends were trying to convince them they lived nearby and could handle him. With Danny stumbling between them, and stopping once to let him vomit, they got him home. He let them settle him on the sofa, where he sat crying softly. By then he sobered up just enough to be embarrassed.

"Get him some water," one of the men suggested.

"Should shove him in the shower," the other said as he headed for the kitchen.

"Good idea," Pedro said. He sat on the coffee table across from him, elbow on one knee, chin on his fist. "What's your problem?" he said.

Danny looked around the spinning room, seeing faces he didn't recognize. Even this drunk, secrecy was so ingrained, he didn't speak. "She is," was all he said.

"Some woman?"

"Yeah. Some woman."

"Bad breakup?"

"Yeah." He took the water in a shaking hand, tried to drink and ended up spilling half of it. Pedro's friend helped him hold it. Danny stared at one corner of the coffee table, trying to get the edges to resolve into solid lines. The smell of vomit on his clothes made him want to puke all over again.

"This has been coming for some time, I think," Pedro said. "He drinks whenever he's not working. Sits in his room and don't talk much."

"You should kick him out," one of the friends said.

"My ball," Danny said, trying to rise. "Where's my ball? Can't afford a new one."

"That's because you're drinking all your money," Pedro said.

"I'll go get it," the friend with the glass said.

"Maybe we should leave."

"Help me get him in the shower first," Pedro said.

"This dude is huge."

"Okay, amigo, let's get you clean."

They helped him undress, but left him in his underwear. Danny calmer now, allowed them to maneuver him into the shower stall. The cold water sobered him even more, and his embarrassment morphed into drunken mortification. "I'm sorry. Really, really sorry."

"Don't do it again. I do not like the police."

"Police? There were police?"

"I'll tell you in the morning."

Once clean, they led Danny to his room. Pedro made sure he was in dry clothes before settling him into bed like he was one of his patients. From outside the room he heard the friend say again, "You should kick him out."

"No," Pedro said before he turned out the light. "I knew from the moment I saw him he was mine to take care of. He's a good guy. Wounded. That's what he is. Some puta broke him."

#####

Danny started medical school under the influence of the previous night's Xanax, the only sleeping pill he seemed to be able to get his hands on. He hadn't wanted to be hungover, but the grogginess the drug left him with was worse. He fell asleep in one class and forgot to get the syllabus for another. He arrived home that day not knowing what any of his assignments were. After a humbling round of phone calls to his teachers' offices, he discovered that medical school faculty could be particularly unforgiving.

He straightened up his act out of sheer necessity. He drank less, studied and worked part-time and attended classes, but still he needed several drinks before he could sleep at night. He had a hangover so much of the time that his grades suffered. The boy determined to show the bigots of the world that he was better than they could ever hope to be didn't much care.

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