The Lucky Ones(96)

“The EMTs checked you.”

“Am I okay?” she said.

“You fainted. The EMT said to let you rest. He said it didn’t look like you had any pepper spray in your eyes. You have some bruises on your neck but nothing broken. I need to get him.”

“No, stay. Please?”

“You were choked and you passed out. You need medical attention.”

Allison started to sit up. “Later.”

“Allison.” Roland said her name like a plea or like a prayer. She couldn’t say for sure.

“Is he dead?” she asked, suddenly remembering everything that had led her to this moment.

“Not yet,” Roland said. “Soon. Tonight.”

Allison closed her eyes, breathed, nodded.

“I don’t know what he said to you. Or did,” Roland said. “But—”

“Let’s not talk about it. It doesn’t matter.”

She wasn’t sure if that was true but she needed to say it, needed to try to believe it.

“So he’s still here?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Roland said. “The EMTs want to take him to the hospital.”

“He wouldn’t want to go.”

“I know. I ought to let them take him. After what he did to you.”

“No,” Allison said. “He’s just sick. Let him die here in his home in his bed like he wanted.”

And let it be quick, Allison thought but did not say aloud.

“It won’t be long now.” Roland’s voice was hollow, empty of emotion.

“Why aren’t you with him?”

“Because I’m with you.”

“I’m fine. Go to your dad.” She lay back down again.

“No,” Roland said. “I’ll stay here with you.”

Allison swallowed a hard lump in her throat. It hurt but not enough to scare her. She’d be okay. Eventually.

“I tried to do something nice for you today,” Roland said.

“You do something nice for me every day,” she said.

“I was going to finish the laundry you started yesterday,” he said. “I threw your jeans in with mine. This was in the back pocket.”

He held up a folded piece of paper. She didn’t have to look at it to know what it was. The note about Roland’s operation.

“Is that why you didn’t wake me up last night?” he asked. “You found that?”

“I needed time to think. Do you blame me?”

“You could have asked me about it,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d tell me the whole truth.”

Roland took the hit well. He nodded in agreement.

“The truth hurts sometimes.”

“It does, yeah,” she said. “But so do lies.”

She rolled over onto her side, facing him. His hand was there on the covers and she could reach out and take it if she wanted. She wanted, but she didn’t.

“I don’t think I lied to you,” he said. “Except by omission. It’s not easy to talk about...”

“What? Tell me. You told me you were in love with me, so I know you’re not a coward. I was with McQueen for six years and never told him I had real feelings for him.”

“This,” he said, holding up the page again with the notes on his surgery. “So, ah...when I was twenty, I met this girl in Astoria. We worked together. We went out on all of two dates, and I thought, yeah, she’s the one. Dad asked about her and I told him that. I thought he’d be happy. He was but he said he needed to tell me something. He said that what I had as a kid, that condition that made me violent, it could be genetic. And I needed to be really careful. He said...he said I shouldn’t have children. That is not an easy conversation for a twenty-year-old guy to have with his dad when he’s madly in love. Dad knew a doctor, he said. He...”

“Tell me, Roland. Just say it.”

“I had a vasectomy.”

“What?”

“This is not a comfortable conversation for a man to have with the woman he’s in love with, either. It’s humiliating. I know it shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t change that it is. So, you know, not the easiest thing in the world for me to talk about.”

Allison took a heavy breath. She hadn’t expected that, not at all.

“Is that why you joined the monastery?” she asked. “Because you can’t have biological children?”

“Terrible reason, right? I joined for a lot of bad reasons. I didn’t want to risk falling in love again. I felt tainted by what I’d done to Rachel. I felt like I maybe should go away for a long time. There were good reasons, too. I wanted to be forgiven. I wanted peace. I wanted to be a different person. But that doesn’t work. You’re still you no matter where you go.”

Allison touched his face, the scruff on his chin, pale as snow on sand.

“I remembered something else today,” she said.

“Like what?” Roland, she knew, was trying to sound normal but it wasn’t working. He sounded scared, and for Roland that wasn’t normal.

“The first time you and I made love upstairs in my room, which used to be your room, I remembered I tried to run my fingers through your hair. You pushed my arm down on the bed before I could. I thought you were being sexy...” Allison ran her hands through his hair and pulled the little black elastic band out of the short ponytail he always wore it in. Roland lowered his head. She dropped the elastic on the floor, and started stroking his hair. Under her fingers she felt a ridge of scar tissue under his hair. It was in the same place she felt the scar on Antonio’s scalp.