One Last Thing Before I Go

“But she’ll be mine last.”
    “Rich . . .” Denise says quietly.
    “What?!” Rich says, turning on her. “Isn’t that what we do here? We say whatever we think, right? And everyone laughs.”
    “He’s sick.”
    “He’s more than sick. He’s dying. And I’m the only one who seems inclined to stop that from happening.”
    “Which I appreciate,” Silver says.
    “You’re an asshole, Silver.”
    “I think I’d like a second opinion.”
    Rich turns around so fast, Silver is sure he’s going to punch him. “OK, Silver, here’s a second opinion,” he spits out. “You don’t want to die. You just want a free pass to forgiveness, to undo the fact that you left your wife and neglected your daughter. And you’re too self-absorbed to realize that you’re just screwing them up more in the process.”
    “Stop it,” Denise says.
    “Tell me I’m wrong, Denise!” he shouts at her. “Tell me he’s not the reason I’m staying in my old house again.”
    “You are?” Silver.
    “Shut up, Silver.” Casey.
    “Don’t do this here.” Denise.
    “Where else am I going to do it? It’s not like you’ve been returning my calls.” Rich.
    Silver rolls out of bed and looks at Casey. “I think we should give them a minute,” he says. He heads for the door, but Rich steps forward and blocks his way. Silver looks him up and down, wondering if they’re about to come to blows. Rich has a few inches on him but probably hasn’t been in a fight in his entire adult life, whereas Silver is a veteran of drunken brawls, none of which he can recall with any specificity, and all of which he lost, but still, being able to take a punch is half the battle.
    “You can’t have her,” Rich says.
    “What?”
    Rich looks at Denise while he speaks in slow, measured tones. “Denise. You can’t have her. She’s going to marry me. She may be questioning that right now, but that’s how this story ends. And maybe you delay that a little bit, maybe you throw her off temporarily, but in the end, I marry Denise and she and I, and Casey . . . we bury you.”
    “Unless I have the operation.”
    “That’s right. You can live or you can die. But either way, you can’t have my wife.”
    He’s being noble and a prick simultaneously. Later Silver will have to replay this conversation in his head to see how he pulled it off. But for now, his tortured love is filling the room, forcing Silver out.
    “Where are you going?!” Denise calls out, alarmed.
    “Home.”
    “You just had a stroke, Silver!”
    “Yeah,” he says. “But it was a little one.”
    Out in the hall, he turns to look at Casey. “It’s OK, baby. Don’t cry.”
    “I’m not,” Casey says, wiping his face with her fingers. “You are.”
    * * *
    He loved a girl once. She was pretty and kind, soft and hard, had a quick wit and a killer smile, and for reasons that never really crystallized for him, she loved him back. She laughed at his jokes and craved his body and threw herself into loving him with a blind trust that warmed his heart even while it terrified him. When they made love, they did it with fierce abandon, and it was they who shook, not the earth. And afterward, as they lay together hip to hip, her sweat on his tongue, he would make promises, and she would believe them. It had not been love at first sight, more of a slow burn, but when it hit, it hit like a tsunami. And then, one evening, as they ate ice cream by the wharf, he asked her to take off the Claddagh ring she wore so that he could see it, and when he handed it back, it was a diamond ring. And she couldn’t stop crying, and he kissed her tears and promised her that he’d never make her cry again, and that was just one of the hundreds of promises he would break sooner than even he ever would have believed.

CHAPTER 31
    F riday-night dinner turns out to be an ambush. Casey and Silver walk in to the shouts and whoops of his nephews, and Chuck and Ruby are on the couch in the living room, in somber conversation with Denise, who looks somewhat ill at ease in the home of her former in-laws.
    “Oh, fuck,” Casey says quietly.
    “Did you know about this?”
    “I had no idea.”
    Ruben comes over to greet them, looking sharp and scrubbed in one of his better suits. He has just returned from Friday-night services. The house is filled with the smells of Silver’s childhood: freshly baked challahs, sweetened gefilte fish, and stuffed cabbage. In the dining room, the table is set with an