Duma Key Read Free

mend.
    Kathi Green the Rehab Queen came to Casa Freemantle in Mendota Heights on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I was allowed an extra Vicodin before our sessions, and still my screams filled the house by the time we finished up. Our basement rec room had been converted into a therapy suite, complete with a handicap-accessible hot tub. After two months of torture, I was able to make it down there on my own in the evenings to double up on my leg exercises and begin some abdominal work. Kathi said doing that stuff a couple of hours before bed would release endorphins and I’d sleep better.
    It was during one of these evening workouts—Edgar in search of those elusive endorphins—when my wife of a quarter-century came downstairs and told me she wanted a divorce.
    I stopped what I was doing—crunches—and looked at her. I was sitting on a floor-pad. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, prudently across the room. I could have asked her if she was serious, but the light down there was very good—those racked fluorescents—and I didn’t have to. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing women joke about six months after their husbandshave almost died in accidents, anyway. I could have asked her why, but I knew. I could see the small white scar on her arm where I had stabbed her with the plastic knife from my hospital supper tray, and that was really the least of it. I thought of telling her, not so long ago, to get that hamhock out of here and stick it up her face-powder. I considered asking her to at least think about it, but the anger came back. In those days what Dr. Kamen called inappropriate anger was my ugly friend. And hey, what I was feeling right then did not seem inappropriate at all.
    My shirt was off. My right arm ended three and a half inches below the shoulder. I twitched it at her—a twitch was the best I could do with the muscle that was left. “This is me,” I said, “giving you the finger. Get out of here if that’s how you feel. Get out, you quitting birch.”
    The first tears had started rolling down her face, but she tried to smile. It was a pretty ghastly effort. “Bitch, Edgar,” she said. “The word is bitch .”
    â€œThe word is what I say it is,” I said, and began to do crunches again. It’s harder than hell to do them with an arm gone; your body wants to pull and corkscrew to that side. “I wouldn’t have left you, that’s the point. I wouldn’t have left you . I would have gone on through the mud and the blood and the piss and the spilled beer.”
    â€œIt’s different,” she said. She made no effort to wipe her face. “It’s different and you know it. I couldn’t break you in two if I got into a rage.”
    â€œI’d have a hell of a job breaking you in two with only one amp,” I said, doing crunches faster.
    â€œYou stuck me with a knife.” As if that were the point. It wasn’t, and we both knew it.
    â€œA plastic rudder knife is what it was, I was halfout of my mind, and it’ll be your last words on your fucking beth-dead, ‘Eddie staffed me with a plastic fife, goodbye cruel world.’ “
    â€œYou choked me,” she said in a voice I could barely hear.
    I stopped doing crunches and gaped at her. The clock-shop started up in my head; bang-a-gong, get it on. “What are you saying, I choked you? I never choked you!”
    â€œI know you don’t remember, but you did. And you’re not the same.”
    â€œOh, quit it. Save the New Age bullshit for the . . . for the guy . . . your . . .” I knew the word and I could see the man it stood for, but it wouldn’t come. “For that bald fuck you see in his office.”
    â€œMy therapist,” she said, and of course that made me angrier: she had the word and I didn’t. Because her brain hadn’t been shaken like