Free Coming Home by Laurie Breton Page B

continued blithely.  “I’ll be working
second shift, so I won’t always be here for supper, but it’s only three days a
week.  That’s all they could give me right now.”
    “St. Peter’s,” he said.  “That’s in Roxbury.  Have you lost your
mind?”
    The tone of his voice finally registered, and she glanced up in
surprise. “What’s wrong?” she said.
    “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that you might have consulted
with me first?”
    She raised an eyebrow.  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “it
didn’t.  Since when do I have to consult with you before I make a decision?”
    “For Christ’s sake, Casey, use your brain.  Are you trying to get
your throat slit?”
    “I know Roxbury’s a tough neighborhood, but—”
    He slammed a fist down on the washer.  “You don’t know shit!  I
grew up here, and I wouldn’t venture onto the streets of Roxbury after dark
unless I was carrying a loaded AK-47!”
    She gaped at him in astonishment, unable to reconcile this
stranger with the soft-spoken man she’d married.  He looked like Danny, his
voice was Danny’s, but the words he was speaking were the words of a stranger. 
“I can’t believe you’re carrying on like this,” she said.  “Over something so
small.”
    “I want you to go to the phone right now and call that place and
tell them you’ve changed your mind.”
    White-hot fury shot through her.  “Over my dead body!”
    “Damn it, Casey, that’s what I’m trying to prevent!”
    “I think we’d better get one thing straight,” she said.  “This is
the twentieth century.  I may be your wife, but I am not, nor will I ever be,
your property.  I’ll work where I want, with or without your permission.”
    “That’s odd,” he said, “because I seem to remember something in
the marriage vows about obeying.”
    “Words put there hundreds of years ago by male supremacists who
regarded women as chattel!”
    “I will not allow you to work after dark in Roxbury.  Period.”
    “You can just go to hell, then, because you can’t stop me.  As a
matter of fact—”  She kicked at the pile of laundry.  “—you can start washing
your own underwear!”
    “I can do better than that.  If this is what marriage is going to
be like, I don’t want any part of it!”
    She tried to breathe around the sudden obstruction in her throat. 
“Just what are you saying?”
    “I’m saying that we might as well call it quits right now and get
it over with!”  He untangled one of her brassieres from his shoe, threw it at
her, and stalked from the room.
    She dropped the brassiere and followed him, catching him by the
arm and yanking him around.  “Where do you think you’re going?”
    He jerked free from her grasp.  “Out.”
    She narrowed her eyes.  “You’re walking out in the middle of a
fight?”
    “The fight,” he said, “is over.  And so is the marriage.”
    “Fine with me, then.  Get out, and don’t bother coming back!”
    “Don’t worry!  I don’t plan to!”
    He slammed the door so hard the picture on the wall shuddered. 
Casey walked to it woodenly and steadied it, and then she went to the kitchen
stove and turned off the burners, methodically, one by one.
    She tried to pinpoint the exact moment when Danny had stopped
loving her, but she was too numb to think clearly.  She should have known it
wouldn’t last.  She should have realized that marrying Danny would be like
caging a wild bird.  Now she was paying for her stupidity.  The love of her
life had just walked out the door, and her marriage was over almost before it
had begun.
     
    ***
     
    His anger lasted for exactly twenty-three minutes.  That was how
long it took him to realize that she didn’t love him any more.
    If she loved him, she would have understood that he was only
trying to protect her.  If she loved him, she would have realized that all
other women had ceased to exist from the instant he first lay eyes on her, and
he was