The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“I’m listening, but that just isn’t—.”

“You were about eleven when I quit med school,” said Jim, “but you never really knew what went down. I hated it, studying to be a doctor, positively hated it. But that’s another whole story, how I let myself be drawn into something just because of Mom and Uncle Tim, because of some idea we were a family of doctors, because of Grandfather Spangler and how he doted on them and on me.”

“I figured you didn’t want to do it. How else—?”

“That’s not the important part,” said Jim. “I was drinking myself to death at Berkeley. I was really pushing it. And I was having an affair with the wife of one of my professors, a beautiful Englishwoman. Oh, the husband didn’t give a damn. Quite the contrary; he set it up. I realized that right off. He was twenty years older than her and wheelchair-bound since a motorcycle accident in England two years after they married. No kids, just him in his wheelchair, giving brilliant lectures at Berkeley, and Lorraine like some kind of angel caring for him as if he was her father. And he invites me to come study with him, at his house in south Berkeley, one of those beautiful old Berkeley homes with the dark paneling and the hardwood floors and the big old stone fireplaces, and the trees outside every window, and Professor Maitland turning in at eight o’clock and telling me to use the library as late as I wanted, spend the night in the guest room, you know, and ‘Here’s your own key.’ ”

Reuben nodded. “Cushy situation.”

“Oh, yes, and Lorraine, so sweet, you have no idea. Sweet, that’s the word I always come back to when I talk about Lorraine. So sweet. Gentle, thoughtful, with that silvery British accent, and the refrigerator filled with beer, an unending supply of beer, and the single malt Scotch on the sideboard, and in the guest bedroom, and I took advantage of the whole thing. I practically moved in. And about six months after this all started, I actually fell in love with her, if a twenty-four/seven drunk is capable of falling in love. I finally admitted how much I loved her. I was drinking myself into a stupor every night in that house, and pretty soon she was taking as much care of me as she did of the professor. She started handling all the messy stuff in my life.”

Reuben nodded. This was all so new to him, so unimagined.

“She was exceptional, she really was,” said Jim. “And I never knew if she fully understood the way Professor Maitland had set it all up. I knew, but she didn’t know. At the same time, she was resolved we’d never hurt him if we kept this strictly secret, and never showed a particle of special affection for one another when he was around. But she tried to help me. She wasn’t just sitting around filling my glass. She kept telling me, ‘Jamie, your problem is booze. You’ve got to stop.’ She actually dragged me to two AA meetings before I threw a tantrum. Time and again, she finished up my papers for me, worked out my little projects for me, got the books I needed from the University library, that kind of thing. But she kept saying, ‘You’ve got to get help.’ I was failing my classes and she knew it. Sometimes I played along, made a couple of promises, made love to her and then got drunk. Finally she gave up. She just accepted me the way I was, just like she accepted the professor.”

“Were Mom and Dad suspicious about the drinking?”

“Oh, highly. I was ducking them. Lorraine helped me to duck them. Lorraine made excuses for me when they came over the bridge to see me and I was dead drunk in the guest room at her place. But I’ll get to Mom and Dad in a minute. Lorraine got pregnant. It wasn’t supposed to happen but it did. And that’s when the crisis happened. I just about went nuts. I told her she had to get an abortion and I left her house in a rage.”

“I see,” Reuben said.

“No, you don’t. She came over to my apartment. She told me she’d never get an abortion, that she wanted this baby more than anything in the world. And that she’d leave Professor Maitland in a minute if I said the word. When Professor Maitland heard about the baby, he’d understand. He’d give her a divorce, no problem. She had a small income. She was ready to pack her bags and come to me. I was horrified, I mean in a state of shock.”

“But you loved her.”

“Yes, Reuben, I loved her, but I didn’t want the responsibility of anybody or anything. That’s why the affair with her had been so attractive. She was married! When she tried to lay anything on me, I could up and go back to my place and not answer the phone!”

“I understand.”

“And here, it had turned into a nightmare. She was begging me to marry her, become a husband, a father. This was the very last thing I wanted. Look, I was so into booze at that point all I could really think about was laying in a stash of beer and whiskey, locking the door, and chilling out. I tried to explain all this to her, that I was damaged, bad for her, that she couldn’t want me, that she had to get rid of the baby and now. But she wasn’t buying it. And the more she talked the drunker I got. At one point she tried to take the glass out of my hand. That tipped me right over. We got into a fight, I mean a veritable brawl. It started with me throwing things, slamming doors, breaking things. I was falling down drunk, saying the meanest things to her but she wouldn’t accept it. She kept telling me, ‘That’s the booze talking, Jamie. You don’t mean these things.’ I hit her, Reuben. I started slapping her, then beating her. I remember her face was covered in blood. I hit her over and over again, until she was down on the floor and I was kicking her, telling her she’d never understood me, she was a selfish bitch, a selfish slut. I said things to her that nobody should say to another human being. She curled up in a ball, trying to protect herself—.”

“And that was the booze, Jim,” said Reuben in a soft voice. “You would never have done it if it hadn’t been for the booze.”

“I don’t know about that, Reuben,” he said. “I was a pretty selfish guy. I am still basically a selfish guy. I thought the world revolved around me in those days. You were just eleven or twelve then. You had no idea what I was really like.”

“She lost the child?”

Jim nodded. He swallowed. He was staring into the gas fire beneath the mantel. “I passed out at some point. Blacked out. And when I woke up, she was gone. There was blood all over, blood on the carpet, blood on the floor boards, blood on the furniture, the walls. It was horrible. You cannot imagine how much blood there was. I went and followed a trail of blood right down the steps, and through the garden and to the street. Her car was gone.”