CHAPTER TEN: "Sins Bleed Pink in the Kitchen Sink"

"Sins Bleed Pink in the Kitchen Sink"

Ronda staring. The young doctor has carrot hair. Eyes like a September sky. Face full of freckles.

At the window, lace curtains the color of oatmeal flutter up from the sill. The breeze carries spring air, the swell of budding trees, warming earth. After this, after all this talking, she promises herself she will go outside, she will take a long walk, she will get some fresh air.

"Ronda? Ronda are you still with me?"

Inhaling, Ronda sniffles. "Yes. Of course I am. I guess I just don't really feel like talking about that right now."

"Oh. OK." Silence. "It's painful, I know."

Silence. Dead silence. Dead, except for Ronda sniffling. Ronda's head so full of congestion that she feels as though she's drowning in her own phlegm. All she wants to do is lay her oversized head down on a pillow and fall asleep.

"So what do you feel like talking about?"

Ronda shrugs, clears her throat, pulls a wheezy breath into her mouth.

"I guess the divorce, I mean, now that it's final and all, I..." She goes quiet.

"You what?"

The breeze stiffens, lifts the curtains higher. Outside, it buffets the big oak tree. Tender leaves, still not fully unfurled, curl in the wind.

"Oh. Well. For one thing, I keep thinking I need to get a job. Something to do. To make money. But then. I knew I would."

"Yes, of course. Any leads on that?"

"No. Not really. I mean, because I haven't been feeling so great, I haven't really begun to look. The asthma's been bad."

"You're seeing the doctor?"

"I've been twice already this week. He started me on prednisone. He says it's a combination of bad spring allergies and...more anxiety than usual. And hormones."

Ronda coughs.

"And so, you haven't been able to look for a job."

She is nodding her head no. "I haven't been going out at all. Except here."

"So you say you're worried about the job? About getting a job?"

"I am, I go over and over things, a lot. Not so much during the day, but at night. I make myself sick worrying. I lie there, staring up in the dark. I can't breathe well, so I'm awake. And I feel like I've got to try to...to sort things, you know, figure things out."

"Like the job?"

"Yeah. I lie there at night, thinking about how hard it is to get a decent job. How I'll never get one."

"It is hard. Not impossible, though."

"No, but after so many years..." She shrugs. Saying this makes the tender space behind her eyes sting, the space where tears collect. Swallowing, she feels the knot, the knot she's got lodged in her throat all the time now. "Sometimes, I'm talking to people, telling them I want to get a job, and I...I just feel ridiculous. I mean what must they think? I haven't got a bit of experience doing anything except being a mother. A wife."

"But that's not all you've done. You've been dancing now for how long? Three years?"

Ronda stifles a chuckle. "Four actually. Yeah, I do have the dancing. But that's my hobby. I haven't seen too many job ads out there for flamenco dancers."

"So you lie there at night, staring at the ceiling, feeling stupid, wondering if you will get a job?"

Pause. "Yes. I worry a lot...I mean I've got enough money now. And the house, I have the house. It's just I get frightened that at some point when I'm older, I might not have enough to live on."

The thought, even now, tightens Ronda's stomach. She stares at the doctor, her eyes as blank as blackboards.

"Is that all?"

"Is that all?"

"I mean, is that all that frightens you? The fears about finances?"

Ronda sniffs. Turns. Crosses one leg over the other. Thinks, oddly, of her mother. Marie. One of her mother's all time favorite sayings was 'Money isn't everything, but it sure helps.' And her other favorite saying was something she said, endlessly, in her Abruzzi dialect. 'Those who have gunpowder, shoot. Those who don't, stand on the sidelines and watch.'

"I guess other things scare me too." There are lines that draw down around Ronda's mouth, lines like ropes and now those ropes are attached to cement weights.

"What are the other things that frighten you?" The doctor's voice softens to a near whisper.

Ronda's mouth is as dry as a paper bag. She reaches for the glass of water that sits on the table to one side of her chair.

"Oh God, I don't know. I look at my life and I..." she shakes her head. "all I see is a kind of scary hollow. A black hole. Lately in the mornings, I have been waking up feeling like I'm being swallowed. Like I'm caving right into the hole."

She sees it. A hole with silk edges, folding in on itself. She looks to the window. The lace curtains form a complex shadow, make a pattern of sunlight that quivers on the wide-planked floor.

Ronda sees this pattern and the word that comes to mind, quite automatically, is, 'filigree.' That she should think of that word is most curious, because she isn't even sure what the word means. But she has heard it before. 'Filigree,' she thinks. 'How pretty.'

Sniffling, she begins. "I don't want to be alone." She mutters that last word, and her voice sounds low and gravelly, a sound like the ocean makes scuttling over stones near shore.

"Are you alone now?"

"It depends on how you look at it."

"Tell me. How do you look at it?"

Ronda draws in a long breath, supports her face with one palm. "Well, with Ben out of the picture, and Jack off at Vassar, I guess I'm alone." She shrugs. "I just have to face up to it."

"Face up to what?"

"That it's just me now. And that's how it will be."

"Just you?"

"Well there's Jesús. But Jesús is..." Ronda inhaling, pausing, coming to a fork in the road, having to decide whether to proceed.

"Jesús is what?"

"He's around on weekends but..." Ronda's shoulders rise and then fall. All of a sudden she has an image of herself: her whole body, sheathed in the thinnest sheet of glass, a layer of glass that threatens to shatter.

"But Jesús is what, Ronda? Tell me about that.'

The weights there at the corners of Ronda's mouth, they get heavier. Her words march out in a single tight line. "Jesús is Jesús. He's very busy. I'm always telling him he should leave New York and move up here to the Berkshires but clearly that isn't what he wants to do. Or he can't, because of the music. He wants...all he really cares about is playing guitar, every waking moment. I know he loves me, as much as he loves any human being. It's just..."

Ronda bites into her lower lip. It's chapped, and a dry crack is forming in the center.

"It's just? What?"

Ronda's face dips. She sighs, and the sound coming from her lips is not unlike that of a balloon losing its last bit of air.

"I know he cares for me. He does. He makes me feel very very special. But I want more."

"More what?"

"More attention. More of his time. And, and now, in a couple of months, he's going back to Spain, he says he has to. For a series of performances. And to cut a CD, two recordings actually. He'll be gone most of the summer. I had wanted to go too, at least I thought I did at first."

"So. Why don't you go?"

Ronda raises her eyes to the red hair, stares at the way the sunlight crowns the doctor's curls at the top. "He said I could come, but I don't know if it would be such a good idea. It will be the middle of July when he leaves and probably I'll have Jack home for the summer. And..."

"And?"

"Jesús says he'll be really busy. It wouldn't be anything like a vacation for him and me. He'd be working all the time, rehearsing and visiting his family."

"So, how does that feel to you? His leaving for the summer?"

Silence. Ronda's chest is empty, her eyes fill. She coughs. Her eyes are blinking. The title of a song that Jesús plays surfaces in her mind. "Como el agua." Like the water.

"I know he's got to go. But it feels so..." Her chin sinks. Blinking won't work, won't stop the tears now.

"It feels so...?" The doctor leans. "What?"

Ronda breathes in, holds her breath. "So soon."

This post appeared first on the Huff Post on Tuesday, March 1, 2011.

CHAPTER NINE: "Jack, Jack, Please Come Back!!"

Ronda, sitting in the hospital bed, has dialed Karen's number.

"Hello?"

"Karen?"

"Ron. How are you honey? I was over about noon and you were still snoozing away. I was planning to come again later."

"Thanks. I'm...I'm better today. I'm just afraid my stomach is going to start going haywire again when I eat."

"Well, they're probably gonna starve you for a few days. They have this idea that sometimes it helps just to shut the whole system down. Then, when you're stable, they might send you home with something to help you keep food dow..."

"Look, Karen," Ronda says, interrupting. "I sent Jack out of the room so I could talk. I need to figure out how...what I'm going to do."

"Do? I thought you had decided what you were going to do."

"I know. I know I said I wanted the baby no matter what. But that was before. Before I got so sick. I don't know, Karen. I'm not sure I can handle this...and..." she inhales. "I haven't talked to Jesús. And I need to, soon."

"I thought you had."

"No, I couldn't, not over the phone. I need to see him in person. Do you know where he is?

Because he was here before."

"Yes. I called him in New York. I told him where you were. He got on the first train, was there when I arrived at noon. And then, as soon as Jack came back to your room, about three, Jesús left in a hurry."

Ronda tenses. "You mean Jack saw him? Playing?"

"All Jack saw was this nice-looking man with a pony tail and hand-chiseled boots sitting in a chair beside your bed. Jesús had put the guitar away by the time I got there."

"Oh God. What did Jack say?"

"What do you mean what did Jack say? They just..."

Jack appears now, accompanied by a thin young nurse.

Ronda looks up. "Oh. Karen. I have to go. Look...come over, could you? Seven? Sure. Seven's fine."

She sets the phone in the cradle. The nurse's voice carries to every part of the room.

"Hello Mrs. Fallon. Glad to see you awake and back to the world of the living."

"Glad to be here."

"How are you feeling. Better today I hope."

"Much better. I just need to pee."

Jack leaves and Ronda and her IV pole are shuffled in and out of the bathroom and back to the bed.

"I assume the dizziness is because of the medication?"

"Yes, they gave you Compazine to calm your stomach," the nurse says, helping her get settled.

"Your head should be back in place by tomorrow morning."

"Is the doctor coming? I'd like to speak to him."

"Her. Dr. Barnard. Susanne Barnard. She'll be here in the morning, doing rounds. You can talk to her then."

"When will I go home?"

The nurse takes Ronda's pulse, and then wraps a blood pressure cuff around her arm. "That's up to her. But I wouldn't be surprised if you were with us at least one or two more nights." She pumps the bulb on the blood pressure cuff, lets the air out.

"I suggest you get as much rest as you can." She turns. "Oh, and one more thing. Better tell your son not to lie on the floor tonight. Somebody's bound to step on him."

"I'll tell him."

The nurse leaves, and Ronda is alone, thinking how much she wants to be home. And more than that, she wants to be normal. She wants to be free. Have her body back. God forgive me, she thinks, but maybe I am just too old, too tired, to have a baby. Maybe if I was 33, and not nearly 39. My own mother was a grandmother at 40.

"Ma?"

Ronda looks up. Jack. Poor Jack. Oddly, he will be the most disappointed. Because when she finally told him, only a few days ago, that she was pregnant, and after he got over his initial shock, he laughed a little and said, "That's not so bad. Another kid. I never considered that we'd have another kid in the family."

Of course, she didn't bother to correct the misimpression. She didn't have the heart to tell him that this baby was definitely not part of the Fallon family. She figured there was no point in telling him more than he needed to know. Once she was sure, once she knew exactly what she was going to do, well, then she'd see.

And now, of course, she has to figure out a way to break the news gently to him. She needs to make him understand that sometimes, people go back on their decisions. People don't always keep babies, and can't always keep marriages together either.

"Did you hear me Ma?"

"I'm sorry, Jack, what did you say?"

"I said I was going to the cafeteria before it closes."

"Sure honey. Good idea. I'll see you when you get back."

Jack turns, is almost out the door. "Uh, Ma? I ..."

"What Jack?"

He scratches his head. Looks sterner than she's seen him look in a long time. "I just wondered if ..."

"What?"

"I wondered if Dad was coming. I mean. Do you know where he is?

Ronda's lips fold in on themselves. "I don't know, Jack. He said he was going out of town. I think he said Long Island, the shore. To stay with Buddy Morrison. But I could be wrong. I honestly don't know for sure where he is."

"So you're not..." Jack shrugs once, "you're not going to call him?"

"I don't think so, not after what happened. You know. We had that fight."

"I know Ma. I was there, remember?"

"Come here Jack," Ronda whispers.

Jack approaches.

"Sit down," she says, patting the bed.

"I'm fine standing." His eyes look cold.

Ronda sighs. "I have to set something straight."

Jack is silent.

"Whatever happens, and whether or not your father and I ...whether we stay together, I just want you to know that I love you. And I love your brother. More than I could ever say."

Jack stares at her, and his gaze, she realizes now, is nearly as intense as the one Jesús always has for her. How curious, she thinks, that the two men she adores both share that quality.

"Mom, you don't really think you had to say that to me, do you?"

"I just wanted to Jack. I wanted you to hear it."

Jack sniffs. "I guess if I wanted to hear something, it would be that Dad is coming in to see you. That Dad is coming back. That you two have worked out whatever it is that's out of whack. That's all I wanted to hear, actually."

Ronda sets her thumb and forefinger into her eyes and rubs the orbs. They feel sore. Then she stares straight back at her son. "I'm sorry, Jack," she says.

"So he's not coming back?"

Slowly she shakes her head back and forth. "No, Jack. He's not. You must know that by now. There's just no way that we can..."

Jack's dark eyebrows converge, come together like the wings of a dark bird.

"Question. Does this have anything to do with the baby? Because I mean if it does, maybe you could just decide to ..."

Ronda is swiveling her head back and forth. "No, Jack. No. It's not the baby. Believe me please. It's not." She does not have the heart to say more.

"So why can't you work things out? I mean for God's sake Ma, I know Dad can be a total jerk drinking and mouthing off but I still think you could work things out."

She lets his words hang for a moment, unsupported.

"I'm just not sure that's possible, Jack," she says quietly. "You are almost a grown man, and I think you know that sometimes things don't work out. Your father and I have had problems, for a long time, but especially lately. Things aren't great, not great at all. You have to accept that."

Jack just stands there staring at nothing. Gradually his face takes on that familiar scowl, exactly like the one that would appear from time to time on her father's face. That look was always a warning: Giacomo's red flag. Watch out, that look said, because soon enough this otherwise reasonable man would boil over, start shouting and carrying on in Italian, swearing so all the neighbors could hear.

"I just don't get it at all!" Jack shouts in a desperate voice, clenching his fists and heading toward the door. At the entrance, he turns back to her. His face is ashen. "I want to know one thing."

"Yes?"

He bites his lip. Tears rim his eyes. "I saw a man here before, when you were sleeping. I know I met him once. That Spanish guy. I'm sure he came by the house this summer one time, to give you something. I remember the ponytail." He turns away, so she can't see his face.

"When I came in today he was just putting his guitar away, and he was saying something to you, whispering something in a low voice in Spanish. I saw that and I saw the way he looked at you. What the fuck was he doing here, huh?"

He pauses. His face is as sad as she's ever seen it. As sad as that day when, at age ten, he got off the school bus only to find his father waiting at the door to tell him that the family's golden lab, Buster, had been killed by a car.

Now he points his forefinger at her, stabbing the air, and when he speaks, his voice is low and menacing.

"I hope you can tell me that his being here has nothing to do with you and Dad's problems."

She sees now that he's begun crying.

"Jack, please, Jack, please come back, Jack! Please." But he hasn't heard a word she's said, and before she can say another word, he has fled the room and all she hears are his feet sprinting down the hall.

This post ran first on the Huff Post on Thursday, February 24, 2011.

CHAPTER EIGHT: "Jesús is Definitely NOT a Family Man!"

It was almost eight o'clock that night when they arrived at the Beach Rose. They signed in and climbed the narrow staircase to their tiny room in the back of the house. They peeled back the chenille coverlet off the double bed and made love on top of the blanket, before they were fully undressed. When they finally opened the bed, they made love again, in between the lavender-fragranced sheets.

They stayed up most of the night. They made love six times. Or maybe seven. Ronda lost track. About six o'clock in the morning, as the sky outside the window started to turn light grey, she sat up and told him she was starving. When they got up, she noticed that her face was chafed pink.

"I think you really ought to have a little mercy on me and shave," she said, running her fingers along the edge of his jaw. "I never saw a man grow a beard so fast."

She left the bed and stepped into the claw foot tub in the bathroom.

She closed the clear curtain around her. He pulled the curtain open slightly. He reached inside and placed two fingers on her face. "You are beautiful you know. En español, guapa."

"Guapa?" Ronda shivered. "Ooh, what an ugly word. Call me something prettier than that, will you?"

He thought for a moment. "How about bellísima?" Before she could answer, though, he stepped inside the shower and pulled her against his chest.

He cupped his hands beneath her breasts and tipped his face forward and sipped the water that pooled there. Then he ran his hands up and down her hips and cradled his fingers inside her. She leaned backward and he kissed her throat.

They made love again, lying wet on the shaggy cotton rug on the floor.

On Sunday, about one o'clock in the afternoon, they left the Beach Rose and drove to Truro to the dunes. It was warm but not too warm. The waves were calm, and the spring sunshine played on the lime green sea. The sky, as they lay side by side on a blanket in the sand, was the clear light blue of a jewel.

Neither spoke. There was nothing to say. She kept closing her eyes, seeing the way they had been an hour before, her lying on top of him. She smiled. She drifted asleep and woke up some vague time later, tasting the salt in the wind. Shifting up onto one elbow, she studied him.

His deeply set eyes. The sharp arc of his nose. His lips were slightly parted and now leaning over, she kissed them. Then she gently kissed each lid. When he still didn't respond, she placed the back of her hand against his jaw.

"Jesús?" she whispered.

"What?" he said, slowly coming out of sleep. He looked up at her, squinting, and slipped his hand beneath her sweatshirt between her breasts.

She let his hand stay there, but brought the other one, the left hand, to her mouth. On the third finger of that hand, Jesús had taken to wearing a ring. A simple gold ring on his left hand. The first time she noticed it, they were in New York, in his studio. It was March, their second rendezvous.

Two weeks had passed since they made love for the first time in Boston. She was pleased to see the ring appear, because clearly it meant something; she decided that it packaged a feeling between the two of them.

But she also insisted on teasing him. That day in March, she accused him of having a wife back in Spain. A couple of kids. She did that again now.

"Ronda," he said, letting his eyes close again. He took a long slow breath through his nose.

"How many times do I have to tell you Ronda that I am a first-class lover, as you well know, but that I am definitely not a family man?"

She waited.

"I'm not looking for a family man," she said finally. "I don't need another mate. A marriage partner. It's enough for me if I have your heart." He didn't reply.

She smiled slyly.

"Oh, well. I suppose there are a few other parts I want too."

He opened his eyes and faced her. His look was unusually serious. Then he looked away, staring beyond her into the cool blue of the sky. "I just want things to be clear between us," he said, turning back to meet her eyes.

"Me too. So go ahead, make things clear."

He paused. "I love you. I want to be with you. That's it. That's everything."

"Yes, that is everything. I agree. See, we think the same way." She dropped to the blanket.

"I just can't help teasing you about that wedding ring, that's all."

"It's not a wedding ring. Don't call it that."

"Whatever." She squeezed his hand now and turned back to face the sea. She watched a wave coming into shore. She held her eyes on the wave, traced the green water as it swelled, crested, folded over, then dissolved into white foam on the sand.

"I cannot explain why, Jesús, but I keep seeing a cottage in my mind," she said a little later.

"It's a small white cottage. I think maybe it has a red tile roof. Anyway, it's painted such a bright white that when the sunlight hits it, it hurts my eyes. Out front it's got pink bougainvillea. And hot red geraniums planted in two long window boxes."

He sits straight up. His forehead is drawn into a crease. "Ronda, why would you be imagining such a thing?"

His tone is sharp and it makes her uneasy. "I...I don't know," she said. "I mean, it's just a daydream for heaven's sake. Oh God, Jesús, I'm sorry, I guess I just like to think of the two of us together. In that cottage. The two of us sharing the bedroom, which is painted a cool blue.

And there is a small kitchen with nothing but a table and two chairs and open shelves. And a living room stacked with piles of gigantic pillows. And one other room. The studio. It's lined on one side with full-length mirrors. You practice guitar on the low pine stool set in the corner facing the window. And I...well I guess I dance on the other side, the side near the line of mirrors."

He nodded but stayed silent. The crease eased into a frown. Finally he lay back down and shut his eyes tight.

"Are you all right?" she asked after a while.

"I'm fine," he said. He reached for her hand. Held it against his lips and then set it on his hip.

"Look, I'm sorry," she said after a while. "I didn't mean to, I didn't really mean anything by it. It's just a, a little fantasy of mine, that's all. I guess I like to think that there is a place where...where maybe someday we can be together."

She studied him but his eyes stayed closed. Suddenly, she could feel blood pumping through her limbs. Until this moment she had not allowed herself to think about the possibility of loss. About the chance that she could get hurt. Lose him. But now she saw how easily it could happen. Fear billowed up like wind, hovering like the grey and white seagulls coasting over the ocean.

Her eyes closed. He rolled onto his side and took her to his chest. Kissed her forehead.

"Querida. I want us to be together. You know that." He kissed her nose. His tone was back to normal. Gentle. Relaxed.

"I hope it isn't wrong of me, Jesús. I mean to daydream." She was speaking into his chest.

She smelled the cotton of his new sweatshirt, the one they had bought the night before when they ducked into a souvenir shop in Provincetown, to get out of a sudden driving rain. It was the only shirt that didn't boast gold embossed letters or anchors or lobster pots or coils of knotted rope or multi-colored fish or silvery piles of shells.

The smell of his sweatshirt was clean and comforting. And it was heavenly mixed with his citrus cologne.

"Of course it's not wrong," he said. He clasped her hands flat between his own. Clapped them together. "We've got to, both of us, we've got to dream. I mean we have the rest of our lives. And hopefully, we can find a way to spend them together."

He kissed her again. Later, though, when she thought about what he'd said, what struck her was his tone: it was sad.

She had not heard that sadness before.

This appeared first on the Huff Post on Tuesday, February 22, 2011.

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Who-What-When-Where-How Ronda Got Pregnant"

Ronda knows for certain when she got pregnant. And she knows exactly where she was.

Provincetown.

It was in May, the weekend of the 13th and 14th.

They stayed at the Beach Rose, a tiny bed and breakfast tucked into a grey-shingled cottage on a narrow side street. Looking back now, she is convinced that she tempted fate. That she invited disaster by abandoning her family and spending the better part of Mother's Day weekend with her lover. Glued to Jesús for two days, naked in bed.

They left the Berkshires on Friday afternoon. She told Ben over breakfast that morning that she and Karen had decided at the last minute to go away for the weekend. That what she needed most for Mother's Day was two days of R & R. "And so we're driving up to Hyannis, just the two of us." She smiled smugly. Shrugged.

Ben sat at the table. Drained the coffee from his mug. He scratched the thin spot in his hair with two fingers.

"I guess if that's what you want." He was preoccupied, reading over a paper he was preparing for a seminar the following week. A panel discussion on Kant. The paper wasn't going the way he wanted it to. He rumpled his forehead. "But Ronda, I was hoping to take you out for dinner at least."

She stood, walked around behind him. Leaned over, casually draped her arms across his chest, laid a dry kiss on his brow. "You can take me out to dinner next weekend, honey. I'll even make the reservations. Maybe the River Inn?"

As soon as Ben packed up his briefcase and left, Ronda called Karen. Asked her if she would mind driving over, picking up Ronda just after three so that Jack would be there to see her leave with Karen. Presumably, he'd convey that information back to Ben.

When Jack stepped off the school bus at the corner, Ronda was waiting, watching nervously from an upstairs window. He opened the front door and she paraded casually down the stairs into the living room with her duffel. Jack dropped his backpack on the floor and went to the kitchen.

"I'll be going shortly, honey," she said, trailing him. "Karen should be here any minute."

Jack nodded and opened the refrigerator. "Okay, have fun."

"Thanks, honey," she said. Her stomach twisted ever so slightly. She couldn't remember a time when she had lied to her son.

"Can I make you a sandwich?" Her voice was calm but her palms were sweaty. She ran the faucet, slipped her hands into the stream of water.

"I can do it. You do realize that in four months I'll be a freshman at Vassar?" He grinned. "Go wait for Karen." He took two slices of bread out of a bag and spread one of them with peanut butter. She remained in the kitchen.

"So, Jack," she said, taking a plate out of the cabinet and setting it next to his bread. "Please tell your father that we might not be back until very late Sunday night. I mean it might even be after midnight."

"Right, Mom." He was slicing a banana now and laying the chunks side by side on top of the peanut butter.

"And also, tell him that Karen and I probably won't call. I mean, the point is we want to be all by ourselves. No responsibilities." She inhaled slowly. God was there no end to these lies?

"Sure, Mom," he said, stuffing one piece of bread into his mouth. "I think it's neat that the two of you are going away. So don't worry. Everything will be okay here."

She loaded her duffel into Karen's Saturn and sat in the front seat. It occurred to Ronda then that she ought to be feeling something. Guilt. Regret. She had been lying to Ben for months, but now she was taking another step, far deeper into betrayal.

But as Karen backed out of the driveway and proceeded to the corner, Ronda's excitement grew more and more intense and she knew only one thing: that she absolutely wanted and needed to go. That she had been swallowed whole by her desire for Jesús. That whatever guilt she felt melted in the face of this other blinding emotion.

Ever since that first afternoon in March when the two of them met at a hotel in Boston and lay together in the strip of glowing yellow sunlight falling across the bed, she knew she had to be with him.

She thought about him every day, all day and night. She lay in bed next to Ben, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. When Ben finally fell asleep, though, Ronda would stay awake for hours, her body in twinges, reliving the time she had spent cradled against Jesús.

As the Saturn made a turn onto Poplar Drive, Ronda could feel herself getting lighter. A little giddy. She and Jesús were about to have two nights and two long days together. The prospect of the upcoming weekend made the insides of her thighs ache. It made her hands tremble so much that she had to hold them together in her lap.

"Do you think Ben suspects?" Karen asked as they turned up East Dalton Ave. The plan was to meet Jesús at Betty's, a coffee shop and bakery.

"No," Ronda said, nodding nervously. "There's no way. He can't possibly know a thing." She had placed every call to Jesús from Karen's house; she had used her cell phone only to text him, and then she had erased all of the texts. She had also erased every single email, as soon as she'd written it.

Each time the two of them met, it was in a different location. Twice, she had gone to Boston, to meet him after performances. Another time, she had taken the train to his studio apartment in New York. And once or twice when he traveled to Massachusetts, Karen let them have her house.

He was waiting in the back seat of the rented car when they pulled in front of the coffee shop.

He was leaning over the guitar, running his fingers rapidly over the strings. He didn't notice Ronda until she was standing right beside the car.

"Hello," she said.

He looked up. His eyes always had the same effect on her. They sank so far into her that she felt she had no bottom. She slid into the back seat and he leaned toward her and kissed her on the mouth.

"I was just starting to compose something," he said, laying the guitar into the purple velvet lining of its case. "All the way up the parkway I had this falseta racing through my mind and I have to get it out."

As they drove the Mass Pike, he played the first CD he had ever recorded, a fiery set of bulerías that featured a cantaor and the sounds of a dancer's feet. The car was loud with clapping and the pull of strings and the sharp snap of heels and the singer's howl.

Her eyes closed.

She reached over and set her hand on his leg. He took her hand and kissed the back of each finger in turn and then set her hand inside his thigh, high up. She kept her hand there. She smiled, thinking she was back in high school, trying out feelings she hadn't had for 25 years or more.

It occurred to her then that if he asked her to, she would, without a second thought, call Ben when the weekend ended. She would tell him that she was never coming home. It didn't matter where he asked her to go. She would follow him to New York. She would go to Spain.

This post appeared on the Huff Post on Sunday, February 20, 2011.

CHAPTER SIX: "Jesús Just Wants to Play Guitar" (part two)

"Jesús Just Wants to Play Guitar"

Ronda blushed and Jesús bowed slightly. "I'm afraid I must go inside now. Otherwise, there is a bride who will have no music."

He reached down and only then did she notice the black guitar case beside his feet.

"Oh, of course," she said. "Of course. You are playing."

"Yes," he said, another disarming smirk crawling across his face. "I have enjoyed meeting you," he said. "My name is Jesús. Jesús Becerra."

He extended his hand. She took it, flushed.

"Ronda. Ronda...Cari. I am Italian." For months afterward, he would tease her about why she said that. Because, as he pointed out, she wasn't Italian, but American.

"Well, 'Miss Ronda Cari I am Italian,' I am pleased to meet you." His eyes left hers and the next thing she knew he was bending forward and she could feel his warm lips caressing her hand. He looked up at her, but she was unable to speak.

"Yes, me too," she said finally. She felt the strong pull of his hand on hers. "I'm going to this wedding too."

"Then you must walk inside with me." He offered his arm and she hooked her fingers inside the smooth suede of his elbow and wondered immediately whether there wasn't some way she could leave it there.

Her body anchored against his, they passed inside the chapel. And when Ben saw her, arm in arm with the handsome Spaniard, Jesús was leaning his head close to hers, so close that their hair was actually touching. And her face was burning because Jesús was asking her now how her name was spelled. When she told him, he gripped her hand even tighter and brought her fingertips again to his lips.

Then he whispered. "I just want you to know Miss Ronda Cari, that your name is very special to me."

She turned. "My name?"

"Yes. Because you see, in southern Spain, just a few kilometers from where I was born, there is an ancient town, a most beautiful town, perched hundreds of meters up on the edge of a cliff and it has the very same name as you have. Ronda. The same spelling exactly. And that is the place where I first fell in love with the guitar."

Ronda turned to face him. Her heart was gathering speed and two warm pink spots were blooming like hot flowers on her cheeks. She wanted to hear him speak her name again. Because most people rhymed the first syllable with pond. But this man rolled the R, and made the first syllable, "Ron," rhyme with "moan."

"I'm...my real name is not Ronda, but Gironda," she said.

But now he had dropped her hand and he was waving slightly and heading away. The best man, Frank Preston, was whisking Jesús to the front of the chapel to begin playing.

Head down, her face a study in red, Ronda scurried up a side aisle, and slipped into the seat beside Ben. Wiggling out of her coat, she realized that despite the brisk cold air, she was sweating; she was almost as wet as she was when she was dancing flamenco in señora Barranca's studio.

Ben was starting to say something, but Ronda cut him off.

"Kiss me," she said, smiling, looking directly into his eyes.

"Kiss you?"

"That's what I said. Kiss me."

So he did. He kissed her. Ben tasted of white wine, but that was fine. Because even though she wasn't in love with her husband anymore, she was full of something absolutely new and delightful and that feeling was so strong that it had to go somewhere, had to spill over tonight. And it might as well go to the man she had married so many years before.

Up front, Jesús began tuning, and soon he started to play. And the music was the music she so loved. The play of strings, and now and then, a falseta followed by a series of explosive rasgueados. Enrico and his young bride, Mercedes, were waltzing up the aisle from the back of the chapel, both holding tall thin tapered candles, both enveloped in a single happy glow.

Ben leaned over Ronda's bare neck and whispered something about the guitarist having a ponytail. Ben's breath was warm, and it tickled her neck.

"I hadn't noticed," she whispered back. But she did now. She looked carefully at Jesús, up there in the front. He did indeed have a ponytail. But more importantly, he had that soft, coffee-colored face, the one she knew but couldn't place. The one that had already drawn her in. The one she saw and thought she had known her whole life.

Later that night, Ben had at least four drinks too many. As he prepared to dance still another time with Brenda, Jesús finally slid up behind Ronda, who was standing alone, and he slipped one strong hand into the small of her back. Smiling, he gestured and then guided her onto the dance floor.

She turned to face him and immediately his hand dropped, and his fingers spread and straddled low across her spine, as if she had strings, as if she was the guitar, and he was preparing to play her. She had the sense that her head was lifting, turning, and that soon she would be impossibly dizzy.

"Is this OK?" he whispered. She nodded and he pulled her tightly to his chest, so close that she might have been his leather glove. Embraced this way, they stood there, barely moving on the dance floor.

Slowly, her chin grew limp and came to rest on his shoulder. She wondered if she would be bold enough at the end of the evening to scribble down her phone number, slip him the piece of paper.

She grew warm, the warmth spreading quickly; soon enough it was so late that Ben was there, holding her coat, waiting. She had to go.

***************

When the fog lifts, and she is fully awake, she is still in the hospital bed, and the light is low and creamy yellow. Jesús is nowhere to be seen. Instead, on the floor beside her, where the chair had been, there is a strange bulky shape. A body. Ronda's eyes, slowly focusing, take in a pair of blue jeans, a set of knees, scuffed boots that look familiar.

"Jack?" she cries out, forcing herself up onto one elbow. "Honey is that you?"

The shape comes to life. Jack pops up, eyes shut tight. His ebony-colored hair, the same shade and wavy texture as her own, is a tangled nest. Yawning, he runs both hands briskly over his face, and in that rapid up and down motion, he is suddenly the boy he used to be at age nine, waking up for school.

"Jack, what are you doing lying on the floor?" She sinks into the bed again.

"I was sitting in the chair for a long time, but my back was killing me."

His mentioning the chair makes Ronda wonder vaguely again about Jesús, about whether he's left the hospital and gone back to New York. She dare not ask Jack, because Jack has met Jesús only once, earlier this summer, and it would seem odd to him that Jesús would visit her in the hospital.

"How long did I sleep?" She's got a feeling like cotton filling her head.

"We brought you last night, and you've been sleeping all day. I think you've got to stay one more night at least."

There is a fluffy sensation, and a flutter, right in the tender part of her stomach. Something like a hunger pang centers itself there too, and gurgling, but accompanying those sensations is also a slight roll, a feeling she had once when she stepped into a sailboat and it pulled too quickly away from shore. Maybe because of the IV, she feels like she is awash in fluid, her insides running like a river of cool liquids.

"Did you speak to the doctor?" As soon as she asks the question, she thinks she shouldn't have. The question, and what it implies, is totally unfair. What right did she have to impose this responsibility on him? Why should her 17-year old son assume the role that his father had once played, that of Ronda's partner and protector? No, she decided, she shouldn't do that to Jack.

And yet, gazing up at her son, at his lean six-foot frame, she knows that there is nobody better, nobody she would rather have by her side in a crisis. This is the same boy, after all, who at age four, when her grandfather, Papa Aldo, died, and she was sitting on her bed, crying, came to sit beside her and patting her hand said, "Don't worry, Mommy, I'll be your grandpa."

A low pinpoint of orange light is shining right in Ronda's eyes now, so bright she can barely see. Without being asked, Jack moves to the window to adjust the shade.

"No, I didn't see the doctor. I've only talked to the nurses. I asked them what they're going to do to help you."

"And?"

"Well, I guess one thing they definitely won't do is give you anything to eat. Not for a while, anyway. All you get is that clear slurp through the IV."

She chews into her lower lip. She isn't nauseous now, not exactly, but there is that awful gnaw in her stomach.

The agony reminds her. She has to make a decision. She has to make plans. And she can't take forever deciding.

Only, she can't do any of this without first seeing Jesús, without confronting him. Without hearing what he has to say when she asks him how a child, their baby, might play into his life.

Clearing her throat, she pulls herself up to a sitting position. "I wonder, honey, if I could ask you a favor?"

"Sure, Ma," Jack says, getting up from the chair. "What?"

"I wonder if you would get the nurse. I want to...I need to use the bathroom and I don't think I should get up on my own. I feel dizzy."

"Sure Ma. No problem."

As soon as Jack leaves, Ronda picks up the phone.

*************

She knows for certain when she got pregnant.

This chapter appeared first on the Huff Post on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claudia-ricci/seeing-red-jesus-just-wan_b_824326.html

CHAPTER FIVE: "Jesús Just Wants to Play Guitar"

The HuffPost has revolutionized journalism by taking over the news business. Is fiction next? My new novel, Seeing Red, is being serialized three times a week on the Huffington Post. Here's the latest installment of the book.

"Jesús Just Wants to Play Guitar"



When she finally opens her eyes, he is right there, right beside the narrow hospital bed. One knee raised, he has the custard-colored guitar cradled beneath his chin.

For an instant before she is fully awake, before she can make sense again of what's happened, she is scared. His bearded face, the guitar, the music, all of it is so illogical, a mirage, a dream that she dare not let herself believe because it is bound to disappear.

But then she hears the sound of strumming, the squeak and twang of the strings coming alive beneath his fingers as he begins humming the tune she loves more than any other. "Ronda Marie," the one he wrote for her, the one he gave her, the night after he performed it in Boston last winter, wrapped up in a black velvet box with a red satin bow.

His eyes are buttery brown, as soft as chocolate left out in the sun. His voice swells, wraps itself around her, warming her more than the blanket, comforting her more than the pillow beneath her head.

"Querida," he whispers when he's finished the song. Sliding his chair closer, he leans over the guitar, so far that his face is only inches from hers. He feathers her cheek with his long fingers, the fingers that gallop like the lean legs of a stallion over the plains that are the guitar strings. So fast do his hands move that sometimes all she can do is watch in awe, focusing on the blur of his hands playing.

"They let you in?" she frowns, stretching her hand toward his face, only to find the clear IV line binds her from reaching him.

"Of course they let me in. 'She needs me,' I told them. 'She needs my music. I will play and she will feel better.'"

He rises, leans over her. A cloud of lime cologne descends. She feels the soft press of his lips, the brush of his new mustache.

"I, I can't believe you've come," she says, biting her lip. A single tear leaks out of just one of her eyes, begins inching down her temple.

"You were hoping for somebody else maybe?" He flutters his fingertips along the inside of her arm, then bends and kisses a spot just below the place where the nurse inserted the IV needle and taped it in. He leaves his face there, lets his mustache graze up and down her bare arm, tickling her, stirring her instantly into gooseflesh.

"Don't," she pleads. "Please don't tease me, Jesús. This isn't easy you know."

"I'm not teasing, Ronda," he says. And after a pause, "You want me to go?"

"No, no," she says, weaving her fingers into his. "Stay. Please. Play for me."

Her lids drift shut. Sleep covers her like a warm blanket, urging her back into the swell of blackness she has inhabited ever since Karen brought her here in the middle of the night some vague time ago. One night? Two? Who knows.

He is playing. She inhales and smiles weakly and sighs as he begins coaxing magic from metal and plastic strings. Soon he is singing, very softly, the refrain from "En la puerta de la luna." She rolls to face him, lets her eyes come to rest on the muscled place above his jaw, a rippled spot that fills with tension when he plays.

Her eyes flutter shut again and she knows that she is on the edge of a vast sleep. The last thing she sees is his hand wider than a claw, stretching across the wooden neck, each of the fingers extended farther than fingers can possibly reach. A single lock of hair falls like a dark arrow straight down from his brow.

All of a sudden she is sailing, but still her mind wonders one last thing: how is it she never noticed before that this single lock of hair, as chocolate as his eyes, boasts a streak the color of straw, so bright it seems threaded in light?

*******

They met five months ago at Enrico Carcellar's wedding. A twilight service held on Valentine's Day in the Williams College chapel. Carcellar, a professor of literature in the Spanish department and an old friend of Ben Fallon's, had invited Jesús to come up from New York to play for the service.

Ronda wasn't fond of Enrico. She told Ben she preferred not to go to the wedding. But Ben said he would be embarrassed if she didn't go. Enrico, an old world guy, a highly traditional sort, would feel insulted. Finally, Ben insisted, so she went.

The evening of the wedding came, and Ronda couldn't decide what to wear. She knew most women would be in short cocktail dresses or long skirts. She decided to wear a new pair of tight black leggings, and a sweater covered in rhinestones.

Her sharp heels clattered as she crossed the wooden floor of the kitchen.

"So don't you look sexy tonight," Ben declared, staring. He was standing at the counter, filling a stem glass with white wine.

Ronda squirted a coin of white cream into one palm and rubbed it briskly into both hands.

"How about we make a deal?" she said, keeping her voice light. "I won't say a single thing to you about what you drink or eat tonight. But you in return have to promise not to make a single comment about my clothes or my hair."

Ben sucked thirstily out of the wineglass, eyeing her the whole while over the rim. "I guess that's fair enough." He kept staring. "But I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you how incredible you look tonight. I mean, I can compliment you, can't I?"

"Sure." She smiled at him. But the smile didn't last. "You can do that any time." She started to stroll away, but he caught her arm, leaned into her shoulder. Before she could pull away, he had left a kiss of cold white wine on her bare neckline.

"I almost wonder if you've got yourself a date after the wedding," he mumbled, taking a second long swallow from the glass.

She had swiveled out of his grasp, and now her eyes narrowed.

"Let's get going," she said hotly. "The wedding's at 5:30."

And yet, when they arrived, a few minutes after five, and she saw that the chapel was only a third full, and the music hadn't started, and the candles up front on the altar weren't even lit yet, and everybody was still milling around, a bit aimlessly, she turned to Ben and told him that she would be outside. "To look at the stars," she told him. "To watch the evening sky."

In the old days, Ben would have gone with her. They would have stood together, despite the frigid cold, holding each other to keep warm. They would have stared upward, scanning the sky, waiting for Venus and Jupiter, or Mars, to pierce the zenith. They would have made bets between them, trying to pinpoint exactly where to expect Orion to rise.

But that was a long time ago. Ben wasn't much of a sky watcher anymore, at least not in winter. He claimed that it was too cold and he was too old to see the way he used to. "It's just not the same," he had told her recently, "when you can't keep stars in focus."

In any case, standing in the chapel the night of the wedding, Ben was focused on people.

There were dozens of old friends and academic colleagues he hadn't seen in years. Like Dan and Brenda Beecher. Dan had been a junior professor at Williams before he went on to a position at Harvard. Brenda had been one of Ben's all-time favorite students, "B.R." -- "Before Ronda." Dan, tall, slim and graying, was walking towards Ben now, extending a hand in greeting. Would he be so enthusiastic, Ronda wondered, if he knew that Ben had slept with Brenda several times, even after she and Dan were a couple?

"Just don't stay outside too long," Ben whispered into Ronda's hair, before pivoting and giving his hand over to Dan.

Pulling the belt of her long wool coat tighter, Ronda descended the stone steps outside the chapel and walked a few feet beyond the sidewalk into the snow-covered lawn. The heels of her boots sank. She lifted her eyes, gazed into the sunset color splashed across the sky: the milky blue overhead gradually turning pink and yellow, and finally coming to rest in a fiery yolk squashed into the rim of the dark mountains.

Tipping her head back, Ronda inhaled the cold evening air. Her arms rose, and her head dropped to one shoulder and she began a slow turn to one side, spiraling unsteadily around the corner of the building.

She was moving slowly over the snow, eyes locked skyward, trying to predict where in the clear space overhead Orion would appear. She had almost decided on a spot when suddenly, her left arm smacked something.

"Ohmygod, I'm...I'm so sorry," she mumbled, turning. Somehow, out of nowhere, she had gotten hold of a man's arm, a soft sleeve.

Later, she would tell him that his face was glowing that night. That his skin was the mellow reflection of the heavenly color of the sky.

"I thought for some reason I would be safe out here in the snow but I see that is not the case," he said, holding a joint between his thumb and first finger. He had his other hand over hers, to steady her. Later, she would remember how the warmth of his hand sent a bolt of electricity straight up her arms and into her head. A moment passed when absolutely no movement occurred, when he simply balanced her.

He was smirking, but when he saw how flustered she was, his expression melted, gave way to a full mocking smile. "I must say that never today did I expect a beautiful woman to appear, going in dizzy circles around me, trying to knock me to the ground." He laughed and the soft sound of it snaked right inside her coat, slid into her blouse and shivered across the bare skin of her back and shoulders. He dropped her arm. But immediately took her hand. "Are you steady now?"

She nodded, conscious only of the blood rushing into her face. She stood gazing at him, confused. His eyes were level with hers.

"I...I'm fine." And then, when she realized what he might be thinking, she stumbled on. "I...I haven't been drinking. If that's what you're thinking."

He laughed harder. Shrugged. "I think everyone ought to drink a little, or a lot, depending on what it is they've got to do." His English was thick in accent. He paused, took a hit from the joint and then, holding the smoke in, he offered it to her.

"No, thank you," she said, shifting uncomfortably. "I really am sorry. I was looking at," she motions upward, "...the stars. I love them as they first appear. It's so beautiful out tonight, so clear, it made me want to dance."

He nodded and exhaled and a sleepy smile crossed his face, mellowed from smoking. His eyes narrowed and he inhaled again, and again he held the smoke inside. The tip of the joint glowed orange. All the while his eyes held hers, until finally, she turned her gaze away because, she would say to Karen later, "I couldn't take him looking at me like that anymore, the way his eyes bore into me. As if he could see right through me."

"It is a beautiful night," he said, dropping the joint and squashing it with one boot into the snow. He looked up at her. "And you are beautiful too."

He stood there, grinning. Her heart was hammering inside her chest.

"You are absolutely right to dance at sunset. If I had time, I might ask to join you, as you are glowing, and you are every bit as pretty as the sky."

READ THE NEXT INSTALLMENT ON THE HUFFPOST ON Thursday, February 17, 2011.

CHAPTER FOUR: "Down the Drain"

"Down the Drain"

With both Ben Jr. and Jack, Ronda more or less felt OK. Mild nausea always used to hit late in the afternoon, right about teatime. Her stomach stayed "out to sea," as she put it, having its way on the waves, swelling, falling, refusing to be quelled, until finally she would force down a broiled lamb chop and a baked potato, because she knew that if she ate something hearty, the nausea amazingly would recede a bit. If Noni was around, she would eat a warm plate of homemade spinach ravioli, or a bowl of Noni's polenta. Then she would fall into bed, half dead from exhaustion, about seven.

But that was 17 and 18 years ago. Noni's been dead for a dozen years. And this time around, it is so much much worse. Not just morning sickness. Morning, noon and all night long sickness.

Sometimes lately, when she is flushing the toilet for the twentieth time, she stares into the clear toilet water circling down the drain and she swears she sees a long black hearse floating there. It's pulling up to her front door. She sees red and yellow gladiolas, columns of them, heaped in back. And a mahogany casket, carrying her inside. So many times in recent weeks that she has decided that dying would be bliss compared to living like this.

"Anything," she whispers now, her mouth starting to water, to fill up once more.

"What Ma?" Jack tenses. "What'd you say? Can I get you something?"

"No, no, nothing," she says, sinking into his shoulder and crying. "Just stay.

Jack starts humming, the tune to that sweet old song she made up for the boys during childhood. "Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, and you are our little angel." Sniffling, she rubs her cheek against the soft flannel of Jack's pajama shirt. It hurts to think about Jack as a baby. Which is why this baby, this baby murdering her tonight, gave her so much joy at first.

At first, she had no doubt. She wanted to keep it, fuss over it, dress and nurse it. Bathe and powder it, walk and sleep with it. No matter that the father wasn't so sure. Ronda was.

Absolutely delighted to think that one more time she would experience the flesh on flesh of motherhood. Especially if she had a girl. Elizabeth. Elizabeth Marie. Marie for her own mother, dead three years, the old-fashioned Italian mother she once resented but now misses desperately.

But now. Now this baby maybe shouldn't be. Maybe it's a curse, maybe the worst idea in the world. "Dear Lord," she keeps asking. "Why?" She can't help but wonder whether this is the way He punishes all women who dare to sin, who happen, quite accidentally, to become pregnant against the wishes of the men they love.

For the last three days, and especially tonight, she has begun to believe that even if the whole ordeal isn't punishment, it's exactly what she needs. Because she has been feeding herself lies. Because she has been deluding herself for the last few weeks with fantasies that Jesús, her lover, will, after all is said and done, come around. He'll call and sound like he used to, his voice low and sexy and carefree over the phone.

She rolls away from Jack. She's got to lie flat on her back on the floor. She is always more nauseous sitting up. She laps the water inside her mouth with her tongue. Tries to contain it, hold it back. She faces Jack, sees his frightened eyes, grown round and wide, hovering over her own.

"Ma?" Jack inquires, his voice quivering.

Bolting upright, she thrusts her chin over the rim. Her stomach caves, tosses, and nothing comes out. She crumples back to the floor. Her face is wet and clammy. She is drained of her last bit of energy. If only she could pass out.

Jack places a hand tentatively on the top of her head, as if he's afraid to touch her face. "I hear Karen," he says, turning. He jumps up. "I'll get the door."

She turns over onto the floor, face first. She feels her cheek against the cool tile. Feels her hipbones, and her stomach, raw and hollow. How ironic, she thinks. Here I am pregnant, supposed to be making a baby, and I can barely keep myself alive.

"I'll die, maybe, but that's better," she says to herself, "at least then I won't have to decide what to do. Whether to..." She thinks those two words, whether to, and she feels brutally unhappy and starts to cry. Her heart pummels the inside of her chest. She would like to think it's breaking.

But actually, her heart isn't breaking, it's just making those funny quick flutters again, as if it were skipping beats. It's been like that ever since she found out she was pregnant. She figured she would tell the doctor on her first visit. That is, if she makes an appointment for a first visit.

"Oh dear God Ronda." Karen is speaking in a hush, and scooping Ronda's shoulders up off the floor. There is that sweet scent of soap, Karen's scent. The fragrance of lilac. "Oh, Ronda why didn't you call before?" Ronda is over, on her back, her head in Karen's lap, and now she is smelling Crest or Colgate. Wow, Ronda thinks, Karen thought to brush her teeth.

"I tried to call you Ronda. You didn't answer." Ronda tries to smile, but is too tired.

"No," she mumbles. "I'm too sick."

"I'm sorry I didn't come anyway. I figured one of the boys would call. But why didn't you call me?"

Ronda smiles sweetly. "I didn't want to bother you."

"Bother me. Bother me? Dear God." Karen looks away. "Look, Jack, honey. We'd better get your mother to the hospital now."

Ronda stares up at Karen, the soft underside of her friend's chin. She feels Karen's strong arms. In these arms, she feels totally limp, soft, pliable, as if she will melt into a puddle on the floor.

"Hospital? Why?" Ronda says now, her lips dry as they come together. She wants to smile, because she is so happy to have Karen here. She can't think too clearly right now, but she knows she loves Karen, and Karen loves her. They laugh together. They shop for bras and bathing suits together. They drink white Sauvignon Blanc, ice cold, and they drink very strong cappuccino together. The night Ronda confided in Karen that she was pregnant, and that she had decided to keep the baby, even if Jesús didn't want to, she and Karen hugged each other for a long time and then Ronda cried. She is crying now. Somehow, tears are coming out despite the fact that there is no fluid left inside Ronda's shriveled body.

"Honey, I'm taking you over to the ER," Karen is whispering. And Ronda is thinking, what? ER? Why?

The rest happens as though it's in the past. As if she dreamed it. As if some vague time ago, she heard Karen say to Jack, in her calm nurse's voice: "Here, Jack, help me. We gotta get your mom up. She's probably not going to be able to walk too well or even to stand."

She heard that. She heard other things. Jack saying he should have realized something was wrong, really wrong, a lot sooner. And Karen saying, "That's not your fault, Jack. There's no way you could have known. We just have to get her to the hospital now. Right away. Before she gets any more dehydrated. We'll take a bag."

"A bag?" Jack asks, confused.

"Yeah, a grocery bag, for when she throws up again in the back seat of the Saab."

"Oh. Right."

Karen and Jack each get an arm under Ronda and move her slowly down the stairs, Ronda stumbling, her legs coming forward on automatic, as if she's Raggedy Ann and her red- and white-striped legs are stuffed and made of cotton.

In the back seat of Karen's car, Jack holds his mother to his side. Ronda watches the block of night sky outside the window go by and she thinks briefly of Orion, but then he's gone and she is falling in and out of sleep, keeping her head on Jack's shoulder, and at one point when she wakes up, her stomach is rolling and heaving and twisting and she's aboard a ship and her mouth is watering yet again and her lips keep trembling and she's retching and absolutely nothing is coming out.

Only her diaphragm keeps wrenching, wrenching, pushing, twisting, and she stares into the brown grocery bag Jack has brought along and suddenly she decides that if tonight is the night she is going to die, then so be it. She had better pray. She closes her eyes and pictures God. An eerie image comes up. Ben Sr. in the garage, lifting the door. Then him in the car, giving her the finger. A huge wind comes up and blows the car away. In the wind, some female god appears. She is bright, an electric light. She beckons Ronda. Ronda follows as the goddess soars skyward, flying white and iridescent in the night sky. In light. In folds and folds of white and golden light.

The lights are so bright that Ronda covers her eyes. Other eyes hover over her. Suddenly a needle jabs the inside of her arm, just below the crease of her elbow.

"Will you just kill me and get it over with?" she mumbles.

"Oh now, come on Mrs. Fallon. Things aren't that bad." A hearty female voice. She hasn't heard this hearty female voice before. She hasn't heard this name -Mrs. Fallon--uttered in some time. For at least three months, she has been telling everybody to call her by her maiden name. Ronda Cari.

"Who are you?" she asks, and without waiting for an answer, she cries out again.

"Karen! Where is she? KAREN!!!!" She is crying, bawling, screeching now. She reaches out.

Tries to rise off the hard bed. Two arms slap her down.

"We'll get her for you, Mrs. Fallon. Just hold on."

Karen appears. Bending over, her eyes close, she squeezes both of Ronda's hands and kisses Ronda's forehead. Ronda reaches up with the wrong arm, feels the pinch and strong pull of a needle, a plastic tube. She cries harder. Her eyes fall shut, and all she sees there is the inside of the toilet bowl.

But this time the water, swirling, disappearing, carries Ronda herself down the drain.

READ THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF SEEING RED, at "Jesús Just Wants to Play Guitar." at Catch up with previous chapters at "Seeing Red on the HuffPost!"