Equilibrium (21 page)

Chapter 25

G
etting ready for dinner with Aidan set off a notion that arose not from Laura’s mind, but from her body, traveling upward until it formed one concrete sentence.
I deserve happiness.
She revised.
I deserve moments of happiness.
A scene featuring a couple skipping along hand in hand through fields of heather while saccharine music played and then faded in time with the golden sunset belonged to unrealistic G-rated movies.

Under the showerhead, the water pulsed at her scalp and clarified her thoughts. When it came to certain areas of her life not related to her children, patience had altogether lost its luster. She rinsed the clogged razor close to the nozzle, then shook the shaving gel and lathered her upper thighs.

Out of the shower, she wiped the fog from the mirror, squeaking it clean, and stood on the bathroom stool. She couldn’t make out her entire body, but surveyed her form in sections, beginning with her breasts. Not too bad, if she stood perfectly straight, no slumping. For the first time in years, her stomach lay flat, a diminished appetite the only benefit of widowhood. And her legs appeared sculpted, detailing not one but two separate curves at the calf when she rose to tiptoe, like a ballerina on pointe. She made the conscious decision to avoid viewing her bottom, much to the chagrin of Elle’s voice in her head.
You need to know what you look like from behind
, her free-loving friend often said. To which Laura always replied with statistics, supporting her claim that attraction happened mostly in the gray area between your ears.

She stepped down from the stool, patted herself dry, and reached for the super-emollient cream, taking great care to slather liberally on those areas prone to roughness—elbows, knees, and the inexplicably dry patches on her bottom. Turned out, she was more concerned with the sense of touch than with vision, at least where her bottom was concerned. She knew what she had to do, how far she needed to go to get exactly what she wanted. She’d done it before, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her, this deliberate planning, and yet it shocked her, making her heart drum in her ears. The last great real-life plotting had taken place years ago, before she’d become an adult in the truest sense, before circumstances had gradually sculpted her like water over rocks. Even then, she’d acted out of character, or so she’d thought.

She worked the remaining cream into her hands, massaging the palms, and then briefly caressed below her navel—more to ascertain certain near-forgotten regions were still fully functional than to obtain a cheap thrill. All systems go.

She finished washing up, brushing and flossing, even gargling with the painfully strong mouthwash. She covered her face with moisturizing face tint to even out her skin tone and make the spray of girlish freckles across the bridge of her nose a bit less prominent. Considered and forewent the blush. She was already flushing. She opted for deodorant, but the decision to skip perfume was a no-brainer. Natural pheromones served her purpose.

Did it really matter what motivated a person? In the end, you were your actions. No more, no less. You forced a smile, and your body interpreted the movement of facial muscles, splashing brain cells with opiates and creating the feigned emotion. She worked mousse lightly through the crown of her hair, and then hung from the waist, using the diffuser to garner maximum volume for what, tonight, she recognized as a glorious mane. She tried out a forced smile in the mirror to test her theory, and, sure enough, her whole body sang.

Sailing on natural opiates, she hurried across the hall and unceremoniously slid off her wedding band, tossed it inside her jewelry box, and closed the lid. She selected a brand-new white T-shirt, one of the few staples she replenished every year, and a well-worked-in pair of jeans. The stonewashed denim hugged in all the right places. For shoes, she decided upon her favorite sandals with the half-inch heels. She was going for the understated look, unaware, approaching innocence, as much as a thirty-five-year-old mother of two could fake naïveté.

Yet, she must have convinced herself, because by the time she went down to the kitchen, her hands were really shaking, and she paused at the counter to steady herself. She dragged over the step stool so she could reach the above-cabinet wine rack and chose the cabernet sauvignon, remembering how on that long-ago fateful day she’d given her virginity to Jack she’d downed a shot of peppermint schnapps.

She was raising her hand to knock on Aidan’s partly open door when he called out from the far end of the apartment. “In the kitchen!” She pulled the door shut behind her, and it locked with a soft click. In the unlikely event her kids needed her tonight, she’d hear them knock.

Aidan stood at the sink, washing his hands. “I’m just about ready for you guys.” He gazed past her.

“Um. Guess I should’ve let you know. Darcy and Troy aren’t coming. Homework,” she offered as a quick alternative to a long drawn-out explanation. “But I brought wine.” She held out the bottle, wishing she’d thought to pick up a gift bag on the way home, something to make the offer less like a regifting.

He wiped his hands on a paper towel. “Great, thanks. Would you like me to open it now?”

“Sure, why not?” she said, and Aidan fished in a drawer for an opener.

She glanced away and hoped she appeared nonchalant, rather than a woman badly in need of a drink.

Aidan’s butcher-block coffee table took up most of the back room; his four overstuffed beige floor cushions outlined its perimeter. A hot plate perched at the center of the table atop a metal trivet, holding a heavy-looking iron stockpot. Plates of raw food surrounded the pot of gently boiling bouillon. The largest plate displayed chunks of creamy tofu, sliced shittake mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, and semitransparent leeks. Thin strips of steak lay across the smaller plate, like sunbathers stretching across a dock. Wide udon noodles roped inside a mismatched khaki bowl.

Only one meal called for this specific selection of raw ingredients. “Shabu-shabu,” she said, and accepted a nice and full glass of wine from Aidan.

“You make swish-swish?” he asked, translating from Japanese to English.

“I don’t make it, but I love it. I haven’t eaten Japanese in years.” On the rare occasions when they all went out to eat, they’d venture as far as Nashua, where they’d watch Asian chefs with sharp knives chop at a maddening pace, magically turning performance art into the most wonderful meals.

“I thought shabu would be fun for your kids. Dinner entertainment,” he said, laying to rest the question of whether he had had an ulterior motive. Unlike her, Aidan’s motives were pure.

He set out two sets of chopsticks and filled small red-lacquered dishes with dipping selections—duck sauce, sweet and sour, and her absolute favorite, ponzu, a citrus-seasoned soy. “Is anything missing?” Then, just as she was about to settle on a cushion, “A toast, to my first dinner guest!” Aidan said. “Not counting takeout pizza with Finn.”

Filling a home with the personal sights, sounds, and smells of food christened a home like nothing else. “To new beginnings,” she said, embellishing his toast.

They tapped glasses, then sipped. Aidan’s smile took over his face. The rich wine flowed downward and kissed Laura’s throat.

She started with the meat—clamping a strip between her chopsticks and inhaling the savory beef broth as she swished the red meat back and forth.

Beside her, Aidan slipped his chopsticks into the pot and swished his tofu, mirroring her movements. The ropes of muscles in his arm flexed. Her face tingled, and she chased the first tender morsel of meat with a healthy mouthful of wine.

Aidan chewed his tofu, and his tongue licked at the excess sauce on his bottom lip. “I’ve forgotten how much I like this.” He grinned like a boy, content with small treasures.

“Me too. Delicious.” She nodded, flushed from the food, the wine, her racing thoughts. She wouldn’t let her mind wander from small treasures to small pleasures—even after the unchaste translation, a dirty little rhyming game. Instead, she drank more wine, filled her plate with every vegetable, and churned them through the broth, a woman on a mission toward a new beginning Aidan hadn’t intended.

He passed her the noodles, regarded her carefully. “You remind me of Suzanne.”

She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and dug into the noodles with her chopsticks, waiting for an elaboration.

“One of my many sisters,” he said.

Maybe she should’ve eaten before dinner, gorged on crackers straight out of the box so she’d appear lacking any discernible appetite, like the Southern belles in
Gone with the Wind
. She imagined his sister Suzanne, an immense girl with beautiful dark eyes.

He laughed. “I swear it’s a compliment. Suze is this tiny thing, so she shocks guys when she eats them under the table. Used to drink guys under the table, too, but she doesn’t do that anymore,” he said, letting her know his sister Caroline of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named fame wasn’t the only member of Aidan’s family with past issues. He leaned forward. “So does Darcy really have homework or is she avoiding me?”

She swallowed her mouthful of noodles, pulled her legs out from under the table, and kneeled on the cushion. “Darcy’s avoiding you, but she’ll come around,” she said, interjecting confidence into her voice.

“And Troy?” Aidan asked. “I thought my bike buddy would show up.”

“Troy got started on homework late. He had a doctor’s appointment in the Boston area this afternoon.” She stood up with her empty wineglass and took his, even though it was still half full. “I’ll get us more wine.”

She poured the wine and noticed a gray Bose sound system lurking covertly on the narrow shelf above the sink. A neighboring shelf housed a stack of CDs.

“Boston? Is something wrong?” he asked.

She should’ve kept her mouth shut. Sharing every detail of her personal life wasn’t part of the plan. But the facts certainly spoke for themselves, a personal ad only a fool would answer: widowed white female, devoted mother of two teenagers predisposed to a serious mental illness, seeks companionship with attractive normal man. Any reasonably sane man would run for the hills, camp out, and live as a hermit until the end of his days, rather than pursue a meaningful relationship with her.

This could work to her advantage. She really liked Aidan and what she sought was a win-win situation. A relationship with her, the type necessitating actually garnering approval from each other’s family and friends, could turn disastrous. All in one night, she could show and tell him exactly how much, or how little, she had to offer.

“I brought Troy to speak with Jack’s old doctor, a psychiatrist who specializes in bipolar disorder,” she said.

“That’s what Jack had—bipolar?” Aidan scrambled up from his cushion and started across the room, a split-second response to a slight quaver in her voice.

“Exactly.” She passed Aidan his wine and took a double sip of hers. “After Troy’s outburst at dinner a couple of weeks ago, he was up all night, extremely agitated, and fretting over Jack memories. And”—her gaze dashed to the dinner table, and then back to Aidan—“because of Jack, the kids are predisposed to bipolar, but I needn’t have worried. Troy is fine.”

“How’s he doing otherwise?” Aidan asked, all at once too close.

She wasn’t the type of woman to start sobbing in front of a new friend. Dissolving into tears wouldn’t convey an accurate portrayal, so she measured her words for stability. “Troy is absolutely fantastic.”
Thank God, he’s not Jack.

“And you,” he said, not giving her any space. “How are you doing?”

An innocent enough question, if it came from anyone other than Aidan. But she couldn’t dismiss his unwavering voice, his steady gaze, or the way his feet pointed toward her, as if nothing else existed in the universe other than his awaiting her answer. Most people threw out a question and mentally moved on to the next subject before you’d even formulated a response.

Aidan wasn’t one of those people, so Laura gave him what approximated the truth. “I’m managing,” she said, grateful the right verb had come to her. She hadn’t said whether she was managing well or not, so she hadn’t lied.
You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you on the ass.
Where had that expression come from? Crass, but she liked it.

Aidan stood perfectly still, as though waiting for a more detailed response to his inquiry into her state of mind.

An abrupt subject change seemed in order.

“Can I put on some music?” She replaced what must’ve been a troubled look on her face with a small smile and shuffled through Aidan’s stack of CDs. Midway through, she discovered a classic Van Morrison recording that broadened her smile. “Do you mind?”

“Go right ahead.”

She read down the list of song titles, remembering the soulful rock, the folksy lyrics. Very many years ago, she’d owned a cassette of the recording, but the tape had gone missing, lost in transit when she and Jack had moved from their last apartment. Jack had never liked Van Morrison. He took her listening to the singer-songwriter as a form of emotional adultery, as if she’d cheated on him with another artist.

Sliding in the beloved music allowed a pause of blissful anticipation.

She leaned against the counter so the steady beat of “And It Stoned Me” pounded through her. She didn’t remember all the words, but the gist of the tune flooded back—taking joy from a simple day, complete with rain and sun, friends and—oh, yeah—liquid spirits.

“You picked one of my all-time favorites,” Aidan said. When the song came around to the chorus for the second time, he caught Laura’s gaze and joined in with the vocals. His voice flowed effortlessly, at once masculine and tender. Aidan sang for his audience of one, but his expression told Laura he’d chosen her from millions.

He combed his fingers through his hair, chuckling at himself, and she laughed with him. “Couldn’t resist,” he said.