The oven timer beeped, like a parent flickering a porch light. “Cookies,” she said ridiculously as she tried shaking the cobwebs from her pheromone-saturated brain cells.
She took out two trays of perfectly browned gingersnaps, his and hers, and inhaled their sweet heated spice. The notion of reality split down the center. Earlier this same night a nightmare had spilled from dreamland to a wide-awake horror show. Now she stood in her midnight kitchen, sure she was wide-awake, but playing at the kind of fantasy she’d refer back to all the next day.
The phone squealed a jarring trill behind their heads, and they both jostled. She frowned at the phone, knowing only Elle would call her at this late hour, and only she would answer her friend’s call. Oh, what the heck. She nabbed the receiver off the wall, if only to prevent a second irritating ring. “Hi, Elle.” Silence at the other end of the phone met her greeting. “Hello?”
Laura was about to put down the receiver, but the sound of a throat clearing followed by a rather congested exhalation stopped her. “May I speak with Aidan, please?” A woman, and she wanted to talk to Aidan, the man with the disorienting gaze. Aidan had given Laura’s phone number to Memorial, for emergency purposes only. She doubted the call was work-related.
“Whom should I say is calling?” Maybe Laura was acting nosey, but hey, it was still her house.
The woman hesitated. “Kitty.”
A middle of the night call from a snuffling ex.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I’d really appreciate—”
“He’s right here.” She thrust the receiver at Aidan. “It’s Kitty.”
He stared at the phone, and his entire body tightened, starting with his eyes and washing down until his toes must’ve curled. He nodded and took the receiver, covering the mouthpiece with his palm. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, but she’d already turned off the oven and was hightailing it out of her suddenly crowded kitchen.
Two was company, and three irked her beyond reason.
Upstairs presented a quandary. Even though Aidan had looked anything but pleased with his midnight caller, he’d taken the call anyway. Kitty still held a couple of his reins, however flimsy.
When Laura turned off all the lights, sensory deprivation washed blood down the walls. She jumped out of bed, yanked the pretty little hydrangea nightlight from the hallway, and jammed it into the bedside outlet.
Then she plumped an extra pillow behind her back and reclined halfway under the covers, waiting for a few precious hours of sleep to claim her from the predawn clash between darkness and light.
Chapter 7
Going out with the same boy for six weeks in high school practically set a record. Mom should’ve been cooking an anniversary dinner for Darcy and Nick. Instead, Mom had invited all their best friends over for the anniversary-eve commemoration of Daddy’s Death Day. Nick, Cam, and Heather for Darcy. Maggie and Elle for Mom. And Michael, Troy’s best friend since nursery school. Right this minute, Mom was fussing over shish kebabs, making sure she cooked the meat the way her father had liked it, bright pink at the center. She thought it was a little sick since he wasn’t the one eating them.
Troy and Michael weren’t home yet from the middle school track practice, and Cam had dragged Heather outside on the pretense of a predinner walk. Despite the fact Heather was so not interested, Darcy had to admire Cam’s perseverance. But Mom’s girlfriends’ annoying voices resounded from the kitchen, so Darcy couldn’t even pretend she was alone with Nick in the living room.
Nick sat alongside Darcy in the one marginally comfortable dent of the rickety old couch, playing with her hair. They fit perfectly, snuggling under the cranberry throw, for privacy, not warmth. This week, the weather had flipped from winter to spring. The red line on the living room window thermometer hovered above seventy, a veritable heat wave.
“Hey, kids!” Elle peered around the corner, a surprise attack. And the reason Darcy had made sure to make herself and Nick scarce whenever Mom’s friends came around. Her mother was enough of a fright. “Darce, your mom would like you to come set the table. ’Kay?”
“I’ll help, too.” Nick dropped his hand from the nape of her neck, and the throw fell from her shoulders. He walked ahead of them, showing off the back of his jeans.
Elle waited until Nick left the room, then turned to Darcy, all girly and conspiratorial. “So cute!” she whispered loudly, as only she could. Yeah, he was adorable, but not deaf.
Elle put an arm around her, guiding her into the kitchen. “Your mom tells me you guys are an item.”
“One of the distinct parts of a whole?” Darcy shot off the dictionary meaning, getting the designated reaction. Elle removed the unwanted arm and gave Darcy the appropriate five feet of personal space. Who cared if Elle widened her eyes at her mother? But Mom didn’t need to smile and sigh in agreement. Mom pointed at the silverware drawer. “Do you have any idea where Troy is? I’m starting to worry.”
“No clue.”
Nick took the utensils from her hands, playing the helpful boyfriend.
“Dining room tonight.” Mom gestured toward the narrow galley that somehow fit a farmer’s table with seating for ten. “Did Troy mention anything to you about a track meet? I mean, I think he’d call, but you never know.”
“I said, I don’t know.” Oh, this was novel, her mother worrying about the good child for a change. “Wait.”
Her mother paused, clutching a fistful of napkins.
“I know for sure he doesn’t have a meet today, just practice. And he already told the coach he’d skip the meet this weekend, due to Dad’s De—the anniversary.” Mom might think she preferred honesty, but Darcy knew better than to share the term Dad’s Death Day with her.
“Okay, thanks, baby.” Mom caressed her cheek, and Darcy cringed. Mom didn’t seem to know where her body left off and Darcy’s began. My body, your body. See the difference?
Nick required similar tutoring. Darcy leaned against the dining room table, sensing Nick’s heat before he came up behind her. He reached around her body to arrange the place setting just so. Not bad at all. He even knew to put the smallest fork on the outside of the arrangement, awaiting the salad.
She inhaled, intending to get a hit of Nick, but coughed on the unmistakable scent of patchouli-redolent Maggie instead. Didn’t she need to save a rain forest or something? Maggie stood in the doorway, stock-still, reviewing Nick around his edges. Her flowered skirt shifted slightly, swaying from the melody of Woodstock coming through the speakers in her 1960s brain. Get back to the garden, sister.
Maggie nodded her whole body, completing her visual assessment of his energy field. “A bit heavy on the root chakra, mostly red and orange.”
Maggie sashayed her flowered bottom past them and into the kitchen.
Nick stared toward the spot Maggie had vacated. “What was that?”
She couldn’t blame Nick for cracking up. Not everyone had heard the Buddhist lessons of her mother’s New Age friend. Darcy liked the idea of energy vortexes circulating the life force of the universe through her body, although she’d never admit it to her logic-loving mother. “Chakra one, seat of sexuality, survival. Chakra two, how you express your feelings.”
“Meaning?”
She leaned over and cupped a hand around his ear. “You’re horny.”
“That’s because you don’t stroke me,” he whispered.
Heat flashed through her body, a surge of wanting to cry. How long before Nick figured out she was too much of a baby to give him what he wanted? How long before he tired of snuggling and kissing? How long before he broke up with her?
Nick twittered his fingers at the hem of her T-shirt. She grabbed his hand and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Mom, Elle, and Maggie fell silent when she entered the kitchen, as if she’d tripped their off buttons.
Darcy glanced over her shoulder, and Nick bit at his fisted knuckles. “I have eyes at the back of my head,” Mom said without parting her lips, even
though Darcy hadn’t done anything wrong.
Darcy dragged out the beat-up cow-stenciled stool and stepped onto the lowest wrung, feeling three sets of eyes burning her back. Her mother, Elle, and Maggie never failed to bug her when they worked in unison. Three against one wasn’t playing fair.
Darcy took down a stack of mismatched sherbet-colored plates, her mother’s idea of pastel mood therapy.
Mom untied her patchwork apron and hung it on its hook. “We’re going to have to start soon. I don’t want the meat overcooked.” She opened the door to the back deck. The aroma of grilling meat wafted inside, and Darcy’s stomach rumbled.
The mudroom door flung open, and Troy burst through, as if the smell had called him to dinner. He raced past them through the kitchen, stomped up the stairway, and continued the stampede across the second floor.
Michael slipped into the mudroom. Since the fall, Darcy had to remind herself Troy’s turned-cute-over-the-summer friend was a few months younger than Troy, and not a few years older. Michael shook his dark hair from his eyes. “Hey, Darcy. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Nick leaned against the doorframe.
Michael glanced at Nick. “Alone?”
“I don’t think so, buddy.” Nick folded his arms, his muscles primed, reminding her of Daddy’s reaction when another dad had flirted with Mom at last year’s high school open house. Daddy had smiled at the man, if only to show his teeth, and his eyes had said, Back off or I’ll kill you.
Nick’s eyes spoke the same language. Darcy imagined the raw smell of blood, a disaster only she could prevent. Her fingers jittered.
“It’s about Troy,” Michael said.
“Nick can stay. I don’t mind,” she told Michael, but she was really reassuring Nick. Darcy placed her hand between Nick’s shoulders and rubbed his back. Nick stretched an arm around her shoulder. He tugged her to his side, and his fingers pressed against the muscle of her arm.
On the way home from that open house, Mom had teased Daddy that he’d acted like an overgrown boy. Nothing extreme. But she’d kept her hand on Daddy’s leg till they’d pulled into their driveway. Then they’d gone straight up to bed.
Michael slid his gaze to the shaking ceiling. “Troy’s kind of hyper or something.”
“He’s always had tons of energy.” Hyper was not a word anyone in her house used lightly, too close to manic. Michael knew better.
“After practice, he kept running, like he didn’t want to stop. No, like he couldn’t stop. Then he sped off ahead of me on his bike. Didn’t even stop at a red light.”
Troy usually stopped on yellow.
“He didn’t want to be late for dinner?” she said, and instantly regretted the way her statement curled at the end.
“Yeah, right,” Michael said, and his deadpan expression reminded Darcy he was just a stupid kid.
Why was Michael getting all worked up? Why was he trying to get her all crazed? Nobody told her what to think, but the thought of her little brother—
“Screw you, Michael! I’ll go see for myself.” Darcy untangled herself from Nick, bolted through the kitchen, and raced up the stairs. So what if Troy ran a few extra times around the track? Extra energy didn’t necessarily mean anything bad. Not always.
She paused at Troy’s closed bedroom door, remembering one of the many times her father had rapid cycled between depression and mania. Daddy had been sitting in the kitchen, forehead resting on his arms, still as a stone. Darcy had tried to tiptoe around him. And then, boom! Next thing she knew he’d jumped up, sprinted for the door, and started running in circles, while she, her mother, and Troy had sat out on the deck. They’d tired from hours of watching him before he’d even slowed. “Troy? Dinner’s up. Let’s go.”
Darcy creaked the door open, expecting to see her brother jogging around the room.
Troy hunched over his desk beneath the watchful eye of his favorite poster, Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue. He scribbled in a wire-bound notebook. The pen scratched in agreement with his twitching legs, his rocking body.
She’d never seen her brother look so much like Daddy before. “Hey, what’s going on?” she said, trying for a light tone. Instead, her voice came out in a whisper.
He mumbled to the notebook, waving her away with his free hand.
Earth-smelling air flowed through six wide-open windows. The slight breeze circulating throughout the room should’ve cooled her down and stopped her from itching with perspiration. Troy continued his nonstop writing. She’d learned about hypergraphia years ago after Daddy started wearing wrist guards to save him from worsening tendonitis. His writing compulsion would evolve from pounding the computer keys to filling notebooks with a frenzy of swirls and loops.
“Just gotta finish this.” Troy jumped up with the notebook, and Darcy startled. He read to himself in front of Darcy’s favorite Einstein poster, the one declaring that imagination was more important than knowledge. The sentiment was lost on her brother.
“Oh, this is so great!” Troy snapped the notebook shut, unleashing a flood of words. “D’you remember when we were like six and eight, and we went camping at Hermit Island in the boys’ and girls’ tents, and Dad was, like, so clueless, and you and Mom slept through that storm, and me and Dad ended up in a freakin’ puddle, and me and Dad slept in our old van, and he gave me all the blankets, and he didn’t even sleep?”
“Kinda.” He’d lost her at tents.
“The scarlet moon howls, and the sun flames, a color burst descent brightening the skies. Children’s book illustrations are so emotionally evocative, so in sync with the—”
“Troy.” She spoke his name clearly, like Mom often did when Dad grew unreachable.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Dad was the only other person in the whole world who liked tapioca pudding, and now it’s too late to thank him for that and for that vase I broke and all those cool rubber bands and—”
That’s it; she’d better get her mother. Mom would know what to do with Troy. Tents, a moon, a flaming sun. She never could handle her dad when he talked at her instead of to her.
“Darcy, Troy! Dinner’s ready!” Mom yelled up the stairs in her singsong sticky-sweet voice.
“Do me a favor. This might sound weird. Could you bring me up a dinner?”
“Troy.”
“Maybe I should go to the library. What time does it close on Friday?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, I can get Dad’s info online.”
“We have to go down to dinner.” If she told her mother Troy was acting all hyped out, the entire crowd downstairs would get involved, convinced Daddy’s genes had finally kicked in. Maybe her brother was just a little jazzed due to the anniversary, showing off the far reaches of normal? Mental illness wasn’t an exact science. What if she were wrong?
Worse. What if she were right? She had to tell Mom.
“I can’t go downstairs, not now. Say I’m sick.”
Nobody got out of one of her mother’s family dinners unless they were at death’s door. “Mom would be out of her mind. I mean, you know, upset. You have to come downstairs for dinner.”
As if on cue, her mother called up the stairs a second time. If they didn’t go down, she’d come and get them. The woman took stairs two at a time if she sensed noncompliance.
Was her little brother scared, too, worried about their shared family history?
“We’ll do it together.” She took his hand and gave it a squeeze, hoping he didn’t notice the tremors running through her hand. The image of her mother calming her father superimposed over their entwined fingers. So her brother experienced a little mania, so what? Once didn’t necessarily mean anything, right?
Chapter 8
Darcy and Troy took an abnormally long time navigating the journey from the second floor. Laura could’ve sworn her often-battling children walked into the jam-packed dining room holding hands.
Magical thinking had played tricks on her before. After one of Jack’s manic episodes
, she’d gone out into the backyard fields. She’d taken a heart-shaped worry stone from her pocket and set it next to a freshly picked white dandelion. Illogical behavior, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d prayed to her artifacts, icons to suggest her love for her husband should release to the wind and heal his mood disorder.
Most likely, her children hadn’t been holding hands at all, merely digging their fingernails into the soft flesh of each other’s hands and attempting to draw blood.
Darcy and Troy hovered behind the dining room table, and Heather’s voice cut through the din of conversation. “Switch places!” she said, setting off the kids’ fun-loving tradition. Chairs scraped against wood. Laura leaned one knee on her seat at the head of the table and counted nine guests. She wouldn’t need to move Jack’s chair from its place at the sideboard.
Cam and Heather had popped up in the dining room minutes ago, part of the furniture. Maggie and Elle lit a row of tea lights on the sideboard, physically depicting their perpetual emotional support. Michael settled for the seat between Cam and Heather, and Darcy angled in between Troy and Nick, but she didn’t sit down.
“Mom, I need to talk to you,” Darcy said.
Later, Laura mouthed.
Darcy stamped her foot. “Now.”
Laura looked to the ceiling and decided to ignore the mini-tantrum. She didn’t need another Darcy melodrama, not when Jack memories, the good memories, had been simultaneously buoying her and priming her for tears all day. Jack building intricate sand castles for the kids on summer vacations. Writing poems for her birthdays. Wrapping an elastic band around the kitchen sprayer each and every April Fools’.
Last week, wrapping the kitchen sprayer herself hadn’t worked. No matter how hard she’d tried, she couldn’t manage to fool herself.
Laura tapped her fork prongs against her beveled water glass. She waited till the room quieted. She waited till Darcy sat, elbows on the table, glare aimed at Laura. “No kissing. I just want to say a few words, if I might.” The whispered remains of conversations lulled to a finish.
Equilibrium Page 8
