The Art of Adapting

by Cassandra Dunn

  “I mean it,” Dr. Tucker said. She grabbed Lana by the shoulders and looked her squarely in the eye. “I forbid you to put any more energy into this. I’m on it, so you don’t have to be. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Lana said. She was left to dress with her still-shaking hands. She wasn’t sure what kind of resolution she’d been looking for, but she hadn’t gotten it. It was still a waiting game. Like everything in life.

  Lana emerged into the bright sunlight of a cloudless day, almost irritated with the beauty of it, until she saw Abbot leaning casually against her car. He was in a dress shirt and slacks, shirt unbuttoned, chest hair peeking out. He was strikingly handsome all dressed up for work. Lana’s agitation was eclipsed by butterflies. For the first time that day she forgot to feel afraid.

  “You’re here,” she said. He’d had his meeting with human resources and his boss about returning to work full-time, had been sorry he couldn’t join her for her checkup as a result.

  “I am. My meeting finished early. Is it okay that I came?”

  She stepped into his arms and inhaled the sweet warmth of him, his broad shoulder a perfect resting place for her cheek, his strong arms the exact comfort she needed at that moment. “It’s very much okay.” She kissed him, again and again, until the softness of his lips, the mix of their breath, the feel of his arms around her banished everything else from her mind.

  “I got the all-clear,” she whispered. “For . . . you know.”

  During Lana’s recovery from her LEEP procedure they had been confined to make-out sessions, hand-holding, long hugs. It gave their romance a chaste, puppy love quality. Waiting was the best and worst part. It was exquisite torture. But now she’d had her follow-up exam. She was cleared for intercourse. She kissed Abbot again, deeper.

  “So you’re saying . . .” He kissed her back, pulled her close.

  “I have no kids for a few more hours.”

  Abbot smiled, kissed her cheeks, forehead, eyelids. His hands wandered down her back, settled just below her waist. He gripped her hips passionately and pulled her against him. “Where should we go?” He peered into the backseat of her car and raised his eyebrows. Lana laughed and shook her head.

  “Your place,” Lana said. “I’ll follow you there.”

  They met on his doorstep. Lana’s body buzzed with anticipation as Abbot unlocked the door. She trailed her fingertips down his spine. He turned and lifted her, carrying her just-married-style across the threshold. He grunted at her weight.

  “Abbot, your back,” Lana warned.

  Abbot laughed. “You’re right. You’ve got me so excited I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” He settled her onto the living room floor and kissed her passionately. She rolled him onto his back and sat astride him. She unbuttoned his shirt, ran her hands across the bare width of his shoulders, the naked slope of his chest, the soft down on his belly. Abbot leaned his head back and moaned.

  He tugged on the hem of her shirt, and she lifted her arms for him to pull it over her head. He kissed each of her bare shoulders, her collarbone, her breastbone. Lana pushed his shirt off his shoulders, but it was caught on his wrists by the buttons she’d forgotten to undo there. He lifted his shirt-mittened hands to her back and fumbled with her bra clasp, unable to manage it.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, laughing.

  “I swear I’ve done this before,” Abbot said, laughing and kissing her as he unbuttoned his shirtsleeves. They stood and giggled and kissed and fumbled, bumping their topless bodies together as he led the way to the bedroom. Lana sat on the bed, suddenly self-conscious of her half-naked body. Abbot removed his pants, laid them neatly over a chair, and knelt before her. “You okay?” he asked. She nodded and smiled, not sure if she was or not. “My god, you are beautiful,” Abbot said, gazing not at her aging breasts, the little roll around her waist peeking over her pants, but into her eyes with a sincerity that unhinged something inside her. “How did I get so lucky?” He unbuttoned her pants. She stood to remove them. They embraced and kissed, naked except for their underwear, pressing into each other’s bodies until it wasn’t enough. Abbot slid Lana’s panties off and eased her onto the bed. She lay flat, eyes closed, as he kissed every inch of her. Her entire body tingled. When she couldn’t take it anymore she pulled him on top of her and kissed him.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

  “Do you have a condom?” she asked.

  Abbot opened several drawers in search of one. There was something comforting in the knowledge that he didn’t have one at the ready.

  “Please don’t let me have to go to the store like this,” he said, and Lana laughed as he opened one last drawer. “Jackpot!” He lay beside her, ran his hand over her breasts, her belly, her hips, her thighs. She couldn’t catch her breath, from the laughter, the excitement, the smell of Abbot’s skin. He slid his hands between her legs and she gasped. He stopped moving his hand and looked at her face.

  “Please don’t stop,” she said, laughing. He kissed her throat, her shoulders, her breasts, her belly.

  “How much time do you have?” he asked.

  “Plenty,” she said. “No rush.” But she couldn’t wait. She pushed Abbot onto his back, took the condom from him, and ripped the package open. She loved the look of surprise on his face. She was all-powerful, she was beautiful, she was sexy. She attempted to roll the condom on, but found it slick and uncooperative. They both laughed.

  “I’m completely charmed that you’re inept at this,” Abbot said, taking over.

  She climbed on top of him and watched him watch her. They kissed and clutched each other and moved together. Abbot kept trying to slow her down and she kept trying to speed him up. He climaxed first, caressed her until she followed suit. She closed her eyes and let the waves of bliss wash over her. She’d needed this, had missed it, more than she’d realized.

  “I didn’t hurt you?” Abbot asked.

  “You did wonderful things to me,” Lana said. “Thank you.”

  Abbot kissed her and held her, traced his fingertips over her shoulder, down her ribs, across the valley of her waist, and over the slope of her hip.

  “You are stunning,” he said.

  “So are you.” She touched the tangle of hair on his chest. He was here. He was hers. She was overwhelmed at her bounty. She wanted to celebrate it. “Would you be up for meeting my kids?” she asked. The question had snuck out. It was too soon to ask such a thing. “I mean, I don’t want to rush you, or us, I just wondered . . .”

  “I’d love to. How’s Sunday?”

  Lana smiled and cupped his face. She kissed him again and again. How wonderful to be in a man’s arms without reservations, to be admired so cleanly without agenda. No power struggles. No strife. Just this perfect moment: the warm breeze fluttering the pale curtains behind her, Abbot’s eyes on her body, his hand grazing her thigh. She hadn’t been a take-charge lover with Graham. Sex with Graham had been good, satisfying, but like so many things usually more on his terms than hers. Why had she ever agreed to that?

  “Do you have another condom?” she asked, sidling up to Abbot.

  “Oh, god, yes,” he said, tipping his head back as she kissed his throat.

  She made it to school just in time to get the kids. She was disheveled, sore, and relaxed. Empty and full at the same time. She was Lana reinvigorated, reinvented.

  “Let’s go on an adventure,” she told them. “Let’s have dinner on the beach.”

  They swung by home for cold cuts, fruit, cookies, and to convince Matt to join them. Lana drove to Del Mar, parked just south of Dog Beach, along two miles of soft sand and lulling waves. They shared the sunset with surfers, paddle-boarders, off-leash dogs romping in the foamy surf just far enough away for Matt to gather dog-related data without any run-ins.

  Lana kicked off her shoes and gripped the sand with her toes, the heated surface giving way to cooler grains below. Matt settled in the middle of the woolly maroon and gray blanket she’d bought
on her trip to Tijuana with Abbot. The kids headed straight for the water, squinting into the sun and glaring waves. Abby’s sundress billowed out behind her, thin as a distant memory. Byron kicked some water at her and she squealed and spun, dancing in the foam. Lana settled beside Matt as he scribbled in his green notebook.

  “They grow up so damn fast,” she said.

  “We did, too,” he said. “Remember?”

  “No.” Lana laughed. “Sometimes I still feel like I’m fourteen and worried about what to wear to impress the cool kids. I wonder who in their right mind thought I was mature enough for this: motherhood, home ownership, a career, adulthood in general. I hope I have them all fooled, that I have any clue at all what I’m doing.”

  “You do,” he said matter-of-factly. He nodded a few times before returning to his notebook.

  Lana snorted and it rolled into a giggle. She cherished the touchstone of Matt’s frankness. It was such a posturing and gimmicky world. He was the antithesis of that.

  “I bought our tickets for Florida,” Lana told him. “To visit Mom and Dad.”

  Matt looked up, squinting at the bright ocean, then toward the dogs running free.

  “Do you remember the pond we used to go to?” he asked. “To see tadpoles? And the time we brought a bunch home?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t thought about that in years. You were only, what, three or four then? How do you remember that?”

  “What happened to them, after they turned into frogs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We put them in that aquarium, and I remember watching them every day, as they grew legs and lost their tails. But what happened to them, once they were frogs? Did we take them back to the pond?”

  “You know, I can’t remember. But maybe Mom and Dad do?”

  Matt nodded and turned back to his notebook. He deftly sketched a series of tadpole pictures, capturing their varying stages of development into frogs. “I think they died,” he said. It was a typical Matt-toned comment, void of any emotion.

  “Maybe,” Lana said. “I don’t remember setting them free.”

  The sinking sun cast the water in blinding, molten gold. Abby and Byron stood in the surf, ten feet apart, not speaking as far as Lana could tell. They were silhouetted in brassy light, the breeze teasing Byron’s shaggy hair and snapping the hem of Abby’s dress. They were two beautiful tall, lean, strong, loving souls. They were perfect. And they were Lana’s legacy. Her good fortune nearly moved her to tears.

  “She’s eating again,” Matt said. “Abby.” He pointed toward her with his pen, then carefully turned a few pages of his notebook. He turned the notebook toward Lana, holding it just out of reach. He used his pen to point to a page. Yesterday’s date, followed by foods and calorie counts and protein levels. Below that were smiles and laughs carefully annotated.

  “You know exactly how much she eats each day?” Lana asked, reaching for the notebook without thinking. Matt quickly withdrew it.

  “I’m not sure I was supposed to show you. It’s ours. The notebook. I record the data and she . . . well, she eats and smiles and laughs.” He laughed, as if it were funny, as if the existence of such a notebook, the necessity of such meticulous recording, didn’t break Lana’s heart.

  “I’m glad she’s eating again. It’s going to be a hard road, I suppose. But she’s strong. And she has us. Hopefully I’m better support for her than Mom was for us,” Lana said. “I wish you’d known Mom before Stephen died. Back when she was happy.”

  Matt closed the notebook, slid the pen into the coiled spine, hid it away in his bag. “Mom was clinically depressed. There’s medication that could have helped. Or therapy. But she didn’t want help. She didn’t want to feel better. She wanted to be sad about Stephen. She felt guilty that she couldn’t save him, so she just wanted to be sad. Being sad helped her remember him. Dad was sad, too, but he worked instead. She didn’t have anyone to help her. You aren’t depressed. And you have help.”

  The kids started walking north, toward the dogs. They kept the pocket of distance between them, but moved as one entity. Lana knew if anything happened to one of them she’d be just as gutted as her mother had been. Of course she’d been depressed. She had lost a child. How does anyone ever recover from that?

  “I meant me.” Matt laughed, his one-huff, almost cough of a laugh. “I meant that I help. I don’t actually help. I just watch. But Byron can drive now and Abby eats for the notebook and his art’s getting better and he’s the parkour leader and her poetry is about her and not just her body parts now and I don’t see the Vizsla anymore but there are rainbows some days and I know how to send a picture from my phone now and it helps. I help them and they help me.”

  “We’re helping each other, I guess,” Lana said. She had no idea what Matt was talking about, but the details were less important than the love behind them. “We’re a good family. We look out for each other.”

  “I stopped drinking, because you said so,” Matt said. “And no more pills.”

  “Good,” Lana told him. “It was making you sick. Hurting your liver. And now it can heal.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I didn’t understand. Why healing mattered. I mean, more than drinking. Everything hurts something else. No matter what. But this is better.” He gestured toward Lana, the waves, the kids, with three quick flicks of his wrist. “The dogs are better here, too. They prefer the water. They stay over there.”

  Lana smiled at him. “I was thinking of having a family barbecue this weekend. I’d like to introduce you all to my friend Abbot. Is there anyone you’d like to invite?”

  Matt sifted handfuls of sand through his fingers. “I’d like a girlfriend again. I thought after Susan that I just wanted to be alone. Because of the touching and kissing. But Abby has Gabe and Byron has Betsy and now you have Abbot? So maybe it’s okay. The touching. Not always but sometimes. Maybe I could try again. Can I invite Susan?”

  “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

  Tilly, Betsy, Trent, Camilla, her husband Carl, Abbot, and Emily crowded into the small backyard on Sunday, but Susan was a no-show. Matt chose to hide out inside, away from the crowd. Lana made a plate of food and brought it to Matt’s room.

  “So Susan couldn’t make it?”

  “She didn’t want to meet the whole family yet. She just wants to talk on the phone with me for now. She’s happy I’m not drinking anymore. Her cat Murray died. She’s thinking of getting a kitten.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But anytime you want to have her over, you go ahead and invite her. If you need me and the kids to disappear, we will.”

  Matt smiled. “You can’t really disappear,” he said. “You mean leave the house. So we can have sex.”

  Lana laughed and Matt laughed with her. It was getting easier, talking with him and understanding how his mind worked. It reminded her of dealing with Byron and Abby when they were little. Nuance had been wasted on them. Everything was taken literally. Each word mattered. As it should.

  Abby ate grilled mushrooms, bell peppers, and grape tomatoes, juices dripping down her hand as she slid them off the brochette and into her mouth one by one, laughing with Emily. She was a wisp-thin fairy, twirling in a skirt that revealed reedy legs. But she was eating. She’d decided to become a vegetarian, and Lana was hoping that she’d get enough calories and protein that way.

  Abbot brought Lana a plate of her favorite foods: Tilly’s potato salad, Camilla’s coleslaw, fruit salad, two brownies. He had a knack for noticing what she liked and remembering for next time. And he never begrudged her sweets.

  Lana speared a piece of watermelon and smiled. “You’re going to make me fat, indulging my sweet tooth the way you do.”

  Abbot carefully looked Lana up and down and shook his head. “Lana, you have the body of a bombshell. You put pinup girls to shame. You’re every man’s fantasy. Enjoy the brownie.”

  She took a risk and kissed him, right there in front of everyone, and nothin
g terrible happened. Maybe she could be a mom, sister, daughter, professional, and a desirable woman, all at once. Maybe this new version of Lana could have it all in a way the previous one never quite had.

  The back gate opened and Gabe stepped in. Always well mannered, he strode up to Lana and thanked her for the invite. He was perfectly charming. He wandered over to Abby, both of them seeming shy for a moment. He took her hand and they looked into each other’s eyes without saying a word. Lana loved seeing Abby strong, loving, and loved. She was both back to her old self and transformed into an entirely new girl, all at once. Lana hoped that meant the worst was over.

  Abbot eased the empty plate from Lana’s hands. “She’s fine,” he said. Lana laughed. It was nice to have him around. So unobtrusive that sometimes she forgot he was there, yet he was always tuned in to her, always seemed to know which direction her thoughts had wandered, how to bring her quietly back from the brink of unhappiness.

  “I should’ve invited you to Florida with us,” Lana said.

  Abbot slid his arm around Lana’s waist, kissed her temple. “Couldn’t have gotten the time off, I’m afraid. But I appreciate you saying that.”

  Abbot stuck around after the guests left. He packed up leftovers, did dishes, wiped down tables. When Matt emerged for his nightly ice cream, Abbot whisked a bowl of ice cream out of the freezer, already carefully scooped into three round snowballs and drizzled with chocolate sauce, and handed it over. Matt accepted it without comment. Lana turned to Abbot in surprise, and he shrugged as if it were no big deal. And really, it wasn’t. It wasn’t like Lana hadn’t told him that around eight p.m. Matt came in for a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce every single night. But, still, it was impressive.

  “You’re amazing,” she told him. “You manage things like . . .”

  “A dad? A polite guest? A good partner?” he finished for her.

  “Like me.”

  Abbot laughed. “The best compliment I’ve had in a long time.”

  “Is this how you were with your ex?” Lana asked. “Cook? Dishwasher?” There was nothing sexier than a man pitching in around the kitchen.