The Art of Adapting

by Cassandra Dunn

  Behave yourself, Betsy wrote back. Then Byron remembered the frat parties where everyone was wasted and she’d slept with guys she was too drunk to remember the names of. Guys who were too drunk to care how they treated a girl. He went to the kitchen and poured out the rest of the beer. He was drinking a Coke when Lana and Becca came back, giggling and carrying shopping bags.

  “We were wondering if we should brave Disney World before we head home,” Lana said.

  Byron shrugged. He was too old for Disney World, but what else was there to do?

  Gloria came in from her nap for a cup of coffee. She drank hot coffee all day long. She and Lana kind of squared off, so Byron tried to break up the tension.

  “Grandma, we were talking about going to Disney World. You in?”

  “Matt can’t handle Disney World. I’ll stay here with him,” Gloria said.

  “Oh, stop it, Mom,” Lana said. “It’s a little late to play the protective parent.”

  “Both of you stop, okay?” Becca said. She stood between them, which was useless, because she was so short they could still glare at each other right over her head.

  “She woke him up at six this morning,” Lana said. “We’ve been working for months to regulate his sleep cycle, and she decides to get him up a couple of hours early for no reason. First denies him the sleep he needs, then tells him to stop taking his melatonin.”

  Becca turned and looked at Gloria. Gloria just sipped her coffee, staring right at them both. It was like a fuse had been lit. And in a few seconds the bomb was going to go off.

  Byron grabbed his phone and Coke and left the room. He didn’t need to be a part of whatever was unfolding in there. He needed to call Betsy. To tell her he wasn’t a drinker, never would be. She answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, babe,” she said.

  “I poured the beer out,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you. I’m not going to drink around you.”

  “But you aren’t around me,” she said, laughing, but he could hear the relief in her voice. “And I love you, too.”

  33

  * * *

  Lana

  “I’m just a chicken,” Lana said to Becca. “I keep telling Abby how brave and strong she is. I praise Byron for coming into his own. Turns out I’m the scaredy-cat.”

  They were back at the mall, their favorite retreat. It was teeming with scantily clad teenage girls and aloof boys in low-slung jeans, but it was air-conditioned, there was food, and they could spend hours window-shopping to avoid their parents’ condo.

  “You’re just a normal human being,” Becca said. “Recently heartbroken and afraid of getting hurt again.”

  “But I don’t feel afraid of Abbot. At all.”

  Lana had been avoiding Abbot ever since he told her he loved her. It was a childish response and made no sense. Hadn’t she wanted love in her life again? Lana wasn’t sure how to remedy the problem, because she wasn’t sure what the problem was.

  “You’re not afraid of Abbot,” Becca said. “You’re afraid of opening your heart up and getting hurt again.”

  “Oh, here’s the solution right here.” Lana paused by the cookie counter, inhaled the fresh-baked chocolate chip aroma deeply. Becca laughed and nudged her along.

  “We better get back for lunch,” Becca said. Lana sighed. She wanted to check on her kids and Matt, but she felt no desire to see her parents. Which made her feel just as guilty as leaving Abbot’s proclamation of love hanging in the air, just a blue trail of fear streaking across the country from San Diego to Sanford in response.

  Being in such close quarters with her parents, now visibly slower and more frail, made Lana edgy. Gloria’s memory of the distant past seemed to be slipping. She went through old photo albums by the armload, asking Lana and Becca to fill in the gaps.

  “Remember the time we went to Yosemite, and it snowed, and we couldn’t leave?” Gloria asked. “When was that? Easter?”

  “Christmas break. But it wasn’t Yosemite,” Lana said. “It was Tahoe.”

  “Yeah,” Becca said. “North shore, right? At that cabin we borrowed from Dad’s friends. That woodsy place with the rats in the attic.”

  “The Stillmans,” Jack said. “Nice people. You know their son is gay? You remember the crush you had on him, Becca? Turns out you never stood a chance.”

  Becca, Lana, and Jack laughed, but Gloria was displeased, a wrinkle of unhappiness forming between her eyes.

  “I’m sure it was Yosemite,” she said, returning to the photo album. Gloria, always proper and polite to a fault, had recently become impossibly stubborn.

  Lana mentioned it to her dad and he just shrugged. “She’s had her share of hardships. Some recent health challenges. She’s got a little fight left in her, and I think that’s a good thing.”

  Jack, on the other hand, was having trouble retaining the present. He was starting to repeat himself. He’d always had a flare for the dramatic, a lawyer’s courtroom air about him, posturing and pontificating with the best of them. But he asked three times what Lana’s plans were for summer, and three times she explained that she was running the summer school’s reading lab. Each time he regarded it like new information. Lana wondered how much he was retaining.

  “You’ll keep an eye on them, right?” she said to Becca. “Seems fair. I have Matt.”

  “Nothing fair about that deal in the least,” Becca said. “But yes, I’ll look after them.”

  Lana handed Matt his Wellbutrin pill at breakfast the next morning. He studied it in his palm before swallowing it with milk.

  “I feel slower now,” Matt said. “On the meds. I thought that was a good thing. I have a fast-processing brain, you know. Maybe too fast. But maybe it’s too slow now.”

  “Where’s this coming from?” Lana asked. “Did you want to try a different medication? Are you having side effects?” There were a ton of frightening possible side effects for every medication they’d considered for Matt. Lana had just hoped he’d have a high tolerance after his long history of self-medication.

  “Mom said I might be better off without it.”

  Lana braced for battle. She found Gloria in her bathroom, freshly showered, wearing a pink terry-cloth robe, holding the hair dryer aloft in her left hand and a brush in her right hand. Gloria deftly lifted her thin hair up and away from her scalp in practiced strokes as if she were blow-drying it, but the hair dryer wasn’t on. Lana’s anger subsided in a wave of confusion. What was Gloria doing, pointing a sleeping hair dryer at her head?

  “Mom,” Lana said. “Is everything okay?”

  Gloria lowered her spiky round brush and looked at Lana in the mirror. “Are you and Becca going to the store? We need paper towels. And creamer.”

  Lana nodded and waited, watching. Gloria set down the hair dryer, touched her hair, and seemed perplexed to find it still wet. She started the process again, this time with the hair dryer blasting appropriately.

  Lana didn’t mention the scene to Becca. There was something intimate about it, too personal to share. And something alarming that Lana wasn’t ready to face. She also swallowed the anger about Matt. They were leaving in three days. He’d be out of Gloria’s grasp soon enough. How much damage could she do in three days?

  But the whole scenario made her miss easygoing and doting Abbot. She wanted to call him to complain, to get advice, to hear the way he said, “Lana, dear, that’s the pits.” But first she needed to get past the hurdle of words, or to be able to explain to him why it was a hurdle for her at all.

  Lana sat with Matt as he ate breakfast and wrote in his journal. She drank her coffee and tried to figure out what was wrong with her. Why life had to be so complicated. How she could be forty-four years old and still not have a clue what she was doing. For all the times people had thought Matt had insurmountable issues, maybe he actually had a better grasp on happiness than the rest of them: eat only foods that you love and in reasonable portions, worship and record beaut
y whenever you see it, spend all day learning new things, work hard when you work, stay organized, and never get pulled into other people’s drama.

  Lana gave in and called Abbot. “It’s time to discuss the elephant,” she said.

  “Scared the hell out of you, didn’t I?” he said. “Not my intention.” Lana laughed and felt the bubbles of anxiety dissipate. Really, there were so many things to fear in the world. Love shouldn’t be one of them.

  “Yes and no. It was exactly what I wanted to hear, the same thing I’d been thinking myself, and yet it just . . .”

  “Scared the hell out of you.” He chuckled.

  “I guess so. Sorry.”

  “No worries. I get it, trust me. I’ve been single a lot longer than you. I’m a little more ready for this than you are.”

  “I want to be ready,” Lana told him.

  “I’ll wait until you are,” he said. “Don’t rush on my account.”

  The visit was winding down, the kids bonding nicely with their grandparents, which Lana had wanted. She had to remind herself of this fact as she watched Jack dote on Byron, heard him call Byron “son” repeatedly, while barely acknowledging his actual son, sitting right in the same room sketching his alligators and tadpoles.

  Lana handed Matt his melatonin before bed that night, and Gloria put her hand out to stop Matt from taking it. It was the third time she’d interfered with Matt’s medication.

  “Enough,” Lana said. She pushed Gloria’s hand aside and handed the pill to Matt. “He needs this to sleep.”

  “He needs to live and laugh and be happy and silly,” Gloria said. “You’re muting the best parts of him with these drugs. You remember how happy he used to be?” Gloria looked from Matt to Jack. “With those dances? You remember how he would make up tap dances with Kleenex boxes on his feet?”

  “Mom,” Lana said, shaking her head. “That was Stephen. Mocking Becca’s tap class. Matt was only a baby then, not even walking yet. You’re thinking of Stephen.”

  “I was here with him all day, every day. I know my own child!” Gloria shouted.

  “No, you weren’t,” Lana said. “You were home with Stephen. But you weren’t home with Matt. The Masons watched him for you. Then that church day care. Then the Montessori preschool. Then the YMCA. Then the Eastman Academy. You stuck him in one place after another, anything to avoid caring for him yourself.”

  “Okay, Lana,” Jack said, stepping between them. “It was a hard time for all of us.”

  But Lana was all warmed up and couldn’t back down. “I get it, that you lost a child. I know how hard that must’ve been. But you had three more kids. And you just quit on us. Both of you. Dad, you worked twelve-hour days, and Mom, you just . . . disappeared. Volunteering and exercising and puking your guts out four times a day to fool the world into thinking you were fine. But you weren’t fine. None of us were.”

  “You think you’re any better?” Gloria asked. “You drug your brother, your daughter’s starving herself, your son is already drinking, and you think you’re better than me?”

  “What?” Lana snapped, turning to face Byron. Byron held up his hands, shook his head.

  “Now, now,” Jack said. “This is getting out of hand. Gloria, you should go get some rest. Hell, we all should. It’s just about bedtime, and if we all get a good night’s sleep—”

  “Start packing,” Lana said to Byron. “We’re leaving.”

  “Of course you’re going to blame me,” Gloria said. “You always do.”

  “Stop it!” Abby yelled. “You’re upsetting Matt.”

  Lana turned, and there was Matt, leaning back against the wall, holding his ears, rocking, coping the only way he knew how. He struck his ears with his fists once, twice. Swung his arms wide to do it again and Byron lunged for him, planted his palms on the wall over Matt’s head, his elbows beside Matt’s ears, so that Matt’s blows landed on Byron’s biceps. Matt pummeled harder, fighting to get to his skull through Byron’s protective bubble.

  “Hey, man,” Byron said, gritting his teeth to fend Matt off. “It’s okay. Let’s get out of here. We can sketch in the bedroom. We can go outside and see some of those monster bugs.”

  Matt swung harder, wilder, struck Byron’s shoulders, rib cage, flailing. Byron stood strong, refusing to let a single punch land on Matt’s body. Lana tried to step in.

  “I got it,” Byron said. “He’ll tire out.”

  “He’s hurting you,” Lana said. “It should be me.”

  Matt landed a punch hard near Byron’s kidneys and Byron flinched, lost his footing. As he fell, Lana stepped forward, but Abby beat her to the spot. Abby got her arms around Matt, her hands in fists behind his shoulders. Matt’s entire body shook, and Abby shook with him, but she didn’t let go. She flopped around like a rag doll.

  “What about calling Susan?” Abby asked. “Have you told her about the Vizsla? The Rainbow Girl? The picture we took together?”

  Matt was tiring out, trying to shake Abby off, but unable to do so. He made a bleating noise as he pivoted his body repeatedly. He tried to face the wall, but Abby’s body got in the way. He tried again and again, slamming Abby into the wall.

  Lana wedged herself between Abby and Matt, eased Abby’s arms from around his neck. Once free, Matt turned and struck his forehead on the wall. He planted his hands on the wall and drummed his head against it, like he had when he was four. A steady, even rhythm, knocking his brain about in his skull.

  “It’s okay, Matt. It’s over,” Lana said. Matt kept bumping the wall with his head. She put her mouth next to his ear, tried whispering a soothing “Shhhh,” like she had to her kids when they were toddlers winding down from a tantrum. Matt started humming. Lana felt him coming back. “We still need to get you your ice cream. You didn’t have it yet, right?”

  Matt stopped hitting his head. He still had his forehead against the wall, but he twisted to look at Lana, peering at her sideways. He nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I still need my ice cream. Vanilla. With chocolate sauce.”

  “I’ll get it,” Becca said.

  “No,” Lana said. “I’d like to do it.”

  Lana glared at Gloria as she escorted Matt to the kitchen. He so rarely had episodes like this anymore, and this one was small compared to the ones he used to have. Surely she could see the meds were helping to curtail them? Gloria just shook her head at Lana, stubborn to the end.

  Matt sat down at the kitchen table and continued rocking, ever so slightly, and humming a tune Lana couldn’t place. He had a hard red lump forming on his forehead. She served him and then got herself a heaping bowl as well. To hell with the calories. She sat across from Matt and watched him eat. Each bite seemed to soothe him a little more, until he wasn’t rocking at all, just eating steady, perfectly measured bites.

  “Their freezer is set too cold,” he said. “The ice cream gets too hard.” He held up the chunk of ice cream on his spoon to show her.

  “Maybe they just have too much stuff crammed into the freezer. It doesn’t run right when it’s too full.”

  “I like your ice cream better,” Matt said.

  Lana smiled. “Me, too.”

  A few minutes later Byron came in, then Abby, then Becca. They all huddled around the too-small table and ate dessert in silence. Abby had fresh fruit with whipped cream on top. She took one bite, smiled at Lana, and nearly brought Lana to tears.

  “I love you,” Lana said to her. “My fierce little girl.” Abby smiled and opened her mouth, baby-bird-style, to show Lana the pulverized food in there. It was something Abby had done as a child: disgusting and adorable at once. Lana covered Abby’s mouth, but couldn’t help smiling.

  Byron was sweaty and disheveled, eating the remainder of the ice cream straight from the container. His muscles were still flexed, the tendons in his neck straining against his skin. Lana rubbed his shoulder. “We’ll talk about the drinking later.”

  “I don’t drink. She misunderstood,” he said to his ice cream. “I
swear.”

  “Okay. Good. Hey.” Lana shook his tense shoulder until he looked at her. “I love you. And I’m crazy proud of you. The way you jumped in there to protect him.” Byron lowered his shoulders, shoveled a heaping scoop of ice cream into his mouth, opened his mouth Abby-style to show Lana the melting ice cream in there.

  “Disgusting,” Lana said, smiling. Byron laughed so hard the ice cream rolled off his tongue and back into the container. He shrugged and scooped it back into his mouth. Everyone at the table groaned.

  Lana locked eyes with Becca, who gave her a nod of approval. “You love me best, right?” Becca asked.

  Lana snorted. “Despite the fact that your positivity is a royal pain in my ass, I mostly love you, yes,” Lana told her.

  Becca laughed. “I do what I can.”

  Lana turned to Matt. “I’m sorry I lost my temper, Matt. And—”

  “I love you,” Matt said quickly. He looked up and smiled, playful and happy, bright eyes flashing, the episode long gone. “I said it first.”

  “You did,” Lana said. It was the first time she’d heard him say those words. She wondered what they meant to him. If he had any idea how much they meant to her.

  Jack came in and took in the scene. “Your mother went to bed. She isn’t feeling well,” he said.

  “Is she okay?” Lana asked. “For real?”

  Jack came up behind Lana and stroked her hair. “We all do the best we can with what we’ve got.” He kissed her head, bade them all good night, and went off to bed.

  One by one the rest followed suit until only Lana and Becca were left, loading the ice-cream dishes into the dishwasher.

  “I know it’s hard, but you have to forgive them,” Becca said.

  “The hell I do. That’d be basically telling them it was okay to forget about us.”

  Becca leaned against the counter, blocking the dishwasher until Lana met her eyes. “No, it isn’t. In my first session, my Reiki healer told me: forgiveness isn’t forgetting, it’s just saying, Here, this is yours, and I will no longer carry it. Think about that.”