He waits for my answer.
"Lydia," he says. My mind catches up, his words coming to me like I'm breaking the surface of water.
"Zip lining," I say. He laughs.
"Be sure to check the trees," he says. Then he pivots around, as if he's searching for something in my apartment. "Speaking of trees...where's yours?"
The Mojito in my head drains away. Whoa.
"I don't put up a tree," I say.
"No Christmas tree? How come?"
"I'm a Grinch. Totally am." I drop my forearm across my forehead, relieved that the Mojito-craving-that-could've-swallowed-Manhattan has left the building. A headache takes root in its absence. "God, my head is throbbing."
"You want some aspirin?"
"No," I say. I should say yes, but even drinking water reminds me of drinking and I'm afraid that the Mojito craving will come back. I'm afraid I'll start begging for it and that I'll get so nuts, Aidan might actually give in. Or leave. "Is this ever going to get easier?"
"Yes," he says and he says it so solidly, I almost believe it's not bullshit. Almost. "You want some toast?"
"No."
"Soup?"
"No."
"Eggs?"
"No food," I groan. A weather warning suddenly ticker-tapes in red across the bottom of the TV screen.
"Expect sixteen to eighteen inches of snow. Huh, they upped it," Aidan says. I twist on the couch to peer out the window. It's already coming down. When I turn back, Aidan smiles at me.
"Good thing we don't have to go anywhere," he says.
"Don't you have to work?" It occurs to me that I've never asked and have no idea what he does for a living.
"I work from home. Software design. I can take a few days off."
"A few days? Your boss is okay with that?"
"Best boss in the world," he says. "I'm self-employed. What about you?"
"What about me?" I know where this is headed--down a huge, personal slope. He knows I've said I didn't know what I wanted to be and he knows I've said I'm in home design, even though he's obviously never bought it. Feeling this sick and fidgety, with my foot in his lap, I definitely don't have the armor I need right now to deflect him the way I should. "I get by. Let's just leave at that, okay?"
Surprisingly, he shrugs and looks back at the TV.
"Okay," he says and the pressure of his fingers remains even. I lay back and stare at the TV until his steady massage puts me to sleep.
<<<<>>>>
"I'll be right back." Aidan wakes me with a kiss on the forehead. I push myself up on the couch and glance out the window. It's still snowing--huge fat flakes have already covered the neighborhood. The news ticker is constant at the bottom of the screen now, flashing warnings that no one should go out, the roads are a mess, the whole world is shutting down.
"How long have I been asleep?"
"A few hours," he says, pulling on his coat.
"Where are you going?" I cinch the blanket a little tighter around me as I sit up, a desperate panic building inside me at the sight of him putting on his shoes.
"Just a few supplies. Before it gets really bad."
"Look out the window! It's already really bad."
"I won't be long."
He leaves a kiss on my forehead and he's gone before I can really beg.
For the next hour, the only thing I do is focus all my concentration on staying put on the couch, instead of throwing on a coat and sneaking out to the liquor store. I drink water. Water sucks. I sip the warm smoothie Aidan made. It sucks worse. I try to envision Aidan walking through the door, as if wishes will make it reality, and then I'm furious when it doesn't work.
I get up and float around the room like a dizzy top, putting on my coat and taking it off. My mind runs a circular track of excuses and justifications, demands and resolutions, around and around again. I tell myself that Aidan will be back at any minute and he'll catch me leaving. Or worse, that he'll catch me returning with the empty bottle that I would choke down on the way back from the store. The whole thing is infuriating and humiliating. Why did he have to fucking leave?
Aidan uses my own keys an hour later to let himself back in with a grocery bag and a bag of take out from Burger Alley. I'm back on the couch, lying flat with my blanket tucked in tight around me like a straitjacket.
"You look...comfortable." He laughs. With him here, I can release myself from my fabric confinement. "Come see what I got."
I take the first deep breath that I've taken since he left. The calm he brings to me is palpable as I stand at the edge of the kitchen counter and watch him unpack the bag.
I assumed he was off getting staples, like eggs and milk and bread to surf out the storm, but he ends up pulling out a bag of flour and a canister of salt, along with two kid's paint sets. I look at the connected rainbow of paint pots, complete with cheap brushes, and then, at him. He went to the fucking store to get paint sets? While I'm fighting a fucking war here in my head? He smiles when I frown.
"You needed paint?" I say slowly. "That's why you had to go to the store?"
He nods. "I've got plenty of food in my apartment to get us through, but since we're stuck inside, we need something to do."
"Do," I repeat. We're going to paint-by-number? I really don't know what Aidan expects from me. It's taking all my focus to stay inside this apartment and not throw myself from the window.
<<<<>>>>
"Christmas is coming quick," he says, going into the kitchen. "Only a couple of weeks, so I got something to get you in the spirit. But first, we eat."
I grip the edge of the counter, still a little wobbly and still a little pissed. He unpacks the carry out next, arranging the food on two of my mismatched plates and pushes one across the counter to me.
I push it back. "I'm not hungry."
"Eating is a habit you have to get back into," he says, shoving the plate toward me again.
"No thanks."
He shrugs, biting off half of a fry. "It's not an option."
"What's that supposed to mean? You're going to stuff burgers down my throat?"
"Nope. Your recovery is up to you, Lydia. But I'm telling you, if you want to get well, you're going to have to start taking care of your body, so it can keep living."
Just what I want to do right now. Get myself healthy so I can fully enjoy this aggravated, pissed off, itching-for-a-drink bag of guts. I give the plate too hard of a push back at him. It slides straight off the edge of the counter and shatters at Aidan's feet. He doesn't even jump out of the way. He just plucks another fry from his own plate and glances down at the mess on the floor.
I feel like a dick. But an agitated, justified dick. I don't want to eat, the end.
Aidan steps over the mess and swings open the cupboard under the sink.
"What do you know?" he says with amused surprise. He pulls out a dustpan and mini-broom, sweeps up the mess, and dumps it in the trash. I watch his every move, waiting for a real reaction. I wait for him to turn and yell in my face about what I did. Or try to stuff the floor-burger down my throat.
He doesn't.
He gets down another plate. He takes out a knife and cuts his burger in half. He slides the half burger and half of his fries onto the new plate and pushes it over to me.
"Eat, Lydia," he says gently. "It will make you feel better."
Doubtful. But, staring across the counter at his serene face, I feel like an even bigger idiot. I pick up a fry and look away as I stick the end in my mouth. It tastes like greasy cardboard. From my peripheral, Aidan smiles at me and I take another.
<<<<>>>>
I eat everything on the plate, even though it takes effort to get it down. The only thing worse than eating when there is zero appetite, is feeling like there never will be one again.
"Do you have cookie cutters?" Aidan asks. I snort.
"Yeah right."
"I didn't think so. How about a big bowl?"
I just stare at him. He's got to be kidding. I've got a kit
chen designed by Bacardi Crocker.
"I have a blender," I say.
He opens and closes cupboards, but finally pulls out the only saucepan I have. I used it to make baked beans once.
"What are you trying to do?" I ask.
"It's a surprise," he says, but his surprise becomes annoyingly dull to me as he starts stirring his flour-water-salt concoction on a stove burner.
But then, everything seems dull. Painting my nails--snore. Going to the movies--I don't care. Even the idea of going shopping, with the fat stash Des left, doesn't ignite any sparks of interest in me. It scares me a little that I've stopped drinking and now the whole world seems a washed-out shade of nothing. I might need the booze just to live in color. I shiver.
Aidan catches it.
"Why don't you go cover up on the couch? This is going to take me a few minutes. Grab a nap, if you want."
A nap. I roll my eyes at him, but it makes me a little dizzy. I turn around and head to the couch. A nap. Like I'm a fucking toddler. Under the blanket, the burger and fries sink in my stomach like placing an anchor and I'm asleep in minutes
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IMPERFECT SNOWFLAKES
I wake up to a full blown cookie factory happening in my kitchen. Unsatisfied with my lack of kitchen utensils, Aidan's dragged over most of his. There are cookie sheets and bowls and spoons and a wire rack with weirdly shaped cookies cooling on it.
Aidan's pulling something out of the oven when I show up at the counter. I slip a misshapen star off the cooling rack. They look horrible, shaped without cutters. I bite the tip off the star and as he turns around with a sheet of hot cookies clenched in a foreign oven mitt, he catches me spitting out the bite I took. He laughs.
"No good?" he says.
"Worst ever! Awful! They're hard as rocks! What did you do?"
"That's because they're not cookies. They're tree ornaments," he chuckles. He spatulas the new cookies--majorly fucked-up Christmas trees--onto the wire rack beside his other hideous masterpieces. "We made these every year when I was a kid. Salt dough. It's tradition."
They look like a little kid still made them.
I think it might be a good sign that my angst isn't rushing out of my mouth like vomit anymore.
I inspect the bitten star in my hand a little more closely. The salt glitters a little. "You're really into this Christmas tree idea, aren't you."
"I am."
"So," I turn the beige-ish thing over in my palm before placing it back down on the cooling rack with the others, "it's going to be an ugly Christmas."
"That's what the paints are for." He nudges the kiddie paint sets. Ahhh. "We need something to do."
"We do?" I can think of far better things. Well, if I didn't feel so sick. At least, thinking of them provides a bland flicker of interest.
"To get your mind off things," he says. I wonder if he was reading my mind just now. Probably not, since he is merrily carrying on, fucking-up another batch of what I think he means to be snowflakes. I watch shape a ball of dough for a minute, before taking a glob for myself. I start shaping a fucked-up snowflake too. He glances at me from his obliteration of an ornament and a smile flicks over his lips before he goes back to what he's doing.
<<<<>>>>
We are at it all day. I use up all the white paint on three snowflake ornaments and then, to conserve on the other colors, I stick to doing only highlights on plain ornaments. Who would've ever thought that Lydia Strong, with her wild lingerie and sky-high heels, would be enjoying painting ornaments like a preschooler?
But, in between ornaments, I do try to revert back to the normal Lydia and get busy with Aidan, but he's not having any of it. He deflects it in a million clever ways.
"How are you doing those swirls?" he asks when I lean across the couch toward him for the fourth time.
"Great," I say, relaxing back onto my end cushion. He doesn't mention the crankiness or the attitude that I continue to throw at him. He can't, really, since he's the one causing it by refusing to kiss me.
Aidan only does a few ornaments and gives up, leaving the rest of his paint for me. Good thing, too. I'm obsessed. Painting dots and swirls and slashes on misshapen ornaments is the only thing that is keeping my mind off drinking. And keeping my mind off him...for the most part. It seems like every time I think to look at the clock, at least another hour has ticked by.
For the next two days, all it does is keep on snowing and all I do is make dough ornaments. Aidan sits on the other end of the couch, tapping away on his computer, and I huddle on the other, sculpting ornaments on top of a coffee table book that I'm using like a tiny desk.
It would be embarrassing, if it wasn't the one thing that is keeping me focused in the right direction. Aidan is like good furniture, quiet and comforting to have around. He stays over every night, sleeping on the opposite side of my bed, as immobile and chaste as an old Amish man. Even when I mold up against him, he does absolutely nothing to retaliate with the hard-on that results from the contact. When I reach out and grip it, his hand only closes over mine and then gently moves me away. It's maddening, but I don't want him to leave, so I roll over and stew quietly on my side of the mattress.
<<<<>>>>
In only days, I have reached a haughty, pro-level status in the area of preschool-ornament design. My only addiction now is getting more salt and flour when I run out. I empty Aidan's apartment before I hit up Mrs. Lowt.
"Can I borrow four cups of flour and a cup of salt?" I ask her when she answers her door.
"Lydia?" She forces her enormous glasses up the bridge of her nose and squints at me through the lenses as if I'm the alien here. "How are you doing? You look different."
"I've had the flu..."
"You look thinner, but your face has good color," Mrs. Lowt says. I smile, patiently. I need her salt. And flour.
"Do you have any craft paints I could borrow?" I ask.
"Craft paint? I don't think so."
"How about the flour and salt?"
"I have that. Come in." She walks away from the open door.
I've never once been in Mrs. Lowt's apartment and I can't remember a time that she's been in mine, other than to unlock the door when I couldn't drunkenly figure which of the three doorknobs to put my key into.
Stepping inside her place makes me feel like I'm on a weird drug trip. It's like walking into a mirror image of my place, but the furniture is all poufy and brown and the place smells like old cardboard and ham. A table-top Christmas tree sits, tinseled-up, on a table big enough for two. Her apartment is also spotlessly clean. A white cat sits like a statue on a carpeted ledge affixed to the windowsill. I had no idea she had a cat.
I follow Mrs. Lowt to the edge of her wrap-around kitchen counter. As she opens gold canisters and scoops out flour and salt for me, I try to pet her cat. I reach a hand out and the moment I make contact with the hairs of its back, the animal springs up and comes down hissing at me.
"Oh, oh, oh," Mrs. Lowt clucks as she drops the measuring cup in the canister and rushes around the counter. She gets between me and her unsociable fur ball, scooping up the hissing thing in her arms. "Now Peaches...behave yourself. He's deaf, you understand...you just startled him is all."
The animal's ears are flat and remain so, even as Mrs. Lowt tries to soothe it with strokes down its back. Peaches shows me his exact level of comfort and acceptance with a sour, unrelenting glare and a growl that emanates from deep in his throat.
"He's precious," I say. Mrs. Lowt chuckles.
"Well, we've been together a long time. Once Patrick died, Peaches was all I had left. I've spoiled him too much for him to act like this to guests. He's just not used to visitors."
I blink at her. I've always thought of her as my obscenely nosey, horny neighbor. I had no idea she didn't have enough visitors to calm down her nasty cat or that she'd ever had a Patrick.
"Patrick was your husband?" I ask.
"Yes." She smiles and her mind seems to drift away
from the living room, even as she continues to push down Peaches’ growling head with her heavily affectionate strokes. "Forty-seven years we were together. He was a good husband. A very good man."
She snaps out of her daydream and dumps Peaches on the floor. He tears away as if his tail is on fire, his claws scratching across the carpet for traction. The last thing I see is the bent tip of his tail as he hauls ass around the corner and down the abbreviated hall to her bedroom. Mrs. Lowt hustles back into the kitchen and resumes scooping flour into a zip-top baggie for me.
"Aidan reminds me of him," Mrs. Lowt says. "Not in looks--Patrick wasn't so tall and he was a good German boy. A big man, with round cheeks and he was always ruddy, as if he'd been out in a strong wind all day."
"So they look nothing alike," I chuckle.
"No. But it's Aidan's way that reminds me of Patrick. My Patrick was a man that would do anything for you. Anything at all." Her eyes cut to me, over the top of her glasses. They're large and green and there isn't much sparkle to them, but for what her eyes lack in luster, they make up for in the wisdom that emanates from her stare. How did I miss it before? "I see how Aidan's been spending time at your apartment, Lydia. Nights."
I'm suddenly warm, the heat concentrating in my cheeks.
"I've been sick," I say.
"Like I said, he's one of those men that would do anything for you," Mrs. Lowt says, zipping shut the bag and moving to her canister of salt. Once she begins pouring into her measuring cup, her eyes are back on me. "Don't throw that one away, Lydia. In fact, don't you let him get away. Lock him in there if you've got to."
She winks. I roll my eyes and Mrs. Lowt stops pouring to shake her measuring cup at me.
"I know what I'm talking about, Lydia. You should listen."
"I am," I insist. "It's just that Aidan and I are neighbors. That's it."
Mrs. Lowt zips the salt baggie shut and hands both to me with a sigh.
"Such a shame," she says. "Walls as thin as shoeboxes and all we are is neighbors. I live closer to you than my own son."
Stronger Page 14
