With an odd look, Helen let Cass pull Laura away.
She remembered the murmur of voices, the dull clank of dishware rattling and doors closing. She was tucked in her bed in her T-shirt and panties. Her hands were hot. The sheets were cool. Someone turned out the light.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Helen woke with a start. With a groan she saw that the clock said it was still before seven. The kids needed to get up for school.
Her head felt like lead. She thought that at most she'd only been asleep for an hour or so. She hoped they'd fared better. Laura was probably still asleep-at least Helen hoped she was. Whatever had upset her so much last night, it had taken a heavy toll.
Both children had overslept. She rousted Julie into the shower and lured Justin to the kitchen with microwaved hors d'oeuvres. There was a howling wind outside the windows but brilliant sunshine was pouring across the breakfast table. She found hats and coats, anticipating the argument about wearing them because in California it was a point of pride not to need such things, and set them next to the door. After that she swapped her robe for basic sweats and a hoodie-it was too early to care about anything but being warm.
The kids were both in the kitchen now. She had nearly pushed open the door when she realized they were talking about her.
"I always thought Cass was in love with Mom." That was Justin. "And I wondered if they were really a couple, I guess, when I first realized that they could be. But I really don't think anything ever happened."
"I'm not all that surprised that Mom is gay," Julie said. "Do you ever wonder about Mom and Laura?"
"No-thinking about Mom's love life makes me a little queasy. I don't want the details unless it means more eats like this."
"I want our mother to be happy and all you want is for your stomach to be happy."
Only mildly guilty about eavesdropping, Helen pushed her way into the kitchen. "Did you guys get enough breakfast?"
The duet of "Yes, Mom" implied she had asked a stupid question. Julie had heated up more leftovers from the party-the delicious goat cheese puffs with fig jam. Well, Helen thought, it's a better breakfast than a PopTart.
They both acquiesced to hats and coats and she walked them down to the lobby to wait for the car that would take them to school. When it didn't show on time, they managed a cab. She'd have to call and complain. Reliable service was essential.
She scurried into the elevator, which was slightly warmer. She'd ask for something super-warming for dinner. Glad to be alone for the short ride up, she chastised herself, "You're just like Justin, thinking with your stomach. Do you even love this woman? Or do you love her cooking?"
The answer was in the shiver between her legs and the sensation of thick heat running down her spine. It was the same feeling that had overwhelmed her last night in the kitchen, looking at Laura's strong and beautiful face. Never in her life had she thought she would die if she didn't kiss somebody, but she had felt like that last night. Like an adolescent with no self-control, she had kissed the woman with no warning. What must Laura think?
Laura, she reminded herself, had kissed her back. It had been almost playful, almost as if Laura knew it was the only way to shut Helen up so she could get back to work.
Was Cass in the picture? Cass had been so gentle with Laura last night. If Laura loved Cass that would be hard, very hard. She'd be happy for them both and completely miserable at the same time.
Why had Laura flipped out like that? It had been so out of character-something had definitely snapped. She was exhausted, and that was your fault, Helen chided herself. She hoped she didn't have to get Laura exhausted again to garner another kiss. Today, while the kids were at school, they had a chance to talk. Yes, talking was important. All she wanted to do was…talk.
When she stepped inside the condo she smelled coffee. She found Laura wrapped in her dark green terry cloth robe, sipping from a mug and seated at the breakfast table. The sun was dancing all around her and cast her skin in a deep, rich gold.
"That smells good," Helen said quietly.
"I hoped you'd be back. I can't believe I slept this late."
"It's not even half-past seven. I can't believe I'm up. Besides, you're entitled. You were really worn out."
The silence Helen had been dreading fell. She didn't know where to start.
Laura had another swallow of coffee and said, "I freaked out last night."
Helen would have rather talked about kisses, but she would let Laura set the topic. "Cass was right. Whatever it is, you don't have to be alone."
"It's a solo job. No one can do it for me."
"That's not the same thing." She joined Laura at the table, sitting across from her. The sun felt gloriously inappropriate to the chill in the room. "Are you and Cass in love?" She instantly regretted the question. Could she be more self-centered?
Laura looked at her then, eyebrows raised. "Why on earth would you think that?"
"You and she-last night she put you to bed."
"That was Cass? Oh. I like Cass, I like her a lot. I think she likes me. But that's all there is." She frowned into her coffee. "Just because we're both lesbians and we like each other doesn't mean we automatically fall in love."
"I know that."
"I don't love Cass. Not romantically."
"Good." She hadn't meant to say that, not at all. Maybe she ought to have scripted some of this conversation-it would have helped.
"Why is that good?"
"Because… Because you're not right for each other. That's why. That's why…it's good. And everything." You're babbling, she told herself. She felt thirteen. "Tell me about last night, then. About…" Her gaze went to Laura's hands. They were more scraped and raw than she had thought.
"I was afraid that the coke would get into me because I'd touched it. I'm not sorry I ruined his stash. I hope he doesn't make trouble for you."
What had possessed Laura to hurt herself that much? "Neiman is an ass. I don't know who brought him along, but he wasn't on the guest list."
Laura's eyes darkened and there was a glimmer of tears. "I can't be near it, Helen. I know in my heart that I will never use again. Alcoholics can handle watching other people drink-many of them. But I can't be near cocaine. The self-doubt saps my confidence. A daily confrontation with the reality that the temptation never completely goes away-it's corrosive. I don't want that in my life."
Pieces of the puzzle of last night met up with Laura's earlier words and the truth finally assembled in her brain. Idiot, she thought, obsessing over your own feelings when Laura's trying to tell you something, something really huge. She felt a shiver in her heart, then was washed over by an immense stillness. The sunlight dimmed. Words formed across her mind's eye as if her brain had a typewriter: She is an addict.
Her first response was visceral. That idiot Neiman and Laura had nothing in common-except they did. A bad something. She didn't know where to look or what to do with her hands. No script, nothing to guide her. That Laura didn't use drugs didn't change the fact that she was an addict. Laura said she'd never use again, but last night she had been so upset-and not at all the Laura Helen was realizing she loved.
How many young talents had she seen fall into the pit of drugs, alcohol and parties? They were drawn to the atmosphere as if it were the only one in which they could breathe. Most lost their roles and disappeared into the streets. She'd been party to the sobbed apologies, the contrition, the acceptance of responsibility during temporary sobriety, then the misery after falling back into using again.
"What..." She cleared her throat. "What all did you use?"
Laura's expression was wooden. She kept her gaze on her hands. "It has always been cocaine. It will always be cocaine. There are addicts all through my mother's family in Jamaica. Somehow, it's in my blood. To crave it."
"Do you?"
"Almost never."
"Almost?"
Laura snorted. "That's the problem. Almost. That's what my addiction has become. The d
ifference between almost never and never."
"I didn't expect this." She blinked back tears.
Laura's lips had gone almost gray. She put a shaking hand to her head. "I have wanted to tell you but I could never find the right time. The last woman I told threw me out on the spot."
The California blonde? Cass had said it hadn't ended well. Was that what had gone wrong? What a fool, Helen thought. There-though her head was spinning, she knew that anyone who didn't hear Laura out, didn't try to understand, was a fool. "Why did you use? I guess I mean when and why."
Laura leaned heavily on her elbows. It twisted at Helen's heart to see shame flicker over the face she had only ever seen confident and proud.
"The first time because I was young and stupid. I thought I was smarter than my addicted, wastrel relatives. I had my mother's brains, and I worked and was on the way to making something of myself. I thought I wouldn't get hooked. The second time was even stupider, and I'd even been warned. We're all warned that there will come a day in sobriety when you're convinced you're cured. It's like Julie and the pink frosting. She ate it hoping she was cured. So you use to prove you're not an addict anymore. I'm not..." She shrugged. "I'm not a functional addict. Some people are. I have two uncles I could never tell were high. They use and go about their lives, only partially impaired. Not me. I get really manic, then crash. I managed to find a sponsor. I started over. I was still in the AA system-back then that's pretty much what there was for all substance abusers. It didn't seem so hard to crawl back and I did it."
Laura was silent for so long that Helen prompted her with, "Is there more?"
She nodded and a tear spilled over, shining like an impossible diamond in the incongruous sunlight.
"Did something bad happen to you? Push you over some kind of edge?" If I learn what that is I can protect her, Helen thought.
"No, that's not it." She took a deep breath. "I mean, yes, I went over an edge, but I did it to myself. And even now it still hurts. Mostly the impotence I guess. That...I was too young to see what she had done for me."
"Your mother?"
"She died when I was a teenager."
"I know," Helen said softly. "You said the other night."
"About eight or nine years ago my father died." She gave a ghost of a smile. "I fell off the wagon shortly after that. I've been sober for three thousand forty-two days since."
"But you hardly knew him. Why would his death drive you to…"
Laura turned her palms up. Her face was a mix of pain and shame. "I knew he was a bastard just from how he treated me when I got shipped back to America after my mother died. But I really had no grip on what a bastard he was. My Jamaican kin hoped I'd get sent back to them with money to keep me there, but instead he decided to hide me from his own family and mine. I was glad not to go back to Jamaica. I had no more contact with him and I didn't want any. I asked for nothing from him once I could support myself-which was when I graduated from high school. There is nothing of him in me except DNA."
She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked down at her hands. "A few weeks later I got a letter from a lawyer with a nominal inheritance check to make it so I couldn't claim I'd been forgotten. I gave the money to a girls' school. But after that I got another packet from a different lawyer. Since both parties were now deceased and the suit hadn't been-oh, there's a legal word for it that I don't remember. Anyway, my mother had tried to sue for support for me all along. Because she wasn't a citizen she had a lot of trouble, plus she had very little money to pay a lawyer. Ultimately, she failed because she took me out of the jurisdiction, to Jamaica. But in the documents were her sworn statements about how..."
Her voice broke and Helen went to the sink for a glass of water. Laura accepted it with a murmured thank you. Their fingertips touched. The longing to hold her was so intense that Helen shuddered. Though she could focus on what Laura was saying, there was a fugue in her head. Protect myself, protect the kids, protect myself… It might be too late for her, but she had to protect Justin and Julie. She knew that Laura would never deliberately hurt either of them. That was the problem with addicts-once they used they could hurt everyone around them without meaning to. It tore at her heart, the idea that she might have to protect them from the one person they had all grown to trust without question.
Laura spoke again, her voice thick with old and bitter grief. "He had coerced her. He took her for another illiterate near-slave from the Caribbean who existed for his pleasure. She was in the U.S. on a paper-thin student grant that required she have a job. He threatened to fire her and report her to INS as a prostitute, which he'd done before to other young women he employed. She...capitulated. She was a math whiz and all she wanted was to be a teacher. It wasn't a big dream, was it? Not so much to ask."
"No, not so much for anyone to ask," Helen said gently.
"When she told him she was pregnant, he still told the INS she was a prostitute. He tried to get her deported while she was pregnant. It took all the fight she had to stay, stay long enough to have me here. My life was immeasurably changed, in every aspect, because I was an American citizen. She gave me that when my father tried-with all his resources-to keep it from me. And we stayed for eight more years because she worked all the time and couldn't be deported because I was a citizen. Every day, nights, weekends, as a hotel maid. I knew when I was in the first grade how to walk home from the bus, let myself in, make dinner for myself. A neighbor checked on me and locked me in. I learned how to be alone. But someone reported her to child services-it said in the papers-and she decided to go home rather than risk me being forced on my father. She didn't trust him. But I didn't know anything about any of that. All I knew was that she had dumped me among people who hated me. I missed America. I was mean to her, and a brat. Cruel and selfish. And then she died."
More tears escaped but Laura didn't seem to notice. "I was so angry with her for taking me to Jamaica. She drowned at the beach. I thought she was weak, but all she wanted was something better for herself and me-and she didn't ask to have me. She didn't get pregnant because she was sleeping around. That bastard-he-"
She took a long, shuddering breath. "I didn't look up a meeting, I didn't try to call a sponsor and I should have. I hadn't spent any time creating a support net for myself if things got too much because I was arrogant and sure I was stronger than it was. No, instead, I went to a bar. Someone was dealing, of course someone was dealing. I got drunk and then I bought, which is the classic, stupid cocaine addict pattern. Young and stupid is one thing. But thirty-something and twice back from using and falling into it again-that's something else. I didn't think I could be such a fool. But I was. And I can't deny that I could be again, in spite of all my intentions otherwise. I was stupid once. How can I trust myself, really?"
Her mouth was twisted with a self-loathing bitterness that shocked Helen. How could Laura hate herself when she was such a strong and competent woman?
"I knew better and I still walked in the front door of that bar of my own free will."
Helen let out the breath she'd been holding. "And that won't happen again?"
"I don't want it to. With every ounce of fight I have in me, I don't want it to. But I live with my own stupidity. I can't escape myself." After a long moment Laura went on, "One thing that might get an addict to stop using is the certain knowledge that the next one will kill her. I couldn't smell anything for four days and it was two months before I could fully smell and taste sours. I thought my life as a chef was over. It was the only life I ever wanted for myself. I spent days sobbing in AA meetings-I was in Italy of all places. I damn near lost my job but I faked it and prayed." Her word tumbled together. "My father tried to crush my mother, and look what I'd done with her sacrifices. Throwing my life away when she'd given me everything. I didn't think I deserved to get my sense of smell back, but I did. Literally, by the grace of God, which I've enjoyed far more than my fair share of. I never want to use again, Helen. I don't know how to make you believ
e me when I can't trust myself enough to believe it. But never again. The monster never dies, but I will not let it be the death of me."
Seeming to have run out of words, Laura slumped forward to rest her forehead on her arms.
Helen automatically sipped her coffee but couldn't taste it. She wanted to say that none of it mattered, that she believed in Laura and trusted her, but if she did, wasn't that dismissing one of the strongest shaping forces of Laura's life? "I want to be sure I'm hearing you." Hell, was she resorting to psychobabble? "If you'll never use again, I don't understand what was so upsetting last night."
Laura raised her head. Her eyes were bleak, like a night without stars. "Just because I will never stop fighting the monster doesn't mean I'm not afraid of it. I am afraid of it. I know how strong it is. Pretending it doesn't have the power to kill me gives it more power. I don't ever want to put myself in harm's way again. Sometimes…" Her voice broke. "Sometimes running away is the best way not to lose."
Helen's heart was hammering so high in her throat she couldn't speak. For the first time in her life she considered that something might mean more to her than even the next time the curtain went up. Without Laura, without the pulse of Laura in her life, all the stages went dark. How had that happened? Yet another thing she'd thought impossible.
She reached across the table to cover Laura's hands gently with her own. "I don't really know how to put it all into words. Guess I need a script sometimes, huh?" Laura gave her a wan smile. "I understand what a struggle this is, I know it isn't easy, and I know I really have no idea just what the struggle does to you. But I know you can do this, and that you have done it. But you don't have to do it all by yourself. It's like having an operation-it only happens to you, but you're allowed to have someone else bring you soup and love."
She steadied her voice, because the most important thing she needed to say was still to come. "I don't think I can handle it if you leave me. I-"
The front door slammed. It was so unexpected that Helen jumped. Laura scrubbed at her eyes and pulled her robe more tightly closed.
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