Stronger (20 page)
Authors: Misty Provencher
"I'll be right there," he says and flicks off the phone.
"What's going on?"
"Natalie," he says grimly. He's already on his way to my front door. "She tried committing suicide last night. I've got to get down to the hospital."
"Holy shit," I say. Aidan frowns, pushing on his shoes. He's out the door, circling back for his coat, and dropping a kiss on my cheek--like we're some old married couple--before he leaves. I watch him go down the hall from my door. He rubs the back of his neck as curses the elevator for taking so long and finally bolts down the stairwell instead.
Mrs. Lowt's door opens before I close mine.
"What's going on now, Lydia?" she asks. "Everything is so busy here lately."
"A friend of Aidan's...Shane...his wife tried to kill herself last night." The words are all hollow and strange coming off my tongue. They feel like lies, since I knew Natalie too. She wanted to be my sponsor. Maybe I did this to her by turning her down. It couldn't be that. But maybe that added to it.
"Poor thing," Mrs. Lowt says as my mind races to determine if I am responsible for this. Suddenly, Mrs. Lowt's hand is on my arm and I realize the
poor thing
she means is me, not Natalie. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I hardly knew her...I only met her a couple times," I say.
And none of them were good.
I don't say that, even though I'm thinking it. The guilt accumulates, hovers.
And immediately, the haunting thought surfaces--
the liquor store is only down the street.
"Would you like to come in and sit for a while?" Mrs. Lowt asks.
I could be there and back and drunk before Aidan returns. I could hide the bottle; he'd never know. He might not be back until late.
"That would be good," I tell her and let her lead me into her apartment, instead of retreating back into the emptiness of mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Merry?
I stay at Mrs. Lowt's probably longer than what is polite, but she makes me homemade potato soup for lunch and then, when I tell her I should go, she insists on me staying for dessert with her. I'm relieved.
"I made cookies," she says, pulling a platter from the cold oven. She sets it down in front of me; a pile of red and white twists, shaped like candy canes. "Tonight is probably off, so we should enjoy them now. Have one."
I take one, close my eyes and savor the almond taste that melts on my tongue. My reaction leaves a proud smile on my neighbor's face.
"I leave the peppermint sprinkles off," Mrs. Lowt says. "They're better this way, I think."
"Me too," I say. "How many can I eat before you throw me out?"
"Oh no, I would never throw you out, Lydia," she says. The warmth in her voice attracts my eyes and I see the sparkle of lonely tears in hers. She's been my neighbor for years, watching over me and getting my door open when I was too drunk to do it myself, shouting her advise to me as she goosed the rears of the trouble I always brought home. In her funny way, Mrs. Lowt has always been there for me. I can hardly help myself as I reach across the counter and grasp her hand. Her fingers are softly pleated with age, but when she squeezes my hand back, she's got the strength of a man.
"Thank you, Mrs. Lowt."
"
Eleanor, Lydia. My name is Eleanor Esmeralda Lowt, but my real friends have always called me Merry."
"That's perfect." It's hard to take another bite around my wide smile. Mrs. Lowt's reflects my own.
"Sometimes, things are," she says, saluting me with a candy cane cookie.
<<<<>>>>
We hear Aidan call my name from across the hall and Mrs. Lowt picks up the cookie tray.
"Take the cookies," she says. "I'll make something for you kids to eat later too."
I do something I never expected to do. I hug her goodbye. And she hugs back, as warm and steady as any mother. I never expected that either.
"Alright, go," she says, releasing me. "Aidan needs you."
I step into the hallway with the cookies, pulling Mrs. Lowt door closed behind me. Aidan's facing into the open door of my apartment, his back to me. Something isn't right.
"Aidan?" I say when he doesn't turn around right away. I cross the hall and put my free hand on his arm.
He turns. His eyes are swollen and red. The scent of whiskey rolls of him like storm clouds.
"I didn't mean to," he says. My gaze travels down to the paper bag he's clutching in his hand. The open mouth of the bottle, poking from the rolled edge of the bag, forms
oh
lips, as if it is as shocked as I am.
The whiskey is a sour cloud he exhumes with a small sob. He is broken, I see it all over him, but I can't help the anger that wells up inside me.
He
is the strong one.
He
is the
rock, dammit.
If he's going to sink so easily, how am I going to make it? Who am I going to rely on?
I snatch the bottle and pound my shoulder against his as I pass into my apartment. I stomp straight into the lighted kitchen, slamming the cookie platter down on the counter. He drifts in behind me like a fading ghost. I hold my breath as I drain the rich, amber whiskey into the sink. I turn on the water full gush to wash it all away.
"I'm sorry," he says.
I rinse out the bottle and drop it in the sink. I catch sight of my ring finger then, and the tender commitment I had tattooed up my finger only a week ago. Leaning on the sink, I allow myself to droop over the empty bottle a moment longer. Then I pull up my head and take a deep breath.
"How is Natalie?" I ask.
"I'm sorry," Aidan says again. I know what he wants: absolution. When he's sober again, he'll realize that I'm not the one he needs it from.
"You need to call Leonard. If you don't, I will," I say. "But before you do, how's Natalie?"
He sniffles behind me, pulling in a breath. "She's going to be okay. They pumped her stomach." His footsteps turn, retreat, and I whip around from the sink.
"Where are you going?" I ask.
"Home."
"No you're not," I tell him. "You're staying here and sobering up."
"It's over," he says softly. "I blew it."
A fast-moving panic pierces my heart. I imagine losing Aidan--losing him lying beside me in bed, sitting at the end of my couch as he works on his computer, making dough ornaments, and walking me to meetings. When I try to erase his presence from my life, I can hardly breathe. If it's over, we're both lost.
A second wave of panic crashes into me. I really thought I could quit seeing Aidan at any time and just go about my business. I figured it might be a little sad, a little uncomfortable in the halls, but I had no idea that it might make me feel like this. Paralyzed. Destitute. Impossible.
Addicted.
In love.
I go to him, laying a hand on his shoulder, and he turns to me. His face is wet with tears. Mine quickly reflects it.
"You're staying here," I tell him as I draw him into my arms. "You need to be here, with me."
<<<<>>>>
"Merry Christmas, Lydia," she says. "Don't forget, I'm right across the hall if you need me."
She is like a fairy godmother without the wand or sparkles or musical number. As I juggle the food to close the door, I realize that Mrs. Lowt is more magical than any of that. She is more like a mother.
Aidan reeks, but I don't shove him under a shower. I don't prolong his
drunkenness with coffee. Instead, I watch him laugh as struggles to feed himself, dumping a load of biscuit crumbs down the front of himself and drooling soup from the corner of his mouth.
I've never really seen this side of
drunkenness before--the part where stupid, nothing things are hysterical and where every moronic, useless thought seems insightful. Only one of us thinks he's brilliant right now and it's not me.
I think he's repulsive this way. The Aidan I know and his appeal is completely gone. He's gone from remorseful to happy, horny drunk and I can't stand him. I shove and push him off, I can't even bring myself to laugh at this version of him.
He appears at the door of my bedroom, his belt undone.
"Fuck me," he slurs. "Come on, Lydia. You're beautiful and pretty and you smell like...cake. Fuck me."
"Shut up and go lie down," I tell him.
"You're going to come and fuck me then?"
"Yep," I say flatly. "Go lie down on the couch and wait for me. I'll be there in a few minutes."
He moans my name a few times and I ignore it. I'm relie
ved when he finally passes out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He emerges almost an hour and a half later, following a long shower, but his eyes are still swollen. I'm on the couch, a bowl of cereal waiting for him on the coffee table.
"Merry Christmas. I made you breakfast," I say, nudging the bowl toward him with my toe. He falls onto his usual cushion at the opposite end from mine.
"I'm not that hungry."
"You've got to eat. You have to re-learn the right habits," I say. I give him a tiny grin as he takes the bowl. He stares into the cereal.
"Aren't you going to ask me about yesterday?"
"No."
"I fucked up."
"I know."
"I think you should know why it happened though," he says, putting down the cereal bowl.
"I'll listen if you want to tell me."
He nods. "I was okay being there for Shane. It was awful seeing Natalie, but I was still alright until I was riding the bus back home. There's something I haven't told you, Lydia. That first night I spent with you over a year ago, I was where Natalie is right now. That night I met you, I expected that you were going to be the last fling of my life. Everything about that night was going to be the last night of my life. That girl, Marta? Her whole family is a bunch of gun enthusiasts. I had a loaded gun waiting in a drawer at her house, waiting for me to come home that night."
"Holy shit, Aidan..."
"I know. I didn't tell you this part at first because I thought that it would be all you'd ever see in me--the lowest part. I thought it would scare you away. I didn't want to tell you because it isn't me."
"Of course it's not."
"My addictions had sucked me dry." His voice quivers. "I didn't think I could ever stop drinking. I was sure I couldn't. I was more messed up then I'd ever been. I was with different women every night, my business was starting to fail because I wasn't doing the work to keep it going--I was too busy partying and I didn't even care. All I wanted to do was feel
good
, but I got to that place where no amount of anything could even make me feel just
okay
anymore
.
That night I met you, it was like a death-row inmate's last meal. I was going to do everything and do it up big, come home, and swallow a bullet."
The tears stream down both our faces, but we stay on our opposite sides of the couch, connected only by his memories and my empathy.
"But then, I met you. We came back here and had sex. It was phenomenal. I
felt
it, but then you passed out and I didn't want to leave. I wanted to wake you up and feel
what you made me feel all over again. Then, in your sleep, you started to cry. But when I held you, you stopped crying. I realized that it wasn't just about what someone else could make
me
feel. I could get a bigger rush by making someone else feel good. It changed how I was thinking about everything. I never went back to Marta's. I went to Shane and Natalie's house and met Leonard. I've never thought about doing anything like that ever again."
"Until last night." I can hardly say the words, but Aidan moves across the couch, taking my face in his hands.
"No, not even last night," he says. "But I got overwhelmed. I was scared that I'd ever gotten to that point before, that either of us might ever be where Natalie is. I started to panic, thinking about what I would do if it ever happened and the thoughts kept going. I let them pile up. I should've called Leonard, but instead, I caved. I got a fifth and I fucked up."
"You should've called me," I say, wiping away his tears as he wipes away mine. "You can't do that again. You call me if you're in trouble. I need you to be stronger than that."
"I will."
"But what's going to stop you from doing that again?"
"Me," he says. "I feel like shit. I choked down every swallow last night and it didn't help anything. I'm still sick about it all this morning and I have this hangover on top of it--I fucked up and it wasn't worth it. It didn't change anything."
"Not a thing," I say. "I'm glad you see that."
He sits back on the couch. I pick up his bowl of cereal and hand it to him.
"Thank you," he says.
"Friends make friends eat breakfast, right?"
My words make him miss a beat and I immediately start searching for what I said wrong. He frowns, softly stabbing his spoon into the bowl.
"Yes," he says a little tightly, "that is what
friends
do."
I realize the mistake instantly, but the vibe in the room is suddenly too steep for me to go back on what I said. He's probably thinking that I'm friend-zoning him because he screwed up, but to say it out loud might be shaming. After all he's done for me, I didn't think anything could be this awkward between us, but it is.
And then another thought chimes in: it doesn't have to be awkward.
I've
got the ability to turn this all around, just like Aidan has done for me, time and time again.
"So do friends who are a lot more than
just
friends," I say. His eyebrows lift a tiny bit.
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm just saying, people like to--should--help each other out. You know."
"That's not what you said before, you didn't say
people,
" he teases, leaning toward me, over the middle cushion.
"You know what I meant."
"I'm not sure I do." He smiles. "Tell me."
He catches my wrist and pulls me toward him. We clunk foreheads but stay there,
cross-eyed as we stare at each other. I giggle. When have I
ever
giggled
?
"I was saying...we're a little more than friends."
"A little?" he asks. I feel the crinkle of his eyebrows as they rise.
"Maybe a little more than that."
"I am hoping for a lot more than that," His irises widen, drinking me in. They search for my answer, jumping between my eyes.
I can't answer. What do I say to him?
I'm still somebody else's wife.
I haven't figured myself out yet.
And
yes, God, I want you, I want you more than I want to be whole.
"We're a couple of drunks." My laugh whispers away as I close my eyes. His thumb
grazes my jaw bone.
"More or less," he says. "But don't let that be all we are to each other, Lydia."
There he is, my sober Aidan. The man who sees beyond the moment and rises to it. I open my eyes, allowing myself to swallow down every detail of him. The endless depth in his dark eyes, his caramel skin, even the equator of his facial hair--the angular lines drawn between the areas where it is smooth and where there is stubble. I reach up and run my fingers over the rough patches. My tattoo glances at me. Aidan takes my hand and moves my fingers higher, so they glide across the soft skin of his cheek bones instead.
I smile and he smiles back, as though neither of us needs my answer anymore.
<<<<>>>>
"She's going to be okay, whatever that means," he says, dumping his phone on the coffee table. He's never been in my apartment before, but his level of fatigue and distress has him dropping onto my couch like he lives here. He leans forward, his head in his hands.
"When did you eat last?" Aidan asks.
"I don't know," Shane says. It's pretty obvious that all he's been chewing on is his misery.
"You've got to eat. I'll get you something." Aidan gets up and goes into the kitchen. I move a little closer to Shane, quietly stalking around him. I don't know what to say to him and I know it's not reasonable, but getting in too close, the guilt of Natalie's attempted suicide is too contagious. I think of her, after the meeting, running after Aidan and I in the snow, asking me to let her help. Letting her sponsor me might've been the help
she
needed and I turned her down.
"How are you doing?" I finally ask. Shane pulls up his head, as if he didn't realize anyone else was in the room. He clears his throat, but it does no good. His voice still cracks.
"I'm okay. I'm going to be okay."
"She's conscious?"
"Yeah. She has been all along, for the most part. She was out of it when they brought her in, but she didn't like having her stomach pumped."
"She was awake for that?"
"Yeah," he says. I sit on the edge of the chair, furthest from him. He scrubs his head with harsh fingers.
"Do you know why yet? Why she did it?" I ask and he lets out a long sigh. Maybe asking is going too far, but Aidan sets a hot bowl of Mrs. Lowt's soup on the coffee table and answers for his friend.
"It's pretty common for addicts. Part of the disease."
Shane eyes the bowl, but doesn't lift the spoon. "She was in a bad place for a while, I knew that. I just couldn't figure out why. I could see her sinking, but I didn't know what to do for her. I should've tried harder to figure it out."
"Figured out how to fix it?" Aidan asks. "Come on. We've all been at the low spots before. You know you're the only one that can get you out of it."
"I was sixteen," Shane says. "It was completely different. And you were the one that straightened me out."
Aidan shakes his head. The two of them have entered into a private world, a past that I can only observe from the side lines. This is part of Aidan's history that he hasn't told me yet and it intrigues me.
"Overwhelmed is overwhelmed," Aidan goes on, "and you straightened yourself out. The only thing I did for you was need my best friend."
"I need her."
"I know you do."
"But I've always needed her," Shane says, his tone collapsing, the breaks in his thought process mirrored by the way his voice fails him. "It hasn't been enough, or we wouldn't be here."
"I turned her down," I blurt. "Natalie asked me to be my sponsor. She wanted to guide me and I turned her down. I think I contributed to this..."
Her husband's eyes find mine. "I guess we all did."
"Knock it off, both of you," Aidan admonishes us softly. "No one knew Nat was in this bad of shape. She made her own decisions." He wipes his mouth with his hand, as if he's wiping away the memory of last night's fifth. "We can't blame ourselves for what someone else chooses to do."
Shane's gaze sinks to the floor. "But I should've..."
"You
couldn't have
."
In the break of our voices,
Christmas carols and laughter permeate the wall from some other neighbor's apartment, and Shane begins to cry. Aidan and I move in, surrounding him, leaning and being leaned on, like a tepee of souls, trying to kindle enough faith to send up a genuine signal of hope.