Acute Reactions

by Ruby Lang

  “Why would you want to do that? It won’t be fun. Besides, won’t you be busy? Aren’t weekends big for you?”

  They weren’t big for her. She’d added Saturday hours in an effort to drum up business. So far, no takers.

  “Lilah and Gerry can cover for me. Gerry wants to learn more about management. We could walk along the shore. I haven’t been to the shore in a long time.”

  She felt herself sliding under the influence of his voice. But she really had to concentrate on surveillance of Jim Morrison and his nefarious plans. And she didn’t want to be worried that Ian would think she was being mean to her mother.

  “We could go up on Saturday night,” Ian continued. “Spend the night in a bed and breakfast. I can get someone to recommend a place to me, or if your mom knows somewhere that would be great.”

  It sounded so appealing. Of course, there was still marriage and the Jim Morrison issue to get over. And the fact that she would be introducing Ian to them.

  They didn’t have to know how she and Ian met.

  He was lovely. How could her mother disapprove of a kind, smiling man with deep brown eyes, who ran a successful business? There had to be something wrong with him, of course, but maybe his charm would lull Lisa into forgetting to find fault with him. Just like his charm had lulled Petra.

  “Do you not want me to come?” he asked. “You don’t want me to meet your mother?”

  “I just—”

  Some of it was true. She did not want her mother finding anything wrong with Ian and asking Petra if she had time for relationships when her practice was in peril.

  “I want you to come. It’s just not the best circumstances. I’m just afraid that you will see Jim Morrison and Lisa and run screaming. Or that you’ll see us fight or that she’ll try to tell me something about you that makes me sad. It’s one thing to tell you about my problems. It’s another for you to witness them.”

  “What could she say about me that would make you sad?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied.

  Ian said, “I don’t think there’s anything that she could say about you that would make me run away. Why don’t I come and make this easier for you? I could make the whole trip different.”

  “You would make the whole trip different,” she said, sincerely. “And maybe I don’t want to feel good, maybe I don’t want you along, making me feel better about everything, making everything seem so easy.” She laughed uncomfortably. “What I’m saying is, you won’t see me at my best.”

  “Who says I have to?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Pantalettes,” he said.

  They had pulled out onto Highway 30.

  She had been quiet all the way out of the city and now she was gazing out the window at the winter landscape. It wasn’t the best time of year to take a drive. The trees looked scrubby and sparse and the sky and roads and land seemed gray in the remnants of the evening light. At least traffic hadn’t been bad.

  Had he pushed too hard to come with her? He glanced at her profile, the curved cheek, the sardonic lips, curved even now, the little pointed chin that he loved to kiss. He could practically hear her thinking. Not that she was always like that. In bed, she let her guard down. The more they talked and had sex, the more they slept together, the more she just let herself be. Obviously, he needed to spend more time with her. Which suited him just fine.

  But right now, he needed to distract her.

  “Pantalettes,” she repeated, frowning. “Not a bad replacement for the female-underpants-word-that-shall-not-be-named, but I think in reality, pantalettes are actually more like bloomers. They’re long and lacy.”

  “How about bloomers?” he asked.

  “Too poufy. I thought you were supposed to invent a new word. It’s not fair to take an old word and make it mean something different.”

  “People do it all the time. Besides, those weren’t the rules,” he said. “You never said anything about reclaiming and recycling. It wouldn’t be very Portland of me if I didn’t at least try.” He put his hand on his heart and adopted an expression of woebegone earnestness mixed with condescension.

  She laughed. He loved that laugh.

  She was looking at him again, her eyes traveling up his jeans and shirt, across his arms and neck until he practically felt her on his lips. How did she do that? Had she taken some sort of course in medical school that made her able to envision every sinew and bone and nerve on a body?

  “Let’s pull over and make out like horny teenagers,” he suggested. When she demurred, he added, “Why not? We’re not in a hurry.”

  “We’re barely on the road. We’ve got another hour before we get to the inn.”

  “We could stop in a motel. Maybe one with a mirror on the ceiling,” he said, trying to push her farther.

  “Are you always this classy with the ladies?”

  “You haven’t lived until you’ve felt the friction of your bare bottom on a polyester bedspread.”

  She held her breathing in check, he could tell. Her nimble mind was turning over the possibilities. “And I suppose you have?” she asked.

  “I’m just trying to expand our horizons here,” he said.

  • • •

  Petra felt close to giving in. Her eyes skimmed over his jeans. She was making him crazy, and that made her delighted and insane. If she reached over and—

  Sarah, with her infinite good timing, chose this moment to call.

  “I’ve got tickets to the ballet tonight. I wanted to see if you were up for it.”

  Not a word about the fight. This was Sarah’s style. Although, frankly, Petra was surprised that Sarah had been the one to call first.

  “I’m driving up to Astoria.”

  “You should have told me. I’d have gone up with you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Sarah waited a beat. “You’re with Helen, aren’t you?”

  Petra sighed. “No, I’m not. And besides, Helen loves the ballet. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I can’t. Not after what I said to her. It’s like trash talk came out of my mouth and it’s hanging above my head permanently like a series of thought balloons. Helen’s never going to be able to look at me without seeing them and I’m never going to be able to look at her without seeing her seeing them.”

  “Sarah.”

  “Who are you with, then? Are you with him? You know, whatever, Pete, whatever. Obviously, you have to take Helen’s side on this whole thing, because you always do. I’m left looking like the hard ass because I said what needed to be said. So you and Helen and your various male friends can have your fun and damn all the consequences. Just don’t get judge-y when I do my thing.”

  “Sarah.”

  Petra looked at the screen. Disconnected.

  Ian glanced her way. “Trouble?” he asked.

  Petra pursed her lips. “It’s nothing.” She sighed. “Why am I starting to feel like perpetual-crisis woman?”

  “Maybe you care too much.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. In fact, maybe it’s something I like about you. You’re in a profession where you take care of people. I like seeing you in action, although I’m sorry that it seems to be tearing you apart lately. Maybe I’ve spent my life not caring enough.”

  He checked over his shoulder and pulled smoothly in front of an SUV that had been hogging the road.

  “Tell me more about your friends,” he said.

  “I haven’t been seeing much of them lately,” she said. “We had a falling out a few weeks ago. You know about that. We still haven’t sorted it out. But Sarah’s great. She seems strait-laced, but she knows the filthiest jokes. Helen’s more ethereal and you think she’s a little spacey, but then you get her in an argument and she suddenly becomes alert and incredibly stubborn.”

  “Pit bull with fairy wings. Got it.”

  She laughed. “They’re complicated,” she said. “I guess most friendships that ar
e worthwhile are a little bit complicated.”

  She turned a little in the seat. “How about you?”

  “I’ve got Gerry.”

  “Insult Chef.”

  “Yes, that’s a good name for him.”

  “Why aren’t there more people in your life?” she asked. “You seem like a social person. Plus, you’re in a profession that requires a lot of cheek-kissing and arm-patting.”

  He shrugged. “I work too much.”

  “Yet, here you are, tooling around the countryside with me on a Saturday evening. You aren’t answering the phone.”

  “I’m not always like this, as you already know. I’d like to promise you that I’m often like this, but I haven’t made time to spend with anyone before.”

  He spoke slowly, as if confused and surprised. She was, too, but he looked so bewildered by his admission that she quirked him a smile. “Maybe we should pull over,” she said, after a short silence.

  They ended up spending the entire night at the Twin Motor Inn. There was no mirror on the ceiling, and the American flag quilt on the bed seemed to be composed of cotton, not man-made materials. Ian seemed cheerfully unconcerned.

  “You’re a pretty cheap date,” he said much later, opening a tiny bag of chips.

  “I wouldn’t speak so soon. I’m still hungry,” Petra said, stretching out.

  It was near midnight and they had eaten the bananas and apples that Petra had brought, and that was nowhere near enough. He got up to get some water. His torso was lean and long, and she felt the urge to reach out to brush the sparse, crackly hair on his stomach.

  It wasn’t just lust, she thought. They were good together, despite the fact that he’d been a patient, despite Sarah’s naysaying and the disaster that lay ahead with Jim Morrison and Lisa, despite the fact that he was taking up too much of the time and energy she should be using to get out of the red.

  She swigged her water and held out the bottle to Ian. “I’ll admit that I will have very good memories of this room,” she said. “But I’ll still want a better breakfast than chips and stale nuts and fruit.”

  “Anything you want,” he said sleepily. “I think you’re amazing.”

  He pulled her close and tucked his head into her neck. She could feel a smile on his lips. She had put that there. And then he was out, his breaths coming steady and warm against her neck. She lay wide awake beside him.

  • • •

  “So, Ian, what do you do?” Jim Morrison asked in what passed as a gruff parental manner.

  Jim Morrison made shirred eggs. Jim Morrison had a gorgeous, sun-filled house with a wraparound porch, high in the hills. Jim Morrison had a signed original concert poster of The Doors in his study because he knew how to chuckle at himself—or that’s what he wanted the world to think.

  Petra’s mother presided over this all in a mint-green dress topped with a little white jacket. It was a far cry from the oversized sweaters and baggy pants that she usually favored.

  They ended up having brunch, even though Ian and Petra had eaten eggs and toast at a greasy spoon earlier that morning. Jim Morrison’s eggs and toast put the other eggs and toast to shame. There was also apple-smoked turkey bacon and homemade blueberry muffins, and a fruit salad.

  Lisa’s life was looking kind of ideal right now.

  Petra, on the other hand, felt grubby from waking up in a motel with hard water, no shampoo, and a sliver of medicinal soap. Curse Ian for having convinced her to stop over last night. Petra had scrubbed as much as she could in an attempt to get the smell of sex off of her before she met her mother. Ian, on the other hand, had suffered few ill effects. He flashed his teeth and pushed his hands through his hair so that it looked even wilder, and it was such a three-way love fest between Jim Morrison and Lisa and Ian, that Petra thought she would have to dump the water from one of Jim Morrison’s Lalique vases on them.

  Instead, she glowered and ate a lot of muffins.

  She watched her mother, not as a daughter, but as a clinician assessing a patient. There was nothing physically wrong with Lisa. Her eyes were clear, her hair shone, no bruising, no flushing, no strange weight gain or loss. She seemed to be full of energy, although some of it was of the nervous variety. But her mother wasn’t cowed or intimidated by Jim Morrison. She met his gaze straight on and even laughed over the fussy way he rearranged the table.

  “I’m so glad you decided to come and that you brought Ian,” her mother said, waving her arm with one of her fabulous new gestures.

  Come to think of it, maybe the green was a better look for Lisa’s complexion. Plus, it made the yellow diamond look almost blue. Maybe Lisa had achieved the happiness that she long deserved and she would sit on the porch on the hill and eat shirred eggs for the rest of her life. And maybe Petra just needed to shut the fuck up and let her mother live her life.

  Lisa leaned forward to take some bacon and her jacket slipped down for a moment, and Petra saw a bright hickey on her mother’s collarbone.

  Oh my God, Petra thought. They had sex, probably this very morning.

  Petra set down her fork and closed her eyes. She was not thinking about this. She could not think about this.

  Ian’s hand slid across her thigh. Her eyes popped open.

  “We were thinking of having a simple ceremony here,” Jim Morrison was saying.

  It was so pretty, even in winter. She could almost picture it. Imagine the wedding instead of your mother and Jim Morrison.

  Jim Morrison turned to ask Ian if he knew of any good caterers in the area and Ian promised to look into it.

  “When were you thinking?” Petra asked, taking a big gulp of coffee.

  Lisa and Jim Morrison exchanged glances. “If it were up to us,” said Jim Morrison, massaging Lisa’s shoulders, “it would be right away. But there have been some complications.”

  Lisa looked at her daughter, then plowed on. “We have to wait for Jim’s divorce to be final, first of all.”

  Ian leaned into Petra and tried to touch her shoulders, but she shrugged him away.

  “Mom, you’re living here and he’s not divorced?”

  “Well, Petra, I wanted to be with Jim and—” She hesitated. “I sold the house. That was the other thing I was planning to tell you. It’ll probably be another couple of weeks before they take possession. There’s plenty of room here. It just seemed sensible, given that Jim’s place is big enough for us, for all of the children if you want to come back during holidays. And in this market, a larger property might be harder to sell. It’s not as if it was your childhood home,” Lisa added.

  “Does Ellie know about this?”

  A pause.

  “We feel, Petra, that maybe the support isn’t always there,” Jim said evenly.

  “Now, let’s not—” Ian began.

  But Petra was already far ahead. “You mean that you don’t think that I am very nice to you,” Petra said. “Just come out and accuse me, Jim. Just come out and blame me with some pronouns and action verbs. Even though you’re the one who’s shacking up with my mother even though you aren’t even divorced yet.”

  “Petra!”

  “I was quiet. I was nice. I gave you a chance. It seemed like you were happy. Now I don’t know what I can tell you, Mom. I’m disappointed in you. You told me you had your head screwed on straight, that you weren’t being impulsive and taking any chances. I trusted you to be practical. But now, this.”

  She gestured at Jim Morrison. He looked mildly offended. But only mildly.

  “Petra, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the house. But I hated it. I hated the empty rooms and the ugly carpets, and the bathroom floor always looked dirty because the previous owners had white tile. And I’m happy here, in this place, with Jim.”

  “Because you’ve got a view, and he makes you a few fancy eggs? Mom, he’s not going to take care of you. Your own house would at least be something.”

  “He doesn’t need to take care of me, Petra. I kept the money. I’m my own woman. S
ometimes he makes me muffins, sometimes I make him meatloaf.”

  “Well la-dee-dah. Maybe you can cater your own wedding, then.”

  She strode out. Ian followed and said thank yous and goodbyes while Petra started the car. She watched while Lisa tearfully gave Ian a hug. Her mother whispered something in his ear and he shook his head. Jim said something, too, then Ian got into the car with a Tupperware container full of Jim Morrison’s blueberry muffins.

  • • •

  He almost handed them to Petra, then thought twice about it, and placed them in the back seat.

  She waited until they got to the outskirts of town before starting.

  “You didn’t have to be nice to them,” Petra said. “Why the hell were you nice to them? Did you think I was so wrong to say any of those things? You thought I was too hard on her, didn’t you?”

  “I understood where you were coming from.”

  “You understood. God, you were all cooing at each other the whole time. She hugged you. She’s never hugged any of my boyfriends before—”

  He would have liked more details on this—which boyfriends? how many? had they been serious?—but she didn’t seem in the proper mood to divulge.

  “You know what your problem is, Ian? You’re like some sort of diplomat who only offers half-statements and equivocations. You avoid committing yourself emotionally. If I’m a person who naturally takes care of people, then you’re one of those people who tries to smooth over other people’s feelings. I’ve seen you work a room. You avoid conflict, but you also avoid depth and taking sides with people you should take sides with—”

  He watched her switch lanes almost angrily.

  “Petra,” he said.

  “What?”

  He asked her to pull into a parking lot. She did and she turned off the car. He took her hands in his.

  “I made you cry,” he said quietly.

  “No,” she said through tears. “Yes, a little. But mostly, I think my mom made me cry. And I did it to myself, too. And Jim Morrison. That fucker.” She swiped at her face. “I don’t usually clutch my pearls like that over divorces and houses and money. But it’s my mother, and I can’t deal with it.”