Equilibrium

by Lorrie Thomson

  Darcy dialed Nick’s number before she could chicken out. He probably wouldn’t be at home today, anyway. It’s ringing. Probably, he’d gone for a drive to visit old friends, or he could’ve gone to the library. He’d told her last night he might go to do homework, which had really shocked her. Another ring. Not that she thought he was stupid or anything. She just didn’t see him as the library type.

  “Yeah?” Nick answered, sounding as if he’d just come through the door and had yanked the phone off its receiver.

  “Wait a second.” Nick’s voice came from a distance, along with clattering and thuds. “Sorry, just cleaned the house.” He chuckled. “Who is it?” Well, there he went. Her boy pulled it together.

  “It’s Darcy. What’s going on?”

  “Swear to God, I was just thinking about calling you. Thought you were doing family stuff today, so I was gonna wait until later and call or swing by or—”

  “Could you swing by now?” She slid the useless joint inside the box of condoms, tossed the box back in the drawer, and slipped the foil packet into the back pocket of her jeans.

  “I can do anything you want.” Nick lowered his voice, and the special spot where he kissed her neck tingled.

  “There’s just one not so small matter,” she said. Her mind sped, jazzed with the challenge of working up an escape plan to circumvent Maggie on guard duty in the living room. “You have to park on Lake Street and wait for me there. Think you can do that?”

  “Know I can.”

  “Thata boy.” Darcy hung up and docked her iPod. She set the volume loud enough to mask the sounds of her climbing out the window and clambering down the iron fire escape, a lucky leftover from the house’s previous owner. The random song selections would play infinitely, leading Maggie to believe her charge was enjoying a bit of alone time, grooving to the beat.

  She threw open the sash and screen, and inhaled the rain-scented air. Far-off storm clouds mingled above the mountaintops, threatening a future deluge. She should probably grab a jacket, but she couldn’t risk going downstairs. Besides, who was afraid of a little rain? Her mother’s eventual punishment carried a much more imminent threat. Darcy didn’t have a clue how she’d explain her mother’s discovery of her friend guarding an empty bedroom. The porch-side wind chimes tinkled, and she laughed. Who cared? What mattered was now, sneaking out, and getting with Nick. Dream. Believe. Do.

  She tiptoed down the slatted steps, and then dropped to the squishy spring ground. Delicious dangerous energy danced through her body. She touched the condom in her pocket, checking in with Daddy’s Extreme Girl. She ran up the hill, away from her house, took a shortcut through a neighbor’s property, and then sat waiting at the corner, writing Nick’s name in the curbside sand with a stick.

  The ratty Monte Carlo pulled up alongside her, and she checked her watch. Ten minutes—he must’ve flown. Nick got out, came around to the passenger side, and even opened the door for her. “Where to, gorgeous?”

  Her last trace of doubt fell away. “Anywhere but here.”

  Chapter 12

  Jacob Abraham Klein.

  No matter how many times Laura visited Ever True Cemetery, she’d never get used to seeing her husband’s name inscribed on a gravestone. Reading Jack’s name narrowed her windpipe, numbed her legs, and sucked the joy out of her life.

  She lowered herself to her knees between Elle and Troy, and stifled an urge to rock. Purple-and-gray clouds hung low, swollen tight like overripe fruit. The musty-compost smell of impending rain filled her nose and burned the back of her throat. To stave off the chill, she tugged the lapels of her bright-coral trench coat around her neck. She set a bouquet of daffodils in the cemetery vase, proof that Jack had been gone for a full year and the world had not come to an end.

  A year ago, she’d stood in this spot, buoyed by a sea of friends and neighbors, with the knowledge that Jack’s body lay in the grave below, dwelling, as he would say, with the vilest of worms. Then she’d gone home, and the discovery that Jack wasn’t waiting there for her had knocked her on her ass.

  Logic, be damned.

  She no longer expected to feel the warmth of his body when she skimmed her hand across her bedsheets. She no longer expected to hear his voice wending its way to her from the kitchen as she headed up the stairs. And she certainly didn’t expect to see Jack emerge from his study, gray hair poking around his head in odd angles, blue gaze unfocused with thoughts of the fictional characters in his head.

  Over the past year, the surface understanding that Jack was gone for good had seeped through her skin, traveled through her bloodstream, and embedded itself in her heart. The anniversary served as an exclamation point. Jack didn’t need her anymore.

  But did she need him?

  “We’ve really missed you,” Laura said, feeling slightly ridiculous talking to her atheist husband at his burial site. What the hell? If Jack could actually hear her, then the joke, for once, was on him.

  Irony, be damned.

  “The kids are doing … as well as can be expected,” she said, thinking of Darcy closing herself off from Laura, all her Daddy’s-girl hurt misdirected. Troy pitching a fit, his thirteen-year-old heart and mind overwhelmed with the sadness Jack had caused. Herself. Well, that hardly mattered. “Do you want to say something to Dad?” she asked Troy.

  Her son had decided to leave his Jack-memories notebook filled with his Laura-like impossible to read handwriting back in his room. Sharing memories with Laura till the wee hours of the morning had been enough of a tribute.

  Big plans, be damned.

  Elle rubbed Laura’s arm. Elle’s breathing betrayed a readiness to cry. Laura loved Elle, but she probably should’ve asked Maggie to come to the cemetery in her stead. Troy’s emotional state was enough of a worry.

  Color rose in Troy’s cheeks. His nostrils flared, and he stared at the gravestone, reminding Laura of the expression on Troy’s face when he’d tried to talk to Jack about his interests, and Jack had only half listened. Listening, she supposed, had been her job.

  Jack had always told Laura he was proud of their son. Laura would’ve preferred it if Jack had shown that to Troy.

  “Maybe tell Dad about making the A-team for basketball? Placing for the mile run in track?”

  Troy shook his head, and he sucked his lips between his teeth, as though trying to hold back his words.

  Elle made a sound at the back of her throat, a cross between a growl and a suppressed sob. Her hand dropped from Laura’s arm.

  Troy took a loud breath, and his exhalation vibrated the air before them. He slid a daffodil from the cemetery vase, worried a yellow petal between his fingers.

  “Your science project?” Laura said.

  Troy plucked the petal, and it dropped to the grass.

  “Shaving?” her high-pitched word hit the air. Power of suggestion, she inhaled the lime smell of her son’s freshly shaven face. An image of Aidan’s clean-shaven face flashed over Jack’s.

  Troy plucked two more petals and crumpled them in his fist. Troy’s chin dimpled, and he flung the ruined petals to the ground.

  “Never mind, baby.”

  “How about telling your dad how you really feel?” Elle said, and Laura’s jaw clenched. She cut her gaze to Elle and gave her the universal arched-brow signal to back off.

  Troy stopped in midpluck, his fingers buried in the remainder of the yellow blossom. Tears pooled in the sleep-deprived wells beneath Troy’s eyes. He looked to Laura for approval.

  She nodded. Her whole body shifted toward Troy. After last night’s headfirst dive into Jack memory lane, what could Troy have left to express?

  “I liked how you made Mom laugh during dinner,” Troy said, and Laura let out a breath. “I liked that time we tried to beat the Guinness World Record for stringing rubber bands. Especially the part where we caught Darcy in our giant spiderweb. And camping. I miss climbing the giant anchor with you at Hermit Island. I miss that a lot.”

  “Me too, sweeth
eart. Those were good times.” And took place years ago. Laura rubbed Troy’s back, and he stared straight ahead. His fingers plucked, crumpled, and then tossed the daffodil’s petals until nothing remained but the stalk, stamen, and pistil, trembling in his hand.

  “This year’s been okay. Mom’s sad,” Troy said.

  Laura held a hand to her throat and reminded herself to breathe. She’d never wanted to burden her children with her grief. She thought she’d hidden it well.

  “But now Darcy and I can have friends over without worrying you’re gonna embarrass us. And Mom’s not all preoccupied with you.”

  She’d mostly hidden that, too, with the possible exception of the few times she’d forgotten to pick up Troy after school in the second grade. And once when he was in fourth. “Dad was sick,” Laura whispered.

  Troy turned to her. “He was also a jerk!” Troy said, debunking Laura’s conviction that she knew the difference between her husband’s personality and his mood disorder.

  How could she? How could anyone?

  Elle took a tissue from her jacket pocket and blew her nose. She looked from Troy to Laura. “I’ll go wait in the car,” Elle said, and she got to her feet.

  Oh, sure. Start trouble, and then run for cover, leaving her to deal with the mess.

  Just like Jack.

  Except Laura could criticize Elle. She hadn’t let herself get mad at Jack until recently. For years, she’d buried her anger and resentment, so it wouldn’t bury her.

  “I’m so sorry, Troy.”

  “What if I don’t miss him?” Troy said. “What if, sometimes, I don’t miss him at all?”

  Sometimes Laura was too pissed to grieve. Sometimes, in between spikes of loneliness, she couldn’t miss the man who’d torn their family apart. She’d hoped she’d hidden that from Troy, too.

  I’m so sorry, Jack.

  “I think that means we’re making progress.”

  Laura’s ponytail holder strained, pulling the hairs at the nape of her neck. The sky rumbled and brightened between the maple trees, illuminating fuzzy rhubarb-colored buds. Last year, she’d missed all the signs of spring. This year, she was determined to pay better attention.

  “One, Mississippi. Two, Mississippi,” Troy said, and Laura grinned, remembering the trick Jack had taught the kids to estimate the distance from the storm.

  “Three, Mississippi. Four, Mississippi. Five,” they said together. On six, thunder smacked the sky, the storm nearly upon them. Raindrops splattered against Laura’s trench coat, darkened Troy’s unzipped navy fleece, and wet the red silk of Jack’s tie he’d insisted upon wearing.

  “Think Dad’s the rain king?” Troy asked, and he started to cry, a perfectly normal reaction.

  Sadness, anger, resentment. All these emotions fell under the umbrella of grieving. So why was she planning on bringing her son to a shrink?

  “King of the heavens?” Laura said. “Sure, honey. Why not? Anything’s possible.” She imagined Jack in one of his grandiose moods, loving the title.

  Another flash and a boom, and the sky cracked wide open, releasing a downpour. Laura imagined Jack gazing down on them, happy at last, and something inside her released, too.

  Then she imagined Jack, the day after one of those moods, seeming perfectly normal. He’d play mind games with her and rationalize his previous day’s behavior, trying to convince her he didn’t need to see Dr. Harvey.

  She hugged Troy to her side, tilted her face to the skies, and let the rain numb her face. Good thing for Troy, Dr. Harvey had a supersensitive BS detector, honed from years of listening to patients like Jack.

  Chapter 13

  Nick pulled away from the curb, and Darcy took a good hard look at his light blond hair, curling up at the ends, and full lower lip. His double layer of shirts, short-sleeved brown over a long-sleeved beige jersey, got her craving coffee ice cream and chocolate sauce. Got her craving him.

  Nick turned a corner and caught her staring. “What? Do I have food on my face or something?” He checked the rearview mirror, scrubbed a hand across his chin, picked at imagined remnants of meals gone by, and flicked them onto the floor.

  Darcy smiled. No, he was perfect. She could climb on top of him and lick his face, bite his yummy lips and eat him up like a hot fudge sundae.

  “So what’s with the secret meeting place?” Nick asked.

  “I kind of sneaked out of the house, left one of my mom’s friends guarding an empty bedroom.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “Fire escape.” Darcy made climbing motions, getting a secondary rush from the memory.

  Nick issued a low whistle through his teeth. “You are in deep.”

  Well worth the risk, considering the alternative of hanging around for more doom and gloom. She’d had more than her fill. Nick careened through the hokey small-town square, past the statues of children reading on the green, nearly clipping the curb by the drugstore that still served ice-cream sodas to customers twirling on vinyl-covered stools. Elle wasn’t working today, but the usual cast of characters would be wandering the brick-lined sidewalks.

  Darcy slid down in the bucket seat below window level, far enough to evade detection. Nick tossed her a questioning look. “My mother knows half the town,” she said by way of explanation. Her mother not only knew everyone in town, but also kept them in her employ, hiring them as unpaid freelance kid watchers. Darcy couldn’t make a move in Hicksville without her mother receiving a full report, complete with eight-by-ten color glossies, like the photos featured in “Alice’s Restaurant.” Every Thanksgiving, Mom made her suffer through the song. Family tradition.

  God, she was tired. She closed her eyes, a trick she’d learned long ago for heightening the other senses. Cool air brushed her cheek, and her mouth fell slack. The car engine shook, vibrating through her body, starting at her bottom and working outward in a series of unbroken waves. She smelled rain and lightning, and a sour taste puckered her tongue. Nick’s heat opened her eyes.

  No more acting like a baby.

  She reached past the stick shift until her hand hovered above his lap in temporary indecision, then she dared herself and went for it big-time. She let her hand fall to the lap of Nick’s jeans and spread her fingers across the folds.

  “Darcy.” Nick not so much spoke her name, as breathed it. He adjusted her hand and wriggled beneath her massaging fingers, his gaze on the road. If he looked down, he would’ve seen her whole arm shaking, a current running from her shoulder to her fingertips. She couldn’t believe she was really and truly touching a boy. “I was going to suggest a movie, but this is way better. Hang on,” he said.

  She nabbed the door-side handle in time for an impromptu hairpin turn Nick navigated, jostling her hand from between his legs. She walked her trembling fingers back to his lap, and he kept her hand at bay, lacing his fingers between hers. “Not yet.”

  Back roads whizzed by, and Nick drove with one hand on the wheel. What did it matter where they were going? She had exactly what she needed sitting right beside her.

  The car bumped along unpaved streets. Nick turned down a dirt driveway, avoided a major pothole, and jammed the stick shift into park. The sky hung heavy with swollen clouds. Strands of electricity rippled neon white. She could see them now, and her electrified hair stood on end. Beyond the treetops, clouds clashed. The first shock of lightning startled the air. The sky brightened. Her lips puckered.

  “One, Mississippi. Two, Mississippi,” Darcy counted, and Nick joined in, estimating their distance from the storm’s center, the way Daddy had taught her. They barely reached six, and the sky exploded, the storm within a mile’s reach. Darcy shrieked, even though she’d expected the noise.

  Rain splattered against her T-shirt, and she rolled up her window. A tiny blue beat-up house, not much larger than a double-wide trailer, stood at the end of the pockmarked driveway. Sickly evergreens dotted the front yard, and pine scent gave rise to the associated taste of peppermint candy canes, staple
ornaments for the Klein family Christmas tree. Daddy, a devout atheist, never begrudged Mom’s winter holiday with all the trimmings.

  “Grandma’s house,” Nick said. “You okay with this?”

  Nick asked her over to his house at least three times a week, where his two-job mom rarely lurked and his one-job grandma left him to his own devices. Where they’d be left to their own devices. No turning back.

  Darcy licked her tingling lips. She leaned across the seat and kissed his mouth into a smile. “Thought you were gonna make me wait forever,” he said.

  Nick came around to open her door, and she kept one hand over the red foil packet in her pocket. Probably, Nick thought she was Little Miss Sexually Experienced, that she’d slept with half the boys in the school, or at least gotten them off. She was going to have to tell him the truth. Until Nick, she’d always stop boys when they tried to touch her.

  She’d never let a boy get her all worked up. She’d never let a boy see her like that.

  Nick followed her gaze to the ramshackle house. “You sure about this? We can find another place… .”

  “This is fine.” Did he think she was some kind of snob? She of the psycho family had visited her father in a variety of locked wards, so a shoddy bungalow didn’t even register on her snubbing scale. She hurried out of the car and touched Nick’s arm, morphing his scowl back into the dimpled smile she adored. Her vision fuzzed before her open eyes into a cascading zigzag pattern.

  “You okay?” Nick took her arm, steadying her, as if she were a little old lady needing assistance to cross a street. Only he wasn’t exactly the Boy Scout type.

  “Sure.” Her brother’s mental health was cracking, her dad was rotting in the ground—his choice—and her mother was a control freak. Even the Mad Hatter wouldn’t stick around for her father’s warped anniversary. “Let’s go inside.”

  The tentative raindrops had already doubled in size and number, splattering the grassless front yard, and tilling the soil into a seed-ready medium. The earth aroma she loved mingled with the rain smells, blending until she could no longer single out each distinct scent. This year, she might actually create the garden she’d tried last spring when nothing would grow.