The Art of Adapting

by Cassandra Dunn

  Lana sighed and settled at the table. She rested her cheek in her palm, her elbow on the sticky surface. “It is too much to carry.”

  “So let it go. Drop the burden of other people’s shortcomings. Stop trying to fix them. That’s their job. Yours is to take care of you and those kids and be happy.”

  Lana rolled her eyes. She loved Becca and her metaphysical spin on everything. And deep down she knew Becca was right. But anger had been Lana’s only comfort for all those lonely years in her childhood. In her marriage. “Next you’ll be telling me to forgive Graham.” Becca shrugged and Lana shook her head. “Why should I?”

  “Ironic that you’re so pissed at Dad for working twelve-hour days, putting his job ahead of family, but you married a man who is the exact same way. Until you forgive Mom and Dad, you’ll just keep creating the same scenario. I’m having to learn this, too.”

  Lana buried her face in her hands. “Why does healing have to be so damn hard? I’m not sure I have it in me.”

  “He is able who thinks he is able,” Becca said.

  “Is that your Reiki lady, too?”

  “Close. Buddha.”

  The next morning Lana rose early. She and Becca did yoga out on the mossy lawn, deep-breathing themselves back to center. When they came in Gloria was up, drinking her coffee. Becca headed for a shower, giving them a moment alone.

  “Okay,” Lana said, sitting next to her mother. “I’ll mention your concerns to Matt’s doctor and see what he has to say. There may be milder meds to consider.”

  Gloria took a slow sip of coffee. “No. You’re right. He’s better on the medication. Those episodes . . . nobody should have to feel that much. If it helps him, even a little, to not go to that scary place anymore . . .”

  “Okay. Thank you,” Lana said. “I do talk to his doctor, though. And Matt. We are monitoring the side effects. If the bad ever outweighs the good, we’ll take him off the meds in a heartbeat. Nobody’s saying they’re forever. We’re transitioning him from self-medicating with drugs and alcohol to being happy and in control sober. The meds seem to be helping for now. But they’re only part of the solution. We’re finding ways to help him sleep better, eat healthier, keep his mind busy. He’s not all wired and amped up anymore, if you want to call that his ‘sparkle,’ but he is happy. It’s working.”

  Gloria nodded, stirred her coffee, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. “It should’ve been me,” Gloria said. “To get him sober. To start him on medication. To stop the episodes. What kind of mother can’t even keep her own child calm? Make him happy?”

  Lana shook her head. “There’s a learning curve with Asperger’s. You were flying blind. We know so much more about it now than we did when Matt was a kid. You did the best you could with what you had.”

  Gloria studied her spoon and shook her head. “You don’t really think so. You think I failed him.”

  Lana took a deep breath, released it with a sigh, visualized a lifetime’s worth of emotions pouring out of her body and draining down through the floor, back into the swampy earth below the condo. “I don’t. I’m just pissed. I have decades of pent-up emotions I never expressed and they’re all coming out now. I blame Graham.”

  “Not me?” Gloria said, batting her eyes playfully. “I thought it was always me.”

  “Not always.” Lana smiled. “Look. About Stephen. I’m sorry. I know it was hard for you, but it was also terrifying for me. I was eleven. I was alone. I was sad, scared. Nothing felt safe anymore, like anything could be taken from me without warning. I lost my big brother. My idol. Then I felt like I lost my parents, too. I needed you guys to reassure me that it would all be okay, and . . .” Lana let a few tears fall. She hated crying. Especially in front of her stoic mother. She’d always felt weaker than Gloria: too emotional, too insecure. “But I forgive you. It’s time. That child inside me is still hurting, still misses her big brother, still misses the house full of laughter that died along with him. But as a mother, I cannot imagine your pain.” She touched Gloria’s hand, surprised at the chill of it on such a warm day, the frailty of her mother’s bony fingers, the dryness of her wrinkled skin. “I honestly don’t know how you survived it. Losing a child.”

  “I didn’t,” Gloria said, staring at the table but gripping Lana’s hand with surprising strength. “That was the problem. I think maybe after losing Stephen it seemed easier . . . not to get so attached.” A single tear slid down Gloria’s cheek. She was not one to cry, and it touched Lana to see her vulnerable. Gloria sighed. “You’re a good mom. You have good kids. You’re better at this than I was. Even with Matt.” She shook her head. “Especially with Matt.”

  Lana put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Thank you for saying that. Of course you’re a hell of a lot better at marriage than I am, so you’ve got that going for you.”

  Gloria smiled. “Oh, don’t beat yourself up about Graham. Never trust a man who spends that much time looking at himself in a mirror.”

  They laughed together. “He really does spend a lot of time primping.”

  “He doesn’t know who he is,” Gloria said.

  “Do any of us?”

  “Don’t you?” Gloria asked. “I always thought you were the only one who did. College, marriage, kids, career. You’re the only one of my children who managed to have it all.”

  “Too bad it didn’t last,” Lana said.

  “You’ll find love again. I have no doubt.”

  Lana squeezed her mother’s shoulder, which was so much thinner than she remembered. Jack came in and found them sitting in silence, holding hands.

  “Well, look at this,” Jack said. “We should finally get a break from all this heat, because hell must surely be freezing over right now.”

  “Oh, Dad,” Lana said. “You should know as well as anyone that this ridiculous heat is never letting up. You two should come out to San Diego to visit. It’s seventy degrees year-round. Can’t beat that.”

  “What do you think, Glo?” Jack asked. “Brave the perils of cross-country travel for this troublemaker of ours?”

  Gloria tucked Lana’s hair back behind her ears. She nodded. “I’d like to see all these paintings Byron and Matt keep talking about. And meet this boy who’s stolen little Abby’s heart.”

  “Don’t forget that garrulous girlfriend of Byron’s,” Jack said. “My kinda girl.”

  Matt came into the kitchen, sleepy and quiet.

  Gloria rose. “Take my seat here. I’ll get your milk and English muffin. You take your medication with breakfast, right?”

  “I do,” Matt said. “I thought you didn’t want me to take my pills anymore.”

  “I think maybe they are good for you after all,” Gloria said. “I really just want what’s best for you.”

  “Oh,” Matt said. “Then can you put extra butter on the English muffin? I like lots of butter.”

  “Of course you do,” Jack said. “What’s the point of a smidge of butter? So if we come to California, will we get to meet this Susan of yours?”

  Matt started on his generously buttered English muffin. He looked at the ceiling. “I think we should have another barbecue. Like when we all met Abbot. This time Susan will come. She said so.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said. “Who exactly is Abbot?”

  “My boyfriend,” Lana said. The word sounded lumpy and ill-fitting. A teenage label for an adult relationship. But it made her smile like a schoolgirl, so maybe it wasn’t far off.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Jack said. “Look at you. Love lost. Love found. He’s not another accountant, is he?”

  Lana laughed. “No. He’s in sales.”

  “Oh, lord,” Jack said. “Gloria, talk to her, will you?”

  Gloria put her hand on Lana’s shoulder, kissed the top of her head. “She’s just fine, Jack. You leave her be.”

  34

  * * *

  Matt

  The barbecue was on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon. Susan came just like she said s
he would. She wore a pale blue sundress and no lipstick.

  “That’s my favorite color,” Matt said, pointing to the dress.

  “I know.” Susan laughed. “You like it?”

  “I like the dress, and I like you,” Matt said. Susan laughed and twirled for him. The happy feeling was so big in his chest that he felt dizzy. He had to sit down on the back steps. There were a lot of other people at the barbecue: Abbot, Gabe, Betsy, and some neighbors, but Matt and Susan were having their own private party in the side yard, away from the crowd.

  “I want to paint a picture of you,” Matt said.

  “I’d like that,” Susan said.

  Matt took her into the garage to see his and Byron’s art studio. She admired their supplies, which Matt had organized nicely on shelves. She took her time looking at the row of canvases already painted, propped up against every wall to dry. Matt liked how her dress swayed as she moved. It gave him an idea for the painting.

  “Those paintings over there are Byron’s. These here are all mine,” he said.

  Susan turned back toward Matt’s paintings. She pointed to the green hill, the bird in flight, the long spring grass bowing in the breeze, the dog-shaped shadow beneath the bounding red dog, its ears flopped back and tail high.

  “Your beloved Vizsla?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Beautiful,” Susan said. “You’re so talented.”

  Matt put a blank canvas on the easel, looked around the garage for a good spot for Susan to stand, but the light and setting were all wrong. Too dark, too many shadows, too many tools and bikes and Graham’s bins of clothes. None of it would make a nice enough backdrop. He handed the canvas to Susan and lifted the easel. “Follow me,” he said. He walked out to the side yard and spun in a slow circle, looking for the best background.

  “You mean you want to paint me now?” Susan said.

  “Are you busy?” Matt asked.

  Susan laughed. “Actually, no.”

  Matt decided to have her stand near the fence, with the grass under her bare feet and the ivy behind her. He set up the easel and went back into the garage for the paints. He had an image of her in his mind and he wanted the real her to match the image.

  “The sun needs to be on your face more. Turn to the left a little. Put your chin up. And your hair, I need more of it forward, over your shoulder.” He tried telling her how to pose without touching her, but it wasn’t working.

  “I’m a statue,” Susan said. “You can adjust me however you want.”

  She held very still while Matt tilted her head, moved her arm, rearranged her hair.

  “You smell very good,” he said. He just about had her posed right, but then he had the overwhelming urge to kiss her. So he did, which messed up the pose. Susan kissed him back without moving her body any closer to his. He liked it when she played statue. He could get as close as he wanted without being distracted by her touching him. He stopped kissing her and stroked her hair. It was soft, silky, the perfect feeling against his fingers. She closed her eyes while he touched her, and smiled.

  “You’re always so gentle,” she said.

  “Yes,” Matt said, because he knew how it felt to be touched in a less-than-gentle way, knew more about it than anyone else, felt the pain of hasty, rough contact through every nerve ending, all the way down to his bones. “You know someone is happy with you when they are gentle,” he said.

  Susan opened her brown eyes and smiled at him. “I’m happy with you,” she said.

  He put half of her hair down her back and half over one shoulder, and the sunlight shone off her hair just right, bringing out copper highlights in her brown hair. He couldn’t wait to paint that color, the same color as the Vizsla’s coat. So maybe he didn’t only like blues now. Maybe Lana’s love of the color red wasn’t so strange, since he liked some reds now, too. Maybe he even liked his maroon blackout curtains, so close in color to Susan’s highlights, to the darkest tones of Vizsla fur. He posed Susan’s arms and head. He stepped behind the easel and sketched her outline on the canvas.

  “I like having you as my girlfriend again,” he said.

  “What does that mean to you?” she asked. She hardly moved her mouth as she talked. She was a very good statue. “How is a girlfriend different than a friend to you?”

  “I don’t kiss friends,” Matt said. “And I never have sex with friends.”

  Susan laughed. “Is that the only difference?”

  Matt thought about how Gabe and Abby sat together, not even talking, sometimes for a half hour, just being together. “A friend is someone you do stuff with. Like Lana walks with her friend Camille. And Byron does parkour with his friends. But a girlfriend is someone you want to be with all the time, even when you don’t do stuff together. You just want to be with them. Even doing nothing is fun with a girlfriend.”

  Susan laughed. “Matt, even when you’re doing nothing you aren’t doing nothing. You have the busiest brain I’ve ever seen.”

  Matt had her face, hair, shoulders sketched right, and he liked the flow of the dress, the way he could just draw loose lines that weren’t exactly like the dress right at that moment but were the right idea of the dress. That was the fun of art. He could paint exactly what he saw, or he could improve it, just a little, making a tiny adjustment to the hem of a dress, create an imaginary breeze to change the whole feel of the image.

  “There’s a breeze blowing in the painting. But not in real life,” he said.

  Susan laughed. “If I have to stand here in the sun for hours we’ll need a breeze in real life.”

  “This won’t take hours,” he said. “Only minutes. I’m very fast.”

  Matt wasn’t as fast as he wanted to be, not with the drawing. He had to erase the outline of Susan’s legs and start over, the curve of her calf down into her ankle was giving him trouble. He took a deep breath and it helped him not get frustrated. He listened to Becca’s meditation CD most nights now, whenever the melatonin wore off and the weighted blanket and noise machine weren’t enough. He liked the lady’s soft voice talking about the ripples of light warming and cleansing every cell in his body, one by one, from his toes to his head. He pictured it during the day whenever he started to feel anxious, and it helped sometimes. It slowed his brain down, focusing on the waves of light passing through him.

  The lady’s voice and the light waves of cell-cleansing calmness were like sitting in the window with Abby. And painting with Byron. And writing down data about everything interesting that happened in the house. And the tadpoles. And the way Lana prepared his ice cream every night without him even having to ask.

  He remembered the darkness and the mildewy smell of Spike’s apartment, and Spike’s anger and yelling, and the pills he needed to stay calm there. He looked up at the sun, heard the rise and fall of the other party guests laughing and talking just far enough away not to overwhelm him, but close enough to remind him that he was safe and not alone. His whole family of people who cared about him and never yelled at him and wanted his liver to get better so he could be with them for a long time. Everything seemed better now. He talked to his mom on video and she held up her hand for him to trace on the monitor, and he didn’t even have to talk sometimes.

  Susan sneezed and laughed. “Sorry,” she said. She returned to being a statue, but it wasn’t the exact same pose. Her head was a little different, angled down more than it had been before she sneezed, but he already had her head sketched, so it didn’t matter. He only had her legs left to do and after a few more strokes he got the legs right. He nodded, pointing from her to the canvas, before he remembered that she couldn’t see herself.

  Focusing on Susan gave Matt that same warm calm feeling. She was soft and smelled good and let him be the way he was and never gave him that anxious feeling.

  “You’re right. I’m never doing nothing,” he agreed. “I have a very fast-processing brain. I tend to think about several things at once. But when I’m with you all I think abou
t is you. That’s what a girlfriend’s like.” Matt smiled, not an anxious smile or a confusing one, but the real kind, the kind that showed the happy feeling coming from his body, but bigger than his body, so it poured out of his chest and into the air around him and onto the canvas that she couldn’t see yet. Matt was surrounded by the good feeling.

  35

  * * *

  Abby

  Abby was meeting Emily at the movies. She took a long look up and down the street, searching for those long legs of Em’s, and that’s when she saw her. Caitlin. Fluffy, sprayed, bleach-blond hair. Shoulders back to emphasize her busty figure, hips swinging with every step. She was alone and headed right for Abby. Abby backed up, tried to blend into the crowd waiting for tickets, but Caitlin stepped into line right behind her.

  “Abby?”

  Abby turned and faced Caitlin. Her heart was racing. Did Caitlin know about Abby and Gabe? What would her punishment be for that? “Hey, Caitlin,” she said lamely. She didn’t know what else to do. There was a good crowd around. Hopefully Caitlin wouldn’t make a scene in front of all of those people.

  “How’s your summer going?” Caitlin asked, like they were just any two kids from school. She seemed so normal. It just stressed Abby out more. Where was Emily?

  “Um, fine. We just got back from Florida.”

  “Cool. Family trip?”

  “Yeah, my grandparents live there.” There was an awkward pause. The line inched forward. Every muscle in Abby’s body was tense. “How’s yours?”

  “Oh, you know. Great to be done with school. Sucks to be home with the parents all the time. You can’t win. My mom’s a total busybody. She’s all over me. You know how that is.” Abby shrugged, because she didn’t. Lana watched her from a distance, never pestered her with questions, gave her plenty of space, maybe too much. Although lately it had been better. Sometimes they snuggled together on the couch like when Abby was little. Lana smelled the same as she always had, like safety and comfort, and Abby loved those moments. Close, without having to talk. Abby appreciated the space even as she wondered why they needed it. Why she didn’t want her mom close to her all the time, why she didn’t want to share everything with her the way she had when she was little. Caitlin sighed and stomped one foot, startling Abby. “Okay,” Caitlin said. “So I guess I kind of need to say sorry. You know. Things got out of hand, and . . . well. I didn’t mean anything by it. Boys are stupid anyway, you know?”