Chapter 18 #3
The countertop tiles peek up at me like an avalanche victim. I keep scrubbing.
“He’s getting worse,” I note.
“It’s his neurobiological disorder,” Casey says quietly. “Not him.”
“It just makes me crazy that this isn’t something I can fix. Like, my whole job is organizing other people’s lives, and my own dad lives like this.”
“It’s not your fault. And it isn’t an easy fix.”
“Thank you for being here.”
Casey stands up straight, shoulders back, and looks me squarely in the eye. “We take care of each other, Lauren. It’s what we do.” Then he flips the trash bag over his shoulder and whistles on his way out to the curb.
It’s long past dinnertime when I finally arrive back at the Met. Danny is reading on the couch, and even through my exhaustion I can see his glasses are still ridiculously sexy.
“You’re back,” he says, removing them. “Is everything OK?”
“It is now. I’m really sorry I ran out on you like that,” I say, sidestepping into the bathroom. I can smell it on me. The otherness. “I’ll just have a quick shower.”
When I’m clean and dressed in joggers and an ancient sweatshirt, my wet hair piled in a bun, I find Danny putting a plate of olives down on an immaculately set table, complete with lit candles.
“Oh,” I say, my eyes wide.
“I stopped by Pike’s on my way home,” he says, popping a sparkling kombucha and filling two wine glasses. “You didn’t eat anything at the party.”
I glance over at the counter and see a cutting board with a fresh filet of wild salmon ready to go in the cast iron skillet.
“Thank you,” I say, touching a petal of the fresh flowers now gracing the table.
“Are you OK?” he asks when my eyes droop to half-mast.
“Just a really long day,” I say, stifling a yawn. My limbs ache from scrubbing, hauling trash, racing against time to make Dad’s space somewhat livable. Danny pulls out my chair, and I collapse into it. “I shouldn’t be yawning over such a nice dinner. I’ll rally.”
“You know what?” Danny says, taking the plate of olives away from me as I reach for one. He takes my dinner plate away, as well, moving it over to the coffee table. “A fancy sit-down dinner isn’t what you need tonight.”
“What are you doing?”
“A cozy dinner in front of the TV will feel better.” He lifts the chenille blanket.
I sit rigid, not moving a muscle. “I don’t eat in front of the TV.”
“Never?”
I shake my head no.
Dad always eats in front of the TV, moving piles of magazines out of the way for his plate, the monotonous tones of C-SPAN emanating from the living room.
Sitting at a proper dinner table each night as a child was my one act of rebellion.
My crisply folded napkin was a reminder that even though the house I was being raised in wasn’t right, I still could be.
“Give it a try,” Danny says gently. “Sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered.”
I hesitate, then walk over and slip under the blanket. Danny tucks it around me, clicking on the television and navigating over to an episode of a true crime show.
“Just relax. I’ll bring your plate when it’s ready.”
Twenty minutes later, Danny has joined me on the couch, our socked feet up on the coffee table as we eat wild salmon and roasted dill potatoes.
“Oh, the husband so did it,” Danny says, adding some cracked pepper to his plate, then mine.
“It’s always the husband,” I say with a nod, biting another crispy potato. “I didn’t know you like murder shows too.”
“Tutu got me started a while ago,” Danny says, sipping his kombucha. “Now I’m onto the podcasts too. I like watching justice be served. People getting punished, getting what they deserve.”
“The way you think you deserve punishment?” I say gently. “For what happened with your mom?”
A thin line appears between his brows. Shit. Why did I say that? What is wrong with me?
“Oh my god—I’m so sorry. I never know when to stop.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“It’s not. Your grandmother asked me to help you through some lingering guilt, and I should have said no.”
Danny laughs. “I would love to see you try. Tutu doesn’t exactly take no for an answer.
And I do feel like I deserve punishment.
Intellectually, I know it was just an accident.
My mom was depressed about the breakup, drank too much wine one night, and lost track of how many sleeping pills she’d taken.
But emotionally … I can’t help but think what might have happened if I’d been home instead of out partying that night.
Or if I tried harder to get along with my stepdad. ”
I reach out to touch him, and he places his large hand over mine. “It’s not your fault,” I say.
“I know that. I do. But it still doesn’t help me. Where do I put the anger? The guilt? I’m just supposed to go on living with it, I guess.”
“Instead of living with it, you can choose to just observe it. There’s a trick for increasing space between yourself and your emotions, to view them more objectively.” Then I backtrack. “Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear life-coaching jargon right now.”
“Tell me what you mean,” Danny says, turning to me. “Observe it how?”
I put my plate on the table and shift to face him on the couch.
He does the same and arranges the blanket over our legs.
“OK. Imagine a koi pond. It’s serene and beautiful, filled with big, fat koi fish all cruising around.
Each koi fish is an emotion—anger, sadness, guilt, joy.
All of them. But you are not a koi fish.
You are the pond. You observe each fish as it swims by inside of you.
Some hang out longer than others, some make a ruckus splashing around, some are shy and rarely come out unless the circumstances are just right.
But none of them are you. None of them define you. Because you are the pond.”
Danny’s shoulders drop, as if my words removed a heavy rucksack he’d been carrying. He reaches for my hand under the blanket. We settle in again and watch the television in silence, our bodies warm where they touch, our bellies full of nourishing food.
“I like the orderliness of it all,” I say finally. “The methodical nature of investigations. So often, life is messy. It’s nice to watch someone calmly assess the mess, clean it up, and help people find closure.”
“Like what you do with life coaching,” he says, running his thumb over my hand. “You take people’s chaos and clean it up.”
I smile. “I try to, anyway.”
He squeezes my hand twice. “You do.”
By the time the killer husband is arraigned, Danny has cleared our plates and done the dishes, even drying them, and putting them away and wiping down all the countertops. He comes back to the couch with a specialty cookie to share.
“Don’t get too excited. It’s vegan, sugar-free, and macro-friendly,” he says, splitting it in half, “which means it likely will taste like shit.”
I give him the bigger portion, and rest my head on his giant shoulder, sleepy and warm.
“God,” I moan, chewing. “It’s fucking terrible.”
“It’s somehow getting dryer the more I chew it.” Danny sets his cookie down. “So … do you want to talk about tonight? You must have gone somewhere important to risk leaving me alone.”
My muscles tense under the blanket. I always feel like this when I’m forced to share things about my dad.
My anxiety goes into overdrive: What if Danny doesn’t understand?
What if he can’t see past the hoarding to the extraordinary man behind the disorder?
Worse still, what if it changes the way he sees me?
I shake my head. “Just something I had to take care of.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Danny says, sliding his eyes back to the TV. “Besides, I already know.”
I turn to face him, surprised. “What do you know?”
“I know where you went. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.” Danny grins. “You went back to the swingers restaurant. Once you go unicorn, you never go back.”
“Hey!” I launch myself at him, unleashing a flurry of punches. I’m giving it my all, but his arms and chest are like steel.
“OK, OK. I’m sorry.” His cheeks are red with mirth as he fends me off. He taps out on the couch as if submitting in the ring. “Please, I’m bruised enough already.”
“Fine.” I settle in next to him, a small smile on my lips. “Thank you for making a joke.”
“Anytime, Theranos.”
“And thanks for making me dinner, and for the flowers. No one has ever bought me flowers before. I could get used to it.”
“Good,” he says, tucking me into his arms and pulling the blanket over us. He rests his chin on the crown of my head. “Because I could get used to buying them for you.”