Chapter 20

Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad

Lauren dragged herself to the loo just feet from the kitchen where she fell down. She just made it before she retched uncontrollably into the toiler and hyperventilated, partly from panic, partly from sightedness. She gasped like a fish out of water and tried to silence herself with a towel she dragged down form the rack. Her face on the cold tile floor felt like heaven as she struggled to steady herself mentally and physically.

"I am not well…" she thought. "Holy crap, what am I going to do now?" Sitting up with the wall of the washroom holding her in position she tried to shake away the panic and control her breath.

"Dammit, I sure know how to ruin a good time" she thought as she dragged herself from the floor, flinched away the evidence and looked at herself in the mirror and rolling her eyes. She washed her face and rinsed out her mouth, spitting water into the bowl as if she was spitting at herself for screwing up.

"Seriously Lauren, get your shit together and stop looking guilty! It's not like you barfed on the Mona Lisa!"

She slid quietly back into the kitchen, and resumed fixing salad as if nothing had ever happened. "It never happened" she reminded herself over and over like a chant to keep the bad spirits away. Her head still pounded from the stress but John would be none the wiser she figured. She ran to her purse that she dropped onto the couch and fished out a rogue antacid. Chomping on it she was suddenly taken into an embrace from the back that startled the crap out of her.

"You haven't even tasted it yet." Johns voice shook in her ears.

"Oh, yeah..umm..calcium you know." She winced at this lousy argument but continued trying to save herself. "Women, you know, we, they're, I mean doctors, they're always saying, you know, not enough calcium." She knew she sounded like a fool but she stammered through it and turned around stiffly in his arms, hoping that her face wouldnt' betray her ever present bullshit. "I'm going to go and finish up that salad now…not quite finished." She just couldn't shut up when she lied.

John smiled faintly and unclasped his grip and released her back to the kitchen where she slid quickly. Picking up a giant knife she chopped the head of iceberg lettuce and ultimately quartering them in to more manageable handfuls. She let herself let her frustrations out on the produce while she watched him out of the corner of her eye go back to the deck and grill. Rolling her eyes at her total lack of grace she whispered "Dummy!" to herself with every whack of the knife. Stopping before she liquefied the lettuce, she threw it into a giant salad bowl and casually cut up the rest of the veggies and tried to act a normal as possible. Everything around her was normal, therefore she felt that her behavior should reflect that instead of giving into what she figured was the beginning of a stomach bug.

She felt less green now and began to overcome her queasiness enough to set the table and even tolerated the smoky goodness of the meat being grilled just outside.

They sat down to a lovely little dinner of steak tips, salad, and grilled veggies. The nausea far in the back of her mind, she ate normally and for once in this life, felt like a normal person, in a normal house having a normal dinner. No complications. Yet she couldn't figure out why the whole scene filled her with a sense of dread. Like there was a monster waiting for her in the closet, counting down the minutes until it was time to jump out and surprise her with some disturbing madness.

"You don't look happy" commented John and subtly reminding her that there was nothing that she could hide from him.

"Oh, it's nothing. I'm not unhappy" she explained knowing damn well that it was crap. She pursed her lips and decided that it was much better to admit to what's going on in her head. "I guess I just don't understand. This. All of this here." She wrung her napkin on her nervous hands while his eyes fixed upon hers. "Why do we..I mean you, why do you live ina dusty warehouse that makes you cough your brains out instead of staying here where the air is fresh?" She was getting brave. "I haven't even heard you cough once since we've been here" she challenged.

John finished a glass of water slowly and countered. "So you will tell me what in this world is for me and what is not? Every direction must be taken into consideration for me and I must do what is desirable on all paths." He paused in wait for her counter argument but she just looked at him as if he just ate a bug. "So, my inquisitive little detective, what else is creeping around in that head of yours that you want to ask me, hmmm?" She balked. He continued on, gently but with affirmation in his tone. "Perhaps you would like to know about what it was like to have everything in the world in your grasp, every string in your grip and all at once have it ripped from your hand." She dropped her fork onto the table and focused in on his eyes, a trick she had learned from him.

"I don't need you to tell me how badly life can shit all over you and leave you with nothing in your hands. Everybody loses, at least once. People go away, taking great, giant chunks of your soul and leaving you at a loss as to how it ever even happened and makes you crazy with thoughts about how you could have avoided it, but guess what? There ARE no easy answers!" She stopped for air and continued while he was in her rapt attention. "You just put your feet on the damn floor every morning and keep getting up. Every single day, get up and live your life. I learned that the world doesn't stop for a broken hearted girl and that even at the worst of times, you just gotta get the hell out of bed and do what you gotta do, even if it's not necessarily what you want to do. That stupid stinking trailer is ALL I had left of a horrendous marriage that ended in violence, so you know what, go ahead." Her emotion flashed all over her body as she spoke, curling up like a big cat ready to pounce. "Lecture me, oh great one on how anyone could be prepared for the shock of getting the crap kicked out of you one day and leaving you for dead by the side of the road." Her eyes gleamed with tears, determined not to fall. "I once swore that I would never EVER let anyone get close to me again, but here you are. I broke my one and only rule to myself…god!" She turned away from him, unable to meet his stare any longer, shaking with anger and the squalled memories of years gone by with a man she truly came to hate. "You just can't prepare for everything" she said with a warbled voice that was holding back her grief. She heard the sound of his chair sliding away from the table and the falls of his feet once more coming up behind her. His breath nipped upon her neck and it bit her in her heart. It wasn't John's fault of course that these unfortunate things had happened to her. Lashing out at him was decidedly improper and rude, but she was overwhelmed with the pain of those times they fell from her lips like a hurricane, blowing over anyone that happened to be near.

"What do you want me to say, little Lauren? That I am sorry that this happened to you, that all of the pain that you felt and still continue to feel about something and someone over whom you had no control?" he hissed into her year, burning her. "My dear there are reasons why people come into and out of your life, there is a grander purpose to life than a broken marriage and the loss of a life you were so sure that you wanted for yourself." He spun her roughly to meet her crying eyes, nearly tearing the hair from the nape of her neck. She gasped in horror as he had never behaved in such a rough manner to her before. Certainly he wasn't going to harm her, so she hoped.

"There is so much more to do and a very short amount of time in which to do it." He pressed his other hand on her stomach and brought her face to his so that there was no escape. "How have you been feeling lately?" he asked her.

"How did.." she trailed off. Wiping the stubborn tears from her face she wondered how the heck he knew she had a touch of the flu. "I don't know" she said, "I guess I just have a bug or something. It's nothing to worry about." He nodded slowly and reached for a napkin and gave it to her. Her cheeks, flushed with agitation were mopped dry and she opened her mouth to apologize for her outburst when he whispered.

"Not now. You're tired and we've had enough words for today." He let her loose from his grip and gave her the room to walk away. She sunk back into her chair at the table and drank some water out of a trembling glass in her hand. John turned toward the table and excused himself to another room upstairs. She took that as her cue to start cleaning up, the dinner that she wanted to go so well she ruined and was left to clean it up.

She took care of all of the dishes and wiped down the counters. She took her time and made sure that the downstairs was as they found it when they arrived. There was no need to hurry through her tasks, he had made himself clear that he wanted to be left alone. When there was nothing left for her to do, she walked out onto the deck and stared at the lake reflecting the moonlight back upward almost lighting up the trees. It was chilly outside so she grabbed a blanket from one of the lounge chairs and wrapped it around her shoulders. Encased in her blanket cocoon she decided that she didn't feel bad about what she said. He had asked her a perfectly simple question and she answered him. If he didn't like what she had to say than it was his problem. Then she bent over the deck rail and puked into the lake.

"Fabulous," she thought. "I'm just the graceful one tonight."

She coughed the last of it and ambled back inside for a glass of water and a good rinsing of her mouth with a little peroxide for good measure. From the loo door looking out into the expansive house, she sighed. There was nothing left for her to do. Noticing that it was eleven o'clock she wondered if John had gone to bed and wondered if she should stay downstairs as a precaution. "No, no way" she thought. "He brought me here. If he doesn't like it, he can just leave then." She shut off all of the lights save for one so that if she needed to come back down she would at least be able to see where she was going. Her blanket sagging behind her like a sad wedding train, she made her way upstairs slowly. Reaching the top, she surveyed the doors. One she discovered was a linen closet, and there were two perfectly empty rooms with no furniture or decoration. She had two left and with one being the bathroom, the only one left, the one with golden light dripping from the space between the door and the floor. She carefully turned the knob and eased the door open to find John lying in a grand king sized bed with his back to the door and a small lamp left on, presumably for her so that she wouldn't stub her toe. She looked around and saw that the master bedroom was furnished with a couple of dressers, a hope chest and curiously, a vanity with a bench. Everything seemed empty and had that just-from-the-store odor to it. Dropping the blanket, she skinned off her jeans and paused briefly before easing into the bed, leaving a large space in between them. She dared not move from the edge where she lay. Turning the lamp off, she settled into the comfortable bed, snuggling into the sheets and quilts and letting out an audible sigh.

"Comfortable?" John asked as she nearly leapt out of her own skin.

"I thought you were sleeping. I didn't mean to wake you," she said brushing off the tingle of being frightened. He hadn't moved but she could drown in his scent from where she was. Drunk on him, she moved over to be closer to John and he relented to at least lying on his back. She wanted to reach out, to feel him close to her and quench her need to be forgiven. Lying fetal like a child she crept her right hand timidly toward his body and her mind cried out for some sort of accepting demonstration from him, any progression of acknowledgement of her presence. He sighed slowly and turned to face her as her eyes twinkled from the sheen of unfalling tears that she deliberately held back refusing to outwardly give in to her turmoil of hunger for him. Without words, she sank into him naturally and abandoned the notion that she would ever be able to deny him her love and devotion. John pressed her face close to his chest, cradling the back of her head. She suffocated herself in him and felt his acceptance in her heart, the most beautiful silence she had ever experienced. The sound of hearts in silent dialogue, so delicate, so rare and wonderful lulled her to sleep in an insulated and secluded from the world, far from inquisition and confusion.

The unconscious perfection.