“I’m in the kitchen.”
“Be right there.” Alex hung his coat in the hall closet under the stairs to the second floor and headed into the kitchen where Lisa sat at the bistro table sipping a glass of white wine, looking very upset.
“Bad day?” he asked while removing a wine glass from the cupboard.
She finger-combed her hair then shook it out. “Laura called.”
He knew of two Lauras in her life: her sister and a friend. “Your sister?”
“What other Laura is there?”
Whoa. Not good, whatever was upsetting her. Long ago he’d learned that when she showed this mood, he should simply allow her to raise the problem on her own terms rather than prying it out of her. He picked up the wine bottle to pour a glass and was surprised at how light it felt. He held it up to check the level. Three quarters gone. Not good at all. “Go on with your story.”
“She called about Mom.”
He poured some wine and set the bottle on the table. “What’s wrong?”
“You probably don’t remember me mentioning the chronic cough she developed, but it became progressively worse, so she saw her doctor. Turns out it’s lung cancer.”
Ah shit. He wanted to reach across the table to take her hand, but knew she’d pull away. She got like that when depressed or upset or both. “I’m sorry. Has it been staged yet? Know any more details?”
“She said it’s too advanced for them to consider surgery, so her only options are radiation or chemotherapy—one or the other, but not both. Laura wants me to come home soon as possible.” She dumped the remainder of the wine into her glass.
“I’m so sorry, Sweetie. Of course you’ll go. Have you booked a flight yet?”
She shook her head. “No. I wanted to talk to you first.”
He didn’t see any need for discussion. “What’s to talk about? You’re going.”
“Will you come with me?”
He considered that a moment. “How long?”
“Christ, Alex, how should I know? However long it takes.”
“I don’t know how soon I can get away. I’ll have to arrange coverage. Why don’t we get you back there first, and I’ll come soon as I can.”
She flashed exasperation. “But I want you there to explain things. You know how I am about medical things.”
“Honey, I’ll see what I can do. It’s going to be difficult getting someone to cover the trauma center. That’s the best I can say right now.” Feeling trapped, he sipped wine and waited. She was rotating her wine glass by the stem now, making little screeching sounds as the glass rubbed the marble.
“Why don’t you open another bottle?” she said at last, clearly not making it optional. “We can have a little while I heat up the chicken.”
“Okay.”
He removed the one remaining bottle from the small countertop wine rack. As he stripped foil from the neck, he heard a sigh. Not just any sigh, but her proprietary I’m-fed-up-with-this sigh.
“Know the one thing I resent the most in our marriage?” she asked.
Okay, here we go.
Without a word, Alex screwed the opener into the cork. This was her classic gambit. Nothing he could say or do at this point would alter the ensuing argument. Often, when frustrated or angry—especially when fueled by wine—she had an urge to beat up on him, as if him serving as an emotional punching bag was a given in the “for better or worse” clause of their marriage vows. Didn’t mean he liked it.
When he refused to take the bait, she continued. “That you’ve never loved Mom. Not like Dan does. He still sends her a Christmas card every year.”
Working on prying the cork out, he wondered if Dan—Lisa’s first husband—really loved Donna or if Lisa just used this phrase to try to make him feel guilty for his lack of connection with her mother. Did it make a damn bit of difference? It was something that would never be reconciled.
“Why don’t you like her?” Lisa asked.
Alex turned toward her, bottle and corkscrew in hand. How many times had they discussed this? “Look Sweetie, I don’t dislike her. For whatever reason, we’ve never been able to resonate. If I try to talk with her, she clams up. What am I supposed to do?”
“She’s extremely passive, Alex. Extremely passive. She never takes the lead on anything. You know that. But you don’t like passive women. You don’t respect passive women. You only like strong women, just like your Mommy.”
Okay, there it was. Squelching a retaliatory zinger, he popped the cork, perhaps with a bit more force than necessary. “Being passive and non-communicative are two entirely different things. She won’t say much more than yes or no to anything I say. What more do you expect me to do? You just said it; she’s passive. I can’t change that.”
She glared at him. “For one thing, you could try to be a bit more understanding. Maybe if you did, you’d be able to accept her.”
They were on a path traveled too many times where he was the villain and Donna was the victim. He debated the wisdom of pouring her any more wine, but decided hiding it would only inflame her even more. So, without a word, he brought the cabernet to the table.
“We’ve been over this, Alex. The reason she can’t talk with you is you intimidate her. We grew up poor. My father was a farmer. There’s never been a doctor or lawyer or any other professional in our family. The only doctor we knew was the vet. She doesn’t know what to say to you. She’s afraid of saying the wrong thing and that you’ll laugh at her and think she’s stupid and uneducated. She’s a smart woman, Alex. Maybe not university educated, but smart in other ways. Is that so hard for you to understand?”
Best strategy now, he decided, was to change the subject. He poured more wine and hoped for the best. “Let’s try to think of a way to get you home soon as possible.”