Deja Who (Insighter #1)(20)
“Baths don’t work,” he corrected her sharply. “I can barely stand to pee in there, remember? It took us over eight months for you to get me to stop pissing in the kitchen sink. It’s hard enough just to pee in the bathroom, never mind take a—”
“A sitz bath is small, and you’re only in water up to your hips. It’s what pregnant women use after they have a baby and are too sore for much else. Trust me, you cannot drown in one.” Probably. Not without considerable sustained effort, for certain. “Baby steps, right? Don’t get rid of the kiddie pool; store it in your garage for now and we’ll work back up to that. In the meantime: sitz bath. Pick one up or order it online. Today. I’ll put a note in your chart and your HMO will reimburse. Meanwhile, step up the sponge baths. The hottest part of summer is coming.” Oh, God, it was. If Harry was this ripe now . . . it didn’t bear thinking about.
“Okay, I’ll try. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Of course. And we’ll have a longer session next week, when you can tell me all about the joys of your sitz bath.”
“Can’t hardly wait,” he said, and gave her a crooked smile on his way out.
If nothing else, she thought, giving her patient a wave as he left a trail of stink behind him before opening every window in the room, it’s nice to put my own problems in perspective. I’m due to be hideously murdered in the next several months, but at least I can enjoy many showers between now and then. I don’t smell. I don’t have sex with strangers in ball fields. This doesn’t make me a better person, just a less complicated one.
Yes, for some reason she was viewing the cup as half-full today, and she even knew why: it had everything to do with the man about to accompany her to the pit of horror she’d grown up in.
She realized, with equal parts unease and anticipation, that she couldn’t wait.
TEN
“I’m really nervous,” Archer confessed as they pulled up to her childhood mansion.
“Why, do you think she’s unstable?”
“No! God, no.”
“Then you’re something of an idiot,” Leah said, softening the observation with a smile. “She’s incredibly unstable. But she would never hurt you.”
He waved that away, which given that he’d been stabbed (repeatedly) by another family member, struck her as courageous or stupid. Courageously stupid? And he’d passed over the emphasis on you, which she also found interesting. “I’m nervous about the questions. I’ve got so many! What if I forget one? When am I ever going to be back here? God, I thought my family was screwed up.”
Leah sighed, shut off the engine, got out of the car. Archer had been more than happy to let her drive; he was understandably sore. Fine with her; she loved to drive. There was something about hopping in a car and just going that appealed to her inner chickenshit. She could never summon the courage to pick up and leave her life, but often indulged a rich fantasy world where she did. Taking the long way on virtually every trip factored into that. I am not driving to my terrible mother’s house; this is the beginning of my road trip to Egypt. I will need a new plan by the time I get to Florida. Perhaps I can trade my car for a one-way cruise ship ticket. That is Monday’s problem, today I am going to drive. Drive. Driiiive.
So when Archer asked her to drive, she’d made sure he was buckled securely in the passenger seat of her gray Ford Fusion (which looked an awful lot like a giant electric shaver, which was an awful lot like why she’d bought it), and taken the scenic route around the lake. But it was a gorgeous day, the kind that lures people to the Midwest: bright blue sky, clouds like marshmallow fluff, the breeze off Superior, the sunshine. Chicago’s slogan should be “See? Winter eventually ends.”
It was exactly as creepy as she imagined to find herself in the old neighborhood; she had not been home—though her apartment was only a half-hour drive away—since high school. If she’d had her way, she wouldn’t have been home since middle school. For the thousandth time, she cursed the thick judge. If Nazir v. Nazir had not been a clear-cut case for legal emancipation, she could not imagine what was.
The place looked, from the outside, as it had when she’d last seen it: a gorgeous pile of Prairie-style brick concealing the utter madness within, with all the rich toy trappings out on the broad lawn, which was, of course, a perfect vivid green. Not the back lawn, either; if it cannot be seen from the street, if someone driving by doesn’t crane their neck to take in all the accouterments, it hardly counts: a gazebo, a conspicuous absence of lawn jockeys, and . . .
A koi pond stuffed with Gosanke and Kohaku. For God’s sake. She hates fish. It could have been her idea of a subtle sly commentary on Hollywood’s bottom-feeders, except it’s neither subtle nor sly, and she has great respect for bottom-feeders.
Unmoved by the McMansion’s clichéd beauty, she marched up the porch steps and hammered on the glassed-in door with both fists. “I know you’re in there, you horrible thing! I might kill you this time, so let me in!”
The door opened at once, startling her, and a moment later she knew why she’d gotten such an instant response: her mother hadn’t answered the door.
“Leah, I’d like the record to show I tried to talk her out of it.” The man, whom she knew was her mother’s age but not holding up nearly as well, blinked nervously at her. His pale blue eyes were unusually large and the glasses made them look watery, as if he was always on the verge of an allergy attack. The few gray-blond wisps of hair he had left seemed so thin and fragile the wind could whisk them away, leaving him bald and blinking. “I truly did.”