The Husband Hour(39)
“He’s wrong,” Lauren said. “I flew to LA that night and Rory was fine. The doctors said he was fine.”
Actually, he hadn’t been fine. But Rory didn’t want to admit he was injured. And now Lauren felt obligated to portray the incident as he would have wanted.
“Did you go to a lot of games his first season?” Matt asked.
“I saw him play whenever he was in DC or Philly, and I flew to LA for a few home games.”
Watching him play at the Staples Center, surrounded by eighteen thousand rabid fans, was surreal and thrilling. When he skated onto the ice just before the national anthem, his signature number 89 on his back, it brought tears to her eyes.
The Kings had retired his number three years ago. She’d declined to attend the ceremony.
The truth was that the NHL had been an adjustment for him. For as long as she’d watched him play, he’d always been one of the top players on the ice at any given moment. But things were different in the NHL; he was competing with guys who had all been the best where they came from. Sometimes Rory rode the bench, and this bothered him deeply. But Rory was Rory, and he figured out how to get more ice time by simply throwing his size around.
Lauren read every article written about the games, had every mention of him memorized. He gained a reputation as a double threat, a player who could score but could also fight. Still, it was never easy seeing him get into fights. Or, like that night in 2009, seeing him on the receiving end of a bad hit. It was all part of the game, and certainly part of the game at the pro level. Still, whenever anyone touched him, she felt a burst of indignant fury, even though he was always okay. That night, in the seconds between his contact with the boards and him hitting the ice, she told herself it was okay—it always was. But that time was different because he didn’t get up.
“Like I said,” she told Matt, “I flew out there the night he took that hit from the Blackhawks. And he was fine.”
Watching from her Georgetown apartment, she’d panicked when he didn’t stand up from the ice. The TV broadcast cut to commercial. Frantic, Lauren called Ashley Wade. Ashley was from Canada and, like Lauren, had been with her husband since high school. Except Rory wasn’t even Lauren’s husband at that point. Which was why she knew she wouldn’t get a call, would be in a complete information blackout.
When Ashley’s phone went straight to voice mail, Lauren called the airline and booked the next flight out of Dulles.
Landing in LA, she found out that Dean had stayed the night at Rory’s. The team doctor didn’t think it was a concussion, but Dean wanted to be on the safe side.
“I’m fine,” Rory assured her in his bedroom with the shades pulled down, not watching TV or anything, just sitting there. “But I’m happy you’re here.”
He didn’t seem fine. He was cranky, wouldn’t let her put on any lights, and asked her to check his phone when it buzzed with messages because the glare of the screen bothered him.
“Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?” she asked.
“Jesus, Lauren. Now you’re a doctor?” he snapped.
She wasn’t a doctor, but it didn’t take a doctor to know that something was seriously wrong. But the team clearly didn’t want to sideline him, and Rory didn’t want to be sidelined.
Now, she knew Rory wouldn’t want to be remembered as someone who had been weakened or diminished in any way.
“He was okay,” she insisted.
“You and Dean Wade see things differently.”
“I think I knew Rory better than Dean Wade,” she snapped.
“Of course you did. But Wade’s in the film and you’re not.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to be in this film. I’m just telling you that you’re getting it wrong.” Her instinct to stay on the surface of everything that had happened, not to dig too deep, was as much for her own sanity as it was to protect Rory’s reputation.
“I don’t think I am,” he said calmly. Confidently. “But I’m offering you the chance to tell your view of events.”
Her view of events? As if the past were purely open to individual interpretation.
“It’s not my view of events. I know what happened.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that you do,” he said, locking eyes with her.
“I’m late for work,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Beth wiped her hands on her apron. It was new, a gift to herself. A token to remind herself that she had been good at something once.
The kitchen counter was covered with packages and jars and containers: confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract, milk, eggs, salt, vegetable oil, and shortening. The kitchen island held two other gifts to herself: a brand-new deep fryer and a stand mixer. For the first time in years—certainly since the girls had grown up and left the house—she was making doughnuts.
She didn’t know how to do leisure. After thirty years of spending nearly every day at the clothing store, the sudden stretch of endless free time was more than unwelcome. It felt hostile, as if the universe were telling her in no uncertain terms that she was obsolete. Even work for the Polaris Foundation quieted during the month of August.
The past week, with Howard in Florida, Stephanie and Ethan back in Philly, and Lauren at the café every day, she had no idea what to do with herself. She could spend only so many hours clearing out the attic before becoming overwhelmed with a crushing sense of failure. The end of Adelman’s, losing the house the girls had grown up in, and now facing the sale of her parents’ house.