The Husband Hour(59)
For two weeks, they scoured flea markets and estate sales for bargains on good solid furniture. Rory hated anything mass-market like Pottery Barn and wanted to leave the rooms bare until they found the right things rather than fill them with “commercial junk,” as he called it. That was fine with Lauren. She kept calling it his house, and he always corrected her. “Our house.”
The plants in the front lawn amazed her, the spiny Shaw’s agave, the waxy chalk liveforever, and the grasslike giant wild rye. There was a certain smell to the air that permeated the house, their clothes, her skin. The beauty of Southern California was alien and surprising, and she was certain that no matter how long they lived there, she would always feel like a visitor.
In the early evening, they opened a bottle of wine while they cooked dinner. She was amazed by how easy it was to find fresh fish and organic meat and vegetables. Everything tasted better. She didn’t know if it was the California produce or simply that the food was served under her own roof, but she had never felt such lust for meals.
Sometimes, they didn’t make it through cooking dinner. Lauren would be stirring pasta, and Rory would sneak up behind her, move the heavy curtain of her hair, and kiss the back of her neck. Always, she tried to keep going, but after a few seconds she would turn and find herself in his arms, and then—barely remembering to turn off the burner—they would head to the half-empty living room to have sex on the rug under the Spanish candelabra left by the previous owners.
“How did Rory feel, physically and mentally, heading into his second season?” Matt said.
“He was excited. Determined to start making his mark.”
If Rory was a little more short-tempered than she remembered, if he failed in his effort to hide his frequent headaches, it was nothing she couldn’t deal with. They were together, that was the important thing.
But once the season started and she began working, it was challenging for them not to take their frustrations out on each other. While it was clear the Kings were on fire, Rory was riding the bench a lot. And her job at an entertainment blog wasn’t exactly high-level journalism.
“When I interviewed the coach, he said Rory struggled with insomnia that year.”
“Well, he was so adrenalized after games, he just couldn’t sleep.” Still, Lauren had been shocked to find a bottle of Ambien in his bedside-table drawer. Rory was anti-drug—even over-the-counter stuff. He’d get on her case for popping Advil when she had her period. When she found the Ambien and asked him about it, he became uncharacteristically angry and defensive. They had a big shouting match, the first of many.
“Was he experiencing any lingering effects of the head injury? Headaches? Short temper?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Matt glanced at his laptop.
“When did Rory start thinking about enlisting?”
“That’s a tough question. It honestly took me by surprise.”
“So there was no turning point you could identify?”
She shook her head. “I mean, Rory had a military family. So I guess the idea of it was more in the realm of his thinking than maybe your average person’s. And then everything in the news pushed that nerve.”
“Like what?”
“Well, the Fort Hood shooting had a big effect on him,” she said carefully. The November 2009 attack at the army base in Texas by a radicalized Muslim U.S. Army major who’d killed thirteen soldiers and wounded thirty others. “Rory followed the story obsessively.”
“He felt like he needed to do something in the wake of this?”
“No, not exactly. I think it just underscored the divide between what was going on in the world and maybe the insignificance of what he was doing with his life.”
“He felt playing hockey was insignificant?”
“He started feeling his role was insignificant. He would have felt better if he were playing and scoring more. He was frustrated sometimes at not being the best for the first time in his life. But everyone told him this was a natural transition from college to pro sports. I mean, he was still an exceptional player. But he was hard on himself. So he would look at those guys fighting in the Middle East and think, They’re doing something great, and I’m not. It was just classic Rory, always wanting to excel.”
“You said his decision to enlist was a surprise to you?”
“His decision to enlist was a big surprise to me,” she said.
By that time, it seemed so many other forces were at play in his life. Some days, she felt she barely knew him anymore. And it scared her.
Beth beat together creamy peanut butter, heavy cream, and confectioners’ sugar with perhaps more aggression than the task warranted.
Of all the things Howard had said that infuriated her lately, the crack about her baking with Ethan was the worst. What was this, 1950?
“When does the jelly part happen?” Ethan asked.
She had, to his delight, come up with a recipe for peanut butter and jelly doughnuts.
“We’re going to use raspberry jam, and that part comes later. We’ll fill one of these pastry bags with the peanut butter mixture, one with the jelly, and then we use these plastic tips to squeeze them into the doughnut.”
His eyes widened. “Cool.”
“The best part of these doughnuts is that we should eat them right away or else the dough will get soggy. You okay with that?”