Finding Isadora(63)

“Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe you care deeply about him, but… Are you sure you want to hear this? You’ve never been very open to, uh, input about your relationship with Richard.”

I walked over to the office door and closed it, then returned and sat on the edge of the desk. “Go on. I’m feeling confused.”

Her brows rose. “Okay. Well, a solid long-term relationship requires a lot of things. Like, a firm friendship and mutual respect.”

“Which we’ve got.”

Grace nodded. “Yeah, I guess you do, even though you have different views on a lot of things. But you and Janice have that friendship and respect thing going too, and the two of you aren’t talking about getting married.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know I’m not lesbian.”

“And you do want a relationship with sex.”

“Of course I do.”

“And with you and Richard…”

I flushed hotly. In the past I’d avoided having conversations about sex with my parents. They were totally open to the idea, but it made me feel squirmy. Still, today, I could use my mother’s wisdom. “With Richard the sex is good,” I muttered.

“Good?”

All she’d done was repeat my word, but it fell like a stone, dragging my fairy tale down with it. “It’s really good,” I protested.

“Uh-huh.”

The stone dropped deeper. Softly, I said, “But maybe not good enough?”

“Only you can answer that one, hon.” Grace put an arm around me. “Do you sometimes feel so hot and bothered you can’t wait to make it into the bedroom, so you just have at it on—”

“No!” I jumped in quickly, having no desire to hear about some of the strange places my parents had made out. I shook my head. “Not exactly. I mean, when we have sex it’s loving, and arousing and satisfying, but I can’t quite envision, uh, the hot and bothered scenario.”

“If Richard was right for you, that scenario would be one of the first things you’d be envisioning. Before you thought about kids and houses and furniture.”

“Kitchens,” I murmured. So what if I fantasized about kitchens? Kitchens were the heart of a home, the place where families came together. Kitchens were far more important than dizzy, dancing, hot-and-bothered feelings. “You’re talking about chemistry, lust, pheromones,” I argued, trying to recapture, to justify, my fairy tale. “That stuff may be exciting, but it wears off. It’s not enough to base a relationship on.”

“No, of course not. You need friendship and respect, which you say you do have. Trust, the same values, a shared philosophy of life.” She paused, then said slowly, “To be honest, I’m not sure you and Richard really have all those things.” Her arm tightened around my shoulders. “Again, only you can answer that.”

“We do. Much more than I’ve ever had with anyone else.”

She nodded slowly. “And you’ll never find a perfect match. But—”

“It feels easy with Richard and me,” I broke in. “It has from the beginning, when we met at the blood donor clinic.” I’d never felt off balance with him, as I did with his father.

“It’s easy because you don’t challenge each other.”

“No, it’s easy because we’re so compatible.”

Grace sighed. “No, you just avoid dealing with anything that might cause a fight.”

“That’s not true,” I protested indignantly.

“Vegetarian versus meat-eater. How are you going to deal with that when you’re married? How’s he going to balance his drive to build his career against his desire to spend time with you and your kids? You both assume that somehow these things will work out, but they’re not going to do it by themselves. You have to both put some hard work into it. Until you do that, how can you be confident in your future together?”

I scowled at her. “This doesn’t sound like my hippie mother talking. I thought you were a big believer in going with the flow.”

“That works when a couple’s already faced serious problems and conflicts, and worked through them together. Things haven’t been so easy for Jimmy Lee and me, especially not in the beginning. With my parents, the draft issue, coming to Canada.”

“I suppose.” I had to admit she was right. Richard and I had never faced any serious issues, and the trivial ones like our food preferences always got shoved aside in the optimistic hope we’d figure them out later. But that wasn’t like me. I was a planner, not a go-with-the-flow person.

“You have no trouble challenging his father,” she said.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. In the short time I’d known Gabriel, we’d disagreed on lots of things—and yet we’d talked the issues through, listened to each other, not avoided our bones of contention. I frowned, bewildered at what this might mean.

My mother studied my face, then bit her lip. “There’s another thing, Isadora. About that sexual spark? You’re wrong about it wearing off. That won’t happen if the man’s the right one. It’ll change, and maybe lie dormant for periods of time, but it won’t die. If anything, it will grow stronger. Everything grows stronger as you make your way through life together.”