The Trials of Laura Baines
Now it was true that the blue shirt was a much smarter garment, anybody could see that, even there as Laura held up the collar with one hand and stretched out the sleeve with the other. (She had never seen a man stand in this pose, but it was always how she examined shirts). She peeked over the empty shoulder at the red shirt again. Jason looked so much better in red. It was a virile colour and it suited him. He wore virility so well. But the sleeves were more billowed on the red, not as clean cut as on the blue, as if the tailor had started thinking of Bolsheviks but then mindfully drifted back to the needs of more western practicalities at the elbow. She didn’t normally take such care when shopping for Jason, but she wanted that night to be special. It all had to be right. For them both. It was important that everything was just as perfect for her as it was for him, and she knew that she would wear that black dress that he liked but which she thought was leaning more toward the slutty than the sleek. She picked up the red shirt and tucked it under her arm. It was the least he could do.
At the counter Laura tried not to catch the eye of Abigail Tundry but it was to no avail. Abigail was a tall lady, a few years younger than Laura, who had known Jason since school. Laura didn’t like her. Laura had found it difficult to find connections with the people of New England on moving there after the wedding. She had told herself it would be a matter of settling in; a new culture would take some getting used to. And Jason was so caring. He was strong and young (some eyes in her new home did not approve of the age gap and she resented that) and he had protected her against many discomforts from the earliest periods of their affair. And in return for the relief that this comfort brought her, Laura agreed to pack up her life and move to the other side of the world to settle in New England. But she had not settled. And people like Abigail Tundry had contributed to that.
“Laura!” The call and the wave immediately had an effect on Laura’s mood of hope and ease. She returned the wave with a by now well-practised smile.
“Abigail. Nice to see you.”
Abigail looked down upon Laura with the pity of someone who had just paid to see animals at the zoo. Laura was always reminded of a story that Abigail had told her in a pathetic attempt to connect when they had first met. It involved a sandwich year in Paris when studying fashion and how she felt so alone for the first few months until she began sleeping with a bistro waiter and learning the language. Laura could not see the morality of the tail and she tried to tell herself that there was no advice in it for her.
“How are you doing?” Laura found Abigail’s way of pursing her lips at the end of the question extremely irritating, not to mention the fact that her sentences began at break neck speed and slowed down to a drawl as they careered to their insignificant conclusion.
“I’m doing fine.” Laura handed the cash over for the shirt.
“Shopping helps.” Offered Abigail.
“Helps?” Laura knew exactly where this was going.
“It’s therapeutic.”
“It’s for Jason.”
“Really?” Abigail looked embarrassed that she had approached the subject.
“Yes. Just a wife buying her husband a gift.”
“So you’re okay? The two of you are okay?”
“We’ve discussed it. Couldn’t be better.” Laura rolled up the bag with some annoyance and walked off. She was not in the mood for conversations as trivial as this. She was not in the mood for the trivialities of this town. She did not say goodbye to Abigail.
Laura slammed the car door. She hated the fact that she allowed people to get under her skin. She held her head high, she smiled politely, but deep down it burned. She had always been the same. When her brother had aired his polite reservations about the marriage – more about the emigration, in truth – she had smiled in a way that showed her respect for his opinion and told him that he was wrong. But apparently he was not wrong, and that hurt her more than the fact she had not believed him.
But now it was going to work. All that had gone before, the coldness, the deceit was all in the past. They had worked it out and tonight was the beginning of the rest of their lives. They didn’t need anyone else.
She drove a little fast to the supermarket at the opposite end of the main street. Her temper always made her do things quicker, but on thinking of Jason, young and strong and renewed, she slowed and parked with calm.
She needed soup. A good soup to compliment the New England Lobster that had been extremely difficult to get hold of at the time of year. She couldn’t spoil that entire endeavour by getting the wrong soup.
Butternut Squash and ginger? She was not entirely sure what a butternut squash was but it was quite likely that, as a native, Jason would. Sweet potato soup. Tinned. A few extra herbs and ground pepper and he would never know. She placed it in the basket and moved on to the vegetables. Jason had a sophisticated palate. It was something she had liked about him, his style, his etiquette, his stock. His father was a politician, a successful one at that, who had worked for Kennedy and Johnson before moving to the senate himself. Jason was expected to follow suit and maybe go all the way if the world was at all a just place. Laura was all too aware that Jason’s father would not have allowed the marriage had he lived to see it. Laura Baines could not have been less of a Bostonian. On his Father’s death Jason’s plan was to return to his ancestral home and illuminate his father’s political legacy with his own charms and ambitions, rally the troops and reclaim the throne. Laura found his ambition a powerful aphrodisiac, and as the years after their marriage dissolved into the photo album, she found that she wanted him, needed him, more than she ever imagined she would. But New England had drawn thick lines across their lives. She saw him less and less, his work keeping him away for weeks on end at times. New England was as stifling as it was spacious, as cold as it was lonely.
Paying for the soup and the vegetables, (she had decided to go with boiled carrots for the lobster and nothing else – keep it simple, it was going to be a difficult enough time as it was), she caught her reflection in the shop window. She looked tired. Her hair was untidy, hair that had once been her most arresting feature. She had pinned it up in a hurry and it looked like a dark abandoned bird’s nest. Her skin was pale. She looked old. She rarely felt old, and indeed, as Jason had often reminded her, her beauty was the kind that age accentuated rather than corroded. She felt a tear come to her eye and she couldn’t be sure whether it was the last remnant of pain forcing it’s way of her, or whether it was to do with the hope and happiness she had for the future. She had made Jason promise that things were going to be different. Things had to be different. No more nights away, no more nights alone, no more adultery, no more talk of divorce. Now it was going to be forever, like they had promised each other.
With too many bags for her small arms she climbed the steps to the house, steps that were coated with the damp leaves shedding from the various maples in the grounds. One of the things she had grown to like about New England was the autumn (The Fall not so much). She kicked off her boots at the bottom of the stairs and looked up the large oak staircase. Jason was in his study just as when she had left to do the shopping that morning.
In the kitchen she emptied the shopping bags and hung the new shirt on the back of the pantry door. He would look so good in it. She poured the soup into a pan and put it on a low heat on the stove. She wanted all of this to go perfectly. She prepared the carrots and wrestled with the lobsters. She was not a great cook, but she had heart and Jason always appreciated the effort she put in. Tonight would be more effort than ever.
In the bedroom she smiled at his shirt and looked willingly at the black dress. She did look good in it, she decided after all, not at all slutty. She lifted the shirt from the hook by the hangar and took it down the long corridor to Jason’s study. Knocking gently once she entered with the shirt in her hand like a flag, proud and expectant all at once, nervous that he may not like. Jason was sat in the corner of the room in the cushioned wooden chair that he often sat in to “do some thinking”, his wrists and ankles wrapped with tourniquet where Laura had sawn off his hands and feet with a band saw the previous night. His head was bowed to his chest.
“I bought you a new shirt dear.” Said Laura approaching him cautiously - she was not sure what mood he was going to be in. “I thought you could wear it to dinner this evening.”
Jason’s head bobbed up drowsily, a disappointing side effect of the morphine, Laura regretted. He groaned achingly from behind his gag, his sleepy eyes, ringed with darkness sticking out from his sheet white sweat soaked face, were pleading in their confusion.
“How about we get you washed and then we’ll dress you up, shall we?” Laura leaned forward and kissed him long on the forehead. Jason groaned again, almost in comfort at the gesture. “I’ll run you a bath.”
Laura folded the shirt as she exited the study. Tonight was going to be so special. Their marriage was going to be stronger from this night on. She would be there for him. But that was all that she ever wanted.
As she walked along the corridor back to her and Jason’s room she turned to enter another room, she needed some fresh towels. But as her hand touched the doorknob to enter she had second thoughts. She didn’t want to go in that room just yet. That was where she had left the children.
As published in Blue Tatoo, August 2007