Under My Skin. Lisa Unger
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conversationalist, sometimes even a little blank, his face lights up when Layla talks. He watches her with love in his eyes. Personally, I think he’s on the spectrum, a genius with numbers but maybe struggling elsewhere. Not an unusual combination. But since Jack’s death, Mac has spent many an evening at the office with me, educating me on everything Jack used to handle. He’s patient, gentle, explaining and re-explaining as often as necessary without a trace of annoyance. He’s been there for me, just like Layla. These people—they’re my family.
Layla rubs at the back of her shoulder, seems about to say something but then it dies on her lips, replaced by a wan smile.
“I know,” she says. “Of course he does. Seventeen years.”
She takes a sip from her wineglass, the lights behind her twinkling in a sea of dark. In daylight, the room looks out onto Central Park—an expanse of green, or autumn colors, or white. “It’s okay. We can’t change each other. Most of us who stay married know that.”
Jack and I had just passed our eighth-year wedding anniversary before he died, so I don’t comment. But I don’t remember ever wanting to change him.
“I’m sorry,” she says, sitting forward and looking stricken. “The stupid things I say sometimes.”
I lift a hand. “Don’t walk on eggshells. Don’t do that.”
“So what’s going on with you, then?” she asks. “Something—so don’t lie.”
“Nothing,” I lie. She doesn’t buy it, doesn’t push, but keeps her gaze on me.
“I saw Dr. Nash today,” I say, just to put something out there. “She wants me to get off the sleeping pills.”
“Why?” says Layla, pouring us each another glass of wine. I don’t stop her, though I’ve had enough, and the pills earlier. This is our second bottle. “Fuck that. Take what you need to sleep. This year’s been hard enough. You tell her—”
I tune her out. She’s always had a mouth on her, always the fighter, the one standing up, speaking out. For some reason I flash on her arguing with one of her high school boyfriends. We were in the parking lot after a football game. She hit him on the head with her purse. You fucker! she’d screamed, as we all watched. I dragged her off; she kept yelling. The look on his face, like he’d never experienced anger before. Maybe he hadn’t. Layla wept in my car afterward. What had she been so mad about that night? I don’t even remember—or who the boy was, or who else was there. Just the bright spotlights from the field, some girls giggling, the smell of cut grass and Layla’s voice slicing the night.
“Poppy,” she says.
“What?”
I’m getting the mom look, the one she gives her kids when they’re not listening.
“I asked if she took you off the pills.”
“She lowered the dosage.”
“And.”
“My dreams.” My dream images of Jack from last night mingle with the shadow on the subway, the odd daydream I experienced on the train. “They’re more vivid. I don’t feel as rested.”
“Tell her to put the dose back up,” she says sharply. “You need your rest, Poppy.”
“I want to get off them.” The words sound weak even to my own ears. Do I really? “I don’t want to take pills to sleep for the rest of my life.”
“Why not? Better living through chemistry. Lots of people are medicated all their lives.” She lifts her glass like she’s proving a point.
I don’t know if she’s kidding or not. What’s certain is that I’m duller, mentally heavier. I haven’t had a camera in my hand since Jack died, haven’t taken one serious photograph. The truth is I don’t even feel the urge. Is it the grief? The drugs? Some combination of those things. I put the glass down on the table, where it glitters accusingly. How many have I had? Is it weird that I don’t even know?
She drops it. We chat awhile longer, just gossip about the firm, how I think Maura and Alvaro might be involved. I think I see something cross Layla’s face at the mention of Alvaro’s name, but then it’s gone. She tells me that she’s started shooting again. Layla has an eye for faces. They blossom before her lens, reveal all their secrets. Her favorite subjects in recent years, naturally, have been her children. She still maintains her website, has an Instagram feed with a decent following. She has real talent, more than I ever had.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “Not more beautiful shots of my gorgeous children. After Slade and Izzy go to school, I head out the way I used to. Just looking for it, you know, that perfect moment.”
“Show me,” I say, curious.
“I will.” She looks away. It’s not like her to be shy. “I’m rusty. I’ve spent so many years on the kids—maybe I’ve lost my eye. What small amount of talent I had, maybe it just withered up and died.”
“I doubt that,” I answer. “Be patient. Maybe you just have a new way of seeing things now.”
She shifts on the couch, folds her legs under her. Something about the way she’s sitting seems uncomfortable, as if she might be in pain. Too much kickboxing. She rubs at her shoulder again. “Life does that I guess.”
She looks at me too long, too sadly. I look away.
“I should get home.” This happens. I’m okay where I am and then suddenly I just need to be alone, like I can’t hold the pieces of myself together anymore.
“Stay here,” she offers. But I’ve spent too many nights in their guest room. Tonight, I need to think. Layla’s life is a cocoon. When I’m here, everything else disappears—the real world seems fuzzy and insubstantial.
I get up, and grab my stuff, get moving before she can talk me into it. She watches me a beat, seems like she wants to say something. But then she rises, too, and doesn’t stop me.
“Wait a second,” she says, then rushes off down the hallway. She’s back in a moment, as I’m pulling on my coat.
“Take these,” she says, pressing a bottle of pills in my hand. “They’re mine. I think that’s the dosage you were on originally.”
I look at the bottle. “Don’t you need them?”
“I can get more.”
“How?” I ask. “Dr. Nash watches me like a junkie.”
Layla smiles. “I have my ways.”
I shouldn’t take them. I should hand them back to her and ask her what the hell she’s talking about. Where is she getting all these pills? And why? But I don’t. I just gratefully shove them in my pocket, promising myself that I won’t take them. Unless. Unless I absolutely need to.
“Sure you don’t want to talk about it?” she asks. “Whatever is going on? I’m here when you’re not okay. Always. Don’t forget that.”
It’s tempting, to come back inside and tell Layla, let her take over in that way she always has. This is what we need to do...
“I’m okay,” I say instead.
The Lincoln Town Car waits for me in the motor court. When he spies me, Layla’s towering, refrigerator-sized driver, Carmelo, climbs out quickly and rushes to reach the door before I do, smiles victoriously as he swings it open. He has long blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, faded denim eyes and a jaw like the side of a mountain.
“I got there first, Miss Poppy,” he says.
“This time,” I concede, slipping into the buttery leather