When Carol returned home from Boxing Day Dinner with Rindy, Harge and his parents, she was fine.
Too fine.
Therese had waited anxiously since the moment she left from the moment she returned. She had tried to distract herself first, methodically pulling book after book down from their large display and dusting each one. Then she had moved onto the clothes that were no longer worn, folding them up and neatly placing them in a bag for donation once the world resumed from the Christmas and New Year’s festivities. She’d dusted, mopped and vacuumed the whole house before moving on to cooking.
Well, baking to be more exact. Carol was the cook, not her.
She’d poured over Carol’s old, worn-out baking book, observing all the treats Carol liked and the ones she disliked.
In her defence, though, who had ever thought egg custard tart would be an appealing option?
She had settled on a banana bread, deciding it was a hard enough task to distract her for a while but easy enough she wouldn’t start weeping over the mixing bowl with a cruel mix of sadness and frustration. Mashing the bananas into a pulp was therapeutic at the very least. She used three bananas. One, the biggest one, was Harge and the other two were his ghastly parents. Carol would reprimand her for such blatant displays of violence. But here, right now, Therese couldn’t bring herself to care.
Because the woman she loved was currently sitting around a table with three people she despised most in the world, only there for the one she loved most in the world - her darling daughter. Therese had bitten her tongue in an effort to not insist Carol not attend the dinner when the invitation arrived, a week before Christmas.
The way in which they requested Carol’s presence (although it was not a request, much more of a demand) had thrown Therese for a loop. A small piece of paper slipped under their front door, printed on the time, address and occasion of the event. It was very odd, Harge had always just called. Still, Therese knew why he’d done it that way.
Sometimes it was easier for Carol to think she wasn’t letting Rindy down if she refused another one of Harge’s immoral requests over the phone. However, sending a physical piece of paper to their apartment would ensure Carol would feel too guilty to deny the invitation because it was real and tangible then - she could imagine her daughter sitting at a table lacking her mother, surrounded by the group of sharks that was her father and grandparents, completely defenceless to their wicked ways.
It didn’t help that Harge had made Rindy sign the invitation. Her writing was scrawly and uncertain in a way that displayed just how young she was. Too young to be put through the wringer of her parent's bitter divorce, which she knew was what Harge had intended and Carol had fallen for. She’d heard Carol weep over the signature the night the invitation arrived, in the shower so she thought Therese wouldn’t hear.
She often thought she was doing Therese a favour by keeping her away from Harge’s displeasures, but it often left the younger woman with a rather disillusioned view of their relationship. Carol loved her enough to have practically given up everything for her, yet almost refused to let Therese be the shoulder she desperately needed to weep on.
Therese wasn’t sure what caused her to act in such a dismissive way. She had Abby to fall back on, someone who Carol saw as much more experienced than herself. In a way, she thought Carol saw her as childish, naive to the cruelties of life. Or maybe she thought she was a burden and saw herself as an infestive mould that would eventually suffocate Therese.
Therese knew Carol worried she’d leave her. She thought she was too bogged down by conditions beyond her control, and in her mind, there were plenty of women out there who were not so tightly leashed by an unfair ex-husband and young daughter. Therese knew how Carol lay awake at night imagining one day she’d arrive home from a long shift at the furniture store to find Therese gone, her belongings cleared out. Their shoe rack that was split top and bottom devoid of shoes on one level, Carol’s toothbrush sitting alone in its pot and the apartment stripped of its photographs taken by Therese’s very own hands.
The truth was, even if Harge did eventually become too much, Therese knew she’d spend the rest of her life looking for Carol in every other woman she came into contact with. And some things were worth the suffering, if that was what it meant to love Carol Aird then Therese would endure every painstaking second of it.
Even if she wasn’t the one Carol confided in, she was glad she turned to someone. Abby became a repetitive feature in their living room as Harge made more and more demands Carol would not meet and denied her access to her daughter time after time. It stung, knowing she was not the one the woman immediately turned to, she was not the one she found comfort in. But Therese thought it too selfish to voice the thoughts. At the end of the day, she was just glad Carol hadn’t shut herself down completely. She knew how hard it could be in such punishing conditions to not completely shut yourself off from everyone around you, driving yourself to a place of complete isolation.
If Carol wouldn’t talk to her, she was glad she at least spoke to someone.
Abby had asked her once if Carol expressed her worries to her. Then, she had sheepishly shook her head, muttering quietly: “She won’t. If she won’t speak to me I’m glad she’ll speak to you.”
Abby had looked at her then with an expression resembling pity. Because she knew firsthand how hard it was to love Carol. Therese had tried to indulge Carol, insisting over and over that she didn’t mind being there for her, but Carol remained steadfast in her opinion it was not Therese’s job to help.
So, all things considered, it’s a surprise when Carol returns. Therese had almost been ready to dial Abby’s number the second the blonde returned, but she seemed… unaffected.
Therese stood awkwardly in the kitchen area, watching as Carol hummed as she got to work stripping off her outside paraphernalia. Her long fur coat is deposited onto the hooks by the door, her heels placed carefully onto the shoe rack, her handbag placed onto the kitchen table and her earrings removed.
“How was it?” The words sounded weak and feeble to ever her own ears, but in her defence, she really had expected Carol to be a blubbering mess and her words displayed the anxiousness of someone who had anticipated a meltdown.
To her credit, Carol doesn’t falter.
“Pleasant. Rindy looks well.”
And if Therese had stupidly assumed Carol wouldn’t dismiss her this time, she was wrong. The simple expression of her daughter’s appearance, Therese knows, will be only a tiny slither of what she’s feeling, what she wants to say. Almost as if she’s throwing out a thought from an ocean full of other ones, and it irks Therese to no end.
“Well? Is that all she looked?”
At that, Carol glances at Therese. Almost properly looking at the woman for the first time since she entered the apartment, she nods.
“Yes, she looked well. And bigger.”
Which is also an empty adjective.
But Therese nodded because she knew Carol wasn’t overtly lying. Rindy probably did look well and she probably had grown. The problem lay in what Carol didn’t say.
“Good. I’m glad.” She spoke and winced at her words. They were talking to each other as if they were distant friends, not lovers.
Carol didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s bitterly cold out there, angel,” she mumbled, “I was thinking I might draw myself a bath.”
At those muttered words, Therese knew this time would be no different from the others. She leaned back against the solid foundation of the kitchen counter, eyes closed with the effort it took to not scream at Carol to just speak to her.
She didn’t say anything else as Carol left the room and Therese listened to the padding of her stocking-clad feet against the hardware floor fade off to another part of the apartment.
Therese looked longingly at the phone. In a way, she had gotten used to Abby dealing with this in the face of Carol’s reluctance to let Therese take up the job. Now, she found herself feeling rather out of her comfort zone with the whole situation. She was almost at war with herself. One part of her was desperate for Carol to talk to her, as her partner and lover that was her job. She wanted the bad as well as the good and wanted Carol to trust her wholly. On the other hand, Therese hadn’t realised how used she’d gotten to Abby handling the broken, melancholy side of the woman.
She didn’t want to be just the good for Carol, she wanted to be that and everything on the other side of it.
With her mind made up and only now realising she’d been pacing the kitchen for a good 15 minutes, lost in her pondering, she advanced to the bathroom.
Knocking softly, she was greeted by the sight of a flushed Carol submerged in soapy bath water. She looked absolutely stunning and Therese was momentarily distracted by the curl of hair at the nape of her neck that had escaped the loose bun sat atop her head, distracted by the shiny leg perched on top of the bathtub’s ledge, distracted by the swell of her breasts that were visible through the waters bubbles.
“Hi,” she started dumbly and watched as Carol smiled affectionately. “Do you want tea? I can bring it to you.” The woman offered. She wasn’t going to let Carol slip through the cracks tonight, let her bypass her desire to help.
Because despite Carol’s facade, Therese knew she couldn’t possibly be fine after several hours spent with Harge et al. If she wouldn’t speak, Therese would bombard her with offers of tea and massages instead.
“No tea, thank you. But if you’re offering a drink, I wouldn’t mind a rye.”
Therese blinked, brain short-circuiting.
“Rye?” Her voice sounded too sceptical, too much like she was causing a scene.
Because Carol was fine, by her own volition.
“Rye,” she repeated, voice much more casual. “Right, of course.”
Therese left the bathroom, now certain Carol was pretending to be fine. Carol only drank rye when she was depressed.
Shuffling around in the very depths of the cupboard hurt Therese in a way that made her heart clench and her eyes fill with tears. They hadn’t needed the rye for so long, long enough that Carol probably thought Therese had forgotten how much she favoured the drink when she was upset.
That thought alone pushed her to the very edge. Therese wanted to help Carol so bad it was driving her to the point of distraction, she’d decided she had had enough. Whiskey glass in hand, she made her way back to the bathroom.