I shook my head. “Not until tomorrow.”
How would I ever be strong enough to leave my house again, let alone go back to work? The bruises would fade from purple to green to yellow, and eventually disappear, but the scars on my heart were permanent. Within a couple of weeks, I’d be as good as new on the outside, but my insides were damaged goods for life.
“Okay, then. Why don’t you crawl under the covers and go back to sleep.” She pulled my duvet back and waited while I nestled in. “Ben and I will be gone for most of the morning, but when I get back I’ll fix you a grilled cheese just the way you like it, piled high with bacon and tomatoes.”
When I heard the front door slam, I hurried down the hall to my parents’ room and watched them climb into Blessy’s ancient Ford Taurus. I hated for her to have to leave her family and stay with us, but her children were grown, and we needed her help.
Once they were safely out of the driveway, I ransacked Ben’s room. In the bottom drawer of his dresser, hidden in a stack of ratty T-shirts, I found a plastic baggie of pot. Feeling like the poster mom for War Against Drugs, I flushed the marijuana down the toilet and placed the empty baggie back where I found it.
His iPhone was on his bedside table. Dead. I plugged it into his charger and waited for it to power up. Just as I’d suspected, Emma was jerking Ben around. She was almost pornographic in her come-ons to him in one text, and then she’d tell him she wanted to date other people in the next. Ben, in turn, was pathetic, in his attempt to appease her. He promised he’d fly out to Texas to see her, but when that wasn’t enough, he offered to marry her. In the most recent entry, she broke up with Ben, claiming she was in love with one of the golf pros at her uncle’s country club. The time and date on that text—July 4, 5:08 p.m.
Seventeen
The loud pounding on the door and ringing of the doorbell woke me from a deep sleep. I glanced at the clock on my bedside table. It was almost noon.
Must be Blessy and Ben.
I staggered down the steps and whipped open the front door. “Did you forget your—” I was stunned into silence. It wasn’t Blessy or Ben, but Thompson, poised with his fist in the air preparing to knock again.
Like a missile on its target, he zeroed right in on my bruises. “What happened to your neck?”
I drew my hand to my throat.
“Did your brother do that to you?” When Thompson moved toward me, I closed the door tighter between us. “You can’t stay here alone with him. When are your parents coming home from Europe?”
Of all the things Thompson and I had talked about at the party, the subject of my parents never came up. He would have learned of their trip from Archer. I imagined the breakfast scene in the Rolands’ kitchen—with everyone gathered around the island and shoveling down pancakes as fast as Archer’s mom could take them off the griddle. In her curious but nonchalant way, Archer would ask Thompson, “Did you have fun with Katherine last night? I never got to say good-bye to her. Did she leave early?” And Thompson would nod his handsome head and explain that I had to drive Ben home. Which would lead to the discussion about how drunk Ben had been and poor me for having to take care of him while my parents were away.
“Blessy’s here now.” When his brow furrowed in confusion, I added, “She’s our nanny.”
A smile crept across his lips. “Aren’t you a little old to have a nanny?”
“You know what I mean. Blessy is like a mother to us. She knows how to take care of my brother.”
“And who’s going to take care of you?” He tilted his head to the side and softened his smile. “I’d like to help, if you’d let me. I’m a good listener. Can I take you to lunch so we can talk?”
As much as I wanted to drive off in his Land Rover with him, I couldn’t let myself get any closer. It wasn’t right to share our family’s problems with someone I barely knew. “I’m sorry, Thompson. Now is not a good time for me. Last night was fun. Let’s just leave it at that.”
His shoulders slumped. “Okay, but only for now. I don’t give up that easily. I’ll give you some time to sort things out, but in a week or so, when you’re feeling a little better, I’d like to drive over from Charlottesville and take you to dinner.”
Somehow I managed a slight smile. “We’ll see.”
“We will see. I’ll be checking on you periodically, but in the meantime, you have my number if you need anything.” He ran his fingers over my bruises and then leaned down and kissed my cheek.
After watching Thompson drive away, I closed the door behind me and slumped to the marble floor.
Damn you, Ben. I’ve been bogged down in your twisted relationship with Emma for the past God-only-knows-how-many months, and then I meet someone I find attractive and intelligent and kind, someone with the potential for a serious relationship, and I have to make him go away in order to protect you.
I had no idea where Blessy and Ben went that day, but they were gone an awful long time, way past lunch and well into the afternoon. When they returned, I immediately sensed a new bond between them. As much as it was killing me not to be a part of their secret, it was an enormous relief to have Blessy around to take care of Ben.
Living in the same house with my brother was torture. Every time I closed my eyes to sleep, I saw the anger in his face and felt his fingers around my throat. Unable to endure the shame in his eyes when he stared at the five purple bruises on my neck, I avoided him in the kitchen and hallways. I longed to flee, to run to the safety of Archer’s house; but she and Spotty had gone public with their relationship, and I wanted nothing to do with love. I even ignored Thompson’s calls and texts. Living in the shadow of my parents’ dysfunctional marriage had made me wary of the notion of everlasting love, but it was watching Ben being tormented by Emma that destroyed my last shred of hope of ever having a healthy relationship.
I had no clue how to move on with my life, so I immersed myself in the only thing left that made sense to me. After two days of moping around the house, I went back to work. I wore a cotton turtleneck under my scrubs to hide the bruises, and I stayed at the hospital for three days straight, working double shifts and taking naps whenever I could find an empty stretcher and a few minutes to myself. To be needed in the understaffed ER went a long way toward restoring some of my sense of self.
When I finally returned home, around dinnertime on the fourth day, I found Blessy and Ben in the kitchen making homemade marinara sauce. They were using Hanover tomatoes and fresh basil, and it smelled so unbelievable I didn’t resist when Blessy insisted we all sit down at the kitchen table together to eat.
It was the first real food I’d had in days, and I was concentrating more on stuffing my face than on Ben’s explanation about losing his job at City Limits. He was saying something about them needing to cut back on staffing because their business was slow. But he caught my attention—and I looked up in surprise—when he mentioned he’d gotten an internship at Traveler’s, the five-star restaurant recently opened in a converted warehouse in Shockoe Bottom.
“How’d that happen?” I asked. “I mean, you don’t just walk into Traveler’s and apply for a job.”
“Reed’s father is one of the original investors in Traveler’s,” Ben said, his eyes shining with excitement. “He arranged the interview with Nick Nixon for me.”
As much as I wanted to share his enthusiasm, especially since I’d been bugging him all year to consider a career as a chef, I came up empty.
“Did you know Nixon learned to cook the same way as me?” Ben asked.
I shook my head, unable to speak. I hadn’t seen Ben that fired up since he scored the winning touchdown against Benedictine his senior year in high school. How could this be the same person who tried to cut off my air supply with his bare hands less than a week ago?
“He spent the summers with his grandparents at their farm in Charles City,” Ben continued. “Just like us, they cooked all the meat they hunted and all the fish they caught. They even had a little vegetable
garden. Do you remember ours?”
He waited for my answer like a little boy eager for an ice cream cone, but I couldn’t summon any enthusiasm. Doing so would’ve been letting him off the hook. It infuriated me that he could be so happy when I was so miserable. I wanted him to suffer, same as me.
“In my experience, an internship means no pay,” I said, glaring at him. “Don’t forget you still owe me money. A lot of it in fact.”
Ben’s whole body slumped, head and shoulders and torso. I’d accomplished my objective. I’d caused him pain. Funny how it didn’t make me feel any better. And to see the disappointed look on Blessy’s face only made matters worse.
“Where’re you going?” she asked me when I pushed back from the table.
“I’m not hungry,” I mumbled, dumping my plate in the sink and running up the back stairs to my room.
She followed me and closed the door behind us. “What’s gotten into you, Katherine? I didn’t spend all this time pumping that boy up just for you to tear him down again.”
My guilt alone was difficult enough to bear, but being on the receiving end of Blessy’s wrath brought on an outpouring of tears.
She sat down beside me on the bed and wrapped her big arms around me. “Poor Kitty Cat,” she whispered. “Shame on me. Here I am always counting on you to be the strong one.”
Her kindness only made me cry harder.
“But you are strong.” She lifted my chin so she could see my face. “You’ve traveled down more rocky roads than some people do in a lifetime. But those tough times have given you confidence. That’s not to say you don’t have feelings like the rest of us. Ben knows he scared you. Hell, he scared himself.”
“Seriously?” I asked, sniffling.
She nodded. “What happened here the other night was more than just a wake-up call for him. He views it as a sign from God.”
I studied her face. “He admitted that to you?”
“In those very words.” She wrapped her big hands around mine and squeezed. “It’s obvious you still need a little more healing time. But while you’re straightening things out for yourself, be aware of how hard Ben’s working to make it up to you.”
I scooted off the other side of the bed and stood, staring out of the window in silence for several long minutes. “What if he can’t make it up to me, Blessy? What if my wounds won’t mend?”
“No one’s expecting you to forget what happened here the other night, but I can promise you the memory will grow blurry as soon as you’re able to forgive.”
I turned around to face her. “That’s pretty profound.”
“That’s the truth,” she said. “It’s not so much what happens to us in life; it’s the good grace we show in reacting to those experiences. It’s within your power to rise above this, just like you’ve done in the past with your mother.”
I thought a lot about forgiveness and trust during the sweltering weeks that followed, when I retreated to the windowless tombs of the emergency room where the air conditioning was kept low enough to cure meat. To prevent my patients from questioning my age or credentials, I learned to approach them with confidence and compassion. All they really needed from me was someone to hold their hand and answer their many questions. Their trust in me lasted as long as their belief in my promises. If their pain didn’t subside in a reasonable amount of time or the doctor took too long to get in to see them, they were quick to drop my hand and send for my supervisor.
The kids were the easiest. Their favor could be earned for the price of a SpongeBob Band-Aid or a Dixie cup full of ginger ale. With their broken arms and croupy coughs, their faces pinched in pain, they reminded me of Ben and me when we were little, those long-ago days when we believed so easily and trusted so freely—before our mother destroyed our innocence.
I’d never forgiven my mother her betrayal, mainly because she’d never asked me to. But I saw how much my trust and forgiveness meant to Ben. As the days blended together and grew into weeks, I softened toward him a little, especially when he left the money he owed me with a sweet note and three chocolate truffles he’d made on my bed. He was working hard to get his life together. Regardless of what time he got home from the restaurant at night, he was up every morning at seven for his five-mile run before reporting for duty in the weight room. According to him, he was back to his high-school weights, both the amount he was lifting and the amount on his scales. Work was also going well for him at Traveler’s where he’d been promoted from dishwasher to an assistant pastry chef. As for Emma, I didn’t ask, and he never mentioned her name.
On the first Sunday afternoon in August, our parents made a sudden reappearance in our lives, loaded down with leather goods from Italy, a wallet for Ben and a pair of soft boots for me. Over pizza, they showed us pictures of all the places they’d visited and all the friends they’d made. Never once did they inquire about how we’d spent our time while they were away.
The next morning when Blessy got to work, she summoned my parents into my father’s study where they stayed for more than an hour. Placing a glass against the wood-paneled door, I tried to hear what they were saying, but the only thing I could make out was that Blessy was the one who was doing all the talking. Whatever she told them, however detailed her account was of the happenings at home in their absence, she got through to them. They came out of that meeting stunned, with cloudy eyes and trembling hands. My father left right away for a last-minute lunch meeting at the Commonwealth Club while my mother wandered around the house in a semi-state of delirium, looking at Ben and me as though she recognized us but couldn’t quite place us. Late in the afternoon, I discovered her in the family room surrounded by old photo albums, either searching for the years she’d lost or reacquainting herself with the children she’d forgotten.
Mom went to bed that night in a comatose state and woke up the next morning a new person. Or an old person, really—the mother I remembered before I went to kindergarten. She made blueberry pancakes and freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast, and sat with us while we ate.
“I owe both of you an apology,” she said, a real tear trickling down her cheek. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but the biggest one was assuming that the two of you would come to me when you had a problem and needed guidance. When you never did, I assumed everything was fine.” She rose from the table and searched in the junk drawer for a pocket-size pack of tissues, then wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “If you’ll let me, I’d like to try and make it up to you.”
Ben and I both shrugged, unable to make sense of our mother’s overnight transformation.
“According to my calendar, you still have a couple of weeks before you head back to school. Do you think we can manage a long weekend at the river? Just the four of us.”
It took some juggling and compromising but we finally agreed on four days and three nights during the third weekend in August. It was the only vacation Ben and I had taken all summer, and once the plans were made, we were excited at the prospect of a change of scenery and a break from the demands of our jobs. As soon as we got to the river on Thursday afternoon, we jumped in the boat and sped across the creek to the Turners’.
I almost didn’t recognize Mrs. Turner when she answered the door. The plump, rosy-cheeked woman I’d always known had grown old over the summer. Her hair hung in gray limp strands around her face; and even though it was four o’clock in the afternoon, she was wearing an old flannel robe with faded blue flowers, the once-white background now yellowed with age. When she pulled the robe tighter around her, I noticed her waist was thinner, nearly three dress sizes if I had to guess.
“Ben, Katherine,” she said, holding the door open a little wider. “It’s so nice to see you. We’ve missed you this summer.”
Ben and I took turns leaning in to kiss her cheek, apologizing for not getting down to see her sooner.
“Is George home?” I asked.
“No, dear, he’s out of town.” She stepped onto the porch and spread her
arms wide. “There’s a nice breeze today. Would you like to join me on the porch for a glass of lemonade?”
Ben and I nodded our heads with enthusiasm. Mrs. Turner made the best homemade lemonade in the Northern Neck—freshly squeezed with a mountain of sugar and real floating lemon slices—and she never served it without her oatmeal raisin cookies.
She smiled. “Well then, why don’t you make yourselves at home out front on the porch and I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
We wandered around the side of the house to the porch where we could see up and down the creek for a mile in each direction. We waited in silence, side by side in metal rocking chairs, a thousand memories on our minds. Curling up in their hammock and listening to the rain ping against the porche’s tin roof was once my favorite lazy-day pastime.
Mrs. Turner joined us fifteen minutes later, dressed in a pair of white shorts and pale pink top with her hair pulled back in a clip at the nape of her neck.
“How long will George be gone?” Ben asked her.
“At least another week, possibly two.” She lifted the crystal pitcher from her tray and poured three glasses of lemonade. “I’m hesitant to tell you this, but I think George would want you to know. His father and I . . . well . . . we had to send him away for professional help. He’s having a hard time dealing with Abigail’s death.”
I looked over at Ben, whose face was pinched in anguish. All summer long we’d been focused on our own problems—Ben with Emma and me with Ben—while our good friend was suffering. “That explains why he’s been ignoring our calls,” I said.
Mrs. Turner nodded. “He’s not allowed to have his phone.”
“I’m so sorry we didn’t try harder to get in touch,” I said, close to tears. “We should’ve realized things were bad for him.”
Mrs. Turner stirred her lemonade with her finger and stared into her glass, as if it were a crystal ball with the answers she needed to put her family back together again. “There’s nothing anyone could’ve done. He’s just so angry, and his drinking got way out of control.”
Saving Ben Page 15