I could feel Ben’s eyes on me, and I knew he was thinking about his own alcohol abuse and anger management problem.
Mrs. Turner looked away from us and stared across the water at a group of kids sailing their Sunfish back and forth across the creek. “It’s so hard for him to have to see those girls around town all the time,” she mumbled, more to herself than to us.
Ben and I exchanged a knowing look. These girls were surely the same bitches George had been talking about the night before Abigail’s funeral.
“Mrs. Turner,” Ben started in a gentle voice. “Katherine and I don’t really know that much about Abigail’s problems, only that they began after she broke her jaw.”
“It would really help us to hear more about what she went through,” I added.
Mrs. Turner stared first at me and then at Ben before settling back in her chair. She let out a deep sigh. “I’d just assumed George had told you everything. My daughter’s problems actually started a couple of years before the accident with her jaw. We didn’t know it at the time, but she was being bullied. There were four girls, the same ones she’d known since kindergarten, making her life a living hell. They called her Abs Big Butt because of her weight.”
“That’s just cruel. What grade did all this happen in?” Ben asked.
Expert that I am on the behavior of adolescent girls, I answered for Mrs. Turner. “In middle school, right, Mrs. Turner? When girls are at their meanest.”
Mrs. Turner nodded. “But these girls got even nastier as they got older. But I’m getting ahead of myself,” she said, reaching for her glass of lemonade. “She lost a lot of weight . . . what with her jaw wired shut and all. Her new figure gave Abigail a confidence she’d never known before. She was so proud of that first bikini. I remember it well—red with little white polka dots.”
Mrs. Turner set her lemonade down and picked a daisy from the bouquet in the center of the coffee table, plucking the petals off one by one. When all the petals were gone, she tied the stem in a knot and tossed it over the side of the porch. “The same girls who’d bullied her wanted to be her friend,” she continued. “For Abigail, it was like being the new girl in their grade. Boys were calling and texting her all the time. It didn’t take Abigail long, though, maybe a month or two, before she realized she didn’t belong in their group. They were drinking and smoking marijuana, and Abigail wasn’t ready for any of that. She wanted out almost as soon as she got in.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Mm-hmm. These girls were not the type to be ignored.” Mrs. Turner pulled a tissue from her pocket to wipe her tears. “As you know, Abigail was a very private girl. She never told us about the torture she endured, even when she started seeing her psychiatrist and was going for weekly weigh-ins at the pediatrician’s office. I’ve asked myself time and again why wouldn’t she have confided in us?”
“Pride,” Ben answered.
“That’s exactly what the doctors said, Ben.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Knowing how close you are with your sister, I’m sure you can imagine the anger George feels toward these girls.”
“Did George know these girls before?” I asked.
“Yes. Since preschool. One of the girls’ brothers is actually a close friend of George’s. He was at their house the night he—” Her voice caught on a sob, preventing her from continuing.
I gave her a moment to compose herself and then asked, “The night he what, Mrs. Turner?”
She stood and wandered over to the porch railing. “The night he punched the maple tree in our front yard and broke several bones in his hand. Only the good Lord knows what that girl said to set him off so.”
Ben and I joined her at the railing. And for a long time, we watched the activity on the creek in silence, each lost in our own thoughts of Abby and George.
We left Mrs. Turner a little while later with our well-intentioned promises to come and visit her often. Instead of going home, we took the boat out into the river. We rode all the way to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and then back again to Urbana.
As much as I’d been trying to get my mind around it, my heart had refused to accept Abby’s death. It was only now that I was beginning to understand she wasn’t just off at Camp Mont Shenandoah or visiting her favorite cousin in Charleston. She wouldn’t be coming home tomorrow, or even next week. I would never see her kind eyes again or watch the freckles spread across her nose when she smiled. From now on, if I wanted to connect with her, I’d have to come out here, in the river, where the sun glistened like diamonds across the water.
My heart ached for George and all he was going through. Learning to live without his sister was one thing, but having to face the girls who were indirectly responsible for her death was another matter. In the small community where the Turners lived, George no doubt frequently encountered those girls at parties or at the gas station or out in the boat on the weekends. And every time he saw them, he would have to face the brutal reality of Yabba’s death all over again.
Why would those girls have chosen someone as kind and humble as Abby to destroy?
Fuck those bitches.
Eighteen
Our parents were waiting for us at the table on the porch behind a mountain of steamed crabs. During the past two weeks, my parents had suggested one activity after another for us to do together, as if a round of twilight golf could make up for all the years we’d done very little as a family. Even though I thought their relentless pursuit impressive, I wasn’t quite ready to trust that their intentions might last.
They surprised Ben and me by offering us a beer with dinner, a signal that they considered us on the pathway to adulthood. For the first time in as long as I could remember, if ever, we enjoyed each other’s company. We talked about politics and about our lives at UVA, but mostly we fantasized about the new sailboat my father was considering buying. As much as it seemed like we were getting reacquainted after a long absence, it felt as though we’d just met our parents for the first time, Adele and Spalding Langley—only they no longer seemed like our parents but our friends.
When all the crabs were picked clean, I pushed back from the table and wiped the crab gunk off of my arms and face with a paper towel. “I feel gross. Are you game for a swim, Ben?”
He kicked back his chair and was already on his way to the pool when he called to me over his shoulder, “Last one there has to blow up the floats!”
I leapt off the end of the porch and sprinted across the lawn to the pool, managing to catch up and then bypassed Ben. I stripped down to my bathing suit and dove into the water before he even reached the gate.
“Be sure to toss me one of those floats when you have them ready,” I yelled at him, backstroking the length of the pool. “And don’t forget to turn on the pool lights.”
We floated on our rafts under the glow of the full moon. The tree frogs croaked and the crickets chirped, competing every now and then with the putt-putt of an outboard motor as it made it’s way past our property. Too much time had passed since I’d spent such an evening at the river. It was as lovely as it was bittersweet.
“Is it just me or is it impossible to be here and not think of Yabba?”
Ben rolled over onto his stomach, but when his float started to sink, he flipped back over again. “It would be easier for us to deal with her death if we lived down here all the time, but since we don’t face the things that remind us of her on a daily basis, it’ll take us longer to sort through our grief.”
“It seems like all I’ve done this summer is think about her, but it’s ten times worse being here now. Her death is so fresh, like it happened yesterday instead of four months ago.”
“It sucks, doesn’t it?” Ben climbed out of the pool. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He grabbed a couple of towels out of the pool house, then tossed one on a nearby lounge chair for me and wrapped the other one around his waist. He snuck around the front of the house and down the hill toward the tackle room, returning
a minute later with an armload of beers.
“Well, aren’t you the boss?” I said, paddling over to the side of the pool nearest him.
He popped the top off two beers and handed one to me. “Cheers,” he said, holding his bottle out to mine.
I tapped his bottle once and then again. “To new beginnings.”
Ben set his bottle down on the edge of the pool and cannonballed into the water. He swam back over to the side next to me. “George has every right to be pissed off at those girls for what they did to Yabba, but at least George had the sense to hit a tree instead of one of them. I have no excuse for what I did to you, Kitty, only that I let my anger get the best of me because of the drugs. I reached for whatever I could find to make me feel better, to help me forget. I wanted to be numb, to exist on planet oblivion. Alcohol was effective for a while, but then I needed something more, something stronger. And it snowballed from there.”
“I understand, Ben, and I admire how hard you’ve worked to make amends and get your life back on-track.”
He hung his head. “If you want to know the truth, I’m scared to death of what’s going to happen when I go back to school.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, bracing myself. In order for Ben and me to finally put everything behind us and start fresh, we needed to talk about Emma. Only I wasn’t ready for it yet. Our new bond was way too fragile.
“I’m scared to death of what’s going to happen when I leave Blessy.”
“Your self-appointed sponsor?” I smiled, thinking about what a strong presence Blessy had been in our lives. “Where did she take you that day, the day after Lizzie’s party?”
“She didn’t tell you?” When I shook my head, he shrugged. “It’s hard for her to talk about. She probably just assumed I would tell you.”
“Okay, so now I’m really curious. What gives?”
“She took me to the James River Home for the Disabled to visit her daughter.”
“Her daughter? What happened to Natasha?” I’d met Blessy’s daughter several times over the years. She was only a few years older than me, in her midtwenties, with an adorable little girl of her own, Asia. As far as I knew Nat was healthy and working as a court reporter in the Richmond court systems.
“Not Nat. Her other daughter—”
“Wait a minute, what? Blessy has another daughter?”
He nodded.
“What’s wrong with her that she has to live at this home?”
“If you’d zip your lips I’ll tell you.” Ben took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “Blessy has another daughter named Alice, who’s about thirty years old. She has a big head and mangled legs and the most amazing positive attitude.” Ben took a long drink from his beer and set the bottle back down. “You know how we’ve always suspected that there was more to Blessy’s relationship with Dock and MayMay than we thought?”
I nodded.
“Well, that’s because there is. Blessy grew up in a tiny little shack down the street from Dock’s office. Even after she was married, she lived there with her parents, her four older brothers and sisters, and all their children, her nieces and nephews. Dock found Blessy on the front porch of his office during a thunderstorm late one July afternoon. She was nine months pregnant and going into labor, but she was also strung out on drugs.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Blessy? No way.”
“Yep. And she had never even been to a doctor before.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Ben said, shaking his head. “Anyway, baby Alice was in such bad shape when she was born, Dock air ambulanced her to Richmond. In order for the baby to get the medical support she needed from the state, Dock had to report Blessy to child welfare services. About a week later, Blessy came to see Dock and begged him to help her. He gave her a job and a place to live, away from her abusive husband, but most importantly, he made sure she got clean. When she was strong enough, she asked Dock to help her move to Richmond where she could be close to Alice.”
“And that’s when Dad promised he’d give her a job and look out for her.”
Ben nodded. “And she gets to see her daughter nearly every day. You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve learned from Alice and all the other children at the home.”
“How so?” I asked. It’d been a long time since I’d seen this empathetic side of my brother. If only he could find a girl who brought out that sensitive, caring side of him.
“I’ve been back to the home five times now, once a week since the Fourth of July. The kids always run up to me and hug me. They love it when I read to them or throw the ball with them or work a puzzle with them. I have to make myself go sometimes, because it’s hard. It breaks my heart to watch them struggle with their various impairments.”
I reached over and mussed his hair. “You should be proud of yourself, Ben. It takes a special kind of person to be around such challenged children.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You do it.”
“True, but the kids I meet have broken bones that will heal or illnesses that can be treated. Mom wouldn’t volunteer her time like that. Can you see her playing checkers with a mentally challenged child? Seriously, Ben, you’ve given those children a special gift.”
“Maybe. But they’ve given me so much more. They’ve helped me stay clean.”
His eyes welled with tears and I gave him a moment to compose himself.
“We can wait until another time if you’re not up to it, but I have some tough questions for you. That is . . . if you don’t mind me asking.”
He shrugged. “You have every right to ask.”
“I’ve been wondering . . . is it safe for you to be drinking?”
“Truthfully? No. But I’m trying to limit myself. And I’ve sworn off hard liquor completely. That shit makes me a mean drunk.”
“If your behavior at Thanksgiving is any indication, I agree.” I climbed out of the pool, wrapped myself in a towel, and sat back down on the edge, dangling my feet in the water. ”Okay, so let me ask you this. The next time you’re feeling down about something, are you gonna be able to handle it without turning to drugs?”
“There are no guarantees, Kitty, but I feel more in control than I have in a long time. I’m focused, not just on finishing my business degree but on applying to culinary school as well.” He’d been keeping that little tidbit of information to himself, waiting for just the right time to surprise me. He pointed at me, laughing. “Gotya!”
I kicked my feet in the water and moved my upper body in a victory dance. “Uh-huh. Oh, ye-ah. My brother’s gonna be a ch-ef.”
We broke into a fit of laughter like we hadn’t experienced together since Emma entered our lives. I ran over to the pool house and turned on the stereo to The Highway station on Sirius radio. I dropped my towel and slid back into the pool. “Remember what Dock used to say? ‘Reach for the stars and strive to be great, because you only get one chance in life to fulfill your dreams.’”
Ben nodded. “I can hear him now. ‘Missed opportunities become the might-have-beens that will plague you for the rest of your life.’”
We finished our beers and opened another, talking more about culinary school while I gathered the nerve to ask him the one question I needed an answer for.
“At the risk of spoiling the mood . . .” I took a deep breath and held it in for a long minute. “Before I begin my second year as her roommate, I need to know what’s going on with you and Emma.”
“Nada,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t spoken to her in six weeks.”
“Whew-wee, that’s a relief.” I ran the back of my hand across my forehead, wiping fake sweat from my brow.
“Look. I understand if you don’t believe this—and if you don’t I’ll keep trying until you do—but what happened on the Fourth of July scared the shit out of me, enough for me to make some changes in my life. I’m clean and I plan to stay that way, Emma or no Emma.”
As much as I wanted to believe him,
an uneasy feeling in my gut told me things were far from over between the two of them. I had no idea what any of it meant for me as her roommate, but I knew I needed to prepare myself for another turbulent year.
***
The next day, while Ben and Dad were out fishing, I made my way down to our small section of beach, wanting nothing more than to dig my toes in the sand and finish the last remaining chapters of Cutting for Stone. When my mother came down about an hour later, I knew my quiet time was about to be interrupted, but she surprised me. Instead of making her customary grand entrance, she set up her chair and settled quietly into her September Vogue.
When I reached the end, I closed the book and tilted my head back.
“Isn’t it good?” my mother asked, peeking up from her magazine. “I heard Verghese speak a couple of years ago at the Junior League Book and Author Dinner. He’s an interesting man.”
I nodded. “Both a physician and a successful author. He makes me want to forget about nursing school and become a doctor.”
She put her magazine in her bag and rummaged around for her sunscreen. “Speaking of nursing school, you’ll be getting into the meat of your degree this fall, won’t you?”
I shrugged. “For the most part—although I still have a few general ed requirements left.”
“How are things for you at UVA, Katherine?” she asked in a genuine tone. “With the sorority and nursing school?”
I shifted in my beach chair and watched as she rubbed sunscreen on her face. The skin around her mouth and on her forehead was smooth, so smooth I wondered if she’d snuck off to a specialized clinic in Switzerland for some state-of-the art treatment while she was abroad.
A part of me didn’t think she had the right to ask me about my life after the way she’d manipulated me into going to UVA, but I saw in her eyes a warmth I hadn’t seen in a long time. And I was intrigued.
Saving Ben Page 16