by Gina Holmes
“Yeah, we get it,” I said, although I really hadn’t until she explained it. “So, in a nutshell—” I cracked yet another crab leg I had no intention of eating—“you had a great time and Marnie found the next big thing.”
She set the roll back down. “She’s going to personally introduce him to a designer—Panachee, I think she said. Apparently this woman is a really big deal.”
I pushed away my plate full of mutilated king crab legs. “I never heard of her. Why didn’t you tell me about this guy when I was there?”
“I mentioned him,” she said looking uneasy.
“No, you didn’t. You sure you don’t want me to drive you back to the airport so you can return to Milan and hang out with him?”
She shook her head at me like I was an insolent child. “He’s just a nice guy. Sheesh.”
I looked at Kyra’s and Benji’s barely touched entrees and said, “Since no one’s eating, does anyone mind if we go?”
“Great idea,” Benji said, a little too enthusiastically.
A neighboring patron pushed away from his table just as our waiter walked by with a full pitcher of tea. Before he could react, it sloshed over the side and right onto our plates. It missed Kyra and Benji, but I, and most of our food, ended up wearing it.
Cold liquid soaked through my shirt, and a handful of ice cubes slid down my front and landed in my lap. Dark amber pooled on my plate and Kyra’s. The waiter grimaced. “I’m so sorry; let me get a towel.”
I brushed the ice onto my hand as he rushed off.
The person who’d caused the mishap went on talking and laughing, oblivious. Shaking his head, Benji watched him leave. “Excuse you.”
The waiter returned with some paper towels. I dabbed them against my shirt and wet hands and tried my best not to sound irritated. “We’ll just take the check.”
He said it was on the house and continued to apologize, but Kyra in her sweet, disarming way let him off the hook. By the time she finished, she had us all convinced that our meal being ruined was the best thing that could have happened to us.
As we made our way back to the vehicle, I pulled at the cold, wet fabric of my shirt so it wouldn’t lie against my skin. With the window now whipping my hair around and drying my shirt, we drove along I-81 with eighteen-wheelers flying by us on all sides.
Kyra turned back to Benji. “Baby, I just want you to know how proud we are of you.”
“Proud?” His tone implied he thought her statement ridiculous.
“Of course.” I hit my blinker and passed an Accord that didn’t understand the concept of a minimum speed limit. “You went after your dream, Ben. That’s more than most people do.”
I looked in the rearview mirror to find him staring out his window. I wondered what he was thinking, but Kyra went ahead and asked.
“I think it’s finally hitting me,” he said. “I’m not going to be a Navy man. I’m really being discharged. I couldn’t even make it through boot camp. How pathetic is that?”
Kyra reached back and squeezed his leg. “Benjamin, you listen to me. You are the smartest, most kindhearted, loving, giving, God-fearing, wonderful boy I know. Don’t you ever, ever sell yourself short. What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“None of that changes the fact that I’m out.” He let out a sound that was part moan, part whimper. “I’m out.”
I glanced in the mirror again to see my son crying. When our eyes met, he covered his. Kyra unbuckled her seat belt, and before I could protest about how dangerous that was, crawled back beside him.
I snuck glances at them. He laid his head on her lap and sobbed in a way I hadn’t seen him do since he was a boy. Kyra cried along with him.
When we arrived home, Benji opened his mother’s door and helped her out before disappearing inside.
After changing into a clean shirt, I joined Kyra on the couch. “Where’s Benji?”
“Upstairs.” She laid her head against my chest. “I can’t stand to see him this way.”
“It’s awful,” I agreed. “But there’s no way through it except through it.”
“I just hate it for him.”
I bent over her hair and inhaled.
“Are you sniffing me again?”
“You smell like pancakes.”
“This is some kind of maple-based treatment Marnie made me try.” She grabbed a handful of hair and held it under her nose. “I only did it to make her stop talking about what a wonder-serum it is. You know how obsessive she can be.”
“That I do. I like your regular shampoo.”
She kissed my neck. “The smell you like is actually my conditioner.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
Sitting there, with my wife nestled against me, it hit me that whatever it was we’d lost for so long, was actually back—the comfortableness around one another, the mutual respect, the playfulness. I’d forgotten how good it felt to just be with her without all the tension. There wasn’t a place on this earth I’d rather be than right here.
I looked over her to the front window. Sunshine poured in as one of the neighbor kids whizzed by on his bike, wearing a baseball hat instead of the helmet he was required to by law.
An idea hit me. “I thought of something that might help Benji.”
“What’s that?”
“Batting practice.”
“Batting practice?”
It wasn’t an original idea, but I recognized it immediately as a good one. “It’s a great stress reliever. Larry took me there when you and I—” I stopped myself, horrified by what I’d almost said.
She sat up. “When you and I what?”
Above us, something heavy scraped against the ceiling. “Think he’s rearranging his room?” I asked, trying to distract her.
“When you and I what?” she repeated.
“When you and I had one of those fights about work or something.”
She searched my eyes. “That wasn’t what you were going to say.”
I picked up the remote off the table. “Yes, it was.”
She laid her head back down. “So, hitting bats might make him feel better?”
“No, not hitting bats. That would just hurt. But hitting balls might.”
“Maybe a little beer drinking, belching, and scratching too?”
“He’s not old enough to drink.”
“I was kidding,” she said.
“Oh.”
“When would you go?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Why not now?” She glanced at the window. “It’s still early.”
Her eagerness to be rid of me hurt my feelings, but I’d always been sensitive that way. “I don’t want to leave you the day you get home.”
“I don’t mind. You two have a guys’ night. Take him to that sports bar with the wings you both like for dinner after. I can hang out with Marnie.”
She started combing through her hair with her fingers. “She’s taking Marcello to Ole’s for dinner. If you two aren’t going to be around, I’ll take a nap, then join them.”
“You want to have dinner with him?”
“Not with him. With him and Marnie. I had dinner lots of times with him in Italy, Eric. It’s no big deal.”
Jealousy bit hard. “You think that’s acceptable? Having dinner with a man I don’t know?”
A smile played on her lips, which only made me madder. “In this case, yes.”
There was only one thing that would make this okay. “Is he gay?”
“If you mean happy, then yes.”
“You know what I mean.”
“He doesn’t like to kiss other men, no.”
“Does he like to kiss you?” The last remark was out of line, but I only realized it after it flew out of my mouth.
She stood. “I’m not even going to justify that with an answer.”
“So it’s true,” I said.
“Since when did you get so jealous?”
“Is he ugly?”
“No, he’s not ugly.”
I pictured a young, buff, stallion of a man sitting across the table from my wife, telling her that her eyes sparkled in the candlelight, asking her to pass him the salt just so he could have a reason to touch her hand. I’d kill him. No, I’d kill her. No, I’d kill Marnie.
“Oh, so you’re attracted to him. I knew it.”
“You don’t know jack.”
“This is how affairs start, Kyra.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that right?”
“That’s right. You’re not going to dinner with some Italian hunk.” I knew how ridiculous I was being, especially in light of what I’d done, but I couldn’t get my mouth or emotions to agree.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “I am.” She headed for the stairs.
“Kyra, I’m asking you—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Benji said from the stairs.
My gaze flew to where he stood. “I’m sorry, Ben. We didn’t mean to wake you.”
The elastic band of his sweatpants had worked its way toward his side, which told me he’d been tossing in bed.
“You guys aren’t going to start this back up.”
“Start what back up?” Kyra asked.
“I’ll move out before I live with you two at each other’s throats again.”
I made big eyes at him, hoping he wouldn’t say more.
He gave me an annoyed look. “Just keep it down, please. I’m gonna try and take a nap.”
When he disappeared back up the stairs, Kyra turned to me, looking confused. “I knew things had grown stale, but . . . at each other’s throats?”
I licked my lips. “You know teenagers. They love to melodramatize everything.”
She looked dejected. “Let’s not do that anymore. Benji’s got enough to worry about.”
“Agreed,” I said. “So, you want us to pick you up for dinner after the batting range?”
She was halfway up the stairs when she turned around. “I already told you I’m having dinner with my sister and Marcello.”
I figured when she said she didn’t want us to fight anymore that meant this discussion was over. Staring up at her, I felt an overwhelming desire to hit something. “Fine. Maybe I’ll have dinner with some of my female coworkers then.”
“Or maybe you could just do lunch,” she said. “Oh, that’s right. You already do.” A strange look crossed her face. “We’ve argued about this before, haven’t we?”
My blood ran cold when I realized what was happening. Maybe not, I told myself. Look at her face. She’s unsure. There was still time to convince her she was just imagining things.
I started to disagree, but stopped myself. Adding one more lie to the pile was something I just couldn’t stomach.
She rubbed her forehead as if the newfound memory gave her a headache. “Why would we fight about you having lunch with your coworkers? Was I that jealous?”
“We’ve fought about a lot of things,” I said. “But we’ve started over, remember?”
Looking dazed, she slowly nodded. I watched her retreat up the stairs and recalled the last fight we had before she’d found the e-mail. It had been about me having lunch with my female coworkers, one of which was Danielle. I realized two things then: one, that things were not as good between us as they once were, and the same old demons still lurking below would surface; and two, my wife was getting her memory back.
Twenty-Eight
During the long hours Kyra was gone, I sat on the couch, flipping through channels, wondering why there were so many cleaning product infomercials and what my wife might be doing at that moment.
I’d offered numerous times to take Benji out for dinner or to the batting cage, but he maintained he wasn’t up for it. I ended up just ordering us a couple of sandwiches from McCallister’s down the street, and resigned myself to house arrest.
I raised the corned beef sandwich to my mouth, sniffed the mustard-coated rye bread, then set it down again in its wrapper without taking a bite. I knew I should make myself eat. The only thing I’d taken in all day was a brown-speckled banana, half a pot of coffee, and a roll at the Harbor Inn. Rampant thoughts about Kyra and what she might be doing with Mr. Italiano didn’t exactly whet my appetite.
Despite the ridiculousness of it, I couldn’t help picturing the two of them going at it like teenagers and eventually moving the party to his hotel room. He was probably loaded and would have one of those penthouse suites that took up an entire floor, a heart-shaped bed, and a giant Jacuzzi that just happened to have a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon and two glasses waiting beside it.
Drawing in a deep breath, I reminded myself of what Marnie had said. Kyra wasn’t like that. She hadn’t even let me get to second base until our wedding night. The front door opened and Benji walked in. Looking at him coming in, I felt disoriented. I hadn’t even heard him leave. “Where have you been?”
He gave me the same one-raised eyebrow his mother was famous for and plopped down next to me. “You sure you weren’t the one in the accident? I told you I was going next door to see the Harringtons.”
“The Harringtons? Why?”
He smelled like hickory smoke. Bram was always grilling up something.
“Because they asked me to.”
“When did they do that?”
“At boot camp. They wrote to me.”
I was beginning to feel like the whole world was off. “The Harringtons wrote to you?”
He sat beside me, unlaced his boots, kicked them off, and set his socked feet on the coffee table. Kyra would have a fit. Not because his feet were up there, but because the soles of his socks looked like he smeared them around in a pile of dirt. I wondered how long he’d been wearing them.
“You okay or has Mom’s date got you all discombobulated?”
My cheeks grew warm. “Get your feet off the table, I’ve got food up here, and it’s not a date.”
“You’d deserve it if it was.” He set his feet down. “Even I know you can’t pull that macho stuff on the modern woman.”
“You think your mother is a modern woman?” Was she? I never really thought about it. Just like the rest of women throughout history, she cooked, cleaned, and made no sense, so I doubted it. “Anyway, it’s not a date.”
“I know.” He slid his hand up his T-shirt and scratched his chest. “I was just picking.”
“Well, stop.”
We sat there a minute staring at the TV, though if someone had asked me what I was looking at I wouldn’t have been able to say. “So, why were the Harringtons writing you?”
“Because they’re nice people and they’re interested in my life,” he said.
“Yeah, they’re nice,” I said halfheartedly. Phony and annoying, but nice.
Benji eyed my sandwich even though I delivered one just like it to his room an hour before. “What did you get?”
“Same thing as you,” I said.
He nodded to the overweight brunette throwing pizza dough in the air on the TV. “What are we watching?”
The woman caught the crust on her fingertips and said in a thick Louisiana accent that she’d be right back after a word from her sponsors. A fabric softener commercial blinked on.
I shrugged and held out the remote to him.
He didn’t notice it, because his eyes were glued to the corned beef.
“Take it,” I said, waving the remote.
“You sure you don’t want it?” He picked up the sandwich.
I set down the remote as I watched my son tear into bread, meat, and Swiss cheese. Five minutes later, the only thing that remained of the sandwich was a smear of yellow mustard on the corner of his mouth. I wondered if he’d put on a bunch of weight like he had when that girl broke his heart. If we didn’t get him over this Navy thing soon, he’d look like Larry.
He ran his tongue over his lips as he flipped through the stations. He set the remote down when he got to what looked like a Deadliest Catch knockoff. Icy
waves were beating a fishing vessel mercilessly.
“Those guys are crazy,” I said.
“I don’t know.” He looked at me. “I can see the draw of that lifestyle. You know how much money those guys make?”
“You mean if they live?” I said.
“I could buy my own boat.”
“You mean if you lived,” I repeated.
Right on cue, one of the men caught his foot in a line the others were throwing over the side of the ship. It nearly dragged him into the water. Luckily another crewmember saw it, dove on him in the nick of time, and grabbed on to a thick chain. The other men shot right into action and freed the victim’s foot as though they’d performed the move a million times.
Benji and I sat quiet watching while the man rubbed at his leg, choking up as he thanked them for saving his life. I’m sure Benji, like everyone else, saw it as a touching moment; I just saw it as scary. When a commercial came on, he said, “Well, maybe I could do something else to buy a boat.”
I’d have thought seeing what we just had would have deterred him. “What’s your sudden interest in boats?”
“I’ve always liked boats.”
“What kind of boat would you want to buy?” I was thinking if it was a kayak or canoe I might surprise him with it to take his mind off the Navy.
“A troller. You know, one of those big commercial ones.”
I about choked. “You know how much those things cost?”
“Forty-five to sixty-five thousand used from what I could find online. It’s cheaper than a college education though, and it would pay for itself in time.”
“You want to be a fisherman, Benji?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
His whole life flashed before my eyes. This wasn’t at all what I pictured when Kyra insisted we paint his nursery in bright colors and read to him every night to boost his intelligence. “You know how much they make?”
“I don’t care.”
“You should,” I said. “About twenty-five grand if they’re lucky.”
He gave me the look all teens were good at, that made it clear they thought their parents knew squat. “How do you know that?”
“Because before I took the job here, I thought about it myself.”