‘You know you can ride the bus to work with me, right? With me right there telling you where to get off and all?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, that’s all we’re doing today. Let’s go.’
‘Why again?’
‘Ben. I said let’s go.’
We walked side by side together, two and a half blocks to the bus stop. I had to slow my pace over and over again to match his. I had to breathe, and think consciously about going easy on him.
A woman in a bathrobe was letting her dog out to pee in the yard. She waved as if we were long-lost friends. ‘Hi, Ben!’ she called. ‘Hi, Rusty! Welcome home, Rusty!’
I waved, but said nothing.
Ben called back, ‘Good morning, Mrs Givington.’
‘Where are you two going so early?’
Ben called, ‘My buddy is teaching me to ride the bus to work.’
Her face fell. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well. Good luck.’
I knew the universe wanted me to see it as an omen. But I refused to.
‘So, are you here every morning?’ I asked the driver, as I helped Ben count out the change I’d given him.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Are you on this route at this time every morning?’
He still seemed confused by, or suspicious of, the question. ‘Five days a week,’ he said.
‘You’ll be here tomorrow?’
‘Should be.’
‘Good. Tomorrow I’ll bring my brother down here to the bus stop, but I won’t get on with him. And I’d appreciate it if you’d remind him to get off at Ridgewood.’
‘Tomorrow might be too soon,’ Ben said, tugging at my sleeve.
The engine roared as the driver pulled away from the curb, and Ben spoke loudly to be heard over the drone of it. ‘What if I forget Ridgewood between now and tomorrow?’
‘I’ll be standing at the bus stop. I’ll remind you.’
‘Oh. Right.’
I led Ben to a seat right up front and across the aisle from the driver.
‘Always sit right here,’ I said. ‘So you can watch the driver and hear what he tells you.’
‘What if someone else is sitting there?’
‘Then just sit as close to the driver as you can.’
‘Oh. OK. I think tomorrow’s too soon, though.’
‘Let’s just focus on today.’
‘Oh. OK.’
We got off at Ridgewood, and I stopped a minute to help him orient himself. It was only about six thirty.
‘See where you are?’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean, no? How can you not see where you are?’
‘Well. I see what’s around me. But I don’t know where I am.’
‘You’re only two blocks from the market.’
‘But I don’t know where it is.’
‘Ben. You’ve lived in this town all your life.’
‘Don’t yell at me, Buddy. Sometimes I get confused.’
I hadn’t yelled, actually. But I’d spoken from a lack of tolerance, and it had shown through.
‘Sorry. Just stand here a minute and look where you are.’
‘OK.’
‘You get off the bus …’
‘I did.’
‘I know that, Ben. Just listen.’
‘OK.’
‘And you go left. You know which way left is, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes,’ he said.
I just stood a minute, trying to find the patience that had made such a positive impression on Anat.
‘Let’s try this, then. You see that pet shop?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Turn toward the pet shop and walk to that corner.’
‘Aren’t you coming with me?’
‘Yes, I’m coming with you.’
‘Then why are you telling me this? Why can’t I just follow you?’
‘I’m trying to teach you what to do tomorrow.’
‘I think tomorrow is too soon.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. I started to walk, and he followed me. ‘I’m beginning to see your point about that.’
‘You’re so late,’ Anat said. ‘I was just getting ready to worry about you. I thought you weren’t coming in.’
It was twenty minutes after seven. And she had other customers. Three of them. So we had to speak in a different way. A different tone. As if none of these words had any weight behind them. As if we were nothing to each other. As if she were only teasingly commenting on a customer’s routine.
Frankly, I don’t think we were doing well. I think that, after our early morning happenings, there was no turning back.
I looked around to see all three of her customers staring at us. We must have been shedding an energy that stuck to them. They must have felt an overspill of our emotion.
‘Today was my first day trying to teach Ben to ride the bus to work. So then I had to wait for the bus myself. To come back. And then I had to get off at Whitley and walk four blocks. It’s not a speedy process.’
‘How did it go with Ben?’
‘Badly. But I intend to keep at it.’
‘Good. Well …’ And behind that ‘well’ was an evaporation of all of our options. We had reached the end of our tether, like a couple of chained dogs. All we could do now was strain until we choked. Or accept our limitations. ‘What will you have?’
‘Cinnamon twist,’ I said. And I reached into my jeans pocket to pull out a few folded bills.
I saw her start to shake her head, but I stopped her with a look. And she caught it and understood it. I needed to pay for the cinnamon twist. This was the first time I had ever been beaten into the shop by other customers. And it would be the first time I’d paid for my food. Otherwise it would leave a bad impression.
She took my money and rang me up. Handed me change. The tips of her fingers brushed my palm lightly. Maybe purposely. Other than that, I found the whole moment profoundly depressing.
I felt like we were paying for our impetuous morning. Suddenly we had something to hide.
I ate the cinnamon twist and drank coffee and watched her putter in the kitchen for ten or fifteen minutes. Watched her glance at me far too often.
Then I waved goodbye and walked the nearly two miles back to the house, hoping to catch up on at least some of the sleep I’d missed.
The doorbell jolted me out of sleep. I’d been deep into a REM cycle, dreaming something dark and convoluted and a little disturbing. And the sound was like a bomb going off under my bed. I woke up on my feet, standing beside the bed, with no memory of how I’d gotten there. My heart hammered so hard I felt like it might be dangerous to my health.
I looked at the clock beside my mother’s bed. Ten thirty. Too early to be Anat.
I put on a shirt, and combed my hair as best I could with my fingers. The bell rang again before I could get to it.
‘I’m coming as fast as I can,’ I called, trying not to sound pissed.
I threw the door open wide.
It was Mrs Jespers from next door. Mark’s mom. She looked like she’d been crying.
‘Oh, honey, I got some bad news,’ she said. ‘Mark wanted to tell you, but I said, “No, let me.” Because of how you two haven’t been getting along so good. Anyway, sit down. You should be sitting down.’
‘Did something happen to Ben?’
‘No, it’s not Ben, honey, sit down.’
She barged into the house. Just walked right around me and sat down on our living room couch. Then she patted the couch next to her thigh. But I didn’t feel like sitting.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just tell me.’
‘It’s Vince, honey.’
I must’ve still been half-asleep. Because I made no immediate connection with knowing someone named Vince.
‘Vince?’
‘Vince Buck. I just got done talking to his mother. Oh, dear God, she’s a mess. She was on her way out the door this morning to go to the hospital because her husband – Vince’s father – jus
t had a quadruple bypass. Yesterday! And just as she’s walking out her front door she sees them. Coming up her walkway. Those two uniformed soldiers they send to tell you. She said she knew right away, before they even said anything. She said her knees just went right out from under her, and she took a tumble down her three stone steps. Banged herself up good.’
With that image, Mrs Jespers began to cry again. I excused myself and found a box of tissues in the TV room, and brought them back to her. I held them out for a long time before she looked up and saw what I was offering.
‘Oh, thanks, honey.’ She took them from me, yanked out one tissue, and used it to delicately wipe under her eyes without smudging her make-up.
I watched her, wondering why, when a person is crying and you hand them tissues, they always wipe their eyes. They never blow their nose. I always think the nasal stuff is more to the point. But maybe we’re only worried about the part that shows. I guess I’m famous for disjointed thinking in times of stress. As if there were any other times these days.
‘She says she didn’t even ask why they were there, because she knew. She just asked them, “Where did it happen, and how?” They said his unit was trying to secure this prison in Kandahar … Oh, Lord, honey, it’s so sad. Now she has to go to the hospital and ask the doctors when they think her husband can take the bad news, and then she has to break it to him and hope it doesn’t kill him. Can you think of anything sadder than that?’
My brain did a fast scan of fallen towers and mothers dying suddenly and young. Well, not just any old mothers. My mother. This news had stiff competition.
Plus, it could have been Larry, the guy with three kids; but even so, it was bad enough.
‘It’s very sad,’ I said, not wanting to play games with sadness ratings.
‘I just knew you’d want to know, seeing how you two went to school together and all. And Ben. You’ve got to be the one to tell Ben, OK? Those two were pretty close. Vince was nice with Ben. Nicer than most. He and Larry even came by after your mother died, just to see how Ben was doing.’
Just for a flash of a moment I entertained the idea that this might all be part of my discordant dream. Then, failing with that theory, I grilled myself regarding what I felt. No doubt it was a shame. And yes, Vince and Larry and Paul had been there for the first eighteen years of my life. But had I known them? And had they known me? Or were we just semi-strangers operating in the same small piece of real estate? This is not to say I didn’t care. I’d very much wanted Vince to come home from Afghanistan in one piece. And not in a flag-draped coffin. But it wasn’t a heavy personal loss. He was just a guy I knew. But not really. I was very sorry for his family, but only a little bit for myself.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell Ben.’
‘I thought maybe it was something you needed to hear. You know. So you could … kind of …’ I felt the pressure of subtext. Heavy agenda. I could feel it rise. ‘… reexamine some of your choices.’
Blessedly, at this point, I had no idea what she was talking about.
‘My choices?’
‘You have to be careful who you let into your home, Rusty. Your life. You know. Not everybody is suitable friend material.’
And then I knew.
I leaned down a little, so my face would be closer to hers.
‘Get out,’ I said. I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. Those words spoke volumes for themselves.
She recoiled as if I’d slapped her.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Get out. What part of “get out” don’t you understand?’
She dove off my couch and practically ran for the door.
‘Mark was right,’ she said, stopping with her hand on the knob. ‘He was right all along. He said you’ve gone downright un-American, and I wouldn’t listen, but now I see it with my own eyes. Choosing those people over the good people who knew you all your life.’
‘You’re not getting out yet.’
This time she did.
The door drifted open behind her, letting in a blast of cool air. I closed it, and stood a moment with my forehead leaned on the door.
‘So that’s where Mark gets it,’ I said out loud to the empty room.
I walked back to my mom’s bedroom. Not because I thought I could possibly get back to sleep, but because I wanted a shower. Needed one. I felt as though I needed to scrub off Mrs Jespers’s world view. Like part of it had stuck to me, and could infect me if I didn’t wash myself. I felt dirty.
Before I could even get there, I heard my cell phone ringing on the bedside table. I walked into the bedroom and stared at it for another two rings. Wondering if it could hurt me. It felt like it wanted to hurt me.
I took two steps closer and picked it up. It was Anat.
‘Hey,’ I said, all the weight of the morning sliding off me. ‘It’s you.’
‘Oh, Russell,’ she said. And it was not good. It was not a good ‘Oh, Russell’.
‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘My father is very upset. As upset as I’ve ever seen him, and I’ve seen him pretty upset. Someone called him and told him they saw you come in at two in the morning, and that your car was here until four thirty.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Wait. I need to sit down.’
I plunked into a sit on the bed. Hard enough to bounce a little. Which I could have done while she was talking. But I needed her to stop for a moment. I needed the world to stop pelting me with more and more bad news.
I had a sudden weird image that those two planes had hit the towers with such impetus that they’d knocked the world, or at least the country, just slightly off its axis. And that we still hadn’t managed to get balanced again. It felt like nothing had gone right since that morning. Except Anat. And now even that was in peril.
‘Who called him?’
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t know. Someone just called and said this. They didn’t say their name.’
‘And he believed it? From an anonymous stranger?’
‘Russell. It’s true.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’
‘He asked me. I think he wanted not to believe it, but he came into the shop and he just asked me right to my face. Is this true? Maybe I should have lied to him. But I’ve never lied to my father. Well. Not about anything important. Childish lies, maybe, when I was younger.’
‘Did you tell him nothing happened?’
‘Of course I did. And I think he believes me. I hope so. But somewhere in his mind he must wonder. Plus, our nothing and his nothing are two very different things, Russell. In his culture … our culture … if a man and a woman are alone in a bedroom in the middle of the night, this is very much something. No matter what they do.’
‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘No!’ She literally shouted it. It made me jump. ‘No, you must leave him alone. Give him time with this. That’s the main reason I called, to warn you to stay away from him. Even I wouldn’t try to talk with him now. Not until he calms down. If you want me, I’ll be at the shop. I’ll be in the room upstairs. I won’t be going home for a while. If you want to call. But don’t come in when he’s around.’
My head swam. I pressed my forehead into my palm. Hard. As if I could physically steady my thinking. I couldn’t think what to ask first.
‘Are you afraid of him? Would he hurt you?’
‘Yes. And no. Yes, I am afraid of him. No, he would never hurt me. But I can’t be around him right now. I have a temper, too, you know. And he brings it out in me. We both said some things we can never take back. I need to stay away until things calm down.’
Speaking of calming down … I counted breaths. I tried to pull them in deeply.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
‘No. Please. It was every bit as much my idea as yours.’
‘Should I not come in at all for a while?’
‘You can come in, but on my days only. Not when he’s here.’
I breathed some mor
e. I wanted to ask a dozen more questions about our future. If indeed we still had one. But I was afraid that, if I did, she might answer them. I decided to go with her idea of giving everything time to settle.
‘I have a customer,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.’
And she clicked off the line. Before I even had time to say goodbye.
‘You look bad,’ Ben said. ‘You look really upset.’
‘Walk with me,’ I said. ‘I have to tell you some news.’ We stood together just outside the sliding doors of Gerson’s Market. Close enough to hold them open with our presence as we spoke.
‘Bad news?’
‘Yeah. Pretty bad. But pay attention to where we’re going, anyway. OK? The bus stop is that way. You look that way. And, see the stoplight? You walk to the corner with the stoplight.’
‘OK. But I think tomorrow—’
‘Right. I know. Too soon. I won’t ask you to do it by yourself tomorrow. But pay attention anyway, OK?’
We set off walking.
‘What’s the news?’ he asked, struggling to keep up.
I was too agitated to match my pace to his. So I just kept gaining. I stopped at the corner and waited for him to catch up.
‘Maybe it should wait till we get home,’ I said.
Maybe you don’t tell Ben bad news in public. What if he collapsed or had a tantrum right in the middle of Conner Avenue?
‘No, you have to tell me now,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll be scared for too long.’
‘Yeah. OK. But first … do you see which way you’re supposed to turn?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t know which way the bus stop is?’
‘No.’
‘It’s right.’
‘Right.’
‘That way.’
‘Oh. That way. OK. I can see the pet store way down there. Walk to the pet store, right? What’s the bad news?’
I started off walking.
‘It’s Vince. Vince Buck. He was killed in Afghanistan.’
No response. I looked over my shoulder to see Ben a good six paces back.
‘Could you slow down, Buddy?’
‘Sorry.’ I stopped and waited for him. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yeah. Vince. What’s Afghanistan?’
‘It’s a country where we’re fighting a war.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you know what it means when someone gets killed?’
When You Were Older (retail) Page 20