The restaurant smoke is tingling my eyes, and the waterfall words and prinking piano are drowning the thoughts in my head. I squeeze my eyes shut against the smoke sting.
“You are unbelievable,” Mom says. “I take you to this beautiful restaurant and all you can do is sulk. You’re a real prince.”
“It’s not my fault,” I say.
“Oh, it’s mine, then? Are you blaming me? Go ahead and order something else, whatever you want. Double my bill. See if I care.”
“I don’t want anything. I don’t need anything from you.” A few people are looking over. “In fact, here. You can take your stupid bracelet back, too.” I pull it off my wrist and toss it into her salad, where it lands like a giant onion ring.
“Great, Ben. Congratulations. It only took you twenty minutes to ruin this evening for me.”
And I know she means it, too, and so I decide I’ll ruin it all the way.
I stand up from the table, push back my chair, throw my napkin over the brains, and tell her in as unrestricted a voice as I know that she better drive me back to the motel.
Right. This. Second.
I TOLD MOM I DIDN’T go back that far, but I’m lying. I remember too much of my Before, same as you. You used to talk about your Before, always plunk in the middle of some wrong time, like during our first Thanksgiving together.
Remember Before? you asked Lyle, just as him and Mom and you and me sat down at the dining room table. Remember Before, when my mom put horseradish in the mashed potatoes, how good that was? That was like the perfect way to have potatoes.
Lyle answered something easy on everyone, a nice thing about your mom’s cooking and then something else about how a real Thanksgiving always should have mashed potatoes, and weren’t we lucky to serve some up now?
The harm was done, though. I felt the ghost of your mom glooming in the shadow while we said grace and passed plates. You made me see into the Before room when it was just you, your mom, and Lyle. A perfect Thanksgiving.
I didn’t have those rooms in my Before. Mom and Dad were eater-outers, all the time, even Thanksgiving, when one year they found a seafood place that was open for an all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving special on beer-battered clams and shrimp. Back then, Mom’s hair was down to her waist, and she had to keep pushing it behind her ears to stop it from getting in the tartar sauce. They made me wear a bib even though I was too old, but then Dad tied on a bib, too, and Mom was laughing and saying, Frank, quit being a bozo, just this once?
Then Dad and Mom went out on the dance floor and didn’t come back. They danced and another guy was dancing with Mom too, and Dad would grab her away, and they’d dance over to the bar and refill their drinks while I sat at the table and chewed and watched them.
There were some little pink packets in a holder on the table, so I opened them and poured the white powder all over my shrimp. At the time, I didn’t know it was sugar substitute, all I knew was the powder tasted awful, a million worse times sweeter than sugar and it shriveled my tongue like salt on a slug. It’s a mystery to me why I kept on eating. There was no more water, so I drank some of the wine from the bottle, and that tasted awful too.
After my stomach turned sick, I tried to hide it by throwing up under the table. The waiter who found me there scooped me up and carried me into the restaurant kitchen and gave me a glass of seltzer and a roll.
Oh, Ben, Mom said after the waiter found her, too, and brought her into the kitchen to reclaim me. She picked me up from where I was sitting on the floor. She hugged me hard and kissed my head.
Oh, Ben, she whispered soft. Why do you always have to go and ruin Mommy’s fun?
THE DRIVE TO THE motel is full of the radio music turned up too loud. Mom doesn’t talk to me but she does everything quick and huffy, even the way she taps her fingers to the music and snicks on and off the turn blinker.
Lyle answers the door wearing his pajamas. He is holding a Chinese food carton.
“You’re back early,” he says.
Mallory is in her pajamas too. She’s sitting on one of the beds and watching the television. Without turning her eyes away from the screen, she hands me a carton of Chinese along with a fork rolled into a napkin. “Fried rice,” she whispers.
“Sorry for dropping in on your evening,” Mom says, “but Ben decided to end dinner prematurely.”
Instead of answering to that, I walk over to the farthest-away chair in the room and sit down and start eating. I’m starved.
“What happened?” asks Lyle.
“Thuh,” says Mom through her teeth. “What didn’t happen? Let him explain. I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to the hospital at eight tomorrow morning. Will I see you there?”
“Sure,” agrees Lyle. “Around eight, eight-thirty.”
Mom’s voice drops, but I hear her tell Lyle something about how she doesn’t envy him.
“Your loss,” Lyle starts, and then I can’t hear the rest because it’s too quiet, but whatever he says, it makes Mom leave quick.
After she’s gone, Mallory stands up and yawns and tells us good night. She leaves for her room, and so it’s me and Lyle. I move to sit in the space where Mallory was, next to Lyle, and watch the television alongside him. It’s a movie I saw before, but there’s something good tonight about seeing a story where I know how it ends.
When the movie’s over, Lyle goes over to my suitcase and gets out my pajamas, which he hands me along with a new toothbrush still in its box.
“In case you forgot yours,” he says. “I went to the drugstore, earlier.”
When I come out of the bathroom, he’s in his bed, reading. “Better get some shut-eye, sport,” he says. “Another long day tomorrow.”
“You should probably report me to the GCA,” I say. “Because I didn’t act so great at dinner with Mom.”
Lyle puts down his book and takes off his glasses, then cleans them careful with a corner of his sweatshirt while he thinks out what he wants to tell me. “Your mother is still growing,” he says, in the serious voice he uses to talk to clients. “One thing I’m sure of, though, Ben. I’m sure better days lie ahead for the two of you.”
“She wants me to come live with her.”
“That choice is all yours,” Lyle says. “It always has been. You know that.”
“Maybe when she’s finished growing,” I tell him. “Not now. I’m good where I am. Okay?”
“Okay,” answers Lyle, and then I hug him good night quick before I climb into the other bed. He turns off the light and soon I hear the swing of his sleep-breathing. It takes me longer, could be since it’s not my own bed, but prickly sheets and a slab of motel pillow.
Somewhere in Lyle’s book, there’s a section about concentrating on some kind of happy time from the past, to help clear the mind. It’s another relax-exercise for before making a speech, but I use it for falling asleep. I always go to the same one, too. A summer day from a lot of years ago, when Mom turned on the lawn sprinkler of one of the houses we’d lived in, I don’t remember which one or where. What I do remember is how the sprinkler moved like a giant waving water-fingered hand, and Mom and I ran back and forth, back and forth, in and out of the spray, trying not to get too splashed but wanting to feel the scatter of cool drops on our skin.
That mom doesn’t have much to do with the person whose time I keep ruining, or the lady Lyle sometimes calls your mother. She is shaped and colored shadowy from being inside my memory for so long, and her voice and her laugh and the smell of her clothes might never have happened the way I invent them in my head. But it’s how I stay near her, the best way I know how to hold her close.
THE HOSPITAL IS STILL cold the next morning, but I’m prepared. I’ve got on my sweater that I reclaimed off the gravel hill, and over that I’m wearing my new sports jacket. Plus I’m perked up from the carton of orange juice Lyle bought on the way over.
Mom lurches over and hugs me when she sees us in the third-floor nurse station, but her hug falls apart quick, to show me
she’s holding a little grudge from last night. I knew she’d be that way, but still it feels not so good.
“The nurses are changing his fluid bags,” she says. “It’ll be a few minutes.”
We wait around without talking, but as soon as the nurse signals us into your room, everyone gets noisy, ringed around your bed and smiling and asking how you’re feeling.
I join in, but you catch the fear in my face.
“Big Ben’s freaked,” you say.
“No,” I answer, except you’re right. I hadn’t expected the skinniness of your arms or the leathery black-and-blue shiner that fills one side of your face.
Everyone’s drizzling over you with words about the nice nurse and the nice food and your roommate, Mr. Anthony, who is at X-ray now but who is nice too. I can’t stop staring at the tubes in your arms and the bandages holding you in at the seams.
I lean against the window ledge, next to a vase of flowers that Mom says were sent by the people at her vet clinic. The flowers are rubbery and sun-bleached at the tips. Nothing like what people would send back home. Nothing that would cheer me up or make me Get Well Soon.
Then Mallory says she’s hungry. “Is anyone else hungry?” she asks.
Lyle and Mom say yes and I say yes, but Lyle says, “Why don’t you stay here with Dustin, and we’ll bring you something from the cafeteria?” and I realize it’s kind of a plan for me to spend some time alone with you.
“You look demolished,” I admit once they’re gone, which makes you smile. You have Lyle’s face, I realize. Stiff edges, soft in the middle.
“I feel better than I look.”
“How long are you in for?” I move closer, aiming for the chair by your bed.
“Doctor says a week, and then some outpatient therapy. I’m trying to figure if they’ll let me go early for good behavior. Take a chair, if you want.”
So I sit.
“What’s with the getup? It that what Dad’s girlfriend makes you wear?”
“Mallory? No. No, Mal’s okay.”
“She’s a fruitcake.”
“I thought you’d call her that,” I say, “but she’s okay. She’s sort of famous, actually.”
“How?”
“On TV. She does the news for Channel Five. She’s not bad.”
“Gina’s asked for a divorce. I don’t blame her, considering.”
“You can’t blame him, either. My mom was the deserter. Not Lyle.”
‘“My mommy deserted me,’“ you say, imitating my voice but making it sound stupid. “You could have come out here anytime, you know, Ben. I was the one who had to fight for it.”
“There’s nothing out here,” I say. “Everything important is back at home.”
You don’t answer, but you’re breathing quick through your nose. Inside its purple cave of skin, your eye slides back and forth like a trapped black ant.
“How come you stay here, anyway?” I ask. “Your friends are always asking me about you.”
“I made new friends. I like it here, besides, Gina lets me do what I want. She always did.”
“That’s not really the job of a mom,” I say, and I wait for you to say something mean, to imitate my voice or whatever.
You don’t. You turn your head. Your good eye is peeled and stuck wide open looking at me, surprised. “Well, I got gypped out of my real mom,” you answer, “so I take what comes my way.”
“Lots of people get gypped,” I say. “My real dad’s gone and my real mom’s gone too. I got gypped, right? Right?”
“You can’t compare yourself to me, runt. It’s an insult. My real mom died. Who died in your family?”
I don’t have anything to say to that, so for a minute we just breathe at each other like two boxers, and then I take a swing. My breath reaches for its strongest place. “You’re out on the beach all day,” I start. “That’s what you told me on Thanksgiving. You must know all the good diving points.”
“Yeah?”
“Which is why I’m wondering if you did it on purpose.”
“What?”
“Your jump. Everyone thinks it was by accident.”
“Of course it was by accident.” Your eyes, good and bad, move to stare at the ceiling. You’ve gone back there, I figure. High up on those rocks, watching the sky.
“Like that day on the yellow trail, in Pinewoods. How you pushed off your bike.”
“Or maybe the bike just got away from me. Maybe I slipped.”
“I always wondered what that must have felt like, to push off.”
“And maybe this time I slipped too,” you say, your voice turning hard, locking me out. “How would you know why I do what I do? How would anybody? I’m sick of people trying to stamp answers on me.”
“Forget it then. Sorry.”
“Just because people have questions doesn’t mean answers come attached.”
“Sorry, I said.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.” You yawn, too wide, and stretch your arms. “Anyhow, I’m tired. Go be with Gina. I don’t want to gyp you out of your time with her.”
“I’ll go if you want.”
“Yeah. I’m tired now.”
And so I stand up and say, “See you later.”
Just as I’m about to close the door, I take another chance. “Dustin, I hope you come back and visit Lyle and me, even if there’s nothing important at home.” My throat sticks a little and I try to unrestrict. “Because Lyle misses you, you know. It’s not like I’m a replacement or anything.”
You don’t stop looking at the ceiling. “Right,” you say. “I know that, Ben. But I appreciate your saying.”
I close the door and keep my hand on the knob, wondering if there is anything else to tell you. Waiting for the elevator, I almost turn around. I almost turn around and run back to your room and say how bad I feel, taking away all those things that didn’t belong to me, like your work space and Lyle, even your outgrown sports jackets and your Hotrocks six-speed, when I couldn’t trade for anything good.
When all I could give you back was the wrong mom.
But I don’t turn around. The elevator opens, and I step into it, and I guess I will just have to live with that.
THAT AFTERNOON AND THE next morning, when we come back to say good-bye, I’m always in a group. No more you and me. But the talking feels easier when more people are standing by, helping each other out of the silence traps.
Lyle’s got you promised to fly back for a long visit in the summer, except for I don’t think anybody except maybe Lyle believes in it. You go on about how you’d love to eat another Pete’s Pizza and to tell Dogger you’ll see him soon, but it’s mostly just conversation air whipped up to fill the corners of the last hour before we leave.
Outside the hospital, Lyle talks to Mom about therapy for you. He asks her to send him the bills. Mom listens mostly, but she also reminds Lyle about how she can’t make you do what you don’t want.
“Dustin’s a free spirit,” she says, and I watch Lyle’s hands fist up in his pockets. I watch him rock up and back on his feet. Annoyed. Pent up. Maybe even wishing he’d never set eyes on Mom that day in the Stop & Shop.
“I’d give anything to have Dustin under my own supervision,” Lyle says. “But if he won’t come home, you’ve got to help me here.”
“I’m no miracle worker,” Mom tells him.
“He’s out of my reach,” Lyle says.
“Join the club, pal,” Mom answers, tipping her head to where I’m standing beside Mallory’s car. “I didn’t ask for this arrangement either. Welcome to the modern world.”
Lyle’s next words are too low, since he knows I’m listening in. Probably, though, he’s telling her something easy on everyone, something about how he knows Mom will do her best and try her hardest. Hoping that by saying it, he’ll help make it come true.
Me, I want to go. I’ve seen enough of motels and hospitals and restaurants. It’s time to head home.
“We never used the pool,” I remind Mal
lory as we’re checking out at the front desk.
“It was septic,” she answers. “I wouldn’t have let you near that water.” When Liptwitch overhears this, she looks like she might start crying.
This time on the plane we sit together with Mallory shared in the middle. Lyle passes out gum to keep our ears from popping.
Mallory asks for her Very Special stuff—a clean blanket and a twist of lime in her water—and she gets the plane man apologizing for everything but the weather. Either Mallory has totally memorized Lyle’s book, or she never needed much help speaking to save herself in the first place. Still, she was the right person to call. She is the right person to sit between me and Lyle.
The movie starts and I’ve bought earphones, but Lyle and Mallory bend their heads together and continue their conversation about you that has no way to finish. Not that day and not ever.
Halfway through the movie, I fall asleep on Mallory’s arm and I don’t wake up until we’re touched down, safe on the planet again.
THE AST TIME YOU came to see us was the Christmas right after you started college. You were taking classes in marine biology, and everything seemed to be going great for you. You brought your new girlfriend, Elise, and Mallory had to pretend she needed to go the grocery store, only she really split off to the mall to buy Elise too many presents, wrapping them in the family room with the television turned up loud so Elise wouldn’t hear the last-minute rip of scissors and tape.
Next we heard you’d left school and were living one place, then other, but always drifting around the coast. Some bad words between Elise and Mom had broken you and Mom apart, and so the faint news of you that had trickled through Mom ran dry. The magnet of whatever pointed you home rubbed off slow, until nothing pulled you back our direction, not even holidays, not even Lyle’s wedding to Mallory that you promised on the phone you’d make. You were Lyle’s best man right up to the last minute, when I stepped in and took your place.
When we got the news, I never doubted for a minute that it wasn’t at least partly on purpose, although no one saw you, and no one even knew you were gone for a while after. Lyle went out there by himself this time, and came back looking partly erased. The fact of it takes me by surprise, even now. Who would have thought there’d be so many not-yous? Under a hat or across the street or next to me in line at the movies; I’m always just about to call your name. Sometimes I do.
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