The Precious One

by Marisa de los Santos

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Willow touched the button to bring the phone’s screen flaring to life again. I considered leaving, but I got the sense she wanted to say something else to me. Finally, without looking up, her finger flitting over the touch screen, in a low voice, she said, “Did you ever say no to him?”

  “Ben?”

  “Yes. Besides the, um, annulment, I mean. Did you ever tell him no when he asked you to do something that you didn’t want to do?”

  Worry slid cold fingers down my neck.

  “Sure,” I said. “Usually, though, when we were deciding something, we talked about it. If one of us just truly didn’t want to do it, we’d let it drop.”

  She nodded, still not looking at me. Then: “Was there ever someone in your life to whom you just could not say no?”

  Oh, God. I kept my voice calm. “Wilson.”

  She didn’t leap to defend him, just nodded again, still not looking up.

  “What about you?” I asked her, as carefully as I could.

  I thought she might tell me. The light from the chandelier cast a greenish glow across her pensive face, and for a second, she was otherworldly, mermaidlike, and so fragile. When her eyes met mine, though, she looked like any teenager who realizes she’s said too much.

  “Nope,” she said, shrugging. “Not really.”

  AFTER BEN AND I carried in shopping bag after shopping bag (and one large red cooler) of dinner supplies—not only food (in various stages of preparedness) but also flowers, a vase, candles, candleholders, matches, wine, trivets, olive oil, spices measured out into Ziploc bags, oven mitts, paper towels, parchment paper, placemats, cloth napkins, salt and pepper shakers, and two green bottles of bubbly water—I stood in his kitchen unloading them, while Roo and Pidwit wove around the bags, sniffing ecstatically, their stubby tails tick-tocking. Ben watched me with the twinkle in his eyes getting increasingly twinklier, then dropped his head back and laughed a laugh that was like Mardi Gras and the Fourth of July rolled into one.

  “I overdid it, you’re thinking?” I said, grinning. “Four giant bags and a cooler full of I’m-desperate-to-impress-my-friend-Ben? Is that it?”

  “More like four giant bags and a cooler full of my-friend-Ben-is-so-lame-he-probably-doesn’t-even-have-napkins,” he said. He reached inside one of the bags and pulled out the saltshaker. “Or salt. Salt? Now, that’s just insulting.”

  “Hey, I knew you were renting. I thought you might not have all the dinner accoutrements.”

  “Yeah, but you’re living in a pool house, right?”

  “A very well-stocked pool house. I’m sure it was Caro’s doing. Wilson isn’t exactly the kind of guy who would say, ‘Taisy’s coming. Better make sure she’s got some silver trivets and linen napkins on hand!’”

  “Huh. So I was thinking you invited yourself to cook here because you didn’t have what you needed at the pool house.” He looked at me, questioningly. “But that’s not why, I take it.”

  I lifted the salmon papoosed in white paper out of the cooler, and instantly, the dogs stopped their excited perambulations around the shopping bags, stood stock-still, and lifted avid faces to gaze at the fish.

  “Aha, I see we have some Alaskan sockeye fans in the house,” I said.

  Ben kept looking at me and, slowly, raised his eyebrows, twin black parabolas. I sighed. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said, “and you’re right.”

  His eyebrows, unappeased, continued to wait.

  “Maybe I thought it would be uncomfortable for you?” I ventured. “Being in Wilson’s house, even if it isn’t his house-house?”

  “Maybe,” he said, neutrally.

  “Your face is going to stick that way, you know. How would it be, to walk around every day with that knowing look? I don’t think that’ll win you many friends, Ben.”

  Silence. I sagged. “I’m sorry. I’ve been tiptoeing around the guy my entire life. Even when he was hundreds of miles away, I tiptoed. But next time, I promise, pinky-swear, cross my heart and hope to die, that I’ll invite you to the pool house. Wilson be damned. Okay?”

  His brows came in for a landing. “Okay.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “How could I be mad at someone who brings me trivets?”

  OVER BEN’S PROTESTS, I ate dinner with Pidwit curled up on my lap and Roo sitting on my feet.

  “You’ll spoil them,” said Ben.

  I looked down at Pidwit, tucked neatly between my lap and the underside of the table, his sleeping face perfectly serene, not even the wings of his eyelashes fluttering. “I don’t know,” I said, skeptically. “He seems awfully comfortable.” I narrowed my eyes at Ben. “Almost like he’s done this before.”

  Ben laughed. “Before—or every day. Pid is what you’d call a classic lapdog, but I usually don’t let him inflict himself on guests.”

  “Inflict? Are you kidding? It’s an honor to have him here.”

  “Some people would call it uncivilized. Or unhygienic.”

  “Oh, but just look at that face!”

  Ben grinned. “Yeah, that’s pretty much how all arguments about not giving in to Pid’s every whim end, especially the ones I have with myself.”

  While we ate, Ben talked some more about leaving Wisconsin, a topic that was quickly becoming one of my personal favorites.

  “I just wasn’t cut out for teaching,” he said. “I wasn’t terrible at it. I’m pretty sure I taught the kids what they were supposed to learn, and most of them seemed to like me well enough.”

  “I bet they loved you.”

  Ben shook his head. “I doubt it. Kids know. They know when someone’s heart isn’t in it, and I just didn’t like being in front of a classroom that much. It felt unnatural, having mostly one-sided conversations with forty strangers all at the same time. We were discouraged from really knowing them or spending time with them outside of class, and even if we hadn’t been, I never wanted to be that professor.”

  “The sad, desperate one who hangs out in student bars and is always dropping the names of cool bands into conversations? No, I don’t see you as that guy.”

  “But teaching is a good job, and there are people who are born to it, and if you have one of them, you never forget it. I could have kept doing it, but you know what I missed?”

  “Your old friend Taisy?”

  Ben smiled. “The wonder. I mean, you were the kind of student I was. Remember how you’d learn something or read something, and it would just blow your mind, and you couldn’t stop talking about it? Actually, you and I had a lot of those conversations.”

  “Gregor Mendel,” I said. “For at least two weeks, you and I were crazy in love with Gregor and his pea plants.”

  “Darwin and his finches, too. And leafcutter ants. And Emily Dickinson.”

  “And The Sound and the Fury, even though it was really hard. Oh, and remember when we found out that light acts like a particle and a wave?”

  “Yeah,” said Ben, “I’m still not over that one.”

  “Me, either.”

  “Anyway, there just wasn’t any wonder in teaching, for me. Sometimes, in doing research there was, although not enough, but never in the classroom, which seemed not really fair to any of us.”

  “How about what you’re doing now? Studying gardening, working with plants. Is there wonder in that?”

  “There is, actually.” Ben shrugged, sheepishly. “Hey, I know a lot of people do jobs their whole lives that they don’t find fascinating. Wonder is a luxury. But I wanted it, and not just in my job, but in—” He trailed off, his cheeks turning red.

  Inside me, hope grew wings and soared. Ben lifted his wineglass and drank, not looking at me.

  “I know,” I said. “Relationships.”

  “What about you?” he said. “Is there wonder in your job?”

  “Ben.”

  Our eyes met. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to turn the conversation in the direction of—” He broke off again and
rubbed his forehead with his palm.

  “Love?” I said. “But that’s my favorite direction. And do you think maybe you did mean to? Subconsciously?”

  Ben smiled, reluctantly. “It’s my subconscious, so I can’t say for sure. But I don’t think so.”

  I shrugged. “If we’re going to be friends, we’ll have to talk about the past seventeen years eventually, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “And occasionally, we’ll have to allude, in passing, to our prior relationships, won’t we?”

  “I guess.”

  “All right, so—everyone I was ever involved with after you was nice, well, except the guy in college who cheated on me for two straight years. The rest were nice, funny, smart.” My voice got softer of its own accord. “But I never looked at one of them and thought, ‘How in the world was such a person as you ever invented? This exact combination of things—eyes, hands, sense of humor, the face you make when you’re figuring out a physics problem, the sound of your voice—how can it even exist? And by what grace have you ended up sitting here talking to me?’”

  Ben’s single dimple flared in his cheek. “You did physics problems with all your boyfriends?”

  I shook my head and smiled back at him. “No.”

  Pidwit stirred in my lap and looked up at me with his tiny, sleepy, flower face. “What do you think the long-term effects are of living every single day in the presence of this much adorableness?” I said. “Have they studied that?”

  “Adorable, loyal, trusting, and funny.” Ben gave a slightly weary chuckle and then added drily, “When your dogs take your breath away more often than the person you’re supposed to marry, it’s probably time to reassess.”

  Definitely.

  “Okay, well, I see what you mean, but it has to be said that, when it comes to dogs, these two are exceptionally wondrous.”

  Ben didn’t laugh, just sat there regarding me with such plain, wide-open appreciation that, if it hadn’t meant disturbing Pidwit—not to mention the candles, flowers, serving dishes, and Ben—I might have leaned across the table and kissed him right then. He blew out a sigh that was half groan and dropped his napkin onto the table.

  “Yeah, well, it’s true that once you’ve had wonder, it’s hard to get used to not having it,” he said.

  “It’s not hard,” I said, firmly. “It’s impossible.”

  AFTER DINNER, WE ENDED up sitting in front of the fire, which, alas, wasn’t as romantic as it sounds, since I was in a chair, and Ben was on the couch, and the kitchen lights were on. With Roo and Pidwit curled up—two spoonfuls of Yorkie—on their round bed near the hearth, I told Ben about the anonymous letter.

  “Do you think you should go talk to someone at the school?” he asked.

  “You know, she’s just starting to trust me,” I said. “Not long ago, she thought I was the slut sister from hell, here to steal her father’s heart and wreck her life, but now she’s confiding in me. Sort of. And probably only out of sheer desperation because she doesn’t have any female friends and doesn’t want her parents to worry about her or think she’s not perfect. But still, she’s reaching out, and I don’t want her to retreat.”

  “I can understand that,” said Ben. “But what if—”

  I held up my hand to interrupt him.

  “I know. Which is why, I’d go tell someone and risk her hating me forever in a heartbeat, if I thought it would help. I can see that she’s working through something, but she’s not there yet. This girl has never trusted anyone, as far as I can tell, except Wilson and Caro. And if I jump in too soon, she might never trust anyone else ever again.”

  “Well, that would be bad,” agreed Ben.

  “It would be disastrous. No one should have a universe made up of just herself and two other people.”

  “Especially when one of those people is Wilson,” said Ben.

  I waited for my knee-jerk reaction to defend Wilson, but it never came.

  “It’s his fault, you know,” I said. “Whatever bad thing is happening at school. He’s kept that girl so isolated and protected that she hasn’t acquired the normal instincts for danger. It’s like those animals that evolve on islands with no predators.”

  “And then the rats show up.”

  “Exactly!”

  Even in my worried state, I could not help but notice Ben in the firelight, how the shadows swept into all the little dips and hollows of his face.

  “What do you think happened to Wilson?” I asked Ben. “How does a person never learn to love properly?”

  Ben contemplated this, his eyes full of concentration and firelight.

  “You’re writing a book about him,” he said, finally. “You said that whenever you get stuck, you think of the right question to ask the person. What would you ask Wilson?”

  “Ha. He’d never answer.”

  “Still.”

  “Okay. How about: Why did you lie about your parents’ dying in a car accident? Or: Why did you change your name? Or: Why did you despise your first two kids?”

  Ben said, “Who did you ever headlong, all-out love without having to try?”

  “My mom,” I said quickly. “Trillium. Marcus. You.”

  Ben smiled. “Thank you, but I wasn’t actually asking you.”

  “I know,” I said. Suddenly, I could not bear to be so far away from him. And he missed me; I was sure of it. Even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself, all that talk of wonder meant he missed me. “Can I come over and sit beside you for a second?”

  Ben narrowed his eyes at me, suspiciously.

  “Come on,” I said. “I need to ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  I left two feet of space between us. I reached across the gap and traced an arc from his temple to where his cheekbone peaked below his eye. He breathed in, sharply. “What’s this bone?” I asked. “The one around your eye.”

  “I’m better with plants,” he said, “but I think it might be the zygomatic bone.”

  “I missed your zygomatic bone so awfully much,” I told him. “Both of them.”

  He circled my wrist with his fingers, barely touching it, and for a few seconds, there we were: the fire crackling and flickering, my fingers on his face, his around my wrist. Just us, like we’d been slipped into a pocket. Then, Ben opened his hand and let go, lightly, like he was releasing a firefly but still he let go, and sat back against the couch cushions, and I moved my hand away and did the same.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, with a rueful smile at the fire. “Tigering.”

  “You want to hear something crazy?” said Ben.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “When we got married, I thought it would last.”

  I shut my eyes.

  “Seriously,” he went on. “And ‘thought’ is the wrong word. I knew like I knew, I don’t know, that three was a prime number or that my dad was my dad. I was confused about other things, but on that point, I was rock solid. And then, you know what?”

  “It ended,” I said. “I ended it.”

  “Right,” he said. “It still ranks as the worst thing that ever happened to me.” His voice held no trace of meanness. He was stating facts.

  I turned to face him. The outline of his profile was lovely but remote, like a coastline you see from an airplane.

  “I did a terrible thing to you, and I have paid for it bitterly, not that that matters,” I said.

  “That’s not what I wanted,” he said, and then lifted the corner of his mouth. “Okay, I wanted it at first, for two years, maybe three. Maybe three and a half. But after that, I hoped you were happy.”

  “You did?”

  He sat, thinking. “No. Not exactly.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I did stop hoping you were unhappy, and I wasn’t mad at you, but I put it away.”

  “What?”

  “All of it. The good and the bad. Us. I boxed it up and moved on, and I promised myself that I would never get it all back out. It was the onl
y way I could get through it.”

  “And never includes now?”

  “It has to.”

  I knew what I’d seen in his face just moments ago when I touched him and he touched me back, and it was so hard not to say, You want me. You do! But I was afraid he’d end everything right there. Besides, if you have to tell someone that he wants you, maybe it means he doesn’t want you enough. I looked at him and said, “I guess I can understand that.”

  “Thank you,” he said, sincerely.

  I held out my hand, trying to tell myself that it wasn’t just so he would touch me again. “Friends?”

  Pull me against you, I begged him, silently. Bury your face in my hair.

  Ben took my hand in his and gave it a firm shake. “Friends.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Willow

  TO PUT IT BLUNTLY, Mr. Insley’s house was not what I’d expected, a two-story brick-front snaggletooth jutting up out of a flat yard in an otherwise tidy neighborhood, not picturesque enough to qualify as ramshackle, no bushes or flowers to soften the crumbling edges. A metal mailbox tilted drunkenly at the end of the short driveway. A cracked, empty terra-cotta planter squatted on the front stoop, and a blanched NO SOLICITING sign hung next to the door. Surrounding the backyard, but visible from the road, was a low chain-link fence. A chain-link fence! At a private residence! I had not known such a thing existed.

  When Mr. Insley opened the front door, I fear he saw the look of dismay on my face because he said, wryly, “Welcome to my humble, but very humble, abode.” He took my hand and walked me down the worn green carpet runner that led through the house to the kitchen, saying, “I find I’m mostly indifferent to my surroundings, a side effect of living too much inside my head, I suppose. It’s only when others come over, which isn’t often, that I realize how austere my living quarters are. Besides, it’s a rental.”

  While austere was not perhaps the word I would have chosen, since it suggested to me simplicity and spareness, and Mr. Insley’s house, what I caught a glimpse of, seemed more like dingy and cluttered, I did admire him for not caring.