by Lyndsay Faye
Even though she did kill him, it can never be prosecuted, Ben thinks. Horatio already said it to you: What happens, once you find out?
“How did you know where to send Rory and Garrett? My place is one thing, City Diner is something else.”
“There have been cameras in your apartment hallway since you’ve had an apartment. And I know you, Benny. I know what you do when you’re having an episode. Crashing out of this townhouse the way you did, I had no doubt whatsoever where you would go.”
“Mom, it’s not unnatural for me to have left here,” Ben pleads. “Isn’t independence the goal of good parenting?”
“Maybe so.” Trudy’s hem flares as she spins on him. “But you didn’t leave here, you left me, entirely. Just the way your father did. Do you have any idea how toxic this self-obsession of yours is? The universe doesn’t have enough time for your shit. While you still needed me, and I could still do something for you, it was bearable. Only just. You have everything you could ever want, honey—a mother who loves you, an endless fortune, people who are devoted to you, and you still tried to die. It’s shameful. When I think of my life at your age, still smiling over the fact there was more than one kind of fork, I can’t bear to look at you.”
“That’s . . . not unfair, really. But you’re the person who tried to murder this ludicrous human being. For more easily manipulating the board? What in even your malignant brain could possibly justify what you’ve done?”
“You’re right, Benny. We don’t understand time the same way.” Trudy raises her glass to him as she takes a deeper drink. “You understand it as something that’s always there. Forever, flies trapped in amber. I understand time the way it actually works.”
“And how is that, then?”
“Never current,” she snarls. “We are forever and always already a step behind—and meanwhile, you have never had to face what would happen when you were no longer young.”
Benjamin blinks—she isn’t wrong, there’s a gap between:
SIGHT
THEN SOUND
THEN BRAIN INTEGRATION TO MAKE THEM SIMULTANEOUS
THEN THE MEMORY OF WHAT HAPPENED
Time is like watching a commentator on a live talk program. The flat-ironed woman or the gelled man receive the signal and process it; but there’s always a lag as their answer returns via lazily orbiting satellite.
“You said that I was born with a face and painted myself a different one.” Trudy shakes her head. “I was born with nothing whatsoever and made my own paints out of mud. Then, after you were born, I painted you a different one. Who you survived to be is my greatest achievement.”
“You’re putting a lot of effort into killing that achievement!”
“And you’re relentlessly ruining everything,” she volleys. “It was obvious you’d have kept the theatre going exactly the way Jackson did, and I was finished. That cuff you’re wearing out of Jackson’s belt . . . so morbid. So obviously refusing to move on.”
“When am I meant to move on?” Ben cries out. “Right, OK, I’ll play this shit game with you, let’s set me a clear timeline. When the fuck is the right day for me to forget about Dad? Is it one day, two, a hundred? You hated him, and now you clearly hate me too, but this is just a cruel version of the heap of sand paradox. Is a single grain of sand a heap of sand?”
“Well, no. Of course not.”
“How about four?” Ben growls, advancing.
“Benjamin.” She steps back.
“Twenty?”
“Probably not, honey, and you’re being—”
“How many does it take, for fuck’s sake?” he shouts. “How many? How many days does it take until I begin to forget my father, and how many until I struggle to remember? What about Lia? How many minutes need to trickle by? How many infinitely divisible increments can exist between two human hearts? How many is a fucking heap, Trudy?”
He’s cornering her beside a display case of monstrously ticking clocks, her chest heaving in alarm under emerald silk. Ben doesn’t know when the rage and hurt turned from messily smeared coal to diamond hardness. It feels like a stranger who’s noting a strand of her golden hair unpinned, that there’s a sheen on her healthy skin now, that her mouth is flushed with biting. He doesn’t think he’s nearly as strong as this strange Other-Benjamin. He doesn’t believe he can control him. When Trudy reaches for his arm, Ben wraps his fingers around her wrist and pins her left hand hard against the wallpaper.
Her wine trembles in her other fingers but doesn’t fall.
All right, that’s enough, be more careful with your mother there, son—I love her, we both do. Don’t frighten her like this.
“Shut up,” Ben snaps to his invisible father.
Your mom is a delicate lady who deserves your protection.
“No, she is not, that’s seriously the most ridiculous bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
“Benny, please,” Trudy whispers, “who are you talking to?”
“You. And you’re going to listen.”
“All right, honey, I’ll hear whatever you have to say—just let go of me?”
Ben laughs blackly. Dropping her forearm, he rests his palms on either side of the still-beautiful mask she wears, pressing intimately into the wall although no longer touching her.
“Right, to conclude the heap of sand paradox,” Ben hisses. “In ancient Greece, they didn’t mathematically have ‘to the power of,’ and so they came up with the term ‘sand hundred’ to mean these . . . these unimaginably big numbers. Understand something: Sand hundred days is how many I will need to forget Dad, and forget Lia. And ever forgive you.”
When Ben launches himself away from the wall, his fist strikes it, and Trudy gasps. Stumbling, she reaches her gilt-edged desk and presses the silent alarm Ben knows is there. It doesn’t matter. They’re coming for him anyhow, thanks to Paul. Shoving his fingers into his eyes, Ben fights the growing chaos in his head.
Meanwhile, he watches Trudy straighten. Her chin raises.
“You called the cops just now,” Ben rasps. “Probably Norway and Fortuna on a direct line.”
“I had to. You’re frightening me.”
“You’re frightening me.”
“All right, I’m through with this.” Downing the last mouthful of wine neatly, Trudy goes to the small sink and rinses the glass out. A superfluous gesture that belies having both multiple live-in housekeepers and a robot dishwasher. “Sit down until they get here, please. We won’t have long to wait.”
Fuck it, Ben concludes grimly.
Picking his own wine up as if it’s the heaviest thing he ever lifted, Ben downs it in two swallows. Trudy lets out a tiny hiss of air.
Aha, Ben thinks, as his universe shatters.
Once upon a time there was a soft little tabby in a box with a hammer poised to strike. If a radioactive atom decayed, the hammer would crush the kitty’s skull; if the radioactive atom did not, the hammer would not fall, and the tabby would live. Before actually observing the decay of the atom and thereby selecting a definite thread of the multiverse as our own path, the cat would remain both alive and dead in separate potential worlds.
Giggling like a child, Ben sinks to the couch. His cheeks are wet. Why are his cheeks wet? At the same time, he hears his mother whimper.
Trudy stares at her own empty wineglass in horror. “What did you do?”
“Nothing that ought to matter.”
“No,” she chokes. “You did something. Benny, what did you do?”
“I didn’t want to believe that you actually were trying to kill me. I switched them,” Ben says, barely loud enough to hear.
Trudy Dane falls to the carpet.
The police are already coming. He goes to his mother without any idea of what she just consumed, and he cradles her head. The tears come in a soundless waterfall now. Trudy
is still warm, still solid, as he pulls her to him.
“Mom, why?” he gasps.
“I didn’t want to,” she answers in a cracked voice. “But you made it impossible.”
Look what you’ve done now. My god, son, what a failure you always were, all along.
“Go away!” Ben closes his eyes, burying his nose in her hair. “All right, I’ll just. I’ll tell you the story of what you did. If that makes it easier.”
Trudy nods. Her body begins to curl in on itself.
“I was suicidal, I was insane at the gala, I more or less murdered a family friend, and I was caught. What simpler thing than to make it look like I killed myself here?”
Trudy is turning whiter by the second. She clutches at her belly.
“Mom, you didn’t even poison me and you’re killing me, please tell me if that was a true story?”
Her lips lock together as she nods. A shudder wracks her small bones, then another, then another.
“Do you want me to tell you a different story, Benny?” Her eyes wince shut. “For old times’ sake?”
“Yeah,” Ben whispers. “Please, Mom. Tell me anything you want. They’re on their way. They’re coming.”
“The Greeks created the most incredible clock,” Trudy gasps. “I want you to know about this. A jewel-encrusted gate, hung . . . hung with twelve golden orbs. One for each hour of the day. It was hydro-powered, and called the Clepsydra. Do you know what that means, honey?”
Benjamin shakes his head.
“Water thief.” By now she is haggard even beyond her years. “It reminds me of you.”
“To measure one thing, you always have to steal from something else. Distance or velocity, never both. Space or time.” The panic rises, clutching at his throat. “Mom, stay with me. I know Norway and Fortuna are coming, but I’m calling an ambulance.”
“It won’t do any good.” Her voice is barely audible as he lays his mother reverently on the floor.
Ben’s hands are palsied as he pulls out his phone.
take the device
type three numbers
using non-ionizing radiation
from the electromagnetic cell fields
to save the mother
you just murdered
Ben remembers nothing of the phone call. They tell him to stay on the line, but he can’t possibly, he needs to do something, he needs to save her.
Trudy has already gone still, mouth slack. Eyes unblinking.
Ben can only stand there looking down.
The sound of the door opening snaps his head up. But it isn’t the paramedics yet, not even Norway and Fortuna, it’s Claude Dane, wearing reading glasses and a ravaged expression, dropping a legal pad and a pen on the carpet.
What did you do? he mouths.
“Technically, I switched wineglasses,” Ben forces out. “Please help me.”
“Dear God in heaven.” Claude’s face turns scarlet, then ash white.
“I didn’t put anything harmful into anything, I just survived my own mother trying to kill me, please for god’s sake help me. I know you would, you’re. You’re a decent man.”
But whatever poison Trudy Dane put in the wine, it was swift. Claude rushes to her, but it is already too late. Her eyes are soft white pearls.
“No,” Ben moans. “No, please. I didn’t want this.”
It takes Claude several seconds to gather himself. But when he does, his eyes turn dark. Claude goes deliberately to the desk, opens a drawer, and pulls a gun out of it.
“I loved her. She was all I had,” he says.
“Yeah, she was all I had once, too. I know how it feels. You don’t—”
“You are not going to dismiss me ever again.”
“No, no, the ambulance is coming, they’re almost here, I called them, I didn’t—”
Claude fires the gun.
A BRIEF INDEX OF WHAT BEN DOESN’T NOTICE AFTER HE’S BEEN SHOT:
the metallic aromas of hot metal and spilled blood
the continued ticking of the clocks
the sound of Claude’s shoes pounding away in panic
fresh air seeping in through the townhouse’s open front door
He does notice a tiny crack in the ceiling when he blinks, and the sudden sharp agony of being lifted up, and a new voice begging for something indistinct. Ben struggles to open his eyes more fully.
When he does, he smiles.
Ben never appreciated how beautiful Horatio is. His body still isn’t fully processing being shot. The hole where his heart still beats and hemorrhages is just another emptiness in space. But he does note how much he simply loves the sight of Horatio, how everything becomes better when Horatio is there to share it.
Except that Horatio is probably about to watch me die.
Horatio is still talking. His tears spill like the blood from Ben’s body. If only they were somewhere else, maybe they wouldn’t be ruined. Maybe somewhere else, they would have had more time. A gentler country, a kinder one. As imaginary as the one conjured in City Diner. A faraway place that doesn’t smash people to pieces and discard them like so much ceramics.
It depends on geography because here in America
if I so happen to fall and I
then I’m buried in the ground, but in
the ancient Empire of Japan
cracks are marks of resilience and are repaired with gold and no matter
what happens here, my heart, o my heart,
every shattering of you patched with precious ore
every loss every hurt
shone so brilliantly you all but blinded me
“Don’t look like that,” Ben manages. “I’ve hurt you too many times, and you never deserved any of it.”
“This isn’t happening,” Horatio pleads. “No, no. You—I’ve already watched you die once. You cannot do this to me again.”
“I was always going to die. It was the one certain thing in my life.”
Horatio’s hand is warm on his cheek. “Please don’t.”
“I can’t do that. It’s a candle flame, and candles go out.”
“That’s just poetry.”
“No, it isn’t.” His eyelids flutter. “Life isn’t a noun, it’s a verb.”
“Life isn’t a biological process.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then—”
“It’s a story, just the way you told me.” Horatio’s voice as he gentles his fingers through Ben’s hair seems to come from a dark void. Across an event horizon. “It’s my autobiography, and yours, and Lia’s, all bloody crashing together like the entropy you love to go on about, you utter utter prick.”
“Horatio?”
“Yes, love?”
“If life is a story, then it’s written by a real idiot.”
Benjamin cannot believe that this makes Horatio smile. He hears sirens wailing in the distance. They speed as fast as they can. They will be too late. He slides his hand up to Horatio’s open collar and clutches, not wanting to let go.
“I don’t want a life without you in it,” Horatio whispers. “I won’t stay here without you. I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“For god’s sake, why?”
“No one’s written the stories down yet.” When Horatio makes a sacrificed noise, Ben stares up. “Hey, I have to tell you . . . Sorry, this is. It’s all getting . . .”
“Shh, it’s all right. I’ve got you, I’m here. Tell me.”
The gap in his body is just a gap, does it have to feel like wolves’ teeth tearing into him? “I have friends in high places, I think. Other places, other, are they planes or mirror universes or . . . I’ll find you. I can’t explain. I’ll talk to t
hem and I’ll get you back, Horatio. You can’t die, promise me you won’t? I’ll do this part. Live first. You deserve it. No one deserves it like you. And then when you’re ancient, then if you still want me to, I swear on every thread of the multiverse that I will bring you back to me.”
“You mad bastard,” Horatio answers brokenly against his cheekbone. “I love you, too.”
The sirens are louder, and louder. Ben wants to spare Horatio’s feelings. But the blood is everywhere, and the light is dimming. Nothing can save either of them. It was always going to end this way. And since the initial shock has passed, everything hurts more than he thinks he can stand.
“Please don’t go,” Horatio begs.
Ben cannot register anything very well after this. Shouting, weeping, running, lips against his skin. He falls into a memory of Horatio when he first knew his friend was in love with him, but didn’t allow himself to recognize it.
LIA
And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land
It will whisper of the garden
You will understand.
—Oscar Wilde, “To My Wife”
Lia has been making too many bouquets, pouring her mourning into them the way she fills their vases with oil-blessed water.
The first funeral she attends is the least connected to her own life. It turns out that Jeremy Bradford, hedge fund manager, had no parents and few friends. It is an ash-scattering ceremony in the Battery, tinsel scraps of light glinting off the waves at the southernmost tip of the island. Five of his coworkers show up for it, an aunt, two cousins who also live in the city, and Jessica Anne Kowalski.
Jessica isn’t crying any longer. She looks hollow, but she stands straight. Her dress is a simple charcoal sheath with a large gold necklace. She looks more capable, more adult, than Lia has ever seen her. Brittany is not in attendance.