by Susan Wilson
The two-lane road became the Main Street of another small New Hampshire town. To my left the ample firehouse, to my right a library and municipal building. Ben downshifted before he put his signal on and we turned onto a side street, then half a block down, into a driveway which took us around the back of a small, squat brick building. Ben slid into a parking space and turned the car off. He didn't move for a minute, both hands still on the steering wheel. An odd pressure in my chest felt a little like fear or maybe more like nerves.
“Ben?” I wanted him to tell me now why we were here, at this nursing home. I thought I knew, but I wanted him to tell me before we went in. I needed some clue to what I was to see. I needed to rehearse my reaction.
“Come on.” He was out of the car, almost not waiting for me, clearly anxious about doing this, as if it had been impulse to bring me and he was on the edge of wishing he hadn't.
We went around to the front of the building, which I could see had been designed to mimic some aspects of New England architecture, with the ornate lintel over the heavy fire door and the fake shutters on the flanking windows. Inside, the carpeting gave over to creamy tile almost instantly.
“Hi, Ben. How are you today?” A man dressed in the blue clothes of a maintenance worker greeted Ben.
“Pretty good, Erv. No complaints.”
“Wouldn't do you no good, anyways.”
We walked past the empty nurse's station, although two women in perky floral smocks greeted Ben in the corridor with almost coworker-like casualness, as if his presence there was expected and routine. As it certainly was.
“Benson, how ya doin' mon?” Another very young man with a Jamaican lilt high-fived Ben. “Ya going to play for us today, mon?”
“No, maybe tomorrow, Clyde.”
I watched Ben transform from tense and guarded, to relaxed and comfortable in the presence of these various caregivers. Obviously here he was safe because here his secret lived.
“Cleo, this is Talia.”
We stood in the doorway of a single room. I stepped slightly in front of Ben and then I could feel his hands on my shoulders, encouraging me to go in. I didn't know if I should speak. If she could hear me. What would I say?
Talia lay flat, various plastic tubing emerging not so discreetly from under the light blanket. A ventilator protruded from the base of her throat. A monitor blipped—measured respirations, I supposed, monitored heartbeat. Her blue eyes were open, unfocused as a newborn's, staring blankly at the ceiling, where someone had pinned a Matisse poster. At the corner of her still mouth, a tiny bubble of moisture glistened, the sunlight through the open window illuminating it into prominence.
“Hello, my love.” Ben leaned over and kissed her, making the tiny droplet disappear. “I've brought a friend to meet you.”
I felt myself want to cry, not just for Talia, but from the sadness of Ben's resolute cheerfulness.
Ben pulled two chairs up to the bed, taking the one closest, allowing me the one at the foot of it. He took Talia's hand and began massaging it. Her arm was like that of an old woman, the loose skin over the atrophied muscle soft and fluid as he gently worked it. “I met Talia when I was forty. I was just climbing out of the trough of my rock career and finding good work as a sessions musician in New York. She was twenty-three, nearly half my age. It's unfair to ask a beautiful woman if she's ever noticed a beautiful woman, but if you'd known her then, you would have been as taken with her as everyone else whose path crossed hers. She had a luminescence, like an internal pilot light kept her ready to glow at all times. As if she held the secret to happiness. She played that way, reviewers called her sparkling. One reviewer in particular said she sounded like champagne, effervescent and rare.” Ben set Talia's right hand down and moved to the other side of the bed, where he picked up her left hand, and his thoughts.
“Is it too trite to say I fell head over heels? That's exactly what it felt like to me. Suddenly I was infected with this same happiness. It was as if all the weight of my self-destructed career, my grief and perplexity with Kevin's death, my demons, were blasted away by Talia Brightman's smile. I remember going to my sublet apartment after our second recording session and looking at myself in the mirror. I literally looked myself in the eye in the bathroom mirror and told myself to go slow. She seemed so ethereal that I was afraid the force of my love would make her disappear, like she had made my demons go.
“This was about the point in her career when she was desperate to move away from classical repertoire and into jazz. It was a chancy thing, only Winton Marsalis has made a dual career of it. In Talia's mind, she wanted to abandon what she'd been so successful at, what her lifelong training had focused on, and get into a form she was fascinated with, but untrained in. I became her co-conspirator. I knew people. I'd been in the industry since college in one form or another. I'd jammed with some terrific jazz musicians all around the country, going into these smoky, stinky nightclubs in Chicago and God knows where—heading out after Angles concerts, enjoying the relative anonymity of playing for people who had no clue who Interior Angles were. So, I introduced her and she practiced and somehow along the way I talked her into marrying me.” Ben was finished with the left hand and came back around to me.
“We should go.”
I won't say I wasn't relieved. I remained on the vinyl and metal chair, sitting forward, uncomfortable in a way I was embarrassed about, hoping that my discomfort wasn't obvious to Ben. “We don't have to go yet.” I turned away from my childish dislike for being in a hospital room. “I can go outside if you want some time alone.”
“I won't be long.” Ben squeezed my shoulder gently.
* * *
I went straight out, seeking to let the warm breeze take the nursing home odor out of my nostrils. I walked down the short block, turned, and walked back, sitting down on a bench a little way from the front door. I knew that Ben's bringing me here to see Talia was because I had shared my own secret last night with him. To show me that we all have things we keep from others. Except that Ben's sharing had not explained anything to me, only created more questions.
An old man sat on the bench opposite to mine and in the time it took for Ben to come out, smoked two cigarettes. He smoked them slowly, considering each inhalation. By the scruffy slippers on his feet, I assumed he was a resident, given outdoor smoking privileges. He carefully dabbed each of the two cigarettes out on a scarred spot on the iron framework of the green bench and then got up and went inside. As he passed through the wide wooden door, Ben came through. Seeing me sitting there, he smiled and put his baseball cap back on. “Thanks for being patient.”
“Ben, I'd feel bad if you hurried for my sake.”
We walked quickly back to the parked car. The passenger-side door creaked in loud protest as Ben opened it for me. “Is it very expensive to have her there?”
“About like having a child in a little ivy college.” Ben adjusted the rearview mirror. “This is a good place, despite being out here in the middle of nowhere. Her parents were very upset with me keeping her here in New Hampshire when they had found a place in New York that specializes in cases like Talia's. But this place is very caring and she gets the same therapies as she would in a big-city place, maybe even better. We have a guy named Jeremy who is her private nurse and he gives her the best care possible. He's teaching me some things, you know, basic nursing care, so that when she becomes . . . end-stage, I can bring her home.”
Benson Turner had been grieving for the dying, not the dead.
“Can I ask you something, Ben?”
He kept his eyes on the road in front of us, but nodded. I'm sure he must have known that I would ask.
“Why do you let everyone think Talia is dead?”
“Is that what they think?”
“Ben, you know that they do, you told me yourself they resented you because you didn't have a funeral service. Why have you let this evil misapprehension go on, let those women treat you with disdain?”
�
�Cleo, I don't know those women. Despite what I said last night, I really don't care about them. They only knew Talia slightly. Since I've lived on the lake they've always treated me with disdain, because I was different from them, didn't fit into their worldview. But, believe it or not, it was the greater world I wanted to keep out of our business. You have to understand that as a popular recording artist, Talia was a public figure. Having dealt with being a public figure myself, I knew exactly what kind of hay the press would make of this tragedy. We—her parents and I—decided it was wiser to simply let them believe she'd died that night, and then we'd never find photographers sneaking into her hospital room. They don't even know who she is at the nursing home. There she's Talia Judith Turner, resident of room one-oh-four.”
“They know who you are, though?”
“Some do. But it's been long enough, not many care or are impressed.”
“Clyde asked you to play for them.”
“Sometimes I flex my classical training and play a little Mozart or Rachmaninoff for the residents. Sometimes just play-it-by-ear show tunes. Depends on my mood.”
“You come every day?”
“No. I used to, in the beginning, when there was . . .” He cut himself-off. “I come about every other day. Jeremy convinced me that I didn't need to come every day. Or spend whole days sitting by her side. He's been pretty blunt with me on occasion.”
“How?”
“By not letting me delude myself into hope.”
We were almost back to Cameo, another three minutes and we'd be in the parking lot of the laundromat. If I were writing this scene I knew that this was the last opportunity for the important dialogue to be said. Pressed by time I reached out and touched the hand which rested on the stick shift. “Ben, you have to know that I'll say nothing about this to anyone.”
“I wouldn't have brought you if I couldn't trust you.”
“Why did you bring me?” There it was, the important question.
He turned into the dirt lot and put the car in neutral, letting it idle as he thought about his answer. He sucked in a breath and let it out. “I guess because you are the first person to come into my life in a long time with whom I feel safe.”
Over the awkward barrier of the gear shift we hugged, then kissed each other's cheek as good friends will. Then I got out of the car and waved goodbye, wondering if now Ben would tell me the story of how the accident had happened, enabled now by this event to ask him.
Twenty-one
The kids were indistinguishable from the twenty others all dressed in shorts and Camp Winetonka T-shirts. Everyone was uniformly dirty and overtired. Only Mrs. Beckman seemed rested and perky in the wake of the overnight. Lily looked a veritable Medusa: her curly hair, caught erratically into a knotty ponytail, was threaded through with bits of leaf mulch and some unidentifiable substance which might have been juice or sap. Tim struggled to get his unrolled sleeping bag stuffed into the car while attempting to climb in on top of it. I had to sort him out, separating little boy from sleeping bag, and get both into the car.
“So, was it any fun?”
“Yeah. It was fun.” Exhausted, thus listless, my two were asleep even before we achieved the main road.
“Fun is such hard work. I wonder why any of us do it,” I said to the sleeping forms in the backseat.
The bumpy road leading to the cabin shook the kids awake. Rejuvenated by even a twenty-minute nap, they were the first to catch sight of a car parked just under the cedar trees. Sean's.
“Daddy's here! Daddy's here!” Almost before I could bring the monster car to a complete halt, they were unbelted and out of the car.
“Yikes. Who would have imagined this.” I threw the car into park and unsnapped my own seatbelt. “Well, what a surprise.”
Sean was wearing his aviator-style sunglasses. His mint-green polo shirt was fashionably untucked from his khaki shorts. He wore the old topsiders he'd had since we were first married. Coming up the path, I couldn't help but notice how worn they were, the leather laces dangling in ancient square knots, the stitching shot along the toes. When I hugged him, he smelled freshly showered, and his hair was still damp.
“How long have you been here?”
“You'll be proud of me, I left the office before noon.”
“I'm sorry I wasn't here.” By way of explanation, I pointed out the laundry basket filled with unfolded clothes and sheets. I would have been here if I hadn't gone with Ben.
Sean scampered off with the kids, who were anxious to show him newly discovered treasures of the lake. I lugged the heavy laundry basket into the cabin and wondered at this new Sean. Had I finally pierced through to his conscience? Or maybe it was my ill-considered remark about a dinner date. Either way, I was glad he was there and I set about making dinner.
It was natural that soon after the kids went to bed we would tumble into bed ourselves. Sean wanted the light off, although the bedroom faced only deep woods. Aware of the thin walls, we were very quiet, two invisible bodies touching and tasting and moving. We danced the intimate dance, and yet the moves seemed unfamiliar to me, robbed of sight on that moonless night, as if danced with a stranger. Sean was vigorous and I was ready quickly, but it was the accidental thought of Ben's kiss which triggered me.
A sudden cold front kept us from swimming, and thus, from the raft. Twice over the weekend, I saw Ben stroking his canoe toward the town landing, then, a couple of hours later, homeward. We kept indoors as the cold front produced drizzle. If Ben played at all, I never heard his music that weekend. I didn't run, got my period, and used the menstrual energy to clean the cabin top to bottom and make a real winter dinner for my family two nights running. On Sunday morning Sean decided to stay until Monday morning, a decision that necessitated his driving to the top of the hill to call Eleanor to let her know his plans. “You can't call her in the morning? Why bother her at home on a Sunday?”
“Eleanor hates surprises.”
“What possible difference can it make to her to know today or tomorrow morning at eight that you're staying longer?” I was annoyed, both at this controlling secretary and at my husband for letting her be that way. “Who's the boss?”
“Hey, just let me call her, no big deal.” He grabbed the car keys from the island counter and stomped out, clearly annoyed himself. At me.
I put a kettle of water on for tea when Sean left. It had boiled and reboiled three times by the time he got back.
“Did you get her?” I asked as he dashed back into the cabin, trailing bits of pine mulch on his wet topsiders.
“Yeah. I found her.”
“You should have told her you're taking the whole day off.” I poured water into his mug, “You could, you know. We could go hiking while the kids are at camp.”
“Oh, Cleo, I'd love to. And I will, but not this week. I've got to head to Pittsburgh on Tuesday.”
“But you will come back next weekend?”
“Definitely. Can't keep me away. I have to admit, this place is growing on me. I miss Narragansett, but this place has one superior quality.”
“What's that?”
“My family isn't here.”
“Are they at the beach now?”
“Everybody who was going went last weekend. They send their love to you. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, they want to know if you want to go down and join them for a little while.”
“Your mother went?”
“Of course, she's the matriarch of Watch Hill.”
An unaccountable foreboding wafted through me, I tipped a little tea out of my mug. I dashed to the sink to grab a cloth, when I turned back around Sean was wiping the drips up with a paper napkin. I leaned back against the sink. “Are you all right at home by yourself?”
Sean looked up at me from under bushy eyebrows. “I'm fine.”
Sean happily drove the kids to camp on Monday morning on his way home, leaving me to get a run in and started on my work before eight-thirty. Our goodbye kiss was perfunctory, a couple's kiss
, signaling solidarity and a certain superstition that, should anything happen in the meantime, we had at least kissed goodbye.
I stretched with deliberate slowness on the little patch of grass at the lakefront, using the picnic table as a barre. The cold front had moved off and the day was pure dry warmth. At that early hour, there was little noise emanating from the other cabins as I ran by, nearly silent except for my footsteps against the nicely moistened leaf mulch. I had used up the last of my batteries, so I ran without accompaniment, keeping my rhythm with remembered strains from Ben's music. And then I was hearing Ben's music. I matched my stride to the allegro section of the piece, the playful lighthearted theme. I began to run so fast, my breath and my footsteps obscured the actual music, but by now I had heard it enough, I could fill in the missing phrases until I caught the sound of it again. I realized that Ben had committed the notes to paper, that what he had been working on for weeks had codified into actual music and that what I was hearing, as it went on and on without the usual stop and start, was something no longer first-draft but almost complete. Complete except for the solo part.
The allegro segued gently, easily into the adagio, just as I began to slow down. Then the music stopped, leaving me to walk through my cool down alone.
I wrote for a couple of hours, but my work was slow and mainly disjointed. The impulse which had given me my conflict had leveled out and now I had the technical work to do, the weaving of foreshadowing and believable character reaction. It was a little hard getting back to work on Monday morning, just like a real job. I was fidgety and eventually I abandoned the attempt and climbed into my suit. The water was charged by the breeze still cool from the weekend's weather. Little choppy waves kept splashing me in the face as I swam to the raft. It wasn't yet noon. I climbed aboard the raft, puddling it with the drips from my suit, slipping a little against the slick surface. I lay down to get out of the cooling breeze, and as I did I heard Ben's screen door. I think I held my breath as I waited for him.