So he elected to keep his distance for a while, let the dust settle. Though he still wanted her to paint Roxanne. The girl was the first person he’d cared about in a long time, and he wanted to give her something special, something she could look at after he was gone and perhaps think fondly of him. She was like the daughter he never had, and he treasured every moment he spent with her.
He’d give it a few weeks, then approach Ely again. Soften her up with a box of those Häagen-Dazs treats she loved so much.
* * *
With the exception of Roxanne coming into his life, Ray moving into the Center was the best thing that had happened to Ben in over a decade. His abrupt transition from fulltime practice into retirement had derailed him, and in spite of his best efforts, he’d never fully gotten back on track. His life as a physician had fulfilled him, not only professionally but socially as well. Since he’d never married, he’d come to think of his fellow staff members as family; it was the principal reason he’d moved into the Center instead of retiring to the winterized cottage he owned west of Ottawa, a property he’d hung onto after selling the townhouse he’d called home for thirty-eight years. And at first it had been good, meeting colleagues for lunch in the cafeteria or joining them for outings and parties. But most of that gang was gone now, either dead or retired. And the new crew, while they knew who he was and respected him for it, often made him feel like he was getting in the way. So eventually, he just stayed away.
Having his high school buddies onsite was a plus—and sometimes a hoot, like the other day outside the greenhouse—but in small doses only. Those guys could be exhaustingly juvenile. Even growing up, it had always been Ray he was closest to.
But for the first few days following Ray’s impassioned plea for euthanasia, Ben had deliberately avoided the man. Partly because he needed time to process the gravity of his friend’s request; but also because Ray had confronted him out of the blue with the perverse notion that he was using Roxanne as some kind of substitute for a girl he’d dated in high school, and it ticked him off. It was clear Quinn and Wilder had put him up to it, both of them lurking in the background while Ray raised their ridiculous assertion. This was on the day after he introduced Roxanne to Ely, the three of them showing up on his doorstep like reluctant executioners, the two cowards skulking off to raid the fridge while Ray passed judgment in the living room.
Sure, he’d had one of his spells that day; he was aware of the missing time. And it was clear the guys knew what was going on with him now, though he’d only ever discussed it with Ray. Which meant his best friend had not only betrayed a confidence, he’d allowed himself to be swayed by those grinning yard apes. Quinn and Wilder had been in the apartment when Ben went into anaphylactic shock from the medication, and it was Wilder’s quick thinking that saved his life. But he’d never actually talked to them about the disease. It was just one of those things you didn’t discuss, like alcoholism or AIDS, particularly in a community like the Geriatric Center, where the specter of Alzheimer’s hung over every head in the place. Because to those not already afflicted, it seemed that to even utter the name of the beast—especially in the presence of someone in the early stages themselves—was to somehow invite it into their own lives. Like a contagion or maybe a vampire. And even with the proven success of the current treatment regimens, the prospect of slipping into the remote alternate universe that was dementia was a source of low-grade terror for everyone.
But none of that justified his friends’ cruel accusation, and he’d promptly tossed them out on their asses, saying if they ever brought it up again, they’d be dead to him. Every last one of them.
* * *
So he fumed for a couple of days, pouted for a couple more, then took unwitting advantage of the primary symptom of dementia—memory loss—and picked up the pieces with his buddies as if nothing had happened.
Through the balance of June, he and Ray fell into a casual routine, first convening in the cafeteria for breakfast—Ben having a bagel and tea, Ray loading up on bacon and eggs, home fries and white toast lathered in butter. “Who gives a shit, Benji? It’s not like I need to watch my cholesterol anymore.”—then trekking over to the falls to reminisce. There was always a lot of laughter. Ray was incredibly funny, his round face as pliable as Silly Putty. And he loved to fool around.
On occasion, though, their discussions turned serious. One hot day toward the middle of June, Ray brought up the thing with Roxanne again, saying it was pretty obvious Ben got confused around her sometimes. In his defense, Ben said he got confused around everyone lately, he had Alzheimer’s disease for Christ’s sake. But Ray persisted, risking Ben’s fury again—and it was there, just below the surface.
“I know you see it,” Ray said. “It’s in the girl’s eyes. And that smile. The first time I laid eyes on her, I thought of Melanie Anderson.”
“Melanie was sixty years ago, Ray. I’m over it.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. Now would you drop it, please?”
“Because I don’t think you are over it. Maybe when you’re yourself you are. But this girl…she triggers you somehow. Not always. But when she does, it’s like watching you when you were a teenager. It’s freaky.”
“Please.”
“All right. But you’re going to break the kid’s heart, and I know you don’t wanna do that.”
“I’m about to break your arm.”
“Okay. Bitch.”
“Dipshit.”
Ray fell silent for a minute, then said, “You know what I think?”
“That I’m a sentimental old fool?”
“No. I think that when we get older, there’s a natural desire to go back. Or maybe it runs deeper than that. Maybe it’s hardwired into our genes. I think our purest selves are children, filled with love and wonder, the way we start out. And I think that child remains inside each of us as we age. In a sense, we become its caretaker. Neglectful ones, usually. Because we get busy with serious things. School, romantic love, making ends meet. And the years fly by. And pretty soon we lose touch with that child. We can’t see through its eyes anymore. So it goes to sleep. Hibernates, maybe. But it’s still there, waiting. Waiting for all that shit to fall away.
“And one day, decades down the road, we find ourselves alone—even if we’re surrounded by people who love us—staring our mortality in the face. But if we’re lucky, really lucky, we rediscover that forgotten child, sleeping in the dark. It’s why you see such horrible things on Florida beaches. Old bastards sucking back Margaritas and strutting around with their droopy asses hanging out. Because they’ve found that child and embraced it, and now they just don’t care.”
Ben said, “Adolescence revisited.”
“Well…yeah.”
“Honestly, Ray, that’s a beautiful notion. I mean it. And I think if anybody’s managed to keep their inner child thriving, it’s you. But what has any of that got to do with me and Roxanne?”
“Nothing, really. I just felt like waxing poetic.”
“You really are a dipshit, you know it?”
Ray grinned. “Naw, I’m just a kid.” He rested a hand on Ben’s wrist. “But listen, Benji, I get it. If I could go back, I would. I mean, who wouldn’t? But I can’t. And neither can you, outside of your mind. Or your disease. And using Roxanne to get there can only end badly for both of you.”
* * *
Most mornings between about nine and ten, Quinn and Wilder would catch up with Ray and Ben and they’d all head over to the rec center for a few games of snooker, then move to the food court to girl-watch and lie about past conquests.
For Ben, the truly heartbreaking part of those days was witnessing Ray’s precipitous decline: the weight loss accelerating at a staggering rate; those merry eyes retreating like hunted rodents into their bony sockets; the antic energy the man had always possessed fizzling like a doused coal. At three o’clock in the morning on June twenty-first, Ray appeared at Ben’s door in his pajama bottoms and said he coul
dn’t hack it much longer, then drifted down the hallway like an apparition. What made it worse for Ben was that he frequently forgot the severity of his friend’s condition, and was repeatedly forced to confront it anew.
In the midst of all this, it was Roxanne who gave him the will to carry on. Most days, depending on which shift she was working, he’d meet her for lunch, turning the hour they gave her into an event, sometimes bringing picnic food he’d prepared the night before, sometimes sitting with her in the cafeteria munching burgers and fries. Roxanne liked to talk, and Ben was happy to listen. She told him about her grandfather and how much he, Ben, reminded her of the man. She described at length the courses she’d be taking in the fall, and showed him pictures of the Dalhousie campus she'd downloaded onto her phone.
At the end of her day shift on the twenty-second, Roxanne ran up to him red-faced in the lobby with a folded sheet of white bond in her hand, telling him she’d been awarded a full scholarship by the university. Ben scanned the letter with a grin on his face. When he handed the letter back, Roxanne hugged him and said they should celebrate. Ben agreed, suggesting they cab into the city that very night, go to Al’s Steakhouse on Elgin Street and chow down in style. Roxanne asked if she could bring her grandmother along and Ben said of course, he’d love to meet the woman and tell her what a great job she’d done raising her granddaughter.
Tucking the letter into her knapsack, Roxanne said, “No need to pay for a cab. We can take Gram’s car. What time works for you?”
“I’ll make the reservation for seven.”
“Then it’s a date. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”
And she was gone.
Ben was still smiling when he got back to the apartment and glanced at the clock on the microwave.
Five-thirteen. Time to get ready.
As he undressed, he wondered what Roxanne’s grandmother would be like. Then he padded into the bathroom, singing an old Beatles tune under his breath.
“She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah …”
When he stepped out of the shower ten minutes later, he was startled by his own reflection in the steam-fogged mirror. In the soothing hiss and splash of the shower, he’d been wandering the back avenues of his memory…cycling actually, climbing a steep hill in Vermont behind his girl, watching her work the pedals with those long legs, remembering their warm strength as they encircled his waist in the tent the night before, the tiny moans she uttered as he moved inside her…
Oh, God.
He slipped a towel off the rack and used it to clear a porthole in the steamy mirror—and in that first instant, a total stranger returned his stare, the effect so alarming, Ben believed he was standing naked in front of a window and some dirty old man had been watching him shower.
Then it dawned, as it had so often in the recent past, only to duck below the horizon again to catch him unawares.
That’s me.
With a kind of defiant vigor, he toweled off a wider area of the mirror, polishing the surface to a telling gleam, revealing the old man he’d become: stooped; wrinkled; liver-spotted; grey.
Staring into those faded eyes, he became aware of a furious debate going on inside his head—yearning versus despondency—each side tugging at him now, seeking to tip him off the knife-edge of his sanity. It troubled him deeply, making him fearful of losing his grip for good. Making him believe his friends had been right.
Then, quite audibly, a door slammed shut in his mind, silencing the quarrelsome voices. And now another voice, this one barely above a whisper.
Fuck it.
He wrapped the towel around his waist, grabbed the toothpaste and deodorant and switched off the bathroom light. From now on he’d brush his teeth in the kitchen. There were no mirrors in there. No tired old men leering back at him.
He had a date with a beautiful girl, and no ‘concerned’ friend or nattering inner voice was going to take that away from him.
Not now. Not ever.
* * *
Ben was sweating in his suit jacket when the phone rang at precisely 6:30. Roxanne was waiting for him in the lobby, standing with her back to him by the floor-to-ceiling windows, haloed in pale evening light. She was wearing a coral-red dress, cashmere with a zipper down the back, the hem suspended an inch above her knees. She had her hair down tonight, a tapered cascade that almost reached her hips.
When she turned to face him, Ben felt his insides plummet, the sensation reminding him of a summer he’d spent as a dunk-tank clown, the visceral thrill that drenched him now no less bracing than the icy water in that tank. She carried a tiny sequined clutch in one hand, letting it rest against her thigh, and when she took his arm he caught a whiff of jasmine.
Smiling, Roxanne said, “Gram couldn’t make it tonight. She’s not feeling well.”
Good. “Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Migraine. I offered to stay home with her, but she insisted we go ahead.”
Good again. “Next time,” Ben said, holding the door open for her.
“Next time for sure.”
* * *
Ben had been a loyal patron of Al’s Steakhouse since it opened in 1967. In that time, he’d seen the place undergo numerous facelifts and personnel changes. But the fundamental constant was the beef, always the beef. The finest on the planet. Opening the door for Roxanne, he felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs, the smoky aroma of chargrilled steak flooding his mouth with saliva.
He’d requested his usual spot, an intimate booth at the back of the restaurant, away from the bustle and clatter of the main dining area. As Roxanne slid into the plush leather seat across from him, Ben pointed out the rogues’ gallery on the adjacent wall, dozens of framed photographs of the proprietor with some of the famous faces that had dined here.
Pointing at one of the photos, Ben said, “You know who this guy is?”
Roxanne shook her head. “That’s quite the hairdo, though.”
“That’s Gene Simmons, bass player for the rock band Kiss.” Roxanne shrugged and Ben shook his head, saying, “Oh my, the youth of today.”
Laughing, Roxanne pointed at another photo. “Okay, smarty-pants, who’s this right here?”
Ben squinted at a color shot of a heavily made-up woman with what appeared to be a braided mop on her head and iridescent fish scales for eyebrows. He said, “Bride of Frankenstein?” and Roxanne laughed so explosively she sprayed him with spit.
Leaning across the table to dab his face with a napkin, she said, “That’s Lady Gaga.”
“Lady what?”
“Gaga. She’s young in this shot. She must be forty now, but she’s still going strong.”
“What does she do? Model Halloween costumes?”
“She’s a singer. Very famous. I can’t believe you never heard of—”
“Good evening, folks. My name is Russ and I’ll be your server tonight.”
Ben shot the waiter a dirty look—nothing like interrupting a person in the middle of a sentence—but the kid’s eyes were glued to Roxanne. Ben knew the type: bright, good-looking, cocky as hell.
The kid was holding a pitcher of ice water, and now he leaned in to fill their glasses, starting with Roxanne’s. That done, he set the pitcher on the table and struck a quizzical pose, saying, “Roxanne, right? Roxanne Austen? Greely Elementary?”
Ben watched her cheeks flush red, perplexity pinching her features, and he almost told the kid to send over a different waiter.
But Roxanne was smiling now. She said, “Russell Ames? My God. Eighth grade, right? Mrs. Skrim’s homeroom class?”
“Right,” Russ said, returning Roxanne’s smile. “If memory serves, you were pretty much the teacher’s pet in that class.”
Roxanne’s blush deepened. “I was a bit of a brown-noser.”
“I wouldn’t’ve put it that way. Smartest kid in the school, maybe, but never a brown-noser.”
Roxanne laughed, that big, unselfconscious laugh Ben loved. She said, “No, I was a brown-noser,” and now Russ lau
ghed too.
Glancing at him now, Russ said, “Is this your grandfather?” and Ben wanted to knock the perfect white teeth out of the brat’s GQ coverboy face.
Roxanne said, “No,” and apologized to Ben, saying she hadn’t meant to ignore him. “This is my friend, Ben Hunter. He’s a doctor.”
The kid offered a handshake and Ben accepted it, the little showoff almost crushing his fingers.
Still pumping Ben’s hand, Russ said, “A doctor, eh?” and looked again at Roxanne. “Well, you may come in handy tonight, sir, because there’s a good chance I’ll be getting my heart broken.”
Ben thought, Jesus, does ham-fisted shit like that actually work? But Roxanne was grinning like a schoolgirl.
Tugging his hand away, Ben said, “We’d like to see menus, please.”
Russ said, “Of course,” and handed over the menus tucked under his arm. “Would you like to hear the specials?”
Roxanne started to say something and Ben said, “Maybe later,” getting some edge in his tone.
Russ picked up on the vibe, saying, “Take all the time you need.” And with a nod at Roxanne, he moved away.
She seemed uncomfortable now, and Ben felt guilty for being so abrupt. He said, “I’m sorry, Roxanne. I realize you know the kid, but the way he interrupted you, that was just rude.”
Turning to watch Russ move toward the bar, Roxanne said, “That’s okay. I barely remember the guy. He was a pimple-faced clown in eighth grade, that much I do remember.” She sipped some water through a straw, then glanced the kid’s way again, saying, “He certainly has changed.”
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