The New Man

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Helen concentrated for a moment on scrubbing the pan then rinsing it. This was harder than she’d thought it would be. Hundreds of miles away, safe in her lonely hotel room, she had rehearsed over and over in her mind. Now she couldn’t remember the words.

  But she had to start somewhere. Turning off the water, Helen said, “Do you remember when I told you once that I didn’t like myself very much by the time Ben died?”

  Alec hadn’t moved. “I remember.”

  “We tried, oh, half a dozen treatments. The last was experimental. His oncologist tried to discourage us from that one.” She couldn’t look at Alec, so she concentrated on the soapy water. “And, I think, from the previous one. And…and maybe even from the one before that.”

  “Ben didn’t want to give up.”

  “No.” She made herself lift her head and look at him. “I didn’t want to give up.”

  “Helen…”

  She snatched her hands from the dishwater, dried them on a towel and flung it to the counter. Eyes dry and burning, she said relentlessly, “Don’t you see? I was selfish. I couldn’t let Ben go. I kept insisting we go for another treatment, and another. Everybody was trying to tell me it was hopeless, and I wouldn’t listen. And he…” Her throat closed up completely. She breathed in and out, in and out, before she could get the last few words out. “He never said no. He kept suffering, for me.”

  An obscenity seemed wrenched from Alec, who tried to take her in his arms.

  She backed away. “You have to listen to me!”

  His hands dropped to his sides. “I’m listening.” His voice was deep and ragged. “But nothing you say will make me believe you were selfish. Do you think I wouldn’t have tried any damn thing to save Linda? I never really said goodbye to her, because I was still fighting, still trying to believe, until the bitter end. Does love mean gently letting go? Then it’s not my kind of love.”

  Helen wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed. “But everything happened so fast for you. It wasn’t the same. Did you know she wanted to die?”

  “Did Ben tell you he did?”

  “No. But I knew. That last year…” She swiped at her eyes. “I have a few pictures of him bravely smiling, but you can see death around him like an aura.”

  Alec’s expression was gentle. “How were you supposed to know what he wanted, if he didn’t say?”

  Helen gave a laugh that hurt. “I didn’t give him the chance. I filled every silence. A couple of times especially haunt me. He tried to talk, but I was afraid. I wouldn’t let him. I chattered, like…like some casual friend who had come to visit and was refusing to acknowledge his illness.”

  “Has it occurred to you that maybe he, too, kept hoping? That however much he was suffering, he was more afraid of leaving you?”

  She grabbed a paper towel, mopped her eyes and blew her nose. “I don’t think so. I did all the talking when he saw the doctors, too. Ben would weakly agree when I said, ‘We want to go for it.’”

  “Did you love him so much?” Alec asked quietly.

  She looked at him through streaming eyes and shook her head hard. “No. Yes, of course I loved him, but mostly I was scared to be left on my own. I knew our savings were gone, and I’d have to sell the house and get a job, but I had no idea where to start. I’d wake in the night with my heart pounding. I don’t suppose you can imagine what it feels like to be thirty and have no job skills. I was a restaurant hostess when we first got married but hadn’t worked since. And now I had a child and would have to pay for day care. I imagined being out on the street, losing Ginny. I could see her screaming as they wrenched her away from me.” She shuddered. “Oh, I envisioned every horrible fate I’d ever read about in the newspaper. I needed Ben. If he’d just live, I wouldn’t have to cope alone.”

  Helen closed her eyes. She saw Ben’s face, the shadow of a smile that was the best he could do, and she knew: he had read her fear as if she had written a letter to him. A new kind of grief clawed at her. Ben had silently suffered, because that was what she needed from him.

  She hadn’t deserved his love.

  Helen swallowed and forced swollen eyes open. “So now you know.”

  Alec was so close he was able to grasp her chin and lift it. “What are you so scared of, Helen?”

  Through the tears, she whispered, “Getting hurt.” She squeezed her eyes shut again. “Hurting you.”

  The next instant, she found herself gathered into his arms. Even as she briefly struggled, he lifted her, carried her into the living room and sat on the sofa with her on his lap.

  “And you think you’re selfish,” he murmured.

  But I am! Helen wanted to cry. But she couldn’t. She buried her face in his neck and wept. Alec held her and stroked her hair and kneaded her back and talked, saying nothing and everything.

  “Get it out, love. It’ll be all right. It will.”

  Would it? Over and over, he promised, and she had begun to believe him by the time she ran out of tears and lay exhausted in his arms.

  He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “Sweetheart, I wish you’d told me sooner. You’ve kept this to yourself, haven’t you?”

  Feeling drugged, her voice slow and heavy, she whispered, “Who could I tell?”

  “Kathleen, Jo?”

  She shook her head. No. She loved them both. They were her best friends, the sisters she hadn’t had. But they’d never watched someone they loved die. Not even Jo, whose mother had died when she was a child. No. They wouldn’t understand.

  His fingers continued to massage, probing for tension in her neck and shoulders and back, making her feel boneless, unable to move.

  “If you’d joined a support group for widows, my guess is you’d find most of them harbor some kind of guilt. You didn’t want Ben to die. What if instead you’d been praying he’d die sooner, so he didn’t run through all the money? Or so you could go back to a job you love, and not spend your days in a sickroom?”

  Helen’s thoughts felt odd, as if a thick fog enveloped her brain. Still she listened as he kept talking, repeating a grief counselor’s advice. She imagined each scenario, and the guilt that would be the aftermath.

  What if she had persuaded Ben not to try the third treatment, or the fourth one? Would she have spent the rest of her life wondering if she’d given up too soon?

  The clatter of footsteps on the stairs made her stiffen. “Oh, no! The girls! It’ll scare Ginny if she sees my face.”

  Alec’s arms tightened, and she burrowed into him.

  “Girls,” he said over her head, “can you give us a few minutes? Ginny, your mom and I were talking about your dad, and it made her sad. She’s okay, but she doesn’t want you to see her crying.”

  Helen heard Lily saying, “Let’s go get a pop or something. Come on, Ginny.”

  A moment later, Alec said in a low voice, “They’re off to the kitchen. Time for you to mop up.”

  She managed a laugh, something that would have been impossible a few minutes ago—and lifted her head. “I guess I can’t escape without scaring you, can I?”

  The tenderness in his eyes made her heart swell. “You can’t scare me,” he said huskily.

  Her vision blurred. “You’ve made me cry again!”

  He groaned. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” She blinked hard, kissed his cheek and scrambled off his lap. “I’ll be back.”

  Upstairs, Helen locked herself in the bathroom. She let the water run until it was steaming hot, then soaked a washcloth and laid it over her face. It felt so good, she repeated the process until the bathroom was filled with steam and her sinuses opened. Her face in the mirror was red and puffy, her eyes bloodshot. The sight was familiar. There had been a time when she’d cried so often, she scarcely recognized herself when her eyes weren’t almost swollen shut.

  But this time there was something different about her face. Brushing her hair, she kept sneaking peeks. Finally
it came to her. She looked at peace. Her guilt had been like a deep infection, invisible but attacking her body’s defenses nonetheless. Now, she thought, it had been lanced, the poison cleansed from her system. Just telling someone had helped.

  But Alec had said things, too, that made sense. She and Ben had had to make dozens of decisions. If he’d recovered, she never would have questioned them. But with his death, she was bound to reexamine each and every one. There must be women with heavier burdens of guilt. Yes, she’d been a coward, but she had loved him. Surely, surely, she’d been as desperate to save him out of love as cowardice.

  Helen took one last look at herself in the mirror, considered putting on makeup but decided it wouldn’t do much good. Besides, Alec had already seen the worst.

  As she came down the stairs, Ginny peeked out of the kitchen. “Mommy?” she said uncertainly.

  Helen smiled and held out her arms. “Here, pun-kin.”

  Ginny clung to her tightly. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. It felt good to cry. But maybe—” she smoothed her daughter’s fine, straight hair “—I’m done crying. I don’t do it much anymore, you know.”

  Ginny’s mouth trembled. “I hate it when you cry!”

  Helen hugged her hard. “I know.”

  Sniffing, the eight-year-old let her go. “I guess I’d better tell Lily you’re okay.”

  “And I’ll tell Alec. Unless he’s already fled to his car.”

  Alec hadn’t. He was standing in front of the fireplace, studying a framed photo of Jo, Kathleen and Helen, taken two summers ago in front of the house. In the midst of one of their remodeling projects, they wore their most ragged clothing and were filthy, but the three stood with their arms around one another, grinning at the camera.

  On that job, Helen remembered, they had made Kathleen rip out the plaster and wrench up rotten boards. “Helen and I are the skilled labor,” Jo kept saying. Unlike on the first bathroom they had gutted, when Kathleen had somehow done almost none of the work, this time she had gotten down and dirty. After a tetanus shot, a dozen bandages and hair caked with plaster dust, she had laughed in triumph. Flexing her biceps, she declared, “I am woman!” Jo had just about fallen down laughing.

  At Helen’s soft “Hey,” Alec turned.

  “Hey yourself.” His eyes searched her face, lingering on her puffy lids and red nose, and finally on her smile. “You’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” I really, really am, she thought in amazement.

  He reached for her hands when she got close enough, his grasp warm and strong. “Want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head. “I said my piece. Unless you were lying and I have scared you.”

  Head bent, he said, “What do you think?” just before he kissed her. His mouth was tender, loving, soft, and her eyes closed as she let the balm of this kiss soothe her soul.

  When he lifted his head, she leaned her forehead against Alec’s chest. “I think,” she said, in a small scratchy voice, “I’m falling in love with you.”

  He jerked in reaction. “Do you mind?”

  “I did,” she confessed softly. “But now I don’t.”

  His fingers tightened around hers. “Good. Because I’m falling in love with you, too.”

  They simply stood there holding hands, Helen leaning against him, soaking in the quiet joy of obstacles overcome.

  By the time they heard whispers from just outside the door, they were ready to step away from each other.

  “You can come in,” Alec called, and the girls appeared, clearly relieved at the sight of Helen looking composed again.

  Alec made their excuses shortly thereafter. He had an early-morning meeting, he said, and besides he didn’t like leaving Devlin on his own for too long.

  When Alec looked into Helen’s eyes and said “I’ll call,” she believed him. For tonight, her doubts and fears were gone.

  They were falling in love. Maybe she did deserve a happy ending. She’d told Alec the very worst thing she knew about herself, and he still said he loved her.

  Helen didn’t kid herself that romance was a stroll in the park at their age, with three children to think about. It was probably more like their rollerblade outing. She’d stumbled and fallen again and again. Next time, they might try something that Alec wasn’t very good at, although she couldn’t think what that might be. But she wouldn’t like him any less just because he wasn’t a he-man.

  She knew Alec was afraid Devlin wouldn’t accept her, but after the way he’d grinned at her when she called “Ankles,” she didn’t believe it. He wouldn’t go from that to telling his father he hated her, would he?

  After tucking Ginny in, Helen went to work in the kitchen pantry. She cut long loaves of soap into bars, labeled then tied them with colored raffia.

  She kept realizing she was smiling for no reason.

  For every reason.

  HE’D LIED TO HER. He wasn’t falling in love. He was in love. Madly, passionately, deeply in love.

  Alec wasn’t, however, stupid enough to tell Devlin. Give it time, he told himself. Let them get to know each other.

  She came to dinner at his house that week, bringing Ginny and Emma.

  “To charm Devlin,” Helen whispered in Alec’s ear, as he kissed her cheek.

  She wasn’t stupid, either. Dev, prepared to be sulky, had flushed bright red at the sight of the delicate blond beauty.

  “Wow! I mean…um, hi!” he blurted.

  Emma gave him a delighted, conspiratorial smile, as if the two of them were teens against the world. “Hi. Aunt Helen said you probably had cool music.”

  “Yeah.” His cheeks flushed even darker. “You want to look through my CDs?”

  “Sure.” She smiled at Lily. “Can I see your room later, too?” As Devlin led her away, her voice drifted back. “This house is fabulous.”

  Without a word, Ginny and Lily raced off to Lily’s bedroom like best friends. Alec drew Helen to him for another, more leisurely kiss.

  “You, lady, are brilliant.”

  “Thank you.” She curtsied. “Emma was at loose ends tonight, and I thought Dev’d like her.”

  “Like?” Alec laughed. “He won’t get a coherent sentence out all evening. He’ll feel young and gauche and be in love before the end of the evening.”

  He knew how his son felt. Helen looked especially pretty tonight, her hair bundled up but slipping out, a green tank top exposing almost as much as that sinful dress she’d worn to the theater. Her shorts weren’t quite as abbreviated as Emma’s, but they exposed enough of her long, elegant legs to raise his blood pressure.

  Helen, however, was still thinking about Kathleen’s daughter.

  “Emma’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?” Helen’s face was pensive. “Did I ever tell you she’s anorexic?”

  “In passing.” He led her to the kitchen, where he’d been cutting and dicing to make a stir-fry for dinner. “She’s thin, but she looks fine.”

  “When I moved in, she was skeletal. It was scary. She’d reached the point where she was cold all the time, and she’d grown this weird fuzz on her cheeks. Her body was trying to keep her warm. The day Kathleen met Logan, Emma had collapsed in the bathroom.” Helen shivered. “Ginny found her and screamed. I was at work already, but Jo told me later. Emma had been lying to the doctor and nutritionist about how much she was eating so that she could stay out of residential treatment. Kathleen signed the paperwork that day.”

  “And she got better?”

  “She hasn’t been back, but…” Sadness flickered. “Anorexia is a lifetime battle. Emma has her ups and downs. Mostly, she’s doing really well. She and Kathleen worked out some of their problems, and she started making friends at school. Then—” she smiled “—she met Raoul.”

  “The young Heathcliff who is so often slouched on your living room couch.”

  “That’s the one.” She laughed. “Actually, he’s very nice, and he has a delicious French accent. Plus, he loves foo
d. Texture, taste, presentation. He’s been good for her.”

  Alec was in a mood to think love was good for everyone.

  “Can I do anything useful?” Helen asked.

  “You could set the table. A good host would have done it already, I realize.”

  “Come on! You’ve eaten at our house! You’re lucky if you get silverware there.”

  Thanks to Emma, even Devlin contributed to conversation at dinner, telling them about football practice and the basketball program at Queen Anne High School. He thought he’d be playing wide receiver on the JV football team.

  “Devlin has great hands, and he’s quick,” Alec put in with a father’s pride.

  “Basketball is really my sport, though,” he said, taking Alec’s statement for granted.

  “Wow.” Emma gazed at him with her big blue eyes. “Maybe I’ll come to a game sometime.”

  Crimson flared again in his cheeks. “That’d be great! I mean—” He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Cool.”

  Under Emma’s eye, he was especially pleasant to Helen that evening, listening when she and Emma talked about craft fairs.

  “I used to go to the one here,” he admitted. “My mom and dad worked on getting it started. I haven’t gone since…” His Adam’s apple worked.

  “Hey!” Emma’s face brightened. “You should come work on our booth some weekend. Since you already know what you’re doing. If you’re not busy. We can always use help, and it would be fun.”

  Alec watched bemused as his son blushed and stammered, “Yeah, sure. If you need help… Especially if you’re going,” he was smart enough to add.

  Emma’s forehead creased. “Next we’re doing…um…”

  “How can you forget?” Helen asked. “We’re doing the Puyallup.”

  “Oh, no!” Alec groaned. The Puyallup Fair was the state’s biggest. It must go on for ten days or more. He’d be lucky to catch a passing glimpse of Helen. “Are you?”

  “Yes, and I’m deeply regretting it.” She scrunched up her face. “This is our first regular fair, but I’m betting people don’t come to shop. They go on rides, they eat, they watch concerts. It’s super-long hours, too. But maybe it’ll be worth it. We’ll see.”