“What is it? Is there something wrong with Ethan? Tell me!”
She didn’t think he could handle it. She didn’t think his shoulders were broad enough to bear whatever it is that they had to bear. After all of these years, didn’t she know? He could do anything for her. He would do everything for her.
Ethan squirmed from Ben’s grasp and fell onto the grass. Ben pulled Angelica into his lap with a desperate force that surprised both of them. He put his hands on either side of her face and made her look at him.
“This is different,” he said.
Her eyes skittered away but the tone of his voice pulled them back to him.
“Ang. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Ethan was laughing and rolling on the ground. Angelica started sobbing, a deep sound that made Ben want to cover his ears. His mother made that sound when she found out that his father was never coming home. Ben felt like vomiting.
He threw his arms around her and pulled her face to his shoulder. She didn’t say anything more that evening, but she cried until her voice was hoarse and her body trembled. Ben held a woman that seemed like a stranger, and watched her child play at his feet.
Angelica wiped her eyes on her sleeve and left with Ethan, Ben stayed for a long time, looking at the stars.
—
They started radiation quickly; there was no choice. They actually had another move coming up, but postponed it until Angelica was feeling better. Ben waited at the park bench night after night. He held a tiny stuffed angora bunny in his hands. It had charming button eyes that would make Ang smile. If she ever showed up.
Fall hit early and it hit hard. Ben wrapped himself in thicker sweaters and scarves in order to keep watch on the bench. He was sure it was too cold for her to come, too brutal on her frail body. Ethan would catch a cold. He knew this. They should be inside their warm house where that man, her husband, could dote on them. At least, he’d better be doting on them.
Ben realized that he was squeezing the rabbit too hard. He had bent the ears, and it gave the rabbit a sad, listless appearance. Ben spent the next two hours in the cold, straightening and restraightening them. He didn’t care if anybody saw him crying.
—
Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. The rabbit now sat at home on his dresser, but Ben still came faithfully. He thought about Ethan playing under the Christmas tree. Would his mother be there? Or had she...
He didn’t want to think about it. His manager’s wife baked him cookies for the holidays, and he threw them out. He didn’t want to look at her sultry eyes or the way that she always crossed her legs whenever he walked by. At the garage’s New Year’s party, she pinned him against the back room wall and whispered some rather creative suggestions. He thought of Angelica’s brown eyes, and shuddered. He quit. He was young; he could get another job. He could move wherever he wanted to. Somewhere new. Somewhere without memories. On Valentine’s Day he found himself at the airport, on a plane. He bought a ticket for the first flight out, and that evening he was living in Portland, Oregon. The gritty rain settled him.
He started calling his mom weekly. He entertained the idea of driving down to see her and help out around the apartment. He took a break from working on cars and worked in a music store instead. He had forgotten how much he liked to listen to the guitar, how he learned the lyrics after only hearing them once. His heart broke for Angelica, but without so much as a last name, he could never track her down. He could never find out what had happened, or where she was buried, or where Ethan would be. Ethan was too young to remember him, anyway. And what would he matter to that little boy? He was only a strange man, an elusive entity who haunted park benches.
It was tough, but he was tough. He had learned how to take care of himself. He had learned how to be kind. There was a pretty redhead who worked at the Greek shop across the way. Her shirts were always too big and her hair was wild. He had blinked at her a few times before ducking out quickly. On Wednesday, when she handed him his gyro, she smiled at him.
In the last seven years, Ben had never smiled at another woman besides Angelica. But on this day Ben smiled back.
That night an envelope arrived. It had been sent to his old address before being forwarded to Portland. Inside was a pink piece of paper with familiar handwriting.
“Baby. Come to Tucson.”
—
Her brown eyes dominated her face. Her thin, worn, beautiful, beautiful face. Ben stood in front of her uncertainly. She perched on the park bench like it hurt her.
“Hiya, baby,” she said. “Welcome to Arizona.”
His eyes scraped over her. The color of her skin and the delicate way that she held her body. She turned her face toward the sun and closed her eyes.
“Doesn’t it feel wonderful to be warm?” she asked.
Ben fell to his knees in front of her, dropping his forehead to her lap.
“I thought, I thought,” he repeated. It was okay for a man to cry when he realized that his life has been taken from him, or given back to him; he couldn’t decide which.
“Shh,” she whispered, and stroked his light hair. “Shh, my boy. My love.”
Her short hair was carefully brushed and her lipstick was applied with extra care. Ben didn’t know that Angelica had decided that, just this once, she would be willing to break her rules. If there was anything that she needed right now, it was to be loved. It was to be kissed by her Ben and to kiss him back in return. There was life in a kiss, and love in a kiss, and more than anything she wanted life and love, but it was not to be. Ben sobbed into her skirt just as she had sobbed into his shoulder months before. The moment came and the moment went, and Ben was fortunate enough not to realize it.
She truly could have been his.
—
“Ethan is in daycare,” she said to him one day. She sat on Ben’s lap with her arms around his neck. She wanted to feel all of him. She wanted to make sure that they were both breathing.
“Is it too difficult for you when he is home? Are you tired?”
She shrugged. “Yes and no. He always wants something. He wants a drink or a cracker or to show me a new toy. It gets wearying. You have no idea.” She stretched. “You’re so lucky that you don’t have children, Ben. They’re just so...”
He waited, but she didn’t finish. Finally he spoke.
“I want kids someday.”
Angelica was surprised. “You do?”
“I do.”
“But why?”
He didn’t know. It’s just the way that it was. To have a child who followed you around, who wanted to be with you and who wore your hat when you came home from the shop. Who wanted to see your tools and made faces when you kissed his mother at night.
“I like kids,” he said simply.
Angelica snorted. “Well, you won’t be getting any from me, that’s for sure. Not that I can have any more after the surgery, anyway. But still.”
She eyed him then, and he tried not to sigh as he recognized the look in her eye.
“Do you want kids that badly? You really want them?”
“Let’s talk about it later, Ang.”
It was dangerous territory that he was wading in. He rubbed her back in what was usually a comforting manner, unless she was riled. And she was riled.
“No, we will talk about this now. You really want kids? I can’t give them to you.” She hopped off of his lap, and Ben knew it was over now, it was over and he would have to watch her self-destruct. When somebody faces cancer, his doctor had told him when he had asked, there is an emotional toll. People lose a part of themselves. They face their own mortality. Whatever it was, it had turned angelic Angelica into something shriveled and mean. It had eaten away at her soul as well as her organs.
“Ang, I was only saying—” he began.
“I’m not enough? You want more? I can give you my heart and my soul, but you want children? Children? It’s impossible! You won’t get it from me, do you understand?”
People were staring at them. Ben wanted to shrug and duck his head. He wanted to push Angelica down and cover her mouth with his hand. But in the anger, he could see her fear, the absolute wildness pushing itself against the shadowed glass of her eyes. I’m broken, the fear told him. I’m broken and I can’t give you anything, not even my last name.
“Maybe you ought to find yourself another girl, then. Somebody who is whole—” her voice cracked “—and complete and healthy. And you can start a family, and she’ll be there... Oh, God, what have I done to you?” She turned and wheeled away, her hands over her face. She ran through the park toward her car, and people slowly turned their heads away.
Ben looked down at his hands. He flexed them, watching the veins ripple under the skin, seeing the strength underneath the grease he could never quite wash off. His hands were empty, as usual. More than ever, he was beginning to realize that.
—
She disappeared. Again. Ben didn’t know what to think.
He thought about skipping their meetings. That would show her. She’d sit on the bench in the hot Arizona sun, waiting for him. For hours. She’d wait and get hot and thirsty and think he had abandoned her. She’d feel how he felt when he sat there alone. It was a lonely feeling, the worst feeling in the world.
He never missed an appointment.
It gave him time to think. Did he love her? Yes, he did. More than anything. More than his family, more than his old friends. More than school and the hope of finding a better job. When she told him about moving, a small part of him always resented it, because she would never move for him. But still he dropped everything because of her. His Angelica, his angel. How could he live without her? Would he really have a life to go back to?
One particularly windy day, he approached the bench to find a little girl sitting on it. She looked up at him worriedly.
“Are you Ben?” she asked.
He was surprised, and stood there. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He was seventeen again, a child again, back when everything first started. His chest hurt.
“Yes. I’m Ben.”
The girl looked relieved. “I have something for you, and I couldn’t go until you came. She said you would come. But it’s so windy and the dust is in my eyes and I don’t like the sound that the wind makes.”
She stuffed a bent envelope into his hand and started to turn away.
“Wait,” Ben said. “I don’t know who you are.”
The girl nearly smiled back at him, but not quite. “You’re friends with my aunt Angelica. She’s not feeling very good.” The girl ran away then. Ben stared after her, and then his eyes slowly focused on the envelope in his hand.
He opened it, and saw a lined piece of paper with words written in an unfamiliar, bold script.
Angelica Brogan
St. Mark’s Hospital
Room #301
Please Come Quickly
He stared. He stared. He read it again and again. Angelica Brogan. Beautiful. And she was in the hospital.
It was time.
His feet pounded on the ground as he ran. Real men run toward danger, not away from it, but he wasn’t thinking about this at all. He was thinking about his Angelica, and her little boy, and whether or not he had time to kiss those lips for the first and last time. What would they taste like? Like death and chemo and pain, most likely. Her tears would taste the same way, but he couldn’t wait to hold her and kiss the toxicity away, just as long as he could finally see her. Because life without Angelica wouldn’t be any kind of life at all, and he knew it.
—
She lay in a hospital bed. No hair. No eyebrows. No eyelashes.
She was sleeping, but her face contorted in pain. It ran underneath her nervous system. Ben stepped into the room hesitantly. He felt gangly and awkward. What if he stepped on the electrical wires? Pulled the plastic tubing from her nose and veins? He didn’t know what to do with his lumbering, oversized hands and stuffed them in his pockets. Surely they would be safer there.
“You must be Ben,” a voice said behind him.
Ben turned to find an ancient man standing in the doorway. His eyes were tired but kind. His face collapsed in on itself in sorrow.
Her husband.
“I’m...Ben,” he said. He didn’t know what else to say.
Angelica’s husband reached forward to shake Ben’s hand. Ben started, then fumbled his hand out of his pocket. The other man’s grip was firm and strong. His wedding band flashed.
“I’m Allan,” the man said. His lips tried to lift in a smile. He wasn’t nearly as old as Ben had first thought. Fatigue and misery had done this to his features.
“It’s...nice to meet you, Allan.” It was. Ben’s eyes slid over to Angelica, who moaned in her sleep. He looked back at Allan.
“It isn’t long now, my boy. She’s...she’s ready to go, I think.” His face crumpled even more, but he straightened it out. “I’m glad that you could come by. I think it’s good for both of you.”
Ben’s world was veiled with intangibility. Angelica was dying. Her husband was shaking his hand.
“This isn’t real,” he whispered, and wobbled a bit.
Immediately Allan had him by the arm, guided him into a chair.
“Sit down,” he said. “We don’t need both of you in that hospital bed.” He frowned suddenly, and aged in front of Ben’s eyes once more. Ben had never felt so ashamed.
“Sir. I...Ang. Elica. Your wife. She and I never...” He couldn’t finish. Allan shook his head.
“Not now.”
Ben didn’t know what to say. He watched Angelica’s breathing. It was irregular and frightening. She had never looked so tiny.
Allan cleared his throat and looked away. “I thought you might need to say goodbye. You’ve meant a lot to her over the years.”
Ben bit his lip. Allan stood up to leave, but Ben grabbed his sleeve.
“You don’t have to go, sir. I can say goodbye with you here.”
Allan made an ugly sound. “I don’t want to be here for this.” He gently shook his sleeve free and did a curious old-man shuffle to the door. He reached the door, but couldn’t make himself pass through it. He leaned his head against the doorjamb and his hands trembled.
Ben slid out of the chair and knelt by Angelica’s bed. He tried to be respectful of Allan, but seconds after patting her slender fingers, he was running his hands over her skin. Up her arms and across her butterfly eyelids. He felt her delicate skull and the hollows in her cheeks.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” he said. She didn’t move. She couldn’t respond. He rubbed his cheek against hers like a kitten starved for affection, and really, that wasn’t far off. He wanted to say, “Don’t leave me.” He wanted to say, “I can’t survive without you.” He wanted to say, “I’m sorry,” but, really, there wasn’t anything to be said except one thing...
“I think that I will always love you. Sometimes I wish this wasn’t the case.”
His kiss was a tender thing, half an inch from her lips. He closed his eyes. Goodbye.
He turned toward Allan. “She had the utmost respect for you, sir. She wouldn’t even tell me your name.”
Allan’s blue eyes regarded him sharply. “Do you know how I found out about you?”
Ben took a step back in surprise. “No...no, sir.”
Allan’s laugh was bitter and morose and baffled all at once. “We have a boy. His name is Ethan.”
“Yes, sir.”
Allan eyed him, but Ben returned his gaze evenly. Allan continued.
“I wanted to name him Ethan Lauran, after my father, but she wouldn’t have it. She was adamant about it, which wasn’t really like her at all.”
It wasn’t? Ben thought, but he didn’t say a word.
Allan deflated. “No,” he said softly. “She had a name all picked out. Benjamin Ethan.”
Ben reeled again, and steadied himself on the chair.
“But...”
“That�
�s your name. I know.” Allan’s mouth worked in a strange way. “And suddenly it all made sense. She didn’t cry when I’d leave, anymore. She withdrew money from the bank account. It used to devastate her whenever we’d move, and then one day it was all okay. I didn’t understand it. And then I didn’t want to understand it.” He studied Benjamin’s face. “You’re not what I expected.”
The urge to fight flashed through Ben’s body. He could stand up to this man. He was already mostly beaten. He’d fall without a sound, like flowers under snow. Angelica could be his. Her eyes would open one last time, and his smile, his warm gaze would be what she saw. How many times had he dreamed of being the one that she awoke to?
Ben took a deep, slow breath and closed his eyes.
“Sir, I...I never fully understood.”
Allan blinked and took the hand that Ben offered. He shook it firmly.
“I’m sorry that things turned out this way, Ben. You seem decent enough. But sometimes life...”
Does funny things, Ben thought. Rips your throat out. Leaves your hands empty at the end.
Ben stuffed his hands back into his pockets. He stared at a scuff on the floor. “I’m glad that I knew your wife, and your son.”
The silence pressed heavily on them. There was nothing more to say. Ben pushed his way through the door, fleeing his love and his hope as they lay dying. Angelica didn’t belong to Allan. She didn’t belong to Ben. And Ben was realizing that he didn’t belong to her, either.
He walked down the hall, paused, but slowly continued walking. He tasted Angelica on his lips, realizing it would be for the last time. When he stepped outside of the hospital, he squinted his eyes against the sun. It illuminated. It burned.
BEAUTIFUL NOTES
“Broken” This is a hint-fiction piece. “Hint Fiction” is a term coined by Robert Swartwood that has to do with hinting at a deeper story in under twenty-five words. I had a dark little tale accepted in Swartwood’s Hint Fiction anthology, and he asked if I would be interested in writing something else for promo leading up to the anthology’s release. I submitted a few pieces and was thrilled when “Broken” was chosen. It chills me.
Beautiful Sorrows Page 14