by Criss Copp
“It was nice to meet you, I’ll see you around!” he says, shaking my hand and pressing a piece of paper into it, before moving toward the door and leaving. Silas follows him out.
I look at the paper, and finally I really can’t breathe... anymore!
Chapter Ten: Week One
Jade.
I grew some balls and finally asked Silas if Ben said anything about me the other night.
“Why?” Silas asks. Rinsing the glass he just had a drink out of, and placing it upside down on the drainer.
“He’s familiar.” I reason.
“That would be because he’s on the television fighting UFC; you don’t watch that stuff much, but I do, and he’s on there sometimes. He’s good!” he explains.
“Oh, okay!” I reply and go to push off the kitchen bench. This is another thing I don’t know about Ben... I knew he did some Karate mumbo-jumbo, but I had no idea what his job was... that it was as a professional fighter.
“He said you were familiar, but you’re not his Jade!” Silas repeats Ben.
“Oh!” my voice cracks, so I resort to nodding and walking away to my room.
The next night, Monday, I ask Silas if Ben knows about his bipolar.
“Yep, everything! I told him everything, and he just took it all on board. Anyway, I’ve got to go, otherwise I’ll be late.” He says looking at the clock and grabbing his helmet.
“Okay, be safe... I’ll see you tomorrow!” I say, giving him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“See ya!” he chimes and walks out the door.
I go to bed and cry myself to sleep! For years I wanted someone who didn’t run the other way when they found out I was charged with caring for my brother, and he had issues of the mental variety. And here’s Ben and he doesn’t want to run from Silas, he wants to run from me.
Actually, that’s not fair! I did the running, it was all me!
I’m on an evening shift on Tuesday, so I take the risk and go to Paul’s gym to do a work out in the morning.
Paul is exactly the same as usual.
“Hey stranger!” he chimes.
“Hi Paul,” I start as I begin my jog. “It’s good to be back, I’ll come on the mornings I have afternoon shifts, otherwise I’ll be swimming.” I explain.
“He’s miserable; I don’t know what happened between you two, but he still comes in the afternoons, so maybe that’s best.” He explains.
“It’s not about Ben,” I lie, “I just needed some change to my routine.”
“Well you’re looking good!” he says smiling.
I smile and think about this situation I’ve surrendered myself to.
It was just a kiss wasn’t it? I mean, it was a kiss that made every other kiss I ever had amateur... but still, it’s not like we did the deed and sealed the deal with sex.
And then I compare the kiss to every sexual encounter I’ve ever had, and I realise that I’m totally deluding myself. Because if I think for one moment that sharing my soul with someone, and connecting with their soul is comparable to having a fuck with a complete stranger, a friend or an uncommitted love rat... I’m the one with reality issues.
The truth is, and I know it, because I saw it etched across his face when I betrayed him and ran... that the kiss was more than anything I’ve ever shared with anyone before. It is more than I can ever give to another living person, because Ben already has it, and I have his! Our hearts, and now he hates me for taking it and shitting all over it!
It all sounds so teenage drama and romance novel, but it is what it is, two broken people who exchanged and surrendered the one part of themselves that mattered... their hearts!
It’s an uncomfortable notion to think about, I don’t want to think about it anymore. But I’m stuck with things the way I let them happen; and I’m left with nothing else but this to think about as I move around the familiar gym in a hollow fashion, because Ben isn’t here with me goading me with his twisted innuendo, and I’m not using my bitch-slapping powers to match him.
When I finish and I’m sitting in the locker room, I do the one thing I instinctually know I must do! I pull out my mobile phone and pull up Sabrina’s number that I have already placed in the contacts list. Swiping through to her number, I touch it to dial.
“Hello?” Sabrina’s voice comes through the phone.
“Hi Sabrina, its Jade, I hope you don’t mind me calling, somebody gave me your number!” I say.
“Oh, Jade! It’s so good to hear from you! How are you?” she asks.
“I’m well... I really just needed to ring and apologise for my abysmal behaviour, I’m so sorry! And I hope you’re doing as well as can be expected!” I reason.
“Oh, I really am... I, um... I can’t really talk right now!” she suddenly states.
“Okay, I’m sorry to have caught you at a bad time. If you need me for anything, you have my number now.” I say softly.
“No, no! I have company issues!” she says quickly.
And then I hear him in the background, ‘who’re you talking to?’
“Okay... that’s okay!” I respond.
“Are you working tomorrow morning?” she whispers.
“Ah... no!” I answer.
“Well, come over to morning tea!” she states, it’s not really a question.
“I’m not sure...” I begin.
“He won’t be here.” She argues. I can hear him in the background... ‘Mum?’
“Okay Sabrina, I’ll bring a teacake!” I say.
“Wonderful!” she enthuses.
She tells me her address and a time and we hang up.
I ride up the road Sabrina informed me she lives on. I have a teacake in my back pack, and although teacakes are tough little buggers, I’m trying to be certain it also doesn’t look like a squished cow pat... although it would still look a whole lot prettier than a cow pat.
I locate the house number and ride up the drive; till I get to a flat part of the drive, at the top, just in front of the garage door, which is open. There isn’t a car there, so I am assuming that Ben isn’t home.
Of course I was counting on Ben being absent, since Sabrina had told me he would be.
I wander up the stairs that take me from the bottom level of the house, to the front door. I can see there is a separate area downstairs. It reminds me of a granny flat, and it extends under the main body of the house, alongside the garage, which can accommodate two cars, despite having a large work bench along two walls.
When I reach the top, and walk across the front landing, which extends to a verandah over the garage door, I turn briefly to look out. They have a view! I can see the beach from here, and in the distance, I can see the ocean horizon, with a string of cargo ships waiting for permission to dock into port. There must be more than a dozen... actually, shit! There has to be more than two dozen ships... some large and looming, others are small and dinky. I know they’re all the same size in reality, so the distance from shore is the deciding factor regarding these monsters of transport. I’m amazed that despite the industrial nature of the hulking ships, it sort of looks... right!
I hear Sabrina walk up behind me.
“It’s even prettier at night.” She says. “The ships have their lights on, and they all bob around on the surface of the water.” She explains.
“It’s a nice view, I envy you for it!” I reply, smiling down at her.
She looks sad, she also looks tired.
“You should be resting!” I say.
“That’s all I do, is rest.” she states. “Shall we go in?” she asks, offering her arm.
I take her arm, and pretend to walk alongside her, when really I’m bracing to hold her up. She knows this, but she holds to the delusion.
We make our way through the house to the kitchen, where she has thing set in place for a spot of morning tea. She flicks the jug on, and settles down on a stool. I take the stool next to her, and determine to allow her to do as much as she wants, but preparing to take over if
I think she’s pushing her limits.
I reach into the back pack and pull out a half squished teacake.
“Damn, I’m sorry, I squished it!” I apologise.
“Well, we’ll eat the good, unsquished part, and we’ll leave the squished part for Ben.” she chuckles.
I smile... I can see where Ben gets his dimples from.
It’s hard to tell how old a cancer patient is, because they age so much from the illness and the drugs. But I want to know how old Sabrina is.
“Sabrina, can I ask a rude question?” I ask.
“Anything! I’ve been through everything, so you, my dear, can ask me anything!” she accepts my request.
“How old are you?” I ask my anything.
“57 years old, and if I make it to September 24, I’ll be 58.” She answers.
“Wow, so young!” I say, nodding my agreement at my own statement.
“Young?” she asks, laughing lightly.
“Absolutely... in my line of work, ageism goes out the window, at least it should!” I explain.
“Ageism?” she asks, smiling her dimply smile again.
“Yeah, sort of like sexism, but prejudiced about age! As far as I’m concerned, anything below 80 years is young!” I reason.
“Well, you must be considered an embryo!” she states.
I chuckle at her reference to my very young age in comparison.
“I guess!” I agree with her.
“Now, I’m not one to waste time anymore, I want to tell you something!” she suddenly goes serious.
I swallow, she’s definitely not wasting time. I’ve been here twenty minutes! She’s going to go all deep and meaningful on me.
“I like you, I like you a lot!” she says.
“Thank you, I like you too!” I respond.
“My son... well, he loves you! A lot!” she states, bluntly.
“I beg to differ, he hates my guts!” I argue.
“No, he really doesn’t... he’s licking his wounds, he’s pulling back to assess his damage. But he’s not over you and he never will be! He’s too much like his father and you, my dear are a lot like me!” she explains.
“How so?” I ask, I mean really, how can she say that... what secrets can she tell me?
“I met my Ben, Ben senior, when I was 18 years old. I was visiting some friends in California on a summer break, and I’d just finished high school. My Ben was 21 years old, and visiting my friends from Australia, on a surfing holiday. He fell in love with me, but I suppose I just thought he was too old, too cocky, so I broke our summer romance off and broke his heart; and then I left for Europe.” She clarifies.
I hop up and grab the jug, pouring hot water into the mugs she has left out with preparations already inside.
She has a tea bag, and I have some powder; she’s left the chai tea latte foil packet next to the cup, so I know she’s bought it for me.
After I push her mug across and pull mine around, she pours some milk from the little jug she has waiting in front of us in both mugs.
She continues her story.
“I travelled around Europe for two years, and when I got back, all I wanted to do was find Ben and tell him I was a stupid little girl, and that in fact I did love him! By then though it was too late! My enquiries led to my discovery that he was married to a woman named Linda and living in his native homeland. I was absolutely devastated! So I went off to college at California Polytechnic for the next four years to learn how to be an architect.” She stops and takes a sip of her tea. I do the same, and beg her to continue her story. She complies.
“After my degree, I returned to Burley Idaho, and worked for the next year. I had relationships, of course I did, it was the late 70s and early 80s. I was having fun, but I knew I had missed out, and it was absolutely killing me. So I wrote to my friends in California and asked if they knew how Ben was doing. It was fate that I did that, because I found out that he was going through a divorce and that he would be spending the summer at their place, surfing and getting over this wife cheating on him.” She explains.
“What did you do? Did you run to California?” I ask, gasping... seven years, that’s a long time!
“No, I was stupid and thought that he’d need space to get over his wife, so I just left it alone.” She answers.
“You what? I’m not like you, I would’ve run to him!” I argue.
“Would you? You’re a runner like me, or at least like I was! I wanted to protect myself, and I used his grief as an excuse. What’s your excuse for running?” she asks me softly.
“I... don’t want to lose anyone, so I push them away!” I suggest.
“There’s more to it than that!” she reasons.
“It’s not my time; I’ve got other responsibilities... I have things that are more important to deal with at the moment.” I explain, it sounds so stupid when said out loud, but it’s true. Silas comes first, I’m a distant second.
“I thought so...” she says warmly, and gives me a huge warm smile full of dimples and sunshine.
“So, what happened?” I ask meekly.
“I worked for another two years, and wrote to my friends again.” She says, sipping on her tea.
“Nine years?” I ask incredulously, this is really dumb, she waited nine years to tell this man she was in love with him?
She nods.
“Please tell me you worked it all out after nine years!” I plead.
“I can’t tell you that, because it didn’t happen like that.” She answers.
I look away. I know she married him in the end, but I’m annoyed she took so long to get there!
“So tell me how it came about!” I beg.
“My friends wrote back and informed me that he was seeing another girl, seriously!” she said.
“Damn, you leave things way too long!” I argue.
She chuckles, “I did!”
“So go on.” I encourage.
“I quit my job and went on holiday to Australia.” She says.
I nod, finally we’re getting somewhere.
“I wrote to Ben, after getting his address and he didn’t write back. But I went anyway, and I travelled for a year around Australia and fell in love with it. Then one day, I knew that I was on the precipice of too late, so I turned up at the address I had for him, which is a house around the corner from here. A woman answered the door, and she had a rock the size of Uluru on her hand and I knew she was his fiancée, but I didn’t care; I asked where Ben was, explaining that we were old friends from the states. She told me he was at work, and I asked where he worked. She explained he currently worked at a construction site over at Charlestown; you see, he was an engineer!” she says, taking another sip. I just keep my eyes on her. She’s already clocked up ten years of wasted time... I’m thinking she’s an idiot! A nice idiot, but still an idiot!
“She told me that I wouldn’t be able to visit him, but that she’d be happy to take my name and number, and give it to him. I told her my name, and she slammed the door in my face! I guess she didn’t like me... I found out why later! In any case, I took my cue to leave and drove to the construction site. I walked in to site office and bandied my knowledge around and flapped some of my credentials in their face, to try and get a job on site, cash in hand. It worked! I just had to be seen and passed by the chief engineer, Benjamin Reynolds.” She smirks. I smile; this is just about to get interesting. I pull off a piece of teacake, and begin to eat it, engrossed in her story.
“So I sit and wait, while they page him to the office! Oh, you should’ve seen his face when he walked into the office! He was so angry!” she giggles. I giggle too, like we’re sharing something that happened yesterday.
“He stormed out of the office without a word, so I followed him; I followed him out to the car park where he told me to get in my car and leave, because I was good at that! I walked up to him and slapped him across the face! He was so incensed by me slapping him that he wheeled me into the nearest car and kissed me senseless!�
�� she laughs heartily. I just look at her with a stunned face.
“Then he pushed off of me and went to walk away. But I grabbed his arm and told him I was in love with him and that if he walked away, I would too! For good!” she pauses. “He stopped, he was breathing hard, and he had his back to me. I dropped his arm and I thought for sure he was going to keep going, but he didn’t; he just stood there! So I walked around him and looked at him. He looked like he was in so much pain, so I touched his face, and he grabbed me into his arms and held me there; he told me I was a fool, that I broke his heart, that he’d never been honest to any woman since me, because I had his heart and he couldn’t give it to anyone else, because I ran off with it!” she sighs, she looks down at her hands... at her wedding and engagement rings.
“What happened?” I ask breathlessly.
“He took me home.” She says, turning and indicating the house with her hand. “This used to be his parents’ house, he took me here, and he told his parents who I was, and they pulled me in to their home with open arms. He went away for an hour and came back with a large suitcase of clothes and a torn shirt.” She explains.
“He broke it off with his fiancé!” I guess.
“Yes!” she nods. “And he moved into the downstairs room with me and we got married the following month.” She explains.
I’m smiling now, but she isn’t, she’s so sad!
“Sabrina?” I ask.
“He died 8 years later in a construction site accident. I only had 8 years with him... it could’ve been 18!” she explains, tears running down her face.
“Oh, Sabrina!” I soothe, but I find tears are falling from my eyes too.
We spend a short time consoling each other before we hear the car pull up. I’m on instant alert.
Sabrina is too, “What’s he doing home so early? He said he was going over to Maitland to look at a bike he has his eye on.” She explains.
I find my eyebrows have risen on their own with that little tidbit of information, he was buying a bike?
We hear the voices.
“Your Mum has a visitor!” A woman’s voice says.
I hear a grumbled reply, but it’s hard to make out what it says.