by Chris Page
Then came the day his body refused the inclination, forcing Benny to accept his waking state. He listened to his parents, to the doctors, was aware of reporters buzzing around his hospital room. It was noise, unrelenting and inescapable. In his shed, there was so little noise. The wind rustling the trees, dimmed by the walls. His own steps, and breath. The rain against the roof. His own stream, ringing out as it struck the metal bucket. The puddle sounds of his excrement. The man had never spoken to him, he had never spoken to himself. Voices, their intricate performances, were, at first, an irritation. The inflections of speech, the complexities of language, the various tones and their meanings. Benny ground his teeth together whenever he was spoken to, silently willing the person to leave. The worst of these were the two men in suits. One hunched forward in a seat pulled to the bedside while the other paced behind him. They not only spoke, but requested Benny speak in return. Their questions sought from his memory an order that he long since abandoned. In their persistence, however, he was forced to engage in the agonizing labor of reassembly. Apart, his recollection was harmless. Stitched back together, it resurrected the identity of the boy that, over time, had dissolved. Its facets included shame, humiliation, self-hate. But in order to answer their questions, to perform the function demanded of him, he invited these back into himself.
Yet, for all his effort, in the end it proved insubstantial. They had asked what the man looked like. Benny answered how he remembered. He said the man wore a mask. When they asked what sort of mask the man wore, he replied that it was a face. They offered famous names, presidents, horror movie villains, showing images on their phones. Benny shook his head. He told them it was a normal face. The man pacing back and forth in front of the window turned and frustratedly asked if the man actually wore a mask. Benny told him no.
They left, but in two day’s time, on the last day of his stay, they presented Benny with a third man. He appreciated the volume and tenor of this man, but offered him little new information. This man seemed to be asking if the mask worn by his captor was his father’s face, which seemed patently absurd. The conversation ambled in circles. Benny put it as succinctly as he could. The man wore a mask like a face, which wasn’t a mask at all.
Carrie and Jake received a diagnosis of severe dissociative disorder. Jake debated with the psychiatrist until Carrie thanked the professional for his assistance and took his information, despite having no intention on using it.
Months passed, renewed media coverage accompanied the reopened case, but nothing new was discovered. No additional children went missing. It seemed the killer had gone dormant, or died, or was arrested for something else. Absent a name, he became myth.
Sean Buchanan promoted Jake rather suddenly, despite the protracted spell of lackluster effort. He invited Jake into his office, congratulated him on saving his child, and in the same breath offered the position. Jakes shook Sean’s hand, felt the clammy palm against his own. A thought occurred to him, or rather, the ghost of a thought. It arose from the section of his mind now cordoned off, and for this reason, was dismissed before its articulation. As if to rebuke its presence, he peered into Sean’s eyes and accepted a new image of his boss, genuine, well-meaning, benign.
With his new salary, they could afford to keep Carrie at home where she watched Benny. Rarely a minute passed by when he was not within her sight. She kept close to him, hoping over time her love, washing over him, would heal his wounds. He seemed not to mind, neither receptive nor resistant to her presence. Carrie accepted this as perhaps the best reaction, a slow and steady rebuilding effort taking place within his soul. Much like the way she observed his body gradually adding weight back to his frame, so too, she believed, the unseen internal work set about mending his heart. Day by day, piece by piece, perhaps even stronger than he had been before. Patiently, she awaited the day when he would acknowledge this process. She could wait years if she had to, all the while sufficed by incremental gains.
In the evening, when Jake returned home from work, the three would gather in the living room, watching television, shows Benny was told had been his favorites. His parents laughed along where the show instructed them, though he remained largely silent. His parents provided him with feasts for the first few weeks after his return. There was pot roast, chicken drumsticks, fettuccine alfredo. When cooking exhausted Carrie, they turned to a variety of takeout. Each time it arrived, Benny observed the same series of actions. His mother carried the boxes or bags hurriedly into the kitchen. There she would open them, retrieving plates from the cupboards to place scoops of fried rice, pizza slices, glazed ribs on dishes. With care, she arranged them, ensuring the appropriate proportions were assembled, little divisions between each item on Benny’s plate, as he was told he preferred it. When he ate, he did little chewing, in favor of filling his belly with haste. Though the flavors were intense and varied, the eventual effect remained the same. Once his teeth finished with it, like the scraps or the bugs, there was no distinction between their descents.
Seven weeks after his return, Benny turned sixteen. His father told him the year signalled the beginning of manhood. He didn’t feel any different when the date arrived, yet his parents insisted on marking the occasion, a ritual he remembered from past years. The three traveled forty five minutes outside Willow Brook to a village where a French bistro served “his favorite steak.”
After they filed into their booth, Carrie placed an arm around Benny, tugging him closer to her. “Excited for your favorite steak?”
On the other side of the booth, Jake grinned at Benny and winked. “He’s got a man’s appetite.”
Benny looked around the space, the faux brick wall along one side of the restaurant, cheap reprinted paintings of the French countryside hung along the other. Beside his leg, between him and his mother, his fingers found a tear in the cloth of the cushioned seat. They had already burrowed into the white stuffing before he noticed. He turned his head down to watch while they drew out the fluff, pinched between forefinger and thumb. Tufts of it separated, individual hairs spreading out.
Carrie’s hand laid across his own. “Honey,” she said, “don’t ruin the seat.”
He looked up into her eyes, then slipped his hand out from under hers, placing it over his knee while it bounced incessantly under the table. “Or perhaps he’d like to mix it up,” Jake suggested. “Try something new.”
Though it sounded like a statement, Benny found his father’s eyes questioning him. “Steak is good,” he answered.
Carrie’s hand, laid across his shoulder, rose up to his ear and rubbed it affectionately. “Nothing wrong with that. Benny loves his birthday steak.”
A soft whimpering sound began with a burst of air past shut lips, then sniffling that became a high pitched creaking sound from the back of the throat. Benny turned to see his father’s eyes welling with tears, his mouth curved downward in an unguarded frown. His eyes crossed back and forth between wife and son, horror mixed with despair. Carrie averted her gaze to the tabletop, Benny taking notice in his periphery. Panic seized him under his father’s stare, the eyes begging for ignorance. Benny found a clock along the wall behind him, focusing on the second hand while it continued its motion, crossing six, seven, eight.
His father coughed. He watched the second hand a moment longer, ten, eleven, twelve, taking a breath before turning back around. Carrie and Jake watched nothing on the table beneath them. Benny felt his lips pinch together, then, all at once, the corners of his mouth twisted towards his ears. He turned the face to his parents, one then the other, who donned the same in turn.
2.17.18 - 12.17.20
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