Wednesday, July 12
BEYOND EXHAUSTED NOW, BEN settled into the La-Z-Boy with the TV on, mauve dawnlight tinting the windows behind him. The Cecile B. DeMille classic The Ten Commandments was playing, and as the fatigue had its way with him, Ben remembered seeing the film with Melanie in the seventies. They’d seen a lot of movies together in those days, sitting high in the balcony of the Capitol Theater, munching popcorn and necking during the slow parts. Sometimes even the good parts, Ben thought, and licked his lips, tasting the peach-flavored lip balm she always wore.
Eyelids drooping, he remembered something else about that long-ago matinee. Holding his lover’s hand as Moses parted the Red Sea, he’d begun to weep for reasons he still couldn’t fathom. Perhaps it had stemmed from his conflicted Catholic upbringing, or from his cold certainty by this point that his relationship with Melanie was on the skids. Whatever it was, the upset had been profound and uncontrollable. Afterward, Melanie had told him she understood, but he’d never pressed her to explain her take on the experience. She’d broken it off with him a few months later, telling him she’d met someone else. That someone had sired her only child, and abandoned her on the day she went into labor. She’d met her second husband a few years later.
Losing Melanie had undone him. He’d been halfway through second-year med school when it happened, just days before a classmate took his own life with an ampoule of potassium chloride, leaving a scrawled note that read, It’s too much. And in that first dark stretch without the girl he’d hoped to marry, that simple phrase had reverberated with seductive regularity in his mind, a clarion call from an inner abyss along the crumbling margin of which he would wander for the next two years. It was only the increasing demands of academic life—and the faint hope Melanie might one day take him back—that kept him from toppling over the edge. He’d filled the hole as best he could: pot, alcohol, and the kind of reckless promiscuity good looks, a leather med-school jacket and playing in a rock band made possible. But it wasn’t until his first year of residency that the wounds began to heal, and a livable future began to take shape.
Ben slept now, tumbling into the dream that had cost him his supper the night before. Only this time when the girl beneath him swept the hair off her face, it was Melanie.
* * *
Voices.
Familiar voices…
“Is he gone again?”
“Again? He was out of it when we got here.”
“What was that shit he was going on about? Moses? The Red Sea?”
“Hell if I know.”
Ben thought, Wilder? and opened his eyes on a strange room, thinking, What a bizarre dream. There were two old men standing over him now, leaning in to view him as if he were laid out in an open coffin. One of them, the wiry one, had Vince Wilder’s voice—
“His eyes are open now.”
And the other one sounded like Quinn.
“Ben?”
Now Wilder’s voice again.
“Lights are on but nobody’s home.”
“Should we call an ambulance?”
“What’s the point? He’s breathing. Maybe he’ll be back, maybe he won’t.”
“I don’t know, Vince. I think we should call somebody. Have him seen.”
“Do what you want, but it’s half-past suppertime and I’m hungry.”
“Come on, man, let’s just hang here a while. See what he does.”
Ben closed his eyes and looked at Melanie, sound asleep on the bunk bed beside him. He hoped those two old farts would go away before they woke her up.
Eventually, they did.
* * *
Knocking.
Go away.
Knocking again…and now ringing. Insistent in his ear.
The phone.
Ben opened his eyes and grabbed the receiver off the end table next to the La-Z-Boy.
“Yes?”
“Hi, Ben, it’s me.”
“Melanie?”
“No, it’s Roxanne. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I guess I was sleeping.” He peered around the apartment. Shadows everywhere, the only light from the muted TV. He said, “I thought I heard knocking.”
“That was me.”
“What?”
She said, “I’m outside your door,” and laughed, the sound strained, no real humor in it. “I just finished my shift. Quinn told me you’d probably still be up. Can I come in?”
He said, “Of course, gimme a sec,” and began worming his way out of the La-Z-Boy. When he’d made it into a sitting position, he brought the phone back to his ear. “Roxanne? Still there?”
She giggled, the sound more genuine now. “Yes.”
“Okay, almost there.”
He lowered his feet to the floor and stood, wondering how long he’d been angled into that chair. A glance at his watch told him it was 9:18 PM, so at least fifteen hours. His last recollection was of Moses parting the Rea Sea.
Shit.
Had he been dreaming?
In the foyer, he switched on the lights and glanced in the mirror, saying into the phone, “Brace yourself, sweetie. I look like Herman Munster.”
He heard her say, “Herman who?” and let her in.
Eyes widening, Roxanne said, “Yikes,” and tucked her phone away, telling him he smelled like a gym sock.
Ben said, “Keeps the flies off the ice cream,” and latched the door behind her. He said, “You’ll have to excuse me a minute. Gotta see a man about a dog.”
He could still taste peach lip balm on his lips.
* * *
While she waited for Ben to return, Roxanne got some tea brewing: Orange Pekoe, Ben’s favorite, the individual bags stacked in a teapot-shaped dispenser on the kitchen counter. She loved how neat his apartment was, everything arranged just so. She’d never want him to see her bedroom. A neat freak she wasn’t. Russ had actually flinched when he saw it, Gram ambushing her the other day, bringing Russ upstairs when he came by to pick her up instead of asking him to wait in the family room. Another of Gram’s good-natured—if pointless—attempts at getting her to organize her things.
She arranged the teapot, cups and spoons on a tray and carried it into the living room, setting it on the coffee table as Ben came back into the room.
Rubbing his hands together, he said, “I thought I smelled something delicious. Thanks, Roxie. There’re tea biscuits in the breadbox if you’re hungry.”
Roxanne said, “No thank you, Doctor Hunter,” and they sat together on the couch, sipping the hot brew. They made small talk for a while, Roxanne giving him the highlights of her shift, making special reference to the fragrant load the bird lady had deposited in her bed, adding, “It looked like she’d been sampling the birdseed herself.” Doing his best to be discrete, Ben told her about Viktor’s late-night dilemma and got her laughing so hard she almost wet herself. When he was done, she said, “I didn’t know you had a car,” and Ben told her he didn’t, but that was a whole other story.
Pouring more tea now, Ben said, “So to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I bumped into Quinn earlier and he told me about your friend Ray.”
Ben set his teacup on the table. Not unkindly, he said, “You could park a Winnebago in that man’s mouth.”
“He also said he and Wilder were here earlier and you seemed a little…out of it. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Almost inaudibly, Ben said, “So I wasn’t dreaming,” but Roxanne decided to let that part of it go. He seemed fine now and that was all that mattered.
She said, “Are you going to be in any trouble?”
“Hmm?”
“You know. For the thing with Ray?”
Ben said, “No. Other than dragging around a broken heart for a while, it’s all under control.”
Roxanne wasn’t sure she believed him, but he seemed genuine enough. She wanted to ask how he’d gotten away with it—she knew he’d retired years ago, and was fairly certain his license to practice medicine would have long since expired—but she decided to let that go, too. She said, “You guys were close, huh.”
Ben said, “Best friends since the third grade,” and spent the better part of an hour describing some of their antics growing up, getting her laughing like a loon again. Then he told her about their final moments together and she cried along with him.
It was jarring, seeing him grieve. He’d been a rock to her since the day they met—even when he got confused about who she was—and she was grateful for the chance to return the favor, Ben resting his head against her shoulder now instead of the other way around.
After a while, he begged off to the bathroom again. Roxanne told him to light a match, she had to go too, and that got a chuckle out of him.
Once they’d both done their business, Roxanne toasted an English muffin for each of them and warmed up the tea in the microwave. They sat at the kitchen table this time, and Roxanne said, “So what was it like seeing Gram again?”
Ben smiled—a little dreamily, Roxanne thought—saying, “It was wonderful. I’d forgotten how beautiful she is.”
“Aw.”
“Did she say anything? About me?”
“Just that it was nice seeing you again,” Roxanne said, praying her poker face was holding up. She wasn’t lying—Gram had seemed pleased to see him—but she wasn’t about to tell him what she’d said later that day.
Sounding disappointed, Ben said, “That was it?”
“Gram can be pretty close-mouthed.”
“I remember.”
“And stubborn.”
“I remember that, too.”
“I tried to get her to tell me about you two, but she brushed me off. Said it was a long time ago.”
Ben said, “What do you want to know?”
“All of it.”
* * *
And that was exactly what he told her. He started with the first time he’d set eyes on Melanie Anderson in the hallway at Hillcrest High, and finished with the phone call that ended them six years later.
“I didn’t realize I was screwing it up until it was way past too late. I thought I was building a future for us, setting the stage for a marriage proposal.” He smiled. “I still have the ring and the airline tickets. I was going to pop the question in Hawaii.
“But what I was really doing was putting her last. Behind my studies, behind the guys I hung out with, behind my compulsion to be at the top of my class. She met her first husband while I was doing a locum in Edmonton. Met him in a grocery store—” Ben felt suddenly stricken. “Oh, sweetie, please tell me you already know about this.”
Roxanne nodded. “Gram told me when I turned fourteen. Bastard left her while she was pregnant with my mom. It’s all right, Ben.”
He thought, Thank God. “She broke it off with me over the phone. I begged for another chance, said I could do better, even told her I’d drop out of med school if that was what it took. But it was too late. I’d lost her. It got pathetic for a while after that. I still had a week left in the locum, but after she hung up on me, I got in my car and drove back to Ottawa. Twenty-two-hundred miles. Flat out for forty hours, only stopping for junk food and gas. To this day, I can’t remember long stretches of that trip. I’m pretty sure I drove through the prairies sound asleep. And I damned near got kicked out of med school for taking off from the locum without letting anyone know.
“I caught up with her where she worked.”
“Le Château, right?”
“That’s right. Hippest clothing store in Ottawa at the time.” He shuddered. “Jesus. I stumbled in there in the middle of her shift, barely conscious from the drive. Hadn’t bathed, shaved or changed clothes in three days. And she was so beautiful. Decked out in a pink one-piece, stacking sweaters on a display. And the look she gave me when she saw me…I wanted to die. Startled at first. Then just…nothing. Like I was something she’d have to sweep up.”
Roxanne touched his arm, and when he looked at her in the warm apartment light he thought she was Melanie. But only for an eyeblink.
“I spent the next six months trying to win her back. But all I was doing was making it worse. After she threatened to call the cops the next time I rang her doorbell, I finally accepted it was over.”
“Wow. Gram’s even tougher than I thought.”
“She was just protecting herself. And she was right. I never would’ve changed. For a while maybe, to get her back. But I was so driven in those days, Roxanne. Had to be the best at everything.
“Anyway, it was a disaster. So I put my head down and carried on. Got my ticket in anesthesia—don’t ask me why, the work never suited me—and did the job for three years before going back to study geriatrics. I dated, sure. Even lived with a girl for a while. But the vulnerable part of me your grandmother reached, that part went deep. After Mel, I was only going through the motions with women. Commitment never entered my mind. After your grandmother, it was all about the work.”
He smiled now, trying to make light of it.
Roxanne said, “Ben, that is so sad.”
“It’s just life, sweetheart. You make the best of the hand you’re dealt.”
“And what about now?”
“What about now what?”
“What about taking another shot?”
“What do you mean?”
Roxanne gave him a gentle poke. “Come on, Benjamin, don’t play dumb with me. I saw your face when you realized who she was. And when she hugged you? I thought you were going to faint dead away.”
He could feel himself blushing again. Damn it. “That obvious, huh?”
“Neon sign obvious.”
“Well, here’s the thing, Roxanne. People seldom change. Particularly someone as iron-willed as your grandmother. And while I’m certain she believes in second chances, I know her well enough to know that particular door was barricaded shut decades ago. I practically wore her out trying to pry it open again. And when she hugged me on the porch the other day, I could tell nothing had changed. That anger, that wariness, was still there, just below the surface. I’m willing to wager she only put up with me being there because she could see how much you and I mean to each other. And I got lost a couple of times that day, kiddo. I’m sure she noticed. I know you did.”
“Ben…”
“Tell me I’m wrong. Better yet, tell me what she really said when you two talked about it later.”
* * *
Roxanne thought, Put your foot in it this time, girl. But he deserved to know. She said, “You have to remember what she’s like. When she’s upset, she reacts, and sometimes what comes out of her mouth can be hurtful.”
Nodding, Ben said, “So what did she say?”
Roxanne could feel her face getting red, and hated that about herself more in this moment than at any other time in her life. She thought, Just say it. “She told me there’s no way she’s getting involved with you again. She said the fact that you and I are friends is fine, and because of that she’d be okay with you coming over to the house from time to time. Said she’d even do things with us if she was invited.”
“But bottom line, she’s not interested.”
Seeing a way to put a positive spin on it, Roxanne said, “That big doctor’s brain in there and you still don’t understand women?”
“What do you mean?”
“She was upset because I ambushed her, bringing you over without letting her know.”
“So what part don’t I understand?”
“The fact that she was upset. If seeing you again was no big deal, then I’d be agreeing with you. No chance with Gram.”
“So the fact she was upset…?”
“Oh, my God. Am I gonna have to lead you by the hand?”
Smirking, Ben thought, Ask your grandmother about that. He said, “Lead on.”
Roxanne took a quick slurp of tea. “Okay. She was upset, but she said you’re welcome at the house anytime and that she’d love to tag along.”
“That’s stretching it a bit, don’t you think?”
“Not at all.” Now comes the hard part. “But you were right about one thing. She did notice your…lapses the other day. And she said straight out she’s too old to get stuck in a care-giving role again.”
“Did you tell her about the isomer?”
“I did. Sold it pretty hard, in fact.”
“Did you tell her it hasn’t had time to work yet?”
Roxanne nodded.
“So that’s it, then.”
Roxanne thought, Yeah, that’s probably it. But she said, “Not necessarily. I think what she needs now is time. We’ve got the rest of the summer. Let her see you around, but keep it cool with her. Friends only. She’ll see us having fun and she’ll want to join in. Plus, she’ll see you getting better on the medication. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on her.” She smiled. “I’m an excellent matchmaker.”
Ben shook his head and returned her smile, saying, “Women.”
Roxanne poked him again.