THE KITCHEN WAS EMPTY, BENJAMIN was sure of that. He listened closely to the sounds of the house, wanting to make sure no one else was within range to overhear what he was doing. From upstairs he heard a creak; Zoey in her room. From the living room, the faint sounds of the television. His mother.
He paused to consider. His mother might get up at any moment and come to the kitchen for something to eat or drink. And that would be a little embarrassing.
Oh, well. It was either take his chances with the kitchen phone or be overheard using the upstairs hall phone.
He sat down at the table, placed a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen in front of him, and lifted the receiver. He dialed information.
“Yes, do you have listings for Kittery? The McAvoy residence. Sorry, I don’t have a first name.” He sighed. “Okay, better give me all six, then.”
He grabbed the pen and, using the hard tip, began pressing dots into the paper, a sort of Braille shorthand. He had an excellent memory for numbers, but even he couldn’t recall six phone numbers. He hung up the phone, tore off the sheet, and turned the paper over. Now he could read off the dots with his fingertips. He dialed.
“Yes, is this the McAvoy residence? Oh, hi. Look, my name is . . . um, Jack. I’m a friend of your daughter Lara . . . You don’t have a daughter? Gee, sorry, I must have the wrong number.”
He went on to the next number and got an answering machine. He didn’t leave a message. On the fifth call he got lucky. This McAvoy residence did have a daughter, and yes, she was named Lara.
“Well, ma’am, I’m an old friend of hers and I was just wondering if she was there this evening?”
No, she wasn’t. Where had he known her?
“It’s been a long time,” Benjamin said smoothly. “I knew her in junior high.”
Why was he calling her up now, after all this time?
Hmmm. Excellent question. “To tell you the truth, I know it’s silly, but in eighth grade I borrowed a book from her and I just came across it in some old boxes and I wanted to return it.”
He was rather pleased with himself for having come up with that on the spur of the moment.
But mom—he assumed it was Lara’s mother he was speaking to—didn’t see why Lara would care about an old book. It occurred to Benjamin only then that this woman on the other end of the line had once been his father’s secret lover in Europe. Where in Europe, he wondered vaguely. Paris, maybe, or Venice.
“Yes, I know, but I can’t keep something that doesn’t belong to me,” he argued. “It just isn’t right.”
Mom McAvoy couldn’t exactly argue with that. If he’d leave his number, she’d pass it along to Lara. She might be down next weekend.
“Down?” Benjamin pursued hopefully.
Yes, down from Weymouth.
“She lives in Weymouth now?” Benjamin said.
That wasn’t really any of his business, but if he wanted to leave a number . . .
Benjamin gave her the first number that came to mind, which happened to be that of a used-car dealer whose annoying TV ads had drilled the number into his brain, and spelled out his name J-a-c-k B-a-t-e-s.
He hung up. So. Lara McAvoy, the mysterious half-sister, lived in Weymouth. How convenient. He dialed information again. “In Weymouth, please, the number for Lara McAvoy, or initial L. McAvoy.”
Just one number this time, under L. McAvoy. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He dialed. Four rings before the phone was picked up. A brusque male voice.
He pitched his own voice as low as it would go. “Uh, yeah, is this the Lara McAvoy residence?”
Yeah, she lived there, so what?
“This is UPS; we have a package for her, but the address label is torn. Looks like Third Street, or it could be Blakely; not our fault since the label is improperly attached.”
It wasn’t either of those addresses, the voice said. Not even close.
Benjamin held his breath.
The voice gave him the correct address and hung up the phone.
Benjamin settled the receiver.
729 Independence, apartment 402. Amazing. He practically walked past it on his way from the ferry landing to school every day. All the time, his half-sister right there, unknown to him. Wasn’t life full of little surprises?
If only he could see her, this half-sister. If only he could see her face, and find the similarities between her face and his own. There should be some similarity if they shared the same father.
People had always told Benjamin that he’d gotten his mother’s good looks—her cheekbones, her eyes. No one had ever said he looked like his father. He had an uncle, his father’s brother, who used to joke about it, saying how lucky he was to look like his beautiful mother and not like his scruffy dad, ha ha ha. And he’d never thought anything of it before. But now he had done the math and whatever his mother said or believed, it was possible that his father wasn’t his father at all.
If his father was indeed his father, then a keen eye should be able to find some similarity between Benjamin and this Lara. He crumpled up his Braille notepad, counted the steps to the trash can, and dropped it in.
Late Friday night, and Aisha was finding it a little difficult walking down Climbing Way wearing shoes with heels, and a little cold walking through the night with her legs bare below the hem of her dress. Stockings didn’t exactly keep out the October wind. But she’d asked Christopher if she should dress up and he’d said sure, why not? She’d taken it almost as a challenge and had gone all out.
She’d sort of overlooked the fact that with the death of the family’s island car, she would have to walk down to the restaurant dressed like she was on her way to dinner at the White House, her leather jacket doing nothing at all to keep her legs and toes warm. Then, as she passed through downtown, she’d encountered the problem of heels on cobblestones.
She was cold but still excited when she arrived at the door of the restaurant. The sign on the door said CLOSED, but she went inside, grateful for the warmth. She took off her jacket and hung it on a peg. The restaurant was empty. A single candle burned on one corner table, flickering from the crystal, casting shadows on the white linen tablecloth. The only other light was the cheerful golden glow from the fireplace. She fluffed her hair and straightened her outfit.
“Christopher?” No answer. Louder, “Christopher?”
The swinging door to the kitchen opened, revealing a rectangle of brilliant fluorescence, then closed again. Christopher appeared, looking like he, too, was on his way to the White House for dinner.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi, back.”
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“You look okay, too.”
He came closer, then stopped. “If I come any closer,” he said, “you’ll look just way too good.”
“I’ll take my chances,” she said.
He took her in his arms and they kissed. He was the first to pull away. “Hey, I’m not just your little love toy,” he said playfully. “I have an evening planned here.”
“Oh, really?”
“This way, please.” He led her to the small, candlelit table and pulled her chair out for her. She sat down and he yanked the napkin neatly from the table, unfolded it, and laid it in her lap.
“You didn’t eat much for dinner, did you?” he asked suspiciously.
“You told me not to. I’m starving.”
“Excellent.”
“Where’s your chair?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, tonight I wait on you alone.” He reached behind her and she heard the slushy sound of ice. He produced a bottle and showed it to her. “Moët & Chandon Brut. Unfortunately, we don’t carry Dom Perignon. Or maybe it’s fortunate, since DP costs four hundred a bottle in most restaurants.”
“Champagne?”
“Of course, champagne. No one’s driving tonight,” he said with a conspiratorial wink. He unfastened the cage, wrapped a clean napkin around the neck, and twisted the cork neatly, a muted pop.
Aisha looked around a little nervously.
“Don’t worry, miss,” Christopher said, pouring her a glass of the wine. “I told Mr. Passmore what I was up to. He went for it. He’s very susceptible to anything romantic right now, poor guy. I guess you know about the whole divorce thing.”
“Yes,” Aisha said. “I really—”
“Hush,” Christopher held up a hand. “Nothing sad or depressing tonight.”
“Absolutely,” Aisha agreed. She took a sip of the champagne. “Excellent. The finest champagne I’ve ever tasted. Of course, the only other champagne I’ve ever had was at my aunt’s wedding.”
“Good. Then I’ll bring on the first course.”
“Aren’t you going to have some?”
“I am your servant tonight,” he said.
“You mean you’ll do anything I want?”
“Yes. Anything.”
“Mmmm. That certainly gives me something to think about,” Aisha said. “Kind of a change in attitude for you, isn’t it?” She asked the question playfully, but his answer was utterly serious.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “I got kind of a second chance at life yesterday. I decided in this life I’d be a nicer person.”
“You were always a nice person,” Aisha said with feeling.
“Not always to you, though,” Christopher said. “As of tonight that’s changed.”
“And now you’ll do whatever I want?”
“Well, for tonight, anyway,” he said.
“Then you’d better kiss me,” Aisha said.
He leaned down and kissed her for a very long time, a time that banished every memory of cold and left Aisha wondering whether the all-body tingle she was feeling came from the tiny sip of champagne.
He straightened up.
“Don’t go,” she breathed.
“Hey, I have a risotto going in the kitchen,” he said. “Even for you I don’t ruin a risotto.”
“Risotto? You mean like that Rice-a-Roni stuff?”
His look was one of pure horror. “Aisha, because I love you I’m going to forget you said that.”
“Um, would you say that again?” Aisha said.
He looked puzzled. “You mean ‘risotto’?”
“You know what I mean.”
He came back to her. And then he knelt beside her, bringing his face level with her own. “You mean, ‘I love you’?”
“Yes. That was it.”
“I do love you, Eesh. I was slow to figure it out, but now that I have, I promise never to forget it.”
Friday Night
Nina lay in her bed and talked to Benjamin on the phone for half an hour. While she talked, she drew in her sketchbook. After they had talked for half an hour, it took fifteen more minutes to say good night. Benjamin had sounded distracted but not depressed. Distracted was good in Benjamin—he liked to have things to think about. After she hung up the phone, Nina lay awake in bed with the lights out for a while, playing a CD he had loaned her. It was baroque guitar, not exactly her usual thing, but Benjamin liked it and she wanted to understand everything about him. When she finally turned it off, she had to resist a powerful urge to call him back. Instead she told the darkness again that she loved him and went to sleep.
Claire lay against her mountain of carefully arranged pillows and read a book called The Last Wilderness. It was about Antarctica. It was Claire’s goal to go to Antarctica when she’d finished college. It was the greatest place on earth to study weather at its most severe. The first year she’d stay just for the austral summer, maybe at Palmer base or McMurdo. Then, with more experience, she’d get to winter over. As far from civilization as a human being could get. As cold, hostile, and alien an environment as could be found. She had turned a dozen pages of the book before she realized she hadn’t retained any of what she’d read. Her mind wasn’t on Antarctica. It was on Jake, not far but very near. Simple, straightforward, never subtle, not even especially intelligent Jake. Almost a dumb jock, really. Not especially handsome to her eye, or particularly sexy. Just a dumb jock she wished loved her.
Aisha tried to sleep but couldn’t, not even after the big meal and the champagne. The meal had been followed by what seemed like hours of long, slow, lingering kisses that had left her buzzing and giddy. Christopher said he had changed, but fortunately there were some things about him that hadn’t changed at all, and the memory of those things kept her in a drifting, half-sleeping, half-waking state, smiling into the dark, sighing into her pillow. It was really Aisha who had changed, she realized. What had happened to the girl who dismissed moony-eyed romanticism as juvenile? What had happened to Aisha-like-a-rock, the girl who couldn’t be distracted by mere guys from the more important issues of life? She seemed to have completely forgotten what those more important issues might be. The important issue now was that in a few hours Christopher would come by on his rounds and she would get to see him again.
Zoey fell straight asleep, exhausted. She woke after an hour and lay staring up at the ceiling. She’d had a dream. She didn’t remember the details, but it had left her feeling sad and defenseless against her emotions. She wanted her old life back. She wanted her father and mother together in the next room. She wanted to erase what she had heard and learned, and especially what she had seen. She wanted to forget her mother screaming hysterical accusations at her bedroom door. She wanted to forget the image of her father in his apartment, looking like he’d had his heart torn out. She wanted to go back to being the girl who smiled more and laughed more and feared for nothing. The girl who collected quotes and wrote her endless first chapter of her never-to-be-finished romance novel. And, as incongruous as it was to feel this way, she wanted to wake up like she had that morning, with her head resting on Lucas’s chest, to hear his heart beating and feel his arm around her.
Zoey
I read a quote by Oscar Wilde. I used to collect quotes and post them over my desk in the dormer because I thought that way I would learn to be wise and understanding. But this quote just shows what a silly idea that is. Oscar Wilde said “Children begin by loving their parents: after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”
It was so right on target with what has been going on in my own life. I had loved my parents. Then I had judged them. Now I have no desire to forgive them. But the problem is that Wilde was being humorous. He was a sarcastic, ironic man who said many very clever things that were designed to make people laugh and say, oh, that Oscar, he’s so witty.
For him it was a laugh; for me it’s just the truth. Nothing funny about it. I will never forgive my parents, especially my mother, for what they did. I know I’m supposed to be all mature and reasonable and understand that they are just people, after all. Just people who occasionally screw up. But they aren’t just people. They’re my parents. Wait, forget that. Just say that they are parents, period. That means they have to deal with being parents. And that means they have to make sure their kids have a family. And if that gets in the way of what they want, too bad.
My mom told me I might be sorry one day for the way I had judged her. But no, I don’t think so. See, I’m living with the results. I’m the one whose family is screwed up. I’m the one who had to go visit her father in his pathetic little apartment. Why should I forgive?
I will get on with my life, I’ve decided that. I will do the best I can not to let this mess me up, but forget about forgiveness.