Ben was already at the house when Lisa walked in. He had one of Gladys’s dish towels tucked into his belt, which made Lisa chuckle as he greeted her at the door. “I washed the lettuce and got water all down the front of me so Gladys insisted it was either one of her aprons or this dish towel.”
Lisa slipped her arm around Ben’s extended arm as he directed her toward the kitchen. “I think it looks good on you, Ben. Besides, Benny would throw a fit if he walked in here and saw his father in an apron.”
Lifting the lid from the huge pot on the stove, Lisa asked, “What can I do, Gladys?”
Turning Lisa toward the hallway, Gladys gave her a gentle push as she ordered, “Nothing. You go get changed out of that uniform into something comfortable. Ben and I have everything under control. Benny should be here as soon as football practice is over and then we can eat.”
As Lisa changed her clothes she could hear Ben’s deep masculine voice telling Gladys one of his famous jokes. Ben could hardly finish them without breaking into a belly laugh himself. You never knew if you were laughing at the joke or just because hearing Ben laugh made you want to laugh. Humor had never been part of her past, but Ben seemed to make it easy to see the humor in almost anything. He reminded her of a teddy bear, a gentle giant of a man. She loved it when he put his arms around her, then he’d tell her something funny and they would both laugh. Ben’s body would start to quiver and a deep resounding chuckle would erupt from him until Lisa was in tears and had to beg him to stop. There was absolutely nothing about this man she didn’t love. Sometimes that fact scared her.
She and Ben were not officially dating. Officer Benjamin Jackson had been assigned the duty of escorting her from her jail cell to the conference room during the three months her attorney was preparing for trial. Then, as the trial got underway, he escorted her back and forth from the jail to the courthouse and stood at attention just a few feet from her throughout the trial. There was very little about Lisa’s life left unexposed to Ben Jackson, a fact that both comforted and mortified her. During the long, lonely afternoons in that jail cell, Ben would usually find some excuse to stop by for a chat.
Knowing any discussion regarding her trial was not permitted, Ben would always have some safe topic to start their conversations; the opening of the new Winn Dixie out on the highway, the Methodist fund raiser that got rained out, and her favorite one, the time the Moose Lodge had a chili contest during the Fourth of July celebration and almost everyone in town came down with the runs. Ben could get so animated in his storytelling she could actually envision the dignified ladies of town making a run for the port-a-potties. “Pun intended,” he had added.
Ben was fun to listen to and she began expecting and looking forward to his daily visits. He always treated her as a real person, so the days he was not able to stop by became very long days. On the days when Ben could stay a little longer than usual, the conversation would slowly drift to more personal topics, but never in great detail. Ben didn’t believe in dwelling on the past, but Lisa never got the impression he was trying to hide anything. She knew he was a widower and had a teenaged son. He attended church regularly, as did most people in this small southern town. He seldom talked about his wife, except to say she had endured a long battle with cancer, one she’d eventually lost. Lisa knew that Ben and his son, Benny, had been alone now for seven years and that Ben never dated.
Recalling the afternoon the conversation about dating came up, Lisa remembered how uncomfortable Ben had been as he explained, “I’ve been on dates, just nothing serious. You can’t be a widower in this town without everyone trying to set you up with some friend of theirs. It’s not that I want to live the rest of my life alone, but right now I need to focus on my son. Watching his mother waste away was really hard on him. I didn’t think it would be good for him to have me drag women in and out of his life just so I would not be lonely. He is going to be a senior this year and then off to college. I’ve waited this long, another year won’t kill me.”
Opening the bedroom door, Lisa thought about Ben’s determination to “wait until his son went off to college,” and how he’d said, “another year won’t kill me.” Lisa knew she and Ben needed to have a long talk and soon. It was more than a week before that conversation took place and neither of them liked its conclusion. Even though they were not officially dating, the gossipers in town were frantically flapping their tongues. As a result, several of the guys on Benny’s football team had taken it upon themselves to keep him informed of everything being said about the newest couple in town.
One night after dinner, Ben opened their conversation with, “It’s hard living in a small town sometimes. I know these boys like Benny, but that isn’t stopping them from being cruel to him. Actually, I think the real reason they are being so cruel is because they really are jealous. The three boys that are giving Benny the most trouble have absentee fathers. One is a doctor who is never home. Another has gone through two wives and is currently pursuing his third target, while the third one has had two DUIs and couldn’t care less what happens to his son.
“Throughout high school Benny had been the guy they all liked and admired. When these three guys were busy complaining about how stupid or selfish their fathers were, Benny would stay quiet. I tried to never miss a game. After a game, if their dads were not able to make it, Benny and I would invite them out for burgers. But now, these same boys are the ones making life unbearable for him.”
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Lisa said as calmly as possible. “Ben, remember when you told me you didn’t want to drag women in and out of Benny’s life? You said waiting another year wouldn’t kill you, remember?”
“Well, that was before I fell in love with you. Now it would kill me to wait another year, believe me on that one.”
“Ben, we have to think of Benny right now. This is his senior year and then he will be off to college and we can start our life then. I don’t like this anymore than you do, but we can’t make our happiness Benny’s burden, can we?”
“But, Lisa, just putting off getting married won’t make this go away. I am not willing to stop seeing you, not talk to you, pretend we don’t care for each other for a whole year because of three selfish boys who don’t know any better.”
“Ben, we have been talking about getting married at Christmas, right? That way my sister and the whole family would be together. We are just talking about six more months. We can be patient, can’t we?”
“Lisa, that is not the issue. I can wait another six months. I’m not a foolish teenager who lives only for today. We are talking about what it will cost us to make the gossip die down. That, I am not willing to do.”
Lisa was almost afraid to ask her next question. “Well then, Ben, what is Benny willing to endure? How does he feel about all of this?”
Hanging his head, his shoulders heaving as he took a deep breath, “Benny wants us to cut it off.” Turning his face toward Lisa, he clarified. “Benny likes you, Lisa. He really does. He is a seventeen-year-old who can’t see past tomorrow, and tomorrow seems unbearable to him.”
With more calmness than she was feeling, Lisa responded, “Well, I guess we either make ourselves happy and Benny miserable, Benny happy and us miserable, or we find a way to help Benny come to terms with the fact that not everyone in this world is going to play fair so we need to find a way to help him deal with these people in a way that we can all live with.”
“It’s not fair, Lisa. You and I have both been waiting for years to fall in love. No one has the right to determine our future.”
Taking hold of his hand, Lisa almost whispered, “We won’t have a future if we don’t handle this right. Benny is hurting and we need to help him deal with this so we don’t have to look back someday and know that we were selfish. We can give Benny some time and the help he needs so he doesn’t have to ever look back and regret how he handled this as well. Benny knows how much you have sacrificed for him, and he knows how much you love me. If we just cut it off because he wanted you to, he will always know it was because that was the easy way out for him. That truth will never sit well with him, once he grows up and is out on his own.”
“When did you get so smart about teenage boys?”
“I’m not so smart,” quipped Lisa. “You notice I didn’t tell you how we’d help Benny. I don’t know how we will go about this, but I know where we might start.”
Ben responded, “Prayer, right? But I seldom do that in front of anyone. Years of church services, community service projects, hauling Benny’s youth group friends to every social on the calendar; those were easy. This is such a private act and I always feel so clumsy with words.”
“Ben, first of all, I’m not just anyone. I’m the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with, remember? We need to start getting comfortable praying in front of each other. Besides, Ben, God doesn’t care about the words we use. He cares that we talk to Him. It took me two long years of listening to Gladys talk to God about me before I was willing to do it myself. I loved to hear her pray for me, even when I protested its value. I know it does work, especially when you don’t have a clue about what to do next.”
Taking Lisa’s hand in his big mitt, Ben reticently said, “Well, that about sums up our situation because I don’t have a clue what to do next.” Lifting Lisa up off the sofa, Ben timidly suggested, “So, before we talk to Benny, let’s talk to God together.”