So for once, I’m not going to be, either.
Chapter 21
Kit
When it’s been a month since I’ve seen Ben, when I’ve worn out all my memories of him in my house, in my bed, even those brief times he was with me at work, I go to the salvage yard.
I’ve been back for a couple of weeks now, my dad settled into the trailer with Candace, and Alex opting to stay in Ohio for a month or so to keep an eye on things. I’d offered to stay too, had winced at the thought of Alex being there on his own, but he’d insisted.“You need to get back, Kit,” he’d said.“You need to be home.”
He was right. I did need to be home, and anyways, I think Alex needed to be in Ohio, or, at the very least, needed to be in one place for a while. At work, things have been slow, a summer lull, Dr. Singh and I adjusting to the awkward aftermath of the Beaumont offer and our subsequent conversation about it when I’d come back to town.“I need more time,” I’d told him, the first day I was back in the office, and he’d said,“I don’t think you do.”We’d gone to lunch that day, a winding, two-hour affair at a Chinese buffet which provided a perfect opportunity for breaks to plate-reload when the conversation got hard. I’d told him my reasons for not wanting the job—the professional and the personal reasons, though I’d left out everything about Ben. And Dr. Singh had told me he hadn’t wanted to take the money, that he was nervous and unsettled by the contract requirements anyway. I told him about the lottery. I told him I understood if he wanted someone else to have the job. And he told me there was no one else who could do the job the way I could, and the whole department wanted me on board for as long as I was happy.
Once we’d settled the bill, I’d asked him, hot-faced and fidgety, who it was that had called him from Beaumont, but deep down, I already knew the answer: not Ben.
That evening, I’d made an offer to my contractor to move up my kitchen renovation, and then I’d added, on a reckless whim, a contract to work on my upstairs bath. Basically, I’ve made it very, very difficult to live there comfortably, and so most days I’ve stayed with Zoe or Greer. I know I’m lying to myself about why I’ve done this. I say it’s because it’ll be better to get the major renovations done before the school year starts up again. I say that since money isn’t really an issue, I might as well pay for the rush jobs, even though this kind of spending is entirely out of character for me. But really, it’s because I’m rattling around in that house, too upset to be alone with my thoughts, missing Ben so much that I’m restless with it, unable to sit still. I suspect Zoe and Greer know this too, though they don’t say anything.
So going to see Henry at the salvage yard—I say it’s to look into the restored clawfoot tubs he has—is only one of the decisions I’ve made since I’ve been back that has more to do with Ben than I’m willing to admit.
It’s Sharon who’s out front when I arrive, and judging by her face, I’ve not been missed around here, or at least I’m no one’s favorite. Somehow, even when she says hello, her lips seem to stay pursed, displeased. She asks how I’ve been but it seems pinched and obligatory. If anything, this oddly makes me like Sharon even more—I don’t think Ben quite realizes it, but Sharon watches him as if he’s her very own. At the Crestwood party, Sharon had flushed with pride when Ben had told her that she looked nice, a genuine reaction that seemed so different from the way Ben interacted with his mother. But I still don’t relish the thought of being under her gaze, and she also seems relieved when I ask for Henry.
He’s in the office, at the workbench, working on rewiring a light fixture that right now is only a small bulb on a wire, but I’ve been around here enough times to know it probably goes to something beautiful and unique and old. At first, I hover in the doorway, unsure if I’ll be able to handle a similarly chilly reception from Henry. I think if I do, it might break me, might ensure that I never come back here again. But when he turns, there’s a familiar light in his eyes, and he stands from his stool to greet me.
“Look at you!” I say, noticing that he’d been able to stand without his cane, without using the table for leverage.
“Still can’t walk without the cane,” he says, smiling.“But I’m up and down mostly on my own now, especially if I’m up high enough. Feeling pretty good.”
“I’m so glad,” I say, still staying in the doorway, still unsure.
“How’s your father doing?”
“He’s doing better. He’ll be okay, I think, so long as he takes care of himself a little more.”
“Good of you to go there to be with him,” Henry says.“It makes a real difference.”
I barely manage a nod to this, look down toward my feet. I don’t know if it made a real difference to my dad that I was there, not how it mattered for Henry to have Ben. I’d arranged to take care of expenses, and I’d done my best to get to know Candace better, to steer clear of any ugly topics between me and Dad. But he mostly seemed embarrassed by my presence, once he was more awake, and the only day I saw him relax a bit was the day Alex took me to the airport to fly home. Ben is so lucky to have Henry. I wonder if he knows that.
“Come on in,” Henry says, gesturing toward the small table where I once sat with Ben and River, talking about physics.“Keep me company while I do up this wiring.”
“Sure,” I say, but then quickly add,“I mean, I really came to look at some bathtubs.” I don’t want him to think I’m doing what I’m really doing, which is checking up on him, mining for any information I might be able to get about Ben.
But Henry sees through me, same as everyone else does, I guess, and waves me in.“Sure.I can show you some if you give me a few minutes on this.”
I settle in at the chair facing his workbench so I can watch him tinker—it’s hard to believe that when I met him, he was in a wheelchair, his arm bound close to his body. We sit like that for a while, quietly, comfortably, and it’s such a contrast to the uneasiness I felt in Ohio, even in spite of the awkwardness of the situation between us. It’s that comfort, I think, that emboldens me now.
“How’s Ben?”
Henry’s hands barely pause in his task, but I’m watching him so closely that I notice.“He’s all right. Working a lot.”
“Yeah,” I say dumbly, as if that’s to be expected, as if I know Ben’s work habits in Houston so well.“Well, I’ll bet he’s glad to be back.”
Henry’s response to this is a hum of something—not assent, but not disagreement, either. I wish I hadn’t asked now. It’s spoiled the easy silence that was between us before. When I’m about to excuse myself, tell him maybe Sharon can show me around, he speaks up.
“You know, when he was a boy, about a week after his mother moved out, he snuck out in the middle of the night, took his bike.”
I stiffen in my seat a little, bracing myself. When I was with Ben, I’d been desperate to hear stories from when he was a kid. I’d shared things—embarrassing, sometimes sad things—about the way I’d grown up, but Ben had kept things close. I don’t know if hearing this now is what I want or what I shouldn’t want.
“I about went crazy with worry,” Henry goes on, seemingly unaware of my discomfort.“Back then, I did a lot of that with Ben. He was always in trouble. He finally showed up at home a few hours later, didn’t say a word, just sat in a chair while I screamed my head off at him.” Henry pauses, stretching his left hand, fingers out and in, wrist back and forth.“That night Laura calls, all upset, asks how he’s doing. She told me he’d ridden his bike to where she’d worked, waited outside for her until she showed up. Begged her to come back, promised he’d be a better kid. He cried his heart out, I guess, and Ben wasn’t much of a crier, ever. She had Richard bring him home, but Ben insisted on getting dropped off a few blocks away.”
I think about how Ben makes his living, about how every aspect of his business is about saying the right thing to get someone to come with him, about how he’d never, not from that first day we met, managed to say the right thing to me. That night at the Ursinus, and after he’d said he loved me, I’d wanted him to say something about the two of us, about how we could be together, but he’d never quite managed that. He’d never puthimselfout there. I think, horribly, about that moment he stood before me in the hospital:I’ll do anything.“That’s…terrible,” I manage, around what feels like a big ball of cotton swelling in my throat.
