Saving Ben (6 page)

Mom took one shoe out of the box and ran her hand across the suede. “Then you’ll just have to practice walking in them, because stiletto heels are all the rage.”

I turned back around to face Emma who was holding the dress up to her body and looking at her reflection in the oven door. She was literally quivering with excitement. “Go ahead,” I said to her. “Try it on.”

Emma looked back and forth between Mom and me. Needing no further encouragement than the nod of my mother’s head, she took the dress and disappeared upstairs. Emma was clearly more suited to be my mother’s daughter than I was. After all, I lacked glamour, I avoided drawing attention to myself, and I’d rather take the SAT again than spend the day shopping.

When my mother’s affair with Ann Patton’s father was discovered, certain aspects of our past lives became clear. Like when the eye doctor put corrective lenses on me for the first time. I wear contacts now, but back then I was looking at the world through a child’s blue-framed glasses. The night in the rose garden was not an isolated incident, a one-time quick little kiss. Theirs was a relationship that only public humiliation, not my father, had the power to stop. My mother was much too vain to let the gossipers bring
her
down. She rallied the friends who were not afraid to be seen with a woman scorned, and she marched right on with her tennis matches and her lunch dates.

Her private life, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter. She’d never been much of a drinker before the breakup with Ann Patton’s father. Her crushed heart drove her to seek solace from a bottle of gin. And she was a really nasty drunk, a binge drinker, one double martini shy of rehab. When she wasn’t roaming the house in a fit of anger, breaking things and insulting anyone who got in her way, she went missing—like on my sixteenth birthday when my father organized a dinner party for me at the club. He was able to convince my friends that my mother had come down with a sudden bout of the stomach flu, but my friends weren’t really the ones who mattered, now were they?

Even though my mother appeared to have stopped the heavy boozing, I wasn’t ready to forgive her just yet. I used to worry that harboring so much anger for such a long time would damage my soul, but I’d learned to use her as an example of all the things not to be in life.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and took it out on the porch to see my dad. “Hey there,” I said, kissing him from behind on the bald part of his head.

He looked up from his newspaper and smiled at me. “Sweetheart! I’ve missed you.”

Ben and I resemble our father, more so than our mother. I wouldn’t call him a good-looking man, but he has good genes, and he’s in good health. His warm brown eyes draw attention away from his droopy cheeks. He’s five foot eight to my mother’s five foot nine, although that’s never stopped her from wearing super-tall heels.

“Brr,” I said, shivering. “It’s kind of chilly out here.”

“Easy for you to say,” Spotty yelled up from the yard where he and Ben were doing stretching exercises. “You haven’t just run a marathon with your sadist brother.”

“Don’t complain, Kitty Cat,” Dad said. “This cold front is a welcome relief from the heat and humidity. Here.” He tossed his paper on the coffee table and slid over to make room for me on the sofa. “Come and share some of my blanket.”

“What time did y’all get home last night?” I asked him when I was all nestled in.

He tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “Truthfully, I’m not sure. Are you checking up on us?” he teased.

I shrugged. “Seems to me like you’ve adapted pretty quickly to being an empty nester.”

Spotty plopped down in a chair across from Dad and me. “They got home about thirty minutes after you went to bed. I know this because I was still awake. The longest night of my young life to date.”

Dad and I stared at Spotty, waiting for him to explain.

Spotty used his shirttail to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Never mind. It’s probably best not to go there.”

Taking the hint, my dad untangled himself from the blanket. “I think I’ll leave the two of you to talk while I go inside for a refill. Katherine, are you ready for some coffee?”

“Sure, Dad, that’d be great. Thanks.” When I heard the screen door slam behind me, I said to Spotty, “Okay, What gives?”

He leaned over, propping his elbows on his knees, and whispered so Ben couldn’t hear him. “After you went to sleep, Emma came back downstairs to have a nightcap. She was all over Ben like flies on a cow paddy. They were both so drunk. At least he was. I don’t know her well enough yet to make that judgment. I hated to deprive Ben of the opportunity to get some leg—”

“Spotty, please! Too much information.”

“Fine,” he said, laughing. “Anyway, you know what I’m trying to say. I was afraid if I left them alone, and your parents walked in on them—”

“Naked? Yeah. That would’ve been kind of awkward.”

My father cleared his throat to announce his return. He handed me a cup of coffee. “Are you planning to use the boat today?” he asked. “Because if not, your mother and I may go over to Urbanna for lunch. We’d love for you all to join us.”

“I thought we decided this last night,” Emma said, waltzing onto the porch in the black sequin dress. She balanced herself on her tippy toes and twirled around several times like a ballerina before coming to a wobbly standstill. “Aren’t we spending the day with George and his sister? Out in
his
boat?”

“George again?” Ben mumbled, dragging himself up the steps and falling into the nearest chair. “Do we have to?”

“We wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, now would we?” Emma asked, and then executed another spin for Ben’s sake.

I watched Ben watching Emma, his eyes huge at the sight of her shapely body in the skimpy dress. He’d been flirting with her since the first day they’d met, but somewhere along the way, he’d crossed the threshold into infatuation. The look on his face was pure lust. In the short amount of time I’d known Emma, I’d already witnessed her hooking up with several different guys. As much as I liked my roommate, I didn’t want my brother to get hurt by falling for a girl who wasn’t ready for a relationship.

“Too late now,” Ben said as he nodded his head toward George and Abigail, who were speeding across the creek in their boat.

I glanced over at Emma. “Don’t you think you’re a little overdressed for tubing?”

She giggled. “Then I guess we’d better go change,” she said to Spotty and Ben as she glided toward the door.

I wandered over to the railing, watching George navigate his boat alongside our dock. The Turners worked together as a team, quietly and efficiently, like they’d done so many times before, to set the bumpers, tilt the motor, and tie up their boat.

I turned back around to face my father. “Abigail is looking really skinny,” I said in a soft voice that wouldn’t carry across the water. “I’m really concerned, Dad. She looks like an escapee from Auschwitz.”

“I know, honey.” He folded his newspaper and set it down beside him. “I saw her parents at a party last night. They are very worried. I was afraid to ask them too many questions, but it sounds as though they are getting her some help.”

“At least that’s something.” I turned back around and yelled to Abby, who was making her way up the hill from the dock. “Wanna come help me pack a picnic while everyone’s getting changed?”

She smiled up at me and quickened her pace. Abigail had always seemed younger to me than the fourteen months that separated us. She was still a child in a lot of ways, in her innocence. She was the real deal. Not overly outgoing, but honest and good. It broke my heart to think something was so horribly wrong in her life that made her want to starve herself. When she got to the porch and gave me a quick hug, I made a pact with myself to be a better friend, to stay in touch with her in the hopes she’d open up about what was troubling her.

“So, George, what am I missing out on at Chapel Hill?” I asked when he followed us to the kitchen.

“No point in beating yourself up over this, Kitty. UNC is not all that different from UVA. Think about it. They both have amazing campuses and belong to the ACC. The same fraternities and sororities are popular at both, and business school is kicking my ass at Carolina like it is Ben’s at Virginia.”

“Maybe you’re right. I don’t imagine the nursing programs are all that different either.”

“Exactly. Now . . . what’re we gonna pack for our picnic?” He opened the pantry door and popped the top off a Tupperware container, sniffing the contents. “No way! Are these Blessy’s lemon bars?”

Never mind that she’s black and has children of her own, Blessy is as much a part of our family as my own mother. In fact, through the years, she was there for me in ways my mother never was. When Mom was off on one of her excursions or sequestered in her bedroom, Blessy took care of Ben and me. She fed us a hearty breakfast every morning and a well-balanced dinner at night. She made certain my father’s shirts were ironed and left him sticky notes on the refrigerator to remind him of our sporting events and parent meetings at school. She bandaged our wounds, and when we reached the appropriate age, she talked to us about the birds and the bees.

Blessy’s ties with our family began a long time ago when she came to work for my grandparents. I never fully understood the special connection between them, but their relationship was more than just employer to employee. Theirs was a bond so strong my grandfather insisted my father take care of Blessy when she moved to Richmond to be close to a sick relative. Not that my father needed any arm-twisting. Who wouldn’t want to have such a formidable woman help raise their children?

I laughed at George when he stuffed a whole lemon bar in his mouth at once. “If you look in the refrigerator, I’ll bet there’s some of her homemade pimento cheese.”

Like a little boy with his presents on Christmas morning, George removed several containers from the refrigerator and lined them up on the counter. “Yum, here’s the pimento cheese.” He slid the container across the counter toward us and then ripped the lid off the one next to it. “Potato salad in this one, and . . . oh my god, fried chicken. Can we take some for our picnic? Please?”

“Yes George,” I said. “If it means that much to you, we can pack all of it.”

Abigail covered her mouth to hide her smile. “Do you remember their food-eating contests, Kitty? I still can’t believe they once ate a dozen eggs apiece.”

George looked up from his containers. “Come on, Yabba. Get your facts straight,” he teased. “I’m the one who ate the whole dozen. Ben hurled after only ten.”

I snatched the chicken container away from George before he could get his hands on another leg. “Better not let Ben hear you say that or he’ll insist on a rematch.”

Ben and George kept a tally—in an old composition book hidden under my brother’s mattress—of the wins and losses from their contests. Two points for eating the most eggs, and five to the winner of the basketball shootout. Wonder how many points Ben had earned for hooking up with Emma.

Every summer George worked at the Tide’s Inn—the grand old hotel located around the bend from us in Irvington—either pumping gas on the fuel dock at the marina or waiting tables around the pool. While we finished making the sandwiches and packing the coolers with bottled water and soft drinks, he entertained us with funny stories from his experiences over the summer.

We were already down on the dock, loading our provisions into the boat, when Spotty, Ben, and Emma finally joined us. “Here, let me give you a hand,” George said, holding Emma by the arm as she stepped on board. She was unsteady, but succeeded in wobbling her way to the front seat. When she slipped her T-shirt off over her head, every male pair of eyes zeroed in on her large breasts hanging out of her skimpy black bikini top.

“Emma’s never been tubing before,” Ben said, dragging the inflatable tube on board. “She wants me to go with her.”

Emma shook her head back and forth so fast it made me dizzy to watch her. “I said
maybe
, Ben. I’m not ready yet.”

“Yeah. Chillax, man,” George said to Ben. “Give her some time to get used to being on the boat.”

Spotty untied the line from the dock and jumped on the stern of the boat with me. “I’ve never known anyone to get seasick before they actually leave the dock,” he whispered in my ear.

“I guess we’re wakeboarding then. Who’s going first?” Ben asked as we were pulling away from the dock.

“Me.” George dropped the throttle back to neutral and slipped on his lifejacket. Ben made a move to take the wheel, but George blocked his path. “Abby’s driving. She knows how to make the turns the way I like them.”

“Whatever, dude.” Ben sat back down. “It’s not worth arguing about.”

George popped right out of the water and immediately began showing off his new tricks, not the simple jumps Ben could do but complicated twists and spins that require a lot of practice. Ben was sitting beside Emma, pretending not to notice, but I could tell he was taking notes on George’s fancy moves. When it was his turn, even though he hadn’t been on a wakeboard in over a year, he tried to copy one of George’s flips. He failed to get enough air off the wake, and like a stone skimming the surface, he skidded across the water on his back.

George was laughing so hard when he pulled the boat up beside Ben he could barely get his words out. “Are you okay, bro? You busted your ass big-time.”

Ben stretched his neck and grimaced. “Nothing but a little whiplash. Toss me the tube,” Ben said, pushing the wakeboard out of the water to George. “Come on, Emma. It’s your turn.”

“I’m afraid,” Emma said.

It took Ben and George ten minutes to convince Emma she wouldn’t get hurt. She finally agreed to go, but only if all three of them got on the tube together. With Emma tucked in the middle between George and Ben, Abby pulled them out into the Rappahannock where there was more room to do doughnuts. Every time the tube went outside of the wake, Emma squealed, and Ben and George, in turn, wrapped their arms around her and pulled her close. They were five-year-old boys again, fighting over the last carton of chocolate milk.