The Fives Run North-South (19 page)

“Okay, Ben. I’ll have your baby. We’ll give this a try. I have one condition.”

“Anything.”

“You ought to hear the condition first.”

“No need.”

“You always jump before checking the depth of the water?”

“With you. And it’s not something I’ve ever regretted. So what’s your condition?”

“We move to Atlanta after graduation. I’ll be halfway there, with the tough part still to come. I want my family and friends around. I want to start my life there. It’s too cold here.”

“Atlanta?”

“Water’s a bit shallow now, isn’t it,” she said.

“No. I mean, I always assumed…”

“That’s your problem, Ben. With us, you just assume.”

“Oh, Ben, I never thought nine months would last this long. I don’t know if I can take any more.”

“Hang in there, Sam. I’m here.”

“So?”

Rubbing her hair, wiping the sweat from her forehead, Ben said. “You did it. We made it.”

She smiled weakly. “Whew. That sucked a little.”

“I love you,” he said.

“Ditto.” Her standard response.

“Edward’s being checked out. I have to go be with him. Are you okay?”

“I just need to rest,” she said.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked, squeezing her hand.

She nodded. “We’re going to be fine.”

“Samantha?”

“In here.”

“Can I turn on a light?”

“Mmmm.”

“Why’s Edward crying?”

No answer.

“Samantha?”

Ben walked into the nursery. He was still sweating from the short walk from his car to the front door. He was still amazed at how fucking hot it was in Georgia. He flipped on the lights then lifted his son to his chest, patting him on his back. Ben noticed that the diaper was wet through. In about a minute, the crying stopped. Ben carried Edward into their room. Turning on the light, he saw his wife lying on their bed with her pillow over her head.

“Samantha?”

Slowly she lifted the pillow from her head. Her hair was wild and tangled, her eyes red and swollen.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Can’t what?”

“Take this anymore. I’m done.”

“Sam, it’s that
post-
part
…”

“Don’t! Don’t you blame it on that.”

“But…”

“No. I knew it. I knew it the day I got pregnant. But you talked me into it.”

“Look,” Ben said. “I’m here now. I’ll handle Edward. Why don’t you go to your sister’s for a few days. Catch up on sleep. You know…”

“That’s not going to do it.”

“Samantha…”

“You made me a promise.”

“What?”

“You know.”

Ben froze. Edward gurgled. Crying would return shortly.
Not now
,
Ben thought.
Please
.
Samantha had stiffened when hearing it, she knew, too. Ben expected her to harden. Instead, her face softened.

“Ben,” she said. “I do love you. Maybe if we’d not gotten pregnant…”

“No…”

“You made me a promise. You have your son. You’ll be a good father, I know it. He’ll have a better shot with you alone than he would with me included as his mother. I’ll sign whatever document you want, but I want out.”

“You’ll regret it someday…please, just take a few days with your sister. If your answer’s the same then, maybe…”

“It will be the same, Ben. It’s how I am. I look at Edward and there’s nothing. Nothing except maybe a growing resentment. I know. I picture myself walking away, and I feel nothing but relief. And that it’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“But you’re his mother…”

“It means nothing to me. I’m broken somehow, because I know most women have that instinct. But those wires aren’t connected for me. I know you think this is some temporary hormonal thing…but it’s not. I just know it’s not. I’m not even going to give you a false hope that I might return someday. I need you to leave with Edward. Go back up north. And go with full certainty that I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Sam…”

“I’m done, honey. I loved you, but I’m done.”

So Ben took his son home to Boston. Over the next few months, his feeling that Samantha would relent and call him faded. Over the next few years, he recognized that his love for her had been grounded in stuff that could never have held, whether they’d had Edward or not.

She’d given him his son, and in the end, it’s probably all he’d ever needed from her, really.

Shoulder to shoulder, a promise he’d had from his own father that he’d now given his son. And for fifteen and a half years, it had been all either of them had needed. Until it wasn’t enough any longer. Early on, people told him that Edward’s behavior was “typical teenager.” Somehow, Ben had an underlying feeling that it was beyond typical. His son was fading, and as much as he reached out, it was like trying to grasp the setting sun. Soon, even the most optimistic of his friends stopped attributing Edward’s behavior to the effects of adolescent hormones.

Then he was gone.

The damned knocking wouldn’t stop.

“Come on, Ben,” Paul said from the other side of the door.

That damned knocking.

Shit.

The room was warping around him, and he wondered why his left foot seemed so much heavier than his right. Or was it the other way around? Getting up, he lunged forward and made it to the door. He closed one eye, lifting his hand to pull back the little security bar then reached down and turned the door handle. As the door open, he squinted as the light behind Paul drained into his room.

“Jesus, Ben,” Paul said, reaching out. “Let me help you to the bed.”

“I’d still be there if you hadn’t knocked, I mean…”

“Easy does it.”

Paul guided Ben to the bed, where he fell back, sitting for an instant then melting into lying. Paul found a
quarter
-
full
bottle of wine beside another empty one. He took it into the bathroom and poured it out. Then he walked in and lifted Ben’s legs so that they were completely on the bed.

“Edward,” Ben mumbled.

“I know,” Paul said.

Paul looked around one more time to make sure there was nothing left for Ben to drink, but when he saw that Ben was now passed out, knew it would not be a problem anymore that night.

20

“I
have a headache.”

“Oh, really?” Paul said, as he spread jelly on his toast.

“What’s that mean?” Ben asked.

“I tucked you in last night.”

“Oh.”

“So the headache doesn’t surprise me. Seeing you eat, now that’s a shocker.”

Ben shrugged, shoveling eggs into his mouth.

“You want to talk about it?” Paul asked.

“Not particularly.”

“You said ‘Edward’ when I was there. What would have triggered that?”

Ben shrugged.

“Been a while since you’ve brought that up,” Paul said, as he filled his mouth with toast. After he finished chewing he said: “I suppose it’ll never go away completely, will it? I still think you should see someone.”

“It’s been nearly ten years. I’ve adjusted.”

“Except when you burp your emotions by hitting the bottles, doing your best Robert Downey Jr. imitation.”

“That was purely recreational. I’m on vacation here.”

“Sure you are,” Paul said. “And by the way: what kind of guy goes on a bender with cab? Be a real man and get a bottle of vodka or scotch next time.”

“Paul?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

After a few minutes, Paul said: “You know I can’t stand sitting here with only your chewing to listen to. Can I talk if I change the subject?”

“If you feel the need to fill the void.”

“I do.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have to get back to New York today. I can come back up after the weekend if you’re still here and you need me.”

“I think I can manage. I’m going back to Dad’s today.”

“What are you going to do?”

“My list is longer than I’ll be able to manage, but no worries. I’m going to start in the office.”

Paul’s eyebrows raised. “Oh?”

“He’s got mail. Accounts I need to close. Nothing to do with
Dented
.”

Paul nodded. They ate in silence for a while. Ben increased the sound of his eating.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” Paul said.

Ben chuckled.

“Sure you’re okay with me taking off to New York?” Paul asked.

“Hell, yeah. Portsmouth’s supposed to be a place of peace and quiet. You have a way of negating that.”

“At least I can eat with my mouth closed.”

“Fuck you.”

Ben threw his napkin on the table, sat back, and rubbed his stomach. “Oh, and Paul,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for everything.”

“Anytime.”

Despite what he’d told Paul at breakfast, as Ben sat at his father’s desk, he found himself reaching for the pile of stuff that was part of
Dented
.
He picked up the next chapter, the last chapter his father had ever written. In reading it, he fell back into the world of Adam and Suze Mann. He remembered why some had said that this book was a return to form for Rob Keaton. Ben never felt that his father’s skills had diminished, and thought that this story was as addicting as any he had ever written. As he ended the chapter, a pit grew in his stomach (nothing to do with the wine from last night, really). It was a strange brew: a
story
-
lover’
s anguish that a good story was going to end prematurely, and a son’s realization that his father’s voice had gone silent midsentence. He set the chapter down on the desk, knowing that only he knew what millions were wondering: Adam’s next steps.

And Randall Grosse’s first dialogue.

Ben looked back at the pile of stuff for
Dented
.
He saw his father’s
five
-
by
-
seven
black
notebook
—
the
one he carried around when he wrote his novels. His eureka book. A place where he
could
—
and
did
—
write
his thoughts and ideas for his current project. Those who were used to Rob had grown accustomed to his constant pecking in that book. He would do it
anywhere
—
while
eating, at the movies, driving (some of his more scribbly entries). He would halt conversations midstream, tilt his head, pull out his notebook, and write a note. After which, he’d resume the conversation as if nothing had occurred.

Ben had seen these notebooks before. His father got a new one with every book. No one but Rob could figure out most of the contents; some of it was unrelated to the book itself. Reminders of things he wanted to do (tape
Lost
, buy a cucumber) and sometimes ideas for future books. As Rob had added his thoughts into his work, or completed the task, he would cross out the notes. When a page had been completely crossed out, he’d tear it out altogether. By the end of any book, Rob’s notebook would be reduced to skeletal remains and tossed in the trash.

Ben was curious, so he flipped open the black notebook. Sure enough, the first page was littered with obscure notes and partial sentences. He smiled as he read over some of the more mundane entries, which didn’t have any apparent relevance to
Dented
.

Don’t use
Hangers
-
On
Cleaners for dry cleaning. Who uses that much starch on sports shirts?

Paul: Keep that
Esquire
guy off my back.

Pillows.

Use Glass again.

Colors of red.

Ben scanned as he flipped through the pages. His father had probably ripped out nearly half of them; the remaining were almost filled, leaving perhaps only a dozen empty at the back. Looking back at the comments, he again saw: “Colors of red.” He thought that perhaps this could have something to do with the book. The red SUV. Perhaps there would come a point where the specific color of red became important in the story line. Across the desk, he saw a highlighter pen. Grabbing it, he highlighted that line. As he combed the rest of the page, he highlighted anything that could possibly be related to the story. It would take him a while, but he figured he could do this throughout the notebook and would then have distilled it into some rough outline of what had yet to be written.

Why are you doing this?
Ben asked himself.
Simple curiosity?

Ben’s father didn’t create an outline when writing his books.

“The outline’s up here,” he’d say, pointing to his head. “And is subject to the whims of firing neurons and eroding gray matter.”

As with most popular writers, the subject of his method of creating stories came up in multiple interviews through his life. And Ben had the additional benefit of long,
wine
-
sipping
nights discussing the
story
-
building
strategies. Rob always started with a skeletal story to which he added characters. For him, it was always the characters that
mattered
—
they
shaped the story rather than the other way around. So as he populated his rough story outline, he sometimes surprised himself when the characters deviated from his original plot. Never by much, but in what became his favorites, by enough to surprise him even as he was writing the books. He became a strange split personality: both author and audience. He always felt that putting an outline in writing held him prisoner to it, as if by going on paper the plot became less pliable. The curse of the writer: paper locks it in.

Before he realized it, Ben had flipped through most of the pages in his father’s notebook. And to his surprise, he’d highlighted a vast majority of the content. More than he would typically have seen in similar notebooks for other novels. It dawned on him that there was enough information there to really assemble the direction of the story. It made sense. As accomplished and confident as his father had been in his writing, he’d already published a good chunk of the book. He would do a high wire without a net, but only to a certain degree. If the audience was seeing early chapters, he had to be exceedingly confident that the journey he’d started in such a public way had a satisfactory destination.

Ben leaned back and rubbed his head, which still rang from last night’s drinking. Checking his watch, he saw that the day was approaching late afternoon. He was hungry since he’d skipped lunch. Looking across the desk, he saw a stack of mail and remembered he’d intended to go through it for any urgent items. No energy for that now.

He went into his father’s office closet, and as expected, saw an old briefcase. He brought it to the desk and filled it with the notebook, the chapter from
Dented
,
the unopened mail, and other
important
-
looking
documents.

He was ready to go back to his place in the city. He knew he’d return here, probably as early as next week, but wanted to get out of the hotel, to his own place and settle down. He grabbed the case and walked out of the quiet house. “I’ll be back,” he promised the ghosts.

He got in his car and felt overwhelming loneliness, which was foreign to him considering he’d chosen a life of relative solitude.

Or perhaps it had chosen him. Either way, he’d grown accustomed to it.

He made it home by nine. He’d eaten a burger on the way, and it had dropped into his stomach and expanded. He went to his bathroom to see if he had any
Alka
-
Seltzer
. There was none, so he grabbed a beer and settled into his couch to channel surf. He woke up about midnight with the TV on
late
-
night
SportsCenter
. His phone was beside him, so he picked it up and dialed.

It went to voice mail, so he dialed again.

This time he answered. “Hmmmhello,” grunted Paul.

“You asleep?”

“I was.”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever. What couldn’t wait?”

“I’ve made a decision,” Ben said.

“Oh?”

“I’m going to grow a beard.”

“A beard.”

“Weather’s getting cold, and I’ve never had one so thought I’d grow a winter beard.”

“Okay,” Paul said. “Is that all?”

“Uh
-
huh
.
Good
-
bye
.”

“Yeah.”

Ben hung up looked at the television. Highlights of a preseason basketball game. Ugh. He lifted the phone and hit the button to redial.

“What?” Paul said, answering after just two rings.

“Get me a deal from the boys and girls at
Esquire
. I’ll finish
Dented.
”