This Glittering World (23 page)

“Tomorrow. You need to make a choice. And once you’ve decided, you can’t go back. Not even if it’s the wrong choice. Not even if it hurts someone. Not even if it hurts me.”

Blood rushed to Ben’s temples.

Shadi took both of his hands in hers. She rubbed the back of them with her thumbs. “Don’t mistake this for love. We share the same sorrow. And you think if you can fix mine, take it away, then yours will go away too. But it doesn’t work like that.”

Ben was shaking his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, and in the darkness he saw Dusty’s empty rain boots standing by the front door. They were red with black spots, like ladybugs. The mud from the puddles she had splashed in still hadn’t dried the day after the accident. And he remembered thinking she couldn’t be dead, not when there was fresh mud on her boots. Not when her raincoat was still wet, hanging on the hook in the hallway.

“You need to do what is right,” she said. “And what will make you happy.”

“
This
is right.
This
makes me happy.” He was crying now.

“Promise,”
she said. “Or go.”

Somewhere a coyote howled, and it was the sound of his grief, of their shared loss. The sound of pain, the melancholy moan he’d been carrying in his body since he was eleven years old. He thought of his father’s empty drawers after he was gone, the cockeyed hangers in the closet. The empty shelf in the medicine cabinet and the vacant look in his mother’s eyes.

The coyote wailed, and their bodies moved together, pressed together until he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. And he knew she was right. It was time.

When the first pale light of dawn glanced across his face, he reached for a blanket. It was cold, and he was naked. The air in the cold trailer was like an icy breath. He opened his eyes slowly and saw that he was tangled up in the blanket Shadi had made, but Shadi was gone. Only the vague smell of absinthe and sweat lingered in the air. She must have known that he wouldn’t be able to leave if she were still there.

He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and walked out of the trailer. Sunrise and a soft layer of snow glistened, glittering in the light of a new morning. He promised Sara he would be home before she woke up. And he’d made a promise to Shadi. And later, as she slept with her cheek pressed against his naked chest, to himself.

H
is cell phone didn’t get reception until he got to Winslow. He would call Sara, apologize for being late. He would tell her he was sorry. That he was on his way.

Then he would tell her everything else. In person. He owed her that.

He pulled into a gas station for coffee and gas. He stretched and yawned and got back into the truck. He clicked his phone on and saw that there were six messages. Jesus. He felt that old familiar anger welling up inside him. And a new, wonderful and terrifying resolve.

Just calling because I can’t sleep. You’re probably still at the reception. Love you. Beep.

Delete.

A long sigh and then
click.

Delete.

It’s midnight. Maybe I’ll call over to Ned’s.
Shit.

He thought about deleting the remaining messages but went ahead and listened.

Ben
… a whispery static.
Benny, I’m scared. There’s something going on outside. There’s a car parked across the street and some guys … goddamnit it, where are you? Beep.

Oh God, Ben, I’m calling 9-1-1. Beep.

His hands started to shake and some of the hot coffee spilled on his lap.

Frank’s voice.
Ben, it’s Frank. Where the hell are you? Beep.

And that was it. The last message.
Shit, shit.
He scrolled through until he found Frank’s number and pressed
SEND.

Frank picked up after the first two rings. “I don’t know where the fuck you are, but you better get your ass down here.”

“Where are you? What happened to Sara? Is the baby okay?”

Frank’s voice grew fainter. “Jeanine, talk to him. I can’t fucking talk to him.” Ben heard the rustle of the phone being passed over to Jeanine.

“Oh, Benny,” Jeanine cried. Her voice was raw. He could barely understand her. “Just get to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.” She hung up before he could ask any more questions, and as he pulled out onto the highway, the bars disappeared from his cell phone.

He didn’t remember the drive back to Phoenix. His eyes were blurred with tears. His hands ached from gripping the steering wheel. By the time he pulled into the hospital parking lot, the memories of everything that had brought him here had faded like a hazy dream, leaving his mind blank and his joints crippled.

He stopped running only to check in and find out where Sara was. By the time he got to her room, he was clutching his chest, wondering if he might be having a heart attack. Frank stopped him at the doorway, held up his hand, and said, “Stop.”

“Where is Sara? Is she okay?” Ben craned his neck, trying to see into the room.

Frank pointed his finger into Ben’s chest and pushed so hard, it felt like a weapon. “I don’t want to know where you were. I don’t want to hear any goddamned excuses. I have no idea what you’re wrapped up in. I don’t fucking care right now. What I want to know is what you were thinking leaving her alone at the house. How could you think it was okay to leave her by herself?”

“What happened, Frank? I just want to know what happened. I just want to see Sara.”

“Goddamn you.
Goddamn you
,” Frank hissed, his eyes burning a furious red. He wiped at them as he began to cry.

“Please let me see her,” Ben said. “Please let me go to her. I’m sorry.”

When Ben entered the room, Jeanine rushed out, holding her hand across her mouth, shaking her head.

Sara lay in the bed, her face colorless, all of that sunshine faded. Ashen. She was staring out the window. She was hooked up to an IV, clear liquid dripping down a meandering tube that crept under her skin, tethered there with a strip of surgical tape.

Ben touched her feet, and her legs jerked reflexively away from him. He moved to the side of the bed and sat down in the chair next to her. He leaned toward her, brushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Sara,” he said, but before he asked, he already knew the answer. “Sara, what happened?”

She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She just opened her mouth, silently, as though someone had stolen her voice. As if she’d been completely emptied out. The color drained from her face. She was a husk. A shell.

“I wish I were dead,” she said.

Later, he would get the story in fragments. The two men who pried the patio doors open, the ones who crept into the living room while Sara cowered in the locked bathroom upstairs. Sara had told Frank that one of them kept saying,
You sure this is the right house? Then where the hell is the bastard?
And then the sound of their footsteps coming up the stairs, the slam of the nursery door, the slam of the bedroom doors. Maude whimpering.
Hey, look at this fucking dog. Some watchdog, huh?

And while they looked for him, Sara crouched in the bathtub.

Where the fuck is he? He’s not here.

He wasn’t there. Jesus, they finally came looking for him, and he wasn’t there.

Wait. Did you hear that?

Sara had slipped and fallen in the tub, which was still wet from an earlier bath, and they kicked the door down. Came at her, ripped back the shower curtain.

Jesus, who’s that? He didn’t say nothing about a girl.

Please,
she said.
Take whatever you want. I’m pregnant. Just don’t hurt me.

Then:
Let’s get the fuck out of here.

It was Frank who told Ben about the blood. That the paramedics found Sara in the bathtub, sitting in a pool of her own blood. That the fall, the stress, had been too much. It was Jeanine who slapped Ben across the face when he apologized, who pounded her fists against his chest. But it was Dr. Chandra who told him the rest. Sara was lucky to be alive, she said. During the C-section, she had started to hemorrhage. They gave her a transfusion. But it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t enough. If Sara had gotten to the hospital sooner, then the baby might have been saved. But there was too much blood lost. It was too late.

It was too late, they said. And to stop the bleeding, they needed to perform an emergency hysterectomy. It was the only way to save her life. They couldn’t save the baby, but they could save Sara.

Sara.

Sara stared out the window, untenanted. Every bit of light snuffed out.

Later, as the sun set, the sky like the inside of a blood orange, the nurse brought the baby to them. To say good-bye. They should take photos, she said. It might seem grim now, too difficult, but if they didn’t, they might regret it later. There was a company that could touch up the photos, Photoshop out the bruises and discoloration. She would give them a brochure. Sara leaned over and vomited into the plastic bin they offered her. And then she curled onto her side, facing away from Ben.

The nurse said to Ben as Sara trembled silently, “We have a certificate for her, with her footprints.”

Ben sat down in the visitor’s chair and held out his arms. The nurse gently offered him the bundle. “I’ll give you some time. As much time as you need. Just hit the buzzer when you’re ready for me to come take her.”

Ben held on, despite his body’s quaking. Despite the awful aching thud in his head. Despite the sounds finally escaping Sara, even with that terrible keening, Ben held on.

T
hat night, he dreamed again of snow.

He was wearing snow boots, each heavy as night as he walked through the woods. It was spring elsewhere, but not here. Here the ground was cold with six inches of freshly fallen snow. The sky was black but littered with a million stars, pinpricks of light and an enormous moon. The path was illuminated in cold blue light. His boots sank into the snow, each step an effort almost too much to bear. He ground his jaw, concentrated on moving forward. He thought about how many storms they had endured this winter, about how many snowflakes had had to fall to make the crusty layer of snow beneath him. He wondered how far down the earth was.

It was difficult to walk with his arms full. Each step was careful and calculated. Tentative. If he were to sink into the white, he might drop the bundle in his arms. He could disappear with it forever. On each side of him, the giant pines reached up into the sky while still bearing the weight of winter on their arms. This gave him strength.

It was so cold, his back and legs ached with it and his face had gone from stinging to numb. He could taste the cold, a bitter lozenge melting on his tongue. He felt mucous in a warm lump in his tonsils. He sniffed and hacked and spit his steaming insides into the snow. His throat ached.

His legs ached.

Finally, he got to the clearing, to the place protected by the thickness of trees. The foliage was so dense it had kept out the storms and now kept out the moon. It was dark and cold without snow or light. He peered into the shadows at what he carried. He rested the quiet bundle on the ground. And then he dropped to his knees.

The ground was exposed but frozen. He pulled the sharp spade from his back pocket and knew he should have brought a shovel. This could take days instead of hours.

It was still here, the silence like something alive. Not even wind was allowed into this fortress of quiet. It was so dark, he couldn’t see his own hands. And so it didn’t matter as he closed his eyes.

The two hot tracks on his cheeks felt like a betrayal of the cold, and so he wiped them away. His glove was rough and clumsy. He peeled it off and tossed it to the ground. And with his exposed fingers he began to unwrap the parcel from the blanket made of sunset.

He was a blind man, studying a stranger’s face. His fingers touched and hesitated, both discovering and recognizing the angles. The predictable architecture of bones, but in miniature. His clumsy thumb stuttered at the place where the quickening flutter he’d both seen and heard but never got a chance to touch now lay buried. That place between tiny throat and sternum, that place inside the small citadel of bone, once beating, now, under his touch, as still as snow.

“I
should kill you,” Frank said.

Ben, kneeling next to him in the hospital chapel, only nodded his head. He’d been sitting like this, his hands pressed together in prayers that could never be answered, for hours. Sunlight was starting to come through the small stained-glass window over the pulpit. It dappled their hands in fragments of orange and red and gold.

“I want you to start at the beginning, and I don’t want any lies. I don’t want any candy-coating, no marshmallow fluff. You owe me that goddamn much.”

And so Ben began at the beginning: a snowstorm, a Navajo boy beaten to death, his blood like a flower blooming in the snow. He told Frank about the hospital, about Shadi, about the long drive to the funeral. About all the other ghosts. He told him about Dusty, about the sorrow he’d held inside like a precious bug in a jar. As Frank shook his head, fuming, Ben tried to explain how he had come to be so cruel. Then he gave him the blue Mustang, Mark Fitch, and the two girls. He told him about Lucky, about the frat party. What he knew about the fight. And then he told him about Joe Bello.

“
Marty’s
kid?” Frank said, rubbing his temples with two thick thumbs. “Marty Bello?” Frank took a deep breath and clenched his fists.

“Listen, Frank. He had Ricky’s friend beaten up. He vandalized Shadi’s trailer. And he’s the one who hired those guys to get me. That’s why they were at the house. They were there for me.” Ben felt vertiginous, the stained-glass colors turning like a kaleidoscope, making him dizzy. Sick. “I’m sorry,” Ben said. “I’m so sorry.”

“You fucked up,” Frank said.

Ben nodded and wiped fiercely at the tears he hadn’t wanted to escape. “I know.”

Frank stood up and rubbed his hand across his head. Straightened his shoulders. “We need to make this right,” he said. ”
You
need to make this right.”

Ben nodded again. “But how?”