All the Lasting Things (6 page)

“I’m sure you would. But here isn’t an option.” Claudia pulled a sleek silver thermos from her bag and, her still-red eyes finding him over a capful of steaming coffee, continued in a harsher tone. “Not that you get a vote. You surrendered that right the minute you decided to play Billy Joe McAllister. You turned your ballot over to me.”

I’ll stay with Mom.

“Mom is nearly eighty, Benji, and already has enough patients,” Claudia answered. “Her hands are full.”

U think Mom will let me end up in a nursing home?

“It’s not a nursing home. For God’s sake.”

He tossed the brochure back at her.
Looks like one.

What,
he wondered,
if I tell the truth?
It was impossible to know whether an alteration to the story of his fall would spare him the torture of his sister’s good intentions. But what had once felt like a pardonable omission of a key detail now, in the fiery light of Claudia’s grief (not to mention the shadowy threat of waking in a rehabilitation facility for the aging), felt like a hoax. A hoax he was about to be punished for.

“You realize sharing a house with Mom means sharing a house with Dad?” Claudia asked.

True, he hadn’t thought of that. How could he possibly share a house with Henry? How, when nobody knew how to push Benji’s buttons better than his father, who many years ago, like an architect charged with building a young boy from the ground up, had helped install them? Henry called actors “mountebanks” and maddeningly, purposefully, added the word “the” to every title on his son’s filmography—
The Prodigy
,
The Hamster for Hannah
. And though age and illness had considerably dulled Henry’s sharpest edges, his belittling commentary continued to play in Benji’s mind, as a radio plays on even after the power’s been cut. It was Henry who Benji now heard. A cruel and cacophonous litany that rose above Claudia’s sorrow and chastening, above the blare of the clumsy roof patcher’s TV. True, he would come clean to avoid his father.

“This could be exactly what you need,” Claudia persisted, flapping the brochure in front of him like a fan. “Time to relax. Regroup.”

But Benji had stopped listening. His brain busied itself composing a confession that his sister wouldn’t automatically reject as a ploy to steer past their father on one hand, a convalescent home on the other.
What to say? What to say?

Facebook!
he wrote, adding the exclamation point with a flourish of relief. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He had 658 friends on Facebook. Certainly one of them, or a friend or acquaintance of one of them, or a friend or acquaintance of one of
them
, would cast a pitying eye on what could be billed a meagerly famous near-suicide. He was, after all, the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question (’80s edition). A little fame, like a pinch of spice, still clung to him. Certainly someone on Facebook would be willing to season their stew with it.

Claudia’s face collapsed with disdain. “Facebook.”

He’d forgotten his audience. His sister wasn’t quite the technophobe their father was, but she subscribed to a philosophy of social media that easily made her look as dated as an Atari.

“Is Ashton Kutcher going to come to your rescue? What? You’re one of his four million friends. Or maybe your prom date? She was a nice girl. Or someone else you haven’t spoken to in twenty years.”

“Yur tho mean.”

“And you’re ridiculous. If you died tomorrow, how many of those friends would be at your funeral?” This was a favorite question, one that present circumstance rendered completely inappropriate but habit and passion spurred her to ask anyway.

Benji managed a look of shock that Stella Adler would have been proud of.

“Sorry. That was a shitty thing to say. But we’ve talked about this, Benji. Relationships are like trees.”

“Ot the twee!”

“Yes, the twee. If we’re lucky, we get a few that feed a lifetime. One. Maybe two. They’re strong, substantial. They put down roots. But most of them, most friendships, are leaves. They’re here. A nice little blossom for a time. A bit of color. Then they fade. We shed them. It’s
natural
that we shed them. You’re not supposed to know what the girl you took to the prom does with her day. Joanna Goverski is eating at IHOP! Who cares?”

“‘Who cares?’” The echo came from the opposite side of the biscuit-colored curtain, followed a moment later by their mother. “Who cares about what?” Evelyn lacked the bearing and attitude to be called regal, but she had the face for it. She was tall and trim, with a fine, upturned nose, lips drawn thin by perpetual sufferance, and a helmet of immaculate silver curls. “Come on,” she called, glancing irritably over her shoulder at Henry as he shuffled into view.

“Tone,” Henry warned. “I’m not a dog.”

Ignoring this, she stepped to the far side of the bed and bent to kiss Benji. A tightness around the mouth let him know he hadn’t been forgiven. Not for nearly dying. That offense proved so mountainous, so impossible to scale, she could do nothing but overlook it. Benji knew: her anger burned for another reason, for the fact that he had lived so close for nearly two months—a half hour away!—without telling her. He hadn’t visited. Hadn’t told her where he was staying or invited her to see the show. As if she, of all people, wouldn’t have welcomed a night out. Not, as Claudia reminded her, that she would have taken it. “Who cares about what?” Evelyn asked her daughter in lieu of a hello.

Claudia got up and, hugging Henry, steered him into her chair. “They’re discharging Benji, but he needs somewhere to go.”

Perplexed, Evelyn stared across the gulf of the bed and asked, “What do you mean ‘somewhere to go’?”

“He needs supervision.”

“Why would he need supervision?” Evelyn asked, smoothing a wrinkle out of the bedspread.

“He tried to kill himself, Mother. That’s why.”

“I told you to stop saying that.”

“She’d rather admit I wet myself last week,” said Henry with a rattling struggle to clear a plug of phlegm from his throat. He swallowed. “And we all know how willing she’s been to do that.”

“Henry.” Evelyn reached for the plastic pitcher sitting on Benji’s nightstand and filled a cup with water. “Take a drink instead of sitting there hacking.”

“Henry come. Henry drink. Henry roll over and play dead.”

Like a conductor bringing his orchestra to attention, Benji tapped the baton of his marker on his pad and, with large, wounded eyes, held up the paper for Evelyn to see.

She wants me to go to a nursing home.

“It’s not a nursing home, drama queen!” Claudia jabbed the promotional pamphlet into her mother’s hand and watched as Evelyn pored over it. “He thinks he should stay with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“He doesn’t know. Someone on Facebook.”

“Facebook?” Evelyn grimaced. “That’s nonsense. He’ll stay with us.” Evelyn dropped Treadwell Acre’s best pitch into the trash as if it were a bill she had no intention of paying, then surveyed the flower arrangements next to Benji’s bed. She snapped off a daisy’s browning head. “Your room is ready for you.”

“His room is the Shrine of Guadalupe.” Henry laughed. “Let me see that. What you just threw away.”

Evelyn stopped pruning the flowers long enough to retrieve the brochure and deliver it to Henry.

“She’s starting her very own assisted living community.” He considered the hazily happy invalid on the cover and said, “You move home. I’ll move here. At least they wouldn’t talk to me like they’re training a Saint—a Saint . . . Jesus fucking—what’s the name of it?”

“Saint who? How would I know?” Evelyn answered. “We’re not Catholic.”

“The dog, the name of the dog!”

It was onto this battlefield that Benji was about to pitch himself. He saw a week into the future, waking in his childhood bed under the watchful eyes of his
Star Wars
figurines. The sound of his parents’ latest skirmish would rise with the smell of coffee from the kitchen, and Benji, hobbling downstairs as if he’d had a bull’s-eye painted on his chest, would become his father’s newest target.

“Bernard, Daddy,” said Claudia, rubbing Henry’s back. “Saint Bernard.” She turned to Evelyn and, packing away her lullaby voice, asked, “You plan to take care of Benji and Daddy by yourself? At the same time?”

“I’m not by myself. I have Sandra.”

“For six hours a day. That leaves eighteen.”

“You make it seem like I’m about to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.”

“Either way you’ll be running around until you break your hip.”

“You and your broken hip.”

“You and
your
broken hip, Mom. And who will have to take care of you then?”

“Don’t worry. I know better than to ask you.”

“Stop it!” Henry called out. “Both of you.”

Benji’s marker moved across a fresh sheet of paper with the high-pitched sound of a hungry mouse.
I have something to tell you.
He flipped the page:
I

Henry pointed and snapped, “Philomela’s trying to tell you something.”

New page:
DIDN’T

Oblivious, Claudia still faced her mother. “Benji and I agreed that he’s not going to put that kind of strain on you. Didn’t we, Benji?”

Now that he had stepped up to the edge of the cliff, Benji stopped. Jump. He was one word away—a few sharp little mouse squeaks, a simple J-U-M-P—from the truth, one syllable with the power to allay his family’s fears, to free himself from an untenable tenancy. Or would he simply be convincing everyone that his primary problem wasn’t a suicidal tendency but a psychopathic one? If his family thought he was troubled before, what would they think when he pulled the curtain back on his latest charade? They’d call him psychotic. Alcoholic. Nutcase. He’d be spared the unthinkable stay at 34 Palmer Street, but roundly delivered into a sequestered twelve-step program in the remotest Adirondack woods.

He took a deep breath before placing pen to paper, but before he could finish his sentence, he heard a voice—
that
voice—that made it impossible to go on. “Knock, knock.” He turned to see Cat McCarthy standing there shyly, half obscured by the curtain, smiling a smile of uncertain provenance. She’d traded her stylish dress for ragged jeans and a boxy yellow (but still unaccountably sexy) T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Save Compton’s Mound.” She took a hesitant step toward the bed, but managed by the time she reached him to shed all signs of apprehension. The smile surprised him with its tenderness. Even if this was a performance, even if Cat was slipping comfortably, convincingly, into another skin as he’d seen her do five nights a week for the last two months, Benji didn’t mind.

As she leaned over to kiss King Hamlet on his unbandaged cheek, Henry made a sharp warning sound, as if she were about to step off a curb into a puddle.

“Careful,” he said, the tone of his voice traveling two orbits closer to congenial. “You’ll catch a cold.”

Cat stopped, uncertain. She looked to Benji, who shook his head to erase the interruption and ready himself for that long-deferred kiss—delivered at last—while Claudia, hands on knees, bent toward Henry with the loving indulgence of a nanny. “Daddy, you know where you are, don’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t I? We’re in the hospital.”

“And you know why we’re in a hospital?”

“Benjamin’s sick.”

“He is. But not with a cold.”

Cat extended her hand to the rest of the family, explaining who she was as if they already might know. Benji breathed in the scent she brought with her, that shampoo smell he’d been so sure he’d never smell again, with an exhilarating sense of confusion. Why in the world was she here? He expected visits from Jerry and stoner Bill and maybe even Kay, whose overly ornate get-well bouquet practically reeked of schadenfreude, but never Cat. Her appearance was a puzzle, one that couldn’t be solved—not by him, not now—but one he would enjoy piecing together in his happy haze of Percocet.

She gave him a beautiful used copy of
To the Lighthouse
wrapped in newsprint and dove with Henry, whose clarity returned to him as quickly as it departed, into an animated discussion of its merits. Benji fumbled through the opening pages while Cat spoke with his father. Henry’s reading lists, which as a teen Benji tended to find joyless and demanding, had largely turned him off serious novels, but he rallied unexpectedly to these opening pages. How bad could a book be when a young boy sits ready to stab his father through the heart with a pair of scissors? But after five minutes the day nurse wandered in with her blood pressure cuff and broke up the fun. Cat, ready, it seemed, for a hasty retreat, kissed him again—a softer, more lingering kiss—or did he imagine it? He set the book down and scrambled for his pad.
Come back!
he wrote.

She laughed as if the idea hadn’t occurred to her. “If I can.”

Wait. I won’t be here. They’re discharging me.

“That’s good news.”

I’ll be with my parents for a while. U can read to me
.

“Read to you,” Claudia said, incredulous. She leaned in close to his ear, whispered, “We’re not done with the Treadwell conversation,” and, before he could protest, offered to walk out with Cat.

Benji shot her a Medusa’s stare but grabbed Cat’s hand and persevered. “Pwomise?”

“Okay,” she said with a rising blush, “I promise.”

When Cat and Claudia had left, Evelyn finished beheading the last few dying flowers before taking her spot on Benji’s bed. She placed a hand lightly on his arm and said, “Your sister loves to stir things up.”

Still savoring the delicious smoke of Cat’s promise, Benji didn’t breathe. He held his breath, as if compounding his high. He hardly noticed Henry get up from his chair, but then he felt the weight on him, extraordinary and rare. His father stood over the bed like a priest, eyes closed, head bent, one hand pressed to his son’s forehead as if to bless him. “No fever, Ev. You check.”

Evelyn shooed Henry’s hand out of the way and went through the motions of taking Benji’s temperature with supreme indulgence. “No fever,” she said, then, having ushered Henry back to his seat, turned to Benji. “What were you saying? Before your friend—” Evelyn paused at the word, turning it over like a teacup in a china shop, curious to know the price. “Before your friend came in?” She picked up his pad and turned back the page to where he’d written
DIDN’T
.