Fire Down Below (9 page)

***

We took a shower and then decided on
a nap. I couldn’t help notice how restless Ben seemed. He kept rolling around
and plumping his pillow. I nearly said something, but then he must have gotten
comfortable because he remained quiet and still. It was an overcast day outside
and I could hear rain tapping lightly against the roof and window. As I drifted
off to sleep, Ben started talking to me. I was sort of half listening, but when
I heard him say the words “get married” my eyes flew open.

“What did you just say?”

“I said I think we should get
married.”

I took a long moment to digest
this, trying to decide whether he was joking or not. He certainly sounded
serious. “We’re too young,” I finally said.

Ben chuckled. “We’re not too young.
We’re both twenty-three.  Heck a lot of people get married younger than that, though
I have to agree that would be too young.” He put his arm around me. “I love you
Kate. I’ve never felt this way with anyone and the more I think about it I
can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t get married.”

Technically I was still twenty-two
and wouldn’t be twenty-three for another couple of months, but I decided not to
correct him on this. Instead I lay there very still. I tried to decide how I
felt about what he was saying. It occurred to me that most women would probably
have felt overjoyed, and I know that’s how I was supposed to feel when a guy I
loved was asking me to marry him. For some reason overjoyed was not the word I
would have used to describe the emotion I felt. I’d say dread was a far better
word. Yes, that was it.

Dread.  

I felt dread because I knew we’d
reached one of those points in a relationship where there was no going back.
It’s like how it is after you sleep with someone the first time and you know
you can never return to just holding hands again. Ben had taken us to the next
level, but it wasn’t a level I felt ready for, and I felt dread because I didn’t
know how we could go back to how it was before.

“So what do you think?” he asked.
“I know I’m kind of throwing this at you, but how do you feel about it?”

I sat up and pulled my knees in, wrapping
my arms around myself. “Listen Ben, there’s something I need to tell you.” Looking
up he seemed relaxed and confident and it struck me that he obviously assumed I’d
marry him. “You know how you’re planning on going back to school? Well, I’ve
been thinking of doing the same thing. That’s why I’ve been so busy lately.
I’ve been putting together a portfolio for art school.”

“That’s great,” he said. “I think you
should definitely get your degree. We’ll both be in school at the same time
then, but I don’t see how that’s a problem for us getting married.”

“It is a problem.” I paused and
then stared down at my legs. I took a deep breath before plunging ahead. “It’s
a problem because all the schools I’m applying to are on the east coast.”

He looked puzzled. “Well, I could always
go to law school out there...,” he was saying it slowly, studying me, and
judging by the expression on his face I knew he was putting two and two
together. “You don’t want to get married do you?” he said in a flat voice.

“I don’t think I’m ready for a
commitment that big yet.”

“I see. And when were you planning
on telling me about school?”

“Well, I haven’t even applied to
any of the colleges yet. I’m still getting all the paperwork together. I don’t
even know if I’ll get accepted. And then there’s all the tuition I have to
figure out how—”

“Jesus, Kate!” Ben suddenly threw
the covers back and swung his legs down, so he was sitting on the edge of the
bed away from me. “I don’t believe this! Here I am planning on marrying you, so
we can have a life together, and the whole time you’re planning on moving away.
How could you not tell me? How could you be so selfish?”

I didn’t answer at first, taken
aback by his anger. “I’m still in the planning stages and I didn’t want to upset
you. I don’t even know whether it’s going to work out or not.”

“You didn’t want to upset me? What
the hell are you talking about? Oh my God.” There was a horrible expression on
his face as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. “You don’t...love...me.”
He said it slowly, like a fact that had just dawned on him.

“
What?
That’s not true!”

Ben put his head down, so his face
was in his hands, shaking his head. I quickly went over and tried to put my
arms around him, but he pushed me away.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I DO love
you. This is crazy. When you told me you’ve never felt like this with anyone
before, it’s the same for me. I’ve never felt like this before either.” I put
my hand on his back, but he shrugged it off again.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Come on, Ben.”

He ignored me and got up from the
bed and started getting dressed, shoving his legs into his pants, pulling on
the same shirt he wore earlier. I felt dizzy as I watched him, that dizziness
you feel when your life is spinning out of control and there’s nothing you can
do to make it stop.

“Please don’t leave,” I said. “I
know I’m not ready to marry you right now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love
you. Even if I go to school on the east coast I’m sure we can still figure
something out. We can still be together.”

He turned around and I saw that
his eyes were red and angry. “Fuck you,” he said in a strangled voice. “We’re
finished. Do you hear me? This is over between us.”

My mouth opened in shock. “Don’t
say that! How can you say that?”

Ben glared at me and when he spoke
his voice shook. “If you loved me you would try to include me in your life,
Kate. I know we’re not always into the same things, but I want you close to me,
so I try. You never try though. You always keep me separate.”

“That’s not true.  I just don’t
want to force you into doing things you don’t like.”

He kept talking as if I hadn’t
spoken. “And here I was worried that you’d think my going to law school would affect
our relationship, when the whole time you were making plans to go away to
school and those plans don’t include me at all!”

“Well, you were making plans to
get married without telling me. You didn’t even ask me to marry you—did you
notice that? You
told
me we should get married. Don’t you think I deserve
a real proposal? Not some half-tossed comment while we’re lying in bed
together.”

He glared at me. “Would it have
made a difference?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I’d asked you to marry me
while we were on top of that hill overlooking the valley, someplace romantic
like that—because that’s what I had originally planned—would you have said
yes?”

I wanted to respond, but I didn’t
know what to say because the truth was it wouldn’t have changed anything. I
felt sick to my stomach. Ben was still watching me with a stony expression and
I was almost tempted to take it all back, tell him I wanted to get married,
tell him I was just scared, but I knew I couldn’t because it wasn’t the truth
and because I really did love him, I felt he deserved nothing less than the
truth.

“Just what I thought,” he said
when I didn’t answer. And then he left.

I nearly got up and went after
him, begging him to stay, but I didn’t. Instead I sat on the bed for a long
time staring at the wall across from me—every line and crack, floor to ceiling—the
long empty wall. At some point I started to cry. I cried loudly, wailing like a
child, and then I went into the bathroom and took off the whole roll of toilet
paper and sat there on the toilet seat crying and blowing my nose.

I knew I was going to miss him. I
was going to miss all the wonderful things about him.

I began to walk around the house
looking out each window. I felt sad, but at the same time I knew that I was
only twenty-two years old and I wasn’t ready for a lifelong commitment. As bizarre
as it sounds, deep down, I even felt a strange sort of relief. I can do
whatever I want now. I’m free to go to school. I’m free to meet new people. I
wouldn’t have the pressure weighing down on me always feeling like I have to
please Ben.  

He returned from wherever he’d
gone to well after midnight. I listened as he came into the bedroom, fumbling
around in the dark, kicking his shoes off. I began to wonder if maybe he’d
changed his mind, that maybe he’d realized it didn’t have to be all or nothing.
He didn’t say anything though, but climbed into bed right beside me. I moved
towards him. It was then that I noticed he smelled like alcohol and, as I
peered at him, I realized he was already asleep. I shook his shoulder trying to
wake him, but he didn’t rouse in the least bit, in fact he had that deep wet
breathing of someone who was passed out drunk. This pierced my heart more than
anything and I started crying all over again. I’d never seen Ben drunk before.
Not ever. I could only imagine what sort of horrible shape he must have been in
to actually go sit in a bar somewhere and drink himself into oblivion.

***

The drive back to Seattle the next
morning was the worst three hours I’ve ever spent in a car in my life. I was
hoping it would give us a chance to clear things up, but every time I tried to
say anything he’d only turn the music up louder. And to make it all that much
worse he kept playing
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
. It felt like an exorcism,
like he wanted to throw it on the fire along with everything else.

Ben had barely spoken two words
since we’d woken up that morning. I felt guilty when I saw that he had a
terrible hangover. I watched as he rooted around in the cabinet for a bottle of
aspirin and then stood at the kitchen sink drinking glass after glass of water.
I tried to speak to him. I told him I thought we should talk, but he shook his
head.

“There’s nothing more to say.” He wouldn’t
even look at me when he spoke, but stared out the window.

Finally we got back to the city and
he drove me directly to my house. He pulled my bags out and carried them up the
front steps, and as he started to walk away, I grabbed his arm. I thought he’d
pull away, but he stopped and stood there gazing at the sky.

 I waited until he turned to look
at me for the first time. Our eyes met and when I saw the coldness in his, all
the things that were bottled up inside of me that I’d been trying to say for
the last few hours died. We simply stood there, our eyes locked on each other, and
then wordlessly he turned and walked away. That was the last time I saw or
spoke to Ben.

Not that I didn’t think of going
to see him or of trying to call because I did constantly, but something always
stopped me. I felt sad in a way I never had before. It was like a part of my
heart had been crushed beyond repair. I cried for weeks and weeks. Life was a
misery and I wondered if I’d ever feel normal again.

Eventually I began to feel
something else though. Anger. I felt angry because, frankly, I didn’t deserve
to be treated this way. He’d told me I was selfish, but who was really the
selfish one here? The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I felt. Ben only
wanted things his own way. It was all or nothing. Was it really so wrong that I
wanted to go to a prestigious art school? Was it so wrong that I simply wasn’t
ready for marriage? The truth is I would never have treated Ben the way he was
treating me. He’d made a decision about his own life, but he’d also made one about
mine when he hadn’t any right to.

The Present Day….

About a half hour
before my
lunch with Ben, Declan stands in my office doorway studying me.

“Are you all right?”

I glance over at him and try to
smile. “Don’t I look all right?”

“Truthfully, you look a little pale.
I came down to tell you that I hope you have a nice time today, but you don’t
seem quite well.”

I shrug. “I found out Ben is
married or at least engaged.”

Declan nods. “So that’s it. You
were expecting certain things from this reunion after all?”

“I guess. It was so long ago that
we dated and the whole thing blew up in my face in the end. Still, I thought it
seemed fated when we ran into each other.” I sigh. “Now I’m thinking maybe I should
cancel out altogether.”

Declan comes in and sits down on
the edge of my desk. “Don’t do that. At least meet with him. Otherwise you’ll
regret it.”

“I don’t know.”

 “Hey, if you want I’ll even come
along with you and pretend I’m your husband.”

I smile, picturing Declan and I as
husband and wife. “Yeah, that would be something.”

  “We’ll say we’ve just gotten back
from our around-the-world honeymoon. Then whenever he talks about himself,
we’ll rudely interrupt with stories from our trip—Darlin’ remember that Snack Shack
just outside Mumbai? That was the
best
vindaloo ever!”

I giggle. “Maybe.”

“I’ll even bring photos of my two nieces
and we can say they’re our children.”

“But how can we have children if
we were just married?”

“Em...you may have a point there.”

“Also aren’t your nieces half Guatemalan?”

“Chile. My brother-in-law is from
Chile.”

“Well, how do we explain that?”

“I know,” Declan snaps his
fingers. “We’ll tell him that we adopted them during our honeymoon!”

I laugh, nodding with approval.

“See that.” He flashes me a
wolfish grin. “He’ll be impressed with how socially evolved, yet trendy and
chic, we both are. So what do you say?”

“Okay, I’ll go and meet him for
lunch.”

“Glad to hear it.” He looks at me.
“Seriously Kate, you’re beautiful and successful and you’ve got nothing to be
ashamed of. Ever. Remember that.”

Our eyes stay connected and my
stomach feels sort of quivery. I look away figuring it’s nerves about my lunch
with Ben resurfacing.

“I should probably get ready,” I
say, reaching down for my bag. “Got to make sure I’m appropriately glammed up
to appear trendy and chic.”