Accidents of Marriage (33 page)

Then she threw the magazines, one after another.

Ben ducked. She scrambled to the side of the bed and reached for a small glass reading lamp. He lunged and grabbed both her hands.

“Let go,” she said.

He held her. “You have to stop throwing things.”

In answer, she spit. Her saliva hit his chin. He fought his instinct to hit her, fling her to the floor.

“Maddy . . .” He stopped, not knowing what to say. Would he have to call an ambulance, have them pink-paper her?

“Should I call someone? Do you want Kath? Olivia?” he asked.

Maddy’s wrists became limp, and her body folded in. Ben let go, and she curled on her side. He fit his body to hers and tried to hold her tight from behind, but she wriggled away and faced him.

“Why. Did. You. Lie?” She kicked out and landed a sharp blow on his shin.

“Why did I lie?” He winced at his words, remembering Maddy talking about her clients.
When they repeat the question, I know they’re lying. It’s how they buy time.
Wisdom he’d used in his interviews, his crosses.

“Don’t play. Ben. I can’t speak. So good. But I can. Think.” Maddy sat cross-legged and grabbed a pillow, kneading it until he thought feathers would fly around the room.

He stayed silent—unable to find anything that could be meaningful to say.

“Don’t wait. For me. Coward. Say something.”

He faced her. “I’m sorry.” He searched for other words, better words. “You know it was an accident, right? You have to know that. A horrible, horrible accident.”

Maddy hugged the pillow to her chest and rocked.

“I didn’t lie. I only didn’t tell you because I wanted to protect you.” Ben leaned forward and reached for her, trying to touch some part of his wife—her ankle, her toe, anything. She drew away. “They said you wouldn’t remember. That maybe you’d never remember. I needed to wait until you healed. I did it because I didn’t want to add to your pain. I thought you’d need to trust me a hundred percent—so I could help you a hundred percent.”

Tears threatened as he prayed for the comfort of Maddy’s arms, wanting the moment to be over.

She jabbed a finger at him. “Who. Are you. Crying for? Me or you?”

“Maybe both of us,” he said.

“Fuck you. I didn’t have. To be this way, Ben. If. You were good.”

•  •  •

Four days later, Ben sat in the living room, turning the pages of the Sunday
Boston Globe
magazine section, registering neither sentences nor pictures. The younger children curled next to him on the couch, Caleb hypnotized by an audiobook coming through his earphones
and Gracie lost in reading yet another book with a magic-themed cover. Since the accident, Anne could barely keep up with Gracie’s thirst for fantasy worlds.

Emma hid in her room, the best place she could be. Ben didn’t want to see her, afraid that he couldn’t forgive her, or that even if he could, he’d lash out at her. Grab and shake her.

He was an asshole. She was just a kid. He’d leaned on her too hard in these past months.

Yet he was furious.

Maddy slept. She hadn’t spoken one word to him since their battle. If she wanted something, she requested it through her mother or sister. Though she was angry with Anne and Vanessa for going along with Ben’s lie, Maddy had to talk to someone. Vanessa would call him at work, ticking off the items Maddy needed: tampons, cranberry juice, some brand of shampoo that was only sold in a far-off store a million miles from their house. He swore Vanessa made up that last request.

Ben didn’t know how to react to this nonspeaking Maddy. It felt like she’d died. Before, she’d shown her anger by pecking at him until he got the point. She’d bang around cleaning, cooking, and slamming laundry baskets, and then she’d talk more. Since the accident, Maddy’s rage had seemed directed at herself and she’d allowed Ben the great luxury of being her protector.

His shameful truth was this: Ben missed that role.

Only Anne took any pity on him. “Just be patient,” Anne had said the previous night, calling to tell him that Maddy and the kids would be eating dinner with her and Jake for the third night in a row. “It would be difficult for anyone to work through this, much less someone struggling with her problems.”

“Honestly, Anne, I can’t even tell if her speech is improving, it’s been so long since we’ve spoken.”

“Every day it gets better, dear. Don’t worry,” Anne said.

Ben’s gloomy little attempt at humor had died on delivery.

It was ironic. After months of wishing for just one day of peace, God had answered his prayers. Night after night he’d come home to an empty house. Now he knew what his grandmother, his wrinkled
Romanian peanut of a grandmother, had meant when she’d warned him, “Careful what you wish, Bennie.”

What could he do to atone?

Tonight they were supposed to have dinner with his parents—he’d accepted the invitation weeks ago. He dreaded the evening, whether Maddy went or not.

Gracie leaned on Ben. He rubbed her shoulder before pulling away and slowly folding the paper. “I’m going to wake up Mommy,” he said.

“Do you think she wants a muffin?” Gracie asked. “I can go with Emma to J.P. Licks and get the blueberry kind she likes.”

“That’s okay, sweetie. I have it covered.” Ben leaned over and kissed first Gracie and then tried to reach Caleb, who bobbed his head away.

Maddy’s need for sleep seemed unending. Dr. Paulo had explained the healing, the normalcy of it all—but Ben couldn’t come to grips with how she slept for hours after the rest of them were awake.

He prepared a cup of coffee before going upstairs. Cream mixed with two teaspoons of sugar made it an inviting toasted-almond color—before the accident Maddy had drunk an evil-colored brew, barely lightened with skim milk. He used a mug from the sunshine set he’d bought for her one evening while alone and wandering through Copley Plaza the previous week, a bright yellow with a blazing orange sun. Upstairs, he placed it on the night table, covering it with a book to keep it warm.

Maddy wakened. For a moment he looked into her loving eyes, her you-hold-my-life-in-your-hands eyes—the eyes he’d seen since she’d returned from the rehab. Moments later, her bitter-blame eyes came back.

“Do you want to get up? I brought coffee.” He hoped she’d notice the mug. Three matching ones lined a shelf in the kitchen.

She struggled to shake off sleep, retrieving the pink nightgown strap slipping over her shoulder. Her tangled curls, dream-rosy cheeks, and newly rounded face made her look like Gracie. She complained about the weight she’d gained, blaming her inability to judge or control her portions—she’d eat an entire row of Oreos without noticing—but Ben found this plumped-out Maddy endearing. Protecting
her seemed more important than ever now that she’d lost the hard muscles she’d had from years of running with Kath.

“Coffee.” This was the first word she’d spoken to him since the incident. She said it without inflection. Asking, not demanding. Just a word. He handed the cup to her with as much simplicity.

“We’re supposed to go to my parents’ tonight,” he said.

“I remember. Wrote it down.”

“Are we going?”

She took the warm cup in two hands, dipping her head into the steam before sipping, using her bent knees as a table.

“You have to talk to me sometime, Maddy,” Ben said when she didn’t respond. “Tell me to get lost. To screw myself. Just, please, talk to me.”

“How did you. Feel?” she asked. “Then?”

“How did I feel?” Ben clenched and unclenched his fists. “What are you asking? How I felt when I first realized you were hurt? When you were in the hospital?”

“Everything. Tell me it all.” The yellow mug shook in her hands. “Give it back. My story. My life.”

He cleared his throat, but it still felt like sand. “I wanted to die, but if I did, I wouldn’t be there for you. I thought God punished me for being an asshole for so long, but I couldn’t fathom why he’d picked on you and not me. Except that nothing in the world could hurt me more than seeing you pay for my sins.”

“Lawyer speak.” Maddy made a talk-to-the-hand gesture she must have learned from her clients.

Ben wondered what would satisfy her. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” He needed words to calm her, words to show her the pain this also gave him.

“Make it up?
Listen!
What if it stays? Like this?”

“It won’t. Dr. Paulo says—”

“Spare. Me.” Maddy swallowed more coffee. “Why did you lie? Say it fault. Of other guy?”

“Because it wasn’t just me. The other guy was practically . . . Oh,
Jesus, Maddy. That doesn’t matter. I lied for you—so you could lean on me without question. I lied for me—so you wouldn’t question my ability to take care of you, so you wouldn’t have additional stress.”

“Asshole.” She crossed her legs, looking like Gracie in that position.

“I didn’t want you to hate me, baby,” he admitted.

“I hate you now. You stole truth. From me,” she said. “Already broke me. Why steal more?”

“I screwed up,” Ben said. “I wish someone had stopped me.” Anne, Vanessa, Olivia, Kath, Jake—they shouldn’t have gone along with him.

Maddy snorted and gave a strangled laugh. Ben took the mug from her hand, afraid she’d spill the coffee, break the cup.

“What’s so funny?”

She snorted and reached for the coffee. “Who could win. A fight with you?”

He held on to the cup. “Did your sister say that? Olivia? Who?”

“No one. Said it.” Maddy slapped her free hand on the bedspread. “I. Am remembering. Before. Stuff is coming. Back. You yelled. Threw stuff. But. I don’t remember. Why.”

Maddy’s words came extra slow this morning—as they did when she took sleeping pills or had headaches.

Or maybe the anxiety of dealing with him caused her sluggish speech.

“Give back. Coffee,” she demanded.

Ben handed her the mug. “Look at your coffee. That might be the sole good thing we can find. Before it looked like you were drinking war rations. Now at least—”

“
Coffee?
Accident a gift, Ben? For good coffee?” Maddy slammed the cup on the bedside table, liquid sloshing.

He gingerly placed a hand on her leg. “Now it tastes better. That’s all I meant.”

“Asshole.” Maddy picked up the book Vanessa had foisted on her, threw it at the door, and stared up at their chipped ceiling. “Fucking lawyer.”

•  •  •

“More roast?” Ben’s mother gestured toward the bloody platter.

He shook his head. “No, thank you.” He’d lost his taste for big planks of rare meat, the staple of his mother’s family meals.

“Children?” his mother asked, nodding at the plate. “More?”

His kids shook their heads, silent, until Ben’s mother shot them a look.

“No, thank you, Grandma,” Caleb recited.

His mother smiled, satisfied. She invited little conversation, though she had a soft spot for Gracie, who was pliable like Ben’s brother. Andrew had always been his mother’s favorite.

“Dear?” Frances asked her husband.

“If you please,” the Judge said.

His mother lifted a slice of rare roast and slipped it on her husband’s plate without a drip.

Steak knives clicked against bone china. His father cut his meat into even bite-sized pieces, finishing the job of dicing it before allowing himself to eat. They’d spoken little since the accident. Last time Ben had seen him, the Judge had offered money.
Tell me if there is need,
his father said as though speaking of something shameful. Each time they saw each other Ben gave his father the look that meant
any news on my case?
The Judge gave back the smallest lowering of his lids and the briefest left turn of his chin that indicated
nothing yet
.

Yesterday Caleb asked if he would go to jail if they didn’t win. Ben promised that wasn’t even in the cards.

“What is in the cards?” Caleb had asked.

“Nothing you have to worry about,” Ben had answered in typical parental reassurance, even as he saw an entire deck of possibilities—losing his job, Maddy, the kids—not probabilities, sure, but his rationalizing offered no comfort.

“Ketchup?” Maddy asked.

Ben winced, knowing his mother considered ketchup an insult to her cooking.

“Does the meat lack flavor, dear?” his mother asked.

Maddy looked confused. “No. I mean . . . yes?” Maddy’s voice rose and squeaked.

“Don’t quiz her, Mom. She just wants ketchup.” Ben stood. “I’ll get it.”

He opened the swinging door and went through the small butler’s pantry to the kitchen, returning moments later with a bottle of Heinz that he set firmly on the table.

“Anything else?” he asked his wife.

Maddy shook her head and uncapped the bottle. Everyone watched as she tipped it, the large, red pool gathering on the white plate. A bit dripped over the lip as she righted it. As she reached for her linen napkin, she knocked over the bottle. Ketchup oozed on the white tablecloth. Panic showed on her face as she blotted the stain, spreading it further.

“No!” Maddy wailed. “Damn it.” She stood and backed away from the table, knocking over her chair.

Ben put his arms around her while Emma righted the chair. “Hey, it’s okay, Maddy.”

“
No!
” She turned to Ben. “Fuck you. I hate you.”

“Now, now,” the Judge said. “There’s no need to go on like this. Maddy, calm yourself.”

“
Fuck you, also!
Hate you too.” Maddy lifted her plate with both hands.

The Judge stood and pointed a finger at Maddy. “Put that down. There will be none of that in this house.”

“Sit, Dad,” Ben said softly. He eased the plate from Maddy’s shaking hands and helped her into the chair. “Shh, shh.” He touched her back. “You’re all right. Everything is all right.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” his mother said. She covered the stain with her own napkin, and then placed her hand over Maddy’s. “It’s only cloth.”

Maddy caressed her own cheek with her mother-in-law’s hand. “Thank you.”

His mother gave Maddy’s curls a brief pat before sitting.

Silence resettled over the table. After finishing the main course, Ben was ready to leave. Dessert wouldn’t be more than the usual cup of cherry Jell-O, and he had no desire for the muddy Turkish coffee his father favored. He pushed back his chair.