The Lucky One (6 page)

“It’s not good for me.”

“Hey, I’m the mother here. That’s what I’m supposed to say. I was just thinking that if you’re hot, you might want some.”

“I’m not hungry. I just had cake.”

“All right. Suit yourself. But don’t blame me if you get home and realize you should have jumped at the opportunity.”

“I won’t.” He turned toward the window.

“Hey, champ. You okay?”

When he spoke, his voice was almost inaudible over the wind. “Why do I have to go to Dad’s? It’s not like we’re going to do anything fun. He sends me to bed at nine o’clock, like I’m still in second grade or something. I’m never even tired. And tomorrow, he’ll have me do chores all day.”

“I thought he was taking you to your grandfather’s house for brunch after church.”

“I still don’t want to go.”

I don’t want you to go, either,
she thought. But what could she do?

“Why don’t you bring a book?” she suggested. “You can read in your room tonight, and if you get bored tomorrow, you can read there, too.”

“You always say that.”

Because I don’t know what else to tell you,
she thought. “You want to go to the bookstore?”

“No,” he said. But she could tell he didn’t mean it.

“Well, come with me anyway. I want to get a book for myself.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry about this, you know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Going to the bookstore did little to lift Ben’s mood. Though he’d ended up picking out a couple of Hardy Boys mysteries, she’d recognized his slouch as they’d stood in line to pay for them. On the ride home, he opened one of the books and pretended to be reading. Beth was pretty sure he’d done it to keep her from peppering him with questions or trying, with forced cheerfulness, to make him feel better about his overnight at his dad’s. At ten, Ben was already remarkably adept at predicting her behavior.

She hated the fact that he didn’t like going to his dad’s. She watched him walk inside their house, knowing that he was heading to his room to pack his things. Instead of following him, she took a seat on the porch steps and wished for the thousandth time she’d put up a swing. It was still hot, and from the whimpering coming from the kennel across the yard, it was clear that the dogs, too, were suffering from the heat. She strained for the sound of Nana inside. Had she been in the kitchen when Ben walked through, she definitely would have heard her. Nana was a walking cacophony. Not because of the stroke, but because it went part and parcel with her personality. Seventy-six going on seventeen, she laughed loud, banged pans with the spoon when she cooked, adored baseball, and turned the radio up to ear-shattering levels whenever NPR featured the Big Band era. “Music like that doesn’t just grow like bananas, you know.” Until the stroke, she’d worn rubber boots, overalls, and an oversize straw hat nearly every day, tromping through the yard as she taught dogs to heel or come or stay.

Years ago, along with her husband, Nana had taught them to do pretty much everything. Together, they’d bred and trained hunting dogs, service dogs for the blind, drug-sniffing dogs for the police, security dogs for home protection. Now that he was gone, she did those things only occasionally. Not because she didn’t know what to do; she’d always handled most of the training anyway. But to train a dog for home protection took fourteen months, and given the fact that Nana could fall in love with a squirrel in less than three seconds, it always broke her heart to have to give up the dog when the training was completed. Without Grandpa around to say, “We’ve already sold him, so we don’t have a choice,” Nana had found it easier to simply fold that part of the business.

Instead, these days Nana ran a thriving obedience school. People would drop off their dogs for a couple of weeks—doggie boot camp, she called it—and Nana would teach them how to sit, lie down, stay, come, and heel. They were simple, uncomplicated commands that nearly every dog could master quickly. Usually, somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five dogs cycled through every two weeks, and each one needed roughly twenty minutes of training per day. Any more than that, and the dogs would lose interest. It wasn’t so bad when there were fifteen, but boarding twenty-five made for long days, considering each dog also needed to be walked. And that didn’t factor in all the feeding, kennel maintenance, phone calls, dealing with clients, and paperwork. For most of the summer, Beth had been working twelve or thirteen hours a day.

They were always busy. It wasn’t difficult to train a dog—Beth had been helping Nana on and off since she was twelve—and there were dozens of books on the subject. In addition, the veterinary clinic offered lessons for dogs and their owners every Saturday morning for a fraction of the price. Beth knew that most people could spare twenty minutes a day for a couple of weeks to train their dog. But they didn’t. Instead, people came from as far away as Florida and Tennessee to drop off their dogs to have someone else do it. Granted, Nana had a great reputation as a trainer, but she was really only teaching dogs to sit and come, heel and stay. It wasn’t rocket science. Yet people were always extremely grateful. And always, always,
amazed.

Beth checked her watch. Keith—her ex—would be here soon. Though she had issues with the man—Lord knows she had serious issues—he had joint custody, simple as that, and she’d tried to make the best of it. She liked to tell herself that it was important for Ben to spend time with his dad. Boys needed to spend time with their dads, especially those coming up on their teenage years, and she had to admit that he wasn’t a
bad
guy. Immature, yes, but not
bad.
He had a few beers now and then but wasn’t an alcoholic; he didn’t take drugs; he had never been abusive to either of them. He went to church every Sunday. He had a steady job and paid his child support on time. Or, rather, his family did. The money came from a trust, one of many that the family had established over the years. And for the most part, he kept his never-ending string of girlfriends away on those weekends he spent with his son. Key words: “for the most part.” Lately, he’d been better about that, but she was fairly sure it had less to do with a renewed commitment to parenting than the likelihood that he was between girlfriends right now. She wouldn’t really have minded so much, except for the fact that his girlfriends were usually closer in age to Ben than they were to him and, as a general rule, had the IQs of salad bowls. She wasn’t being spiteful; even Ben realized it. A couple of months back, Ben had to help one of them make a second batch of Kraft macaroni and cheese after the first attempt burned. The whole “add milk, butter, mix, and stir” sequence was apparently beyond her.

That wasn’t what bothered Ben the most, however. The girlfriends were okay—they tended to treat him more like a younger brother than a son. Nor was he truly upset about the chores. He might have to rake the yard or clean the kitchen and take out the trash, but it wasn’t as if her ex treated Ben like an indentured servant. And chores were good for him; Ben had weekend chores when he was with her, too. No, the problem was Keith’s childish, relentless disappointment in Ben. Keith wanted an athlete; instead he got a son who wanted to play the violin. He wanted someone to hunt with; he got a son who would rather read. He wanted a son who could play catch or shoot baskets; he was saddled with a clumsy son with poor vision.

He never said as much to Ben or to her, but he didn’t have to. It was all too apparent in the scornful way he watched Ben play soccer, in the way he refused to give Ben credit when he won his last chess tournament, in the way he continually pushed Ben to be someone he wasn’t. It drove Beth crazy and broke her heart at the same time, but for Ben, it was worse. For years, he’d tried to please his dad, but over time, it had just exhausted the poor kid. Take learning to play catch. No harm in that, right? Ben might learn to enjoy it, he might even want to play Little League. Made perfect sense when her ex had suggested it, and Ben was gung ho in the beginning. But after a while, Ben came to hate the thought of it. If he caught three in a row, his dad would want him to try to catch four. When he did that, it had to be five. When he got even better, his dad wanted him to catch all of them. And then catch while he was running forward. Catch while he was running backward. Catch while he was sliding. Catch while he was diving. Catch the one his dad threw as hard as he could. And if he dropped one? You’d think the world was coming to an end. His dad wasn’t the kind of guy who’d say,
Nice try, champ!
or,
Good effort!
No, he was the kind of guy who’d scream,
C’mon! Quit screwing up!

Oh, she’d talked to him about it. Talked to him ad nauseam. It went in one ear and out the other, of course. Same old story. Despite—or perhaps because of—his immaturity, Keith was stubborn and opinionated about many things, and raising Ben was one of them. He wanted a certain kind of son, and by God, he was going to get him. Ben, predictably, began reacting in his own passive-aggressive way. He began to drop everything his dad threw, even simple lobs, while ignoring his father’s growing frustration, until his father finally slammed his glove to the ground and stormed inside to sulk the rest of the afternoon. Ben pretended not to notice, taking a seat beneath a loblolly pine to read until she picked him up a few hours later.

She and her ex didn’t battle just about Ben; they were fire and ice as well. As in, he was fire and she was ice. He was still attracted to her, which irritated her no end. Why on earth he could believe that she’d want anything to do with him was beyond her, but no matter what she said to him, it didn’t seem to deter his overtures. Most of the time, she could barely remember the reasons she’d been attracted to him years ago. She could recite the reasons for marriage—she’d been young and stupid, foremost among them, and pregnant to boot—but nowadays, whenever he stared her up and down, she cringed inside. He wasn’t her type. Frankly, he’d never been her type. If her entire life had been recorded on video, the marriage would be one of those events she would gladly record over. Except for Ben, of course.

She wished her younger brother, Drake, were here, and she felt the usual ache when she thought of him. Whenever he’d come by, Ben followed him around the way the dogs followed Nana. Together, they would wander off to catch butterflies or spend time in the tree house that Grandpa had built, which was accessible only by a rickety bridge that spanned one of the two creeks on the property. Unlike her ex, Drake accepted Ben, which in a lot of ways made him more of a father to Ben than her ex had ever been. Ben adored him, and she adored Drake for the quiet way he built confidence in her son. She remembered thanking him for it once, but he’d just shrugged. “I just like spending time with him,” he’d said by way of explanation.

She knew she needed to check on Nana. Rising from her seat, she spotted the light on in the office, but she doubted that Nana was doing paperwork. More likely she was out in the pens behind the kennels, and she headed in that direction. Hopefully, Nana hadn’t got it in her mind to try to take a group of dogs for a walk. There was no way she could keep her balance—or even hold them—if they tugged on the leashes, but it had always been one of her favorite things to do. She was of the opinion that most dogs didn’t get enough exercise, and the property was great for remedying that. At nearly seventy acres, it boasted several open fields bordered by virgin hardwoods, crisscrossed by half a dozen trails and two small streams that flowed all the way to the South River. The property, bought for practically nothing fifty years ago, was worth quite a bit now. That’s what the lawyer said, the one who’d come by to feel Nana out about the possibility of selling it.

She knew exactly who was behind all that. So did Nana, who pretended to be lobotomized while the lawyer spoke to her. She stared at him with wide, blank eyes, dropped grapes onto the floor one by one, and mumbled incomprehensibly. She and Beth giggled about it for hours afterward.

Glancing through the window of the kennel office, she saw no sign of Nana, but she could hear Nana’s voice echoing from the pens.

“Stay. . . come. Good girl! Good come!”

Rounding the corner, Beth saw Nana praising a shih tzu as it trotted toward her. It reminded her of one of those wind-up toy dogs you could purchase from Wal-Mart.

“What are you doing, Nana? You’re not supposed to be out here.”

“Oh, hey, Beth.” Unlike two months ago, now she hardly slurred her words anymore.

Beth put her hands on her hips. “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

“I brought a cell phone. I figured I’d just call if I got into a problem.”

“You don’t have a cell phone.”

“I have yours. I snuck it out of your purse this morning.”

“Then who would you have called?”

She hadn’t seemed to have considered that, and her brow furrowed as she glanced at the dog. “See what I have to put up with, Precious? I told you the gal was sharper than a digging caterpillar.” She exhaled, letting out a sound like an owl.

Beth knew a change of subject was coming.

“Where’s Ben?” she asked.

“Inside, getting ready. He’s going to his dad’s.”

“I’ll bet he’s thrilled about that. You sure he’s not hiding out in the tree house?”

“Go easy,” Beth said. “He’s still his dad.”

“You
think.”

“I’m sure.”

“Are you positive you didn’t mess around with anyone else back then? Not even a single one-night stand with a waiter or trucker, or someone from school?” She sounded almost hopeful. She always sounded hopeful when she said it.

“I’m positive. And I’ve already told you that a million times.”

She winked. “Yes, but Nana can always hope your memory improves.”

“How long have you been out here, by the way?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost four o’clock.”

“Then I’ve been out here three hours.”

“In this heat?”

“I’m not broken, Beth. I had an incident.”

“You had a stroke.”

“But it wasn’t a serious one.”

“You can’t move your arm.”