The Precious One (26 page)

I nodded toward the piece on the wall. “That one, too.”

She nodded.

Barbara lifted her hands. “I guess I am not as good at erasing people as I would have had you believe.”

“You’ve been keeping up with him,” I said.

She flicked her hand, impatiently. “I have no interest in his career, his accomplishments.” She gave me a tender look. “I’ve been keeping
up with you. His family. I just—I thought someone should, someone from Wilson’s side.”

“My writing. You said you looked me up. Did you mean yesterday?”

“Yesterday and a long time ago, too. I’ve looked you up over and over. Does that make you feel infringed upon? That I was out there all along, keeping up with you as best I could?”

“No,” I said. “How could it? It makes me feel watched over.”

She leaned against the wall and briefly touched her finger to the nosepiece of her glasses. I swear I saw tears in her eyes.

“I’ve wanted to know his family. I couldn’t help it. But I never thought I would.”

The clean blue rain-light from Caro’s chandelier fell over the room, over the table, walls, floor, over me and Barbara, my aunt.

“There are more of us,” I told her. “I’m just the beginning.”

AFTERWARD
,
I INVITED BEN
for coffee in the pool house, mostly because I wanted to drink coffee with Ben in the pool house, but partly because I wanted to show myself, Ben, Wilson, the whole world, that I could. Because he’d driven us to visit Barbara, we were in his car, and the fact of Ben’s car in Wilson’s driveway gave me a small, petty thrill of satisfaction. We were halfway across the dark yard, leaves and stalks crunching under our boot soles, stars glittering, when I said, “She doesn’t look like him at all, does she?”

“No,” said Ben. “But she looks like you.”

“She does? I always thought I looked like my mom.”

“Your face does, but you have Barbara’s hands, and her neck, and the way her head, you know, moves around on her neck.”

I stopped in my tracks and spun to face him. Since he’d only been walking a foot or so behind me, he almost crashed into me. Ben was right there, so close. I could see his breath, the thimble-shaped shadow
above his upper lip. To steady myself, I tried to remember what that was called, that indentation. I stood thinking for so long that Ben said, “Hey, Taisy, you okay?”

“Her
hands
look like mine?” I said. “See, you’re just flattering me now. Shamelessly.”

“Come on, you’re saying you don’t see it?”

I pulled off my gloves, stuffed them into my pockets, and held my hands out in front of me. They were long and pale in the dark, ghost hands.

“Her hands are like ballerinas,” I said.

“Like yours.”

“No, I don’t mean they are like the hands of a ballerina. I mean they are like ballerinas themselves.”

“I know.”

“So delicate and supple. And they dance. Pirouettes. Arabesques.”

“Like yours,” Ben said again.

I stared wonderingly down at them. “Really? You mean it? If that’s true, how have I never noticed?”

“Because they’re yours.” He shrugged. “I noticed.”

We stood there, so close to each other, with the stars hanging right over our heads, looking down at my two hands like they were rare, precious objects, the kind of things Caro might make out of glass, and that’s when I knew, all at once, without a trace of doubt, that Ben loved me. Ben loved me in exactly the same no-holds-barred, body-and-soul, cliff-diving way I loved him. It was a pure and simple certainty.

“Philtrum,” I said, looking up at him.

“What?”

Briefly, I touched the dent between his nose and upper lip. “I see your philtrum in my dreams. Along with your zygomatic bone. Not to mention your zygomatic arch.”

“You’re the first person who ever
has
mentioned my zygomatic arch.” His voice was light, but I’d felt him shiver at my touch. I put my
hands in my pockets. After I’d said what I needed to say, there would be no end of touching, but for now, I wanted the moment to be as direct and pared down as possible.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Willow was right when she said that I didn’t love you enough, back when we were eighteen. But I would love you enough, now. I swear I would.”

Ben’s face was completely still.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I wouldn’t just love you enough. I’d be relentless. I’d be so over the top, like those storms that pummel the coast with a hundred-fifty-mile-an-hour winds and three feet of rain.”

Ben smiled but only with the corners of his eyes. “You’d be a love hurricane is what you’re saying?”

“Yes, and even if you don’t let me, I’ll love you like that anyway because I just can’t help it, and a hurricane without a coast, flailing around out there by itself, well, it’s just sad.”

Ben didn’t take me in his arms or laugh for joy. Instead, he looked at me, not adoringly or angrily, but like he was trying to figure me out. Even in the darkness I recognized it: it was his physics face.

“You would really want to do that again?” he asked, finally. “Be Ben and Taisy? After all this time?”

“I never stopped,” I said. “Even when there was no Ben, I was Ben and Taisy.”

For a long time, Ben was silent. Then, he said, “But I did stop.”

“What?” I shook my head in disbelief.

“I told you,” he said. “I boxed it all up and left it behind.”

“No. You might have told yourself that, but it’s not left behind. It’s right here.” I took hold of his coat sleeves and tugged. “Right here. Ben and Taisy. Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way.”

He pulled away from my grasp and took a step back.

“That whole first year, every time I got a letter from you, I put it in a box, unopened, and when I went to college, I left that box in my dad’s basement.”

“You never read my letters?” I felt sick.

“And then when I went to college, I made my roommate get the mail and throw away anything you sent before he even got back to the room.”

“God. You were that cruel?”

“Cruel?” Ben bit out the word. “Do you have any idea what it cost me? To not read those letters?”

“How could you not read them? You were ruthless.”

His eyes went big and angry. “I was
broken,
” he almost shouted. “I never believed in anyone the way I believed in you. And you threw me away.”

“But I didn’t! I always loved you. I was broken, too. If you’d read my letters, you would have known that.”

“You left. That’s what matters. You signed a paper saying that our marriage was a
joke,
and you left. It doesn’t matter if you loved me while you did it. Maybe it even makes it worse.”

I didn’t think this was right, but I wasn’t sure. What I knew is that he loved me, now.

“You love me,” I said.

“Don’t.”

“However you felt about me before now, you love me. Right this second.”

His jaw tightened in a way that I knew meant he was furious. He said, “Remember when you said that I hadn’t exactly called you, ever, in seventeen years?”

“Yes.”

“I never would have. If you hadn’t shown up, I would have lived the rest of my life without ever seeing you again. That’s what I wanted.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

“It’s true. And I should have shut this down the day I saw you sitting on the bench in the nursery with my dad.”

I stood, reeling. But eventually, I gathered my wits about me. I thought about what Ben had said.

“But you didn’t,” I told him. He turned his face away.

“But you didn’t,” I repeated. “Why not? Did you ever ask yourself that?”

“Stop.”

“If you’d really put it all away, why did you care so much about never seeing me again?”

“Stop.”

“Tell me you don’t love me.”

Ben glared at me.

“I did awful things,” I said. “I was a coward who did not deserve you. But I deserve you now. And you’re the one who’s a coward.”

“I’m leaving.”

I don’t know what would have happened next; maybe he would have left; maybe we would have stood there fighting for hours and then he would have left, but what did happen was a voice, high and scared, flying in from the direction of the house: “Taisy! Taisy! Taisy!”

“Oh, no,” I whispered. “She never calls me that.”

I took off hard across the yard, with Ben right behind me.

Willow was standing there in sweatpants and a T-shirt, no coat, hair like a wildfire around her frightened face.

“Honey, what is it?”

“I promise I was paying attention,” she cried. “It wasn’t even late! I was doing homework in my room. I never lock the doors this early.”

I put my arms around her.

“Shh,” I said. “Nothing is your fault. What happened?”

“She was reading on the sofa, but she must have fallen asleep. She would have told me if she had to go someplace. She wouldn’t have just left!”

“She left?”

“Her car’s gone. Please don’t call 911. Please. I don’t know what they’ll do. She can only have been gone a few minutes! Just find her!”

“Willow, listen to me,” I said. “You stay here in case she comes back. I’ll go with Ben in my car.”

I turned. He was already nodding and walking backward, in the direction of the driveway.

“Ben?” said Willow. She saw him, then, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Stay here!”

Once we were in the car, I filled Ben in, as much as I could, about Caro’s sleepwalking.

“She’s asleep, but she can operate a car,” he said. “That’s amazing. Scary, but amazing.”

“I’ve been reading up on parasomnia,” I said. “It’s rare but not that rare. Most people grow out of it, I think. Anyway, it’s fascinating how the brain works. Parasomniacs have been known to cook, drive, even have conversations, all while they’re asleep.”

“You know, I’d forgotten this until now, but I had a housemate in college whose younger brother was a sleepeater. Apparently, once he ate a whole package of bacon, uncooked. He visited a couple of times, and when he was awake, he was a really normal guy, not especially deep or troubled or anything.”

“A whole package,” I said, with a shudder. “Yeesh.”

We talked like we hadn’t practically been screaming at each other just a few minutes before. But our fight was still there, hovering, and I’m not sure how long we could have gone on ignoring it, but it didn’t take long to find Caro. Her car was about a mile down the road, pulled over on the shoulder with the engine off.

“Wow,” said Ben, as we pulled up behind her. “She even turned on the hazard lights.”

Ben waited in my car, ready to drive it back to Wilson’s if everything was all right. When I got to Caro’s car, I could see her sitting with her hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. She looked up when I opened the passenger door but not at me. I had read that it was better to wake sleepwalkers with a loud noise instead of shaking them, so I said her name loudly. Nothing happened until the fifth time. She jumped in her seat, and then I watched her eyes uncloud, recognition dawning.

“Taisy,” she said, confused.

“Hey there, Caro. Everything is all right.”

She rubbed her temples, straightened, and looked around her.

“Oh, no.” Her big eyes filled with tears.

“It’s okay. You’re half a mile from home. How about we head back there now?”

“No one got hurt?” she asked.

“No one at all. Everyone is fine. Look at you, you’re even wearing your seat belt.”

“So I am.”

“Come on, let’s go home, shall we? Willow will be so happy to see you.”

Caro winced as though she’d been stung, and I instantly regretted bringing up Willow.

“My poor girl,” said Caro.

“Listen,” I said. “Why don’t we switch places, and I’ll drive us home?”

I got out, walked around to her door, and opened it. Slowly, she got out, and when she was standing, she looked so lost and frail and shivering that I hugged her, and, with unexpected strength, she hugged back. Over her shoulder, I waved to Ben, and he nodded and drove away.

Before I started the car, she said, “Wait. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

Her face wasn’t frightened anymore, just dreadfully tired. “Taisy, would you ever consider staying?”

I stared at her. “You mean permanently?”

“I don’t mean in our house,” she said, quickly. “Just—nearby.” She sighed. “I know you have a life. And I know I have no right, that I am the last person who has the right to ask you for anything.”

“I wouldn’t say that, not anymore.” I smiled, ruefully. “But Marcus would.”

“And he would be right. I just thought that maybe it hadn’t occurred
to you, the idea of staying here, and that if—and only if, God, of course!—you thought it might make you happy, we would be so glad.”

“Why?” I asked.

Caro gave me a gentle, baffled look, as though my question were slightly crazy.

“Because you make all of us better, of course. Especially Willow. And the longer you are here, the more I can’t imagine you ever leaving, and not because you rescue me from my ridiculous nocturnal ramblings, either.”

“No?”

She smiled. “Well, that’s nice, of course. But mostly it’s because you are what’s been missing. You wake us all up, you expand our world, especially Willow’s. And I know that those are selfish reasons.”

I suppose they were selfish, and, honestly, I felt guilty about not feeling more resentful. Or resentful at all. Marcus would hate that, but, for better or worse, I wasn’t Marcus. It wasn’t just that I liked being needed; it’s that I liked being needed by Caro and Willow. I was even beginning to suspect that I needed them, too.

I said, “I’m not sure that Willow needs me, but she does need more people in her life. She needs a bigger world.”

“She needs you
and
more people.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I can’t promise to stay,” I said. “And I want you to know that if I did, it would not be for Wilson. To be blunt, I’m finished with trying to make him love me. I don’t need that anymore. I don’t think I even want it, especially.”

This last statement was a bit of a stretch, but the rest felt true. I waited for her to fly to his defense, or to reassure me that, deep down, my father cared deeply about me, but she just gave me a tired smile and said, “Good.” I absorbed this and found it didn’t hurt much.