This Story Might Save Your Life(10)
Now. In case you’re wondering: I wouldn’t have mentioned Benny’s scrape with the law if he hadn’t already discussed it on the podcast. I’m only including this particular story because everyone, literally everyone, asks if we were ever romantically involved. And the answer is no. From this day forward, we were bigger than that.
Around Benny, my life made sense. Words came out of my mouth in the correct order. My funny side returned. He taught me how to eat sushi and took me to classic film screenings in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I bought him the limited-edition high-top Converse he wore every day. He picked out my first and only tattoo: three Zs ascending upward on the inside of my wrist, the symbol for sleep. I helped him build a website for his freelance audio engineering business. He paid me back with client referrals, and I thanked him with tacos, and we gained weight together, and lost weight together, and within months I couldn’t imagine life without him.
That winter, I joined his family for Christmas in his Fort Collins, Colorado, childhood home. It was the first time I’d met his dad, Ronald, and his sister, Sarah, who was visiting from Connecticut, where she was getting her PhD in clinical psychology. It was snowing, and everyone was adorable in their flannels and chunky socks, and we drank hot chocolate and ate stew and played loads of competitive board games.
“What’s a one-percenter’s favorite dice game?” Ronald said in the middle of a raucous round of Yahtzee.
“Please don’t start with the dad jokes,” Sarah said.
“Yacht-zee,” Benny and I groaned in unison.
I loved his family like my own.
Later, in the kitchen, his dad pulled me aside. “I want to thank you.”
“Thank me?” I glanced around, as if the old electric stove or scalloped oak cabinet trim could explain. I couldn’t think of any reason he should be thanking me. For doing the dishes? For the cheesy I LA ornament I gave him? For the brownies Benny and I impulse-purchased on the last grocery run?
“Benny’s been so much better since he met you.”
Oh. I blushed. “Well, I’ve been better since I met him.”
Ronald nodded thoughtfully and gently stroked his salt-and-pepper jawline whiskers. Like Benny, he had a full beard. “When his mom died … well, you know.”
I understood what he was getting at, but when it came down to it, I didn’t know because I couldn’t imagine the man Benny had apparently been before. All I knew was that the man he’d become was thoughtful and bighearted, someone who cried while watching probably-fake proposals at LACMA.
“I’m so sorry about Helen.” It was a load off to say it. It felt like everyone had been dancing around her ghost, and I was desperate for details—what kind of personality she had, and how she and Ronald met, and how her laugh sounded, and what kind of books she read, and why she let Ronald hang so many animal busts on the living room wall—but who was I to bring her up? On this one topic, Benny’s family was uncharacteristically tight-lipped. On occasion, one of them might allude to Helen in a story, but I was forever left grasping for more. I wanted anecdotes. I wanted the good stuff. I wanted the bad stuff. I wanted a time machine so I could knock on Helen’s door and thank her for making my best friend. “She sounds wonderful.”
“She was. She was.” He furrowed his brow. “I just pray he’ll stop blaming himself someday.”
I was certain I’d heard him wrong. “But … it was an accident.”
“That’s what I always say. And he always reminds me she wouldn’t have been out so late if he’d taken an earlier flight.”
This was news to me.
“Did he not…?” He covered his mouth. “I thought he would’ve…”
“He did,” I said quickly. “He told me.” I couldn’t let him worry he’d shared Benny’s deepest secret. “It’s—it’s not fair,” I whispered.
Ronald shook his head. “At my age, you learn to accept that fairness is fiction. I hope it’s not inappropriate to say you remind me of her.”
The compliment filled my heavy heart; it felt like it would burst. “I wish I could’ve met her.”
“Me too, honey. Me too.”
“You’re not gossiping about Benny’s sordid quarter-life crisis, are you?” Sarah said, entering the kitchen with an empty popcorn bowl. “Because if you are I want a front-row seat.”
“I can hear you,” Benny called from the bust-filled living room.
Ronald and I shared a smile, and Sarah fixed another bowl of popcorn, and the conversation was over.
Later later, Sarah stopped me in the carpeted hallway as I was getting ready for bed and whispered, “I joke to defuse emotional situations because that’s what us Abbotts do best, but my dad was right. Benny’s been better since he met you. So thank you. For giving me my brother back. And welcome to the family, because we’re never letting you go.”
The next day, settled at 35,000 feet in a plane headed for California, I closed my book, removed my neck pillow, and squeezed Benny’s arm. I couldn’t stop replaying the conversations I’d had with Ronald and Sarah, and I needed Benny to know, right then and there, how grateful I was to be a part of his life. What came out was: “Let’s say you’re visiting your best friend’s family for Christmas, and everyone’s being super nice, like, absurdly nice, and they’re making you feel so special and welcome and loved that your heart explodes. What do you do?”