Steve’s laughter, Steve’s voice, Steve’s touch. Years ago, these things had helped to pull Benny out of the muck of her breakup with Joanie. She had followed Joanie all the way to New York from Arizona, though later she was forced to admit that Joanie had never given her a reason to think that they would get back together. So there Benny was, a few months later, staring down at her boots in the music section of a bookstore in Midtown, when Steve came up to her.
Steve wiggled his fingers in front of Benny’s face and she looked up to see this gorgeous block of a man with a broad smile, pointing to his headphones, eyebrows raised, then pointing to the console where she was plugged in. Benny smiled and nodded. Steve plugged his headphones into the jack near hers and, at the sound of the music, he nodded his head and laughed silently.
By the time they stepped out into the slushy streets together, Benny had begun to feel that maybe she was still made of all of those things that Joanie once saw in her and that maybe someone else could see them, too. It would be a while before Benny would realize that Steve, her music-loving, yacht-sailing new lover, could make her feel as threatened as he could make her feel desired.
Byron
There are things to do, things to discuss, Byron knows this, but he doesn’t feel like dealing with his sister right now. The funeral arrangements are set. Byron took care of them while waiting for Benny to fly out to California, and everything else can wait. Byron sits out on the deck at his place, scarf up to his chin, watching the waves. He will stay here as long as he can before going back to his mother’s house.
After all those times he’s felt Benny’s absence, she’s finally back, but instead of relief, what he feels most is resentment. If things had gone differently between them, Benny would be sitting with him right now. She’d probably be drawing something in one of those sketch pads of hers. He still has that goofy surfing sketch she did of him, wiping out big-time, legs every which way. But Byron has been bitter for so long that it even kept him from calling Benny about their mother’s illness until it was too late. He’d intended to call her before this happened, he really had, he knew they were running out of time. He just didn’t realize how quickly.
Last Friday, Byron walked into the house and sensed right away, before he reached the other side of the kitchen, that his mother was gone. He found her just beyond the kitchen, on the hallway floor. It could happen that way, the doctor said later, the kind of sudden episode that might claim someone’s life unexpectedly. It could happen to a person when their body was struggling against something fierce. Ma had still been able to get up on her own most days, wash her face, pour herself a glass of water, though with trembling hands, turn on some music or the television, until the effort of it sent her straight back to the sofa.
As Byron took his mother’s head and shoulders in his arms and held her cool face against his chest, he thought of Benny, wondered how he would tell her, felt a new grief over the loss that Benny, too, would soon feel. He couldn’t get the words out, at first.
“Benny, Benny,” was all he could say when she picked up the phone. Byron stopped, his throat tight. He could hear noise in the background. Music and chatter and plates. Restaurant sounds. And then Benny, saying, “Byron? Byron?”
“Benny, I…”
But Benny had already understood.
“Oh, no, Byron!”
Then Byron got off the phone after breaking the news to her and began to think of all the other phone calls he would need to make, the arrangements, the sense of his mother being gone, the memories of his father’s passing, the awareness of all those miles and years between Benny and the rest of them, and he felt the resentment toward his sister flooding back.
Dammit, Benny.
As he drives up to his mother’s house now, he sees a rental car in the driveway.
Benny.
Byron walks through the kitchen door, kicks off his shoes, and stands still in his socks, listening. Silence. He walks down the hallway, peers through the window into the backyard, looks into Benny’s old room, but no Benny.
Of course.
He continues down to his parents’ room. There she is, lying in the middle of the bed, wrapped in the comforter like a giant egg roll, snoring lightly. She used to do that when she was little, pounce on the bed between Ma and Dad, peel the cover off Dad and roll. A Benny roll! Dad would yell every time, as if she didn’t do the same thing every single Sunday morning. Benny used to have this way of making everyone giggle, of making a person feel light. But it hasn’t been that way for a long time.