His parents sacrificed so much to give Benny and him a good life. Is he doing right by them? Is he doing enough?
Byron doesn’t know anymore if his parents gave him a gift or did him a disservice to make him think all these years that he was someone special. He hopes, at least, that being seen in this profession ultimately will count for something, for all those kids out there who look like him and who might want to follow in his footsteps, or for those who might just need to see their own faces coming back at them, smiling, looking good, being treated with respect.
Listening
In 1978, NASA launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite designed for remote sensing of the planet’s oceans. Forty years later, whenever Byron visited students in local schools, he liked to let them know about the black woman who’d been a project manager on the Seasat program. But the students were always more interested to learn that the same woman had been instrumental in developing early GPS technology. Slick! someone would always exclaim, or whatever the word of the day was.
Like a lot of people, Byron wasn’t aware of any of this when he was in school, but he was already being pulled in that direction. The twenty-minute drive from the beach. The surfing. Learning how to react in the event of an earthquake. Byron grew up understanding that Earth and its oceans were in a constant state of agitation, and by the time he reached college, he knew that he wanted to spend most of his time listening to the seas.
Byron hears the rustle and clink of Benny in her room, getting ready for their mother’s funeral. It has been Byron’s observation that remote sensing, obtaining information about locations without physically being there, is a heck of a lot simpler than gaining understanding of another human being, even when they are right there in the same room with you. He has no idea anymore how to read Benny, how to talk to his sister. There are no machines to help you figure out that sort of thing.
Farewells
It’s not really a funeral. Their mother’s body isn’t here. Eleanor Bennett’s ashes will be delivered to Benny and Byron in the coming days in a container made for such things. But the pastor says that Eleanor Bennett is here in spirit, in this church where she used to volunteer, where she had so many friends.
Benny links her arm in Byron’s and, thankfully, he doesn’t pull away. She feels as though the crook of Byron’s elbow is the only solid thing in her life right now. Benny tries not to think about all the secrets surrounding her mother’s life. She and Byron still don’t know the full story. They still have to finish listening to their mother’s recording, they still have to meet the sister they didn’t know about until yesterday. They still need to learn how much is left of the mother they remember.
The pastor wanted Benny to say something but she just couldn’t. Byron went up front and thanked everyone for coming, said their ma would have appreciated it, then came back to his seat. Thank goodness for Mr. Mitch. At least he got up there and said something more on behalf of the family. Or Benny thinks he did. She stopped listening after “Each one of us knew a different side of Eleanor Bennett. Mother, friend, volunteer…” At some point, he left the lectern with tears in his eyes. That much Benny recalls. Charles Mitch, slipping back into the pew next to Byron, his eyes and nose as pink as peonies.
People are still going up to speak. This whole thing is becoming unbearable. Benny leans against Byron’s arm. Byron puts his hand over hers and the touch of his palm, warm and dry, clears all sorts of dust out of her heart.
Someone is patting Benny’s face now, pulling her into a soft, wool-scented hug, invoking the name of her mother in warm tones. Benny is already looking for a way out. She scans the crowd in the living room, searching for Byron, and sees him heading through a clutch of people toward the kitchen. She follows her brother and for just one moment, she expects to see Ma in there at the sink with him, laughing, teasing.
Her ma.
If only Benny had known about her mother’s past before now. A runaway bride, forced to move over and over again, struggling to find her center again each time she’d suffered a loss. If Benny had known all of this, she might have told her parents about her own troubles in college. It might have prevented the slow buildup of misunderstanding between them. Benny doubts her father would have been any more comfortable with her dropping out of school or with her love life but, being Bert Bennett, his anger over the way in which his daughter had been mistreated might have eclipsed all other concerns.
Instead, Benny had stayed away. Worse, after all that, she’d gotten into the habit of trying to keep her head down, trying to get along, trying not to rankle people, trying not to get hurt. What, then, had been the point of it all?