Beautiful Sorrows (15 page)

BIG MAN BEN

He was almost seventeen, but not quite. She was nearly ten years older, but again, not quite.

He was out in the park, doing clumsy boy things with his clumsy man-boy body. Riding bikes. Chasing squirrels. Searching the shrubbery for things that had fallen out of other people’s coat pockets, like pocketknives and pictures of old girlfriends.

She was bundled up in a lavender coat, her legs pulled up to her chest against the cold. A tiny thing with dark hair and large, expressive brown eyes. Her eyes were always brimming, but he didn’t know that yet; didn’t know anything yet.

He looked at her. Once. Twice. Pretended he was looking anywhere but there. Stared at her hard. Turned his head her way every four or five minutes. Every thirty seconds.

“Excuse me,” she said. Her voice, like the rest of her, was frail. He was afraid the condensation from her breath would freeze and do her in. She’d fall to the ground and he’d try and rub the warmth back into her hands, breathe life into her body.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please don’t call me ‘ma’am’. I’m not old enough for that yet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He wandered over to her, too casually. Tripped. Caught himself and skulked the rest of the way to the bench in embarrassment. He hovered a few feet away.

“Do I frighten you?” she asked.

He puffed out his chest, yawned. “Nothing scares me. Ma’am.”

She smiled then, and something inside his chest broke. It reminded him of when the barn cat had kittens once. Fragile things, balls of puff with miniature bones inside. The fur seemed soft enough to keep them safe, but they were still bags of bones, sacks of fragility like everything else.

This kitten girl stared up at him from inside her soft lavender coat. “Will you sit with me for a while?”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said. Such a simple thing. So honest. He had no idea of the implication. He was just a boy.

He sat. She smiled. He was afraid he was breathing too hard. Held his breath. Coughed it out. Breathed in carefully through his nose.

“You don’t need to be so afraid,” she said. She was whispering now, like they were an invisible secret. The world faded and so did they.

“Told you. I’m not scared of anything.” Said with a bit of pomp, but a lot of earnestness.

Her eyes brimmed, but he wasn’t looking, didn’t know what to be on the lookout for.

“I am,” she said.

—

Her name was Angelica. Fitting, he thought. She was so full of goodness that she glowed. He expected wings to unfold from her back then and there.

She laughed when he said this. His ears burned, but in pleasure. She didn’t laugh meanly like most girls, but was genuinely delighted.

“Oh, you sweet, silly boy,” she said, and smiled directly into his eyes. “Aren’t you delightful? You are. You’re charming. What is your name?”

His name was Ben. Something simple, something nondescript. Nothing like Angelica.

“Ben is a wonderful name,” she said adamantly. She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, summing him up. His ears burned again. This time it was more uncomfortable.

“Yes, Ben is a fine name.” She nodded to herself. “It’s strong and straight and firm. I could very much grow to like a man named Ben. And you will be a man one day, you know. A fine man, if your name has anything to do with it.”

“I’m a man now,” Ben told her. His voice squeaked for the first time in a long time, and it embarrassed him, made him angry.

She patted his hand, but it wasn’t at all condescending. “No, you’re not a man yet, Ben. Almost, but not quite.” He bristled at this, but she shook her head. “Don’t be in such a rush to grow up. Look at you now. Your eyes are clear; your hair is too long. You don’t know whether to smile or be angry at the things that I say. You’re beautiful. You’re simply beautiful.”

Ben’s eyes rolled in his head. Beautiful? Him? Plain, sturdy Ben? He wanted to laugh. He wanted to hit her for making fun of him. He wanted to believe she was telling the truth.

She sighed then, and it was weary. The force of her sorrow fatigued him. He couldn’t carry its weight on his adolescent shoulders. It was the sigh of a woman, not somebody caught between childhood and adulthood like himself.

“Hmm,” he said under his breath. He shifted uncomfortably.

“What is it?” she asked. She looked hurt, or maybe a little afraid. He couldn’t tell such things yet.

“You sound like...your thoughts are very heavy. It does not sound easy to be an adult.”

It was a lot of words for Ben. A lot to string together. A lot of thinking that went into the intent behind them.

“It isn’t easy, sometimes. When I was a girl, things were so much more...I used to live then, I think.”

“You don’t live now?”

She shook her head, her hair falling around her cheeks like snow. “I survive.”

Ben wiggled his big toes, felt the canvas of the shoe give way on his right foot. He’d been worrying at that particular hole for the better part of the day. There was something satisfying about making the hole bigger and bigger. It was like tearing apart a heart. Silencing a crying baby.

Angelica turned to face him then and the abruptness of her movement made him jump.

“Ben, I like you very much. There’s something about you that is just so honest and...you ground me. Or at least I think that you could. Does this sound crazy? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He nodded, but he wasn’t really sure. She liked him? Really? She had spent ten minutes sitting on a park bench with a stranger and she actually enjoyed his company? She was beautiful. She was broken inside somehow, he knew it, but the strength of her suffering made her shine. He wished he had somebody to tell, somebody who’d disbelieve him at first, but then would slowly realize he was telling the truth. “No way!” this imaginary friend would yell, and would punch Ben excitedly in the shoulder. “No way!” But there was no such friend, so Ben chewed his lip in silence.

Angelica’s brows drew up. She looked away. “I’m sorry. I’m being very forward, and I’m probably making you uncomfortable. Please forget that I...”

She tried to stand and Ben reached for her hand automatically. She stopped and stared at her gloved fingers in his bare ones. He jerked his hand away. Clenched his fists. Tentatively reached out for hers again, watching her closely to see if she’d scream and run away.

She didn’t. He wanted to close his eyes and bask in her smile. A lizard on a rock. A boy with a crush.

“Ah,” she breathed. He leaned in closer to hear her. “This could be something beautiful. Something amazing.”

She wrapped her fingers around his, and they were surprisingly strong.

—

Angelica had a husband. This changed everything.

“No, it doesn’t,” she insisted. It was their third meeting on the park bench. She leaned her head on Ben’s shoulder and ran her finger down his arm like she owned it. Perhaps she did. “This doesn’t change a thing.”

Ben wanted to look at her, wanted to stare her down the way a man should. But he wasn’t a man, not yet, and it had never seemed more painfully obvious than it did now. A man would shake his head defiantly and stride away. Ben wanted to cry.

“My good boy,” she said, and nuzzled her face into his neck. Ben wondered what he smelled like to her. Like soap and acne medicine, most likely. The smell of a boy. The smell of a child. He pulled away.

Angelica’s eyes started to get wet, and Ben looked down at his shoes. His big toe had emerged the victor, and he could see a white swath of sock. How terrible he must look to her now. A gangly youth in disrepair. He stood up.

“No, don’t!” Angelica screamed, and grabbed at his arm with both hands. Ben swayed in indecision, a bit shocked by her reaction. Angelica buried her face into his sleeve and sobbed.

“Don’t go,” she cried. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you go.”

Ben stood for a long while, not knowing what to do. A jogger ran past, and cast Ben a commiserating glance. “Women,” it said. “Always so emotional. What’s a man to do?”

A man. A man stays, Ben thought, and he sat back down, put his arms around her awkwardly.

“There there,” he said. He had heard that this was the thing to say to a crying woman, but he had no idea why. “There there.”

It worked. He had found the magic words, and as Angelica’s tears dried to a sniffle, he repeated these wonderful words until they had become a mantra. “There there, Angelica,” he said. “There there, Angie. There there, my girl. My love.” He tried the endearments on. Did they fit? Would they hang on her thin frame? Would one of them truly make her his?

Angelica smiled then, into the front of his coat. He could hear it in her voice.”Call me anything. Call me everything. I like it all.”

Did she?

“Do you?”

There was something behind her eyes, something watchful and weary. It sighed and gave itself over, disappeared. “I do.”

“What...does your husband call you?”

He was trying to wrap his head around it. A husband. A man she told secrets to and ate dinner with and made love to. Ben felt lonely. The muscles in his left arm jerked and then quieted.

She watched his face carefully. “He doesn’t call me anything, anymore. I’m just a warm body. I’m furniture. I’m art.”

She was beautiful. She could be hung from the walls like a Picasso, he believed it. She would dress up the room simply by being there.

“You’re the best kind of art,” he said. He blushed. He looked at the trees.

“Ben.” Her voice was close to his ear. He scuffed his shoe against the ground. “Ben, I’m going to tell you flat out. I’m never going to sleep with you. Never. I won’t betray my husband that way.” He was silent, thinking. Angelica started moving every part of her body at once, like a bird. A snake. Something that was dying a piece at a time. “Ben? Does this change things?”

She wanted him to say that it didn’t, he could tell. But he had a lot to think about. A husband? Betraying? Did that mean that—?

“—you’ll never be mine,” he said. He said it very quietly, but she heard. She kissed the tender spot beneath his ear.

“No,” she said. Her voice sounded very sad. “I won’t.”

“You belong to him.”

She shook her head fiercely. “I don’t belong to anyone.”