The Divide (23 page)

Then there were the stories, endlessly repetitive, about friends or neighbors back in Abilene, almost invariably people Sarah had never met or about something that had happened on a daytime TV show she had never seen or about some heroic or amusing escapade from Benjamin’s boyhood that everyone had heard twenty times before.

Margaret Cooper was a small, rounded woman, with a tight gray perm and a constant, utterly unconvincing smile in which her mouth did all the work while her eyes remained steely. In her late seventies, she was still physically robust and meticulous in her appearance. But in the twelve months since Sarah had last seen her, the repetition had become almost ruthless. Even if you gently let her know that she had already told you something, she would insist on telling you again.

Benjamin, meanwhile, as he so often did when his mother came to stay, had disappeared. Most of the morning he had been stuck in his studio talking on the phone, probably to Martin or to Eve Kinsella in Santa Fe about those dreadful paintings she was doing for their new office block. And when he came in he went straight to the living room and slouched on the couch next to Abbie, listening to tales of derring-do in the forests of Montana. Sarah would have liked to hear them too if she had had only a moment to sit down. Abbie, bless her heart, had offered to help but Sarah had told her the most useful thing she could possibly do was entertain her grandmother and keep her out of the kitchen.

What had gotten into Benjamin lately, Sarah couldn’t figure out. He used to help out but these days barely lifted a finger. Except, of course, at the gym, which had become his new obsession. Since this time last year, he must have lost about ten or twelve pounds and he claimed it made him feel a lot better, though it certainly didn’t seem to have made him any happier. His face seemed to grow a little longer every day. Perhaps it was being stretched by all those newly toned muscles.

She knew how much he missed Abbie. They all did. But his way of coping with it seemed to be to retreat into himself. She hardly saw him. He got up at six every morning to go to the gym and drove from there to work. And when he came home, more often than not, he said he had work to do and carried his supper out to the studio.

And Josh was always either out with friends or up in his room talking to Katie Bradstock or playing that awful, thumping music and pretending to work. How he could even hear himself think was a mystery. So mostly Sarah ate alone now, maybe watched a little TV, and then, at about nine-thirty, went to bed and read. By the time Benjamin came to bed, she was usually asleep. They hadn’t made love in nearly two months. He just didn’t seem bothered anymore. On the couple of occasions that she had tried to initiate it, he said he felt too tired.

Sarah had done her best to turn things around. Books on the subject all said that combating empty-nest syndrome—or, in their case, half-empty-nest—required effort. So last weekend, when Josh was sleeping over at a friend’s place, as a surprise, she had booked a table at a new seafood restaurant that had opened in Oyster Bay.

The place was crowded, the atmosphere lively, and the food terrific and Sarah tried, God how she tried, to get some kind of conversation going. But Benjamin just didn’t seem to want to know. He answered her questions, sure. But he didn’t ask any of his own and after about half an hour there they were, sitting in silence, looking around at the other people who were, of course, all talking and having fun. Sarah remembered how they used to joke about married couples in restaurants who sat there looking sad and bored, and how Benjamin would invent a fantasy dialogue of what might be running through their heads. And now they were that couple. It almost broke her heart.

To see him now so lively and regenerated by Abbie’s presence, bantering with her as they all sat around the creaseless table, somehow only made it worse. But Sarah was trying not to think about it. She kept telling herself to smile and laugh along with the others, to be positive. It was the day when every family had an overriding duty to be happy and not to brood on the cracks that might be running up the walls. The turkey, however inadequately basted, had been adjudged by all a triumph. And though Margaret had taken just one small mouthful of her pumpkin pie before gently shunting her plate away, everyone else seemed to be enjoying it. Benjamin was asking Abbie about going to the WTO meeting in Seattle the following week and what kind of protest she and her friends were planning.

“What does WTO stand for?” Margaret asked.

“It’s the Whatever happened to Ty Organization,” Josh chipped in.

Abbie had earlier made the mistake of telling Sarah in his presence that she had seen Ty only once since the summer and that she felt a little guilty about it. She groaned and gave him a quick, withering look.

“Josh, grow up. It’s the World Trade Organization, Grandma. A club of wealthy countries that do their best to cheat the developing world and keep it poor.”

“That reminds me,” Margaret began. You could hear the collective sound of hearts sinking. “Benjamin, do you remember when you went on that Vietnam protest rally in Lawrence when you were at college . . . ?”

Oh God, Sarah said to herself, here it comes. The Long Hair story. Abbie and Josh exchanged a knowing smirk. Benjamin smiled wearily.

“. . . and Harry Baxter saw you on the local TV news with your long hair and came into the store and told your father you looked like a girl?”

“Yes, Mom, I do.”

“You know, Abbie, your father had hair right down to his shoulders.”

“I know, Grandma. I’ve seen the photos.”

“They were always protesting something or other. The war or Negro rights or whatever was in fashion at the time.”

“It was called
civil
rights, Mom. And I don’t think it went out of fashion.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I thought he looked handsome and not a bit like a girl. But you know, Abbie, after that, he grew a beard.”

“I know, Grandma. You told us.”

“Did I? Oh, I’m sorry.”

But she went on anyway. Telling them how, one vacation a few months later, Harry Baxter saw Benjamin with his new beard and declared that he now looked like a bearded lady in a circus.

“Next time he came in the store, I told him he could go elsewhere.”

“How is Harry Baxter?” Sarah asked, pretending to be interested.

“Oh, heavens, Sarah, the old fool died years ago. Though Molly’s still around. Drives around terrifying us all in one of those little electric carts they give to crippled people.”

“Disabled, Mom,” Benjamin said quietly.

“Crippled, disabled, it’s the same thing. I can’t be doing with all this finicky political correctness, not calling a spade a spade.”

Sarah could see that Josh was about to make some mischievous retort and she glared at him just in time.

How they got through the rest of the day and the next day without murder or at least serious injury, Sarah had no idea. On Saturday morning, when Benjamin finally put his mother in the car and headed away down the driveway to take her to the airport and Sarah stood with Abbie and Josh in the cold sunshine, waving a cheery good-bye, it was like a ten-ton weight being lifted off their lives.

“That’s absolutely the last time,” Josh said, stomping away up the stairs to his room. “If she comes again for Thanksgiving, I’m out of here.”

Sarah didn’t bother to disagree. She put an arm around Abbie’s shoulders.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s make some fresh coffee. I feel I haven’t had a proper talk with you since you came home.”

They made the coffee and took it up the open wood staircase to the little mezzanine that overlooked the garden and the deck where they barbecued in the summer. The fall had been mild and there were still leaves on the silver birches that Sarah had planted all those years ago. They shone a bright and dappled yellow in the sunlight.

There were two cream-colored couches facing each other across a low mahogany table, and they settled on one of them with the sunshine streaming in on them. Abbie made Sarah slip off her shoes and took her feet in her lap and massaged them and told her all about college, things she had no doubt told Benjamin already but which, of course, he hadn’t bothered to pass on. And though Sarah listened to every word, there was a part of her that could do no more than gaze in wonder and pride at this golden child, so beautiful and brimming with life. The massage was exquisite.

“Where did you learn to do this?”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s amazing.”

“Good. I figured you deserve it. Mel, my roommate, taught me. Was Grandma always like that?”

“No. It’s worse, for sure.”

“She doesn’t listen. It’s like she’s just waiting to tell another of those stories about Dad we’ve all heard a million times.”

“Perhaps that’s nature’s way. Making people you once loved less lovable, so it won’t be so hard when they go.”

“Do you think?”

“I think it’s possible.”

They both stared out of the window for a while. Two blue jays were playing a frantic chasing game in the birches.

“What’s the matter with Dad?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just having Grandma around. But he seems all stressed out. Kind of detached, you know? Like he isn’t really here.”

“Well, things haven’t been going too well at work. He and Martin have lost a couple of big projects. They’re having to let a few people go. That’s probably what’s worrying him.”

Sarah almost managed to convince herself.

“Oh. And what about you?”

“Me?” Sarah laughed. “Oh, you know. Same old same old.”

“Mom, I’m a grown-up now.”

“I know you are, sweetie. But honestly, I’m fine.”

“You’re such a bad liar.”

“I’m not lying. He hasn’t been that easy to live with lately, with all that’s happening. And we miss you, for heaven’s sake. We both do.”

“Oh, Mom.”

“Hey, listen. It’s nothing. We’ll get over it. Hell, I mean, in most ways it’s absolutely terrific. Less cooking, less laundry. In fact, having you come home again is a real drag.”

Abbie gave a skeptical grin.

“Let me have your other foot.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That evening, after supper, Abbie asked if they minded her going out for a few hours to meet up with some old friends from high school. Sarah tried not to show her disappointment and said of course they didn’t mind. Go have fun, she told her. Josh took this as a cue to inform them that there was a “kind of party” at his best friend Freddie’s place and since Abbie was going out, couldn’t he too? Benjamin took him aside for yet another quiet fatherly word about alcohol and pot. Twice in the last month, the boy had come home obviously stoned. He had flatly denied it but they were worried about him. Abbie said she would drop him off and pick him up later. They would be back before midnight, she promised.

Thus the scene was set for what Sarah later realized Benjamin must have been planning all the holiday and probably much longer. Maybe for weeks or even months. Within an hour both children had gone and a waiting silence fell upon the house. Benjamin would no doubt soon mumble something about needing to do some work and head out to his studio. But the minutes passed and he stayed. From the kitchen she could see him rather aimlessly tidying the mess the children had made in the living room. She called brightly to him, asking if he would like some cold turkey with some coleslaw and tomato salad.

“Sure.”

Maybe he could open a bottle of wine?

“Sure.”

He came through into the kitchen and pulled a bottle from the rack and stood uncorking it on the other side of the divider where she was preparing the meal. It was a long and narrow counter of polished gray granite, the sort of place every kitchen had, where things that had no other home got dumped, old magazines and stacks of letters and unpaid bills, a wide wooden bowl where they kept coins and car keys. The only sound was the saw and clack of her knife as she carved the turkey. His silence filled the room like an invisible cloud. Perhaps she should put some music on. He took two glasses from the cupboard and put them down, clink, clink, on the divider beside the opened bottle.

“Abbie seems in pretty good shape,” she said cheerily.

“Yeah.”

“Boy, what I’d give to be that age again.”

She became aware that he was shifting nervously from one foot to the other. She stopped carving and looked at him. He was very pale.

“Are you okay?”

“Not really.”

“What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?”

He swallowed. There was a long space of total silence. And then she knew. Knew exactly what he was about to tell her.

“Sarah, I—”

She slammed the knife down with a loud crack on the granite.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Sarah, sweetheart, I can’t—”

“Don’t say it! Don’t you dare say it!”

“I have to go. I just can’t live like this—”

“Shut up! Just shut up! What the hell are you talking about?”

He seemed for a moment to have lost his voice. There was a terrible imploring in his eyes. She was staring at him, waiting for an answer, but he couldn’t hold her gaze. He looked down and just stood there, shaking his head.

“Are you having an affair?”

She heard herself. How she snarled, almost spat the word, as if she were trying to rid her mouth of a foul taste. He shook his head, still not looking at her. Like some sniveling coward. The sight made something inside her explode. She ran around the end of the counter to get at him.

“You are! You bastard! You are!”

She tore into him like a rabid animal, lashing at his head and shoulders and chest. He shielded his face but didn’t step away, just let her thrash and slap and punch him. And this only fueled her fury further, that he should stand there, so wretched and demeaned, like some flaccid martyr of a fanciful God.