Watch Over Me (18 page)

When he was fifteen, he had to read
The Great Gatsby
for English class. Mrs. Grace dropped a pile of thin books on each of the front desks, and the students passed them over their shoulders with groans and protests. Benjamin ran his hand over the cover. Bigger than the shiny pocket-paperback size, and matte, and bound tight, it was the first brand-new book, without a crease or sticky fingerprint, he’d ever received in school.

He opened the book wide enough to see the words, but not so wide as to damage the spine, and he read.

After that, he always kept a book with him. Sometimes he read at night with a flashlight, and when the batteries died, he left his bedroom door open so the light from the hall bathroom fell on the end of his bed, and he’d put his feet on his pillow and squint at the type. Other times he’d hide the book between his legs, beneath his desk during history, and Mr. Scott ignored him as long as he scored nineties on his quizzes.

His father said science tied people together—everyone had the same cellular components, the same DNA—but books, Benjamin thought, formed tighter, more intimate connections. He walked the mall, the campus, the airport, looking at those who passed, trying to decipher the words within the person. Which words did they share? Had that mother comforting her crying toddler read
Anna Karenina
? Did
The Count of Monte Cristo
stand sentry on the bookshelf of the businessman in the food line, the one whose shirt poked through his pants zipper and who still had a ball of toilet tissue stuck to his face, below his ear, where his razor cut him? What about titans of the past—presidents and kings and explorers? What books had they experienced along with him, an insignificant Desi boy who still forgot to throw his dirty clothes in the hamper?

Now he read to fill his head with other things, the words and plots shoving out the past, for a moment at least. He couldn’t read and think at the same time.

The library, recently remodeled, had three restrooms—the men’s and women’s near the circulation desk, and a small bathroom in a back corner. It was there he read; he felt safe in the cramped space. Rarely did anyone come to use that bathroom, and if the doorknob rattled and a knock came, he said, “One minute,” hiding his books beneath his shirt and exiting to sit at the table near the door until the room was free again.

He took two books—a John Grisham novel and a nonfiction one about money management he grabbed from the
To Be Reshelved
pile— back there now, and locked the bathroom door. His first thought was the same thought he had every time he was in there—
What was the
designer thinking?
The top half of the walls were built with some sort of modern brick, white and full of holes, most of which were now plugged with pen caps and chewing gum, cigarette butts, and tubes of rolled paper. He had fished one of those papers out once, using the tweezers from the Swiss Army knife on his key ring.
I want to
die
, it had read.

He hadn’t looked at another.

The hardcover in his lap wore a clear plastic wrap. It crinkled as he opened it, and he played the
Who Read This Last?
game, looking for clues in the pages. Sometimes it was a certain perfume, and he wondered if it was an old lady’s scent or a young woman’s. Other times it was cheesy fingerprints marching in the margins, some snack-food junkie. Today he found scribbles. Dozens of stray pencil marks. He stared at them, imagined them beginning to move. It looked like a person. Like Stephen.

Hey
, the doodle man said.

Why won’t you leave me alone?
Benjamin thought.

I’m not asking to be here.

Then go away.

Man, you got it all wrong. You won’t let me go.

Benjamin blinked.
I killed you.

Nah, I was dead already.

No. I heard you screaming. I saw you. Your eyes were open; they were
right on me. And I . . . Oh, God, I didn’t move.

You were scared.

A soldier isn’t allowed to be scared.

You’re not a soldier anymore.

Shut up,
Benjamin thought, and slammed the book closed. He washed his face and looked in the mirror. He needed to run the clippers over his hair; it was longer now, furry almost. He liked to keep it short, rough, like a cat’s tongue. “Get it together, Ben,” he said. He knew Stephen wasn’t there, that he was talking to himself. He did it anyway.

He dumped the books on the windowsill next to the bathroom door and got in his car. He couldn’t go home, not feeling the way he did. He thought of Silvia; she wouldn’t know if he didn’t go home tonight. She didn’t need
him
. Someone, yes. A warm body to feed and clothe and cuddle her. But any arms could do that. Abbi’s, another foster family three counties away, whoever. It didn’t matter that he found her; she was nothing to him.

He’d seen pieces of dead children in Afghanistan, after the detonation of suicide bombs or IEDs. And that boy, about eleven, who’d walked by near the end of a firefight. He stepped over the body of an insurgent and hesitated, his foot against the man’s AKM assault rifle.

Don’t touch it. Just keep walking
, Benjamin had thought.
Oh, Jesus,
please let him keep walking.
And Stephen, beside him, had whispered, “Don’t pick it up, kid.” But the boy bent down, wrapped his dusty hand around the barrel, and then jerked backward, hit by a smattering of gunfire, falling onto the dead insurgent.

Somehow, Silvia had become matted into his war, a sweet, bright face in the tangle of sand and smoke, the one who made it, despite being left to suffocate in a grocery sack. The one he’d found, and saved.

He ordered battered fish, fries, and a Dr. Pepper at Phil’s, took the food to his car and picked at the meal. He hated the bouncing up and down, the mood swings. They controlled him.

After listening to some ball game for a while, he went back to the county building, to the familiar confines of the holding cell. It was where he belonged, alone. He sat with his head in his hands, in his undershirt, his bare feet on the floor, and heard the office door open. Benjamin didn’t move. Where could he go?

Footsteps, and then, “Come home.”

He lifted his head. Abbi stood there, in the doorway of the cell, Silvia asleep in the car seat hanging against her thigh. She set the baby on the floor.

“The door . . . I locked it. I know I did,” he said.

Abbi held a ring up, jingling it at eye level, two silver keys twitching. “Your spares. From the junk drawer.”

“How did you—?”

“I drove around looking for you the first few times you didn’t come home. And other times, when I couldn’t sleep. You were always here.” She stepped toward him, her feet in sandals; she’d wear them until the first snow, or the second. When she reached him, she took his head in her hands, fingers touching at the nape of his neck, and rubbed her thumbs along the rims of his ears. She always teased him about the ripples in the cartilage, saying it looked like little mice had nibbled on them while he slept.

“Come home,” she said again.

“Abbi.”

“Silvia and I, we need you.”

“You don’t need anyone.”

She didn’t. She was like the sunflowers he occasionally saw while driving down I-90, not on the side of the road but in it, the only bloom for miles, growing from a crack in the pavement, thriving despite the heat and fumes.

“How can you say that?” Abbi asked.

“It’s true.”

“Ben, I’m a train wreck.”

“Stop.”

“I am. But I’m worse without you.” She sighed. “And I’ve been without you for a long time. Too long.”

He pulled her close, face pressed into her belly. Abbi squeezed tighter, arms around his head; she bent down and kissed his hair, his forehead, his nose. “Come on. I’ll follow you,” she whispered.

He slipped on his shirt and shoes, stuffed his socks in his back pants pocket, and smoothed the blanket on the bunk. He drove home, Abbi’s headlights behind him, and when they pulled into the driveway he took Silvia’s seat from the car and brought her inside.

They stumbled against each other and, leaving Silvia strapped in the carrier near the sofa, they found the bed and made love, awkwardly and still dressed. Afterward, they untangled their jeans and dumped their clothes over the side of the mattress, and lay on top of the sheet, legs scissored together, her face in his neck, her arm across his chest, their fingers twined. Then Silvia began crying, and Benjamin said, “I’ll get her.”

Abbi slipped beneath the blanket, and he returned with the baby, bottle in her mouth. Silvia finished the formula, and he burped her, rocking her and singing until she fell asleep. Instead of moving her to the crib, he tucked her into the bed between them, no longer a stone buffer but an anchor, holding him and Abbi steady through the storm.

They floundered in the morning, not uncomfortable but clumsy, like grade-schoolers with crushes, pulling hair and kicking each other under the lunch table. They sat across from each other, Benjamin sneaking glances at his wife through the steam floating above his coffee mug, each one longer, until their eyes met and he smiled quietly. Looked into the black liquid, and then back up at Abbi, waiting for her to look up at him. He liked how her eyes felt on him.

He had no idea where to go from there, with Abbi. She seemed nervous and unsure, too, tapping her grapefruit spoon on the edge of the plate. Twice she stretched her hand out, her fingers as long as she could make them until they nearly touched his. Both times she hesitated, then picked up her glass instead.

“Any plans for the day?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Not really. No. You?”

“Work, obviously. Then home.”

“For dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he said, standing. He leaned across the table, his body stopping and starting, stopping and starting as he went in for a kiss. Their lips touched, flattening like pillows—soft, clean, flannel-cased pillows. “I’ll be home before six.”

She looked at him now, and he held her gaze. It was the longest they’d
seen
each other, and her eyes said she wanted to trust him, but didn’t. He knew the feeling. His eyes probably said the same thing.

He waited until school was over, drove to Matthew’s home. Inside the apartment he heard shouting, and the door flew open with a “What?” from an overweight teenaged girl. She stared up, and he noticed an eruption of pimples in the center of her forehead. She’d tried to conceal them, but the makeup had crumbled away sometime during the school day, and now they peered out at him, seven fiery mounds with white eyes.

The girl seemed nervous; her fist tightened on the doorknob, skin thinning over her knuckles, and she swallowed, saying, “I didn’t know you were a deputy.”

“I’m looking for Matthew Savoie.”

She blinked. “Matty?”

“Is he here?”

“Skye, you trying to cool the neighborhood? Close the darn door already. I—” The woman stopped next to the girl. She grabbed a handful of hair at the back of her neck, lifted it into the air and let it fall. Again. And tossed her head. “Oh, Deputy, can I help you with something?”

“I’m looking for your nephew.”

“Is there some sort of problem?”

“No, no problem. I just need to speak with him for a moment.”

“He’s at dialysis now. Won’t be home until eight-ish.”

“Dialysis?” Abbi hadn’t told him the boy was sick. Did she know?

“There’s a center in Hollings.”

“Thanks for your time, Ms. Benson.”

“Why don’t you leave your number, and I’ll have him get back to you,” the woman said. She tugged at the bottom of her shirt, pulling the neckline down to reveal more cleavage. Beside her, the girl snorted and rolled her eyes, fading back into the apartment.

He scratched his chin—rubbed it, really, his palm flat against the pointy bone, his wedding ring clearly visible. “It’s fine. I’ll just take a ride over to see him now.”

At the dialysis center, a nurse pointed to Matthew, eyes closed in a recliner-type chair, two thin tubes snaking from his arm. Benjamin wheeled a small stool beside the boy’s station and waited, unsure if he was asleep or resting but not wanting to disturb him. And to check, Benjamin would have had to touch him. He felt oddly discomfited doing that; a touch meant more to him than to most people.

A book tented on the boy’s lap—something about the seven most famous unsolved mathematics proofs of the millennium. Benjamin shifted on the stool, listening to the hissing and whistles in the room. At one time, he would have prayed in stretches like this, in the waiting. Stephen told him he was better at the empty moments than anyone else, and there had been many of those in the desert. The other guys had played cards and had spitting contests, pocking the sand with foamy blobs of saliva and mucus and Skoal. They had drunk vodka colored blue and shipped in mouthwash bottles by Sergeant Wilkinson’s mother. Or they’d complained—about what they missed from home, about what they wouldn’t miss from Afghanistan.

But Benjamin had sat quietly, if not actually praying words, working to see God in the grenades and latrines and the MREs. And he had always managed to find some glint of His goodness, somewhere, every day. Now . . . He shook his head, and with his lips rolled under his teeth, grunted softly.

Now I don’t want to see it. The good only magnifies the bad.

Matthew’s book fell to one side, and the boy’s eyes opened. He reached for the paperback, then turned his head and saw Benjamin, groped for his notepad.
What’s wrong? How did you know I—

Benjamin waved to get his attention. “Your aunt. And nothing’s wrong. I came to apologize. For the other day.”

You didn’t do anything.

“I did enough to keep you from coming over the last couple weeks.”

He saw Matthew write,
I should have called
, and reached over to pinch the tip of the pen between his fingers, stopping it from moving. Matthew glanced at him.

“Look, Abbi really appreciates your help. And after three days of rain our lawn looks like the Amazon. So, if you’re feeling up to it, I hope you do come back. We’re not as odd as we seem.”