Accidental Happiness (17 page)

14

Gina

I
stalled Maxine’s departure as long as I could. Her presence meant I didn’t have to think about what Angel had told me at the grave. And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what compelled me to jump in and save the day for Reese. My head and my gut were working on two different levels. Reacting alternately to both, my actions contradicted themselves from one minute to the next. Maybe I’d finally slipped to the other side of sanity. It would almost be a blessing to realize I was crazy and be done with it.

I looked around for Reese, felt relieved when I couldn’t find her. I needed to confront her about Angel’s time with Benjamin. But I dreaded it; dreaded it the way I’d dreaded the visitation and the funeral, the burial and going home alone. All of the spare moments that led to the truth about Ben’s death. This could hold another truth about Ben, one I didn’t want to hear.

“Hey, Georgie,” I called to the dog. She’d been pouting in the V-berth since Maxine left. She loved Maxine. “Want to go for a ride?” I had to begin facing my questions. Maybe some digging on my own—
before
confronting Reese—would make things easier.

The dog stood up. I didn’t have to ask twice to rouse her. I wished that my own funks were so easily cured. As we headed for the car, I considered where I was going. It was a frequent destination, but never with any specific task at hand. Before, I’d always gone there for comfort. This time I was going for answers.

The storage facility stretched out on a flat piece of land behind the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. I’d splurged on the space, paid extra for climate control. It seemed odd at the time that I had to put Benjamin in the ground, leave him to the elements, while all of his stuff remained heated and air-conditioned in human comfort. But the large storage cubicle had become my sanctuary, even more than his grave.

I wondered if that would change with this latest news; if Ben had really known about Angel. Ben and Angel. What was I supposed to do with that?

“Hey, Gina.” Bob, who ran the place, was moving a supply of broken-down mover’s boxes into the office. A large man, about my age, his cheeks were blister red from the heat and the effort. I pulled into an open spot near the office door, saw Bob struggling with the boxes.

“Want a hand?” I asked, opening the car door. Georgie jumped out and ran off ahead of me. “Georgie! Stop!”

“No, go ahead, I’m good,” he said, holding the door with his foot while he slid the boxes inside.

I took off after the dog. She knew the exact row of warehouse buildings our unit was in, waited for me at the outside door. All that told me was that I’d been at the place far too often.

I entered the cool building, turned the light timer on, and headed down the hall after the dog. I took off the combination lock, but for the first time hesitated before raising the garage-type door that protected the belongings. Knowing what I intended to do, it seemed as if I was trespassing, sneaking through Benjamin’s drawers and betraying his privacy.

Inside, everything seemed intact, just as it had been when I left the time before. If it had been ransacked, left in disarray, it would have fit my emotions better. As it was, I simply stood there, lost, wondering where to start.

“You okay?” Bob’s voice surprised me. He stayed in the hall, his size imposing as he stood, framed by the cubicle opening.

“Yeah, I’m sorry.” I wondered why he had followed me. “I’m just kind of a mess these days.”

He held out something in his hand. “You left your car running. I shut it off, figured you’d want these.” He gave a shy smile as he held out my car keys. He looked embarrassed for me.

“Thanks.” I took the keys, remembered my mad dash after Georgie.

“No problem.” He turned to go.

“Bob?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He turned back toward me.

“You’re married, right?”

He nodded. “Nine years. Why?”

“Do you tell your wife everything?”

He was beginning to look uncomfortable.

“I mean,” I tried to elaborate, “do you think a good marriage has everything out in the open?”

“Pretty much,” he said. His face relaxed. He was a genuinely nice man. “I mean, I try to tell her everything. But sometimes, I flat out forget. Not everything that’s important to her seems important to me.”

“What about something that’s hard to tell her, but you know it’s important?”

“I’d definitely try and tell her anything like that.” I could tell he was a little bit worried about where the conversation might go. I didn’t imagine he was the type to analyze his relationships.

“Do you put it off—you know—wait longer than you should before you bring it up?”

I noticed that he stepped back, put physical distance between the two of us. I didn’t blame him.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Seems like if there’s something going on, she halfway knows it. But when I try to work my way around to it, she makes it into something else, or gets me arguing before I really get to the point. Some things, I don’t think she wants to hear. Like I said, I don’t know. We always work through things—eventually.”

“Thanks.” I nodded, tried to smile. I felt grateful for his candor, but he’d pointed out the one thing he had with his wife that I didn’t have with Ben. Time. I would never have the opportunity to hear the explanation for this directly from him, no matter how long I waited.

As he left, I heard Bob’s soft sneaker footsteps on the concrete floor moving toward the door. Georgie had found a rolled-up wool rug and settled at the end closest to the space’s entrance.

“You watch out for me, Georgie.”

With no more excuses to delay me, I fished out the boxes I needed, the ones that held his knickknacks and others that had his files. In all the times I’d visited the space, I hadn’t thought about those. I’d only opened the ones with his clothes, his sweaters and coats. The wools and down-filled jackets turned out to be the most loyal fabrics, the ones that refused to give up his smell. Key rings and cuff links offered visual triggers, but nothing that bypassed conscious memory, mainlining straight to the grief.

So they had remained sealed since the day when Maxine and I sat with a bottle of bourbon between us, putting items by the handfuls into U-Haul book-sized boxes. I’d pulled out a bottle of wine to start off the project, but Maxine shook her head.

“One thing I learned when Henry divorced me,” she’d said. “The men have it right when it comes to drinking. If their day’s gone to hell in a hand basket, it’s whiskey or bourbon. None of this chardonnay nonsense.” We were both looped by the time we got to the second box. I had little recollection of what went in.

Packing tape secured the box lids. I felt in my pocket for the small Swiss Army knife that Ben had given me one year on Valentine’s Day. It was tiny and pink. He’d called it my Camping Barbie knife. Every small moment in my life, it seemed, held a dozen references to him. As I built more of my life without him, I knew that would change, but in the meantime I simply had to step through each memory. I cut the tape along the lid of a box, the slit running rough and uneven, the result of a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking.

A half-dozen boxes gaped open, their contents loose on the concrete floor. I’d gone out to reset the timer for the light outside twice and still I hadn’t found anything that would answer questions about Reese and Angel. I wasn’t even sure what I thought I might find. I only knew that finding nothing would be preferable somehow.

Every time I started in on a pile from a new box, I could feel my pulse get faster, then settle as I sorted through all of the expected items. Ticket stubs, loose keys, and matchbooks from restaurants we’d gone to. Ben had been such an open book. How could he have kept Angel from me? I began to hope that my concern had no basis. As long as I found nothing, there was a chance that Angel was playing make-believe, that Reese had told her enough about Benjamin, enough about Charleston, to create a fantasy father with an imagined relationship.

Even the puzzle, the bits and pieces about me, could have come from Reese. She’d talked to him every once in a while. I knew that. I’d always known that, and it had never bothered me. Crazy, unpredictable Reese came with the territory when I fell for Ben, and she’d never been intrusive. I’d never even met her before all of this.

By the time I got to the third or fourth box, I had calmed down. One small box had different markings than the others, and I realized it was from his office desk at the agency. He’d worked as a graphic artist at a marketing firm. In addition to his drafting table, he’d had a desk with a computer. He could work up a proposal by hand or a computer mock-up; either way his ideas stood out, formed in line with his personality, strong and sure, never second-guessing his instincts. It was easy to let him make decisions; he did it so well.

I opened the box, turned it over to spill the pens and floppy discs on the floor. Georgie had moved beside me. Stretched out, the length of her back pressed against my leg, she felt good, warm, and I realized the AC in the windowless warehouse had made me cold.

I sorted through the hodge-podge of office supplies. The only item of interest was a small rectangular box. The surface was leather. As I picked it up, I saw the gold engraving of the jeweler’s name on the black leather surface. I could just see the shop. It was on a little street in Charleston, the window bright and dazzling with sapphires, rubies, and diamonds. I wasn’t even big on jewelry, just a few nice pieces. But I’d always stop and look. Ben called it a grown-up candy store.

“What do you like best?” he’d ask.

“Who wants to know? You’re a starving artist, remember? I’d need a rich boyfriend on the side to get anything from this place.”

“Hey,” he’d say, his fingers threaded through mine as we stood at the window. “I’m a
commercial
artist—halfway to selling out completely. Besides, if I ever have a windfall and want to do something stupid, I at least want to buy the right damn thing.”

So I’d tell him, fancy to simple, all the things in the window I liked.

I didn’t want to look in the box. It was almost too much. I’d come looking for Benjamin’s secret life, but I hadn’t counted on a secret that was for me. Our anniversary had come and gone in June, just two weeks after he died. I marked the day by returning the binoculars I’d bought for him. Then, not wanting to go back to our house, I had gone to the boat, where I drank as much red wine as I could before passing out. It was the best sleep I’d had since the funeral. That was the day I decided to move out of our house.

I stared at the box. It wasn’t wrapped, but had a fancy gold ribbon tied around it. It had never occurred to me that he’d bought a present for me before the accident.

“Oh, Ben,” I said out loud. Georgie raised her head, then settled down again on the rug. “Okay.” I took in a deep breath, needed something of an internal pep talk to get me through the opening of the box. “It’s not that big a deal. Just a present.” But it was a big deal. It was Benjamin, a
new
thought from him, a show of his sweetness, revealed after I no longer had those things to count on.

I touched the ribbon, had the impulse to leave it be and let his intentions remain unspoiled, take the effort as my gift. But he hadn’t bought the present for it to stay inside the box. He’d bought it to be worn. I tugged at the gold bow and it loosened, fell away. My fingers felt almost too weak to grasp the lid, but I focused, tugged slightly at one edge, and lifted. The hinges made a creaking noise, protested the disturbance. Inside, a gold necklace, attached near the clasp, fell in loose array on a white satin inlay. A small pendant of pale green hung at the bottom of the chain.

I imagined the store, the glass display. I tried to recall if I’d ever seen the necklace before. The chain looked impossibly delicate, and, as I examined it, small.
Had I ever mentioned the necklace? Had he pointed it out, asked me?
I fixed on it, hoping for some memory to come clear. But there was no memory. He’d picked it out cold. That was okay, wonderful even. I dropped the hope of some last connection of our two minds and tried to lose myself in the surprise. But something bothered me. Something too simple to miss.

With the tips of my fingers I detached the chain from the satin, lifted the necklace in the pale storage room light. The lovely, square-cut stone was set in a slight gold pendant. As I brought the necklace to my neck, prepared to put it on, everything in me began shaking. The shivering seized me, traveled to my gut, and I thought I might be sick. As tears arrived, the moment of clarity I’d hoped for arrived full on and it was nearly as terrible as the very moment I’d laid Benjamin in the ground. The chain was too small for me; the stone, the setting, too delicate to belong on a grown woman.

All at once I could hear her, sitting at the table in the restaurant.
My birthday’s next week.

I looked at the necklace. A child’s pale, green birthstone. Peridot. August. The present wasn’t in anticipation of our anniversary, or even anyone’s birthday for that matter; it was a present that spoke of a father’s affection for a small girl he’d accepted as his daughter. The necklace was for Angel.