Eating Heaven (18 page)

“Fine.” My eyes sting, but I continue. “What’s the deal with Benny? You knew him before and you pretended not to.”

“Oh, Ellie, so what? So what if we were friends before?”

“Friends?” I grab the photo album from her hands, flip through the pages until I come to the picture of the two of them in the doorway, holding hands, turn it toward her. “This is just friends?”

She lets her eyes flicker over the photo, takes a deep breath, and sighs before speaking. “You don’t want to hear this story, Ellie. Trust me.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ve always tried to protect you because I know how much Benny means to you, and you to him. You’re his favorite.”

I snort, feel myself color. “Christine’s his favorite. And why should you have to protect me?”

“Honey.” She takes my hand, holds it against the 450-thread-count sheet. “Your uncle Benny isn’t quite the angel you think he is.”

“Jesus, Mom. I know you two”—I almost say “cheated,” then remember how much trouble that word got me into all those years ago—“were together.”

She shakes her head. “Benny Sloan has pursued me since the day I met him on campus.”

“He went to Northwestern?” I’ve never heard anything about Benny going to college.

“For a time, but he dropped out. His family couldn’t afford it, and he wasn’t bright enough for a scholarship.”

Bullshit, I want to say, but I’d rather hear the rest. “Okay, so—”

“I was going steady with this other fellow and never gave Benny the time of day. I was young and stupid and didn’t realize that his befriending me, taking a special interest in me when I was having my troubles . . .” She sniffs and looks away.

“What?”

“That’s always been his way, Eleanor, to work his way into my life, first then, and later, when I’d married your father and had you girls. And after your father died.”

“You’re telling me he put the moves on you after Dad died?” I know Benny, I know him in a way that is unspoken and concrete, and I know he wouldn’t have done this.

“Not sexually, for God’s sake, Eleanor. The man has more class than that.” She rubs the soft sheet between her fingers, then reaches up to tidy the unraveling toilet paper hanging from her head. “He said he would leave Yolanda if I wanted him to, that he would take care of me.” Her eyes fill and she turns away, animal sounds escaping her throat, embarrassing sobs she can’t stifle.

“Mom,” I say, touching her shoulder.

She pulls away, shakes her head, hand shielding her eyes.

“Did you want to be with him then?”

Again, she shakes her head, wipes her face on her palm, turns back to me. “Absolutely not,” she says, then stands and walks back to her vanity table. She sits on the brocade stool, extracts a tissue from a floral box, and dabs at her eyes. “I hope I have sufficiently answered your questions. You can see it’s a very painful topic for me, and I don’t want to discuss it again, do you hear me?” She turns to look at me, and I see that, indeed, there is deep grief in her eyes, more than I’ve ever witnessed, even at Dad’s funeral. Still, I know she’s lying.

“Yes,” I say, feeling nine years old and reprimanded, once again, for daring to ask about the truth.

As I’m leaving, Mom turns from the mirror, her face recomposed. “By the way, honey, you look wonderful. You’ve lost so much weight! What diet are you on?”

I stop in the doorway, breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. “I am caring for a dying man, Mother. A dying man you haven’t asked me about once since I stepped foot in here, or even called to say hello. Somehow, I’ve lost my appetite.”

And then I leave her bedroom, her house, her world, and fly back home to mine.

I
t’s nearly nine a.m. when I get home, and Benny is still in bed. Benny, Mr. Five o’Clock Riser, rain or shine, daylight savings or no. But lately he’s been sleeping longer, napping more. Disappearing a little at a time.

“Ben?” I poke my head into his dark room, see the lump of blankets shift. “You okay?”

“Mmm,” he mumbles. “Mm hmm.”

“Want some breakfast? You need to take your pills.”

He murmurs another assent, and I gently pull the door closed, go put the photo album back in its place on the shelf. When the time is right, I’ll ask Benny about it. Surely he’ll tell me the truth, which scares me almost enough not to ask him a thing. I sigh and head for the kitchen.

“You in the mood for Belgian waffles?” I call out, clanging a bowl from the cupboard. “With chocolate chips and whipped cream?” Benny’s losing weight, even with all the intake, and I keep trying to think of things that will fatten him up.

He can’t hear me, but I know he loves waffles, so I lug the ancient waffle iron from the pantry, plug in the cloth-covered cord, pull out the old tin canister of flour, the baking powder, a battered half-open box of powdered sugar, which puffs a sweet cloud of white when it slips from my grip to the counter.

From the fridge I extract butter, heavy cream, and eggs, then bump the door closed with my hip, feeling impact more on bone than on flesh.
It’s an odd sensation, and not an altogether pleasant one. How it is that I can still get a kick out of preparing food when I don’t want to actually consume it? I appreciate the aromas, the textures, the idea of the final product itself and its presentation. I just don’t want to put it in my mouth. The thought of it makes my jaw tighten, my stomach threaten to heave. I don’t know if I’ve changed forever in this regard, or if it’s a temporary condition, like sympathetic morning sickness, but it leaves me with an uneasy feeling. I’ve always wanted to be thinner, but I can’t help thinking that this might be worse than overeating. I used to get some kind of nurturing at least, some kind of solace. Now I don’t know what’s sustaining me.

When I’ve mixed the batter, I throw a drop onto the griddle; it sizzles and sets. I turn the temperature down a notch and pour the first waffle. Another bowl from the cupboard, a dash of vanilla and a pinch of powdered sugar, and I whip cream into silky smooth fluff, set it aside without so much as tasting it.

With two waffles warming in the oven, I wipe my hands on a dish towel, set the table, then pad down the hall to Benny’s room. “You doing okay in there?” No answer. I knock. “Benny?”

I open the door, head starting to buzz, and say again, “Benny?”

The blankets heave and fall back. “Goddamn it,” he says in a thin, wavery voice as he struggles to sit upright.

A wave of heat burns through my stomach, my chest, up into my face.
This is hell,
I think, right here, right now, and I hurry to his bedside.

Benny is snarled in sheets and pajamas, hair wild against the pillow. The fusty funk of the unbathed rises from the linens. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he moans. “I’m all glued together.”

Detangling the sheets, I lean into him, place my arm under and beneath his bony shoulder blades and lift. He clings to my arm, grip tentative. His hands fall away, so I have to rebalance myself, one knee against the mattress, the other foot planted firmly on the floor, and pull him into a sitting position, jam pillows behind him.

“There,” I say. Out of breath, lightheaded. “Are you okay?” I ask, but all I can think is
turn for the worse, turn for the worse
. Why didn’t I read ahead in Ruthann’s little plan?

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, leaning back into the pillows, eyes jittery. “Just got stuck, I guess.”

“You were pretty tangled up,” I say, offering him a bone.

He takes it, nodding. After a moment, his breathing slows back to normal, and the sugar-cookie smell of waffle drifts into the room.

“Do you want me to help you to the kitchen?” I pick up his robe from the chair by the bed and hold it out to him. He lays it across his lap and strokes it with bent fingers.

“You know, I don’t believe I’ve ever had breakfast in bed,” he says, looking at me from beneath heavy lids. “Not my whole life. What do you think about that?”

I swallow and paste a smile on my face. “I think today is your lucky day, mister. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

He nods, attempts a smile. As I’m leaving his room, I look back and he’s closed his eyes, let his face go slack, and folded his hands together in his lap, index fingers pointing skyward:
This is the church, this is the steeple. . . .

In the next room, Buddy lies asleep on my desk chair. I pick up her warm, heavy body and push her through Benny’s door. Good kitty that she is, she trots to his bed and hops up. He doesn’t open his eyes, but his hand finds her soft fur, strokes her until she has settled in a rounded lump against his side.

“Ruthann,” I whisper into the phone in the kitchen. “It’s me. Something’s wrong. He can’t get out of bed.”

“I can be there by eleven.”

“Thanks. There’ll be a waffle with your name on it.”

“In that case, I’ll try to make it earlier,” she says, and I manage a laugh as I hang up. What would we do without her?

Benny eats just over a third of his waffle, but he finishes the whipped cream, licking even the stem of his fork to make sure he gets it all, shooing Buddy away when she discovers just what it is he’s consuming.

“Aren’t you eating?” he asks me as I reach for his plate.

“I did earlier,” I say.

“Ellie.” Benny keeps a hold on the edge of his plate and we play tug-of-war.

“Benny,” I say. “I did.”

He sighs and lets go of the plate, lying back against the pillows. He looks exhausted. “You know what I’ve always liked about you, Miss Roosevelt?”

“What’s that?” I stand, leaning my thigh into the mattress, Buddy pawing her way up my torso to try to reach the vestiges of cream on Benny’s plate.

“Take those waffles, for instance. You don’t just make waffles. You make goddamn chocolate chip waffles with whipped cream. You don’t just eat something, you really taste it, you enjoy it. You always have.” He winks and reaches over to scratch Buddy’s head. “Used to have trouble hanging on to my desserts, as I recall. You were a little bit like this one here.”

I flush, embarrassed. Benny’s the one person who’s never made me feel bad about my weight, about my eating. But here he is—

“It’s a wonderful thing, Ellie, to be so alive. That’s what it is. You’ve always been so full of life and the enjoyment of it.” His eyes glisten, and he wrinkles his nose, shrugs. “Guess I’m just turning into a sentimental old sap.”

I try to think of something funny, something light to deflect his direct appreciation of me, of how I am—or used to be—but I can’t.

I load his plate on the tray and hand him one of the eggcups we use to sort his doses: yellow cup for first thing in the morning, pink floral for midmorning. Blue is lunchtime, green-striped is afternoon, blue floral for dinner, and white is bedtime. “We almost forgot. Pill time.”

“I’d better let my stomach settle some first,” he says, placing the cup on his bedside table. “I’ll take ’em in a while.”

“Do you need help with the . . .” I nod toward the bathroom.

“Don’t know.” He’s as reluctant as I am to think about it. “I’m okay for now.”

“If you’re sure,” I say, picking up his tray. “Call me if you need me.” I escape down the hall and into the kitchen, lean against the counter, and close my eyes.

Later in the week, when I’ve finished my piece on chili for
American Family,
I call Christine, just to hear someone else’s voice. I tell her how Benny couldn’t get out of bed, how Ruthann brought him a walker, showing him how to pull himself up in the morning, how to stabilize and balance before taking each step. “Use it or lose it,” she barked like a drill sergeant, but Benny seemed relieved to hear that he wasn’t yet bedridden. She asked me to walk her to her car as she was leaving, and said, “You may want to start thinking about a home health-care provider.”

“God,” Christine says, tears in her voice, “this must be so hard for you. How do you do it, El? It’s got to be killing you.”

“What’s the alternative?” I snap, not meaning to, not really. But I don’t feel all that bad when she says, “I know. I just feel guilty that you’re doing it all. Why isn’t Aunt Yolanda helping out?”

“I don’t know,” I say, but it’s the one thing that now makes more sense than it did before my little chat with my mother. This is the thing I really want to talk to Christine about, but I know I won’t.

“Do you want me to come up there?” Christine sounds unsure, as if she’d like me to let her off the hook.

“Maybe,” I say, “but you have so much going on, and you’re so far away. I’m the one who’s here, that’s all.”

“Yeah, if only you’d escaped, like Anne and I did.”

“You escaped?”

“As soon as I could,” she says with a
well, duh
tone in her voice.

“Why didn’t I?”

“Because you didn’t need to. You were happy.”

“I was? When?”

“I don’t know. You’ve always seemed content.”

“Maybe I was just lazy.”

“I don’t think so. It’s only since what’s-his-name that you’ve turned all morose.”

I try to think back to my pre-PR job days. I was definitely happy while I was with Daniel, right up until he screwed his assistant. But what if I’d moved to one of the big food cities right out of school, like San
Francisco, New York? God, Paris? Why have I stayed here so long? I shake my head, sigh. Spilled milk, that’s all it is.

There is one thing that makes me happy, lately, I realize, and that’s Benny’s face whenever I feed him something he loves. And there was another thing, but he’s married, and he has too many secrets that I don’t want to know about.

In the glow of the computer screen, I read:

My jaw unhinges, my eyes blink hard, then stretch wide. Quickly, I scan back to the top of the e-mail and see that, yes, it came from Stefan’s address. It’s not a joke, and I’m not just imagining it.

Stefan likes me.

He’s thinking about me. Okay, mostly about work, but still. He wanted to
rescue
me.

I type:

I stop typing and read, then erase.

I stop, thinking, thinking.

Alluring but inscrutable. I hit
SEND
.

From the moment I found the photos of Benny and my pregnant mother, I’ve worried over when to bring it up with him. I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment, a time when nothing else is more important. So far, it hasn’t come. Maybe it doesn’t matter what his version of the story is. I think I know the truth. They loved each other. They had a baby out of wedlock and gave it up for adoption. That kind of pain would have to tear anyone apart, but it must have killed Benny when Mom married Dad. When he lost his wife, his first thought must have been to move closer to Mom. I’m not excusing their behavior, their dalliances, but what would our lives have been like if we’d never met Benny?