The Good Enough Husband (26 page)

18

Ben Cooper was no neophyte. But once he’d ditched his cell phone, everyone had treated him like he was in the dark ages. The clinic was nearly empty save for Ben, a few pets in surgical recovery, and the overnight technician. He turned to the computer, hating himself for what he was about to do. But it was time to delve into the University of Google. Shaking the mouse to awaken the computer, Ben opened the browser and started to type in the omnibox.

Samara Gold, who’d dumped his last name like a sack of ga
rbage, was first. She really was marrying a half-billionaire. From her Facebook updates—he couldn’t believe people made their lives public—he saw her engagement photos. He couldn’t quite work out what had happened to the guy she’d left him for, but figured he’d been cast aside when a richer model came along. Ben looked down at his hands. They were still. All the anger and hostility were gone. Finally. He didn’t know when they’d left, but he didn’t feel any of the bitterness that had been eating at him for the last two years.

He scrolled down the page for a little while. There was Sam
ara’s life for all to see. Clicking the back button a few times, Ben got out before he went any further down that rabbit hole. Didn’t people value their privacy? Relationships were in the past because that’s where they belonged. He couldn’t imagine connecting with old high school friends on Facebook. He didn’t know how Abbe did it. The last thing he wanted were inquiries about his look-alike half-brother, the bastard child of his father. His shame had bounds, and he liked to keep it under wraps.

He started typing again…Hannah. He had to stop because his hands did start shaking this time. He banged his fist on the co
mputer keyboard in frustration. Why her? He should have followed his instincts and skipped dinner that first night. She wouldn’t have starved to death.

Ben leaned back in his office chair and closed his eyes. He still wanted her. How fucking stupid was he? He still wanted her. But she’d lied to him, big time. All those years he’d looked at his mother and considered her weak and stupid. And he was no diffe
rent. Was the baby even his? If they got back together, and that was a big IF, would he be willing to raise someone else’s kid? Did he want to see Michael weekend after weekend for the next eighteen years?

He finished typing her name in the box, and clicked search. A few real estate listings popped up. But there was nothing older. It
was as if she’d appeared on the web a few years ago. Then he remembered, her
other
name. He typed Hannah Morrison in this time. Bingo. She had a website. Two websites. He had no idea. He clicked on the first. It was a virtual photo gallery. Ben clicked through some of the photos. There were actors and people he guessed were celebrities. On a personal snapshot page there were even pictures of the Lost Coast and Cody. He looked down at the dog snoozing at his feet. Even the dog was online.

He went back to the search results. She had a Wikipedia entry. Did everyone? Geez. His heart started when he saw the picture of her on the right side of the page. It was grainy, and out of focus, but it was Hannah. She was singing in some nightclub, from what he could tell. She was the daughter of famous mus
ician/songwriter/band leader Shay Morrison and singer/songwriter Freja Lauritsen.

He knew that, or most of it, at least. It said she’d been a regular in various cafes in Los Angeles, and that she was an active songwriter. He looked down at her discography, surprised that she’d co-written a very popular song with her father. A pop song he’d heard on the radio a million times. He’d proposed marriage to someone he knew nothing about.

This Hannah online seemed so distant from the Hannah he’d known here. He clicked on a link to another ‘official’ site. There she was, a more professional portrait this time. Her beauty hit him like a punch in the gut. There was a link to music, and he hit the play button. Nothing. He looked around his desk and turned on the speakers he never used. Her husky voice hit him full on. She was singing a bluesy song about being done wrong by a guy.

He closed the website with a swift click on the ‘x.’

Marty Wexler was next. It looked like he’d been the one to follow most closely in their father’s footsteps. He was an associate professor of engineering at Sacramento State. He clicked on the link next to Marty’s name and was rewarded with a picture of a man who looked a lot like him. Damn his father for messing up the family dynamic. Why could no one keep it in his pants?

He clicked in the search box again, and jabbed in his request. Of course, the
New York Times
would have a long article on rates of infidelity in the U.S. It was the first result. All the studies referenced confirmed his continued naïveté. Everybody was cheating. Men, women, young, old, with children, and without. Of course, there were no studies on whether cheaters continued to cheat. He’d never asked his mom if his dad had cheated again. He couldn’t imagine she’d put up with it a second time.

Ben nudged Cody. It was time to go home. Nothing was to be gained from this. Nothing. Before he shut off the computer, he e-mailed the woman who filled in for him. If he timed it right, he could go home, pack, and be in Davis in the morning.

***

It was nine o’clock at night in California. Hannah’s hand tre
mbled on the phone. She had to press the long string of numbers three times before she got it right.

He answered, the deep voice she loved sounding bone weary. “Hello.”

“Ben, it’s Hannah. Please don’t hang up.” When the connection held, she continued, “I’m so sorry. That’s all I wanted to say. I’m sorry, and I love you.” Those were the only words she got to say before he hung up the phone. A lump the size of Texas formed in her throat at the sound of the line going dead.

***

“I thought you’d be down here sooner or later,” Elaine said. She sat a mug of coffee and a dried pear and cardamom scone before him on the kitchen table. He stared down at a burn mark he’d made about thirty years ago when he’d dropped a lit match on the table. His mother had ended his firebug tendencies that day.

“I wanted to see how you’re doing. And I thought I’d check up on Dad when I knew he wouldn’t be home. You haven’t said much about his heart since those couple of days you spent at my house.”

“Your dad’s fine. You know that.” She sipped at her own coffee, looking out the window. “You want to know why I stayed with him.” He was glad she’d taken the lead. After his and Abbe’s discovery, he had never talked to his mother about this, ever. It was the elephant who’d stomped around and moved into his parents’ living room. It was true that elephants lived long lives with excellent memories. She looked past him through the window again. “It’s complicated.”

Of course it was complicated. He’d discovered that for himself. The rational, thinking, well-educated part of him couldn’t even fathom taking Hannah back. His heart and lizard brain wanted her near him, no matter the emotional cost. His mom abruptly stood up, sloshing his coffee. “Come here,” she said. He hadn’t touched his scone yet.

She led him to the dining room and motioned for him to sit. From the bottom of the china cabinet, she pulled out one thick photo album.

He stopped her. “Ma, I’ve seen the photo albums before.”

She shushed him, pulled up one of creaky wood chairs right next to his, and started flipping the pages. For about fifteen minutes, his mom turned the yellowed plastic leaves, and he looked at pictures of himself and Abbe—with new bicycles, with missing front teeth, in tacky party hats. Sometimes his father was there with a book in hand, often working at his desk with one or the other of them playing on the floor. His mother was hardly in any of the pictures.

“Where are you?”

“I was taking the pictures, Benji.” Ben suddenly flashed forward. One day his mother would be dead and there would be few pictures of her. He’d been so angry with her on and off for years, but she’d always been there.

“What is it you want me to see, Ma?” he asked, resigned to the lesson she was drawing out.

“The two of you look happy. Your world was ordered and stable. I never wanted to take that away from you.” She took an envelope from the back of the book—the kind that contained negatives. Instead of old color reverse film, she pulled out a single photo. He knew who it was the instant he looked at the eyes. Marty. “What do you
see
?”

“That’s Marty, right?” The boy looked to be about eight years old in the picture.

“Yes, that’s him. But what do you see?”

Ben studied the picture. It was Marty, with a seventies bowl haircut, wearing too-short cut-offs, and a short sleeved plaid shirt.

“He doesn’t look like they had much money.”

“That’s true. Look again.”

Ben picked the small square picture up in his large hand. Under all that hair, Marty wasn’t smiling. A new train and some other shiny toy was next to him, but he still looked sad. “Oh,” he nodded in understanding.

“He was the saddest little boy. Not all the time, I think. But he didn’t look happy. I never wanted to see a face like his on you or your sister. That’s why I stayed.”

“But how could you trust Dad after what he did? Did you ever worry that he was going to leave you for…” He couldn’t say the name in front of his mother. “…her?”

“He promised. And I believed him. I think he realized he’d made a big mistake. I don’t think he ever did it again.” She paused a long time. “It wasn’t like it is now. I didn’t grow up in a time where people divorced at the drop of a hat. Your dad made a mi
stake—a very big one—but I loved him, and I loved you, and I was willing to work to make it better.”

“Was it better?”

“You’re not really asking about me. You’re asking about Hannah,” she said matter-of-factly.

He put the picture back in the envelope, closed the album, and leaned back. “I still love her.”

“Of course you do. Betrayal doesn’t erase the love.”

“She has a husband.”

“She won’t have him for very much longer, I expect.”

“I’m not sure I’m the father of her baby.”

His mom sighed. “Look, Ben, if you take her back—you’re going to have to take the whole package. That child she’s carrying did not ask to be born. And he or she certainly didn’t ask to be born in these particular circumstances. Who would? But the child is innocent. That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to understand about Marty. I want you to get something I didn’t understand until it was too late. The reason you and your sister don’t know Marty is because I shut him out of our lives. I didn’t want someone else’s baby interfering with what we had here. I didn’t want a reminder that your father might have loved someone else. But that wasn’t fair. You and Abbe wouldn’t have been any less loved if he’d been in our lives. And now, your dad and I are scrambling to make up for lost time. But it’ll never be the same for me, or you, or Marty. I wouldn’t ever want that baby of Hannah’s to think it was somehow second class.”

“You’d accept it even if it were her husband’s?”

“Not it. He or she. There’s a little person coming into this world.” She smoothed back his unruly hair like she’d done so many times when he was a child. “To answer your questions, Ben: unequivocally, yes. If that’s what you decide. That child would be my grandbaby like Abbe’s kids.” She stood and tucked the album away. “I think you need to talk to your father.”

Ben’s jaw clenched. “About what?”

“About this. You need to forgive him. I think it would go a long way to helping you work out what you’re going to do about that woman you love.”

He tried not to grind his teeth. “I’ve got to go, Ma.”

“Go where? Aren’t you staying here overnight? You’re not going to make that long drive back without even eating something.”

Ben cast away the years of etiquette his mom had drilled in his head and walked out the door. He needed to leave before his head exploded.

***

“Making the rounds?” Abbe said when he showed up una
nnounced several hours later.

“Turns out that you can’t really stop by people’s houses with such short notice at my age. Too many small kids in the schedule.”

“And I’m the exception?”

“Abbe,” he pushed his way past his sister, dropped his coat on a chair, and made himself comfortable in her small living room. Ben pointed to the cold hearth. “Do you ever light this?”

His sister ignored him. “She’s in Copenhagen.”

“Denmark?”

“Yup.”

“How in the hell do you know that?”

“I called her.”

“You have her number?”

“Why are you really here?”

Ben rubbed his face, his tired eyes, his roughened jaw. When had he last shaved? “How did you forgive him?”

“Isaiah!” Abbe yelled. Ben heard a faint response from the back of the house where it sounded like her husband was bathing the kids. “I’m going to get drunk tonight. So you’re in charge.” Her husband shouted his acquiescence without so much as a protest. But then, who would buck Abbe? Suddenly he felt very sorry for Isaiah.

“What’s your poison?” When Ben started to speak, she put a hand on his arm. “Don’t say wine. That shit will take forever. I mean real liquor.”