“So, what are you saying? You wish you never went over there? Wish you were never a soldier at all?”
Benjamin couldn’t say that. If he did, it would be admitting the futility of it all—Stephen, his foot, his decaying marriage, that dead boy, those bodies he unloaded. All of it for nothing. “No.”
“Then stop your complaining and start living.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Wesley plucked a fleck of fish from his undershirt. “I know.”
Abbi wore a dress, the one he liked, the one she bought when they first married, beige with a bold fern design and sleeveless, swishing just above her knee. It tied at the side, as if it wrapped around her; but it didn’t really, he knew. He had tried to open it that way once.
Abbi laughed at his confusion when the dress didn’t fall off, and said, “It’s a faux wrap dress.
Faux
being the operative word.”
He pouted. “How am I supposed to get you out of it, then?”
“Try the zipper,” she had told him.
He smiled tenderly now, watched her with a toothbrush hanging from her mouth, filling baby bottles. She said, “I’m almost ready,” through the white foam, and scooted down the hallway. He followed her to the bathroom. She spat, rinsed. “What are you grinning at?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Well, stop it. You’re making me paranoid. Go get the baby.”
Benjamin strapped Silvia into the detachable car seat and dangled a plush monkey above her. “One little monkey jumping on the bed. She fell off and bumped her head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed.’ ” He bent down to her, wriggled his face against her belly, dotted her bare legs with kisses. “Are you my little monkey? You are. You’re Daddy’s little monkey.” She giggled and kicked him in the eye.
“I’m ready,” Abbi said, tugging a green sweater over her dress. A jade donut-shaped pendant hung on a cord around her neck; his eyes slipped down from the necklace over her body, down her legs, to the knots of muscle balled in each calf, more pronounced by her hemp platform sandals. Her skin glistened, and he smelled melons. Sweet, sugary melons.
“You shaved,” he said.
“You like it.”
They took the Volvo, and Abbi drove. They ended up in a tourist town, the main attraction a neo-Moorish building covered in ears of colored corn and other grains that created themed murals. “Want to stop at the Corn Palace?” Benjamin said as they passed. “Silvia’s first tourist trap.”
Abbi rolled her eyes.
“Just asking.”
He carried the baby into a Chinese restaurant, and he and Abbi took turns sitting with her as the other plated their food at the buffet. They ate for several minutes in silence, then Benjamin said, “We had a bit of a break in the case today,” and he told her what he could while she listened, twirling lo mein on her fork.
“What does it mean?” she asked finally.
“That at least one of Silvia’s parents goes to school in Temple. Or maybe someone who knows who her parents are. Most likely it’s the mother, though.”
“Poor girl.”
“I know you didn’t just say what I thought you said.”
Abbi sipped her iced tea through a straw. “I did.”
“Look at that child on the bench next to you. How can you even—?”
“Because I do. Have you even considered how scared and confused this girl must have been to do what she did?”
“Or maybe she just wanted to get rid of her kid. You hear about teenagers at their proms, giving birth in a toilet stall and dumping the babies in the trash before going back out and partying.”
“Which is my point. What healthy, sane person thinks no one will find a newborn in a school bathroom?”
“And if Simon Wayne hadn’t been trying to make out with his girlfriend, no one would’ve found Silvia. She’d be dead, Abbi. It was just dumb—”
“Don’t you dare say
luck
.”
Benjamin swished his soda. “Your problem is you think everyone is basically good.”
“No,” Abbi said, “I think we all bear God’s image. It’s not the same thing, but it’s why I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.”
He’d forgotten how to do that, trust people first and think later.
A man who did that in a war got his head blown off. “You’re such a bleeding heart. Let’s just gather for a big ol’ group hug and the world will be a better place.”
“Not a bad idea,” she said, and she laughed. “Remember our first date?”
“That vegetarian place. Gag. You made me eat wheat meat.”
“I didn’t make you do anything, Benjamin Patil. You choked that down all by your little lonesome. And, if I remember correctly, it was your idea to take me there.”
“To impress you. It didn’t work. We argued the whole meal.”
“Like this,” she said.
A grin pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Yeah. Like this.”
“And I did come back for more.”
“Masochist.”
“Takes one to know one.”
The waitress appeared, gathering their dirty plates. “You finish?” she asked. They both nodded, and she slipped the check onto the table, two fortune cookies on top. Benjamin held one out to Abbi, the plastic wrapper crinkling as she took it from his hand, her fingers gliding over his wrist and palm. “You first,” she said.
He cracked his cookie open, like an egg, on the side of the table.
“ ‘You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy.’ ”
“They obviously haven’t lived with you lately.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry,” Abbi said quickly. “I didn’t—”
“No, I deserved that.” He yanked a napkin from the metal dispenser, swept the crumbs and greasy bits of fried rice onto the carpet. “I am trying.”
“I know. I am, too. I think I am, anyway. Sometimes.” She sipped her drink again, now watery from the melted ice, wrinkled her nose. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait. Your fortune.”
Abbi ripped open the wrapper and broke her cookie into two neat halves. Read the slip of paper.
“Come on. I told you mine,” Benjamin prodded. “What’s it say?”
She looked at him. “I love you.”
The words hung there between the clattering silverware and jumbled conversations around them. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d said that to him, or he to her. And he couldn’t remember why he’d stopped saying it. But it was back now, fluttering like an exotic bird, one everyone had thought extinct but was really only hidden in the thick, dark canopy of angry words and bruised hopes.
He stood, an odd, light feeling in his stomach.
Happiness? It could
be.
“Now I think we can go.”
“You drive,” she said, and tucked the fortune in the diaper bag.
“Hey. What’s it really say?”
“I told you.”
Benjamin inserted the car seat into its base, started the car. He touched Abbi’s smooth knee, beneath her dress. “Thank you. For trying.”
“It’s not much.”
“Yes it is,” he said. “I love you, too.”
There was a knock on the door, and this time it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to Abbi. People had been knocking for weeks—neighbors, church ladies, co-workers from the grocery or her time substitute teaching—all coming to see Silvia. At first Abbi took the meals they offered and, with some excuse about nap time or bottle time, closed the door, leaving them hovering on the patio. The food stopped but the visits didn’t, so she started inviting people in. They held Silvia and between uneasy silences asked the requisite baby questions—“Is she a good baby for you?” “How long is she sleeping at night?”—until eventually words ran out and the guests excused themselves to run to the market, or the hairdresser, or get home to grab the kids off the bus.
Still, they came back. The conversations grew longer and the silences nearly disappeared, and Abbi began to realize this baby that someone didn’t want was closing not only the wounds between her and Benjamin, but between her and the town.
“I’m coming,” Abbi called as the knock came again. Marie Vilhauser, she guessed. The old crone has been coming by every few days with a small basket of eggs. For the baby. “You go ahead and shake up one of these in her bottle,” she had told Abbi. “She’ll grow up strong as a bison.”
So Abbi opened the door with her head tilted down, expecting to be staring at the wrinkled woman’s flaky scalp, but saw instead a gray T-shirt with
PENN STATE
printed across the chest in blue-flocked letters. She’d seen that shirt more times than she could count, and looked up, her heart pulsing thick and joyful behind her entire rib cage.
“Hi,” Lauren said.
The corner of the metal screen door scraped Abbi’s ankle as she flung herself onto her friend, weeping. Lauren cried with her, hugging back. And they laughed, Abbi smearing the tears over her cheeks as she wiped them away.
“What are you doing here? Come in. Where are the kids?”
“I left them at home,” Lauren said. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing. A little scratch. I just can’t believe you’re here.”
“You’re really bleeding.”
Abbi inspected her leg. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was long with tiny pearls of blood sprouting up every few centimeters. Lauren couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Abbi tugged her sock over the wound. “All better,” she said.
“You nut.”
“Sit, sit. Do you want something? Tea? Anything?”
“I’m good, really,” Lauren said, dropping her long body onto the couch. Long, broad, and flat, that was how Lauren was built. Nearly six feet tall, with wide hips and shoulders, and straight through the waist. But not fat. Flat—no curves in the front or back, and even her face seemed pressed in, with wide-set eyes and a wide, low-bridged nose. She scooped a shredded Kleenex from her pocket. “Here. Take half.”
“It’s paper,” Abbi said.
“Yes, but it’s recycled paper. I wiped Stevie’s nose with it and forgot to throw it out before I washed my jeans.”
“Thanks. I’ll pass.” Abbi sniffed and watched her friend blow into the pre-used tissue. She wanted to tell Lauren how much she had missed her, but it would come out wrong. “I’ve really missed you,” she said anyway, and it was wrong, all morose and accusatory, like telling someone her favorite grandmother died, but wouldn’t have if she’d been there a few hours earlier.
“I’ve missed you, too. I should have come sooner. I wanted to. I just . . . didn’t know how,” Lauren said. She scratched her knee. “I knew you’d do it, eventually.”
“What?”
“Motherhood.”
Abbi glanced down the hallway, where Silvia napped, the baby she was trying not to love. “I’m not a mother.”
Lauren hesitated. “Is Ben at work?”
“Yeah.”
“How is he?”
Abbi couldn’t tell the truth. She had a husband. Lauren did not. Who was she to complain? “Fine. Great. We’re both great.”
“Liar.”
“How do you know?”
“Kathy. She talked to Sangita.”
Not surprising Sangita would talk to Stephen’s mom about Ben. “And that’s why you’re here?”
Lauren crossed her legs, her arms over her stomach. “You were there for me, and I left you to deal with this all by yourself.”
“Lauren—”
“No, really. That’s not a best friend. That’s a jerk. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop it. You don’t have to apologize. It was easier for me to be there for you.”
“The last time I checked, God didn’t call us to easy,” Lauren said. She nudged Abbi’s foot with her own. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know. Ben won’t talk to me. I mean, he says stuff. At least he does now that the baby’s here. But it’s not anything about . . . anything.”
“He’s depressed.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that.” Abbi pulled up her legs, rested her chin on her knee. “I don’t know.” Her thighs pushed against her gut, her diaphragm. She couldn’t draw a deep breath. “That idiotic war.”
“You and Ben were having problems long before he went away, Abbi.”
“Not like this.”
“No, you were the one not talking then.”
Lauren was right.
Every woman had what she believed were the wrong reasons for getting hitched. Money. Pregnancy. Family pressure. Abbi could add her own wrong reason. Love.
Ha, ha
. Both hers for Benjamin and his for her.
It had been good in the beginning—that first year of marriage while she finished school and he worked at the mall as a security guard. They still played the part of college kids, living in a loft apartment, washing laundry in the bathtub because they hadn’t enough money for the machines, eating off their laps in front of the television. They celebrated everything by making love, from her B+ on an art history test to his finding a deal on a package of clearance bungee cords at Wally World. They saw their friends every day, sipped coffee together and talked like their conversations could impact everything from teenaged apathy to Tibetan independence.
She’d never had a man love her with his abandon. He’d shown her by telling her how he felt—so unlike any other boy or man she’d known, her own father included—which was why his silence now was so devastating. It wasn’t
him
. He had showed her by doing all sorts of special little things for her, like changing her monitor background to her new favorite painting, or ordering a case of her favorite cherry pie Lärabars, which she couldn’t find anywhere closer than Sioux Falls. And she had loved him because he made her feel like a princess (and she hated to admit that, especially to herself ). She had loved him because he looked at her as if she were the only woman in the world.
And then she couldn’t stand him looking at her as if she were the only woman in the world.
It changed when Benjamin took the job in Temple. She became a deputy’s wife, and people knew her only that way. They had no friends, not like the ones in college, without responsibility to children or career or grown-up obligations. Stephen and Lauren lived twenty minutes away, but they had a real life now, with him working Lauren’s parents’ farm and her pregnant. So it was the
Abbi & Benjamin Show
. Evenings together. Weekends together. Just the two of them. And Abbi started itching, suddenly allergic to Benjamin’s undivided attention. She spent more time in her studio, out running, on the computer— but with her avoidance came the guilt.