“This could be exactly what you need,” Claudia persisted, flapping the brochure in front of him like a fan. “Time to relax. Regroup.”
But Benji had stopped listening. His brain busied itself composing a confession that his sister wouldn’t automatically reject as a ploy to steer past their father on one hand, a convalescent home on the other. What to say? What to say?
Facebook! he wrote, adding the exclamation point with a flourish of relief. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He had 658 friends on Facebook. Certainly one of them, or a friend or acquaintance of one of them, or a friend or acquaintance of one of them, would cast a pitying eye on what could be billed a meagerly famous near-suicide. He was, after all, the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question (’80s edition). A little fame, like a pinch of spice, still clung to him. Certainly someone on Facebook would be willing to season their stew with it.
Claudia’s face collapsed with disdain. “Facebook.”
He’d forgotten his audience. His sister wasn’t quite the technophobe their father was, but she subscribed to a philosophy of social media that easily made her look as dated as an Atari.
“Is Ashton Kutcher going to come to your rescue? What? You’re one of his four million friends. Or maybe your prom date? She was a nice girl. Or someone else you haven’t spoken to in twenty years.”
“Yur tho mean.”
“And you’re ridiculous. If you died tomorrow, how many of those friends would be at your funeral?” This was a favorite question, one that present circumstance rendered completely inappropriate but habit and passion spurred her to ask anyway.
Benji managed a look of shock that Stella Adler would have been proud of.
“Sorry. That was a shitty thing to say. But we’ve talked about this, Benji. Relationships are like trees.”
“Ot the twee!”
“Yes, the twee. If we’re lucky, we get a few that feed a lifetime. One. Maybe two. They’re strong, substantial. They put down roots. But most of them, most friendships, are leaves. They’re here. A nice little blossom for a time. A bit of color. Then they fade. We shed them. It’s natural that we shed them. You’re not supposed to know what the girl you took to the prom does with her day. Joanna Goverski is eating at IHOP! Who cares?”
“‘Who cares?’” The echo came from the opposite side of the biscuit-colored curtain, followed a moment later by their mother. “Who cares about what?” Evelyn lacked the bearing and attitude to be called regal, but she had the face for it. She was tall and trim, with a fine, upturned nose, lips drawn thin by perpetual sufferance, and a helmet of immaculate silver curls. “Come on,” she called, glancing irritably over her shoulder at Henry as he shuffled into view.
“Tone,” Henry warned. “I’m not a dog.”
Ignoring this, she stepped to the far side of the bed and bent to kiss Benji. A tightness around the mouth let him know he hadn’t been forgiven. Not for nearly dying. That offense proved so mountainous, so impossible to scale, she could do nothing but overlook it. Benji knew: her anger burned for another reason, for the fact that he had lived so close for nearly two months — a half hour away! — without telling her. He hadn’t visited. Hadn’t told her where he was staying or invited her to see the show. As if she, of all people, wouldn’t have welcomed a night out. Not, as Claudia reminded her, that she would have taken it. “Who cares about what?” Evelyn asked her daughter in lieu of a hello.
Claudia got up and, hugging Henry, steered him into her chair. “They’re discharging Benji, but he needs somewhere to go.”
Perplexed, Evelyn stared across the gulf of the bed and asked, “What do you mean ‘somewhere to go’?”
“He needs supervision.”
“Why would he need supervision?” Evelyn asked, smoothing a wrinkle out of the bedspread.
“He tried to kill himself, Mother. That’s why.”
“I told you to stop saying that.”
“She’d rather admit I wet myself last week,” said Henry with a rattling struggle to clear a plug of phlegm from his throat. He swallowed. “And we all know how willing she’s been to do that.”
“Henry.” Evelyn reached for the plastic pitcher sitting on Benji’s nightstand and filled a cup with water. “Take a drink instead of sitting there hacking.”
“Henry come. Henry drink. Henry roll over and play dead.”
Like a conductor bringing his orchestra to attention, Benji tapped the baton of his marker on his pad and, with large, wounded eyes, held up the paper for Evelyn to see.
She wants me to go to a nursing home.
“It’s not a nursing home, drama queen!” Claudia jabbed the promotional pamphlet into her mother’s hand and watched as Evelyn pored over it. “He thinks he should stay with a friend.”
“What friend?”
“He doesn’t know. Someone on Facebook.”
“Facebook?” Evelyn grimaced. “That’s nonsense. He’ll stay with us.” Evelyn dropped Treadwell Acre’s best pitch into the trash as if it were a bill she had no intention of paying, then surveyed the flower arrangements next to Benji’s bed. She snapped off a daisy’s browning head. “Your room is ready for you.”
“His room is the Shrine of Guadalupe.” Henry laughed. “Let me see that. What you just threw away.”
Evelyn stopped pruning the flowers long enough to retrieve the brochure and deliver it to Henry.
“She’s starting her very own assisted living community.” He considered the hazily happy invalid on the cover and said, “You move home. I’ll move here. At least they wouldn’t talk to me like they’re training a Saint — a Saint… Jesus fucking — what’s the name of it?”
“Saint who? How would I know?” Evelyn answered. “We’re not Catholic.”
“The dog, the name of the dog!”
It was onto this battlefield that Benji was about to pitch himself. He saw a week into the future, waking in his childhood bed under the watchful eyes of his Star Wars figurines. The sound of his parents’ latest skirmish would rise with the smell of coffee from the kitchen, and Benji, hobbling downstairs as if he’d had a bull’s-eye painted on his chest, would become his father’s newest target.
“Bernard, Daddy,” said Claudia, rubbing Henry’s back. “Saint Bernard.” She turned to Evelyn and, packing away her lullaby voice, asked, “You plan to take care of Benji and Daddy by yourself? At the same time?”
“I’m not by myself. I have Sandra.”
“For six hours a day. That leaves eighteen.”
“You make it seem like I’m about to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.”
“Either way you’ll be running around until you break your hip.”
“You and your broken hip.”
“You and your broken hip, Mom. And who will have to take care of you then?”
“Don’t worry. I know better than to ask you.”
“Stop it!” Henry called out. “Both of you.”
Benji’s marker moved across a fresh sheet of paper with the high-pitched sound of a hungry mouse. I have something to tell you. He flipped the page: I
Henry pointed and snapped, “Philomela’s trying to tell you something.”