A Life More Complete(106)
He pauses and I take the moment, “Ben, you don’t have to do this. I don’t need an explanation of why you’re here. We’re friends.”
“I know. But I need to tell you. I need to tell someone. Seeing it all again and knowing what you’re going through.” He stops and walks to the opposite side of the bed. He pulls his shoes off and slips his tie off over his head. Tossing his suit coat and his tie over the desk chair, he climbs in next to me. “My mom worked as a high school history teacher for twenty years. That seems like along time, doesn’t it?” he asks but I don’t answer. “Not long enough. She was so good at her job. She’d spend hours grading papers and putting together lesson plans. My dad worked equally as hard. When he found out she was pregnant with me he wanted her to quit her job. He spent years building up his business so that she would never have to work again. But she couldn’t leave. She loved it and he never once made her feel guilty for continuing to work.” He stops again and swallows hard. “She went to the doctor because she kept getting headaches. My dad would joke with her that she spent too much time on the computer. But in the end she went in for headaches and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Two totally unrelated things. She died less than six weeks after she was diagnosed.”
I look over at Ben and he’s crying, silently. I can’t control myself and tears fall fast. I take his hand in mine, “Ben, I’m so sorry,” I say, but he stops me.
“Please let me finish,” he chokes out. “It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I sat by her bed for hours. My dad wouldn’t let her die in a hospital. He hired the best nurses and doctors. She had chemo and radiation. She lost all of her hair. She had the most beautiful hair I’d ever seen. She was born blonde and it stayed that way her whole life. When it started falling out I think I was more traumatized by it than she was. I wished I had blonde hair when I was little, but my brother and I both looked like my father. I remember thinking how unfair that was. She carried us for nine months and the reward in the end was that we looked nothing like her.” He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “She made me promise to finish college. How was I supposed to go back to school and leave her? How was I supposed to carry on with my life?”
I can’t even look at him by this point and a ragged sob leaves me. He grips my hand tighter and continues.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not for us. Not for my perfect family. She died the week before I needed to go back to school. I left even though everything in me told me to stay. I stayed gone. I didn’t come home at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I was drunk all the time.”
As he speaks I can’t help but think that Ben and I were only a few hours away from each other. I can picture him drunk in his apartment in Berkley on Christmas. It was the same Christmas that Tyler went to the Maldives with his family, leaving me alone to serve steak to lonely people on Christmas Day. I was the only waitress on staff because I was the only one without family. I ate my Christmas dinner with Marco, the bus boy and my manager, Josef, that night.
“When the school year finally ended I went home only because my brother had called and begged me to. I didn’t realize how bad it was. My dad had fallen apart. Josh called me a lot, but I blew him off. I guess I didn’t really want to hear it.” Ben releases my hand causing me to look at him. He reaches over and wipes the tears from my cheeks and shakes his head. “The business was failing. Terribly. It had basically gone to shit after my mom died. My dad wouldn’t show up to work because he was still drunk from the night before. Luckily for him, his crew was good and they kept it running as best as they could. I took over from there. My dad’s secretary trained me on the billing and scheduling. I’d only ever done the labor portion of the job. I had to learn payroll, which by that point was four weeks behind schedule, but somehow I pulled it together.” He smiles a little, but I know it’s just for show. The hurt is still in his eyes. “I dropped all my classes. It killed me but I knew my mom wouldn’t have wanted me to let my dad suffer. My dad got it together a few weeks after I came home. He stopped drinking, came into work with me every day. Things were really good. Business picked back up and we added the pool installation and cleaning. Josh went off to Texas A&M in early August and I stuck around to help run the business.” Ben stops again and I can hear his breathing accelerate. He reaches for my hand and I slip my fingers into his willingly. “My dad killed himself on the anniversary of my mom’s death. Looking back on it now, I don’t think he got better. He just pulled it together long enough to make sure I was okay with running the business.”