A Life More Complete(9)
“Hi,” I whisper almost inaudibly as I find him lying on a lounge chair staring up at the blackened sky, beer in hand. Roxy is curled into a ball on the chair next to him.
“Hi,” he responds, sitting up to meet my gaze as he adjusts the chair back. His voice is soft, but there’s a lonely, sad quality to it.
I crawl onto the chair and into his lap placing my head against his chest. He smells of soap, a manly smell, mixed with beer. I’ve missed him terribly and I choke back the feeling of tears that sting my eyes. It has been years since I’ve cried. I want to cry for the guilt I feel, for the hatred of my job, for the loneliness I feel radiating from Ben. But I can’t. I won’t.
He runs his hand up and down my back absentmindedly as if he knows to soothe me. I take another long drink of my beer and place it on the ground next to the chair.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to be here with you more than anything, but...” I can’t complete the thought because it always comes back to the same thing. My job, my permanent excuse for everything. “Can you do this?” I ask.
“Can I do what?”
“Can you be with me when I’m late and gone and when I do get here I’m just done?” I inquire exasperated. It’s a question I ask that I subconsciously hope pushes him away. It’s my excuse to keep him from getting too close.
“If it means that when I do finally see you, it ends like this, then yes. Absolutely. Yes. This is the best part of my day.” He presses his lips into my hair and kisses me softly on the top of my head. His words are my undoing. Why is he so unconditionally kind to me when I offer him nothing but emptiness?
Tears begin to fall silently from my eyes. Pouring down like waterfalls, years of unshed tears soaking Ben’s shirt. My mother’s words slam into me. “Save your tears. There will be a day when you need them.” This was said to me when she found me crying in the bathroom after a particularly terrible high school style break up with my then boyfriend, Tyler McCarthy. The words were repeated several months later when I cried over the loss of my beloved cat Mitty and again when I failed my drivers test. But the worst time was when my grandfather died unexpectedly and suddenly. Ripping him from my life without warning, he was gone without so much as a good-bye. I cried harder in those few weeks than I had in my entire life, yet her face was absent and void of any feeling. She never hugged me or attempted to calm me. This was her father, the man who raised her, loved her, and took her in when she and her three small children had nowhere else to go. Crying should have been a sign of respect and love, but she couldn’t. And when I couldn’t gain my composure three weeks after his death she smacked me so hard across the face that she left a handprint, a red, lumpy, finger-shaped welt on my cheek, but still said nothing. I was stunned into silence and knew when my grandmother died three weeks later I learned not to grieve in any way that showed outwardly. When I walked out on my mother at eighteen, I repeated these same words to her and left prefacing her statement with, “Is now a time to cry?” She, of course, said nothing. I was now crying for my job, my inability to let Ben in, my lack of unconditional love, for Mitty and my grandparents and most of all for all those moments I wanted to cry but couldn’t. My body racked with heaving sobs.
Ben pulls me in tighter to him, his arms wrap around me so tightly I can barely pull in a ragged breath. I hear him shush into my hair and it only makes it worse. I can’t believe I’m letting him see me this way, so vulnerable and open. This is far too intimate and I want to shut down. Yet, I can’t control myself.
“I’m sorry,” I stutter through rough uncontrolled sobs. “I just had a bad day at work.” As I speak I regain my composure. I try to stand, but Ben won’t release me. His arms around me like a straight jacket forcing me to stay. “Ben? Can I get up?” I ask quietly.
“No. This is the most real you have been since I met you. I never want to let go of you.” He kisses my head softly and I want to tell him everything.
“I haven’t cried in at least ten years.” I quickly say before I can stop myself. “The last time I remember crying was after my grandfather passed. After that—nothing.” I suddenly breathe out, a long slow release and I realize I have been holding my breath awaiting his response. He says nothing for several seconds.
“Why?”
I take a deep breath and prepare myself for exposure. I haven’t spoken about my mother since I left home. “I don’t know. I grew up in a house that was completely void of any emotion. My mother was unable to deal with weakness or vulnerability, basically anything that caused her to feel. She passed this on to my sisters and me. I don’t know if she so much as passed it on or if it was forced upon us. We all became self-soothers, finding ways to deal. My sister Rachel and I named our mother “Benign” one night. It was the summer of ‘95. It was one of the hottest summers on record. Our house had no central air because it was so old. Only two window units. It really sucked. We sat on the roof outside my bedroom window because the house was hotter than the air outside. We smoked a joint, laughing, we came up with the nickname. Benign, like as in cancer. The kind that doesn’t kill you, but still sucks really bad. That was our mother.” I shake my head against Ben’s chest. “I guess we all deal with our demons in different ways, maybe some less self-destructive than others. My repressed feelings manifest themself in my OCD.” I sound like my therapist from my childhood and I pause wondering if he’ll acknowledge what I just shared with him. He says nothing and I summon the courage to continue. “I’m sure you’ve noticed my OCD. It’s hard to hide, kind of embarrassing for the person who witnesses it.”