Chaos and Control(68)
“What’s this music?” I ask.
She cocks her head and listens for a few seconds. “Oh! This is Belle and Sebastian from ‘96. I’m currently obsessed with this album.”
Bennie and I reminisce about the old days, growing up in Crowley and resenting our parents. We tell the same stories from different points of view and somehow understand each other more.
“You remember that one time I was supposed to sing a solo in the church choir?” Bennie asks, flipping through her magazine.
“Yeah. But you got sick. You wouldn’t let anyone even come check on you.”
Bennie chuckles and looks up at me, her eyes dancing. “I wasn’t really sick.”
“What? Are you serious? I thought Mom was going to have a stroke that day. She ran around the house praying for you to get better and praying to find a replacement singer. Like it was the end of the world or something. It was a nightmare. She made me audition, Bennie!”
“So sorry, kid.”
“What was so important that you skipped out on your big solo, the highlight of your sad small-town existence?”
“It was hardly that big of a deal, Wren.”
“Spill it.”
Bennie shuffles her feet and winds a string of red hair around her index finger.
“I was hung over from getting drunk with Deacon Miles.”
My mouth drops open, and I can’t believe what she’s saying. My chin bobs as my brain searches for a response. Finally, I point my finger at her and grin.
“Mom made me sing that damn song, gave me the disappointed look, and then prayed for me to receive the blessing of talent.”
“She did not,” Bennie says.
“She did! Deacon Miles. The Deacon. You got drunk with Daddy’s assistant.”
“We did more than just get drunk,” she says with an exaggerated wink. “You make it sound so sinister.”
“Because it is, you tramp!”
We both laugh until there are tears in our eyes, and I clutch at a pain in my side.
“Tell me about your travels, Wren,” she says.
“I thought you got all my postcards?”
“I did. But they only tell me where you were. I want to know what you experienced, who you met. I kept every one of those postcards. Want to see?”
“Hell, yes. I bet I don’t even remember half of them.”
Bennie heads upstairs, and the air is much thicker with just Preston and me in the store. I feel, more than see, him approaching. I avoid his gaze until I can’t. What I see there is complete agony. I can tell he hasn’t slept. He looks tired and beat to shit. Though every other thing about his appearance is crisp and neat. Our gazes exchange places. Mine goes up, his goes down.
His telltale frown increases as his lips move. I sit silently, hearing him count to twelve and start over again.
“Twelve,” he finally says aloud. “There are twelve album frames in this case. Maybe I should move some to the other side. Six and six would work better.”
I watch closely as he grabs a stack of flyers on the counter, straightens them, and lays them flat again. He does this three times before I interrupt him.
“Did you need something, Preston?”
His head snaps up, like he’s forgotten I’m here.
“Alphabetical order,” he says, pointing to the flyers. “Coffee Call. Franklin Bowling. Lake Loveless Fourth of July Celebration. C, F, L.”
“Preston,” I say again, urging him out of his OCD attack.
He looks at his watch with a frown. Preston grabs the cup of pens near the register, replaces the caps on each one, and makes sure they are all cap side down. I watch him, waiting. But he seems to be lost in this ritual. He slides the cup back toward the register and spins it so that the word pens faces the front door. For once, I find all these rituals maddening.
“Just spit it out, Preston,” I say, frustration evident.
He turns to me, our eyes finally meet, and there is nothing there, no emotion I can read. He nods and rubs at the back of his neck, his flexed biceps pulling tight against his sleeve.
He shakes his head and says nothing before walking away.
As I watch him leave, I frown when he pauses to straighten the front album on every row on his way to the back of the store. A whisper of guilt floats through my mind. I’ve made his condition worse. His tics seem uncontrolled, his anxiety elevated. I know I’m being hard on him, but I can’t get over him keeping this secret. When I think about Preston knowing this whole time that my sister was dying and keeping that from me, I am hurt.
A few minutes pass, and Bennie emerges with a large book. I am relieved to have her back here as a buffer. She slaps it down on the counter and waves a hand over it like a game-show girl.
“What’s that?”
“Every postcard you ever sent me. Chronologically.”
“What? That’s awesome, Ben.”
“It was Preston’s doing,” she says proudly.
My head snaps up, and I meet his gray eyes across two aisles of records. He gives me a hopeful smile, but I can’t return it. Instead, I hop up on the counter and take a look as she opens the scrapbook and flips through the pages. I’m in awe and reliving my travels through these cards. I’m so honored that she kept them.
“I want to know everything,” she says.