Cameo Lake (26 page)

Thirty-six

L
ife, even life in crisis, finds its own routine. It is impossible to sustain flash point. It happens, action, then reaction, then stasis. In other words, life goes on. Alice and Sean's sisters came home from the beach. I took the kids school shopping. Sean completed his move in with his mother, but came every week to mow the lawn, then to rake the leaves, then to put the storm windows on.

We formalized the arrangement, defined visitation and finances and then stood back to see what we had wrought. We were like spectators at a bull fight, anxious to see the next choreographed stage of the fight. The matador hadn't been brought in for the kill yet, but the picadors were tormenting the bull.

Separation made our marriage neither fish nor fowl. It served only to give everyone but Sean and me false hope that life would go back to what it had been, with Sean on a longer leash and me still part of the family. In theory we were to examine and rebuild our life, with the aid of a high-priced therapist. In practice, we just built new lives, the hub of our defeated marriage at the center, threads here and there crossing which would always keep us connected, but not close. By the end of October I knew that it was too fragile; an arrangement which gave me nothing except ties to a man who loved someone else.

I think even Alice got a little weary of pretending we'd get back
together. She stopped asking me to have dinner with them when the kids went to her house on Friday nights. She gave up manipulating accidental “meetings” between Sean and me. It was important to me to retain Alice's love, but I couldn't do what she wanted.

“Will you come to Frances's birthday party?”

“I'll come by late.”

“You two can certainly eat a bit of cake in the same room.”

“Alice.” She simply didn't understand how painful it was for me to be in the same room with Sean, knowing that in the next hour he'd be off to bonk his mistress.

“Why ever not?”

“I'm uncomfortable.” I drew on a therapist's term.

“Baloney, you make yourself uncomfortable by not forgiving him.”

I stood up and kissed her forehead. “I have to go.”

I knew that every time I had a conversation like that with Alice, I was digging a chasm I would soon not be able to cross. Eventually she would stand on the other side of it. After all was said and done, Sean was her son, I was the outsider.

I stood to the side of Tim's bedroom door. I could hear him, at two in the morning, flying a little plastic airplane over his head, making little puttering noises. I knew that if I looked in, I would see his other hand clutching a newly resurrected baby blanket. Tim's sleeplessness had gone unabated despite all the suggestions of his pediatrician, his therapist, and his grandmother. I sighed and went in. Sometimes simply lying down with him helped. I was already exhausted by worrying about Lily's behavior. It was unnerving how certain miscellaneous misbehaviors could add up to what the school guidance counselor called acting out. More than once since September I'd been called to school. Lily had been picking fights with girls she barely knew. She'd been hanging out in the girls bathroom instead of going to art class. Lily had thrown food at older kids at another table during lunch. The list went on and on.

I'd found my limited supply of makeup in her backpack. Unrepentant, Lily shrugged, “I needed it. You won't let me buy my own.”

“Lily, you're in fifth grade.”

“Everyone else has makeup.”

She quickly discovered that saying, “Daddy lets me” was guaranteed to get a reaction out of me. Tiring of that, she grew more subtle, more silent, and I worried that she, my chum and boon companion, was drawing away. Lily began to remind me of my mother. Cold and undemonstrative. I fought the idea that genetics would come to bear on this child and prayed that she would outgrow this as she would come to accept that her behavior wouldn't change anything.

The good news was that my novel had sold and now I was left with the task of refining and reshaping the rough bits. I nearly went down on my knees in relieved thanks when it sold for enough to insure that I could manage alone financially. In the worst-case scenario, I could buy Sean's share of the house if it came to that, although I had a good lawyer and it might not.

Not a day went by when I didn't think of Ben. I played the CD and listened to his music and remembered with masochistic delight moments of our brief association. I thought about him at his wife's bedside, holding her hand and then holding mine. I heard the plaintive rise of Stash's tenor voice against the underscoring bass line and remembered lying next to Ben on the raft at noon, and in his arms that last night. I took little pauses in whatever I was doing, suddenly smitten with memory. I sat staring out of the little window in my office and saw not my small city backyard but the expanse of lake water shimmering in the early day.

But I didn't call him. Or write, although I phrased out messages in my head all the time. I stuck to my resolve that it would be unfair to both of us. Distance and time hadn't lessened my feelings, the memories were no less poignant, but I was hyper-aware of my own vulnerability and emotional fragility right now.

Ben didn't call me. On good days I imagined him wanting to, thinking of me, resisting the same temptation I resisted, and for the same reasons. On bad days I thought he'd probably forgotten all about his summer companion.

“Mom, come quick, it's Ben on TV!” Tim shouted from the TV room and I made an ungraceful dash from the kitchen.

Tim had been flipping channels, and randomly selected
Entertainment Tonight
just as they announced their cover story: “Startling Discovery Made in New Hampshire Nursing Home.” An old film clip of Ben and Talia working their way through a crowd of fans was visual backdrop to Mary Hart's voice announcing the teaser for the second time. I wiped my wet hands on my jeans and sat next to Tim to watch all the other stuff which would fill in the half-hour program before they got to their “cover story.” Three times they teased me with the “mysterious appearance . . . thought to be dead . . . former rocker with the . . .” each time with the same brief clip of Ben, Talia's arm linked through his, coming through this throng of clamoring people. At second look I realized they must have just been married when this was shot. Dressed in a deep blue suit, Talia carried flowers cradled in the arm not holding Ben. In the two seconds of broadcast history, I saw what had drawn Ben to her, her smile and the sparkle in her eyes. Ben had eyes only for her and seemed oblivious of the crowd of well-wishers surrounding them. I sat through “News Briefs” and seven commercials before they got to the story.

I listened to every word reported by Mark Steines, suddenly afraid that what I heard would go counter to what Ben had told me, some detail which would change my understanding of him.

Someone newly hired at the nursing home had made the connection between Talia Judith Turner and Talia Brightman, and had recognized Ben coming to see her. Steines rehashed the year-and-a-half-old story of Talia's apparent drowning. “At a news conference the next day, doctors reported that Miss Brightman had dived or fallen from a swim raft, hitting her head on a submerged rock.
Unconscious, she had somehow gotten caught beneath the raft and drowned. Her husband, former Interior Angles member Benson Turner, had resuscitated her, but she was later pronounced brain dead.” More video of Talia, with and without Ben. “It was widely known that Turner and Miss Brightman had been estranged at the time of the accident. Although an investigation was made, no charges against Turner were ever filed.”

I felt myself flush, Ben had never said anything about an investigation. He'd said that they had been apart, not estranged. I had to believe that this was a reportorial flourish.

We watched the rapidly changing clips of Ben, from his Interior Angles days to his obscurity and then rebirth as Talia Brightman's husband. Except for hair and sideburns, he really hadn't changed in thirty years. In the fast-moving kaleidoscope of images, I could see that his features had simply evolved from sharp angles to mature lines. He hadn't changed enough to become anonymous. To those who remembered him from his public days, Benson Turner was easily recognizable.

“It has always been believed that Miss Brightman had died shortly after being taken to the hospital.” Cut to a random shot of the exterior of a hospital. “Sources say that Benson Turner has always claimed his wife died in the accident.” Cut to current shot of Ben, moving rapidly from the car to the back door of the nursing home. A close-up revealed to me his jaw hardened with determination not to be drawn into answering any questions.

Why are they doing this to him? I shook my head and covered my mouth in horror at the invasive questions of the gathered reporters.

“Why have you kept this secret?” “Why have you let the world think she's dead?” “Mr. Turner, did you push her?” The paparazzi clamored like children begging for a treat.

Mark Steines concluded the segment. “Benson Turner has not made any statement regarding the discovery of his wife's survival. Efforts to contact him today have been unsuccessful. Doctors would not comment on Miss Brightman's condition but an inside source
reports that she is considered permanently brain-damaged with no hope of recovery.”

The program closed with a clip of Talia in concert, eyes closed and her whole body moving with the sounds emanating from her flute. She seemed enraptured by her own music, oblivious of the audience. The deliberate juxtaposition of this video against the report of her living death was very moving and I felt myself cry inside for her and for Ben.

“Mommy, did you know Ben had a wife?” Lily had joined us.

“Yes, honey. I met her one day. I mean, Ben took me to see her.”

“Did she talk to you?”

“Tim, she can't talk to anyone. She's in a kind of deep sleep.”

“Why did he tell people she was dead?” Lily demanded, clearly angry about it, although I wasn't sure whether she was angry about the report or at Ben for not telling her his secret or at me for keeping it.

“That guy got it wrong. Ben never said that, he just hasn't said that she's alive.” I tried then to explain to my children what Ben had explained to me about permanent vegetative states.

“Could that happen to me?” Tim sat on the floor and pressed his hands against his head.

“It's why we tell you to wear a bike helmet, and not to swim alone.” Might as well make a lesson of it. I pulled him to his feet and hugged him. I reached for Lily, but she slipped away.

I stared out of my window and finished the dishes. Poor Ben. Just exactly the kind of thing he dreaded had happened. I wiped my hands on a towel and picked up the phone. My heart still did its pounding in my chest, but this was appropriate, this is something I could do legitimately. This wasn't about us as lovers, but as friends.
At the customer's request, the phone has been disconnected.

“Oh Ben.” I hung up the phone. “Don't go incommunicado on me now.” I tried the number again, thinking maybe I'd dialed it wrong, simultaneously hunting through my purse for the bit of napkin
it had been written on long ago, certain both that I knew the number and that the napkin was long since lost. The electronic voice once again told me that Ben had disconnected his phone. It made sense, of course. Hadn't Mark Steines said efforts to reach Ben were unsuccessful? Did I think that Ben would expect my call? I hung up again and went into my office. Ripping a sheet out of a notebook I wrote a quick note to Ben.