Something New (32 page)

I put the cell down and haul myself off the bed, then pace around my bedroom.
Can I call you?
Fuck!
Can I call you?
I should tell him no. I should say I’m busy or I’m on the landline with my husband or I should not even respond at all. But this is what I do instead, because for some reason, when it comes to Ben Campbell, I turn into a jellyfish: I pick up my phone and type the single letter
Y
.

The cell rings in my hand so fast I almost drop it. I force myself to hesitate, take a deep calming breath, then answer.

“Hello?” Casual. No big deal.
Who is this, anyway?

“Hi. It’s Ben.” His voice is low and soft, like he’s trying not to be heard.

“Hi.” I give the word two syllables, bending up the second with a question mark. Like,
And what is it you want?

“Look, Ellen, I’m sorry to bother you. I just had to call to apologize for the way I was this afternoon. I don’t know what came over me.”

I do
, I think.
You came down with a sudden case of manitude.

“Actually, that’s not true,” he corrects. “I do know what came over me, but it’s hard to explain.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. Nonchalant. Carefree.
Nothing bothers me, big boy.

“It’s just that I think you think it was one thing, when in fact it was just the opposite.”

“Ben, it’s okay, really.” This time I’m sincere. He might as well be speaking in tongues for all the good his explanation is doing. But if his earlier actions are causing him this much distress, I am fine with letting him off the hook. “I had a great time paddle surfing. I really did. I might even do it again someday. You know, in the summertime?”

I don’t receive even the barest hint of amusement from his end of the line. “You being there made it better,” he says quietly.

A knot of tension curls like a fist in my stomach. His admission is not a declaration of lust, nor a proposal for a bump-and-grind session in the back of his Land Rover. It is far more intimate than those would be, and therefore far more disturbing. I can think of no appropriate reply and keep my mouth firmly closed.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says, disrupting the silence.

No, please don’t.
“Sure.”

“What would
your
something new be?” He waits a beat. “I mean, paddle surfing was mine. What would you like to try?”

“I’ve never flown in a helicopter.” This is the first thing that comes to mind, and it’s something I have always wanted to do. When Jonah and I went to New York a few years back for a grown-up vacation, we booked one of the helicopter tours to take us around Manhattan. When we arrived at the downtown heliport, we were greeted by a harried clerk who informed us that there was an issue with the main rotor head on their chopper, which meant nothing to us but apparently is one of the causes of helicopter crashes. Although other tours with different lines were
available, we took it as a sign not to go up in the air that day and ended up blowing our refund on an amazing lunch at Daniel.

“I highly recommend it,” Ben tells me. “It’s a rush.”

“Says the man who ‘highly recommends’ jumping out of planes.”

He chuckles at this. “Well, it’s not quite the same rush, but it’s pretty good.”

Again, neither one of us speaks. Again, it is Ben who breaks the silence. “So, are we okay?”

I have no idea how to interpret this question. I’m sitting on the bed I share with my husband talking to a man I am exceedingly attracted to while my family is out of town. Am I okay? Not really. Is Ben okay? Maybe. But who is this
we
he is talking about?

“We’re friends, right?” he asks when I don’t answer him.

“Are we?” I can’t help myself. Definitions are almost as important to me as words. And I can’t help but feel like I am missing something, something important.

“I hope so,” he replies, his voice low. “I feel connected to you, Ellen. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. And that doesn’t happen to me very often.”

I let out a sigh and rub my forehead with my free hand. “I feel the same—”

“Great! That’s perfect. I’ll let you know,” he says hurriedly. Then the phone goes dead in my hand.

I glance up at the TV and see that the old woman looks like she’s about to hurl herself into the ocean. She doesn’t, I know. She throws the necklace in instead. But if
I
were standing at the side of a ship right now, I’d
jump.

Two seconds later, the cell rings. I hit the Talk button. “Is everything okay?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” It’s Jonah. Of course. I realize with horror that I could have said something like, “Hi, Ben” or “Are you all right,
Ben
?” or “Come on over and climb on top of me,
Ben
.” Beads of sweat pop out on my upper lip.

“Everything’s fine,” I say evenly. “Why?”

“I called the house earlier and got no answer, so I called your cell and got no answer on that, and you still hadn’t called me back, so I started to worry.”

With good reason
, I think.
Just not the
right
reason
.

“I was in the bath when you called,” I tell him, glad that this is the truth. “And I fell asleep without even checking my voice mail.”

“You fell asleep at seven o’clock?” he asks skeptically.

“Mia came over today, you know, her annual send-off? I might have had a bit too much wine.”

“Oh. Well, it’s good to know you’re having a grand old time without us.” He is using the same tone Ben used at the marina, and it’s enough to make me want to scream.

“What would you like, Jonah?” I ask icily. “That I curl up into a fetal position and spend the next six days bawling my eyes out?”

“It would just be nice to know that you missed us.”

You just left!
He sounds so petty and juvenile that I can’t resist telling him the truth. “I miss the kids a lot.”

“The kids, huh? But not me, right?”

“Jonah, your behavior of late hardly inspires me to pine away for you.”

That shuts him up for ten whole seconds. “Okay,” he concedes. “But just for the record, I don’t miss you either.”

“Give the kids my love,” I say through clenched teeth. Then I disconnect the call and fling the phone across the
room. Sally looks up quickly, snorts, then falls back against the pillows.

A constant string of Monday songs echoes through my brain as I sit on the floor of Connor’s closet and proceed to go through every single pair of shoes he owns. In terms of mental stimulation, this job ranks about a one-point-two, whereas in terms of the smell factor, it rates a solid nine. My son, God love him, has stinky feet. I gave up on handing down Connor’s shoes to Matthew before Connor turned eight because of the offensive odor that emanated from his sneakers even though he’d worn them on only a handful of occasions. And I should note that Connor is a very clean young man. He showers every day and is positively anal about grooming, a trait he inherited, obviously, from Jonah. But put his feet in a pair of socks and entomb them in anything other than sandals and you have a recipe for a stench that could knock out a stadium full of people.

The house phone rings. My stiff muscles protest as I push
myself off the floor and head for my bedroom to answer it. I pray that it won’t be Jonah. I have already spoken to my children this morning. Jessie called from her father’s cell, since her grandparents don’t let the kids use their phone because of the “outlandish long distance rates, by God.” She spent five minutes telling me about a lizard she spied this morning that was as big as a cat before handing off the phone to her brothers. Connor and Matthew had little to say other than to bemoan the fact that Grandma and Grandpa don’t have a Wii and only have basic cable and won’t let them use the computer to play games and what the heck are they going to do for the next five days? When Connor asks me if I want to speak to Jonah, I give him the excuse I always do when I want to avoid speaking to my husband: that I have to make number two.

I don’t expect it to be Jonah on the line, but just in case, I answer with a chilly “Yes.”

“‘Yes?’” Jill echoes. “Is that your new way of answering the phone?”

“I thought you might be Jonah.”

“Ah, the one-syllable tactic,” she says. “I take it things are still a little rocky with hubby.”

“If the fact that I can’t stand the sight or sound of him equals things being a little rocky, then yes.”

“You know,” she says, “you could just answer the phone
Prick
.”

Oh my God!
“Oh my God!” I say aloud. “Jill, you just said
prick
! I mean, you actually said it! You didn’t spell it! What the h-e-l-l is going on? Did you check in to swear-word-spelling rehab?”

“Ha ha,” she says, amused. “For your information,
prick
is not actually a swear word. ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’”

Since when does Jill quote
The Merchant of Venice
? Something is definitely up.

“What is up, cuz?” I ask.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she says coyly, and I think she knows exactly what I mean.

“You just quoted Shakespeare.”

“So? I love Shakespeare. I could compare Shakespeare to a summer’s day.”

“Are you high?” This is the only possible explanation I can come up with.

“I am high on life,” she says. “And on the fact that I had the most incredible sex of my entire life last night.”

“With who?”

She laughs. “With Greg, of course. You know, my husband?”

“Since when are you having the most incredible sex of your life with your husband?” I can’t help but ask.

“Since last night,” she replies. “Since I told him that if he didn’t start treating me like the desirable woman I am, I was going to divorce him.”

I sit down on my bed, shocked at my cousin’s brass balls. I’ve always known she has balls, but I just assumed they were made of something softer, like Knox Blox.

“Wow,” is all I can say.

“Wow is right,” she agrees. “Do you know that he actually cried when I threatened divorce? Said he couldn’t imagine his life without me in it. And I told him that he better start proving it to me because I was almost done.”

“Jill, you are the
man
!”

She giggles effervescently and I realize that I haven’t heard her sound this happy for a very long time. The cynic in me wonders how long Greg’s renewed attentions will last, but I don’t give voice to this question. I don’t want to spoil her
mood. And maybe, just maybe, this is the kick in the ass he needed to change his ways for good. I pray for this with all my heart because my cousin deserves it.

“So I read your blog this morning,” she says breezily. “Were you in a hurry or something?”

Actually, I wrote the blog last night after throwing my cell phone across the room. I went downstairs to make myself a sandwich, then sat in front of the computer, intending to write a long and laborious treatment on how men are schizophrenic and multiple-personalitied and bipolar and just plain psychotic (and those are the
good
ones) as an addendum to my first post,
Men Are Cheeseballs
. My hope was that writing it would be therapeutic for me and I would be able to release some of my tension over Jonah and Ben. But after coming up with the title, I realized that no amount of description or detail was necessary. I sat for a long moment, debating as to whether I should expound, wondering if I was copping out. I even began several paragraphs. But everything I wrote ended up taking away from my main point, so I scheduled it for today’s publication and shut the computer down.

“You didn’t like it?” I joke. “I thought it was brilliant.”

“Apparently, so do a lot of readers,” she says. “You got more comments for today’s blog post than any of your others. And every single one agrees with you!”

I laugh. “Simplicity is key,” I say.

“So, what’s on your agenda for today?”

A sigh escapes my lips because I know that as soon as we end this conversation I will have to return to smell central. “Finish going through Connor’s closet, start on Matthew’s. I don’t know if I’ll get to Jessie’s today. I think I should pace myself.”

“Gee, you really know how to live,” Jill says.

“What about you?”

“Well, I’m going to bask in the afterglow of my magnificent lovemaking for at least another hour. Then I promised the boys I’d take them to the movies. The Pixar one that came out on Friday. Want to join us? That is, if you can tear yourself away from your closets.”

I contemplate a theater full of popcorn-munching, sugar-frenzied, vociferous preteens and decide, in true Jack Nicholson fashion, that I’d rather stick needles in my eyes.

“Thanks anyway,” I tell her. “I really want to get these chores finished.”

“Okay. But let’s do a girls’ lunch later this week. Just you and me. I’ll get Patty down the street to take the boys.”

“Sounds great,” I say. I put the receiver down, stand up, and head back to Connor’s closet, wishing I had some of that ointment that coroners rub under their noses before an autopsy.

I
t’s
amazing how much you can accomplish when you don’t have four people and a dog constantly asking you to do something. (Well, Sally is here, but she is, without a doubt, the most low-maintenance of the bunch.) By four o’clock that afternoon, I have successfully rampaged through my children’s closets, leaving them frighteningly neat and organized. I know how the kids will scream and complain when they see the fruits of my labor (
Where’s this?
and
What happened to that?
), and I also know that within a month, said closets will be restored to their usual chaotic state, but at this moment, as I pull open the door of the fridge and grab a well-deserved beer, I am feeling very pleased with myself. It’s only Monday, after all. If I can get the garage done tomorrow, I will have the rest of the week at my disposal to indulge myself in whatever activity suits my fancy.