Notes:
The last part before Ben heads to Concord. Setting the stage for all sorts of things,
including Histrionic Family Time! I’ll
be modeling all interactions after my mother’s side of the family, whom I’ve
not seen in a decade and still have nightmares about. Yes, they’re that potent.
Title:
Love Letters
Part Twenty-Six:
If I Wanted To Know, I’d Ask.
***
There had been a time in college, when
Ben had been confident and self-assured and, frankly, arrogant, when he had
wondered why so many of his peers were so interested in what everyone else was
doing. Who cared if Karly’s boyfriend’s
mom had gotten through surgery okay, what did it matter if Peyton’s dog had
arthritis? It seemed like people who
barely knew each other, barely even spent any time together had a check list of
minutiae pop up in their brains the moment they got together, so they’d have
something ready-made to chat about when they had to speak. How are you?
How’s your family? How’s your
dog? How’s your car? It seemed ridiculous, especially in light of
the fact that usually, neither person knew the other one well enough to care.
Ridiculous.
Ben had asked his one and only
girlfriend, Ignacia, what the point of it was.
Ignacia was from Portugal, studying English and Engineering and
similarly awkward to Ben in some ways, although she had a much larger social
circle.
“There doesn’t need to be a point to
it, it’s just polite,” Ignacia had replied.
“Those sorts of questions make up the art of conversation.”
“Those sorts of questions barely even
constitute conversation, much less have anything to do with art.”
Ignacia rolled her eyes, magnified even
larger than they already were thanks to her glasses. “Fine, then call it the art of small talk. It’s what breaks barriers down between people,
it is a way of showing someone that you care about them, that you’re interested
in learning more. Even if you really
aren’t, it’s still polite to participate.”
“So what you’re saying is that small
talk gives everyone a socially-sanctioned opportunity for voyeurism?”
“Curiosity is not voyeurism!”
“Yes it is,” Ben argued. “I guess for some people those questions are
reflexive politeness, even though I don’t think it’s very polite, but then for
everyone else it’s an opportunity to pry into someone’s personal life and hope
something salacious falls out.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Salacious?”
“Gossipy.”
“Oh.
You really think this?” Ignacia
had asked, looking at Ben askance.
“Yes.”
She sighed. “I will never be able to introduce you to my
avó.”
They broke up a month later.
It took Ben a while to get over his
personal hang-ups and learn to handle small talk, and he still wasn’t very good
at it. He wasn’t interesting enough for
most people to really want to know about He could talk at great length about
his family history though, and most of the time people found that interesting
enough that he could get them off the subject of himself and onto the subject
of Benjamin Franklin pretty easily.
Ben remembered his mother had been the
same way. Deborah Franklin Bache had
been a physically unremarkable woman, small and serious, who had inherited her
father’s square jaw and long nose. On
him they looked masculine and professorial; on her they formed a blend that
seemed off somehow, her eyes too
small and her forehead too low to compensate for her loss in outward
femininity. Coupled with the fact that
Deborah was a scholar who didn’t really care about how she looked or what she
wore, she was far from an easy person to talk to. Ben remembered his classmates teasing him the
few times his mother came to pick him up—“Is that your mom or your dad?” they’d
asked, laughing a little. It had hurt
but Ben hadn’t said anything, and if his mother had ever noticed that something
was wrong with her son, she never asked.
They had shared a house, she had kept him clothed and fed and checked
his homework, and that was the vast majority of their relationship. It had been the same with his grandfather,
which was where Ben figured Deborah had learned it.
Family interactions weren’t comfortable
for Ben. Friends, well, Ben actually had
those so he felt somewhat qualified to deal with Ryan’s friends, even though
the only one he could honestly tolerate was Jasmine. The family stuff, though…that was shaping up
to be downright intimidating.
Ryan got down to Concord okay and moved
back into his old bedroom. Thus began an
all-consuming stint of helping his mother, his sister-in-law and his niece and
nephew, who became Ryan’s whole world. Ben
would get texts throughout the day that he had no idea how to respond to.
Joey
put glue on his hands then rubbed them in his hair. Elmers not super thank god.
Molly
and I ditched ballet for ice cream. Promised not to tell her mom.
Cheryl
is dating someone now. Another cop. He comes to get her and she doesn’t get
back until just before the kids wake up.
What was the appropriate response to
that? To any of those? Ben usually settled on fairly nondescript
emoticon responses when he had no clue what to say, and Ryan hadn’t seemed to
mind yet, so…maybe he could fake it long enough to figure it out.
Ben kept sending letters, and Ryan kept
sending pictures. Most of them were
funny, but a few weren’t. Like the
sketch of he’d done of Joey at Brody’s grave.
The grave stone was large and kind of
ostentatious, and Ryan wrote that Joey was fascinated with it. He’d run his hands over the carved letters
and the cool stone, then touch the grass beneath it, then the stone again. Ryan said that Joey was going through a phase
where textures intrigued him. It wasn’t
necessarily a good phase, either.
Three days before Ben was due to fly
out, Ryan called him up in a panic. “My
paintings are ruined,” he said without preamble.
“Ruined how?” Ben asked.
“Joey, he…I was teaching him a little
bit about how to paint, I gave him some acrylics and a canvas to work with
because acrylics are pretty easy to use and he seemed to like it, and he…when I
wasn’t around, I was off getting Molly from her violin lesson, Joey covered his
hands with paint and rubbed them all over my canvases. I got most of the paint off some of them
before it could dry and a few just had a spot here and there, but five of them
are just worthless now.” He sighed, and
Ben could practically hear Ryan
pulling his own hair. “And I have to get
them to Jasmine in two weeks if this volume is going to go to print on time,
and I just don’t know how that’s going to happen. Fuck. Fuck.”
“You didn’t lock your door?” was the
first thing Ben thought to say, and he immediately wanted to smack himself for
it when the line stayed silent for a while.
“No,” Ryan said at last. “My mom was supposed to be supervising Joey,
I thought it would be okay, but she got tired and took a nap. And Cheryl was out.”
“I didn’t mean to…I know it’s not your
fault. I just…”
“It’s not anyone’s fault,” Ryan said
tiredly. “It’s just that I don’t know
what I’m going to do.”
“Ask for an extension,” Ben
replied. This much, at least, he
understood. “Tell Jasmine you need more
time, get her to bargain with the publishers.”
“Yeah, that’s the sort of thing New
York Times bestsellers can get away with.
Small-time comic book artists, not so much.”
“You won’t know unless you try,” Ben
said. “Really, call her. She’ll help straighten it out. It’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Ryan sounded exhausted. “I had all these plans to show you around
town and go to the speedway and the parks.
Now I’m going to be stuck at home redoing these paintings instead. I hope that won’t bother you too much.”
Stuck at Ryan’s home, surrounded by his
family, all of them coming together for a huge, frenetic birthday celebration? Ben had booked a hotel room—his last
experience had taught him the wisdom of that—but for every hour that wasn’t
spent sleeping, he knew he’d be off-kilter.
He couldn’t just say that, though.
It was too late to cancel the trip, even though the thought of going out
there was beginning to fill Ben with dread instead of anticipation. “I’ll be fine,” he lied.
They hung up a little while later, and
Ben immediately called Michael.
“What’s up, luv?”
“I’m going to fuck everything up.”
Michael snorted. “Feet feeling a bit cold at the thought of
meeting the family, then?”
“I’m terrible with families.”
“Oh I know,” Michael said, surprising
Ben a little with how readily he’d agreed.
“I was planning to prime you for bloody weeks before introducing you to
my mum, but fortunately we didn’t get that far.”
“Thanks,” Ben said dryly, feeling a
little offended.
“Don’t be stroppy, Ben, it’s just the
truth. You’re a wonderful friend and an
excellent lover, but you’re not exactly the type to take home to the family. You couldn’t even pretend to be interested in
my nieces.”
“It’s none of my business!” Ben
exclaimed.
“It’s your business if it’s your
boyfriend’s business. You’ve got to take
these people seriously; you can’t dismiss them like you did the artsy people at
his flat.” Ben had told Michael about
his trip to Boston, and where it could have gone better as far as he was
concerned.
Ben rubbed his eyes. “I just want to see Ryan. That was why I was going in the first place,
not to get to know his entire extended family.”
“Life has a way of springing things on
us, luv. Think of it this way: if you’re
serious about Ryan, then you’ll have to take the plunge with his family at some
point, it might as well be now.” Michael
paused. “Are you serious about him?”
“More serious than I’ve ever been about
anyone else,” Ben admitted. “I love him,
I’m just…nervous, I guess.”
“Just be polite and take his side in
any family arguments and you’ll likely be fine,” Michael said.
“Family arguments? Are those likely?”
“An extended southern family who’ve
recently suffered a terrible loss coming together for the ostensibly-happy
occasional of celebrating multiple birthdays?”
Michael snorted. “What do you
think?”
Ben thought he might not survive,
honestly. But it was too late to back
out now.
Oh my, how akward can a guy be? Ben start interacting with people instead of living next to them. And Ryan is my hero. I mean he is saving his niece and nephew even when today nobody realises that. Love it!
ReplyDeleteBen will learn, or pay. Oh, stuff. So much stuff.
DeleteGlad you love it:)