The One in My Heart (32 page)

“Do you want to go home?” I asked Zelda.

“After Rowland comes out of anesthesia,” she said.

Three-quarters of an hour later, a nurse came and told us that Mr. Somerset was awake. Mrs. Somerset and Bennett went into the recovery room; Zelda and I remained just outside.

The recovery room had a window that faced the corridor, its blinds half up. I could see Mr. Somerset on the hospital bed, surrounded by IV stands and various machines, looking incredibly frail. His wife went to him and took his hand. He lifted his other hand a bare inch off the bed. Bennett hesitated, a look of confusion and incredulity on his face. Then he rushed forward and gripped his father’s hand in his own.

The nurse was already laying down the law. “Only one family member may remain with the patient. Everyone else must clear out.”

“I’ll stay,” said Bennett. “Mom, you go home and take some rest.”

“I love you,” said Mrs. Somerset to her husband.

Bennett kissed his father on the forehead. “I love you too, Dad—and I’m sorry for everything. I’ll see the ladies to their cabs and be right back.”

We walked out of the hospital. Mrs. Somerset hugged her son. “It’s so good to have you back. So very,
very
good.”

He kissed her on both cheeks. “It’s good to be back.”

The prodigal son had returned to the fold. The circle was complete. And I stood outside the circle, looking in.

Zelda felt no such outsider status. She hugged Frances Somerset and then Bennett. “I’m so happy for you. For this entire family.”

Mrs. Somerset left waving—and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. The next cab pulled up. Zelda got in first. I looked at Bennett and managed a smile. “Take care.”

He kissed me on my lips. “You too. I love you.”

My ears rang, as if I’d been to a too-loud concert. “But not enough to take me as I am?” I said, my words barely above a whisper.

His voice dropped just as low. “The other way around. I love you too much to survive being kept at arm’s length.”

“You want me to be someone I’m not.”

“Your work is all about making ceramics conduct electricity. Ceramics are insulators. Why are you wasting your time?”

A hundred rebuttals bounced around in my head, everything from source material and kilning methods to the molecular structure of electroceramics.

“Are you coming or not, lady?” asked the cabdriver, getting impatient.

I grimaced and got in. When we were about to turn the corner and lose sight of the hospital, I looked back. Bennett was still there, watching me leave.

Chapter 17

I WAS ALTERNATELY EXASPERATED WITH
Bennett for talking out of his rear end—of course a subset of ceramics conducted electricity, and very well too—and infuriated because, as far as metaphors went, his had been pretty damn seamless.

My work was all about improving properties that the layman might not even know ceramics possessed. And now he wanted me to do the same to my heart, to unearth properties that
I
didn’t even know it possessed.

It was midmorning before I walked downstairs. Zelda was putting away groceries in the kitchen. A box of pastries from the 79th Street Greenmarket sat on the counter. Two big “Get well soon” balloons bumped against the ceiling, their ribbons tied to the fridge handle.

“Morning, darling. I had a text from Frances. Rowland is fine. Imogene is already with him. Bennett went home to take a shower but should be back at the hospital in a few minutes. I’m taking the pastry to them, but there’s enough for all of us. Do you want to have one now or after we get to the hospital?”

I poured myself a cup of tea from the pot she’d already made. “I have some experiments I need to keep an eye on. Say hi to everybody for me.”

“So you’re planning to go later in the day?”

It was a grey, drizzly morning. The shopping tote that still lay on the kitchen counter was wet on the outside. I took a dish towel and wiped it down. “No, I’m not going today.”

Zelda nudged back the pullout basket where we kept root vegetables and turned around. “I know Rowland is out of danger. But I’m sure Bennett would appreciate your company. And Frances tells me Imogene is really excited to meet you.”

I forced myself to look at her. “There’s something you need to know. Bennett and I, we were…we’ve never been together. He recruited me as his pretend girlfriend, because I offered a means for him to be nearer to his parents without his having to come out and say that he wanted to reconcile. Now they’re reconciled and my role is finished.”

Zelda stared at me as if I’d told her that all along I’d been a green-skinned alien from a planet that orbited Betelgeuse.

I scraped my fingernail against a balloon ribbon. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. He wanted to keep it a secret.”

Zelda pinched the bridge of her nose. “But I thought he really had a thing for you—and you him. All the times you spent the night at his place—surely you weren’t just strategizing about his parents?”

“It was a partnership with…benefits.”

“Are the…benefits going to end too?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I opened the dishwasher and took out a handful of plates so I wouldn’t be just standing there, stupidly saying, “Yeah.”

“I don’t understand. I mean, I understand the having-a-girlfriend-to-make-reconciliation-easier part. But if the two of you do in fact enjoy each other’s company, why stop? And last night, didn’t I hear him say that he loved you?”

Had Bennett and I broken up for any other reason, I’d have made something up—or maybe tried to get out of the conversation. But now that he’d shone such a glaring light on the way I lived my life, now that I was exposed for all my tricks and maneuvers, I couldn’t bring myself to be business-as-usual with Zelda.

“He wants a real relationship. And I have a problem with that.”

“I know you’re busy, darling. But surely nobody is too busy for love.”

“It’s not that. I may be…I may be incapable of a real relationship.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Zelda huffed. Then, less certainly: “Isn’t it?”

I kept reaching into the dishwasher. Glasses, mugs, silverware returned to their designated places—anything to prevent me from actually squirming with discomfort. “I don’t like to be asked questions. I don’t like having to talk about things I don’t want to talk about. I’d rather be alone than open myself up to be poked and prodded.”

“My God,” whispered Zelda.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s just that…I remember a conversation with your father. He stood exactly where you’re standing now, and he said more or less the same thing.”

I froze, a spatula in hand.

“You know how your father was—great in a crisis, took his responsibilities seriously, and so droll and witty when he was in the right mood. But dear God, a lot of times it was downright impossible to hold a normal conversation with him. I think his father must have been a nasty piece of work, and his mother most likely an alcoholic—so many things touched him off. Absolutely innocent questions on my part would make him snap and tell me it was none of my ‘fucking business.’”

The spatula handle dug into my palm. I might not have heard that particular argument, but I very much recognized Pater’s emotional volatility.

“It was getting to be too much for me. I wanted our marriage to work, but I also needed him to make a good-faith effort to not be so difficult—and to not keep me always at a distance.”

What had Bennett said last night?
I love you too much to survive being kept at arm’s length.

“That was when he told me I could do what I liked but he had no intention of changing. I realized then it would be only a matter of time before we parted ways.” She looked at me, her eyes wide with the distress of a doting mother who had just found a stash of coke in her child’s room. “But you aren’t like him at all. I mean, you’re as dependable in a crisis as he was, but the similarities end there. You’re the daughter any woman would wish she had. You are…you are…”

I was, in some crucial ways, very much my father’s child. But whereas Pater lashed out, I dodged and sidestepped, when I couldn’t lie outright.

Zelda covered her mouth. “I should have seen it, shouldn’t I? Bennett has known you, what? Seven or eight months at the outside?”

“I’m really good at hiding my deficiencies.”

“There have been times when I’ve asked myself how it is that you’re never fazed by anything life throws at you. And then I say to myself, Of course you’re that graceful, and of course I’m that lucky to have you.” Her voice turned hoarse. “I should have been more observant. I should have realized you were keeping too much to yourself. I should have…”

Tears spilled down her face. And mine. I never wanted Zelda to see that I wasn’t as normal and well-adjusted on the inside as I appeared on the outside. She had been the best mother in the world. To be a cause of pain and doubt to her—my heart felt as if it had been scored with a sharp knife.

“Please,
please
don’t blame yourself. I’ve been an adult for a long time now. For better or worse, these have been my own choices.”

I wanted to comfort her better. To hug her and tell her that everything would be fine. But at this point, that would be only more lies, wouldn’t it?

I dropped the spatula in a stand and went back to unloading the dishwasher. Zelda joined me. Wordlessly we put away the pots and pans that remained on the bottom rack. Then I swept the floor, while she hung up fresh kitchen towels.

We often did household chores side by side—it was one of those little things I treasured. But now I could scarcely breathe against the sense of futility that permeated the air. Against Zelda’s bewilderment, sorrow, and guilt.

She broke the silence at last. “Do the Somersets know yet, about you and Bennett?”

“He was going to come clean today—that was the plan, in any case. I don’t see why he wouldn’t follow through.”

“I’ll make sure to ask him first before I bring up anything—they should learn from him, not me.”

I nodded, dumping the contents of the dustbin into the garbage can, and then tying up the bag and taking it outside.

When I came back, Zelda was biting into a Danish from the box of pastry she’d bought. I grabbed a gooey orange roll from the same box and sank my teeth into it with a vengeance, needing the solace of glucose and refined carbohydrates.

“So what are you going to do?” asked Zelda when only crumbs remained of her Danish. “And I don’t mean about Bennett.”

About myself then. I thought of my father on his deathbed, asking after Zelda, longing for the lovely woman he’d lost, because he’d been too set in his ways to change.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea.”

And for once, that was an honest answer.

IMOGENE SOMERSET WAS EVERYTHING A
young woman ought to be. Her father’s doctors were very pleased with his recovery. And the family was suitably taken aback that there had been no real girlfriend, only an elaborate ruse.

All this Zelda related gingerly over dinner that evening, when I asked how her day had gone. The following week she had further updates. Mr. Somerset was out of ICU and then, a few days later, discharged from the hospital. He insisted that he was well enough, that everyone ought to return home and go back to work so he could recuperate in peace and use the time to try out some reality shows that he didn’t want to be caught watching.

Despite my reminder to Bennett that I was in breach of contract and therefore owed nothing, I received effusive thank-you notes from organizations around the city, pouring out their gratitude for the generous donations in my name. A check also arrived at my office, bearing the previously agreed-upon amount for my research, which I voided and sent back.

That night I took my phone in hand, prayed that it could be a force for good, and texted,
How did you deal with your abandonment issues?

I set the phone aside. I used to know Bennett’s schedule, but not anymore, after the disruption of his father’s surgery. Even if he wanted to reply, it might be hours before he could.

The phone pinged a few minutes later.

It was easier with Moira. She was right that we wanted different things in life—near the end of our relationship I probably had more in common with Darren, her accountant, than I had with her.

With my parents the anger ran a lot deeper. Relationships end all the time, even for people who once believed themselves soul mates. But family is supposed to be forever, through thick and thin.

Even after I saw them at O’Hare and set the whole moving process into motion, sometimes the resentment still came back. Why was I the one doing this? Why weren’t they meeting me at least halfway?

Times like that I had to ask whether I was as blameless in the matter as I preferred to cast myself. And the answer was, of course, no. My dad might have acted out of anger, even pigheadedness, but I was the only one who had retaliated from spite.

Then it was a matter of deciding which was more important: hanging on to my resentment or having my parents back in my life.