The Behavior of Love

by Virginia Reeves

  “Hi.”

  “Ed?” Every time she says his name, he tells himself to treasure it. Every time, he also fears he’ll never hear it again. He has a running list of last things: the last time he saw her fully naked, the last time they shared a bed, and the lesser things that nearly hurt more—the last time she slept in one of his shirts, the last time she cooked him an egg, the last time he drank coffee she brewed, the last time she sat across from him at the kitchen table, reading the paper. He is always anticipating more lasts, looking for them everywhere.

  “Everything okay over there? Sounded like a minor catastrophe was under way when you picked up.”

  “Nothing too catastrophic, just a mug your son broke on purpose. He doesn’t have the right-shaped pieces for the LEGO structure he’s building, and he chose to bust apart a mug to try to accommodate his needs. You wouldn’t know where he gets these ideas, would you?” Her voice is light, not accusatory. Ed knows Ben shares all their adventures with her, all the things they build and take apart. Nothing is sacred at Ed’s house, everything an experiment.

  “I admire the ingenuity, though not the reasoning. Ceramic shards do not mix well with plastics.”

  She laughs. He loves to make her laugh.

  “What’s up, Ed?”

  He does not get to casually call anymore. That is not part of his new role.

  “Dean offered me a director position today, head of a whole new department—Health and Human Services.”

  “Ah, the great Edmund Malinowski finally gets his government position. What are the hours with that? Eighty to ninety a week?”

  He isn’t prepared for the bitterness.

  To his silence, she says, “Sorry. It’s good news, Ed. Really. The state is lucky to have you.”

  The state is lucky to have you, and she is not.

  “You should go celebrate,” she says. “Let me know if we need to rearrange Benjy’s schedule.”

  She thinks he’s calling about the schedule.

  “I wish I could celebrate with you.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m a fat pregnant woman who can’t drink like she used to. Go have fun.”

  He hears the connection click closed, the dial tone in his ear.

  — —

  The next afternoon, he takes a few shots at Dorothy’s and then walks to the library. He finds Penelope in the reference section, helping an elderly lady look up the definition of the word sonorous.

  “So we’re in the S’s, and now we’re looking for S-O. See right up here—these words at the top tell you where you are.” How can this woman just now be learning how to use a dictionary? “Okay, here it is—‘sonorous: able to produce an imposingly deep or full sound.’ Does that help, ma’am?”

  The woman pats Penelope’s arm, calls her dear. She’s tiny, her head barely reaching the top of these low shelves.

  “Pen?”

  “Dr. Ed,” she says, slipping the dictionary back onto its shelf. “Did you figure out ‘Before I Knocked’?”

  “I was hoping you’d come discuss it with me down the street. Let me buy you a drink.”

  She laughs. “I’m working.”

  “Call in sick. Come on. Where’s that wild girl I used to know?”

  She looks at him quizzically. “You all right?”

  The promotion won’t mean much to her, and it doesn’t make sense that he’s seeking her out to celebrate with him, so he chooses a blunter reason instead. “Listen, Pen. I miss you. Even if it’s just this one time, I want to have the chance to sit with you in a bar and have a conversation as two adults out here in the world.”

  “I’m dating Billy.”

  “Nothing like that, Pen. Just a drink between old friends.” Now he’s lying, an effective strategy. People are most compelling when they deliver a mixture of truth and dishonesty. Lovers can never be old friends, and Penelope is more lover than any of the women Ed has taken home since Laura left. He understands that now.

  “Okay,” she says, her sudden softening a surprise. “Okay. Meet me out front in five minutes.”

  “Thatta girl.”

  Because he’s already a few drinks in, he lets himself grab hold of her when she emerges from the front doors moments later. She returns the embrace, their history unfurling in Ed’s mind. There she is in the corridors of Boulder the day he came for his interview. You hear that? It sounds like music if you listen right. There she is in his office with her lines of pistachios. She is walking his rounds with him. Steering Margaret and Barbara back from the river. She is pressing her lips against his, her hands on his belt. He has always wanted her. And the weight of that desire presses him closer to her now, makes his hands grip harder.

  He feels her breath near his ear. She whispers, “You still want me, don’t you, Dr. Ed?”

  “So much.”

  She pulls away enough to look at him. “You have something to drink at your house, I assume?” She walks toward the parking lot. “I don’t have a car here, so you’ll have to drive.”

  He hasn’t moved.

  “Coming?” she asks.

  He can’t move.

  “What’s the problem, Dr. Ed?” Her voice is different, sharp and angry and loud. “Nerves?” she shouts. “Conscience? Can’t fuck your former patient after all?”

  “Stop yelling, Pen.”

  “Why? You invited me out here in the open. Embraced me in front of my place of work. It’s perfectly legal. I’m of age. You’re not married. Aboveboard all the way.”

  “Pen—”

  She’s storming back to him now, her face angrier than it ever was in Boulder. He has time to think, This is what hatred looks like, before she’s shoving him in the chest. “You think you can show up here after everything that happened and whisk me off my feet? You’re a psychiatrist, for Christ’s sake. What the hell do you think’s been going through my head these past four years? You think I’ve just been sitting around pining after you? Waiting for you to arrive? You don’t think I’ve replayed over and over everything that happened in Boulder and afterward? Maybe—maybe—if you’d stayed away, I could’ve cast you in some sort of heroic light. Even if you were a selfish bastard, I could’ve at least credited you with the start of my recovery. I never would’ve gotten to Dr. Wong if you hadn’t discharged me first, so for that I could’ve remained grateful. I could’ve forgotten all the attention and flirtation and let you just be the amazing doctor I’ve bragged to everyone about. But no. You are everything I was afraid you were.” She pulls the hair from her face, absently touches the scar on her head. “I was so jealous of Laura. But I pity her now. Pity her those years of your marriage. She’s lucky to have left. I’m right about that, aren’t I? She was the one to leave?”

  Penelope steps back, and Ed remembers the moments he had to force himself to do the same. Remove your hand. Step back. Another step.

  “Here’s my offer,” she says. “I’ll keep my side of the story going—the great Dr. Malinowski and all he did for me—and you’ll stay away from here.”

  “Pen—”

  “Deal?”

  “It’s a public library, Pen. You can’t ban me. My son needs books—”

  “Laura can bring your son. Do we have a deal?”

  He stares at her.

  “I can make the story worse, Ed. You know I can. You convinced me no one would listen before, but I know I could get some attention now. You may not have a wife to lose anymore, but I bet you’re not willing to lose your job.”

  His promotion. There had been a moment when he thought he was going to get both the promotion and Penelope. More than he could ever have dreamed.

  “Deal,” he says, his voice small.

  “Goodbye, Ed.”

  He’d so wanted to hear those words when she left Boulder.

  Chapter 26

  Ed takes a week off before starting his new position with the state. He gets Pete to come camping with Beau and all their boys.

  Benjamin and Justin dump the tent out of its sack and
help assemble poles. Ed sits in a camp chair, Beau at his side with his heavy head in Ed’s lap. Beau is always at his side, and Ed absently tugs on the dog’s ears. He’s on his fifth beer.

  Hank takes a pole to the creek, and the younger two grab their own and follow.

  “Hey now, Ben. You have a fire to help build.”

  “I want to fish.”

  “Not before you build the fire. Everyone’s got a job.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s yours?”

  “My job’s to drink this beer!”

  “That’s not a job.”

  “Go fish,” Pete says. “I’ll build the fire. Don’t argue, Ed.”

  Pete splits wood, tepees kindling. Ed holds out his lighter. He hears hollering from the creek, a fish on someone’s line.

  “Nothing better, is there, brother?” Ed raises his bottle, and Pete tips his in return.

  — —

  Ed awakens in the dirt by the dwindling fire, stars overhead. He walks to the tree line and takes a piss, fishes a bottle of whiskey out of his backpack, rights the tipped chair, sits down.

  The boys are snoring in their tent, Pete, too.

  Ed came to Montana for these moments, damn it. Fire and whiskey and fishing. He’s right where he’s supposed to be. Director of Health and Human Services! Youngest director in the state! More women than he knows what to do with. Easy women who don’t demand anything. He’ll string them all along with him. No promises to any particular one. No wives yelling at him to get home early. Just this—a fire and a bottle of whiskey.

  He lights a cigarette, drops it, tries again.

  Fire and whiskey and cigarettes. A whole goddamned sky full of stars.

  — —

  He wakes again briefly to someone shaking his arm and Benjamin’s voice shouting. “Dad! Dad, wake up! Uncle Pete, he won’t wake up!”

  “He’s all right, son. Just had a little too much to drink last night. Let him sleep a bit longer.”

  — —

  The sun is high the next time Ed wakes, and he’s sweating in his night’s coat.

  “Good afternoon, sunshine.”

  Ed opens his eyes to see Pete standing over him.

  “You slept on the ground, brother, cuddled up to your bottle. You know I don’t like to put on airs, but you’ve got to clean it up around the boys. If you needed this kind of camping trip, you should’ve come out alone.”

  The sun is too bright. Ed’s head throbs behind his eyes. “Drugs, good doctor. Bring me some drugs.”

  Pete laughs.

  — —

  He joins the boys at the creek in the evening, and they make a good haul of brook trout. They fry them whole to eat with potatoes cooked in the coals, a couple cans of beans heated in their tins. Ed sits back, sips a beer—he’ll stick to beer tonight. The air chills with the darkening sky. Stars appear. Hank and Justin tell stories. Benjamin stares into the fire and rubs at his neck.

  “Your neck sore, son?”

  “It’s okay. I slept on it funny.”

  “Tent sleeping will get you every time.” Ed scoots his chair back from the fire and stomps the dirt in front of him. “Have a seat. I may not look it, but I give a great massage.”

  All the boys laugh, and the anger Benjamin has been sending toward Ed dries.

  Ed digs his fingers into the skin and muscle of the boy’s small neck and shoulders, promising himself he’ll do better.

  — —

  After the camping trip, Ed drops Benjamin at his mother and Tim’s house and goes directly to Dorothy’s, where he gets exquisitely drunk. He will do better when Ben is around, but that is a part-time responsibility. The woman he goes home with asks if he has kids.

  “Occasionally, I have a son.”

  — —

  The day before he’s due to start his new position, he lays off the booze and the ladies. He takes Beau for a long hike on Mount Helena. He goes to the barber. He polishes his shoes.

  He will always be a good doctor.

  Chapter 27

  — Laura —

  Benjy is thrilled to have a baby brother. “I’m going to teach him everything.”

  “That’s right, love. You are.”

  We’ve named him Charlie, after Tim’s father. Charlie Benjamin Cooke, so he can share a name with his brother, whose last name could not be more different. Neither could his father.

  “I’m going to teach him how to build fires and carve sticks and roast marshmallows and shoot BB guns. And Dad and I will take him out duck hunting with Beau as soon as he’s a little bigger and the noise won’t scare him so much. I think it’d scare him now, the shotgun, but he’ll get used to it, and then Dad can teach him to shoot, too.”

  Benjy doesn’t understand that his father is not Charlie’s father.

  “It’s okay,” Tim said when I told him my concern. “He’ll figure it out.”

  Tim was here through the whole labor, talking me through the pain, the coach Bonnie was when Benjy came. He is down in the cafeteria now, trying to find me some real food.

  The baby is asleep, wrapped tight in his blankets, only his tiny red face showing. His brow is furrowed, and I wonder what this new mix of genes will produce. I know somehow that he will be nothing like my first son.

  “We have to tell Dad!” Benjy shouts. “Dad doesn’t know the baby’s here. We have to tell him!” He jumps out of bed and rushes to the phone on the wall.

  I let Benjy call his dad whenever he wants. “Dial nine first.”

  Benjy twists the cord around his finger like I do while he waits for his father to answer. It’s eight-thirty in the evening, past Benjy’s bedtime, and as the silence continues, I realize there’s no way Ed will be home at this hour.

  I’m just starting to tell Benjy to hang up when his eyes light and he shouts, “Dad! It’s me! The baby’s here!” And then a stream of words, the same focus and density as his father’s speeches. Benjy is telling Ed all about Charlie’s face, and his light hair, and his gray eyes. “Mom says they won’t stay that color, but I hope they do.” He’s talking about how small the baby’s fingers are and his feet, and how he’s sleeping right now, but he was awake earlier, and crying, and it was sad to hear.

  “Sure, hang on. Yep. Love you, too, Dad.” He holds the phone out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

  I don’t want to talk to him, but I say hello, aware of my scratchy voice, ragged from screaming. Birthing children is such a glorious, devastating war with oneself. I am torn and bloody and tired, and I hate the comfort that comes with Ed’s words. “Good work, lady. I told you it’d be a boy.”

  It hurts to laugh, all my guts loose and aching.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, as though he’s a girlfriend I’ve called for a little chat, nothing in particular.

  “I’d prefer not to say.”

  “Are you with a lady friend?”

  “I’d prefer not to say.” I laugh again, and wince again, and marvel at this banter with my ex-husband. It isn’t devastating, but it isn’t benign, either. Ed is a bit of a whore, and I suppose I’m glad for him—the bachelor life is what he was made for.

  “I’ll let you get back,” I say.

  “Congratulations, Laura.”

  “Goodbye, Ed.”

  I pass the phone to Benjy to hang up.

  “When is he coming?”

  “Your dad’s not coming to the hospital, love.”

  “Why isn’t Dad coming?”

  There is a right way to answer this question, I’m sure, and I would like to know it. I would like to wave down a nurse and say, “Could you please get me the pamphlet called ‘How to Talk to Your Son About His Half Brother’?” The pamphlet would contain ten easy steps, and it would lead us all to great understanding and acceptance.

  I think of our conversation about Tim’s and my small wedding. “Do you want to call Tim something other than Tim?” I asked him.

  “Why? His name’s Tim.”

  “But he’s your stepda
d now.”

  “Do you want me to call him Stepdad? That doesn’t sound good.”

  I conceded. “You’re right, honey. It doesn’t.”

  I am still not sure what Benjy thinks of Tim, this semi-father.

  I pat the bed next to me. “Your dad’s not coming because Charlie isn’t his son. Charlie is Tim’s son.”

  Benjy’s face scrunches in confusion. “But we’re brothers.”

  “Sometimes brothers have one parent who’s different. You and Charlie have the same mom but different dads.” I feel like we’re scripting out a PBS special on broken homes. It’ll be delivered through puppets to make it easier to absorb. We’ll be a family of woolly mammoths, long extinct to allow for some distance, and we’ll talk in deep mammoth voices, our trunks swaying.

  Benjy still looks confused. He likes clean lines, tidy explanations, proof, evidence. He is empathetic but protective of his own feelings, a champion of underdogs, incapable of admitting when he’s the one who needs championing. Already, he is so much like Ed.

  “Do you understand?” I take on the mammoth voice.

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  “Because I’m uncomfortable with this conversation.”

  “Why?”

  Benjy is also inquisitive.

  The baby is starting to whimper, tiny puppy sounds, and I will need to feed him and direct all my maternal energy back in his direction, but first, I have to make this right for Benjy. It suddenly feels like the most important thing I’ll ever do as his mother—make him understand that he can have a brother who doesn’t share the same father and still love him ferociously and still teach him to build fires and shoot guns (please, no) and take things apart and put them together. And he can have one mom who loves him with all her heart and one biological dad and one stepdad, and instead of loss, he should feel a surplus of riches because there are extra people to love him.

  I am saying these things aloud in an Ed-inspired rant, and Benjy is nodding and staring and absorbing, and I feel his little hand lay itself on my wrist, and I hear his little voice say, “It’s okay, Mom,” because instead of reassuring him that he is fine, I have shown him that I am not.