by Kate Russo
“I think you should put a competing offer in on that Barbican flat,” Bennett says, determined to repay Kirstie with a small nugget of wisdom or whimsy, even if he doesn’t actually know which it is.
“I already did,” she says with a cheeky grin.
He shakes his head in confusion, both relieved and surprised.
“After I dropped you off at the Royal Academy.”
“When do you find out if it’s yours?”
“Tomorrow, but I know I’ll get it. I made sure of that.”
He smiles. “Good,” he says, standing up in what feels like an involuntary motion, as if a changing wind has pushed him. “Sorry. I’ll let you get back to your show.”
“Oh, I’ve already seen it,” she says. She points to the silver fox. “That’s my ex-husband.” He takes the blonde in his arms and they kiss, passionately, as the credits roll.
“Why would you torture yourself like this?”
“That’s rich, coming from you,” she says, her eyebrow raised.
Fair point.
She pulls herself up from the sofa, as though she intends to escort him out. “No one knows Albert the way I do. Everyone thinks they do, but they just know Cliff, his character. I guess, every once in a while, I like to forget what I know and just see what they see.”
“I probably would, too.” He’d like to take her hand again, but he doesn’t.
“I know you would, darling. That’s why we get along.”
“Come here,” he says. She steps forward, timidly, into his embrace. With both arms wrapped around her for the first time, she feels unyielding and blunt, like a tiny stone, someone who’s not remotely willing to love again. Not even close.
* * *
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Cramped on his hard futon, he realizes he had offers of two different, comfortable beds tonight and lost them both. “We get what we deserve,” his father told him when he was eight, after Bennett asked why there were so many homeless men outside Hammersmith Station. He knows that’s not strictly true. Gary Driscoll, the bastard, was himself a flesh-and-bone rebuttal of his own assertion. Still, tonight, Bennett suspects he deserves this stupid futon. Though he wishes it wasn’t true, so much of what he has in life came too easily. He worked hard, sure, but his degrees, his success, the galleries? It all came quickly, before self-doubt could creep in. When he was a young man, it never occurred to him that he wouldn’t have those things, just as it hadn’t occurred to him that when he proposed to Eliza she might say no. Things went as they were meant to go.
We get what we deserve. Surely, he isn’t the only person stupid enough to have believed that? When it came time for him to fight for what he had—his career, for Eliza—he hadn’t realized he could really lose it all. He just expected it all to return to him, eventually. After all, it was his. So, he just hunkered down and did everything the way he’d always done it, even harder and less yielding than before. He wonders if during that time, he felt like a stone in Eliza’s arms, the way Kirstie felt tonight. No, it was more likely the opposite. He wasn’t a stone, he was a sponge, soaking up all of Eliza and Mia’s love and giving nothing back. Even worse, he’s still behaving like that. It took Kirstie to point out to him what a self-absorbed bastard he could be.
He pulls up the sonogram photo on his phone. He hasn’t looked at it since Trafalgar Square. He’s been afraid to, worried he won’t be able calibrate the correct levels of love and fear. Recalling what Kirstie said to him about sacrifice, he wonders if he’s prepared to give up, now, all the things he previously didn’t truly believe he could lose.
I’m sleeping on this rock-hard futon for you, kid. I’m selling my house for you. I’m giving up my Super Host status for you. What are you going to do for me?
Another photo pops up on his screen as he contemplates how the amorphous blob in the sonogram will somehow morph into a human.
Oi, mate! Looks brill x, the attached message reads. The picture: his painting, hanging proudly on the wall of the Royal Academy, the first in more than five years. He zooms in and out with his thumbs, trying to get a better look at the work around it, inspecting his painting in far more detail than he did the sonogram. His mind wanders to opening night: the throngs of guests, the canapés, the collectors with little cocktail napkins, whispering, “Is that a Bennett Driscoll? Is he back?”
Is he back?
He flips back to the sonogram.
Please don’t make me give up painting.
Quite the opposite, of course—he’s going to have to start selling paintings again. Without the income from letting the house, he’ll need to find it elsewhere, somehow. Turning over onto his side, he looks at the new painting of Claire, half-finished on the easel. There’s just the faintest trace of her laughing, as she had been that day. Maybe even at him. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that maybe what she found so amusing was the twat in the back of the pub with the sketchbook. The guy who thought he could sketch her without being noticed. The guy who thought he deserved to interpret her every angle and appropriate her every curve with his pencil without knowing one single thing about her. And yet he must have gotten something right, he thinks. She wouldn’t have slept with him if there wasn’t something in that sketch that rang as true to her as it did to him. Maybe he can paint his way into understanding Claire. Maybe he could he have done the same with Eliza, he thinks, but it hurts too much to contemplate that now.
The other night, when he was sitting in the garden with Kirstie, listening to the cool spring breeze in the trees, he thought that what he wanted more than anything was to find some real momentum and a reason to keep moving. It seems obvious to him now, staring at the painting, that Claire is that momentum. It was Claire that got him moving.
Bloody hell, she even got you running.
He picks up his phone again.
The painting of you got into the show, he types, looking at the half-finished painting one more time before pressing Send.
I thought it would, she writes back. You’re a good painter.
It probably pained her to send that compliment.
Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you, he writes, hoping she’ll understand his deeper meaning. I hope you’ll come with me to the opening.
I hope it sells. It’s worth a lot of nappies.
We’ll be fine, Claire. You don’t need to worry about any of that.
He can picture her lying on her bed in her dingy flat, probably naked, rolling her eyes. He’s going to paint her in every room of the flat, he thinks, before they move somewhere else—a woman in her ground. There won’t be as much time for painting once the baby is born. Even less time when Claire eventually opens her bookshop. This is the sacrifice he’ll need to make.
I love you, too, he writes, though compared to any love before it, it’s unrecognizable. He doesn’t press Send just yet. It’s because she worries so much, he thinks; that’s why she’s good for him. People who worry think about both favorable and unfavorable outcomes. Some just fear the worst, but others, like Claire, almost suffer more because they’ve dared imagine the best. The Bennett she’s imagined is no doubt better than the real one and what worries him more than anything is that he’ll disappoint her. But there’s no worry without hope, and Claire, bless her, remains hopeful about him. He wonders for the first time in a long while, if his burdens and his desires might not be just his own, but shared. He hits Send.
The little bubble pops up and hovers. He waits, anticipating a complicated reply.
You’re joking. A fucking text message?
No, he writes.
You’re such a bastard.
I know. He smiles, aware that outrage is better than defeat. It’s better this way, he types. Now you have it in writing.
Am I going to need it in writing? Are you planning to deny it later?
He rolls on
to his back. No. But you worry. So I thought you might like to have it.
It’s another minute before Thank You pops up on his screen. You will say it, though? Like a proper human being?
Kirstie’s TV still flickers from the main house into the garden. It’s nice, Bennett thinks, that he won’t have to remember Kirstie this way, living in his house. He can think of her in her Barbican flat, leaning over her balcony, watching all the suits go by. He is going to think about her, he knows that. Maybe, in five years’ time, he’ll go sit by the Barbican pond, just to see if she’s there. By then, he’ll have a four-year-old. And a twenty-four-year-old, too. Maybe a new gallery. And Claire. He’ll have Claire. Of course he will.
Tomorrow, he writes. We’ve got lots to do tomorrow.
Acknowledgments
I suppose it makes sense to start at the beginning. A huge thank you to my family: Mom, Dad, and Emily. The phrase “I couldn’t have done it without you” is probably said too much, but in this case it feels especially true. Your support and advice mean so much. Your love means everything. My dad read a couple drafts of this book, and it was his belief and encouragement in the early drafts that made it possible to keep going.
To Steve, Molly, and Henry, who listened to me talk about this book every Sunday night for two years; you deserve some sort of award.
To my friends and family in London; it’s for you that I keep returning. Thank you for welcoming me and giving me a second home—Jon, Maha, James, Clare, Jenny, Luke, Maya, Ruth, Peter, Simon, Karina, Adam, Anna, and Ollie. Thank you to my tutors at the Slade School of Fine Art who told me I didn’t have to choose between painting and writing. It took me a long time to believe you. And thank you to Ziella Bryars for including my early plays in Love Bites and prompting me to think of myself as a storyteller.
Thank you to Nicole Aragi, my wonderful agent, for knowing all the things I don’t, for encouraging me to always trust my gut and for giving me so many reasons to dance in the street. Thank you to everyone at Aragi—Maya Solovej and Gracie Dietshe.
Thank you to my fantastic editor, Sally Kim. I knew from our initial phone conversation that you truly cared about these characters. Working with you has been such a joy and a privilege. Both Bennett and I are the better for it.
Thank you to everyone at Putnam for their belief and hard work on this book—Gaby Mongelli, Alexis Welby, Ashley McClay, and Ivan Held. Thank you to the art department, who’ve designed a beautiful cover and layout.
Thank you to Imogen Taylor and Tinder Press for bringing this book home to the UK.
Thank you to Gabrielle Brooks for the early read and sage advice.
Thank you to Philip Glass for use of Einstein on the Beach, Knee Play no. 5. Every once in a while you hear a song that stops you in your tracks. This piece of music is such a gift.
A huge thank you to Roots Manuva for the music that inspires me every day to laugh, cry, dance, and fight. Thank you for soundtracking Bennett’s life and mine.
Tom. To whom this book is dedicated. Anything I write here would fall short of communicating just how thankful I am. All you need is someone to go along with, right? In short, thank you for going along with me.
About the Author
Kate Russo grew up in Maine but now divides her time between there and the United Kingdom. She has an MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, and exhibits in both the UK and the US.
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