Lost to Light

by Jamie Bennett

  “His mother broke up with you. He couldn’t even do it himself, the little—”

  “I don’t think he really wanted to,” I interrupted Iván. “You heard him on the day you helped me move out. They were going to stop giving him money if he didn’t do what they said. But he was pretty…attached to me.” Parts of me, anyway. Like my breasts. “He liked everything I did for him.” Like cooking and cleaning, his laundry, and sometimes his schoolwork. “He liked that I was available.” For sex, whenever he wanted it. When I thought about it, it was just terrible. Dreadful.

  “I don’t know whether to laugh at him for being such an idiot to let his mother throw you away, or to go to his house to thank him and his parents for being so stupid to let you go. It was a bad night for you, but a lucky one for me.”

  My heart swelled up. “You say lovely things to me.”

  “I mean them,” he told me. “I just need you to believe me.”

  After a moment, I nodded against his neck. “Let’s just not talk about Robin. I’m not going to defend him anymore, and I really don’t even want to hear his name. But I’d rather go somewhere else for dinner.”

  Together we chose a lovely restaurant, not La Raillerie. Iván worked for a while at the kitchen table and I messed around with some sewing I was trying to do in the office. I had thought I would make something for Benji, soft pj pants to wear. I had bought a pattern and everything, but something was just not turning out right. Really, nothing was turning out right. The instructions made no sense, in English or when I tried to read the Spanish version. I picked up some of the various fabric pieces I had cut out and went to ask Belén’s advice.

  Iván was talking to his dad in the living room. I slowed down when I heard my name, but they were speaking so rapidly that was about all I could understand. “Hey,” I said, coming into the room. “What’s going on?”

  Iván turned to me. “Nothing.” Was he blushing? “My dad is angry at me.”

  I peered around him to Santiago. “Why? What did he do?”

  Santiago scowled just like his son did when he was mad about something.

  “He thinks I was rude about your new car,” Iván told me. “He says I’m turning codicioso and fachendoso, two words I don’t want to translate right now.” He wasn’t blushing, I realized. He was flushed because he was so pissed.

  “He,” Santiago said, then stopped. “Joder, Iván..." He talked very rapidly for a while but there were a bunch of words that I recognized. "Enfadado...orgulloso...por fin...querer...casarte—”

  “He likes you a lot,” Iván translated, interrupting his father. “He and my mom both.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t what Santiago had said. Not all of what he had said. “I don’t want you two to fight about my stupid car, ok?” My voice sounded a little too loud. “It isn’t worth it. Please don’t fight.”

  “Maura se pone inquieta porque discutimos,” Iván said to his dad. “Basta ya, ¿vale?” He turned back to me. “We’re disagreeing,” he told me. “But he still loves me, because no one could have a better son.”

  His father rolled his eyes. “I love him,” he told me. “Usually.”

  I thought that the dinner out would be tense and strange with them fighting, but everyone acted just as they always did, and I relaxed. They got angry, but then they got over it. There was no need to be afraid that they would never make up. Iván had admired my car on the way over, so that made me feel better, too. Not that I needed his approval, but I didn’t like the disapproval.

  Iván asked me what Benji had been up to lately, and I related multiple stories of making him play sports with me or at least go outside. All that had improved since his Christmas in Georgia, but he was still kind of a drag about exercising. “Next week, I have time for more swimming,” Iván told me, and I nodded.

  “I told Maura how hard you always worked on your own swimming,” Belén said approvingly. “Always a good boy.”

  Both Iván and his father snorted. “Always?” Santiago asked. “I remember his…” He paused. “Apodo.”

  “Nickname,” Iván supplied.

  “Yes, I remember his nickname from his teachers in school.” Now the three of them laughed. “Iván el Terrible,” Santiago explained. “He was—”

  “Perfect,” Iván said smoothly. “Only sometimes a little mischievous. No more than most children.”

  His father shook his head, but his mother nodded. “That’s right. No more than most children.”

  “There was once when he stole the car,” Santiago put in.

  “What? This you have to tell me,” I said.

  “Not stole,” Iván clarified. “Borrowed. I just borrowed a neighbor’s car, temporarily.”

  “You were thirteen!” Santiago told him.

  “Let me explain, so that Maura doesn’t think I’m a criminal,” Iván said. I saw the change in his expression the moment he remembered that my brother and my purported father, were, in fact, convicted felons.

  I held up my hand. “It’s ok. Please explain why you were boosting cars at age thirteen.”

  “I had to get to the pool! It was imperative, there was a coach coming from our national team to see me. Something happened and my mom wasn’t there to take me—”

  “An accident on the highway. I couldn’t get home,” Belén added.

  “I knew I had to get there, and it was too late to run or ride my bike. Our neighbor, Mrs. Tanco, kept an ancient Dodge Dart in her garage. I didn’t even know if it would start. But I knew she left the keys in it, in case she needed it in an emergency. To me, this was an emergency.”

  “I came home and Mrs. Tanco was in her driveway screaming for the army and the Civil Guard to come and save her from the terrible thieves,” Belén said, wiping her eyes. “I can never forget it, because she was holding a swim cap. She said the thieves left it behind. I knew immediately who took the car and I went straight to the pool. There was the Dodge in the parking lot. Late that night Santiago drove it home and parked it in Mrs. Tanco’s driveway. She had been to church to pray about it and thought that God had stepped in and returned her Dart to her.”

  When I stopped laughing I asked Iván, “Well? Did it pay off for you?”

  Iván nodded, smiling. “I was the youngest swimmer ever on the national team. And I drove the car very, very well, all the way to the pool. It was the beginning of lifetime as an excellent driver.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Are you sure? Or was that where it all started to go wrong for you behind the wheel?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean?” Belén asked. “Iván has always been an exceptional driver.”

  “That’s why he never received his license in Spain,” Santiago told her.

  “I like your parents so much,” I told Iván as I got into bed. It really was much easier for him to sleep in his own room, because he didn’t fit too well in my bed. And it had made sense for me to trot across the hall with him, because…because I liked to be close to him. “I wish they weren’t leaving.”

  “They want us to come visit them. Maybe right after the spring semester ends and you graduate, before it gets too hot. Although you would probably enjoy the temperature.” He turned his head on his pillow to face me. “What do you think?”

  “Maybe I should start with a short flight first, to LA or something. To test it out.”

  “I’m glad you’re not saying no.” He reached across and tucked my hair behind my ear. “They like you, too. I think it’s good that we’re in California, though.”

  “Why?”

  “My sister-in-law and my mom sometimes fight. My mom can be a little too much.”

  I thought of how she talked about being a mother to me. “I can understand that. But I think it’s all out of love, right?”

  “Sure, definitely. She forgets, sometimes, that we’re not still children. For example, for the past two weeks I’ve brought my lunch to the pool every day in a little box. The other coaches haven’t laughed about
that at all.” He paused. “Are you laughing too?”

  “I thought of something else funny at the same time,” I explained.

  “Liar.” He grinned at me.

  “What do they think about us?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  I felt my cheeks get hotter. “Like, do they know we’re sleeping in the same room? In the same bed?”

  “I don’t think they’re checking. It’s no one’s business but ours.”

  “If you want to, we can…we can have sex.” My face was literally on fire.

  Iván looked a little pained. “That’s quite an invitation.”

  “I’m trying to be—” Normal? An adult? His girlfriend? “I’m just trying to move to the next step.”

  “And what would the next step be? Me rolling over on top of you and getting it over with?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He sighed. “Is that what you really want? Or is that what you think I want?”

  “I think you’ve been pretty patient with all my weirdness and I think there are about a million other women who would like to have you roll on top of them. You know what I mean.”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to force this.”

  No, he wouldn’t force me. I knew that. “But you must have expectations. And honestly, blue balls by now.”

  “Blue balls.”

  “It’s when—”

  “I know what it is!” He flopped back down on his back. “Joder.”

  I lay silently next to him. I kept quiet even when he got up and went downstairs and at one point I must have fallen asleep.

  When I woke up in the morning, Iván had never come back to bed. I wandered down to the kitchen and found his parents at the breakfast table.

  “Good morning!” Belén chirped. Santiago nodded to me.

  “Have you seen Iván?” I asked casually.

  “He left about fifteen minutes ago.” Santiago looked at me closely but I looked away. Probably it showed that I had been crying. I was being ridiculously emotional and I needed to tamp it down, immediately.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Belén asked, holding up the pot.

  My stomach turned over. “No thank you.”

  “Toast with jam? Or some cheese instead?”

  My stomach flipped again, and I put my hand over my mouth.

  So did Belén. “Oh! Dios mio. Are you…Maura, are you morning sick?” A huge smile spread across her face. “Are you and Iván going to have a baby?”

  “No,” I managed to say. “No baby.” I made it back upstairs before I puked and then started to cry again.

  Chapter 14

  Iván had to go to class and then to coach, so I drove his parents to the airport the next day. Both of them hugged and kissed me and made me promise to visit. Belén apologized again for the pregnancy remark the day before. “Not yet,” she said, and fixed my hair, just like I’d seen a thousand mothers do to their own daughters. I drank it up. “But you’ll tell me when it happens.” Santiago dragged her away. I had to laugh.

  On the way back home—in my new car!—my phone started to ring. It was Joana, and I fumbled with the buttons for a minute to put her on speaker.

  “Mrs. Dorset took Benji,” she said when I answered.

  I jerked the wheel by mistake. “What?”

  “The school just called wanting to talk to her. She’s not answering her cell phone.”

  “Joana, start from the beginning, please. I don’t understand.” But my heart was already pounding.

  She sighed impatiently. “I got Benji off to school on the bus, like always. Mrs. Dorset left a little later, I thought for work. She didn’t mention anything to me about getting Benji or him not going to school. Then, just now, the school called. I guess Mrs. Dorset walked into the classroom and told him he needed to come with her. She didn’t sign him out properly or say why she needed him to leave, which is why they called here. I didn’t even think she knew where he went to school.”

  “She didn’t know. She must have looked into it for some reason.” For Undine, the reason probably didn’t have anything to do with her son’s well-being. “Have you tried to call her?”

  “She’s not answering me, either.”

  I hesitated. “Well, she is his mother. She’s allowed to take him wherever she wants to. We can’t do anything about it.”

  “Don’t play like that, Maura. I know how anxious you must be about this. I’m losing it over here!”

  I looked at the clock in the dashboard. “I have to go to class and then to the dance studio. I’m going to call her too, and pretend I have to talk to her about something else. Maybe she’ll get back to me.”

  “Yes, tell her it’s about her husband! She’ll be interested in that.”

  We promised to keep each other up to speed. I parked and called and texted Undine, namedropping Mr. Dorset and trying to sound mysterious. I had no idea what was going on in my class that morning, I was so preoccupied and nervous. Where could she have taken Benji? Would she forget about him and leave him somewhere? Was she fleeing the country like Anouk’s accountant? What was going on? I didn’t hear back from her, not a word.

  It was while I was on my way to the dance studio that Joana called me back. I nearly had a wreck trying to answer. Cell phones and driving were a very bad mix.

  “What? What happened?” I answered, pulling into a parking space so I could talk.

  “They’re in Los Angeles.”

  “What?”

  “She called me and told me to get in touch with the school so they would stop bothering her. Rather than call them herself, she calls me to call them. That woman…”

  “Ok, yes, but why are they down there? Why the urgency?”

  “I guess it wasn’t urgent or secret, she just forgot to tell anyone. She didn’t mention what they were doing but Benji can tell us when they get back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “You have the night off.”

  We hung up, with me very glad that Benji was ok (as far as we knew, anyway), but still mystified about this total departure from the norms of the Dorset household. Undine traveled a lot for business, but Benji had never, ever accompanied her. Something was up.

  Anouk had been acting secretive and reserved since our disagreement about her investor. Today was no different. As soon as I came in, she went out, saying she had a business meeting, which I found hard to believe. Why was everyone acting so weird? What the hell was going on? I went into the studio and danced for two hours after I worked in the office, until I totally exhausted myself and my limbs were shaking. Then I did the core exercises Anouk had lined up, knowing that I was going to be even more sore tomorrow.

  I lay on the studio floor and checked my phone for the millionth time. Ugh, Robin again. He had taken to texting me lately, wanting to talk, telling me he missed me. I hadn’t answered.

  I felt like I was at loose ends with no Benji that afternoon. I went to the grocery store and picked out a lot of ingredients, then went home and started early on a very ambitious dinner. By the time Iván arrived, it seemed like everything was going to taste ok, but it had been touch and go for a while.

  “What are you doing home? And what smells so good?” Iván asked, sniffing the air appreciatively.

  Thank goodness I had gotten the burnt odor cleared out of the kitchen. “Benji took an unplanned vacation to LA with his mom so I had the afternoon off. I’m making pisto and flan.”

  “Wow,” he commented. “I’m very impressed.” He stood behind me and put his arms around my waist.

  Things had been a little strange between us yesterday after he hadn’t come back to bed with me the previous night. The weirdness had been partially masked by his parents’ presence, but we hadn’t talked much after I got home from Benji’s house. I had gotten ready for bed, wondering where I should sleep that night. Iván solved the problem by taking my hand and leading me to his room, then pulling my arm around himself as he lay on his side so that I was cuddled aga
inst his broad back. We were just going to forget about my suggestion of sex, and that was ok with me. I guessed.

  “I wanted to do something nice for dinner,” I told him, hoping the flan wasn’t raw inside.

  “Is it hard to cook with me standing here?” He kissed the top of my head.

  “No, I want you there. Stay right there.”

  Over the meal I told him as much as I knew about Benji and Undine’s adventure in LA. “She’s up to something,” I said. “I hope that it’s something good for Benji, but knowing her, probably not. And there’s still no sign of Mr. Dorset.” My fingers were crossed that the little snake had crawled back into his hole, never to return. From what Joana and I could get from looking at the public records online, it looked like he wasn’t going to get any jail time from his drunk driving/drugs in the car incident with the police. It was too bad.

  Iván told me about more problems he was having with the head coach, Christos. “I know he’s wrong,” he told me. “He’s wrong in what he’s doing.”

  “But it’s his team,” I told him. “Christos gets to do what he wants.”

  Iván shook his head, frustrated. “I don’t like working for people.”

  I started to laugh. “Yeah, life’s tough.”

  He scowled, then started to smile. “It’s a new experience for me, having a boss. But I’ve had coaches tell me what to do my whole life.”

  “Did you argue with all of them?”

  He nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “You’re going to have to suck it up, Iván. He could fire you,” I said.

  He scoffed now. “Fire me? No.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “Be careful,” I told him. “Think before you speak. En la boca cerrada no entra moscas.”

  “I’m taking that proverb book away from you.”

  That night I very gingerly got myself into the bed. Iván watched me, amused.

  “I’m already sore,” I sighed. “And I did it to myself.”

  “And we’re swimming tomorrow with Benji,” he reminded me.

  “Great. Looking forward to it.” I actually whimpered a little when my abs stretched out. I curled into a ball.