by Lincoln Cole
“So he let you stay?”
Ben nodded. “He let me stay.”
“Did you quit?” Richard asked. “Drinking, I mean.”
“I did,” Ben said. “Like I said, I was committed and I really wanted to quit, so I did. At least for a while. It was hard at first to break the addiction. My hand would shake and I would sweat a lot, and it was hard to think straight.
“But after a while I got to the point where I could push the cravings back down. And when the headaches weren’t as bad I started to enjoy other things in life besides alcohol.
“After a few months I was feeling healthier, and after ten months I wasn’t even really interested in drinking anymore. I could control it, and I was starting to get better. Roger and his family were good to me.
“He even helped me find a job, kept me fed, and treated me like I was a decent human being worth being cared for. They even set me up with a cell phone. One of those flip phones that are impossible to text on.”
“I used to have one of those,” Richard said. “Didn’t bother me at the time, but now I couldn’t imagine using one.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, chuckling. “Hard to be a beggar and a chooser. I never complained about it.
“Anyway,” Ben continued, “that’s when I met Desiree. She was a local girl that worked at the post office, cute as a button with doe eyes. A few years younger than me, just out of high school. She was amazing, the sweetest person I’d ever met, and she loved me. She really loved me and cared about me, something I’d never really experienced before. I mean, who could possibly love me?
“I was on cloud nine, happier than I’ve ever been and madly in love. And I was stupid and young so I thought things were just fine. I thought that everything would work out and they were finally looking up. I thought that there was nothing in the world that could bring me down.
“But I was wrong,” Ben said.
Then Ben laughed. It was an intense laugh, sardonic and self-deprecating. “God was I wrong. After I was there about five months a phone call came. Roger and his wife weren’t home so I answered it. It was my Dad. He was calling Roger to find out where Lydia’s grave was located. He wanted to go leave flowers and pay his respects.
“It was so crazy, out of the blue, to hear my Dad’s voice again. A part of me still reviled him, but another part of me, a lonelier part, woke up. It was like a blast from the past, hearing him talk to me again, and he seemed genuinely thrilled to be talking to me. I was his son, and he told me he loved and missed me.
“I told him where Lydia was buried, explained to him what had happened, and then I told him how badly she missed him before she died. How much she loved him and how she had always been waiting for him to come home.
“I blamed him. I yelled at him on the phone and said he was responsible for her death.
“He started crying. He told me I was right, that it was all his fault, and that he’d screwed up. He talked about how weak he was. How big a mistake he’d made when he up and left like he did. How he didn’t know how to apologize, so he never came back.
“I ate it up, desperate as I was to have someone to look up to, and when he apologized I forgave him. I actually gave in and forgave him, like the moron I was.
“We decided to go visit the grave together. He would come pick me up and we could pay our respects. I thought this would be the best day of my life. The turning point when things started to pick up. I would be reunited with my father and we could make a new beginning. A fresh start.
“We went to her grave and spent something like five hours there just talking. I told him about her and how she’d been going to college. How smart she was. I told him how I would have killed the guy who did it to her, and he said I was just like him. He would have done the same thing.
“He told me how he’d been living upstate since he left and how Mom told him he had to go away because he always hit me. She told him he was nothing and no good for her kids and that he had to leave or she would call the police.
“He apologized for hitting me. I told him it was alright because he was back. That was a long time ago and now he was back and we could start over. We were back together and we could figure it all out moving forward.
“We both ended up crying. He gave me a hug and told me things would get better. Then it was time to go. I told him I had to get back and that Roger would be looking for me. He told me we should go to a bar and have a quick drink before he took me back. He would buy.
“I said no, that I shouldn’t, that I had a little bit of a problem, but he wouldn’t hear it. He said it would dishonor Lydia to not have at least one drink for her. Just one little drink. What could it possibly hurt?”
“You went,” Richard said.
Ben nodded. “I went. I remember that moment. That feeling I had. I was able to justify it to myself, because it was for Lydia, right? I was only having a drink because I wanted to honor Lydia, and that couldn’t be bad, right?
“And that’s how stupid I was. I actually believed things would work out. I actually thought I was in control. We went to the bar. We had a drink, then another. It wasn’t ‘til the fourth or fifth that he started talking trash. He said some shit I don’t even remember about Lydia, and how she’d probably been asking for it, and I punched him in the mouth.
“We got into a fight and beat the shit out of each other. He told me I was a…a ‘stupid little shit and that he left me because I wasn’t worth being around’ and I threw him into the dishwasher. I’m almost certain he ended up in the hospital…or dead. I didn’t stick around to find out which. I just left. I was drunk off my rocker, no car, in the middle of the night.
“At some point in the fight I broke my phone. I was piss drunk as I staggered down the road until I found a pay phone I could use at a gas station. I called Roger. It was the middle of the night, I was confused and more than a little hurt, and when he answered I just started crying.
“I told him I was sorry, and that I knew I’d messed up. I told him I had thought I was in control, and I’d just made one mistake. One little mistake and as soon as I got home I’d clean up my act and never do it again. That I was done and I’d finally learned my lesson.
“And you know what he said?” Ben asked, coughing. “He said: ‘No.’ He told me he saw the missed call from my father on his machine, figured I was out drinking with him, and told me to screw off. He told me I wasn’t welcome back and if he saw me again he would call the cops.
“I begged and pleaded and screamed and yelled at him on the phone but he wouldn’t listen. He just told me to stay away.
“So I called Desiree. She didn’t answer, and I was drunk and pissed off so I left her a message. Worst mistake of my life, because I said a lot of things I didn’t mean in that voicemail. I was pissed off and alone and I just wanted to vent to somebody.
“I ended up sleeping behind the gas station tucked near the trash cans, and when I woke up the next day I felt miserable and scared. I remembered what I had done the night before and it finally hit me just how bad I’d screwed up.
“I called Roger again the next morning and tried to apologize. He wouldn’t even let me talk. He told me he’d said his piece, that I was just like my Dad, and that I was useless. Then he hung up on me.
“When I tried Desiree she didn’t answer. Her sister did, and all she told me was that Desiree didn’t deserve to be treated that way and she didn’t want to see me ever again. ‘Never come back,’ she said. ‘I liked you, Ben, and I thought you were good for her. But I was wrong, so don’t show your face around here ever again.’
“And that was it. I had forty bucks in my pocket, a broken cell phone, and a hangover that pulsed through my forehead. I didn’t have anywhere to go or anyone to care about me, so I was back to square one.
“I did the only thing that made sense. Ten in the morning, I went inside the gas station and bought all the alcohol I could afford. The attendant, the same one who saw me stagger in drunk the night before, never said a word
.
“I got drunk that day, and the next. And then the one after that, too. It was good, a relief; like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
“I would stare at the phone at night, sleeping in one place or another around our little town, and wish things were different. I couldn’t believe I’d screwed up so badly and was back to drinking.
“But another part of me felt good; like this was what I was supposed to be doing. Part of me felt that I deserved to be drunk, that I deserved to be a wretch living alone on the streets. This was all I was worth, and that self-pity welcomed me home with open arms.”
Chapter 24
Richard
Richard sat still in his chair, listening to Ben speak and afraid to interrupt. He was mute and uncomfortable; some of what Ben was saying struck a chord in him, awakening memories he buried long ago.
Certainly when he envisioned coming to Jason’s clinic to visit this conversation hadn’t been a part of it. He thought it would be incessantly boring and a waste of time.
Or, maybe he had been expecting it. Subconsciously, at least. Ben spoke from the heart, a sad young man with nothing to lose. Ben had hit his bottom and was here trying to figure out if he could ever be redeemed.
Maybe Richard had realized that this conversation was a possibility. His hands were sweating and his mind rebelled, trying to bury his own memories. There was nothing he could do to help Ben, and listening to him speak would serve no purpose other than to remind Richard of his own past.
Right?
“After about a week of wallowing in self-pity, though, my outlook started to change. My anger shifted from being mad at myself for screwing up to mad at my uncle Roger for throwing me out. I messed up, sure, but only that one time and because of my Dad. I hadn’t been prepared for that kind of a situation to occur, and a little lapse wasn’t such a big deal.
“I decided that I should have been given a second chance. Any decent Christian would have forgiven me, not tossed me on the street. It wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t thrown me out, and so maybe Roger wanted me to fail all along.
“He’d set me up to fail, so really it was his fault I was out here alone. Not mine. He hadn’t even offered to give me my stuff back. I didn’t have much of anything that was rightfully mine, but that wasn’t the point. What kind of self-righteous prick throws a kid on the street after one chance?
“So,” Ben said, scrubbing at his cheek, “I did what made sense. I felt like he owed me, so I went to collect. I broke into his house, and I was piss drunk.
“It was the middle of the night, something like four am. I probably made all kinds of noise as I went through his drawers and cabinets, taking anything small enough to fit in my pockets. I was frantic. I found his wallet and shoved the bills into my pocket, then threw the wallet in the trash. Found some jewelry his wife wore and took that too.
“At some point he woke up and came downstairs. He had a baseball bat, but he didn’t use it. He confronted me instead, said he was going to call the police. He said I would be going to jail if I didn’t leave right now.
“So I punched him and took the bat away. He wasn’t a big man, and by this point he was pretty old, so when he came at me I held him back easily. I laughed at him and taunted him, calling him all sorts of terrible things. Then I threw him into the wall.
“He crumpled to the ground in a heap and I busted out laughing. I heard him moaning and it just made me laugh more. Like a joke that isn’t even that funny but by God you just can’t stop.
“His dog came running out of the kitchen, a little Cocker Spaniel, barking at me. I kicked it into the wall beside him and that just made me laugh even harder. It wasn’t even funny, because I loved that stupid little dog, I just couldn’t stop.
“I remember grabbing a bottle of wine off the countertop and staggering back outside, laughing my head off.”
Ben paused here, tears streaming down his cheeks freely now. He sniffled.
“I kicked the goddamned dog,” he said softly, shaking his head in disbelief, “and was proud of myself for it. It was the lowest point in my life, by far, but I didn’t know it at the time. I’d gone a long way down before, after my sister had died, but Roger propped me back up.
“But this time I just crashed at the bottom. Roger was good to me, and I was too selfish and stuck on myself to even care. I threw an old man into the wall, kicked his dog, and was proud of myself for it, like I had really accomplished something.
“At the time, though, all I did was start wandering more. Cops never showed up to arrest me so I don’t know if Roger called the police or not. I kept wandering, spent the last of Roger’s money, sold the little things I’d stolen from him and his wife, and did anything I could to keep myself drunk. Screw Roger, screw Desiree. I drank.
“But the relief was gone. The self-pity fell to ashes as I started to realize what I had done. I was the lowest of the low, the sort of scum I’d promised myself I would never become. What kind of person would do something like that to another person, let alone a person who was good to them?
“A month passed, and that dragged into two. I spent a good number of nights drunk, and when I wasn’t drunk I would cry. I kept wandering, just like when I was younger, only it wasn’t the same this time. I wasn’t running from something like the death of my sister. I was just running. This time there was nothing I could escape from.
“I was at the end of my rope. I could see it all so clearly, even at the time, but it was like staring at a blurry picture. I knew what I was, and how sad I had become, but I just didn’t really admit it. I was lost, confused, and lying about everything.
“The only thing I kept from my time at Roger’s was that stupid broken phone. I would look at it, once in a while, and then chuckle to myself. It was as if the phone was a reminder of the man I almost became. The man Desiree fell in love with. That man was a lie. A cheat on the system. This was the real man. The one living in doorways and on park benches, staggering around for his next drink.
“I was almost twenty-seven years old with nothing to show for my life except an addiction to alcohol. I blamed my Mom. I blamed my Dad. I blamed Roger and Desiree and I even blamed my little sister. The only person I didn’t blame was me.”
Ben leaned back in his chair and let out a deep breath, wiping the tears away. He looked younger to Richard. More fragile in the chair. Defenseless and vulnerable.
“Then everything changed. My world was flipped on its head. This was two months ago. I was staying at one of the shelters near here. One of the guys, Mike something or another, worked there. An older guy, friendly and welcoming, he always tried to get me to talk.
“I never wanted to because, well, what the hell was I supposed to say? ‘Hi, I’m Ben. Don’t be nice to me or I might beat you up and kick your dog’?
“But Mike was persistent. He saw me looking at my stupid broken phone that I kept in my pocket and asked me about it. I told him I’d broken it a few months ago and that it was a gift from my uncle. It was the kind of phone where you buy minutes whenever you need them instead of setting up a contract.
“I’d only ever used it to text Desiree, and she always teased me about how slow I typed on it. She said I looked like an old grandpa sending messages, and I’d tell her if she talked on the phone like a normal person instead of only communicating in texts I wouldn’t have such a hard time.
“He said he might have an extra phone lying around his house if I still had minutes to use up. He said they never expire. I didn’t know, it had been so long since I’d actually used the damn thing, but I said sure.
“What the hell? Why not? We could give it a try. Anyway he brought his phone to the shelter the next night and we swapped those little cards in the back. Then we turned the new one on and started going through it, you know, to see what was on there from six months ago. We were just bored and looking for something to do, you know?
“The minutes did expire, it turns out,” Ben said, “but it still had th
e text messages saved on the account. Mike showed me how to look at them, and we realized one of them was new. Well, not ‘new’ exactly, but it had come after I broke the phone. It was around midnight the night I got in the fight with my Dad. The last text message I received.
“It was Desiree, and all the message said was: ‘had my doctor appointment today and took a pregnancy test. Call me. Very important.’”
Ben stopped talking here, staring at the floor. His breathing was slow and his eyes were closed.
“We sat there, Mike and me, staring at that message for about an hour. Neither of us were able to speak. When I finally looked up at Mike he looked sad. The only thing he would say was: ‘Man, I’m sorry.’
“I asked him why he was sorry. He just shook his head. ‘Since you’ll probably never get to see your kid,’ he said.
“Then Mike just walked away and left me alone with the phone. It took a couple more minutes before it really sank in what he had said and I ran to a payphone. I called Desiree, but the number was out of service. Her number had changed, so I tried calling her parents’ house. Her little sister answered. She recognized my voice, and when I asked if Desiree was pregnant, all she said was ‘stay away from her Ben’ and hung up.
“I stopped drinking,” Ben said. “I stopped that night. It was like a ton of bricks had been slammed into my back and I could barely breathe whenever I thought about it.
“I mean, what if she was pregnant? What if she was pregnant with my child? I don’t know how to explain it…it was like…I don’t know…like maybe if I was capable of having a child there was hope for me yet. Like I could still do something good in this world. Like I wasn’t a total screw up.
“I couldn’t even imagine touching a drink. I had to figure this out. I had to make it a reality one way or another. I asked everyone there for a lift back to her town—it was about an hour away—and some guy took me back to the house where she lived.
