Searching For Meredith Love

by Julie Christensen

  Suddenly Ben was at her side, hand extended. “Would you like to dance?”

  Looking up, Meredith realized there were couples moving around on the floor in front of the band. “I can’t dance,” she announced, regretting the words the moment they slipped out.

  “Neither can I,” he contended, hand still extended.

  “I’ll step on your toes,” she said, wondering why she was still letting herself talk.

  “Next time I’ll wear my Doc Martens,” Ben replied, reaching for her hand and pulling her up to him. She felt, rather than saw, the heads at the table turn to watch. Ben rested one hand on her shoulder and leaned in, telling her, “In the meantime, stomp away.”

  The morning after dancing was Saturday. Ben had to be at the hospital for morning rounds at 7 a.m. At six, Meredith heard him slam a body part on something hard as he fumbled around in the dark. An “oof” floated over the bed. A minute later, he slammed something again. The oof this time was muffled, Meredith could imagine, by his own hand as he struggled not to wake her. She climbed out of bed and opened the blinds, letting the pale winter light into the room. Ben was standing just as she’d pictured him--one hand rubbing his injured knee, the other hand clamped tightly over his mouth.

  “Sorry to wake you,” he said, bowing slightly.

  “Will you buy me a cup of coffee before work?”

  Ben’s face broke into a smile.

  They packed Ben’s bike into Meredith’s car so he could bike home after getting off call the next day to check his mail. “I’ll spend some quality time with the apartment,” he told her as he dangled his front wheel out of her trunk.

  They stopped at a café across the street from the hospital. The coffee was good and strong.

  “What have you got planned for today?” Ben asked.

  “I need to call Kira.” She drank her coffee. “Jeremy moved out.”

  “Oh, no.” Ben put down his coffee. He seemed truly upset. “Do you know why?”

  Meredith lowered her voice. “Why else? Because Jeremy won’t have sex. Kira’s been trying to get him to talk about it for at least the past eight months. He finally moved out and told her she should date other people.”

  “And he still hasn’t talked to his doctor.”

  “No.” The sun came up over the mountains and a ray hit their table. The warm light suddenly made Meredith hopeful that things would work out for Kira and Jeremy.

  “How old is he?” Ben asked.

  “Our age. About. Maybe slightly older. 34?”

  “I had a patient a few months ago with the same problem. His wife called me before he came to his physical.”

  “Are people allowed to do that?”

  “Call me first? I can’t stop them. She knew he wouldn’t tell me that he couldn’t make love.”

  Meredith smiled to herself at Ben’s use of the term ‘make love’ for ‘sex.’

  “Turns out, he had a lump in his testicle. He was so freaked out he couldn’t even admit it to himself, much less to his wife.”

  Meredith paused with her arms over her head. “So what happened?”

  “They removed it. He’s fine. Testicular cancer is most common in men between the ages of 20 and 30.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Most people don’t.”

  “Kira thinks Jeremy won’t discuss it because sex is so wrapped up in a man’s self-esteem that he doesn’t feel like a real man now.”

  Ben shrugged. “Kira has no idea why Jeremy won’t discuss this. It could be hundreds of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “He could be depressed. Have anxiety. Real impotence. He could just not want to have sex with Kira anymore. Jeremy’s the only one who knows for sure.” He looked at his watch and stood. “I’d better get going.”

  Meredith felt a pang with the realization that she wouldn’t see him for two days. “Have a good day,” she told him, feeling a little teary.

  Ben instinctively sat down next to her and wrapped her in his arms. He gave her a body squeeze and asked, “What’s the matter?” She felt emotional, encircled inside of Ben’s arms. He didn’t press, he just kept holding her until she calmed down. Finally she broke away, worrying about the time. She was making him late, and, bless his heart, he was sitting, ready to listen to her as if he had hours in front of him.

  “I’m just feeling sad because I realized I won’t see you for a few days and, uh,” she paused, unable to say what she was feeling. “I’m going to miss you,” she said, cringing at how false it sounded.

  Ben’s shoulders relaxed and he pulled away to look at her. “You’re going to miss me,” he repeated. He was grinning with every part of his body.

  When he finally opened his mouth again to speak, Meredith told him, “You’re going to be late.”

  It took several seconds for these words to hit their mark. He continued grinning, then registered her comment. Then he looked at his watch. His eyebrows raised. “Yes,” he said as he turned back to her face, smiling. “Yes, I am going to be late. I have to go. Good-bye.” Still smiling like an idiot, Ben leaned in and kissed her with an open mouth. Then he grabbed his knapsack and bike and took off.

  I’ll miss you, she thought. How stupid is that? She was still berating herself when she heard her name. Looking up, she saw Ann standing in front of her, holding a cup of coffee.

  “If looks could kill,” she commented. “Maybe I should find another table.”

  “Sorry Ann. Not at all.” Meredith said. “My mind was somewhere else.”

  “Obviously. And not anywhere very good.”

  Meredith gestured to the seat recently vacated by Ben. “You just missed Ben,” was on the tip of her tongue, but at the last minute she threw it out. She didn’t want Ann to think her “look” was directed at Ben. And she didn’t want to offer Ben up as the only topic she could talk about with Ann.

  “How’s it going?” Ann asked as she sat.

  How is it going? Meredith wondered. She was surprised to realize that the answer was, not good. “Kind of sucky lately, but it will work itself out. How are you? Are you in a hard rotation?” Meredith felt like a gunner - shooting out questions to take the focus off of herself. She felt kind of nervous around Ann. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was a doctor, or because she was Ben’s friend.

  Ann took a sip of coffee. “Not really. The only thing I can complain about is sleep deprivation. I’m on mommy-call.”

  “Gosh. I hadn’t realized you had children.”

  Ann started to laugh. “I don’t. But I can see why you’d think that. No, it means that the hospital pages me when parents call with questions about their sick children. That could mean nothing, or it could mean fourteen calls between 2 and 4 a.m., which is what it meant for me this morning.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yes. And then my boyfriend, Roger, who’s not a doctor and treasures his sleep, and I had a terrible row.” She sighed and Meredith noticed for the first time that her eyes were red around the edges. “And he stormed out of the house this morning.” She took a sip of coffee. “And I go into the hospital at eight and come out again Friday morning, so none of this is going to get resolved until he comes home from work Friday night.”

  Meredith hadn’t realized before how much the residents’ work schedules could influence a relationship. She and Ben hadn’t really fought about that yet, partially because, she realized suddenly, Ben had made such an effort to not let it interfere.

  “It was a lot easier dating a doctor,” Ann told her. “We may have seen less of each other, but we understood.”

  Meredith nodded politely and asked, “Did you used to date a doctor, then?”

  Ann looked at her strangely, then said, “Well, a resident.” She opened her mouth to say more, but then apparently thought better of it.

  “A resident counts as a doctor,” Meredith said. “Someone in your department or another specialty?”

  “Another specialty.” Ann sighed. “Meredith, I�
��m no good at deceptions, and I don’t want to have this conversation with you and have you look back on it later and think I’m a liar. It was Ben. I used to date Ben.” She watched the shock register on Meredith’s face and continued to talk. “But we both agreed that we’re better as friends. I’m so happy for him that he’s met you.”

  Small realizations began hitting her like waves. She flashed to the night out at the bar: Meredith stuck between two surgeons and Ann across the table talking animatedly to Ben. Making him laugh. And Cathy. All this time she’d been jealous of Cathy, while Ann had slunk into the picture and befriended her.

  “Cathy?” she sputtered out, mostly because Ann was staring at her anxiously. “I thought he’d been involved with Cathy.”

  Ann sighed. “No. Cathy...” She paused in an attempt to sort out her words. “Cathy has had a crush on Ben. She’s a really sweet person. I’m not sure why Ben never went for her. But as soon as he met you, none of that mattered any more anyway. He’s just crazy about you.”

  While Ann was speaking, Meredith gathered herself. She was now perched on a precarious point, wondering whether to give Ann the third-degree, or wait to get her information from Ben. The questions she could ask, the details she could glean, were extraordinary. How long had they dated? When had they broken up? Why had they broken up? Who broke up with whom? She shook her head. “I have all sorts of questions,” she admitted to Ann. “Most of which are none of my business.”

  Ann still looked worried. “Well, I’ve said enough anyway. I think you should talk to Ben about the rest.” She looked at her watch. “And I’m running late. I’d better go.”

  After Ann had left, Meredith sat at her table awhile longer, marveling over this revelation and wondering how she should feel about it. Jealous? Relieved? After all, Ann was supportive of their relationship. She wasn’t trying to get Ben back. She even had a boyfriend. Roger. A live-in boyfriend. Why then, had Ben not told her? She wondered if he missed Ann, still craved her conversation, the smell of her skin after they’d made love. Her mind pictured Ben naked in bed with Ann. “No,” she said aloud, suddenly grabbing her purse and standing. She hurried out of the cafe as if by moving fast she could somehow leave her thoughts behind.

  Mendra was sitting at the front door. Meredith rose from her rocking chair and let Mendra out into the cool, night air. She turned back toward the room. The phone sat silently on the table, the red message light of the answer machine was unblinking. No messages. “Damn,” she said under her breath. She picked up the phone, for the twentieth time that day and listened for the dial tone. It droned in her ear, tediously demonstrating good working condition.

  While Mendra was prowling about outside, Meredith took the opportunity to clean the litter box. She grabbed a plastic bag and began scooping. Was it her place to call first? Was he waiting to hear from her? Or maybe he was just too busy. She opened a fresh container of kitty litter and poured some in. What did it say about her that she hadn’t called him yet? That she was not overly concerned by Ann’s revelation? That she was too upset to cope with it productively? That she was passive-aggressively waiting for him to make the first move? She sighed, rising from Mendra’s box and headed into the kitchen to wash her hands. The phone rang when her hands were sudsy. She leapt for it.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s me. Ben,” he added hastily. “Do you have a few to talk?”

  “Sure. Do you?” Her voice sounded more accusatory than she meant.

  “Yeah. I’ve got thirty minutes for dinner.” He paused and a silence began to swell up between them. Meredith waited for him to continue, but he said nothing. She wondered where he was. I’m not going to make this easy on him, she decided. The silence felt like a leech, sucking the courage out of her, growing larger and larger until she thought it would burst.

  “I didn’t tell you about Ann because, well, you were already jealous of Cathy. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

  “By giving me something I really should be jealous of?”

  “No. You shouldn’t be jealous of Ann.” He sighed. “I wish I could talk about this with you face to face.”

  “Maybe it’s better that you don’t.” She balked. Where did that come from? She couldn’t understand why she was making this into such a big deal.

  “Meredith. I’ve dated other women. You’ve dated other men. Where’s the crime?”

  Meredith paused, wondering the same thing herself. Then she pictured Ann with Ben at the bar making him laugh. A small, stabbing pain hit her in the chest. “The crime,” she announced, “is in not telling me. Hiding it from me. What else are you hiding, I wonder?” She was aware of her own hypocrisy.

  “Nothing.” Ben’s voice was very quiet, almost a whisper. “Nothing,” he said again.

  “It’s late,” Meredith said quietly. “You need to eat. Can we table this discussion till we see each other again?”

  “Okay. I should get off by seven or eight tomorrow night. I’ll come over instead of going home.”

  “Okay.”

  “Meredith.”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodnight.”

  After he’d hung up, Meredith sat in her rocking chair, cradling the phone, trying to understand her feelings. The room was very quiet. She listened for a scratch at the door, but none came. Mendra was apparently out for the night. Dropping the phone back into its charger, Meredith went to bed alone.

  The next day she felt completely okay about everything. Ben had done nothing wrong. Nothing at all. She considered paging him to stop his suffering right away. But the idea of calling him to forgive him seemed self-centered.

  The guilty expression on Ben’s face erased every trace of forgiveness. Like a dog going for an exposed vein, Meredith resumed her mantle of hurt feelings.

  “I felt like an idiot. What kind of relationship does Ann think we have? That I didn’t already know!”

  “I don’t care what Ann thinks about our relationship,” Ben countered. He was apparently taking the offensive. “What I wonder is what you think of it.” He reached into his breast pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. Stepping toward the door, he shook a cigarette out of the pack. “You sure don’t give me a heck of a lot of feedback on it.”

  Meredith didn’t know what to say. Ben waited a moment and then took a step outside to light up. “Well, I’m giving you feedback now!” she shouted.

  He sat down in the doorway and smiled. “Yes, you are.” Cold air was blowing past him into the room. “In a way, your anger is a relief. It’s tangible evidence that you care.”

  Meredith was subdued. She watched him smoke. “It’s freezing in here.”

  Finishing his cigarette, he came inside and shut the door. He walked across the room and stopped a few feet in front of her. His arms opened in a gesture of vulnerability. “No more secrets. Okay? I promise.”

  Meredith cleared the space between them in a single step. “Okay.” Leaning in slightly, she kissed him. Ben took a step backward and dropped onto the sofa, pulling her into his lap. They kissed again and Meredith came up coughing. “Ugh. Smoke.” She rearranged her limbs for comfort.

  “You’ll get the good and the bad from now on,” he informed her.

  Hypocrite, said the voice in her head, but she pushed it away and let Ben kiss her.

  Meredith was cleaning up in the kitchen. Ben was out in the yard smoking. Mendra was standing by the door, waiting for Ben. Meredith called outside, “I’m going to bed.”

  “Okay.” Ben’s disembodied voice sounded far away. Meredith shivered.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “Nope,” floated into the room.

  She got ready for bed, feeling dissatisfied.

  She heard Ben come into the kitchen and bolt the lock behind him. He entered the bedroom. Meredith could smell tobacco across the room.

  “Don’t you ever worry about lung cancer?”

  Ben walked to the bathroom. “Sure,” he said. Water started and Meredith could hear him
brushing his teeth.

  Shut up, she coached herself. Don’t say another word about his smoking. She opened a book.

  When he climbed into bed, she moved over to hug him. “Hey, do you want to see that new foreign film this weekend? What’s it called?”

  “I worry all the time about lung cancer, but it seems so abstract. Because I still don’t quit, I think I must not really believe it.”

  “Have you tried to quit recently?”

  “Yes. But I never even make it through one day. Just the thought of quitting makes me double up and smoke even more.”

  “Did you ever use the acupuncture appointments I gave you?”

  His face was a study in guilt. “No.”

  “It works on some people,” she said.

  “I’m not ready to quit. Besides, I’m pretty positive that I’ll fail.”

  “You may not. Plus, I read that every failed attempt is a building block to permanent quitting. They all contribute to the final time.”

  Ben laughed again. “Great. Stack up a bunch of failures to climb the wall of success.”

  “Well, that’s what the experts say.”

  “Well then.”

  “You’re not used to failing, are you?”

  Ben raised his eyebrows. “Wow. That hit a nerve. Maybe you should have gone into analysis.”

  “So are you afraid to fail? Is that it?”

  Ben turned off the light, signaling that he was ready for bed.

  “Is that it?” Meredith persisted in the dark. There was a long silence and then Ben answered.

  “That word is not in my vocabulary. So how could I be afraid of it?” His voice was light, but there was an edge to it that made Meredith drop her line of questioning and let him go to sleep.