Дуглас Кеннеди: Five Days

All this started in January of this year — though Ben told me nothing about it until Easter when he was back from college. He asked if we could go out to Moody’s Diner for lunch. There, over grilled cheese sandwiches, he informed me, in such a shy, hesitating way, that he’d met someone. His difficulty in articulating this — the way he also said, ‘Please don’t tell Dad. I don’t think he’ll like her’ — filled my heart with such love and worry for him. Because I could see that he was in an unknown territory and rather deluged by it all.

‘What do you feel exactly for Allison?’ I asked him at the time.

‘I want to marry her,’ he blurted out, then blushed a deep red.

‘I see,’ I said, trying to sound as neutral as possible. ‘And does Allison want this?’

‘Absolutely. She said I am the love of her life.’

‘Well. that’s lovely. Truly lovely. But. you’ve been together how long?’

‘Ninety-one days.’

‘I see,’ I said again, thinking: Oh my God, he knows the exact number of days and maybe even the exact number of hours.

‘First love is always so. surprising,’ I said. ‘You really cannot believe it. And while I certainly don’t want to rain on your parade. ’

Oh God, why did I use that clichй?

‘. but. all I’m saying to you, is — how wonderful! Just give it all a little time.’

‘I love her, Mom. and she loves me.’

‘Well. ’

There was so much I wanted to say. and so much I realized I couldn’t say. Except:

‘I’m so happy for you.’

We met Allison once. Poor Ben was so nervous, and Dan asked a lot of leading questions about how much seafrontage her parents had in Cape Elizabeth, and Allison was looking around our rather simple home and smiling to herself. Meanwhile I was trying to will everyone to relax and like each other, even if I knew this was downright impossible. I didn’t like the way she was so deliberately tactile with Ben, stroking his thigh with her hand at one point in full view of both Dan and myself, whispering things in his ear (she may think herself a Goth, but she behaves like an adolescent), and playing on his evident neediness. All right, maybe I was being far too maternal/cautious — but what worried me most here was that Ben was so in love with being in love. How could I explain to him that sometimes we project onto others that which our heart so wants. As such, we aren’t seeing the other person at all.

Dan told me after the dinner:

‘She’ll drop him like a hot potato the moment she’s decided he’s outlived his interest to her.’

‘Maybe you should have a talk with him about—’

‘About what? The kid never listens to me. And he finds me so damn conservative, so Republican. ’

‘Just talk with him, Dan. He really needs your support.’

To my husband’s credit the next time Ben was home for a weekend from college they did spend much of the afternoon raking leaves in our garden and talking. Afterwards Ben said that his father seemed genuinely interested in knowing how he felt about Allison and just how serious it was. ‘And he didn’t lecture me about anything.’

Then, just six weeks ago, I got a phone call early one morning from the college. Ben had been found by a campus security officer in the middle of the night beneath a tree near his dormitory, oblivious to the pouring rain that had been cascading down for hours. He was brought to the college nurse, diagnosed with a bad chill (thank God it was only the tail end of August) and sent back to his dorm room. After that Ben refused to get out of bed, refused to speak with anyone. When this carried on for two days his roommate did the smart thing and alerted the college authorities. A doctor was called to Ben’s bedside. When he didn’t respond to the doctor’s entreaties to speak or even make eye contact with him Ben was transferred to the psychiatric wing of the local hospital.

That’s when Dan and I both rushed up to Farmington. When we reached the infirmary and Ben saw us, he turned away, hiding his head under a pillow, refusing to engage whatsoever with us, despite the nurse on duty asking him to at least acknowledge his parents’ presence in the room.

I was doing my best to keep my emotions in check, but Dan actually had to leave the ward he was so upset. I found him outside, smoking one of the three cigarettes he still smokes a day, his eyes welling up with tears, clearly so unsettled by the psychological state of his son. When I put my arms around him he briefly buried his head in my shoulder, then shrugged off my embrace, embarrassed by the outward sign of emotion. Rubbing his eyes, sucking in a deep lungful of smoke, he said:

‘I want to kill that little rich bitch.’

I said nothing. Except:

‘He’ll be OK, he’ll get through this.’

The psychiatrist on duty — a large, formidable woman named Dr Claire Allen — told us later that day:

‘I suppose you are aware of the fact that Ben’s girlfriend took up with someone else just a few days ago. My advice to you is to give him a little space right now. Let him start talking with me over the next few days. Let me help him find his way to an easier place — and then I’m certain he’ll want to talk to you both.’

To Dr Allen’s credit she phoned me every few days to update me on his progress — though she also informed me that the information she was providing me with was ‘very generalized’ so as not to breach patient/doctor confidentiality. As such she would never go into anything that was discussed during their sessions. To Dan’s credit he was eager to hear all the developments from Farmington and seemed relieved to discover that Ben was talking and ‘genuinely wants to get better’ (to quote Dr Allen’s direct words). He left the hospital after a week. But it was a full three weeks before Ben returned to classes and before Dr Allen gave us the all-clear to see him. On the day in question Dan had a first interview for that job in Augusta, so I went up on my own to the college. I met Dr Allen alone in her office. She pronounced herself pleased with Ben’s progress, telling me that, though still rather vulnerable, he seemed to have come to terms with what had befallen him and was having two sessions a week with her to ‘talk through a lot of things’.

‘I have to say that, without revealing too much of what Ben told me, he still does have a great deal to work through. I know all about him being chosen for that big exhibition in Portland. But like so many creative people he is also wracked by considerable doubt — especially when it comes to the issue of self-esteem. He has told me he is very close to you.’

‘I like to think that,’ I said, also noting her professional silence on the subject of his father.

‘There’s a sister, isn’t there?’

‘That’s right, Sally.’

‘They are rather different, aren’t they?’

Understatement of the year. If Ben is creative and withdrawn and tentative about himself, yet also given to thinking outside the box, then Sally is his diametric opposite. She is wildly outgoing, wildly confident. Dan adores her, as she adores her dad — though his testiness has been getting to her recently. My own relationship with Sally is a little more complicated. Part of this, I think, has to do with the usual stuff that adolescent girls (she’s seventeen) have with their moms. But the other part — the part that troubles me — stems from the fact that we are, in so many ways, such profoundly different people. Sally is Ms Popularity at her high school. She has worked hard at this role, as she truly cares about being liked. She is very all-American girl. Tall, clean-limbed, sandy-haired, always fresh-faced and well scrubbed, with great teeth. Her image means so much to her — to the point where she is already obsessively working out two hours a day and spends at least forty-five minutes every night ensuring that her face is blemish-free. She uses teeth-whitening strips to make certain that her smile is electrifying. No wonder she has half the football team chasing after her, though her current steady, Brad, is the school’s baseball star pitcher. He’s also something of a politician in the making who, I sense, sees Sally as nothing more than a very good-looking girl to have on his arm. Sally knows this too. When Brad was admitted early decision to Dartmouth a few weeks ago, I found her crying in our living room after school. In a rare moment, she confided in me: