The One In My Heart

It was midmorning before I walked downstairs. Zelda was putting away groceries in the kitchen. A box of pastries from the 79th Street Greenmarket sat on the counter. Two big “Get well soon” balloons bumped against the ceiling, their ribbons tied to the fridge handle.

“Morning, darling. I had a text from Frances. Rowland is fine. Imogene is already with him. Bennett went home to take a shower but should be back at the hospital in a few minutes. I’m taking the pastry to them, but there’s enough for all of us. Do you want to have one now or after we get to the hospital?”

I poured myself a cup of tea from the pot she’d already made. “I have some experiments I need to keep an eye on. Say hi to everybody for me.”

“So you’re planning to go later in the day?”

It was a grey, drizzly morning. The shopping tote that still lay on the kitchen counter was wet on the outside. I took a dish towel and wiped it down. “No, I’m not going today.”

Zelda nudged back the pullout basket where we kept root vegetables and turned around. “I know Rowland is out of danger. But I’m sure Bennett would appreciate your company. And Frances tells me Imogene is really excited to meet you.”

I forced myself to look at her. “There’s something you need to know. Bennett and I, we were…we’ve never been together. He recruited me as his pretend girlfriend, because I offered a means for him to be nearer to his parents without his having to come out and say that he wanted to reconcile. Now they’re reconciled and my role is finished.”

Zelda stared at me as if I’d told her that all along I’d been a green-skinned alien from a planet that orbited Betelgeuse.

I scraped my fingernail against a balloon ribbon. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. He wanted to keep it a secret.”

Zelda pinched the bridge of her nose. “But I thought he really had a thing for you—and you him. All the times you spent the night at his place—surely you weren’t just strategizing about his parents?”

“It was a partnership with…benefits.”

“Are the…benefits going to end too?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I opened the dishwasher and took out a handful of plates so I wouldn’t be just standing there, stupidly saying, “Yeah.”

“I don’t understand. I mean, I understand the having-a-girlfriend-to-make-reconciliation-easier part. But if the two of you do in fact enjoy each other’s company, why stop? And last night, didn’t I hear him say that he loved you?”

Had Bennett and I broken up for any other reason, I’d have made something up—or maybe tried to get out of the conversation. But now that he’d shone such a glaring light on the way I lived my life, now that I was exposed for all my tricks and maneuvers, I couldn’t bring myself to be business-as-usual with Zelda.

“He wants a real relationship. And I have a problem with that.”

“I know you’re busy, darling. But surely nobody is too busy for love.”

“It’s not that. I may be…I may be incapable of a real relationship.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Zelda huffed. Then, less certainly: “Isn’t it?”

I kept reaching into the dishwasher. Glasses, mugs, silverware returned to their designated places—anything to prevent me from actually squirming with discomfort. “I don’t like to be asked questions. I don’t like having to talk about things I don’t want to talk about. I’d rather be alone than open myself up to be poked and prodded.”

“My God,” whispered Zelda.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s just that…I remember a conversation with your father. He stood exactly where you’re standing now, and he said more or less the same thing.”

I froze, a spatula in hand.

“You know how your father was—great in a crisis, took his responsibilities seriously, and so droll and witty when he was in the right mood. But dear God, a lot of times it was downright impossible to hold a normal conversation with him. I think his father must have been a nasty piece of work, and his mother most likely an alcoholic—so many things touched him off. Absolutely innocent questions on my part would make him snap and tell me it was none of my ‘fucking business.’”

The spatula handle dug into my palm. I might not have heard that particular argument, but I very much recognized Pater’s emotional volatility.

“It was getting to be too much for me. I wanted our marriage to work, but I also needed him to make a good-faith effort to not be so difficult—and to not keep me always at a distance.”

What had Bennett said last night? I love you too much to survive being kept at arm’s length.

“That was when he told me I could do what I liked but he had no intention of changing. I realized then it would be only a matter of time before we parted ways.” She looked at me, her eyes wide with the distress of a doting mother who had just found a stash of coke in her child’s room. “But you aren’t like him at all. I mean, you’re as dependable in a crisis as he was, but the similarities end there. You’re the daughter any woman would wish she had. You are…you are…”