“No,” Ben said. “Not yet,” he corrected himself. He could hear Ted’s exhalation rattle through the receiver. “Where are you?”
“Cleveland,” Ted said. “There’s a lot of weather along the coast. There’s still a chance flights will start up again, but if not, I’ll rent a car in the morning and start the drive.”
“Thank you, Ted.” Charlie was on the other side of the attic, and Ben tried to keep his voice from breaking. “You don’t even know what it’s been like. You have no idea. I don’t even—I don’t even understand how this is happening again.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow even if I have to walk, Benj,” Ted said. “I’ll get Charlie out of there so you and Caroline can do what you have to do.” He cleared his throat. “How is Caroline?”
“The same way anyone would be,” Ben said. “Tearing the place apart.” He had to clamp down on a hysterical laugh that had fluttered up his throat. “I guess you were right about me, Ted. Right about this place. I got everything I ever wanted, and look at where it’s landed me. I’m such an idiot.”
“What are you talking about, Benj?” Ted said. “Look at everything you’ve done, coming from the place we came from. You can do anything. Anyone would tell you that. You’re only an idiot if you can’t see that.”
Ben found himself dangerously close to tears.
“I’m proud of you, big brother,” Ted said. “Remember, you’re not in this alone. Hold it together a little longer. I’ll be there soon.”
They said their goodbyes and Ben found himself unmoored, reeling from emotion to emotion and always perilously close to panic. What was he going to do? What was he going to do?
The phone was in his hand, and by the time Ben’s mind caught up, his fingers had already dialed.
“Hello?”
“It’s Ben, Mom.” His voice sounded like a rusty door.
“Ben?” she asked. One syllable, but it was all he needed to determine that her blood alcohol level was above the legal limit in every state. “What an early Christmas present this is,” she said. “Twice in one year! I wonder if even the pope is treated this nice. You see much of your brother? Haven’t heard a peep from him in years.”
“When I can.” He’d never called her from his cell phone before because he’d never wanted her to have his number. Another of his ridiculously invented problems of Before.
“He doing okay?”
“He’s great. We’re all great.” He just wanted to hear her voice. He just wanted her for one moment to be a tiny fraction of what a mother was supposed to be.
“It warms my heart to hear it.” Over the line, her voice was not cruel or ingratiating, only faintly ironic. She didn’t know why Ben had called but didn’t yet realize that he wasn’t entirely sure himself.
“I told you I visited Grams’s family’s old farmhouse.”
“The place she left to you boys and not to me, her own daughter? The one you seem so sure you’ll never see a red cent for? She used to talk about that old place, your grams. I always asked her why they left. We had that sweatbox of an apartment in Weehawken—nothing like the nice neighborhood where you grew up. I used to imagine I could have been some kind of dairy-land princess if they hadn’t left that farm.”
Demons in the wood and devils at the door: That was what she’d told him last time. Ben hadn’t asked her about it then, and maybe he should have. If he had, maybe things would be different.
“What did she say?”
“What did she usually say? Something about the water being bad. Also said that her daddy had gotten tired of farming. Though I can’t imagine working at a gas station could have been much more glamorous.”
Demons in the wood and devils at the door: Of course she’d been making it up.
“You okay, Benj?”
“Yes, I’m great.”
“How is your wife?”
“She’s fine.”
“And the kids?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
“How many do you have now?”
“Two.”
“Right. Charlie and…what do you call the other one?”
“Robert.”
“Two boys. Just like you and Teddy. Would you send me a picture?”
“Sure. I gotta go, Mom.” Ben wasn’t sure what he’d needed from her, but now he knew he wasn’t going to get it.
“You still in the city?”
“Not anymore.”
“Where are you?”
“We got this place upstate.”
There was silence on the line.
“Ben, do not tell me that you moved to that village,” she said flatly.
“What village?”
“You know what village.” The way she said it made him jump. She used the voice that had yelled at him for eating too much or not enough. It had berated him for running or for not getting somewhere fast enough. “Grams’s village.”
“What’s wrong with the village? You just told me that they left because they were tired of farming.”
“Didn’t you ever hear her when she’d get into her cups? Singing her lullabies?”
“Grams didn’t drink.”
“Maybe not when you knew her, but she had her day. You think my thirst invented itself? You think she was a saint? She was the saint and I was the demon? Well, she was no saint.”
“What did she say about the village?”
“A million reasons to leave, to hear her tell it. Said the woods were haunted and the village was worse. Said there was a curse on the place. It took her brother. My uncle. After Grams tied a few on, she’d sing the lullabies she used to put him to sleep with. For hours, sometimes. Well, he didn’t need the lullabies anymore, I’d tell her.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this the first time I asked?”
“You have kids now, Benj. You know why. I bet you’re a good dad. Isn’t most of it trying to pretend the world isn’t half as bad as it really is? If they knew it all up front, what kinds of people would they grow up to be?”
“Which half of the world’s horrors were you protecting us from?”