26. Bennett
TWENTY-SIX
BENNETT
When I get back, I grudgingly tell Marley that the guy doesn’t think it’s going to take long to fix the road, maybe a couple of days. Her response is…complicated. Her voice is thrilled but her smile is forced, and I can’t decide if I love or hate that she doesn’t seem to be in love with the idea of leaving so soon.
We don’t talk much through dinner. I take a pill before we decided to put on a movie and cuddle on the couch.
At some point during the movie, I fall asleep, and when I wake up, I’m alone. I sit up and follow the sound of Marley talking softly. The kitchen door is open and she’s sitting on the porch swing, chatting with Yogurt like they were old friends. The other dogs are spread around the yard and near her, and I lean against the doorframe to quietly appreciate the whole scene.
When a dog brings a stick, she throws it. When they do something silly, she laughs. When they nudge her, she scratches behind their ears and kisses their noses. The whole scene is like something taken from my wildest dreams.
Yogurt notices me first and trots happily to the door, distracting Marley from Clarence who’d waddled up the stairs to flop down in front of her.
“Hey!” she says, smiling up at me.
“Sorry I fell asleep,” I apologize, pushing through the door and joining her.
“I’ve been known to fall asleep during a movie occasionally too. It’s not a crime.” She leans into me, and we sit there quietly for a while watching the dogs play, her head resting on my shoulder.
“I have something important to ask you,” she says quietly.
“Shoot.”
I feel her take a deep breath and prepare myself. “How many squats would one have to do to get an ass like yours?”
It takes my brain a second, and when it clicks, I can’t help but laugh.
“I’m serious,” she says, poking me in the ribs. “I mean, all of you is toned and muscly, but your ass looks like it was carved by Michelangelo. Looks like it should be on display in the Louvre. I bet it would be a top draw too.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes and look down at her. “I can’t really tell you. I don’t actively do them.”
“I think you’re full of shit. I think when you say you’re ‘going to work on the kitchen’, it’s code for going to work on your glutes.”
I throw my hands up in surrender. “You’ve figured it all out, Marley. I’ll also have you know that when I go out to feed the dogs, I’m actually doing chin-ups the entire time.”
“I knew it,” she says triumphantly before snuggling back into my side. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Anything.”
“I’ve noticed you seem to get headaches a lot. Are you okay? ”
I’ve never wanted anyone to know me like I want Marley to. “Remember how I said I played football in university?”
“Mm-hmm,”
“Well, I was drafted, and during my first training camp I was hit hard—harder than normal, I guess. Anyway, I had a concussion from the hit. I went through all the concussion protocol stuff, which at the time wasn’t very robust, not like it is now. So when I was cleared I returned to training, except I was getting headaches pretty regularly. I’d get them while working out, reading, watching TV. It didn’t seem to matter what I was doing, although noise and light were major triggers. Specifically, sudden loud noises.” My eyes wander to where creatures known for sudden loud noises are sprawled around the yard. “One day we were doing fairly easy drills, and I just fell to my knees and vomited. The headache was so intense it felt like the only way to relieve the pain. I was sent for tests, and eventually a sports neurologist was called in for a consult. I was basically told that one more concussion would be devastating. I’d had a few in university and a couple playing other sports growing up, but since I’d never had any long-term effects, I just never really thought much of it.”
“I mean, why would you? If the people around us don’t seem worried, why would we be?”
“Exactly. So long story short, I made the decision to leave the sport, which my grandfather did not approve of at all. Thankfully my grandmother was supportive, so I had at least one person on my side. My girlfriend broke up with me shortly after, saying I was no fun anymore. And the few good friends I had just kind of disappeared, which wasn’t entirely their fault. I definitely isolated myself as a form of self-preservation.”
“I’m sorry, your girlfriend left because a medical condition meant you weren’t”—she raises her fingers in air quotes—“‘fun anymore’? I’m guessing what she meant was you’re not going to be a pro and there go all those sweet dollar bills?”
“To be fair to her, it wasn’t about the money, not for her or for me.”
“Oh, just the passion of the game, then?”
“Honestly, she just liked the party lifestyle, and that was hard to be around when I stopped playing. I didn’t like it that much when I was playing, come to think of it. But football for me was about making my grandfather proud. I had my heart set on med school. He had his set on his grandson doing something different with our name.”
“Something different than what?”
“Um…” I hesitate.
“What? Is there a history of bank robbing in your family? Generations of reliable insurance agents? Car sales?”
“Have you heard of Morgan Kelly Inc.?”
“I’m guessing it’s a company?”
“A company started by my great-great-grandfather eons ago, although it was just Kelly then. My grandfather added his name when he took over. I’m not involved with it now. My grandfather sold his share in the company when I was in high school because he wanted to buy a football team. That was honestly his main goal in life, which is weird to me, but I guess that’s just one of the reasons we didn’t exactly get along. We did not understand each other at all. He wanted glory that could be easily bought, or so he thought anyway. Turns out people are not just out there selling pro football teams, even if you offer a ton of money. Anyway, I wanted to do something more than run around a field. I wanted to help people.”
“By becoming a doctor?” she asks.
“I came home and told my grandparents that I planned to enroll full-time in med school instead of staying part-time, and he went off the deep end. Told me I wasn’t a real man because a real man could handle the odd headache. I ended up leaving that night and didn’t come back until Nan was moved into the hospital. I’d come home and keep her company there on my weekends. But I didn’t come back here, to this house, until Nan’s funeral. The old bastard didn’t even talk to me then. Sophie was actually the one who called to tell me she had died.”
“I’m sorry, Bennett.” Marley wraps her arms around me, and I melt into her hold.
“It was what it was. My nan was warm and supportive of whatever I did, and at the end of the day my grandfather hated everyone else more than me so there is some vindication that I was the only one he could leave his stuff to. Sometimes I think she stopped fighting cancer just to get away from him.”
“I doubt it,” she says, sitting back and shaking her head. “There’s no way she would have chosen to leave you alone with him. What happened with med school?”
“Nan was sick throughout, and between that and managing my own health, I just couldn’t keep up. I went down to half-time again, which made everything feel more impossible. After she died, I dealt with some depression. That’s actually why I got my first dog. She gave me something to focus on other than death, pain, and feeling like a failure.”
She laces our fingers together and squeezes, and I am relishing how she is initiating every touch tonight. “You’re not a failure, Bennett,” she says quietly. “And you’re still taking care of people.” She points to her ankle then sweeps her arms around gesturing at the dogs. “Not people, I know, but it’s the same in a way.”
I squeeze her hand back. “I know that now. It may have taken years of hard lessons, therapy, and nailing down the right medication, but I do recognize that I’m not a failure. ”
A moment passes before she speaks. “The bottles in the cupboard.”
“Saw those, eh?”
She shrugs. “Kind of hard not to.”
“Yeah. My doctor suspects I may have CTE—um, chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” I clarify.
“Oh.” She sits up straighter. “So the headaches?”
I nod. “CTE is fucking terrifying, but the neurologist I see yearly has said it’s promising that my symptoms haven’t gotten worse. The headaches are about as frequent as before, and I haven’t considered myself depressed in years, so that diagnosis may not have had anything to do with the CTE. The most promising thing is that I haven’t developed any new symptoms. Granted, they can’t truly see the extent of damage in a living patient.”
I hear the intake of air from beside me followed by a slow exhale. “You say that so calmly, it’s unnerving.”
“I’ve had years to come to terms with it.”
“How do you do all this alone? The other day you kind of disappeared when you had a headache. What happens if there’s no one around? Why not hire someone?”
“I’ve thought about hiring, but it’s a lot of work, and that someone has to be the right fit. I also don’t want to have to rely on someone.” I don’t add that I’ve become comfortable in this bubble of isolation; it’s not purely a decision based on the reliability of others.
“Bennett,” she says disapprovingly. “That sounds like your grandfather’s influence. Relying on others is part of being human.”
“Oh, because you were so welcome to the idea at first.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
She huffs. “It just is.”
As the swing sways slowly, it’s getting harder for me to live in the moment. The movement reminds me of a clock, each back and forth another minute ticking by. Marley lives for the here and now, and I envy her for it. Instead of just enjoying this, her and me swinging peacefully on my porch, my mind is already showing me visions of next week and beyond. And in them, I’m alone again, and for the first time in a very long time, it hits me that maybe I don’t want to be.