Annabelle Fading into Him
Annabelle
Fading into Him
True love is something you have to fight for. Lovey has been telling me that since I was a little girl. Sometimes you fight harder, and sometimes the person you love fights harder but, whatever the circumstances, if it isn’t a love worth fighting for, it isn’t worth having.
I realized that Holden still thought we were worth fighting for, as Ben said, “So you want to give me a little insight as to why I was punched out today?” Ben was lounging on our bed, towel around his waist, a frozen New York strip over his eye.
I grinned coquettishly, hoping he wouldn’t be angry with me, though, truth be told, he was very seldom angry. “I just wanted you to have a little excitement in your trip is all. I hired that actor to shake things up.”
Ben raised one eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Right.”
“Well, you knew I was engaged. That was my engagee.”
“That’s all?”
I wanted to say something more, but in truth, there was nothing more to say. “Those sentences literally just summed up our relationship.” I crawled up onto the bed, straddling Ben’s waist and rubbing his chest. “It was nothing like us.”
I wouldn’t say that I fell in love with Ben so much as he consumed me. From the very first moment I laid eyes on him, I began fading into him, staining his skin with mine like new denim on a white cotton T-shirt in the wash.
He smiled and looked at me with that adoring smile. “TL,” he said, “you are stupid beautiful.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, leaning over to kiss him.
He exhaled deeply and said, “So, I have kind of a big question.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “I’ll marry you!”
He smiled. “How would you feel about moving to Salisbury?”
Salisbury was Ben’s hometown, where his parents still lived. It was quaint and charming. But you didn’t have to be a real estate agent to realize that quaint and charming equated to small. It meant settling down and living a regular life.
“Um,” I started, not quite knowing how I felt but fully aware that I had taken vows that necessitated following my husband’s passions, however crazy they seemed. “I thought you wanted to go on tour for another year.”
I had never planned on going on tour. I had never planned on marrying a musician. And I had certainly never planned on living in an RV. Hell, I’d never planned on stepping foot in one. But I had done it.
In less than a week after I met Ben, I had gone from a swanky condo-owning woman engaged to a very eligible bachelor to a married, jobless groupie living in an RV. And I had never been happier.
I had always been the responsible one. I drove my drunken friends to parties and always went to class.
I made good grades, accepted invitations from suitable boys and had a fractional share of the sexual activity of even my most prudish friends.
So maybe that’s why my time came all at once like that.
When I look back on my life, I think I’ll always remember those months living in the back of that RV with fondness.
Ben and I would lie there at night, his head on my stomach.
“Oh I can’t wait until there’s a little Benabelle in there,” he would say.
Then he would look up at me anxiously. “Do you think?”
I would have been a young mother, much younger than I had ever imagined.
But I was so swept up in that breathtaking love that the only thing that could possibly make it better was for another human being to come out of it.
It’s so unlike me, but I never once worried about raising a baby in an RV.
That was the effect Ben had on me. For the first time in my life, I was glass half full. I knew it would all work out.
That’s when Ben said, “I did want to go on tour for another year. But my dad needs me at the firm.”
“Really?” Ben and his father were both CPAs, a totally strange job for my hippy-dippy, adventure-loving husband. But his idiosyncrasies were probably my favorite thing about him. “Doesn’t he have like two other partners?”
“Three actually. But . . .” He trailed off. “But, it’s bad.”
I could feel my eyes widen as I got out of bed and arranged the sheets into some semblance of a made-up fashion. “Is someone sick or something?”
He cocked his head to the side.
I rolled my eyes. “Just spit it out.” Then I put my hand to my mouth. “Oh, God. Your dad’s not sick, is he?”
Ben ventured a smile. “No, no. It’s just that one of his partners is on trial.”
“Tax evasion?”
“They wish. Drug trafficking.”
I felt myself wince. “Yikes.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah. So he’s probably going to lose his license, and Dad needs someone to work and something to boost the firm’s morale and reputation in town.”
I smiled broadly, putting my finger in my dimple. “So, like, the prodigal son and his blushing bride?”
Ben grabbed my arm and pulled me back into bed, kissing me passionately. “A new grandchild probably wouldn’t hurt either.”
When I walked downstairs later for a snack, I got the distinct impression that the rest of my family wasn’t having as good an afternoon as I was.
D-daddy was in his wheelchair, raising a banana to his mouth with a trembling hand, staring out the window toward the ocean.
Usually when I saw him, I wondered what was going on in his head, if he was thinking or remembering, if he knew where he was.
But, that afternoon, looking into his blank face, something inside me just knew he was gone.
Louise, Sally, Lauren, Martha and Mom were sitting around the table in their gym shorts and socks, hair wet from showers, while Lovey was sipping coffee, lipstick on, looking fresh and rested.
Louise was saying, “But if I have to go on another blind date, I’ll absolutely lose my mind. Can’t people just accept that I’m fifty-three and single? It’s not a disease.”
Lauren laughed, her green eyes sparkling, smoothed her blond hair back into a ponytail, and said, “That’s good for you, but I could never be happy without a man.
” I realized that something felt off, like a dress that shrunk just the tiniest bit in the dryer.
You could still wear it, but it didn’t lie quite right.
Mom was saying, “Well, then we better get dressed and start cruising for men—” when I interrupted.
“What’s going on in here?”
“What do you mean?” Mom asked in that strained, high, faux-happy voice she uses when she’s trying to hide something.
“Oh, forget it,” Lovey said. “Darling, I’m moving to assisted living.”
She said it proudly, distinctly, with her head held high.
Sally’s eyes filled with tears.
“Momma,” Lauren said. “I still say you’re plenty healthy, and you don’t need to leave your home where you’re comfortable.”
The tears were running down Sally’s face now.
“Stop it right now, you two,” Mom scolded. “If she’s ready to be out of that house, then she’s ready to be out of the house.”
“Yeah,” Louise chimed in. “It’s just a house.” She turned to Lovey. “Besides, Momma, I hear that assisted living facilities are basically country clubs now.”
“Oh my gosh!” Sally exclaimed through the tears. “You aren’t getting rid of this house too, are you?”
“Honey,” Lovey said, “you’re making me feel terrible.”
“No!” Martha exclaimed, shaking her head furiously, the sun reflecting off of her shiny jet-black hair.
Lovey shook her head. “I’m not selling the beach house.”
I still hadn’t said anything. But to say that some of the best memories of my life had happened around Lovey and D-daddy’s breakfast room table wasn’t an exaggeration.
Those long talks with the women of my family, popping Hershey’s Kisses into our mouths, had shaped so much of my growing.
I thought of my room at Lovey’s house, the twin bed where I’d snuggled under the duvet while she recited bedtime stories by heart.
And the way her house smelled . . . Even though she never hung her laundry on the line to dry, her linen closet smelled like what I imagined sunshine must.
But, in the past several years, that house had changed for me.
I’d walk in now and see D-daddy, confined to his chair in the dark living room, the TV dancing with movies that he loved as a young soldier, and nurses milling around bringing medicine, feeding him juice, checking his blood pressure.
I wanted to pretend things were the same as always.
But there was no mistaking that old age permeated.
Ben walked down the stairs, that steak still in his hand. As he reached the bottom step and smiled to say hello to us, he looked at the faces of my aunts and mom, pointed back upstairs, and said, “I don’t think I got enough of a nap.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lovey said. “You’re family now, for better or worse.” She sighed. “I’m just telling the girls that I think it’s time for Dan and me to move to assisted living and sell the house.”
Ben pulled out a chair and sat down beside me like this conversation was crucial to his future. “You can’t sell the house!” Ben chimed in.
I glared at him, completely thrown by the unsolicited opinion.
“One of the best memories of my life is in that house,” he said.
Mom laughed. “What are you talking about?”
“It was the first place Ann and I told anyone we were married.”
Lovey smiled. “There are scandals and then there are scandals. When your granddaughter dumps her hedge fund manager fiancé and marries a musician she has known three days, that would fall into the category of the latter.” She glanced over at Ben, who was laughing. “No offense.”
He squeezed D-daddy’s shoulder. D-daddy looked at him blankly, and I wondered if he knew who this man was sitting beside him at the breakfast table. “Do you remember what you said?” he asked D-daddy.
“What he said?” Louise asked skeptically.
Lovey laughed. “Well, sort of. He said, ‘Mm.’”