Joy Moore - Four Years Ago
Joy Moore
EXCERPT FROM UNTITLED JOINT MEMOIR WITH BENNY ABBOTT
Four Years Ago
Benny and I happened upon each other again on a rare rainy day in June.
I’d taken up painting—dollhouse art, Xander called it, because the canvases were smaller than my hand—and I was at Blick replenishing supplies.
I heard Benny’s voice first, and then his laugh, and I froze.
We hadn’t spoken since Xander kicked him out of our apartment, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I considered dropping my basket and running. I didn’t know what to say.
The look on his face when he rounded the corner and found me beside the canvas stacks—I can still see it now. “Joy?” he said. As if maybe it wasn’t me. As if maybe he was imagining it.
“Hi, Benny,” I managed to say. Three years had gone by. Three entire years. And in that time, I was a matryoshka doll of emotions. Initially, too sad and broken to reach out, unable to summon the will or energy to pick up the phone, much less endure an entire conversation.
As the exhaustion chipped away, it revealed a layer of outrage. Because how dare Benny say I never wanted the baby? Of course I wanted the baby. Did he think I would become a mother simply to appease my husband? If that were true, I wouldn’t have been so fucking sad.
Deeper still, I felt shame. Benny saw me at my window.
He knew I heard him arguing with Xander, knew I chose to remain hidden.
I watched Benny leave, saw the hurt in his eyes, and did nothing to make it right.
To this day, I have no excuse for my behavior, except to say that I just … couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
Months passed. Months and months. I knew it was on me to reach out, but every time I imagined the conversation I started crying.
The gap between us had grown so wide. How had it come to this?
It didn’t make any sense. Benny understood loss.
He knew what it was like to act irrationally in a state of grief.
He had to know Xander and I weren’t in our right minds.
Which was why it stung all the more that he didn’t try harder.
In all those months, months and months, he didn’t call or text.
Not once. His silence was so loud I could hear nothing else.
He’d walked away from my window, and that was … it.
And so nestled into the core of my matryoshka doll was a broken heart.
Sadness begets sadness; I understand this all too well now.
It was sickeningly satisfying to pile it on, and so I let myself believe that Benny no longer cared, that he no longer wanted to be my friend.
I mourned my baby, and then I mourned my friendship, and it was the most miserable time of my life.
And now here Benny was, staring down at me with a cautious, bemused smile, as if I were a cute but potentially dangerous animal that had just stumbled across his path.
“You’re at an art supply store,” I said stupidly.
His beard was longer, and his curls were shiny, and his Wilco T-shirt was a size too large. He dropped his basket, closed the gap between us, and wrapped his arms around me.
I hugged him back, tight, and then tighter, and when we released each other I punched him in the stomach. The air came out of him with a grunt, and he stumbled backward, jaw slack with shock.
“That’s for not calling me,” I explained. “Now punch me back.”
“What?”
“Punch me.” I motioned wildly toward my stomach. I wanted the wind knocked out of me too. I wanted to be punished for being such a terrible friend. “I didn’t call you either.”
“What do you mean ‘either’?” He shook his head, bewildered. “I called you a hundred times. A thousand.”
“Shut up,” I snapped, before my conviction gave way to confusion. He was lying, right? He had to be lying. I pulled my phone from my bag and held it out, as if its very existence could prove Benny wrong. “You did not.”
“I did. And then I called Xander and he told me you blocked my number.”
“He did not,” I said, less convincingly.
“Do you think I’m making this up?”
“I…” I wanted to think that, yes. I wasn’t ready to consider what it would mean if he wasn’t. “I don’t understand.”
Benny’s chest rose and fell. I could no longer read the expression on his face. “You didn’t block me?” he asked quietly.
I frowned up at him through my bangs. “I would never block you.”
We stared at each other, blinking this new reality into focus as shoppers chatted with sales associates in the nearby aisles. “It’s so good to see you,” I said finally.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
My cheeks heated. “Sorry I punched you.”
“It’s cool.” He waved it off. “Happens every time I come here.”
“Crazy artists,” I said with a forced laugh.
He nodded. “So.”
I nodded back. “So. How are you doing?” I cringed at my own formality. Benny and I didn’t talk like this.
He started to respond, but then his gaze locked on something over my shoulder.
“Joy?”
I turned. It was Luna, looking sharp in a sleeveless white jumpsuit and strappy sandals. She smiled uncertainly and stepped forward to give me a loose hug. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.” I felt like I was at an audition without having been given a script. We were all being so awkward. I gestured to her power-lunch attire. “You look good.”
“Oh.” Luna pressed a hand to her chest. “I just came from—”
I gasped. “Is that…?” On her ring finger was a modest, horizontally set oval diamond in yellow gold. Simple. Perfect. “Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”
She dropped her hand and looked to Benny for help.
“We sent you an invite,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, you didn’t.”
“We did,” Luna said. “And you returned it.”
“I didn’t.” I was still shaking my head. “I wouldn’t.”
Luna crossed her arms and gave me a once-over. “Look, I get that things have been rough for you, but lying about it isn’t—”
“She’s not lying,” Benny said. “Xander didn’t pass along our messages.”
“I mean, we don’t know…” I spoke so quietly it was nearly lost amid the gentle rustling of shoppers. “Maybe they were … misplaced.”
I heard myself; don’t think I didn’t hear myself. But it made no sense. Why would Xander do such a thing? All those nights he let me go on and on about Benny shutting me out—how could he keep a straight face if he was the one holding us apart?
Luna raised her eyebrows at Benny, and he bit his lip with a questioning smile.
“Fine,” she said. “I think I’ve got everything I need. Why don’t you two catch up while I go … elsewhere.”
Benny kissed her on the cheek and whispered something into her ear.
“Nice to see you,” she said over her shoulder.
“You too.” I waited until she was out of sight before turning back to Benny. “El Coyote is across the street.”
Understanding brightened his face. “Flaming margaritas?”
WE WAITED UNTIL after we got our drinks to address the awkwardness.
“So…” I held up my coupe. “Congratulations.”
“Right. Thanks.”
We clinked glasses.
“When was it exactly?”
“Last year. May.”
My chest felt tight. I took a large gulp of my margarita and waited for the tequila to spread through my veins. “Here? In LA?”
“Up north. A restaurant near Santa Cruz. It was small,” he added. “Mostly her family.”
“Right. I forgot they were up there.” I nodded as my thoughts began to spiral.
What had I been doing that day? Who’d stood as his best person?
What song had they chosen for their first dance?
And the question that hurt the most, the one I couldn’t ask: Who’d officiated?
We’d promised to officiate each other’s weddings.
He must have read my mind because he said quietly, “The phone works two ways. You didn’t call me once.”
“I was upset. What you said about me not wanting the baby. And then you didn’t apologize.”
“I tried so many times.”
“I didn’t know. Xander said…” Xander said I should wait for Benny to contact me first. That people’s true colors come out when others are suffering.
That Benny clearly wasn’t the stand-up guy I’d made him out to be.
I cringed that I’d let those words in, but I was so lost. “You visited me in my dreams.”
Benny’s expression turned hopeful. “I did?”
“You never said anything. You usually just sat in the corner … shaking your head at me like I was some sort of disappointment.” Every time, I was so certain he was actually there. Every time, Xander would have to remind me it wasn’t real.
“You sleep-hallucinated a mean Benny? That’s terrible.”
“I really believed you were over it.” I teared up. “I was in a bad place.”
“I know you were. I know.” His eyes were moist too. “How are things now?”
I didn’t want to talk about it. The alcohol, however, had already created a disconnect between my mind and my mouth because I found myself saying, “He wants to try again.”
The rain picked up, pounding on the roof. Benny’s green eyes shifted toward the slanted twinkle-lit ceiling, then settled back on me. “How do you feel about that?”
I shrugged in an attempt to play it cool. “I have frozen eggs. It wouldn’t have to be me. I wouldn’t have to take hormones or anything.”
“Oh.” Benny looked like he was struggling to remain impartial. “When did you do that?”
“About thirteen years ago.” I wasn’t surprised the topic had never come up.
I’d been so young. If I’m honest, I hadn’t even considered surrogacy until after my pregnancy.
I’d done the retrieval only to appease my parents, who insisted I take precautions before testing out a new drug—just in case I was in the minority of women who suffered devastating fertility side effects.
I didn’t end up staying on the drug for long, but we kept the eggs.
“So you wouldn’t have to carry.”
I knew what he was thinking: I’d never had to suffer. I could’ve avoided exceptional heartache if I’d gone that direction in the first place. He and I wouldn’t have lost three years. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking those things. Maybe it was just me. “Correct,” I said.
“And Xander’s good with that?”
“He’s warming.” In truth, he maintained romantic notions of traditional conception. But I hoped we’d eventually be on the same page. “Nothing is decided yet.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to keep feeling like me.” I said it flippantly, but this may have been the truest statement I’d ever uttered.
I’d worked so hard to get to this point.
The hormone fluctuations had wreaked havoc on my body and shaken up my trusted medical cocktail.
Under the supervision of my doctors, I’d been up and down and in and out and all the way around myself trying to find a new equilibrium.
The fact that we’d recently achieved something close was an enormous relief.
“It’s your body,” Benny said.
I sipped my margarita. “I know.”
“Your body.”
“Benny.”
He sighed. “I wanted to be there for you. You have no idea, Joy. I thought you hated me.”
“I could never hate you,” I whispered.
He reached out and took my hand.
Later, hours later, I went home and yelled at Xander, and he cried and told me he was sorry, he was only trying to protect me, I was fragile and he didn’t mean for it to go on so long.
I didn’t believe him, but I let him hold me anyway, and when he stopped crying, I made him promise he would never do it again, never ever, and he swore on his life that he only ever wanted what was best for me, he loved me so much, so very, very much.
He reminded me that it had been rough on him as well, and I eventually gave in because he was right.
It was rough on both of us. The only thing to do was move on.
But in this moment, holding Benny’s hand in this twinkle-lit El Coyote booth, I wasn’t thinking of the future or the past. I was thinking only of how grateful I was to be given this second chance.
Benny stared at me as he sipped his margarita, a dreamy expression passing over his face.
I couldn’t help but smile. “What?”
“I have this idea,” he said. “For a podcast.”