“How do you figure that?” she wondered, almost angrily.
“You just said it. Your family’s standing by you. You know when I last spoke to my dad? Last summer. He’s down in Florida visiting my uncle while I’m here. Know why? Because we can’t be in the same room together.”
“You two always butted heads.”
“No, you don’t understand.” He held his hands apart like he was cupping a loaf of bread. “I hate him. I hate him totally and completely. He is a small-minded, bitter man who’s going to get liver disease and be dead within a decade, and you know what? I cannot fucking wait. I love my mom, I love my sisters, but I hate that man. He’s poisoned everything I’ve ever done, and if I let him near me he’ll poison whatever I try to do.”
Because in those days she felt so close to bursting into tears all the time, it was unsettling to see Ben clear-eyed, motivated, and convinced of what he was saying.
“If you have people beside you in life who care about you, who love you, who you can count on—that’s all there is, Stace.”
“And you don’t.”
“No, I do! That’s what I’m saying. I learned the difference. I’ve got Mom and my sisters, and Bill and Rick—if I can ever get them to talk to each other again.”
She laughed despite herself. “You’re counting your two douchebag high school friends?”
He grinned, surely knowing what a torch his smile could be. “I consider them more douchebag high school brothers.”
Then they were both laughing hard enough that other lunch patrons glanced over the tops of the booths to see what could possibly be so hilarious.
“Speaking of your neighborhood, I saw Bethany Kline tonight. Actually, that’s sorta the reason I’m here. She wants my help getting Lisa to come home.”
Mr. Clifton arched his eyebrows once. “Ah.”
“Do you ever… Have you ever… heard anything from Lis?”
He took a long quaff and then licked the foam from his upper lip, now missing the mustache he’d worn for so long. “The inimitable Lisa Han.” His eyes and lips searched for the right words. “Let me say two things: One, I have no patience for what Lisa did taking off like that. If Kim or J.D. pulled that on me, I would consider them cruel people. I would wonder if they could take into account human beings other than themselves.”
She wanted to shout both Yes! and But you don’t understand.
“On the other hand, I’ve lived across the street from Bethany since they moved in, when Lisa was seven or eight years old, and I know that woman has problems. She needs to see a therapist as badly as anyone I’ve ever met.” He inspected a chip in his glass, scratching a thumb over the divot. “I wrote to Lisa maybe a year after she left.”
Stacey’s entire body tensed. “You did?”
“Sure. Just to say I understand why she did what she did, but that didn’t excuse it. Her mother was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and she had a responsibility to call her, to try to work it out.”
“Bethany didn’t tell me that.”
“I at least got Lisa to write to her, but…” He waved a hand to indicate how it ended there.
“Where was she?”
“About to cross into Cambodia, according to her.”
She blinked back furious tears. Mr. Clifton could see this struggle, though.
“I take it you have not heard from her in some time?”
“No.” She shook her head, swallowed, and swallowed some more. “It’s not just her fault, it’s mine too. I was… pissed at her. I didn’t try very hard.”
“If it makes you feel a bit better, you’re not the only one. Lisa was always brash, impulsive, and I think she’s completely miscalculated how much she’s hurt the people who care about her. Take Danny. Those two were thick as thieves when they were little. He went and did three tours in the army. Three tours. Paul and I were supposed to get beers tonight, but Danny wandered off and didn’t come home, so now Paul’s back at the house waiting up. It’s like even though Dan’s the same sweet kid I’ve known since he was in diapers, he’s not. Not really. It’s not just his injury either.” She’d heard of Dan’s lost eye, torn from its socket in some botched operation pushing the pointless Sisyphean boulder that was Afghanistan. Maybe he hadn’t suffered Rick Brinklan’s fate, but there was something about the intimacy of an eyeball, the slick softness, that demanded it bear no injury in anyone’s lifetime. “He’s erratic,” Mr. Clifton went on. “He’s distant. He’s about a million miles from the kid he was, and really, I’m coming to realize I always thought of him basically as one of my own. Now it’s like talking to the ghost of Danny.”
“Talking to Danny was always like talking to the ghost of Danny.”
He appeared not to appreciate this gentle ribbing.
“No, not like this. He needed someone, and Lisa could have been that friend to him. You know? If you do talk to her, please tell her I said that.”
She felt an urge then. Because sitting across this table surface felt confessional. She wanted to spill everything about Lisa, about Bethany, about her final errand of the night. But something stopped her. Instead she drained the last of her beer. It wasn’t the note she wanted to leave on, but it was late, an hour had gone by in a blink, and her mom and dad would both be waiting up. She told Mr. Clifton how glad she was that she ran into him.
“Just keep being yourself, Ms. Moore,” he said. “The world needs souls like yours.” She hugged him again, said good-bye. He turned his attention to the baseball game, and as she departed into the warm fluid of the night, she marveled at how many extremely decent people she’d known in this place. How much she’d taken them for granted.
She crossed from New Canaan’s downtown into the nearest residential neighborhood. She passed her old church on the corner of McArthur and High Streets, where as a toddler she’d played in the basement, where she’d sat every Sunday of her adolescence. She remembered the First Christian Church as staggeringly tall, looming over the town, a fixture of permanence and strength. Passing it now, maybe five years since the last time she was inside, it was like seeing it through a new set of eyes. Fixed atop the twin wooden doors, the stained glass mural of Jesus on the cross looked like a cheap, garage-sale version of the epic mosaics she’d seen in old European cathedrals. The gray brick edifice was too bright. A sixties ranch home architect trying to pawn off a Gothic sensibility and failing badly.
She had to walk only another block. When Patrick and Becky went house hunting right after her niece Jamie was born, they decided on an old colonial-style near downtown because it was walking distance from First Christian. The porch light was on, but the home was otherwise dark. She took the envelope from her purse and read her brother’s name one last time—as if she might have accidentally written another one without realizing. She stood beside his mailbox, letter in hand. Just staring.
When she told Patrick she was going to Columbus to see their parents, he’d, as usual, asked that she spend the night with him, Becky, and the girls.
You haven’t been to see us in New Canaan in years. We always have to catch you at Mom and Dad’s. There was good reason for this. At their parents’ place, Patrick dared not bring up what she knew he wanted to.
The last time she stayed with them—not the kitchen conversation right after she came out, but years later, well after she thought he’d given up on his absurd notions of conversion—he’d cornered her after Becky and the girls went to bed. Sat her down on the living room couch. Put his hand on her shoulder. And he started crying.
“Hell is real,” he said. “I know you don’t want to hear that. But I have to say it.” He tapped the corners of his eyes to staunch his tears. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try. Because, Stacey, you’re playing with literal fire here. You’re living a lifestyle contrary to everything laid out in the Bible. You’re in danger. You have to understand that.”