In my classic, “I’m in constant competition with myself” nature, I redid the doodle of Deforest Kelley I posted last night early this morning because I’m constantly needing to outdo myself than the day prior :p
For all their weeks in Kentucky, Benny and Beth hadn’t discussed returning to New York besides the tense conversations before he visited her high school chess students. After that, the conversation seemed to be tabled and Beth had been reluctant to bring it up, not wanting to push them into choppy waters, and also, somewhat selfishly, not wanting him to leave. Part of her was always afraid that if they went back to New York, he would never come back, just like she could never stay. But one morning, New York is pulled squarely back into focus when Benny says, “I have to go out there for a few days. I should be back by Monday.”
“Is everything okay?” she asks gingerly.
“It’s my mom. My brother called and said she’s been having some problems recently. So, I’m going to go down there and try to sort it out.”
Beth realizes that for all the time she’d known Benny, he hadn’t mentioned his family before. She wonders then if it was because she never asked, and was she supposed to ask? She also notices that he didn’t ask her to come with.
“Okay.” She hesitates before she asks, “Do you want me to go with you?”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
His words hurt more than she expected and she crosses her arms over her chest. “Oh, okay.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you there.”
“You sure? Because it sort of sounds that way.”
Benny’s face softens and he says, “Beth, you should know by now that there isn’t anywhere that I don’t want you with me.”
“Then why is my going with you a bad idea?”
“The reason my brother called is to stage an intervention. My mom’s an alcoholic.”
Benny never mentioned this before, not even back during her drinking. She thinks then of how difficult it must have been to hear what was happening to her. Maybe it was better that he was out in New York then. She’d seen the haunted look in Harry Beltik’s eyes when he saw her and spoke of his own alcoholic father.
“I can handle it,” she says.
“I don’t want to put too much on you.”
“You couldn’t,” she says. “You’ve been there for me, Benny. Time and time again, you have been there for me. Let me be there for you.”
“You’ll tell me if it’s too much?”
She nods. “I’ll tell you. But it won’t be too much. Let me help you.”
He takes a long pause before he says, “Okay.”
---
They fly out the next morning and take a cab down to his apartment. It had been so long since Beth had been there, and if anything, her memory had recalled the place as nicer than it actually was. She looked at the spot on the floor where the air mattress had been, marveling that she had actually slept on that dank floor for weeks on end.
“Reminiscing?” Benny asks, palming her waist as he stepped past her.
“I’m just thinking about how I should have made you take the air mattress.”
“We both know I wouldn’t have agreed to that.”
“And now?” she asks.
“Only if you’re on it with me.”
“When is your brother meeting us?”
Benny takes a hold of her wrist and checks the time on her watch. “He should be here soon.”
“Are you nervous?”
Benny shrugs, and she expected some quip about how Benny Watts didn’t do nervous. Instead, he rakes his fingers through his hair and says, “All we can do is ask her to get help. Beyond that…”
“I know.”
And she does, more than most. Benny looks at her worriedly. “Are you sure you’re okay doing this?”
The answer is yes, but before she can tell him there’s a knock on the door. Benny opens the door and greets his brother. It’s like looking at an abstract painting of Benny. The similarities are there, but stretched and pulled out of dimension. She steps forward to say hello, and he grumbles to Benny, “Why is she here?”
“Don’t start, Cal.”
“This is a family thing.”
“Beth is my family,” Benny says in a hard voice.
Beth feels a certain rush at his words, but its tempered by the boys’ continued bickering. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for her to come.
“You really think Mom would want someone other than us to see her right now?”
“Mom is probably blitzed out of her mind right now. She won’t even remember who saw her.”
Benny’s wrong. Even in Beth’s drunkest state, she still remembered the people she saw. The calls she ignored. Maybe not right away, but they all had a way of creeping back. Usually in the middle of the night while she stared up at the ceiling, debating whether or not to take a third or fourth green pill.
“That’s not the point,” Cal says.
“I can stay here,” Beth offers.
“You don’t have to do that,” Benny says, glaring at his brother. She steps forward and puts her hand on his arm. “I don’t want to make this more difficult than it has to be.”
Benny swallows hard and from the conflict in his eyes she can tell that as much as he had tried to give her an out before, he wanted her there. He needed her. She squeezes his arm and looks over at Cal.
“Last year, I was addicted to pills and alcohol. I’m not sure how bad it is with your mom, but I’m pretty sure wherever she is, I was there at some point. Maybe I can help.”
Cal holds her gaze before he looks to Benny and says, “I thought all that Freud stuff was bullshit, but you really do end up with your mother, huh?”
Benny shakes his head and says, “Fuck off, Cal.”
“She can come.”
----
It’s about an hour’s drive out to where Benny and Cal grew up, and the atmosphere can only be described as tense. The scene in Benny’s apartment clearly demonstrated that he had a complicated relationship with his brother, and during the drive, Beth felt like somewhat of a referee between them. It was a role that her personality made her particularly ill-equipped to play.
Benny parks the car in front of a tidy looing Tudor house. Thinking of her own past, Beth notes that Benny’s mother at least is well enough to remember to take care of the lawn. They walk up and Cal pulls a key out of his pocket and unlocks the front door. The smell hits them immediately, and Beth knows it intimately. While the two men recoil, Beth feels a lurch of yearning.
“Mom?” Benny calls out. “It’s Cal and me.”
They walk through the house slowly. The kitchen is messy with dishes piled in the sink. She spots a half-finished bottle of wine, but no wine glasses. Makes sense, Beth thinks. At a certain point, the glass just becomes a hindrance to the task at hand. The living room is in a similar state of disarray. She can feel Benny grow increasingly tense beside her, and it only grows when they find the bedroom empty. But, Beth knows where to find her.
“Fuck,” Benny breathes out. His mother is asleep fully dressed in the bathtub.
“Why the hell would she be in the bathtub?” Cal says, and his confusion distracts Beth because the choice makes perfect sense to her. The coolness of the marble against hot skin. The way you sink into the basin, feeling yourself contained at all four corners as the world spins out of focus.
Benny strides past her and crouches in front of the bathtub. He’s all action, which she knows is an ineffective tool against the inertia of drunkenness, but maybe it can work this time. “Mom. Mom, wake up.”
The older woman stirs, her eyes bleary as she gazes up at her son. “Benjamin?”
“Mom, you need to get up,” Cal says forcefully. Everything about him had been forceful since Beth met him.
“Cool down,” Benny says in a tight voice. “Give her a moment.”
The woman’s eyes shift to Beth and she says, “Who are you?”
“I’m Beth.” After a pause she adds, “It helps to shift to your knees first.”
“What?”
“Getting out of the tub. It’s easier to shift to your knees first. You have better balance.”
It takes time for Mrs. Watts to process what Beth said, but then she clumsily leans forward and pulls her knees beneath her. She stands slowly, her sons each taking one arm. They maneuver her down the stairs with effort and then the talk begins. You’re hurting yourself. We’re worried. You’re out of control. All of it’s wrong, but of course, they don’t know that. How could they? Beth stays mostly out of the conversation, washing the dishes in the sink. Behind her, Mrs. Watts insists, “I’m fine. I just had a little too much last night.”
“Mom, we found you in the bathroom,” Cal says.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
Beth hears the hardness in her voice and knows that they won’t change her mind today. But they continue to try, Beth drying the dishes and stacking them quietly next to the sink. When she’s finished she turns around, her heart breaking when she sees Benny sitting next to his mother. He pulled the chair close and he’s leaning forward earnestly as he speaks. Beth places the dishrag on the counter and presses her back against the cool granite.
“I know what you’re feeling,” she says in a low voice.
Mrs. Watts looks up at her and smiles unkindly. “Oh, you do?”
“I do. Right now, you’re feeling hungover. But, it’s the other feeling. The stillness. The world has so much noise, but after a certain point, everything goes still and all you can hear is the beating of your heart. But by that point you don’t remember that you can ruin it, so you drink more, and then you create your own sort of noise. Your heartbeat is too loud. Everything is too loud. So, you drink more to drown it out until you either get sick or pass out. And then you start it again.”
“Who are you again?” Mrs. Watts asks. Her voice is so soft that it’s almost a whisper.
“I’m like you.”
---
Ultimately, Mrs. Watts refuses any help and summarily throws her children, and Beth, out of her house. Cal tries to go back in, but Benny grabs his arm and says, “It’s no use. Today wasn’t the day.” Beth can see the worry in his eyes, and she thinks then that maybe Cal’s forcefulness had just been a way to hide the gnawing fear.
“We’ll try again later,” Benny tells his brother.
---
Back at the apartment, Benny asks Beth if she would mind having some people over that night. This was one of the things that Beth never understood about Benny. She never felt comfortable in a crowd, but with Benny, it was where he thrived. She still remembered the first time she saw him, sitting there in his leather duster and hat surrounded by people.
“I don’t mind,” she says.
A few hours later, she’s playing simultaneous chess games with Benny, Levetov and Wexler. Cleo watches from the side, as usual, puffing away at her cigarette. She and Cleo greeted each other as they always did, but Beth felt part of herself withdrawn around her. Beth didn’t entirely blame Cleo for what happened in Paris, but part of her could not help thinking that if Cleo had never showed up in Paris, she would have won that game. She isn’t naive enough to think that the drinking wouldn’t have happened at some point, but it wouldn’t have happened then.
When Beth is finished with the games – she wins them all – she goes into the kitchen to put together something for them to eat. Cleo comes up to her, pressing the smoldering edge of her cigarette into an ashtray on the counter.
“I always love watching you trounce them.”
Beth doesn’t respond, because she doesn’t know what to say.
“It’s good to see you,” Cleo says.
“It’s good to see you, too.”
“I can’t believe the last time we saw each other was in Paris. That feels like practically a lifetime away.”
Beth nods. “Yeah, it’s been a while.”
There is another stretch of silence, and Cleo lights another cigarette. She takes a long drag, the plume of smoke leaving her mouth like an elongated sigh.
“I’m sorry that I made you drink.”
“You didn’t make me do anything,” Beth says. “I could have stayed in my room. I chose to meet you.”
“I didn’t know about…” she takes another drag from her cigarette. “Anyway, Benny was pretty agnry when I told him we met up. He wouldn’t talk to me for months after that.”
Beth glances over her shoulder at Benny and sees that he’s watching them. His eyes are asking her a question and she nods slightly.
“It’s in the past,” Beth says, turning her attention back to Cleo. And with that, she feels herself release the resentment she had held since sitting across from Borgov in that gilded room, sweat dotting her hairline. It truly was in the past, and what did it matter? She got sober. She beat Borgov. It all worked out in the end, even with the detours.
Cleo grins hesitantly and Beth returns the gesture.
“Hey, how’s the food coming along over there?” Wexler calls out.
“Keep your pants on,” Cleo calls back, eyes sparkling. “The women are talking right now. Your food can wait.”
----
Cleo and the boys leave around one in the morning and Beth and Benny play one more game of chess – he wins and she blames it on the hour – and then go to bed. The next morning, she wakes up to an empty bed. The apartment is cold and she puts on Benny’s robe, wrapping it tightly around her small frame. She begins to walk out of the bedroom but stops at the doorway. Benny is at the kitchen table with his back to the bedroom. She can tell he didn’t hear her wakeup because his shoulders are tense, his movements are short and jerky as he takes a sip of coffee and puts the mug back down on the table. She walks out and she can tell when he hears her because he rearranges his body, giving her an easy grin.
“Morning.”
“Good morning,” she says, sitting next to him.
“There’s coffee in the pot.”
“I don’t need coffee right now.”
“Okay.”
His body goes tense again. “Benny-“
“I don’t think I can go back to Kentucky right now.”
She takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
“My mom needs help and I can’t put that all on Cal.”
“I understand. I can stay here for a few weeks.”
“I don’t think it will be a few weeks.” His hand tightens around the mug. “She’s really bad, Beth. She was never this bad before-“
He stops himself and she fills in, “Before you came to Kentucky.”
He nods. “I checked in more. I think it helped.”
“What about Cal?”
“They never had as close of a relationship.”
Beth nods quietly. “I’ll stay here as long as I can and then we’ll figure it out.”
“I’m sorry, Beth.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Beth says. She thinks of Alma and how she would have done anything to change what happened in Mexico City. “She’s your mother.”
Benny takes her hand and kisses it. “Sometimes I wonder how I ended up with someone like you.”
“It’s the hair.”
“I should have tipped my barber more then.”
“You actually went to a barber? I always just imagined you in your bathroom with kitchen scissors.”
He grins and leans in to kiss her. He stays close, forehead pressed to hers and murmurs, “We’ll get through this.”
He says it like a statement, but Beth knows him well enough to read the underlying question. It’s a rare show of vulnerability, and Beth wraps her arms around him, pressing a kiss just under his ear. “Yes. We’ll get through this.”
