Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [52]
Falling in love with Ben had been easy. Claire was captivated by his intelligence and humor; he was unlike anyone she had ever met. She knew plenty of southern boys with smooth moves and social skills and even, perhaps, brains, but she’d never met anyone with Ben’s mordant, deeply sardonic take on life. And he was kind. From the beginning, Ben wanted to protect her, take care of her, send her out into the world with a better sense of who she was—or rather, a sense of her better self.
“I’m not as good as you think I am,” she told him once.
“You’re not as bad as you think you are, either.”
“Is that a challenge?”
He looked at her sharply. “I’m not your father.”
I’m not your father. Recently Claire had told her therapist about a time when she was eight, skipping rope in the driveway, chanting a song to herself, waiting for her father to get home from work. When he pulled up in his blue Chevy wagon, the first thing he said was, “For Chrissakes, Claire, stop yowling.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “I’m not yowling, Daddy. I’m singing.”
“Well, pipe down. You’re bothering the neighbors. And you’re filthy,” he’d said. “I’ll expect you to change that dress before dinner.”
His words stung, and she let the jump rope go slack. It was the last time she would ever wait for him after work.
“That’s some powerful shame,” Dina said.
Ben was the first man Claire had ever met who didn’t make her feel neurotic. He told her he loved her energy, her passion and intelligence. For a while it made her doubt him all the more. “I can’t be the person you’re telling me I am,” she’d say. “I’ll go crazy if I have to be the person you want me to be.”
“I don’t want you to be anything. Except yourself.”
“What if I don’t know who that is?”
It wasn’t like Claire had fallen out of love with Ben, she realized. It was more like she had drifted, the way you do on a plastic float in a pool with your eyes closed, moving away from the edge without realizing it. Some minute shift had occurred deep within her, and it altered the way she looked at everything. The peace they shared became interminable. Scrabble bored her; her sleep became restless. It was like waking from amnesia, or some epic dream; her head felt clear for the first time since she could remember. Ben didn’t take it seriously, thought it was the miscarriage; a mood, or a phase, part of the natural ebb and flow of their relationship. But Claire knew this was different—something had changed. She had changed. And the life they shared would never look the same to her again.
As she lay in that hotel room bed, staring at the ceiling, a coil of questions unfurled in her head. What kind of happiness is possible? Is it worth risking what I have? What would I give up; what would I gain? She wished she had a crystal ball that would reveal the shape of the years to come—that would tell her what to do. Then she was ashamed of her conventionality, her parochial need for direction. Wasn’t that what she had to overcome? That there was no clear path was precisely the point.
And yet … she worried about money, worried about the future; she could feel the minutes ticking by. It was as if time had started up again, after years at a standstill. When it seemed that she would be with Ben for the rest of her life, the passing of time had felt fluid, unimportant. But now, suddenly, she was exposed to the possibilities and limitations of a different kind of life.
THE NEXT MORNING, Claire was up at seven. She was supposed to meet the local media escort in the lobby of the Hampton Inn in forty-five minutes. According to the faxed itinerary she’d picked up at the front desk when she checked in the night before, they had a full day planned—two local radio interviews, a lunch interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, an interview with the book editor of the UNC campus newspaper. She was also supposed to drop by some of the chain stores to sign piles of books set aside by the managers. These signings