Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [80]
“I guess I deserve that,” his father said. “But maybe that’s part of it. Takes one to know one.”
They trudged along in silence.
“Hope I’m wrong,” his father said when they reached the cars. “For your sake.”
“She’s nothing like you, you arrogant prick,” Ben had said.
It was the last time he spoke to his father for years. But as he let the pieces, fine as silt, sift through his brain now, a picture began to emerge, the way in a trick painting the background details settle into focus, becoming clearer than those in the foreground, forming an unexpected image—a picture composed of shadows, a wraith, perhaps, or a skull. And suddenly Ben’s confused, unanticipated emotions the night of the party—the rush of feeling for Alison, the swell of identification with her, and his own recoiling—began to make a horrible kind of sense.
That boy has a crush on you.
All your strays.
Claire and Charlie.
The night she spilled her wine in his lap and they disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Ben and Alison to make awkward small talk. What were they doing in the kitchen all that time?
The rift with Alison.
Was Ben losing his mind?
Was he making this up out of some kind of deep-rooted insecurity?
Ben wasn’t a particularly jealous person. He didn’t see the point. As a kid he’d witnessed his father’s rabid, hypocritical jealous rages at his mother, and they sickened him. Anyway, he was used to people being infatuated with Claire. She was eminently, as a boorish drunk at a party had told him one night, “fuckable.” He knew, also, that part of her craved the attention, but this had seemed innocuous to him, a quirk of her psychology that played itself out in harmless flirtations. To be desired was enough, Ben had thought; it fulfilled her need.
It never occurred to him that she might act on it.
All at once, jealousy took root in Ben’s stomach like a hardy, noxious flower.
Claire’s distractedness, her distance, even her compassion. She’d been unnaturally nice to him lately, both in and out of bed. There was a distance and a cover in that. Sex had never been the primary bond between them; though at first, like most couples, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, over the years their cohabitation had become so siblinglike that when they turned toward each other in the night it sometimes seemed almost inappropriate. Ben had always thought that their connection was based on a deeply felt, shared sense of irony, which tended to quash lust, a decidedly unironic feeling. To make mad love was to take it seriously, to admit to an earnest, naked need that the two of them didn’t often confess to. It helped when they were drunk, when self-consciousness was obliterated; after parties, late at night, they could be ravenous for each other.
But lately Claire had been approaching him with a disorienting sincerity—acting out, Ben thought now, a pantomime of desire. Was it pity sex? For the two of them to be ironic together meant that they shared a worldview; they were in sync. Her kindness to him now, on reflection, struck Ben as patronizing. Something was definitely going on. With a heavy heart, he realized he would have to find out what it was.
Or would he? He’d never been good at confronting people; it was so much easier to let things unfold, give emotions time to dissipate. And wasn’t it more natural that way? When he’d asked too many questions as a child it usually ended with his mother in tears and his father storming off. Ben had constructed his entire adult life on the premise that people should behave courteously toward each other; in his view, the rules of decorum and the right to privacy were inviolable. He didn’t want people poking and prying in the stew of his mixed feelings. Who knew what might rise to the surface? Putting Claire on the spot might provoke the issue unnecessarily.
He took so much for granted with her. They got along beautifully day to day; they rarely fought, and when they did, it didn’t last long. Claire wasn’t necessarily easy to live with—she felt things deeply, acted impulsively; she could be arrogant